What is going on with Square Enix and the 14 team?

[Lium]

For some reason, I'm just now seeing this thread. Glad I found it. Was hilarious.

Spoiler alert: FFXIV is still the #1 MMO in the world. These are not the Final Days of the game. But thanks for the laugh! I honestly needed it today. Not sarcasm.

[LisSquid]

Spoiler alert: FFXIV is still the #1 MMO in the world. These are not the Final Days of the game. But thanks for the laugh! I honestly needed it today. Not sarcasm.

FFXIV is not going to lose much ground until the next gens arrive, but this is an aging and increasingly unpopular gaming format. MMOs are not the titans they used to be.

[SturmChurro]

I really don't know what you are arguing against, to be quite honest. Again, none of this is the players' problem. Look, I understand the plight of the game devs (as in, the actual programmers and coders who have to do all this work -- not the suits and management types who tell them what they can and can't do and what to put in the game and what not to). No fan told them to make these races the "one last hurrah". No fan told them to gender lock the species. No fan told them to deliberately release the Viera/Hrothgar with limited glam options.

Whether it was management that told them "Aw, nobody's going to care. Just gender-lock the races and make them unable to equip certain glams" or the devs decided on it themselves because it was too much work, it's Square's own fault for how poorly things have gone.

I'm not really arguing against anything. I'm just trying to look at things from their point of view. My original reply was in context to why they might appear resentful or annoyed.

If you want my opinion, they added them to the game, they made promises (hair) that they didn't deliver on for two and a half years in regards to viera, almost three for hrothgar, and the hrothgar hairs lopped off their ears! They have routinely put out items of questionable quality, in regards to these races. They rarely if ever even acknowledge either of them. I think they should do better, acknowledge these races exist, and live up to their own promises. I, frankly, don't really care about a lot of their excuses. Other races were routinely receiving hairs throughout ShB, and they stated they hadn't even started looking into adding hairs to viera until the end of ShB! Having headgear not work for even iconic job gear annoys me... and more.

I'd need more time to compile all of my thoughts on this..

[LianaThorne]

FFXIV is not going to lose much ground until the next gens arrive, but this is an aging and increasingly unpopular gaming format. MMOs are not the titans they used to be.

It's not going to lose ground period unless an MMO comes along that can provide the exact same that 14 does and even more. There's a reason why it's remained #1, even with others trying to bust into the genre.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It's not going to lose ground period unless an MMO comes along that can provide the exact same that 14 does and even more. There's a reason why it's remained #1, even with others trying to bust into the genre.

Which really wouldnt be hard in the grand scheme of things. Theres multiple mmo's in development right now with way better graphics and engines than 14. 14's development and content has seen nothing but downgrades, and when we're at a point where the devs laugh at player woes...i think we're getting to the point that they dont care.

[LisSquid]

It's not going to lose ground period unless an MMO comes along that can provide the exact same that 14 does and even more. There's a reason why it's remained #1, even with others trying to bust into the genre.

FFXIV is not going to lose much ground until the next gens arrive, but this is an aging and increasingly unpopular gaming format. MMOs are not the titans they used to be.

It's like I said that. It will be a good future for MMOs, and hopefully will bring it back afloat. It's a slow-death market with how much it takes to build an MMO, and then hope it keeps an audience.

But we're getting off topic here, but I'll round it out by repeating what I said earlier: The business market for the modern MMO is no longer to just maintain subs. It's to incentivize new accounts to purchase expansions, and fill out cash shop sales. The changes SE has made is to encourage new players, and they don't care that you've played since HW, ARR, or even 1.0. You're not the consumer base that shows the biggest blip on the revenue report.

[Theodric]

Spoiler alert: FFXIV is still the #1 MMO in the world. These are not the Final Days of the game. But thanks for the laugh! I honestly needed it today. Not sarcasm.

By what measure, exactly? The deceptive marketing that tries to pretend as if 25 million accounts made equals 25 million active players? The game hasn't once hit the lofty heights of ten million active players that World of Warcraft enjoyed during its glory days and there's actually a decent amount of viable MMO's on the market that aren't lacking for player activity in the present day. Just because they may not necessarily be to your personal tastes or mine...that does not mean they do not serve as competition.

As an aside, the strawman argument of bragging about the activity of players was something that people did during WoW's steady decline as well. It didn't matter how many missteps that the development team made - there would always be a number of players insisting that everything was fine, that WoW was still on top even as more and more people quietly left.

[IdowhatIwant]

For some reason, I'm just now seeing this thread. Glad I found it. Was hilarious.

Spoiler alert: FFXIV is still the #1 MMO in the world. These are not the Final Days of the game. But thanks for the laugh! I honestly needed it today. Not sarcasm.

Actually I think lost ark has it beat with active player count and over all activity.

[AziraSyuren]

By what measure, exactly? The deceptive marketing that tries to pretend as if 25 million accounts made equals 25 million active players? The game hasn't once hit the lofty heights of ten million active players that World of Warcraft enjoyed during its glory days and there's actually a decent amount of viable MMO's on the market that aren't lacking for player activity in the present day. Just because they may not necessarily be to your personal tastes or mine...that does not mean they do not serve as competition.

As an aside, the strawman argument of bragging about the activity of players was something that people did during WoW's steady decline as well. It didn't matter how many missteps that the development team made - there would always be a number of players insisting that everything was fine, that WoW was still on top even as more and more people quietly left.

The latest LuckyBancho census showed that there were 1.7 million active players, whereas WoW is currently estimated to have 1.1 million from here.

The source for WoW's playerbase depends on where you look, though, so it's difficult to find any good data on it. Here it says that WoW still has 5.5 million monthly players and 500k daily players.

I still firmly believe that FF14 is at or near its lifetime peak though, so whether we're #1 or not, we might not be for long.

[LittleImp]

Spoiler alert: FFXIV is still the #1 MMO in the world. These are not the Final Days of the game. But thanks for the laugh! I honestly needed it today. Not sarcasm.

Based on what metric? World of Warcraft and Lost Ark are both still more popular than 14.