Subscription should be to improve FF, not just make other games.

[LaylaTsarra]

No normal mode for FT should never have been an issue. It's a major problem and is inexcusable. At the least they should announce a normal version is in the works and apologize for not having one at the start.

Bozja had an excellent road map for raids and that was literally thrown out with the excuse they took the best from previous relic instanced zones to make this better which is far from the case.

[Kohashi]

Sad but true.

I used to play Star Trek online. A few years ago the companies which managed STO, Perfect World Entertainment (publisher) and Cryptic Studios (Developer) filtered a large amount of money, and quite a few of STO's Devs, to a new game they wanted to develop - Magic: Legends (based on Magic the Gathering).

They pulled the plug on it near the end of the development stages - the game had a soft beta and microtransaction store but that was as far as it got. The only reason they gave was that "their vision for the game missed the mark".

So they had to refund anyone who purchased anything from the microtransaction store. The Devs that moved across from STO were essentially made redundant - they were unable to return to STO for reasons that were never made clear, and both PWE and Cryptic struggled on, with far fewer Devs, for about two years when both were sold to Embracer group/Gearbox Entertainment. And they inherited the numerous bugs and glitches that the pervious studios never addressed. I gather, from friends who still play it, those bugs etc remain to this day.

I mean, granted, their business model was/is very much F2P (with a VERY heavy emphasis on loot boxes and expensive item bundles) but it does show that smaller companies don't recover from diverting their funds into questionable projects.

SE really shouldn't take FFXIV for granted the way it seems to.

PWE used to be a real stronghold house in terms of MMO, and they innovated a LOT in the past. They developed and made stuff which is now a staple in other MMOs a long time ago; however, like many, they fell victim to their success, expecting their reputation to carry them and fans to put up with slop, I suppose.

They are trying to make a comeback with World of Jade Dynasty. We shall see how that goes for them.

[Valence]

Personally, I don't know any video game developers, artists, whatever who would make the effort to learn to read, write, and speak Japanese on the off chance that they might get hired by a Japanese gaming company. Perhaps that's why it's harder than you believe. But, hey, English speaking game developers of the world - go for it!

Yes as everybody knows, Japan as a country has zero video game culture, no avid gamers, and no talents in the industry, therefore the immense need for foreigners to teach them how it's done.

[Mawlzy]

CCP Games had a similar situation with Eve Online, the developers who worked on an entire system had since moved on and its code wasn't in English either so no-one could even understand it as fresh blood were mostly english speakers, they eventually re-wrote an entirely new system to replace it with new features etc... At the time of re-write their average online player base was 35 000 players.
It can be done, you just have to care enough about your product to invest in its future, they could bring in new talent to work on replacing old with new to build a new foundation for the future. It's a lot easier to just have to understand how you need to plug your new system in than modify an old.

Couple of things worth pointing out about EVE in the current context.

As you say, CCP was faced with arguably a worse legacy code problem. Player pressure and developers that cared about the game produced a massive code rewrite that greatly improved performance, and gave a new foundation for future improvements and new features.

The second point is that Pearl Abyss effectively subsidized EVE during this process, supporting the game at a loss.

I'm certainly not suggesting that EVE is free of flaws, but it is remarkable what can be accomplished by a team that has gaming passion.

Warp drive... active.

[Mawlzy]

We are at our lowest numbers in over 4 years, thats rough. Any further is scary.

Based on comments on r/ffxivdiscussion, the recent LL is going to drive that number down a lot more.

[Aneshda]

I played WoW and still play it. The difference between WoW and FFXIV is enormous.
While SE offers us small pieces of content that can be completed in less than a week, WoW produces one patch after another, with new game content, events, maps, and so on.
WoW costs the same as this game.
There's no need to pay extra for Retainers to store gear, materials, and all the other stuff we've collected over time.
WoW has a great solution for all of this: a large book with different pages. Minions, mounts, toys, heirlooms (gear, weapons, etc. for faster leveling),
transmog items (gear, weapons, and shields), and I'm sure there will be a separate page for furniture and house decorations in the future.
There's also a large bank for each character, a warband bank for trading and storing almost anything between characters (account-wide, regardless of which server you play on).
An additional material storage, an additional storage for items that aren't used as often, and a huge guild bank for even more items.

At the same time, we pay an additional 1.40 per month on top of our 12.99 subscription just to have 175 additional slots for the 12 billion items this game offers.
How fair is that? Maybe SE should rethink its forever free to play model and abolish the forever free to play game.
If a player doesn't know after, say, 12 weeks whether they like the game or not, they can either pay or find another game.
WoW also offers a forever free play option, but this is only available up to character level 20.
After that, players can upgrade and pay or play The Sims.
The fact that so many players pay absolutely nothing to reach level 70 and also get all expansions up to Stormblood for free creates an imbalance.
Because we, the paying players, help fund these free-to-play players.
If everyone had to pay, there would be more money to make real changes to the game, not just for the low-budget content we currently have.
The next expansion will definitely take free-to-play players up to level 80 and into Shadowbringers.
Therefore, there's only one fair solution: Everyone can play for free, and SE will only finance itself through the Expansions, Item Shop, Retainers, etc., and the content SE brings will remain as before.
Or everyone pays, and the retainers are free, a maximum of 10 per account with 300 slots each, and in return, there will be more and better content.

[Volgia]

IDK if it's been said before, but the fact that it has a subscription and a shop is still the most egregious thing FFXIV has.

[Valence]

Couple of things worth pointing out about EVE in the current context.

As you say, CCP was faced with arguably a worse legacy code problem. Player pressure and developers that cared about the game produced a massive code rewrite that greatly improved performance, and gave a new foundation for future improvements and new features.

The second point is that Pearl Abyss effectively subsidized EVE during this process, supporting the game at a loss.

I'm certainly not suggesting that EVE is free of flaws, but it is remarkable what can be accomplished by a team that has gaming passion.

Warp drive... active.

It's funny in a way that Pearl Abyss recently announced that EvE is for sale.

[Larirawiel]

IDK if it's been said before, but the fact that it has a subscription and a shop is still the most egregious thing FFXIV has.

They earn way more money with the shop than with the subscription. Adn this is the reason why you get new shop items way more often than new content.


Cheers

[klu]

I don't pay my sub so that

This always bothers me, when people say it in relation to taxes or subscriptions.

You are not a shareholder. You are not a stakeholder. You do not get any say, at all in how the money that you have surrendered gets spent.

At least with taxes you are comforted by the knowledge that the extraction was at threat of force, and therefore you shouldn't really pretend to be in a position to complain.

But this is a subscription to a video game. Your literal only option to influence is a binary PAY/ NOT PAY one.

Whiny scribbles on forums about "how" "your' sub money is spent are the height of silly narcissistic nonsense. It stopped being "yours" the moment you paid it, little brother.