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Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward |OT| The Midas Touch

studyguy

Member
Thordian will be down within like an hour after release, come on guys.

I'm having fun by actually playing with people I like. Somehow makes even the most mundane content like leveling or pony farming rather enjoyable. Beats kicking it with randoms. God am I glad to have someone to dive into new content with.
Having people to play with is pretty essential yeah. Like I mentioned before I've still been kicking ass in PvP due to always going in with full premades over a group of friends in mumble. It's fun as shit despite the mechanics not being stellar. It's the way to do it.
 

Bladelaw

Member
There's 5 of us that can play regularly (1 got us into it, and the rest were looking for something). Is that a reasonable group size for most content?

Can I level sync with my wife and adventure with her? Will we run into the age old problem of she can never catch up to me? I like doing a lot of the activities in the game but as a result I'm about 6 levels over her. Once we meet up it'd be nice if we can group up and clear out her quest log.
 

Ken

Member
There's 5 of us that can play regularly (1 got us into it, and the rest were looking for something). Is that a reasonable group size for most content?

Can I level sync with my wife and adventure with her? Will we run into the age old problem of she can never catch up to me? I like doing a lot of the activities in the game but as a result I'm about 6 levels over her. Once we meet up it'd be nice if we can group up and clear out her quest log.

4 is the size for dungeons and guildhests.
8 is the size for everything else.

There's no content for exactly 5 people, but you can still queue up as 5 for a good amount of stuff like the 24-mans, airships, trials, and raid.
 

dramatis

Member
She's not 100% sold on the game yet, the quests are working for her and the story is keeping her attention but she's still on the left hand side of the combat learning curve(this is her first MMO). I'm wondering if a Gamepad would be better for her, anyone prefer to play that way?

We're not planning on going super serious high end EX raiding so as long as there's things to entertain us along the way we should be in for the long haul. Neither of us have touched crafting or any of the profession stuff so if that's something worth exploring at this point please let us know.
Gamepad is good for newcomers yet requires some skill at the end game content. It might be simpler to use gamepad for play, but it requires some maintenance and workarounds to get the most out of it. If your wife wants to try it, she can.

As for crafting, it's fun once you get most of the abilities and then you can actually do a mini-game like thing with it, but the initial bouts with crafting are very slow.

Gathering is SUPER SLOW, but it can turn into "race around the world all the time" if you choose to do it.

Fishing is for relaxing. Unless you do big fishing. Then it's about fighting the worst boss of all time, the Random Number Generator. It's still fun.
 

Sifl

Member
I'm having fun by actually playing with people I like. Somehow makes even the most mundane content like leveling or pony farming rather enjoyable. Beats kicking it with randoms. God am I glad to have someone to dive into new content with.
This basically. I usually pvp with 1 or 2 people from my fc and even though Seal Rock isn't the most enjoyable thing, playing with friends makes it fun and less frustrating (fuck the Adders).
 
She's not 100% sold on the game yet, the quests are working for her and the story is keeping her attention but she's still on the left hand side of the combat learning curve(this is her first MMO). I'm wondering if a Gamepad would be better for her, anyone prefer to play that way?

I play using a gamepad (PS4 player). The gamepad controls are really easy to use and there are plenty of configurable options and shortcuts to make using a gamepad very comfortable - feels just like playing any other console game. That said, there is a little bit of an initial learning curve that comes with practice.

Note that the game craps buttons all over your hotbar as you learn skills, so it's worth getting used to customising the hotbars and coming up with something that works for you and makes your most frequently used skills and combos easy to hit.
 

WolvenOne

Member
Seal rock can be fun, buuuuut it's kinda up to luck whether you're going to be teamed up with people that have the right mind-set to win. The thing that's been driving me the most batty lately, has been people not committing to either defense or offense. Players that'll run to take a node, but will stop the moment they hit opposition and cease pushing. Or players that run away when a force tries to take one of our nodes, even if we vastly outnumber said force.

Even with favorable RNG, it can be really hard to make a decent go if you have too many players acting like that. Really what people need to realize is that with any engagement in PVP the grouping that breaks first loses, so you need to do your best to make certain it's the other side that breaks first. That usually means locking down and focus burning opponents until the psychological impact starts scattering people. Or if it's a node you need, holding it as long as possible. I've held onto nodes against multiple alliances with just me and a handful of other people, a larger force doesn't necessarily mean they can push you around.
 

213372bu

Banned
I have been playing for almost a year now, but never have been paying attention to big patch times.

Is it expected to finish before, exactly at, or after 1am Pacific?

Every MMO I've played has been one of the three, so not sure when to expect to hop back in.
 

Ken

Member
I have been playing for almost a year now, but never have been paying attention to big patch times.

Is it expected to finish before, exactly at, or after 1am Pacific?

Every MMO I've played has been one of the three, so not sure when to expect to hop back in.

I think we've seen all three happen before so hard to say.
 

Sylas

Member
I have been playing for almost a year now, but never have been paying attention to big patch times.

Is it expected to finish before, exactly at, or after 1am Pacific?

Every MMO I've played has been one of the three, so not sure when to expect to hop back in.

Exactly at 1am. They used to have the times waffle a little bit but anything that could mess with the weekly reset will always finish after said reset takes place. You used to have people that would rush through content and get double rolls on weekly gear or extra tomes before the reset took place.

Though things might not be perfectly stable at 1am. It should be fine, as major patches typically don't have much instability--but the likelihood of things coming up before 1am is super small.
 
Nothing will ever hit 2.0 launch numbers, that was the release of a brand new video game so comparing 3.0 to that means nothing. If marketing is on point (which SE finds a way for people to be hype even when there is nothing to be hype for), then people will always be attracted back to X.0 expacs. It's just the way it is. Even the grumpy "meh, meh, this game is for baddies and meh, meh, I hate everything SE does" people still see new jobs, new level caps, the promise of hours and hours or story content and they all peek their head back in.

The problem with the WoW Cycle is that as we have seen with WoW, you eventually reach a peak and decline. This isn't a big deal when you're WoW and your peak was like 20 million players and that was like 6 years after launch. Even now, a decade later, WoW is still pulling 5 million subs after a widely-disliked expac.

FFXIV has managed to hit it's peak almost immediately after 2.0 and has already gone into decline, and it's peak isn't anywhere near 20 million players. I think someone posted a graphic showing about 385k players actually reached level 60 in HW, that's a realistic number for the post-expac peak and now we're in the decline phase of the WoW Cycle.

If Squenix really wasn't concerned about longtime players quitting, they most certainly won't have implemented 45 days until your house explodes. If that isn't a stick being used to beat longtime players about the head and neck to try and force them to remain subbed, I don't know what is.

You really think people aren't gunning to get it down first even if they pretend they don't care?

World-Firsting is generally exclusively limited to raiding in MMOs.

I'm sure Elysium will have Thordan EX down about 20 minutes after the servers come up and nobody will even notice because they won't even care enough to announce it.
 

WolvenOne

Member
The housing thing is sadly an absolute necessity, there are NUMEROUS servers out there without even a single lot open. They can't endlessly add lots either, due to how housing zones are handled. The only long term solution is to start booting long-term defunct players. Even then they'll need to gradually add more lots in time.

As for the 360K figure, I really really doubt that's the bulk of the player base right there. Casual players take, "F-O-R-E-V-E-R" to level up. I have a friend on another server, that took over a year to get his first class to fifty, and his sub never lapsed. I actually hear stories like this quite frequently, so clearly large swathes of the playerbase aren't at sixty yet.

PS: Saying subs peaks in 2.0 is factually wrong, subs were confirmed to be higher in 2.2, and if I recall were confirmed to be higher again in 2.5.
 

Sorian

Banned
The problem with the WoW Cycle is that as we have seen with WoW, you eventually reach a peak and decline. This isn't a big deal when you're WoW and your peak was like 20 million players and that was like 6 years after launch. Even now, a decade later, WoW is still pulling 5 million subs after a widely-disliked expac.

FFXIV has managed to hit it's peak almost immediately after 2.0 and has already gone into decline, and it's peak isn't anywhere near 20 million players. I think someone posted a graphic showing about 385k players actually reached level 60 in HW, that's a realistic number for the post-expac peak and now we're in the decline phase of the WoW Cycle.

If Squenix really wasn't concerned about longtime players quitting, they most certainly won't have implemented 45 days until your house explodes. If that isn't a stick being used to beat longtime players about the head and neck to try and force them to remain subbed, I don't know what is.

You don't need to compare it to WoW if you don't want to, compare it to any MMO you'd like. The peak success just shows how long until they have to go f2p. MMO is a dying genre in the form that we see (and that I care about).

I understand what you're saying about the 45 day rule and that might completely be the case but it smells more like an easy money grab from higher up than trying to combat people ducking in and out of their sub.

Edit: We can also pretend that SE is sugar and roses and this housing thing is just to free up room for the people that do actually play to get housing but if they actually gave a shit about that they would just add more instances.
 
Seal rock can be fun, buuuuut it's kinda up to luck whether you're going to be teamed up with people that have the right mind-set to win. The thing that's been driving me the most batty lately, has been people not committing to either defense or offense. Players that'll run to take a node, but will stop the moment they hit opposition and cease pushing. Or players that run away when a force tries to take one of our nodes, even if we vastly outnumber said force.

Even with favorable RNG, it can be really hard to make a decent go if you have too many players acting like that. Really what people need to realize is that with any engagement in PVP the grouping that breaks first loses, so you need to do your best to make certain it's the other side that breaks first. That usually means locking down and focus burning opponents until the psychological impact starts scattering people. Or if it's a node you need, holding it as long as possible. I've held onto nodes against multiple alliances with just me and a handful of other people, a larger force doesn't necessarily mean they can push you around.

I've noticed a lot of that is due in no small part to player composition. GCs that are heavy on ranged DPS and light on CQC classes like tanks and melee tend to buckle faster than any other make up. Then you have tanks that won't play point and lead the group into a pack, and melee who won't attack priority targets like healers and SMNs. Having enough healers to even do a push back is also a problem. You can't push back if you only have a grand total of 3-4 healers throughout the entire alliance. Then there's the problem of whether or not they're any good at healing in PvP at all. I've had to deal with trying to push many a time as a tank and the healers will just run away when they aren't even being targeted.

tl;dr its hard to be aggressive with a pack of ranged cowards.
 

WolvenOne

Member
On the busier servers another zone or two would be filled up within a month. So adding more instances aren't going to do a bloody thing until they get rid of some of the empty houses. 9_9;;

As for the MMO model being broken, I actually agree to a large extent. I don't like the F2P model one bit, but I've seen way too many people quit the game because they weren't going to have time to play much for a month or so, only for them to never really come back to the game. The problem with the model is that, in the 90's and early 00's people had relatively few monthly subscriptions for entertainment products, so occasionally sitting on one sub wasn't a big deal. Now, with entertainment subscriptions being so much more common it's difficult for people to sit on a sub for a service they aren't actively using at the moment, and once people aren't paying the sub for a few months and aren't actively playing for such a length of time, getting them to come back becomes harder.

Honestly, I have thoughts on how to solve this issue, but I won't go into them in detail here. Suffice to say, the model needs to lower the bar for first, getting into an established MMO, and second for staying nominally involved even during periods when the player is busy or when there's a bit of a content drought. I think there are ways to do this without going F2P, but it'd involve new subscription tiers, and handling older content differently then newer content.
 

Sorian

Banned
On the busier servers another zone or two would be filled up within a month. So adding more instances aren't going to do a bloody thing until they get rid of some of the empty houses. 9_9;;.

They made their bed and have to lie in it now. No one would have minded if you had to just buy an instanced house and then there would have been an unlimited supply but they had to go down this shitty route. Like I said though, this isn't an effort to get more housing out to the people who want it, this is a cash grab so the point is moot.
 

WolvenOne

Member
They made their bed and have to lie in it now. No one would have minded if you had to just buy an instanced house and then there would have been an unlimited supply but they had to go down this shitty route. Like I said though, this isn't an effort to get more housing out to the people who want it, this is a cash grab so the point is moot.

I really doubt it's a cash grab. I rather doubt that players that are thoroughly dis-invested in the game are going to come rushing back to keep their house from being demolished. Especially when they'll be getting most of their Gil and furniture back anyway. As for the housing system itself, yes I would have created a separate instance for personal housing, and kept free company housing in it's own distinct permanent zone. Regardless, that's the system they have now, and they have to deal with it as is.

My ONLY complaint, is that 45 days is a bit too brief. Players DO take breaks from this game for 2-3 months at a time and come back. Even with them getting most of their resources back that is a bit severe for such a brief absence. 60-90 days would've been more appropriate.
 

Sorian

Banned

lol

I really doubt it's a cash grab. I rather doubt that players that are thoroughly dis-invested in the game are going to come rushing back to keep their house from being demolished. Especially when they'll be getting most of their Gil and furniture back anyway. As for the housing system itself, yes I would have created a separate instance for personal housing, and kept free company housing in it's own distinct permanent zone. Regardless, that's the system they have now, and they have to deal with it as is.

My ONLY complaint, is that 45 days is a bit too brief. Players DO take breaks from this game for 2-3 months at a time and come back. Even with them getting most of their resources back that is a bit severe for such a brief absence. 60-90 days would've been more appropriate.

Also, double lol to the bolded. Have you met any MMO players in your time with FFXIV. The "mine!" mentality is very strong.
 
You don't need to compare it to WoW if you don't want to, compare it to any MMO you'd like. The peak success just shows how long until they have to go f2p. MMO is a dying genre in the form that we see (and that I care about).

I understand what you're saying about the 45 day rule and that might completely be the case but it smells more like an easy money grab from higher up than trying to combat people ducking in and out of their sub.

Edit: We can also pretend that SE is sugar and roses and this housing thing is just to free up room for the people that do actually play to get housing but if they actually gave a shit about that they would just add more instances.

FFXIV will never go F2P, let's not forget that FFXI has never gone F2P and in fact Squenix is just going to shut FFXI down entirely instead of try to run it as a F2P MMO.

MMO is a dying genre because the generation that grew up with them grew up and got full time jobs and kids and ran out of infinite free time but the makers of MMOs never tried to attract new younger players to the genre. Now that we have MOBAs which are also F2P it's not likely that the MMO demographic will ever recover, most younger people who would have played MMOs today are now playing DOTA2 and LoL and the like instead.
 

Sorian

Banned
FFXIV will never go F2P, let's not forget that FFXI has never gone F2P and in fact Squenix is just going to shut FFXI down entirely instead of try to run it as a F2P MMO.

This argument is worthless. FFXI is older than dirt, of course they are going to shut it down instead of trying to revamp it. FFXIV still has not provided a return on their investment, if they have to go f2p to survive, than they will, simple as that. And if they don't want to, then they can take the kick in the bottom line, that's really their choice.

Yes, because clearly we've going to see a huge spike in subs as a result of this, suuuuuuuuure. 9_9

Why would it cause a spike in subs? Are you dense? It's not meant to cause a spike, it's meant to get someone to re-think letting their sub lapse.
 

Sifl

Member
tl;dr its hard to be aggressive with a pack of cowards

Fixed for you, and I'll admit I'm guilty of it too. I usually play drg and its difficult to play aggressive when 1. Other people aren't being aggressive and 2. When you know you aren't gonna be healed sufficiently for it. I commonly have 0 to 1 healers in my party (except when my friend plays, if we have no healer she switches to make sure we have 1) and when there's like 6 smns grouped up there's not much pushing that can be done without good healing. Not by my friend, but there have been times where I've died waiting for heals behind the fighting because I have so many DoTs on me, like walking around for 20 seconds and not getting a single heal.

Edit: In case anyone tries to get smart, yes I know Purify and Fetter Ward exist.
 

Jeels

Member
Apparently it was confirmed in the Patch-notes reading that the Adamantoise Mount would be made into a flying mount as of 3.2.

gamerazigra_shot0l.jpg


Please be excited.

I am cool with that. Would be great to fly around on my lala admantoise :)




Woah, is that art official? Looks awesome!

This argument is worthless. FFXI is older than dirt, of course they are going to shut it down instead of trying to revamp it. FFXIV still has not provided a return on their investment,


I get what you are saying in terms of FFXIV still having several years of earning potential left in it but let's not exaggerate. FFXIV has already been a huge money maker for SE and they have probably more than received a return on their investment.
 

WolvenOne

Member
Why would it cause a spike in subs? Are you dense? It's not meant to cause a spike, it's meant to get someone to re-think letting their sub lapse.

I doubt that'll make people re-think all that much; maybe it'll delay a dissatisfied player from unsubbing but I doubt it'll stop them. People let subs lapse either because they're no longer having fun, or because they no longer have time to play. Losing a house really doesn't have any bearing on either of those factors.
 

Ken

Member
Or players lapse their subs because they've run out of things they want to do so instead of paying money to experience content draught they'll come back in 3-5 months and continue playing again.
 

WolvenOne

Member
Or players lapse their subs because they've run out of things they want to do so instead of paying money to experience content draught they'll come back in 3-5 months and continue playing again.

Pretty sure that falls under the first category I mentioned.
 

WolvenOne

Member
I'm sure there's overlap between the two in a Venn diagram but I don't think they're the same.

If you have nothing to do, you're not having fun. That's pretty darn flipping straight forward.

Next you'll be arguing what the meaning of, "is," is. 9_9
 

Sorian

Banned
I get what you are saying in terms of FFXIV still having several years of earning potential left in it but let's not exaggerate. FFXIV has already been a huge money maker for SE and they have probably more than received a return on their investment.

You really think they've made back money from the disaster that was 1.0 and basically having to build an MMO up from the ground twice? Because I don't.

Honest question.

I doubt that'll make people re-think all that much; maybe it'll delay a dissatisfied player from unsubbing but I doubt it'll stop them. People let subs lapse either because they're no longer having fun, or because they no longer have time to play. Losing a house really doesn't have any bearing on either of those factors.

If they get a substantial amount of people that were toying with quitting to stay an extra month because of this then I don't see how you could call it anything but a cash grab. That is about $15 per person and that's only if they con them for one month, they'll probably con people with more than that. That is not a small amount of money and it's obviously much higher than the $0 they get from people that quit without a thought to it.
 

Ken

Member
If you have nothing to do, you're not having fun. That's pretty darn flipping straight forward.

Next you'll be arguing what the meaning of, "is," is. 9_9

And you can still not have fun with a lot of things to do. I was arguing more from the patch lull perspective, where players still enjoy the game but don't want to pay $15 a month to keep repeating the same stuff for 5 months. Those players, the ones that lapse but still enjoy the game, are the ones most likely to come back.
 

MrHoot

Member
I remember stopping playing for a little while not because of lack of content, but more because the older content was pretty bland. Still is. As the game progresses and devs are being more creative with new dungeons and raids and whatnot, it also shows a light on how dull the ealier dungeons and level 50 stuff prior to maybe 2.3. Which brings to the point where I'm hoping future updates also brings back old content up to snuff.

There's a ton of content in FF 14 seriously. It's mind boggling the number of things you can do with one character and that's the great thing about. The thing is now that you have a lot of that content that feels stale and will only seem more sour as updates and expansions roll by
 

BadRNG

Member
I really really don't think the housing thing is some insidious plot to make people subscribe more. It sounds more like they are just being cheap and instead of adding more housing servers, they can just take the plots from people who aren't using them.

Cheap and lazy just fits more with their past moves, rather than evil cash grab. It's also a mechanic they talked about using like when housing first came out, so it's not some brand new idea that came about because they are hemorrhaging subs.
 

Cmagus

Member
I really really don't think the housing thing is some insidious plot to make people subscribe more. It sounds more like they are just being cheap and instead of adding more housing servers, they can just take the plots from people who aren't using them.

Cheap and lazy just fits more with their past moves, rather than evil cash grab. It's also a mechanic they talked about using like when housing first came out, so it's not some brand new idea that came about because they are hemorrhaging subs.

The housing situation was handled so poorly. Most can't get a house and lose out on things associated with housing. I really wish if they don't plan on adding more housing they at least give those who don't have the chance to get one some of the perks like gardening.

It would be nice if we could have flower pots or something in the personal rooms for growing stuff. Also it would be nice if they had some kind of room upgrade system where you could add an additional room or make the room larger King of like the system they have in PSO2.

I think this would be a great system and that they should have left the housing plots for FC housing and did more with personal rooms within it.
 

Valor

Member
You really think they've made back money from the disaster that was 1.0 and basically having to build an MMO up from the ground twice? Because I don't.

Honest question.
in my opinion they're either in the black or very close at this point. We have seen ourselves the popularity and success that ARR has been and the idea that their staff has been slightly growing. Their budget also appeared to have gotten bigger, so they're likely making money off of the game. Otherwise I think the game would be in a bit more dire state.

Maybe that's just my optimistic point of view but I can also see the reverse. They want to push expacs every year. Time between patches. Yoship saying they didn't have the resources for three raid tiers. I do think this game has been a success since 2.0 but I am also not as naive to think that success = making money. I would still lean towards yes, however.
 

Jeels

Member
You really think they've made back money from the disaster that was 1.0 and basically having to build an MMO up from the ground twice? Because I don't.

Honest question.


Uhh what? That's a super easy thing to say. Let's say 500k subscribers (a fair number across this games lifetime) paying 10 dollars a month (the bare minimum). Thats 120 million dollars. Add to that merchandising (plushes, art books, sountracks) optional store (retainers, cosmetics, minions, Mount, and fantasia) and the smaller profits on the actual game(s) at launch, there's no way they didn't make their money back. If they didn't, you wouldn't even see a Heavensward or continuous patches. You only have to look at SEs financials to see that.
 

WolvenOne

Member
I believe they said a long while ago that 14 was back in the black. Plus the game is cited as a large factor in SE's return to profitability.

My leading theory as to why they do not reinvest more into the game, is that a lot of that money is being diverted to the development of XV. If true hopefully that means they'll start putting more resources back into XIV in six months or so, when XV development winds up.
 

Jeels

Member
I believe they said a long while ago that 14 was back in the black. Plus the game is cited as a large factor in SE's return to profitability.

My leading theory as to why they do not reinvest more into the game, is that a lot of that money is being diverted to the development of XV. If true hopefully that means they'll start putting more resources back into XIV in six months or so, when XV development winds up.

Either that or they just want to be very conservative in their approach, considering the state of paid mmos and them being burned before.
 

IvorB

Member
I get what you are saying in terms of FFXIV still having several years of earning potential left in it but let's not exaggerate. FFXIV has already been a huge money maker for SE and they have probably more than received a return on their investment.

Well someone posted revenue numbers in a thread the other day and the revenue from FF XIV has been on a upward trend for a while so I guess they are happy with it.
 

Valor

Member
I know that 2.0 restored faith in a damaged se brand but looking at sub numbers and money isn't exactly fair because while you have the money spent on 1.0 and 2.0 you also have salaries for a team of at least ten-twenty people for the past two years. Not like you suddenly stop spending money on an mmo development. I'm sure there's other stuff going on that needs money spent on as well like fan fest and all that other promotional stuff that I dunno is factored into cost analysis for the brand.

I think it's a fair point to question the profitably of ff14 not just now but as a sustained revenue stream.

Edit: currently crossing fingers for a nice crit bow of some sort. Plz.
 
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