FFXIV's Future

[VelKallor]

Ashes of Creation

Ashes I never had an interest in, and I hear mixed things

Rumour has it that game will release the same day as Star Citizen....

Many MMOs have come out, and just cause they have these things dont really mean they will be successful, or take away FFXIVs playerbase.

Ashes has been announced as a full loot open world always on pvp MMO......which will be lucky to last six months.

IF THAT.

[True-to-Caesar]

Rumour has it that game will release the same day as Star Citizen....



Ashes has been announced as a full loot open world always on pvp MMO......which will be lucky to last six months.

IF THAT.

Oh I agree that the whole pvpve thing doesn’t sound good at all. With like 1 guy being able to fly if they become mayor or something (so only big guilds or streamers will enjoy this feature).

I saw how it went with Age of Conan with pvp being mixed with pve areas and the game is almost truly dead with 2 servers left. It’s too niche and people generally prefer a fair pvp setting where everyone comes to fight.
I do like the GW1 concept of mixing classes tho, it’s really nice.

[Dohmi-Zeiva]

People come to the forums to complain, mostly. Also some people want A and other people want X. Dungeon difficulty being one of your examples. So whatever we don't seem to have, or that which people perceive we don't have, will be the topics you see at the top of the forum.

I love the game, but yeah, I scratch my head at some of the decisions SE make. I just don't post about it. Like 90% of the player base. I do however come here after a patch to see if people are posting what I'm thinking.

[Katashi90]

Things that kills MMOs :

1. P2W gear. Cash shops that offers casual players to experience endgame content without going through a progressive gear upgrade model.
2. Dungeons and old content loses relevance to powercreeping. Every MMO I'd played all went through this, and FF14 is the only one that has syncing system to cap your stats from one-shotting the boss, no matter how high your gear/level is.
3. RNG-based gear upgrade system. A common approach, which a weapon is bound to upgrade tiers in order to max out your stats. These upgrade tiers often give you high failure rates, or worse some may even destroy the weapon for failing. MMORPGs that has this system always put fail-safe upgrade materials, or materials that bypasses that failure rate, in cash shops.

As you can see, these are the things every "dying MMORPGs" share in common. Unlike most people here, I played in Korean MMOs for last 2 decades instead. A dying MMORPG is when the game loses players for good and the publisher re-assigns their developers to create new MMO projects elsewhere while milking current players by keeping servers running for as long as possible. They don't have roadmaps, they don't have plans, they simply keep it running barebones while adding little stuff like events and fancy cash shop items to satisfy what little players they have left in there, until they'd decided that the servers would cease operations. (1/2)

[Katashi90]

(2/2) FF14 is nowhere near that stage. Among the 3 points I'd highlighted, certain aspects of powercreeping probably might still plague FF14(just like how this new Manderville weapon powercrept Flamecloaked weapons in such short time and with little effort), but everything else FF14 has done were pretty on point. For a game developer to tell you to spend your time wisely and not waste them grinding in-game, it's a blessing to have such a developer making your favorite MMORPG.

The problem with grindy setups(like ARR/HW relics) is that while some of you may think it's worth doing now, it's a huge wall for newer players to overcome in later years. Newer players would either chose not to access that content at all, or demand the requirements of that content to be reduced. I'm sure older veterans would disagree on the notion that reducing it tantamounts disrespect to their time wasted grinding for it when it was first released. So, why made it grindy in the first place? Just look at those whom moved from other MMOs to FF14, those players left their favorite MMORPG because newer changes made them felt that the time they'd spent were disrespected, but how does the developer circumvent that without time-gating newer players from accessing it? It's impossible. You cannot expect them to NOT cater to new players and casuals, because its the only thing that makes the MMO grow.

Stop lamenting the lack of grind and go out and touch some grass. Let FF14 become part of your life. FF14 was never meant to be your whole life.

[Zsavooz]

Not seeing much of a future for this game. It's slip is already showing.

[MintnHoney]

I asked my neighborhood psychic what the future had in store for this game. This is what they saw in their crystal ball:

Grass.
Fields of green, as far as the eye can see.

But when I asked for clarification on the actual gameplay, she shook the ball and said it told her to ask again later. So, who knows?

[poptarts12]

There's an interesting article over on MassivelyOP today that talks about how this game may end. Not story-wise, but in general. It used FFXI as a comparison, a game that is still around but is in a quiet maintenance mode.

And it got me thinking.

According to the forums, of course, this game is terrible and in real danger of dying despite the fact that the real world outside of these forums objectively goes against that grim assessment. (The game keeps wracking up awards and more importantly, is still growing in population, as the article points out. Which is the only metric that really matters.)

Now, these forums are not unique in its negativity. Pretty much all games, specifically MMOs, have pretty awful forum communities. The only other MMO I've played that had a decent forum community was LOTRO, but that was a long time ago. I have no idea how their forums might be today. (That truly was a great community, though. From top to bottom.)

And here's the point. I read a lot on here about how the game is too easy, how SE isn't really trying anymore, etc. Yet on the forums and subreddits of other MMOs, such as WoW and ESO, they consistently praise FFXIV's accessibility. They do complain about features being locked behind the story, but they give the game high marks for not being raid-focused and for having dungeons that are relatively easy to complete.

But that relative ease of the game is exactly what people here complain about. The very things that have made FFXIV the current market leader are the things people here would like to see changed. Which honestly makes me very grateful none of you are running SE

I am curious, though. Based on everything I've read here, what do you really want to see in FFXIV's future? Keeping in mind that everything they've done up to this point has REVERSED the trend that FFXI followed in terms of hitting a downward slope after the fourth expansion. Shadowbringers brought more people to the game.

But what would you change that would honestly help the game overall? Not just for a subset of hardcore players?

Have you seen the patches lately? This game is already in maintenance mode.

[ReynTime]

Here's XIV's future:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...bfedf5eac09b64

The awkward modern glamour is the gift that keeps on giving.