Where is the "never before seen content"?

[polyphonica]

I doubt that SE’s goal is to have players basically treat this MMO like a single-player game, where they purchase an expansion, sub for a month or two, and then stay unsubbed for nearly 2 years. Or purchase an expansion, but only play during free login periods.

I doubt it's their goal, but I'm sure they realize it's a not-insignificant part of the playerbase even now, and it's not different from most other competing MMOs as well (e.g. people going back to prep for the WoW expansion now). There's an audience of players who just don't like the MMO endgame routine in general (regardless of whether it's WoW, FFXIV, or whatever else), but still enjoy the story and playing for a time.

Eventually all MMOs can be branded as “financially-successful” if they live long enough. That doesn’t mean that the stale formula is okay.

It's financially successful by SE's own admission in their earnings, not just because it's long-lived. Obviously, years with expansions are even more financially successful, due both to expansion sales and increased amount of players coming back or joining to experience it. That said, the subscription model is there to provide stability as well (like why a lot of software companies are trying to move towards subscriptions), so obviously they need that too (or some other way to provide on-going revenue to fund content development).

It’s been a rare occurrence that I’ve met someone who isn’t fed up with the stale formula for patches and expansions - and they’re usually newer players or people that rarely play. Stale formulas aren’t good for player retention.

Honestly, there's no simple solution to the retention problem. This game is a vertical progression theme park MMO, and there's only so many ways they can mask the simple reality that, in all vertical progression MMOs, the gear you earn will eventually be useless except as glamour. This is ultimately what burns people out from every vertical progression MMO. They can do things like 8-person dungeons, differing levels of difficulty/time attacks, and instances with other different kind of gameplay mechanics (and I believe they should do these things, to be clear), but these are still just gimmicks that won't really mask the fundamental problem that burns people out, ultimately. Of course, this problem is also the sub-genre's greatest benefit.

I just don't think I've seen any game in this sub-genre really ever solve this "dedicated player ennui" problem. There's never enough content, and the sense of "pointlessness" eventually settles in, except when your experience is driven more by the people you play with and those social connections become the real content that keeps you engaged. Horizontal progression MMOs, on the other hand, tended to foster more long-term engagement from dedicated players (since you could always work on your own objective that wouldn't just be rendered pointless in six months), but at cost of accessibility to new/casual players. People are pitching this as a FFXIV problem (and sure they could do more to obfuscate the pattern), but fundamentally it's a trademark problem of this design approach in every game that's used it (at least in my experience, anyway).

[Yzuna]

I just don't think I've seen any game in this sub-genre really ever solve this "dedicated player ennui" problem. There's never enough content, and the sense of "pointlessness" eventually settles in, except when your experience is driven more by the people you play with and those social connection become the real content that keeps you engaged. Horizontal progression MMOs, on the other hand, tended to foster more long-term engagement from dedicated players (since you could always work on your own objective that wouldn't just be rendered pointless in six months), but at cost of accessibility to new/casual players. People are pitching this as a FFXIV problem (and sure they could do more to obfuscate the pattern), but fundamentally it's a trademark problem of this design approach in every game that's used it (at least in my experience, anyway).

I agree with almost everything you said.

But, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't try to be a little more horizontal and a little less vertical as far as progression goes.

And even if they keep doing ultra vertical progression, they could do it better. Are you excited when you get a new weapon/armor ? You get almost the same exact stats, exept in higher numbers. This is the only game that has, in my opinion, a gear system so poor.
Look at WoW, EQ, TESO, GW2, Rift, hell look at FFXI and FFXIV v1. They all had set bonus, proc on weapon, reactive on armor, skill buff/change on either, even hidden/latent effect for FFXI. A LOT more than STR+5 and VIT+4 on your new shiny armor. And I'm pretty sure it help keeps people interested, if only a little.
Even with vertical progression if, at least, the new gear you get to farm is different from the old one not only in term of look (because, let's be honnest, most of the player base uses glamour instead of the default armor look) but more importantly, in term of caracteristics.
Theory Crafting/min/maxing as of now is almost pointless in this game, because the way stats are handle right know is beyond ridiculous. You just grab and equip the one with the higher ilvl and don't even look at it.

But, they could go for more horizontal, I think.
They have an armoury system that let you change your gear pretty easily, why don't use it. They could start releasing all sorts of armor sets/weapons with very different bonuses. Some better for certain type of content/mobs/playstyle whatever.
People could either focus on one or all of them, depending of their playtime/dedication.
And yes, maybe some of them would be better that others, maybe some ellitist people would create PF saying "X set needed for Y" , but wouldn't it be better to risk some balance issues and have variety, than staying in this blank and dull system ?



On another subject, I tried Eureka yesterday...Is that the "new super fun system" that took almost a year to develop ? Fate train ? The thing they keep doing since the Atma days ? The one that everyone hates ?
They developped a new levelling system so we could do fate again ?

It's not all bad though, there is some degree of difficulty in the open world, which we desperately need, you lose HP when you die, the elemental wheel could be a good tool (not practical as of now though). But FATE train...whyyy?!
They could have done something similar to Sky/ZNM (FFXI). You farm key item from mobs/small bosses, that allows you to summon a boss, which might drop another key item to summon a more powerfull boss.
That way you have a group/Linkshell content. And the last Key Item allows you to summon the zone boss or something similar, that needs an alliance to defeat.
I mean, FATE train aren't fun, they don't build community. group/alliance content that need to be coordonated does. And, in my opinion we really need community builder content.

[polyphonica]

Theory Crafting/min/maxing as of now is almost pointless in this game, because the way stats are handle right know is beyond ridiculous. You just grab and equip the one with the higher ilvl and don't even look at it.

Honestly, I feel like this is 100% the intention. They've tried to make it so that the casual player only ever has to look at one number (Item Level) and be okay for every content they'll try. The other stats are sort of like the "advanced" mode for people who want/need to mess with melding at the beginning of a raid cycle, but are otherwise unimportant. For better or worse, I think they would probably say that this was a way of reducing "friction" to the end-user, and to ensure that all jobs could complete all content in a relatively even/balanced way.

They did experiment a little bit with the characteristics in Diadem, if you recall, but I suspect they found that it caused more problems than it solved, so that may be why we're not getting too much more of that outside of the niche melding metagame.

And yes, maybe some of them would be better that others, maybe some ellitist people would create PF saying "X set needed for Y" , but wouldn't it be better to risk some balance issues and have variety, than staying in this blank and dull system ?

Again, honestly, I think they would say no. It's a simplification they chose to remove friction, so that casual players would never have to worry about this. As soon as you add it at all, it creates this dynamic I think they were purposefully trying to avoid.


All this is part of why I believe this "casual who returns occasionally to catch up on the story" is a larger target audience than you'd think if you listen to the forum or other communities (like Reddit, etc.), and one of the more important target audiences in their development process. If it weren't the case, it seems to me they wouldn't make so many design decisions focused specifically on making their life easier. This seems, on the surface, counter to having a subscription-based game where you would want to encourage/reward dedication and longevity. (Their version of this is basically seasonal cosmetics, but even those they sell on the cash shop a year later -- so even then people who take breaks can catch up. The subscription-duration rewards were also nerfed so people could catch up. At most you'll lose your house, if you had one, and that's about it.)

In any case, I guess we'll see what happens. As I said before, if they decide to keep the game running for another full story arc of expansions after 5.x, they'll probably have to shift the direction somewhat. (Wouldn't surprise me Yoshi-P himself starts pulling back a bit after 5.x to at least have someone else take the director role.)

[Remedi]

. There's never enough content, and the sense of "pointlessness" eventually settles in, except when your experience is driven more by the people you play with and those social connections become the real content that keeps you engaged.

Yes, I think this was also a point in a very old video from totalbiscuit where he was debunking the game addiction that some ppl were accusing wow of (and becoming rich off it too). One of the reason he presented of why wow was good to play with was the connections you made and the friends you play with