We need to talk about the PC Gamer article

[Eastwall]

And here I thought people were criticizing the developers for not improving the game. Now it turns out they're being criticized for improving it.

Goes to show you just can't win.

I skimmed the article but didn't read it fully. Seemed like she was complaining about how SE continues to use the same content release formula and wants them to change it because she's bored, then tossed in a few community memes in an attempt to gain credibility.

I feel like all I needed to know about the author was included in the profile at the end. "When she's not staring at her bunny girl, she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade. " In other words, she doesn't really play the game. She just logs in to stare at her Viera for whatever reason.

I'll repeat what I've said many times before. If you're not longer enjoying the game, take your money elsewhere. Blizzard didn't pay attention to what players had to say until WoW players took their money elsewhere, or stopped playing modern retail to play Classic instead.

SE will not behave any differently. As long as FFXIV is not falling massively short of whatever revenue goals they've set for the game, they're going to stick with a formula that is making money for them. When it stops making money, that's when they'll think about change.

Can't agree anymore. People got to vote with their money

[Turtledeluxe]

I skimmed the article but didn't read it fully. Seemed like she was complaining about how SE continues to use the same content release formula and wants them to change it because she's bored, then tossed in a few community memes in an attempt to gain credibility.

I feel like all I needed to know about the author was included in the profile at the end. "When she's not staring at her bunny girl, she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade. " In other words, she doesn't really play the game. She just logs in to stare at her Viera for whatever reason.

I'll repeat what I've said many times before. If you're not longer enjoying the game, take your money elsewhere. Blizzard didn't pay attention to what players had to say until WoW players took their money elsewhere, or stopped playing modern retail to play Classic instead.

SE will not behave any differently. As long as FFXIV is not falling massively short of whatever revenue goals they've set for the game, they're going to stick with a formula that is making money for them. When it stops making money, that's when they'll think about change.

16 likes and none of you seem to understand

- People have left the game
- They're leaving the game
- They're playing it less
- Revenue has been down for several quarters

So you're being incredibly redundant. SE devs are complacent and think the bump from 7.0 that is inevitable will somehow justify them. What the article is pointing out is what if 7.0 doesn't really sustain hype and players just continue the downtrend? You're acting like poor performance is just "woops this week is bad we need to change the game". A fundamental shift in behavior likely won't begin until the months after 7.0 is released.

So just as with WoW, it wasn't one day "oops 5 million people quit". It was years of annoying content drops and negative feedback.

And I can't emphasize enough devs and players make this assumption-- "Oh it's just the end of a patch cycle, 7.0 will bring the game back to where it was". Yeah keep assuming that. Players sang Endwalker's praises for two months at most. Once the glow of MSQ is over again we will see how engaging the game is in its current state.

[Kes13a]

16 likes and none of you seem to understand

- People have left the game
- They're leaving the game
- They're playing it less
- Revenue has been down for several quarters

So you're being incredibly redundant. SE devs are complacent and think the bump from 7.0 that is inevitable will somehow justify them. What the article is pointing out is what if 7.0 doesn't really sustain hype and players just continue the downtrend? You're acting like poor performance is just "woops this week is bad we need to change the game". A fundamental shift in behavior likely won't begin until the months after 7.0 is released.

So just as with WoW, it wasn't one day "oops 5 million people quit". It was years of annoying content drops and negative feedback.

And I can't emphasize enough devs and players make this assumption-- "Oh it's just the end of a patch cycle, 7.0 will bring the game back to where it was". Yeah keep assuming that. Players sang Endwalker's praises for two months at most. Once the glow of MSQ is over again we will see how engaging the game is in its current state.

I think we understand very well.

the people who complain have every right to. however they constantly complain and still.. pay money to be here.

this is an mmo, kinda... people will always come and go. when they are done with what they wanted to do, or experience, they will play it less. revenue will always rubber band because of this.

are the devs complacent? I dont know, I am not in their work place or in their heads. many still enjoy the game, and some of us even understand that things are not always how we want but we enjoy it enough to keep paying for it until it doesnt do it for us any more. People such as the OP post countless variations of the same tired drivel, and yet keep rewarding SE (or any game company for that matter) with their money.

so please feel free to educate me on why the rest of us are misguided when we still enjoy things, and the OP doesnt, and expresses that DAILY and still... gives them money. is the attention they get from a handful of forum goers worth it?

we seem to understand.. but do you?

[Turtledeluxe]

I think we understand very well.

the people who complain have every right to. however they constantly complain and still.. pay money to be here.

this is an mmo, kinda... people will always come and go. when they are done with what they wanted to do, or experience, they will play it less. revenue will always rubber band because of this.

are the devs complacent? I dont know, I am not in their work place or in their heads. many still enjoy the game, and some of us even understand that things are not always how we want but we enjoy it enough to keep paying for it until it doesnt do it for us any more. People such as the OP post countless variations of the same tired drivel, and yet keep rewarding SE (or any game company for that matter) with their money.

so please feel free to educate me on why the rest of us are misguided when we still enjoy things, and the OP doesnt, and expresses that DAILY and still... gives them money. is the attention they get from a handful of forum goers worth it?

we seem to understand.. but do you?

Conversely, people who actually care about the game beyond the superficial experience use the forums. Maybe what you should do, since you're the one dictating behavior, is go play the game instead of expecting the forum to be an echo chamber. Or post in threads that agree with your perspective. So no, you don't understand, because you not only disagree with the article (which is fine) but you are silencing feedback by asking people to unsub. Nor did you know the game's financials when you made the point about SE making money. I'm glad you understand that now.

And if I sound annoyed it's because it's annoying. The same tired "please unsub" across the social media for the game. People are doing that just fine but some of us do prefer to see if change is possible by discussing more critical feedback. And you can say this article is the same tired "the game is boring" but you admit you didn't read it. So who really needs to reevaluate their perspective and their behavior in regards to this discourse between critics and defenders??

I'd also point out, that the dev team has proven historically that it doesn't take financial injury or the collapse of the game to enact major changes to jobs, combat, content, etc outside of 1.0.

[Jojoya]

16 likes and none of you seem to understand

- People have left the game
- They're leaving the game
- They're playing it less
- Revenue has been down for several quarters

You continue to fail to understand:

Games always have players who have left. The honest truth is most games will have more new players leave than those that stay with the game.

There are always players leaving a game. They leave for a variety of reasons. Sometimes that reason is they don't enjoy the game anymore. At least they're smart to leave when they stop having fun. Others around here don't seem to have that level of intelligence.

There are always players who start playing a game less. There comes a point when they've master the parts of the game that interest them. Or they pick up a new game that they want to start mastering while continuing to play their current one on occasion because they still enjoy it. Or they have life changes that don't allow them to play as much as they used to.

Revenue always goes down from the peak at an expansion release until the next expansion is released and it peaks again. Massive new release hype always draws more players in. That should be understood without saying. I'm sorry that it needs to be said to you.

There is nothing alarming going on with FFXIV that hasn't happened in other games over and over.

Stop obsessing over what others may or may not be doing. Play the game because you want to play. Don't play the game because you don't want to play. Don't expect the game to be anything other that what it currently is.

Stop fooling yourself the game will go back to feeling like it did to you in the past.

Even I feel the changes to the game as I continue to enjoy the game. Some changes I feel have been for the better, some I don't, some I have no real opinion about. I don't need the past to return. I want to see what the future has in store.

The past is gone. You have changed. The game has changed. If your paths have diverged, then they have diverged. You need to decide what is in your best interest.

So has anyone reached out to PC Gamer regarding this article? It is obviously false since it says bad things about our game. Is there a way Yoshi-P can maybe talk to the editor and have this article taken down?

It's not false. It's an opinion piece. You don't get to decide what someone else's opinion is or isn't.

Some don't agree with what the author has to say. That's no reason for it to be removed.

Okay. Next they should write an article about the fact that FFXIV still gets more and better content than other MMOs. Source: I play XIV, ESO, GW2, LA.

I've seen others saying ESO and GW2 get more and better content (haven't seen any one talk about Lost Ark in ages).

It's all opinion. Different people like different things, and that's going to make things seem better or worse in their eyes.

It's just that this tactic of dismissing boredom and telling people to unsub is actually counter intuitive to the goal of an MMO.

It's not an attempt to dismiss your boredom.

It's an attempt to get you to do what is in your best interest, both financially and for entertainment. The absolute worst thing to do is throw your money at something you're no longer enjoying or feel is a quality product because industries track what you pay for. They don't track what you're saying until you've stopped paying for it.

Do you feel like you've gotten your money's worth in the last 9 months that you've been paying to express your complaints? Has anything changed because of them or have you seen any signs that they will be changing?

I don't doubt that you care about the game. But sometimes you've got to walk away from those that you love or care about because it stops being healthy for you to stay around them. They're not going to change because you tell them they need to change. They will change if and when they make that decision for themselves.

In the case of a business, the change comes when incoming revenues fall well below expectations. SE isn't dumb. They know that the game's quarterly revenues start falling a couple of quarters after an expansion release and won't pick back up until the next expansion is ready to come out. The WoW exodus was an anomaly that caused them to rise mid Shadowbringers. It's not something that they're expecting to get repeated.

What money they make and whether they're happy with it is their business, not ours. It's a stupid criteria to use when trying to give feedback about your opinion of their game. If someone unsubbing means they're not happy with the game, then what does you remaining subbed to the game mean? To a business, getting your money means your satisfied or better with what they make or the service they provide.

You can keep subscribing just to complain that you're bored and help to keep their revenues propped up if you feel like that's a good use of your money. Or you can unsub to show that the current game is not right for you and spend your money on games that are giving you better entertainment value.

Honestly, I know where you're coming from. I went through the same thing with WoW. Even after I stopped paying Blizzard money, I was still subscribing through the WoW token (I had tons of gold to use) and posting my complaints in the forums. I finally realized that I wasn't accomplishing anything. Blizzard didn't care about the opinions of players like me. I left WoW behind and I'm better for it.

Enough others left that Blizzard finally started paying attention to what players had been trying to tell them. They're starting to change WoW. They're starting to bring back the things that players said they missed. I'm actually tempted to give WoW another try when they release their next expansion and I'll have all that Battle.net Balance I still have left to use to purchase it along with several months of game time because I stopped wasting it so I could post ignored complaints in the WoW forums.

You're so uninformed it should be criminal. They've been bleeding money worse last year than ever before. Ff7r is one of the last desperate ploys to save it.

Thanks for the good belly laugh. You're clearly ignorant of all the different pies that SE has its fingers stuck in. There's far more to SE than just the FF franchise.

helpimdyingomghalp

Slow, deep breath.

Hold it.

Now release and repeat.

[Enkidoh]

Who cares what an irrelevant gaming mag says these days. It's all hot air in wind.

There's a reason 'gaming journalism' is considered a laughing stock. Hardly Pulitzer-material...

[Stormpeaks]

And yet another "ffxiv is dying" thread

Do you never get bored ?

[Mostly_Raxus]

ill agree that the current content cycle sucks and makes me not want to ever sub again, but i dont think games journalists have any room to talk, they are outrage baiting, fake gamers, using the platform to further their carrier with no love for the genera..

how about use your own words if you want to discuss how square is milking our wallets like cows while giving us nothing in return.

[DrWho2010]

It's true that FFXIV's pattern in the expac/patch cycle is very much predictable. You'll know exactly what you're getting when.

However, shaking things up just for the sake of shaking things up isn't always a good thing, and the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence.

[Alaray]

It's true that FFXIV's pattern in the expac/patch cycle is very much predictable. You'll know exactly what you're getting when.

However, shaking things up just for the sake of shaking things up isn't always a good thing, and the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence.

I sort of disagree with your sentiment, only quoting since it's a fairly common one when it comes to long running/live-service styled games. (So don't take the "you" as you, personally - it's general)

Even when everything is as close to perfect as it can get, there will always be a running issue of: people will grow bored of it. Shaking things up, for the sake of it, is usually a way to reinvigorate something that's gone stagnant - it can be done well, it can be done poorly, however; fear of failure is never a reason not to do something - nothing would ever get done with that kind of perspective. If the general gameplay experience is something a large core of players initially enjoy, even for three or more years, it'll always become dull, boring, same-old/same-old eventually. This extends, as well, to content cadences -- excitement for the new wanes, because you already know what to expect and there's no air of surprise to anything anymore. While I enjoy aspects of XIV and still play it for either raiding content, or some solo challenge stuff, I don't remember the last time I felt any sort of excitement for anything upcoming - I know what it'll be already. I would, personally, prefer to see risks taken to change things up and to make things feel fresh, feel more interesting, to try different variations of design to give different flavors to each era of the game's life. Some will feel good, some will feel bad. But I think it's a risk worthwhile - as, the good that comes from risk taking comes, often, into its own as a high point. Every time there's a mistake along the way, ideally it's something that's learned from that can lead to improvements.

It's also part of the issue of: You can't please everyone. And you can't, so you shouldn't try too hard to do so. A game can be shaken up in one way by alternating through common gamestyle preferences, too. For example: something more akin to Stormblood's encounter/job design was my favorite (for ref: I was a tank player), and while I know people who loved Heavensward's, and even people who do like Shadowbringer's/Endwalker's; having some expansions with more complex/engaging job design paired with simpler fights, and then expansions that flow the opposite direction, expansions that - maybe - prioritize on team synergy, and others that prioritize a different approach etc... would help (again) to add flavor to the experiences, and just let different types of people have their fun in the sun. (I'll stick in a disclosure: I, personally, don't think that Heavensward design would be good to go back to due to the complexity of jobs in an unintuitive/clunky manner and the scaling/fight difficulty - at the time - being quite higher as well: people who enjoy this combination are completely fine in that preference -I do enjoy it - but the reality is this combination does tend to kill raiding scenes and... from, maybe, my selfish perspective: I do like a raid scene existing).

And there's a plethora of other things that make the game feel less exciting. I know I really preferred the Exploratory Zone content for Relics and I still think that Island Sanctuary is about as shallow as daily log-in maintenance of a mobile game. But, stagnation is a problem the game's facing (and, to be frank, been facing for a little while) and (again) changing things up to make them feel fresh, new, and re-create some replayability with a new experience would be nice. Perhaps frustrating, sometimes. But, I do welcome fresh experiences and even design perspectives - the actual designers are good at what they do, I just wish there was more room for creativity/risk/new ideas/and making environments of dungeons/alliance raids/even the open world and exploratory zones feel more like they are truly Places, and not like things are plopped down awkwardly by a game dev (I like atmospheric immersion in setting design, and using the setting some can help make the connection of: Place + Narrative + Gameplay slot more smoothly together). And, I mean: changing up how dungeons flow and are laid out, how alliance raids flow and present themselves, changing up the types of mechanics and the speed/complexity - not to insane levels, but just a smidge to make it feel like a Fight - changing up how all the pieces interact with each other, and so on, can all help make things feel less stagnant in their own right, too.

While the article also touched on some other critiques outside of stagnation (ie: reward structure), I will say that when that team wants to provide good rewards, they do. But for whatever reason they try to make a lot of things far, far less exciting or motivating to do because there isn't anything cool to go after by doing it (and this extends from Criterion, to the PvP rewards in the reward track thing). And, in a way, poor reward structure can also make things feel boring - there's not much excitement to getting a win on, say, Criterion when the thing to look forward to is some cheap Materia.