Please, Developers, Please! Put an end to Easy Mode thinking

[thepinksupervisor]

Casuals = $$$$$$$

[Murugan]

Casuals = $$$$$$$

SE getting more $$$$$$$$$$$$$ does not = me caring if they are designing a crap casual focused game I don't want to play.

I don't invest money in Square Enix, I did invest money in EA because of STWOR, but I never planned to play it myself (and I am in the beta). I know that what I want isn't in line with what the "unwashed masses" desire from a video game, I take pride in that actually because I have confidence in my taste. So I can recognize that a casual cash shop game is going to make a ton of money, but there is no way in hell you would get me personally to waste my time on such a travesty.

I don't care how many people play, I don't care if this game improves SE's bottom line. I only care that there are people on my server I can play with (which means not casual/solo trash running around contributing nothing to my experience but lag), and that I have content to play. FFXI managed this just fine for many years. WoW on the other hand made tons of money, has millions of players, and I really don't care because it completely excluded anyone who desires complex MMO mechanics and has turned their server communities into cesspits. It could sell another 20 million copies I wouldn't waste 5 minutes playing it.

Luckily since Yoshi took over they are catering to "hardcores" again (making them the only major MMO developer to do so in the past 5 years).

[thepinksupervisor]

SE getting more $$$$$$$$$$$$$ does not = me caring if they are designing a crap casual focused game I don't want to play.

I don't invest money in Square Enix, I did invest money in EA because of STWOR, but I never planned to play it myself (and I am in the beta). I know that what I want isn't in line with what the "unwashed masses" desire from a video game, I take pride in that actually because I have confidence in my taste. So I can recognize that a casual cash shop game is going to make a ton of money, but there is no way in hell you would get me personally to waste my time on such a travesty.

I don't care how many people play, I don't care if this game improves SE's bottom line. I only care that there are people on my server I can play with (which means not casual/solo trash running around contributing nothing to my experience but lag), and that I have content to play. FFXI managed this just fine for many years. WoW on the other hand made tons of money, has millions of players, and I really don't care because it completely excluded anyone who desires complex MMO mechanics and has turned their server communities into cesspits. It could sell another 20 million copies I wouldn't waste 5 minutes playing it.

Luckily since Yoshi took over they are catering to "hardcores" again (making them the only major MMO developer to do so in the past 5 years).

You may seem to not care about casual play but if SE only cater to the hardcore that means they won't have an enough player base to help fund FF14

BUSINESSES WORK FOR MONEY
MONEY=DEVELOPMENT FOR FF14

[Murugan]

You may seem to not care about casual play but if SE only cater to the hardcore that means they won't have an enough player base to help fund FF14

BUSINESSES WORK FOR MONEY
MONEY=DEVELOPMENT FOR FF14

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you aren't a professional video game industry analyst, and if you are then I am truly sorry for you and your unfortunate choice of career. I don't think they need to make the game WoW-casual exclusive in order to have enough money to develop a game I would enjoy.

Not to mention if they don't develop content that I can enjoy=I'm not playing it=I don't care.

[AmyRae]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you aren't a professional video game industry analyst, and if you are then I am truly sorry for you and your unfortunate choice of career. I don't think they need to make the game WoW-casual exclusive in order to have enough money to develop a game I would enjoy.

Not to mention if they don't develop content that I can enjoy=I'm not playing it=I don't care.

If they exclusively develop content you enjoy, you won't be playing that either, simply because there's not enough people like that around to support the game.

Hardcore players are a dying breed. The people who used to play hardcore have (mostly) grown up and now have jobs, kids, and/or sex to worry about, not logging in 3 a.m. every night for a few hours for a chance to slay a rare monster. And kids have grown up with casual games like WoW and simply can't be convinced to take a step back from that.

You're going to have accept that at best hardcore players will have to co-exist with casual ones and not everything is going to be as hard as you like it to be. There's just no market for big name hardcore MMOs anymore. The mainstream wants casual play.

[AmyRae]

I'm sorry your life is so hard. How do you manage to do all of those things which all human beings have done for thousands of years and still have a hobby?!

I am also sorry that you apparently wasted your youth playing an MMO nonstop and missing out on everything else life has to offer and are now bitter.

If you want to just "tune out" maybe you should try becoming addicted to drugs. Why demand massive game worlds be developed and then emptied of all substance just so you have an effortless "escape" from your wonderful terrible life.

What is this I don't even

[Sephrick]

I'm sorry your life is so hard. How do you manage to do all of those things which all human beings have done for thousands of years and still have a hobby?!

I am also sorry that you apparently wasted your youth playing an MMO nonstop and missing out on everything else life has to offer and are now bitter.

If you want to just "tune out" maybe you should try becoming addicted to drugs. Why demand massive game worlds be developed and then emptied of all substance just so you have an effortless "escape" from your wonderful terrible life.

The person you quoted made a valid point so you turn to vague personal insults? Always a good way to win folks over.

From the onset, XIV was intended to be a game for an audience more broad than XI.

With that in mind, SE sunk a lot of dough into development.

Look at Demon's Souls as a good example. It was designed to be a hardcore game. It's punishing, brutal and as boring as XI was after a while. But it was designed to make a profit off the kind of low sales you get from a small niche marke. When it finally hit 500k units sold well after its release, Altus was elated with the "success." But it was a hardcore game designed to profit off the kind of sales that sort of game can generate.

XIV was made to pull in a casual audience -- albeit it was rushed out the door before it was fully designed. So the original "casuals and hardcores living in harmony" concept never came to be. But just because the hardcore audience is mainly the one that currently is playing doesn't change the amount of money and man hours they've already sunk into making the game.

They need to sell more units. And to do that they need to give people a reason to invest enough time each month to keep paying.

People have netflix (qwikster). Console games with in-depth multiplayer. High level characters in other mmos. And, as AmyRae mentioned, the general activities of day to day life. SE needs to give these people a reason to spend time in Eorzea, and a brutal unrewarding time sink just won't cut it.

SE could have designed a game for what's left of a hardcore generation. But they didn't. And nothing is going to change that fact. Now they need to deliver on the promises they've made and continue to make if they ever expect to even break even on this game.