What happened to these forums?Follow

The bulk of the players who enjoy XIV 'as it has been designed' are either new players or players who are 'on again, off again'. I can honestly say that as a player who subs 4-5 months out of the year, I have seen almost everything this game has to offer. That doesn't translate well to players who choose to remain subscribed.

It's fine if it's your preference, but most will argue that it's actually the reason why people are 'on again, off again' in the first place. It's not that the game isn't fun. It's just that the fun for many of it's players doesn't carry through between content patches.


I disagree. I personally think they're just too stubborn to accept the shift in said market toward F2P games. I don't fault them for trying to cash in on their franchise name, but the resulting product leaves much to be desired.

FFXI didn't have massive numbers when they started, but they were able to consistently grow their subscriber base over the course of several years. That's a far cry from todays 20-30% retention rate that MMOs expect and a big indicator of how well a game is received in general, not just your perception or mine.

I took a break recently, but did not even break my subscription. (My idea of break is rare log-ins to hangout). RL reasons and rampant negativity were my primary reasons. I'm just not interested in a community who's primary casual passtime is to ***** at what they want to be their primary passtime.

As much as I loved FFXI and that style of MMO I play this game for what it is, not what I wished it was.

I'll finish up the content on this patch, then hang back and wait for the next wave of content to hit.

>.> I hope you guys got him down before you ended the static. Still feel bad about bailing out.

Been thinking about a midcore static myself but not sure I'm at a high enough personal operating percentage to do regular raiding on top of RP events yet. I still want to have some free time available for other hobbies. I'm not a 'one passtime' sort of guy.

And see, that would be a normal pace for my sort of work. But ideally we run 2 nights for RPing each week. So if I added Raiding on top of that, that's 4 nights dedicated to FFXIV out of my week.

For someone like me who likes to sort of just rotate games and shows in and out of my free time (and a growing twitch/stream addiction) 4 nights is a bit much.

Yeah I don't know what I'm doing long run for the game as far as endgame is concern. Personally my target for the game right now is glamour, rather than performances. I never completed Bismark, Ravana, or Thordin Ex. I'll probably go back now to try to get the clears now that my ilvl will overshadow it, meaning I can do it with a pug without worrying about me being under-geared.

After that, its mainly hunting glamours for my character and working on alts through the story. I have a couple low enough to partake in the training regiments and see how they play out. But I don't know if I'll even fill that itinerary and that's just fine with me.

No, we do play the game's content.

I think the biggest difference is a lot of the folks in my FC aren't online from 5 p.m. to midnight. Most are on either for a couple hours daily or every other day. We have a handful of more hardcore players who are on again, off again, but then we also have a few hardcore players who are just always on. They raid, they do the primals, but then they also mine, craft, run dungeons with other FC just for fun, etc.

I play almost daily, and I do as much content as I'm able, but haven't been able to do all of it. Never beat Thordan Ex or Ravana Ex. But I did get my relic, farmed a full set of Alex gear, and farmed a full set of VA gear. And I'm leveling my miner toward the mid-50s. So I definitely keep busy with the content, as do most of my FC mates. If I had a static to do savage content, then I'd have even more to do.

Edited, Feb 25th 2016 5:02pm by Thayos

We probably both play close to the same amount of time then. But I'm guessing your play schedule is a little more predictable.

I don't mind fluff content but it has a time and place, and right now they need to spend more time on the meat of the game.

Plus LoV sucked. I finished all the missions in about an hour and a half and never touched it again. Where the hell's the motorcycle/snowboard mini-games? Those things never got old.

Honestly, it isn't broke. But I do feel it's not exactly complete either. The habit of taking a break and coming back is natural. Same goes with 3.0, which had a larger grouping do that because of the larger window between patches, and the l/o appeal in hardcore raiding.

Honestly I still don't think Alexander Savage is going to be all that sucessful, even with it being modified the way it is. They're just appealing to too narrow of the game's base with that. Alexander Midas Normal? I expect that to go fairly well, because it's something someone can approach without a static, play, enjoy, and get done.

Difficult raids, specifically the ones with a high learning curve and slow progression rate, are becoming stale in the genre itself, not particularly FFXIV. People don't have the time, or simply no longer care enough to put a hard static together to push content like that. And with SE not providing much for an alternative to that, and effectively hamstringing itself by double-downing on the idea that hardcore raiding should be the only way to get top-tier loot. We're still going to find ourselves in a rut where the hardcore base has difficulty finding groups to get content done, and the midcore and casual base feels dejected because there's jack for content progression on their side, save for a Relic that will only be available to reach that level for a few weeks before it's severely outdated again.

IMHO, SE really screwed the pooch with Diadem. I feel it would have been far more successful as an easy-access version of Dynamis, rather than instanced Hunts with poor reward turnout.

That said, there's still enough here to keep me interested for the meanwhile, and there's some hope for the PvP end of things which might spark interests back up.

Edited, Feb 26th 2016 4:07pm by Hyrist

Exactly. They're trying to appeal to a player who isn't dedicated to the game at all and while they're not doing a horrible job at it, they're hurting themselves in the process. I love theme parks, but I couldn't go to the same one every day unless there was enough to see and do that I could spread it out enough to keep it from becoming redundant.

Re: Savage Midas.

It's going over well actually and everyone who has actually done it has already commented on it being a lot more fun than previous Savage, that wasn't even properly tested as admitted by Yoshida. Savage content will never be "mainstream content" in a playerbase that has an overall low skill level. It's no use beating around the bush, but for every 1 good person there's at least 40 terrible players that eat every single mechanic and refuse to learn from their mistakes. You even had people complaining the Hall of Novice is too hard for the DPS and Tank portions...that tells you plenty.

If they truly feel like sticking to this format, all they need to do is stop making content no one really asks for, and simply dedicate as many resources to major content as they can. Focus firing on raid content will let them create actual tiers of content, like every other MMORPG, ever (including their other 2 MMORPGs) and if they want to add fluff/filler content, go for it!, but don't stretch your limited resources when you can create lasting content instead and keep players busy with actual progress without all of the artificial lockouts and gates for no reason, just look at the crafting update...

It's no secret people will take a break, but usually a lot of people take breaks because they end up dedicating TOO much time to an MMO or RL issues...rarely did you see people "take breaks" because the MMO is just...out of things to do. No matter how you try to slice things - even if you wanted to do content you have no interest in like Triple Triad or Lord of Verminion, SE designed it in such a way you'll legitimately be wasting your time to do it because..what's the reward? Outside of populated servers like Balmung, you really see how the state of the game is.

I mean, whether or not you want to admit this - SE designed the current grinds that proves 3.3 will be either EXTREMELY small, delayed or they expect EVERYONE to farm current content AND do PvP, because they actually EXTENDED the typical grinds by 3-4 weeks than the norm. Take for example, unless you get over it and do the "hard content", you'll take 7-16+ weeks longer to get your Lore weapon, which is drastically longer than the usual tome weapon grind in comparison to the other alternate. If you don't care about having high end gear..cool, but 3 years later, if people who like raids "don't matter"..why waste limited resources on that content? Why continue to waste limited resources on a "small portion of the community", but "it's ok to waste resources on content an equally small portion of the community asked for because it's not raid content"? Clearly they know people aren't going to simply stay on this game if all that exists is fluff, believe it or not, people play MMOs for the content, especially raid content. You don't build your character just so you can wear level 60-255 glamour afterall, unless the game specifically is designed with that in mind. Even the normal mode of Midas is just hold over content, as usual, because with this patch, they did it so people have an easier source of ilvl 220 gear in order to easier farm Savage, meaning UNLIKE 3.0 AND 3.1, it's designed as an actual progression, but of course people who kept current are already clearing Savage..and yes, people cleared Savage to at least 7 within the first 2 days, much faster than previous Savage and even Coils, actually.

So even with this double edged nature, there's so much more they can do with the content structure, but seems they just really don't want to at this point because...why should they if they're making all their money now? 3.0-3.1 hurt SE pretty badly, they even stated it as such in their November report and come March, we'll see just how badly it hurt them because they're clearly banking on XIV being their main money maker so when it's time to re-evaulate stuff, maybe the new president. will whip the team into shape.

I'm going to challenge this and declare that your ideal of dedication is both dated and completely invalid to begin with.

Let's start with the validation. The two measuring sticks a corporation who's developing a game are going to look at is subscription numbers and activity of an event. Period. A few dedicated people who habitually return to the same content over and over again in the same month are not more valuable to a larger group of casual players who play enough to stay subscribed through each month. In fact, if the numbers of casual players outnumber the hardcore base, the larger group is actually more valuable.

Dedication, in this sense is a player who remains subscribed. That's all that matters. So the new definition of dedication should be the person who remains subscribed and plays a lot of different content. Right now, the way that the game forces players to butt their heads at a single kind of content, by design squeeze life out of other parts of the game, because it forces everyone to worry about keeping current with the power creep. If there were multiple ways of keeping current with keeping current with the power creep, you can keep far more people engaged in the game, choosing what sort of method appeals to them more.

So. I'd say SE is hurting themselves more by over-focusing on hardcore content that keeps a minority of people engaged, rather than focusing on content that keeps a large number of people engaged.

Put simply, if they designed Diadem to function like Dynamis, or even a harder version of the 24 man content we have now. Then put the average difficulty of raiding between Savage and what we have now, pull savage entirely out of the progression pool. And put a decent reward system tied to PvP. They could potentially keep the highest reward tiers on all three routes, and appeal to the dedication of a far, far broader range of players than they are now.

The best of the best players? They will still be here, doing multiple sections of content rather than pushing just once, in order to twink out the best in slot spread between these three sets.

If the hardcore players absolutely must have their prestige gear to weigh above other players. They can provide multiple routes for the Relic Weapon Quests which nets them higher stats at their respective peaks, and then stick the upgrades into Savage, or distribute them at the top echelons of each content type.

Right now? What SE's doing, is trying to lead most their players around the nose to content that gets progressively harder in order to progress. But they bleed subscriptions when they do that between the tedium and difficulty jumps. If the content is too easy, then hardcore players unsub when they get their goals done quickly because there's really only one route to take. If the content is too hard they loose the casuals because their harder end content just doesn't appeal. Their efforts should focus on midcore content that further encourages the 'variety of play' they're already trying to get people to do. Less nonsensical content that will distract players for a week and then get ignored, less super-difficult content that only a small sliver of players are going to enjoy and complete.

Edited, Feb 26th 2016 6:14pm by Hyrist