FFXIV is in a Prime Position to Make Some Drastic Changes

[Shyle]

All the games you mentioned. ESO, GW2, SWOTOR, and Wildstar have had less success than FF14.....

Actually, ESO and SWTOR (and to an extent GW2) have had a lot of success since their move to F2P. Despite SWTOR having the worst F2P model in existence and the most limitations, the game community is still quite large, and it only got bigger with the release of the last expansion (and the movie of course). And they just refreshed their talent system (much like WOW's).

Wildstar didn't do well due to the difficulty of the game, even after the "nerfs" it was still a very steep cliff to climb to get into end game raiding. Carbine specifically tried to pull the "hardcore" raiding community from WoW and other MMO's in and found that it wasn't enough to keep the game going (along with several issues regarding stability during launch etc..).

[Galibier]

Actually, ESO and SWTOR (and to an extent GW2) have had a lot of success since their move to F2P. Despite SWTOR having the worst F2P model in existence and the most limitations, the game community is still quite large, and it only got bigger with the release of the last expansion (and the movie of course). And they just refreshed their talent system (much like WOW's). /snip

Actually SWTOR hasn't. Yeah people will say "it made X money" but read the earnings calls. Since its f2p transition it has either broken even or been seen as a loss, all the f2p transition did was stop an absolute free fall. Also according to NCSofts financials GW2 has lost money big time over the last year. Finally there is no way to tell if ESO is now successful or not, private companies have no obligation to publically release earnings.

[Galibier]

To the OP... Part 1

1. RIFT. They balance the game now around 61 point builds. A couple hybrids survive by chance. The idea of the soul trees was great for players but a nightmare for developers to keep balanced because of synergies.

2. SWTOR. You haven't needed to use a calculator for over a year because not you get "utilities" but the utilities are such that everyone takes the fact same ones,

3. Wildstars just massively dumbed down runes in Sept.

4. EQ2 is an apples and oranges thing imo. That is a game that is now going on for over 10 years. Procs for the longest time, were rare as all heck. One of the biggest reasons for procs on gear became common was to maintain a sense of gear prog. without crazy stat numbers and/or unintuitive new stats (such as crit MIT) it wasn't about making gear "unique".

[Galibier]

Part 2

As for the Relic thing. it all depends on what you see the purpose as. It seems clear that SE sees the Relics as serving these two purposes.

1. Give non-raiders a way to get psuedo raid quality weapon by replacing raid with time sink. To minimize the time sink, and to give them unique traits would then create an already bigger debate as to the balance between them and raid weapons.

2. The second purpose is, because of how one optains them, high level characters have to go into old/ lower level zones. A perennial problem in MMORPGs is the "old world" and/or lower level zones feeling like ghost towns to new players and the Relic weapons help alleviate that.

So in the context of SE's purpose for the gear the current set up makes perfect sense.

[Terribad]

Snip

I admit retention rate on MMOs isn't all that great but 5 million accounts made with an estimate of 750k active subscribers? That's extremely low by anyone's standards. Blizzard released their sub numbers for Q2 of 2015, as with majority of subscription based MMOs it lets people know how well the game is doing and the amount of people playing.

Complexity can be very offputing.

No one is asking for complex, people are asking for a variety which can be achieved without being complex. I get it that most of this playerbase can barely think and chew gum at the same time so we don't have to go the extreme route. Again, everything doesn't have to be at the extreme opposite end, there can be a happy medium.

[Valkyrie-Amber]

Well to start off with are all theses mmos mentioned in original post compatible with ps3?

I think that's the main issue with the engine being outdated and it has to stay compatible with ps3 so really
it will be hard to compete with other mmos due to console limitations of ps3 preventing the game from
moving forward.

Sad fact they can't drop ps3 support so really only way is to end this game after this end of hw story and make a new FFXIV-2 4.0 onwards that will be a new game non expansion that would copy all account data to a new game that will be PS4 and PC only. cause unless its a new game they cannot lawfully drop ps3 support.

[Galibier]

I think that estimate of 750k is definitely low. Here is the logic. First a registered account must have subscribed independently, post free with box, for 30 days. At the end of 2014 the game had 2.5 Million such accounts, beginning of 2015 4 million, August 5 million. I would argue based on that, that 1- 1.5 million would not be out of the question. This would be good because today there are a lot more MMOs than when WoW started nd many of them are f2p. If I remember right the 750 number came froman estimate from the 2014 earnings call when they said 1 million between this and FFXI. Thing is that earnings call was before China and Ps4 launch. a well thought out estimate imo.. Another good Reddit elsewhere noted the average loss of BAD games...28% remaining. They crunched some nunbers and came up, based on SE statements of a 35% retention overall here, which would be 1.7 million, which would be consistent with the link I posted.

[IndigoHawk]

Competition, whether PvE or PvP, is one of the least fun things about MMOs and won't improve anything in FFXIV. MMO competition is grinding, which is why it's not fun and can't be fixed.
The way to win competitions in MMOs is outfarm your opponents.
For PvE, run more dungeons, farm more materials, craft more stuff, or spend more time grinding than anyone else.
For PvP, grind gear to farm players who have grinded less and have little chance to win.
Farming competitions people will not create a sense of community.
Giving relics horizontal progression is also a terrible idea. If it's BiS, then raiders will have to farm it in order to raid. If it's not, then everyone will ignore it.

[BlatantPyre]

... MMO competition is grinding .... <and pretty much everything else she said.>

You do realize *everything* in MMOs, especially FFXIV, is grinding, right? Also, in games, competition does NOT necessitate grinding, unless it is developed that way, and that can be said about anything and everything in the medium. As far as competition goes...

I gotta get this off my chest...it saddens me the younger generation is being so heavily deceived on stuff like this, I've run into it elsewhere. Most seem to be confusing greed with competition, and while the two aren't mutually exclusive, neither are they intrinsically linked. Someone said something about it causing death earlier - but what she described had nothing to do with competition, it was greed.

Competition in its purest form is not only healthy, it is *essential* to life. Greed wields many aspects of things we need to survive in order to feed itself and essentially destroy, but that doesn't mean we should then hate that which was used. Would you stop eating food because it's possible to poison it? I hope not...

Competition does not beget death, it does not rely on loss, and it does not have to be unbalanced. Greed and avarice do, and they will employ whatever they can - peoples needs, empathy, and yes, even competition, to meet their ends. Please try not to be so easily deceived on such things...no matter who it comes from, no matter the reported intentions. You'll find you will cause that which you are trying to avoid...

And with that out of the way...as far as our suggestion of expanded PvP goes, I believe it was even suggested that grinding be left out in one of the posts, give us some even ground to stand on so it could be about skill. I think in the end we're just asking for more options as far as play styles go, so that both casual and hardcore players have things they can enjoy.

[BlatantPyre]

The sad fact here is that so many people die needlessly because of competition. For example, delivery companies could easily hire two truck drivers that alternate shifts so one doesn't cause an accident because he's tired and falls asleep mid-drive (Or, allow them some longer sleep-breaks). That alone would save hundreds of lives each year. But it isn't done, unless the law demands it, because it is costly, limits your delivery times and thus, is detrimental to the competitive standing of the company. It's cheaper to just pay compensations whenever it happens. And that's just one fairly harmless example.

Definitely greed.