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FFXIV player attrition: it is going to be bad.
gamesrfun
Member Posts: 127
Over the last 6-7 years the MMO community has witnessed some very successful initial launches.
Age of Conan
WAR
SWTOR
Each of them crashed and burned very fast. They shared many of the same qualities, namely:
1) Seriously easy leveling at the start;
2) Major leveling and end-game nerfs soon after;
3) Standard theme park designs;
4) Initial game queue issues; and
5) Major bugs that were exploited early.
FFXIV shares all of these "symptoms". FATEs are so ridiculously OP that many casual players are in their 30s and 40s and anyone remotely hardcore is already 50. Amdapor Keep just received a massive nerf of the exponential variety. Everyone already knows about the initial login headaches. Endgame dungeon exploits abound.
The attrition rates of the games above were approximately 90% in the first 6 months. FFXIV does not look to be in better shape.
Comments
But that's not the way to bet.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The game will have a healthy following just like FFXI has. I prefer a small but dedicated and mature community to the cesspool of something like WoW any day!
i think FF14 will do ok
AOC felt like a "bait and switch" after leaving the starting area Tortage
WAR was ok but I didnt think it was worth subbing to
I didn't play SWTOR
EQ2 fan sites
AK did not get a nerf............................... ...
People were abusing the aggro mechanics to run past all the mobs in a dungeon to go directly to the bosses. They fixed that mechanic so you actually have to kill stuff other than the bosses (which most people were doing anyway). They even doubled the amount of coin drops from treasure chests to make people want to clear more of the content in dungeons...
The rest of what you said could be addressed in exactly the same manner as your claim of "dungeon nerfs" but I'd rather play the game than sit here and reply to every chicken little screaming that the sky is falling.
I think I remember it taking me no less than 8 or 9 days of /played time in Vanilla WoW to hit max level. Here, I probably have 60 hours or so and I'm level 40. That, coupled with the small zones and the seemingly lack of different gear models means I probably won't be sticking with this game. I'm already getting a little bored.
Really dude? That not a fair way to talk about people who play wow. Granted servers like blackrock have the worst community I've ever seen, but, servers like Wyrmrest Accord have some of the nicest.... Generalizing you're dislike of the wow community like that is just unintelligent. Not to mention that anyone that still plays wow to this day is probably way more dedicated and mature then someone who game hops to every new game that comes out.
Also, small communities are not always better, I don't know if you've played games like Darkfall, but its a niche community that I personally found to be very undesirable.
Wow is a disasterpiece of what it once was but that doesn't mean that the people who still play are all bad.
Go play your hardcore MMO then. If this game is too easy and you are so pro, why even bother? Nobody here is holding you back.
1) Not every MMO is a cakewalk at the start. Moreover, many would say that FFXIV takes this to an entirely new level. It makes GW2 look like a grind.
2) Come on now, AK is a complete nerf. And if you don't consider that a nerf, then it is fixing an exploit (see point five).
3) Doesn't change the fact that it is also a recipe for failure when combined with all other elements.
4) Plenty of MMOs have launched without MAJOR queue problems.
5) Medica ftw.
If you like your small playerbase that's fine. That doesn't mean the population isn't setting up for a major plunge.
Square Enix is a public company.
I am sure that investors with significant holdings expect more than a "small and dedicated group of players" for their #1 franchise.
Age of Conan sold over 800,000 copies. The game (along with The Secret World) bankrupted the company. If you think they've made back their investment already you are deluded.
Oh look, a doom and gloom thread. How original!
Hey guys! Guys! The new game you're playing is going to die. Tee Hee!
Pointless thread. :-(
Do you think FFXIV is the only game Square Enix has out? Funcom reduced themselves to basically a 2 game company as of 2008, it's not shocking they are in financial trouble. Square Enix has over a dozen games out in 2013 and some very big titles coming out in the near future, - FFXII - 3, Theif, FFXV and Kingdom Hearts III to name some. If FFXIV is more profitable than FFXI was I doubt the investors will be too worried about it.
I feel that this is going to be the same for Final Fantasy XIV if they don't do something. At the moment its a good game but not really worth subbing to. My hope is that they listen to the players and open this game up with new content.
Disclaimer: This is just my opinion
So you think there is only 29 bucks worth of content that's been made and can all be consumed within 30 days? You cant be serious can you.
Read what I said again and this time think before you reply.
Of course not. The first point is that MMOs are extremely expensive to make and that a public company such as Square Enix is not aiming for "a small and dedicated group of players". The second point is that selling 800,000 box/digital sales were not enough to keep a small company afloat when subscriptions faltered. It is reasonably safe to assume that FFXIV's cost was more than that of AoC.
In my heart of hearts after just playing FF14 you can just feel it's not gonna be a winner in the long run. It's very simplistic, and overall I think the vast majority of us who are playing it realize that. To me, however, I don't really care. This game is just a distraction on the time line of gaming while I wait for something better to come along. The only reason I think FF14 had the "success" it did have is because it was released during a gaming drought.
My 2 gil.
Unfortuently every game is like this and it will conintous till the Devs find oput it doesnt work long term, im currently playing FF14 solely because there is nothing better to play at this time, hoping this will keep me somewhat immused till EQN/Landmark and with anyluck that changes how things are right now.
The thing is, this game is paid for. They didn't need to get investors, they only have to please shareholders. As long as the company is making a profit and the game is making a profit - even slowly, nothing is lost. 2.0 has obviously sold more than they expected to the point where they had to stop selling the game, I think the shareholders will see that as a success at this point. I also think if they were aiming for millions of players they would have had server infrastructure in place at launch to handle more than a couple hundred thousand people.
If the game limps along with a FFXI sized population or more then the game won't be going anywhere and the company will be fine financially. This game is not a make it a break it deal for SE, it's a totally different situation than Funcom's.
I don't disagree that the game in the state it's in now could suffer massive subscriber loss down the road, but I am interest to to see what they do with the first two real patches.
The only key component you need look at ,is ALL the games after Wow have suffered.That is because Wow at one time owned a higher share of the total market than all other games combined.That is not good for the industry,it leaves very few gamer's to join new games as the smaller % must be spread among all other games.
There has been a small amount of success of late as many of those gamer's have left Wow,it is simple economics.
The high end of the numbers will of course make all games look bad as MANY of those Wow players look back and see their max level or years of hard work and feel the need to go back to Wow anytime they see a new xpac.Then they realize their mistake,get bored again,try new games again,leaving impressions of success only to see them leave again.
I shake my head whenever i see players talk about downfall of a game,yet every other game does the same mistake or does the game play exactly the same.
I could go play Runes of magic and have the EXACT same game as Wow with a few added components that make it better than Wow,so is it really about FUN or just a fact of needing to be a part of the big boy and now have a lot of time invested in that game?Point is ,EVERY game that comes out,people compare it to a very average Wow game and think what they say is factual.The biggest game on this planet does nothing but simple linear quest feeding all with a goal to progress to a one dimensional end game,is that really good game design?
Point again is look over that list of probable problems and i see WOW and every other game,so it is NOT about that at all.It is more about acceptability of a game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
agreed, post tortage was aoc's downfall. they gave you this totally awesome fully voiced starting area that told an epic story about YOU. then you go out into the world to eq1 grade text bubbles and mundane tasks. and despite that i still enjoyed the game until tier 2 raiding. they were all broken and not fixed for like a year so i said F it and quit, and not even ftp can get me to try it again because they had their chance to fix the game and didnt.
ff14 will have enough hard core fans too pay in to it to keep it going until they at least make back the money they spent making it, and remaking it. which will probably take 5 years if they hit a million steady players, longer if not.
I have to say I disagree with the overall review here. I think people look at this as a normal MMO in regards to leveling. I don't think the leveling from 1-50 is supposed to be hard. What will be a challenge for the time being is leveling 1-50 on multiple classes. Luckily they give you things like the Hunting Log/Fates/Leves to use, but other than that - eventually it's going to get tough.
Far less values worth of content if you ask me. I paid $3 for FFXIV in the bargain bin for 1.0, got my 2 weeks in 2.0 for being a legacy, saw everything I needed to in that time. Nothing here worth spending another $12 on.