Square Enix, please think about both Casual AND Hardcore crafters..

[Callinon]

That’s not what I said in my post. I said a new director should rise up with the new Final Fantasy 17 MMO, rather than it being Yoshida every single time. I also said that whoever directs the next MMO, should not be bias towards casual players like Yoshida was, and favor both players. It’s overall more healthier long term for an mmo, rather than paying attention to just one audience.

I doubt Yoshida will direct the next MMO, it’ll likely be someone else. But if he is, hopefully he’s a bit more passionate for all types of his players.

He's directed one FF MMO. Just one. This one. So I'm not sure where you're getting Yoshida burnout from.

And "bias toward casual players" feels like you fundamentally misunderstand how MMOs make money. My crack about Wildstar earlier was meant to allude to this but it might have been too subtle. Let me try a more sledgehammery approach:

Wildstar was built from the ground up to cater to hardcore players. Wildstar failed hard within like a year. It spent some time as a f2p game, and I believe it's shut down now.

MMOs have to lean on casual players because
A: There are way WAY more of them
B: They're the ones that spend the money

Hardcore players are great to have around and you do definitely want stuff for them to do because they add life and goals to the game world. But they can't sustain a product on their own. There just aren't enough of them.

[DrWho2010]

seems like whatever 5.2 brings will make or break the "hardcore" crafters and see them exit the game forever. to which i say "byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"!

[Nandrolone]

He's directed one FF MMO. Just one. This one. So I'm not sure where you're getting Yoshida burnout from.

And "bias toward casual players" feels like you fundamentally misunderstand how MMOs make money. My crack about Wildstar earlier was meant to allude to this but it might have been too subtle. Let me try a more sledgehammery approach:

Wildstar was built from the ground up to cater to hardcore players. Wildstar failed hard within like a year. It spent some time as a f2p game, and I believe it's shut down now.

MMOs have to lean on casual players because
A: There are way WAY more of them
B: They're the ones that spend the money

Hardcore players are great to have around and you do definitely want stuff for them to do because they add life and goals to the game world. But they can't sustain a product on their own. There just aren't enough of them.

Yeah, that’s fair to assume. I just wish more mmos had more hardcore content, it really is upsetting...

seems like whatever 5.2 brings will make or break the "hardcore" crafters and see them exit the game forever. to which i say "byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"!

What did hardcore crafters ever do to hurt you to make you say stuff like that? That’s a bit unnecessary to say.

[Callinon]

Yeah, that’s fair to assume. I just wish more mmos had more hardcore content, it really is upsetting...

Most MMOs present hardcore content in terms of battle content, group content requiring a high degree of skill and coordination to accomplish. In this respect FFXIV actually does very well. The Ultimate fights in particular are very well done and are absolutely "not for" casual players. They're there to present a challenge to a coordinated group playing at the highest levels of the game.

Crafting in a theme park MMO is basically ALWAYS casual side content. FFXIV actually adds more complexity to it than most games do, but it's still casual side content.

[Cleanse]

Well, we're just a few weeks into Ishgard, it's almost empty besides a few levelers, the rewards aren't worth much, the theorycrafting and rotation chat is long since over, the mb's have crashed, DoH chat channels discuss other things, no one needs a crafter for anything and casual players who tried it have moved back to roulettes. Is this really what we wanted?

Ultimate was cleared in 4-5 days. I think a few weeks of Ishgarde (which probably had more players participating than Ultimate) is a good chunk of content.

Instead of being upset that Ishgarde didn't meet our individual expectations, we should be brainstorming ideas. Reading your post gave me an idea, weekly challenges.

Whether they are tied to Ishgarde or another part of content, it could give you guys a little treat to look forward to every week without requiring people needing to be on 24/7.

Or another idea: Needing "expert crafters" meeting certain accomplishments to advance the construction stages. ie, The big zerg of crafters/gatherers can do the easy stuff in the FATE to participate, but you Liam Harper are needed to craft a difficult item (and X gatherer needs to bring back a high quality collectible) to advance the event to a new phase. After the first crafter turns it in, other crafters have 5 mins to complete the achievement. Same for the gatherers.

[Zarabeth]

WOW. Was FFXI seriously that intense? Holy crap, that sounds like heaven for me, lol!!!

Yes, it really was. If you would like to experience it, the way it was before it got too easy, there are private servers such as Eden where you can play the 75 cap FFXI. Trust me, if you tried it for any length of time, you would agree that this game is easy.

[Liam_Harper]

seems like whatever 5.2 brings will make or break the "hardcore" crafters and see them exit the game forever. to which i say "byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"!

Ah yes, then the remaining playerbase will be the sensible, mature players like yourself?

Ultimate was cleared in 4-5 days. I think a few weeks of Ishgarde (which probably had more players participating than Ultimate) is a good chunk of content.

Instead of being upset that Ishgarde didn't meet our individual expectations, we should be brainstorming ideas. Reading your post gave me an idea, weekly challenges.

I'm not an expert on Ultimate, so hard to judge, but was that 4-5 days by the majority of high end raiders? I know there was a fair bit of data-mining (which led to bans) and World First is typically a race.
Ishgard didn't really last even a week. There were 7 mounts on sale on my server day 2 and a fair few around. You just bought a few stacks of mats, set your 1 button macro to work and got every reward in 2 hours or so along with an extra or two to re-sell and cover mat costs. It also didn't seem to be content, just a glorified Rowena's Scrip grind.

I'm all for brainstorming ideas though, I don't want everything I post to come across as negative. Weekly challenges sound great and I'm all for it. However I feel the overall direction of crafting is more the issue for me than Ishgard. The high-exp-turbo-leveling easy crafting seems to have resulted in less interest from the casual player-base than more. It's throw-away content with no real goals to strive for. Very similar to BLU Mage. Also similar to BLU is funneling the "challenge" into a single piece of sub-content instead of the class itself. (Carnival for BLU, Ishgard leaderboard for DoH). Leaderboards are worse in a way because they have limited spots.

But that's just how I feel. How are you guys finding the new crafting so far and feel you will long term? Fun? Bored?

[SpecialTaskForce]

Hahaha the guy who made this character name is Roberts' Bot, love the name.

[Callinon]

Ultimate was cleared in 4-5 days.

I see this fallacy on WoW forums too and I'd like to address it.

Just because a world first happened doesn't mean the content is dead.

People will be working on that fight for months. Not every group of high end raiders participates in the world first race.

It also didn't seem to be content, just a glorified Rowena's Scrip grind.

That's exactly what I was expecting it to be.

[tdb]

People will be working on that fight for months. Not every group of high end raiders participates in the world first race.

And not every group will ever be able to clear it at all. Even with guides written by those who got the world first.