FFXIV and Risk vs. Reward

[Kaurie]

FFXIV: Heavensward had a lot of different expectations set upon it by different types of players. For some of us, we understood that ARR had to play it safe in order to rebuild trust in the game and draw in new players who may not have played MMOs before. We were okay with that. When 3.0 was being discussed, the dev team mentioned that they would be more experimental and felt more confident after ARR's success. Players like myself interpreted this to mean that the training wheels would come off, and that new content would be difficult or at least would require a higher level of skill and participation than content in ARR did, and that the open world itself would also follow this model.

I agree strongly with your risk vs reward argument. However, this is not how I understood what they were saying about 3.0 at all. I thought they were talking about them taking risks in game design and features. ARR was to set the baseline for the game, and 3.0 would add things which add variety in the way you play (things like traits, customization, builds, varied armor, interesting stats and new gameplay modes). They've (kind of) done this with Diadem, but the execution is very low-risk, and in my opinion did not turn out as well as it was hyped up to be.


(OK Now time to read the 4 pages of replies....)