Is it time to Sunset FFXIV?

[Thayos]

This game's failings all boil down to the lack of itemization combined with its rapidly vertical progression. Devs can only introduce a limited amount of new gear to keep the playerbase from gearing up too quickly, which relegates non-raiding rewards to cosmetics/furniture/junk that doesn't really appeal to most gamers. So even when the Devs attempt to make new content, people just aren't interested because the rewards aren't there, because the itemization isn't there & because things are obsoleted so rapidly anyway.

With a more horizontal structure (more itemization options and/or hitting the brakes on rapid vertical progression) the devs would have a much easier time getting players excited about new content.

I remember back in the Final Fantasy XI days when the release of patch notes (and data mining!) was viewed as a major community event. Players couldn't wait to comb through the scores of new items to see which ones might incrementally improve their stats by even the smallest amounts. Nobody expected new items that would dramatically obsolete older items. It was all about the smallest ticks of improvement, giving people goals to chase without making the previous rounds of gear completely invalid. (The little secret of FFXI was that anything could be beaten with auction house gear, and the fancy drops you got from Sky/Sea/Dynamis/etc. just helped you beat things faster or with different party makeups.)

I'm enjoying FFXIV for what it is -- a game I log into and play for a little bit maybe two nights/week -- but I frequently long for what it could be. For a game that tries so hard to cater to casual players, there's a shocking lack of social (Free Company) battle content that would allow people to build the kinds of connections that made previous MMORPGs so special. At this point I have little faith that this game will ever be more than it is right now.

[Larirawiel]

Yes, the game becomes emptier, it seems. I have more often no login queues. And New Gridania is emptier too.



Cheers

[Elissar]

I would like to say a thing...we are not even on late expansion (x.3+) and i am already unable to find MSQ dungeon party on duty finder...
Second dungeon Worqor Zormor is taking >16min as DPS.

[Hyperia]

I'm thinking that they need to consider a soft reset of the game by using shard travel as the tool.

How I would propose they do it is that we travel to another shard, everything goes well, we kill the bad guy, save the people, happy ending and then when we return, something happens with the transfer. We end up in Eorzia centuries in the future where we have moved from history into legend, and nobody believes we are who we say we are. If they are really desperate to bring some of our friends along, they can go to sleep in the Crystal Tower until we return.

The old zones would remain as we would "remember them" but story wise, they are behind us, and we would only use the new zones for story progression. They could easily fit the entirety of ARR and some of HW and SB into a single expansion due to larger, expanded zones. All of our abilities would be reworked because of the shard and time travel, allowing for everything to be rebalanced, and reset.

This would not require a rebuild of the game, it would allow them to fix most of the outstanding issues and allow them a creative reset to get themselves out of the boxes they have placed themselves into. The zones would be much larger and incorporate all the older zones into single larger zones.

Proposed zones for the expansion:
1. The shard we go to, just a single zone for now
2. The Black Shroud
3. Thanalan
4. Vylbrand
5. Coerthis
6. Gyr Abania

As it is now, things are a bit of a mess but they can fix things if they put a lot of effort into it.

[CNitsah]

They can do all the changes gameplay wise, add other way to gear yourself, add new zones, etc... if they don't add content with longevity, it's gonna get worse, people will continue to leave once the novelty will fade. That's the one thing they have to acknowledge, the number one FFXIV problem before the story the job balance the pvp problems,... is the lack of new engagement content with shelf life.

[Sililos]

Fact is, SE need to invest money in this game instead of stripping it to pay their endlessly greedy Shareholders or to pay for other projects.

The team have run on a template for as long as i can remember.
Patch releases, it has 1 dungeon, 1 Trial, 1 AR or Norm.
SE feel too 'safe' with this min effort patch cycle and dont really innovate as a result.

As more money is stripped from the game, we will see longer times between patches and more bland content unfortunately.
I hope SE can tell the leeches no for once and start investing money where its needed rather than draining the golden goose dry.

[Hallarem]

Sadly the goodwill is bleeding dry. You can see it in party finders, the empty world (not that theres anything to do there aside from fates and hunts).

But they will only look at sub count, because money is all that matters to the company. The ingerity is not there. The bare minimum is more than clear from the patch cycles and formula.

And people wont unsub for a while, because their communities/friends are in the game world. Defenders and SE will use this as "but lol the metrics are there, everyone loves the game cause they havent unsubbed, the forums are a minority."

So yeh.. I used to log everyday, now I log like.. two - three times a week?

[Sensui]

Sadly the goodwill is bleeding dry. You can see it in party finders, the empty world (not that theres anything to do there aside from fates and hunts).

But they will only look at sub count, because money is all that matters to the company. The ingerity is not there. The bare minimum is more than clear from the patch cycles and formula.

And people wont unsub for a while, because their communities/friends are in the game world. Defenders and SE will use this as "but lol the metrics are there, everyone loves the game cause they havent unsubbed, the forums are a minority."

So yeh.. I used to log everyday, now I log like.. two - three times a week?

Yep. I logged in once last week for about 15 minutes. Didn't do a single roulette or anything. Just grabbed Gil off a housing board. Looked at PF then logged out.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Another one of these threads. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

[KernCadfan]

You know... maybe it is time to begin to sunset the game... but not if there won't be another MMORPG. I'd rather have a lack-luster FFXIV than no MMORPG to play at all. This game means a lot to me, so it pains me to think it may be time to slowly let this one fade, much like ffxi did... I will still play it for many years to come, provided the servers are operational. That being said though, this game is old, and only getting older. With no active open world content, or side progression system, the deeply invested player base is slowly starting fizzle out... those of us around for FFXI knows what I'm talking about... it didn't kill the game when it reached its sunset...

But it did bring upon a new normal in gaming, and a new era... final fantasy MMORPG's are rife with bumps and bruises. They're categorically flawed, but they're special. I can equally agree that maybe it is time to let it slowly fade, while also clinging onto a game that gave me my family. I say that honestly. My longest lived friends of twenty years or more came from FFXI, and together we came to FFXIV... and we will stay.

Unless there's a new game on the horizon, I just don't see myself leaving, even if it means accepting an era of what I believe to be meritocracy.