Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Thayos]

The casuals wanted this game to be a convenient danger-less tome grind for gear and now that we that such an environment does not retain subs, people are here still trying to defend it.

Actually, I never saw anyone ask for any of these things. Don't confuse what people want with SE's poor design decisions. Most of us were happy with the final cut of 1.x, and ARR was a surprise for everyone. Those player polls... never forget.

My point stands that "casuals" is not interchangeable with players who don't like raiding.

Take FFXI for example. I didn't like camping ground kings, and I never farmed sea, but I was a Dynamis demi-god. Farmed that twice a week, full sessions, for like three years. Wasn't a ls leader, but was pretty high up in the chain of command.

This game needs a more diverse endgame so players who would be midcore or hardcore can find where they belong. Not everyone wants to do hardcore raiding, and that really shouldn't be a surprise.

[zosia]

Actually, I never saw anyone ask for any of these things. DoMy point stands that "casuals" is not interchangeable with players who don't like raiding.
n't confuse what people want with SE's poor design decisions. Most of us were happy with the final cut of 1.x, and ARR was a surprise for everyone. Those player polls... never forget.

Take FFXI for example. I didn't like camping ground kings, and I never farmed sea, but I was a Dynamis demi-god. Farmed that twice a week, full sessions, for like three years. Wasn't a ls leader, but was pretty high up in the chain of command.

This game needs a more diverse endgame so players who would be midcore or hardcore can find where they belong. Not everyone wants to do hardcore raiding, and that really shouldn't be a surprise.

This game won't have a midcore, ever. You can hope for it, you can pray for it, but it's never happening. Yoshida killed midcore raiding when he left the coil model behind for gordias savage. The midcore players are not coming back, the HC are one foot out the door. This game is going to die because the dev team does not know how to create impactful and meaningful content.

Everything outside of savage is just a cheap two week trick to get people subbed for a month. Since you seem bent of differentiation, a lion's share of casuals wanted the best gear in the game to come from tome grinds. Wow walked away from that model because they understood valor points were boring. Now valor is just used to upgrade gear, like tomes should have been used for. This is what most of the causals wanted, and when this game dips below 300k subs, they can have the game all to themselves. At least the cash shop should make up the difference in lost subs.

Quality MMO!

[Vantol]

To me, this is like saying you lost air because someone else started breathing. Raiders didn't lose the story, it's just that more people now have access to it.

In this context exclusivity is that air. Let's say you have, I don't know, a plane. You get fame, you ride friends on it, tell stories, take selfies with it and stuff. And tomorrow morning everyone has plane. So now your exclusive plane is just everyday garbage. Same with exclusive story and glamour. I used to stand in Mor Dhona every night with new Coil gear so people could admire it and take screenshots and also give small hints on TS about story. Now there is no point, the value of raiding is zero.

yes but if you then shun the casual players (its the general term i am using) you will see those numbers much much lower

If person drops game because he can't get everything he wants, there is something wrong with that person, not with the game.

P.S.

If not having exclusive access to those things means that raiding is horrible now, all it says is that they didn't actually find the raiding enjoyable.

It actually adds value to reward if you suffer and cry and taer your hairs trying to get it. It's just human psychology.

[MihaelB]

It's really a null argument for both sides when you get to the crunch.

Non-raiders do not need high level gear as current gear is faceroll for content. Raiders if they loved the 'raiding' aspect, don't need better incentives as the raid is there. Considering how few people amongst the subscribers want to raid, shouldn't you be thankful it exists as an option? What people seem to want is exclusive content for their time, which is again null if less than 2% of the game can receive it.

Fluff content seems to be the age of modern games as most people don't have time to play and from the <0.5% clear rates, Western culture gamers do not have the skill nor discipline to participate in the DEV designed difficulty.

I mean, our world revolved around Pokemon Go and Angry Birds at points, what does that say about modern age gaming?

[Thayos]

This game won't have a midcore, ever. You can hope for it, you can pray for it, but it's never happening. Yoshida killed midcore raiding when he left the coil model behind for gordias savage.

This game CAN still have a midcore endgame community, though. We just need more to do besides typical raiding.

The desire is there. It's why so many of us were so frustrated with Diadem, and why Deep Dungeons generated so much buzz (even though it wasn't made to be endgame). This game has scores of players who want to dive in, but they don't want to swim in the raiding pool.

[zosia]

This game CAN still have a midcore endgame community, those. We just need more to do besides typical raiding.

what? more diadem? more palace of the dead? more aquapolis? Sure, this game COULD have a midcore community, but it won't because the dev team only services the lowest common denominator of this game. Content will continue to be vanilla paste flops that fail at retaining players for more than a month.

[Cakekizyy]

I think they have said they design it as uber difficult and tune it doen for normal and savage.

[Lisotte]

My entire FC raided in the Coil days, most players aren't that hardcore or driven or anything, but raiding as an FC immediately fell apart with Alex. The gear largely doesn't matter, but seeing the story in a timely fashion totally does. So for Coil, seeing the story alongside the community, and on the side, getting the best gear in the game, was a great motivation for people (not to mention the fights were challenging but tuned very well). With Alex the combination of being able to see the completely lacklustre story in a couple days via normal mode, and poor numbers balancing/poor fight design immediately killed off raiding for most of my FC.

Cosmetics, achievements, all the other fluff, can keep you going for a while for sure. However in my FC the only people actively playing much each day are mostly just those few still raiding. I've gotten bored with the game atm but at least raiding 3 nights a week keeps me logging in.

[TripPsyc]

While people are debating Alex normal vs savage effect on the raiding community I noticed this topic has not been discussed in regards to previous coil runners not running Alex Savage. First I can only speak from my experience and those I know, a major of players I know and talk too, self included, do not run savage because of the nature of the statics and the unfriendly attitudes of the current raiding community. I can say hands down that while coil was happening people in general seemed not just more friendly but more inviting to learning and raids in general. While you might agree or disagree with that observation, to new players coming into this game or simply old players raiding new, think how this would drive them away from it, but asking for a change in the community attitude, will probably just add more attitude....

[TaranTatsuuchi]

...
This is a sandbox MMO, there are plenty of non raid activities.
...

Just a correction here, FFXIV is actually a themepark MMO.
Just because it has non raid activities doesn't mean it's a sandbox, or not a themepark.


A themepark MMO is one that takes you on developer designed experiences, MSQ, raids, etc.

A sandbox MMO, at its core, is a game designed in a way that the devs do not provide game experiences, they just provide tools and systems that allow the players to create the game experiences with their interactions.