(tl;dr: Just some more of my introspection on a lot of the state of the game and my feelings about stuffs. I don't post enough on this forum. Oh, and Warren? Talk about relics lol)
Me either.
I can pretty much firmly believe at this point that they are using XIV to cope with the net losses they had to deal with a few years ago that nearly crippled them as a company. But I am afraid that if they keep that mentality up, they're going to end up using XIV as a crutch to throw money at other titles because their other titles won't have long term consistent revenue like XIV will. But you have to feed the cow that gives you milk, and Square needs to take care of its cash cow.
This breaks my heart because of this:
Naoki Yoshida, A Realm Reborn’s director, told The Penny Arcade Report on Friday, “Most MMOs have investors in the background, and the company uses the profit and splits the profit with the investors. But, if the game’s not successful, and it doesn’t reach the target, then they have to switch to free-to-play to try and get just a little profit from it. Among the MMOs in the market, only Blizzard and Square-Enix are making money without investors in the background.â€
^ FFXIV does not have investors. It means they don't need to try to do things to please them. They can focus 100% of their efforts in studying their audience and giving them what they want and they don't have to put any effort towards trying to give investors what they want.
But it feels like XIV is -still- torn in two directions. The staff wants to make a game the people want, but Square Enix wants XIV to make a game that Square Enix wants. Square Enix wants a continuous revenue with maximum profit with minimal investment. But they are having difficulty understanding that MMO's, especially MMO's with sub-models, need to be re-invested into over and over again to provide that same consistent, healthy long term growth. This means staff. This means raises. This means funneling money into development costs and being willing and able to take a short term loss if it meant a great chance at long term growth. That's taking a risk, something Japan's culture is iffy about compared to the West.
FFXIV may not have investors, but Square Enix is currently acting like a disgruntled shareholder that wants his return right -now- on money they gave towards the game years ago and not willing to see the bigger picture here. I really hope that there's some sort of human resources department or some kind of intermediary between XIV's staff and Square that can start making some positive changes done for the overworked and tired-as-hell XIV staff that is being worked to the bone and basically living on caffeine and passion for the title.
Switching subjects here...
Yeah.. that was a real thing too.
I can't say I was frustrated enough to think about quitting, but I did have an adventure trying to get that clear the first time. Lots of wipes, lots of frustrating nights dealing with frustrating people. That's the negative side of it. Often times, not just in those fights but in Second Coil and stuff as well, I would feel like 'these people can't do this shit, who can?'. Like Turn 7 pre-nerf, holy crap the stuff I put up with.
But at the same time, I look back on those Titan HM days and those Turn 7 days and I also remember how it made my old FC so healthy because we were always trying to help people with those clears and all of my funny/great experiences in PF and all of the pop culture that resulted from it (the rage gifs and the fan art and the web comics about Titan and Enrage strat) and in the end, I had bad memories and good memories. I had an experience, and MMO's to me are about having experiences.
I personally prefer that. When things feel hazardous, I feel great for making past it. I want to support your friends that haven't yet. I realize that's more of an old school MMO mentality, and I admit that I am more of an 'old school' guy on that. I also know that PF can sometimes let people down but I'm not gonna touch the whole "NA Partyfinder hurdur" subject with a ten foot pole because I really think that communication has more of an effect on that than location.
The first relic questline felt like a journey. Sure, it was just a lists of steps to do, but in my mind I was the Hero that was on a quest, and that each step in that quest got harder and harder until I hit the midpoint bottleneck. Got past it, slid down that hill and grabbed my relic.
And sure, I didn't touch Titan for a while after that lol but I didn't touch Ravana either after doing it ten times within three days so.. truly, the Titan content lasted longer with me.
Ever since ST it's been pretty straight-forward. I actually appreciate the fact that it's straightforward and not convoluted. I think a lot of people are glancing over the fact that the feeling of progress in XIV is simple, clean, and solid. I always feel like I'm one step closer to my goal when I log out. But when is the point where things become *too* routine?
How long can a dedicated subber do the roulette routine before they begin to desire something different? Was the Diadem supposed to cater to that? Is there no hope for the Diadem to provide the true break in the routine after people just figured out it was dino island farming/mob farming?
More significantly, will FFXIV ever move away from its current progression system of new tomes/raid/progressive patch, new 24-man/dungeons/catch-up patch? Will we ever see a different endgame than what we see now?
I think people... wanted something familiar but different for Heavensward endgame. They still wanted to feel the same emotions and experience from 2.0's endgame, but delivered in a fresh and exciting way. They wanted something more obvious to tell them that the game is evolving. They wanted an endgame to match how fresh and cool it was to have huge zones and flying and new jobs and a new DX11 client with new graphics and stuff that was still based around the same core engine.
In other words, they didn't want a different cake, but they wanted a new type of icing on their chocolate cake and ended up being fed the same icing and the same cake. They wanted to be like Squidward in that gif who ended up racing back to the unpredictable (Spongebob).
I really do think that the Diadem had huge potential to completely re-vamp endgame. "It could be the new Dynamis!" I thought pre-3.1. They still can make it something super special but.. it needs work. It really needs work. It's too.. shallow, and it should not be a situation where people just find out the best way to get 210 gear and do that. Maybe vertical progression is to the blame or maybe the community is to blame. But.. I just have this huge feeling that the devs wanted to try out more exploration, more adventure, more random but... didn't know how to go about it. Just like PVP. It's like an owner of a restaurant not knowing what should be on his menu.
It's a need to want.
This is a very peculiar thing to me because it actually fascinates me in a way. I actively try to push myself to get 210. I actively try to get myself on par with raid-tier gear. I -needed- that i90 weapon at launch regardless of whether or not I was gonna do Coil. Whether or not I was gonna raid. I don't raid anymore, yet I really want, I -need- that raid-tier gear.
Not just that, but I really push the limits of my job. I try to edge out 3k crits on DRK with a vitality build on a practice dummy. I'm constantly trying to better my Wildfire burst as MCH. I get a chuckle from a buddy: "Why do you care? You don't raid anymore."
Why? ... I honestly don't know. I guess it's just very irrational. I want this stuff because I know people who raid and I like to feel like I'm on par with them because I'm an ex-raider. I want this stuff so that I can try my best, so that I can create a goal (Hit a 8k Wildfire in a dungeon) and then smash past that goal. I want this stuff so I can get content done faster, be more useful to others, and maybe even be a replacement for a static one night if they need help. That's another thing, I feel like I can help more.
If I dig really deep down inside, then I come up with yet another answer. I want the i 90's and the 210's because the real reason why I quit raiding is because I hated putting up with the stress of managing other people and having it suck time out of my life. I had a schedule, so I felt like I was doing this not out of my free will. I had to manage people, have a schedule.. wait a sec, that feels like work! It began to feel like work to me when the managing and the schedule and the drama became more of a hassle for me than the content.
I was part of three statics, the last one I created myself. I left the latter two due to this.
I created a static back in January because I was so freaking tired of not being able to be taught Turn 9 and not being able to put myself in a position to beat it (because no static would accept someone who didn't have experience, and Second Coil was supposed to be less hardcore because Final Coil was out, but I had to gate through T9) that I made my own, got taught by being a replacement for another one of my FC's statics for a night or two on a dps job (DRG) when I wasn't gonna be dps (PLD) and I just sucked it up, learned it the best I could, recruited my own people and we blasted through T13 the day after I got home from my graduation trip in May.
But the baggage that comes with a static killed me.
The schedule killed me. Having to be the sole leader killed me. Having to manage people killed me. Everything outside of being in the fight itself killed me. Going to bed at 1-2am or later even because of after-raid meetings and getting up at 7am every day killed me. I became a stressed out, RP-starved madman and I had to leave.
I realized that it's not 2013 anymore. I'm not a fledgling college student with too much free time anymore. I couldn't do it. I bailed. I'm not that hardcore to lead a static and I will never be.
I left the static I created in July, cut that stress out of my life and my blood pressure loves me now. I feel free. I feel like I can relax. I feel like I can roleplay more than I ever have. I feel like I can do what I wanna do. That's casual mentality. I don't want anything to feel like a job.
But I still have that passion for being the best, for bettering myself and doing some hard ass content that can kick my butt because at the end of the day I still love this game and doing that stuff.
That's why I classify myself as midcore now. I have that urge to be carefree and take a breathe and not take things too seriously, but I also have that edge (kill me for using that word) to 'git gud' and blast through some content hard enough to satisfy that passion yet not where I need to call up seven people four nights a week every week to do like I'm doing it to keep the lights on.
I know that's a terribly long answer, but this is the first time I truly wrote out my feelings about that question and why I feel like I need those things.
(12-05-2015, 01:58 AM)Olivia Wrote: Square Enix nearly bankrupted themselves after 1.0's disastrous launch, coupled with spending obscene amounts on Tomb Raider and FFXIII. The former supposedly didn't make a profit, while the latter struggled to corner the estimated market. I suspect they are using FFXIV to funnel other projects to basically reinvigorate the company. FFXIV, unfortunately, has long been viewed as a hail mary attempt to salvage a sinking ship. The fact it practically saved SE makes me think their shareholders are writing it off with the mentality, "well, if you were successful with a shoestring budget. Why should we give you more money?" Â
Sincerely hope that isn't the case long term.
Me either.
I can pretty much firmly believe at this point that they are using XIV to cope with the net losses they had to deal with a few years ago that nearly crippled them as a company. But I am afraid that if they keep that mentality up, they're going to end up using XIV as a crutch to throw money at other titles because their other titles won't have long term consistent revenue like XIV will. But you have to feed the cow that gives you milk, and Square needs to take care of its cash cow.
This breaks my heart because of this:
Naoki Yoshida, A Realm Reborn’s director, told The Penny Arcade Report on Friday, “Most MMOs have investors in the background, and the company uses the profit and splits the profit with the investors. But, if the game’s not successful, and it doesn’t reach the target, then they have to switch to free-to-play to try and get just a little profit from it. Among the MMOs in the market, only Blizzard and Square-Enix are making money without investors in the background.â€
^ FFXIV does not have investors. It means they don't need to try to do things to please them. They can focus 100% of their efforts in studying their audience and giving them what they want and they don't have to put any effort towards trying to give investors what they want.
But it feels like XIV is -still- torn in two directions. The staff wants to make a game the people want, but Square Enix wants XIV to make a game that Square Enix wants. Square Enix wants a continuous revenue with maximum profit with minimal investment. But they are having difficulty understanding that MMO's, especially MMO's with sub-models, need to be re-invested into over and over again to provide that same consistent, healthy long term growth. This means staff. This means raises. This means funneling money into development costs and being willing and able to take a short term loss if it meant a great chance at long term growth. That's taking a risk, something Japan's culture is iffy about compared to the West.
FFXIV may not have investors, but Square Enix is currently acting like a disgruntled shareholder that wants his return right -now- on money they gave towards the game years ago and not willing to see the bigger picture here. I really hope that there's some sort of human resources department or some kind of intermediary between XIV's staff and Square that can start making some positive changes done for the overworked and tired-as-hell XIV staff that is being worked to the bone and basically living on caffeine and passion for the title.
Switching subjects here...
(12-04-2015, 11:42 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: It's impossible to determine what's the "right" difficulty" for anything. Clearing the EXes for i90 weapons was truly hazardous because of Titan EX: I was seriously almost driven to quitting because I kept failing the encounter because no one else could hold up this part of the encounter. I did beat it eventually, and I never looked back. The gimme 3-pack of tokens is still on a retainer.
Yeah.. that was a real thing too.
I can't say I was frustrated enough to think about quitting, but I did have an adventure trying to get that clear the first time. Lots of wipes, lots of frustrating nights dealing with frustrating people. That's the negative side of it. Often times, not just in those fights but in Second Coil and stuff as well, I would feel like 'these people can't do this shit, who can?'. Like Turn 7 pre-nerf, holy crap the stuff I put up with.
But at the same time, I look back on those Titan HM days and those Turn 7 days and I also remember how it made my old FC so healthy because we were always trying to help people with those clears and all of my funny/great experiences in PF and all of the pop culture that resulted from it (the rage gifs and the fan art and the web comics about Titan and Enrage strat) and in the end, I had bad memories and good memories. I had an experience, and MMO's to me are about having experiences.
I personally prefer that. When things feel hazardous, I feel great for making past it. I want to support your friends that haven't yet. I realize that's more of an old school MMO mentality, and I admit that I am more of an 'old school' guy on that. I also know that PF can sometimes let people down but I'm not gonna touch the whole "NA Partyfinder hurdur" subject with a ten foot pole because I really think that communication has more of an effect on that than location.
The first relic questline felt like a journey. Sure, it was just a lists of steps to do, but in my mind I was the Hero that was on a quest, and that each step in that quest got harder and harder until I hit the midpoint bottleneck. Got past it, slid down that hill and grabbed my relic.
And sure, I didn't touch Titan for a while after that lol but I didn't touch Ravana either after doing it ten times within three days so.. truly, the Titan content lasted longer with me.
(12-04-2015, 11:42 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: So what is there to do now? Diadem, for one: It can drop 210s and it isn't overly difficult, even if it is a bit grindy. Doing Void Ark once a week gives you a guaranteed 210 piece of Esoterics gear. Grinding your Esoterics every week is fairly standard; Queue, do dungeon, receive progress. It all adds up to a fairly straight-forward progression.
Ever since ST it's been pretty straight-forward. I actually appreciate the fact that it's straightforward and not convoluted. I think a lot of people are glancing over the fact that the feeling of progress in XIV is simple, clean, and solid. I always feel like I'm one step closer to my goal when I log out. But when is the point where things become *too* routine?
![[Image: raw]](https://media.riffsy.com/images/669c33d18228728107ec22c79c4f4742/raw)
How long can a dedicated subber do the roulette routine before they begin to desire something different? Was the Diadem supposed to cater to that? Is there no hope for the Diadem to provide the true break in the routine after people just figured out it was dino island farming/mob farming?
More significantly, will FFXIV ever move away from its current progression system of new tomes/raid/progressive patch, new 24-man/dungeons/catch-up patch? Will we ever see a different endgame than what we see now?
I think people... wanted something familiar but different for Heavensward endgame. They still wanted to feel the same emotions and experience from 2.0's endgame, but delivered in a fresh and exciting way. They wanted something more obvious to tell them that the game is evolving. They wanted an endgame to match how fresh and cool it was to have huge zones and flying and new jobs and a new DX11 client with new graphics and stuff that was still based around the same core engine.
In other words, they didn't want a different cake, but they wanted a new type of icing on their chocolate cake and ended up being fed the same icing and the same cake. They wanted to be like Squidward in that gif who ended up racing back to the unpredictable (Spongebob).
I really do think that the Diadem had huge potential to completely re-vamp endgame. "It could be the new Dynamis!" I thought pre-3.1. They still can make it something super special but.. it needs work. It really needs work. It's too.. shallow, and it should not be a situation where people just find out the best way to get 210 gear and do that. Maybe vertical progression is to the blame or maybe the community is to blame. But.. I just have this huge feeling that the devs wanted to try out more exploration, more adventure, more random but... didn't know how to go about it. Just like PVP. It's like an owner of a restaurant not knowing what should be on his menu.
(12-04-2015, 11:42 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: It comes down to the classic argument of progression: If you aren't raiding, why do you need raid-tier gear? Why do you need 210s if you aren't pushing Alex Savage? If you aren't doing Coil, why do you need i90?
It's a need to want.
This is a very peculiar thing to me because it actually fascinates me in a way. I actively try to push myself to get 210. I actively try to get myself on par with raid-tier gear. I -needed- that i90 weapon at launch regardless of whether or not I was gonna do Coil. Whether or not I was gonna raid. I don't raid anymore, yet I really want, I -need- that raid-tier gear.
Not just that, but I really push the limits of my job. I try to edge out 3k crits on DRK with a vitality build on a practice dummy. I'm constantly trying to better my Wildfire burst as MCH. I get a chuckle from a buddy: "Why do you care? You don't raid anymore."
Why? ... I honestly don't know. I guess it's just very irrational. I want this stuff because I know people who raid and I like to feel like I'm on par with them because I'm an ex-raider. I want this stuff so that I can try my best, so that I can create a goal (Hit a 8k Wildfire in a dungeon) and then smash past that goal. I want this stuff so I can get content done faster, be more useful to others, and maybe even be a replacement for a static one night if they need help. That's another thing, I feel like I can help more.
If I dig really deep down inside, then I come up with yet another answer. I want the i 90's and the 210's because the real reason why I quit raiding is because I hated putting up with the stress of managing other people and having it suck time out of my life. I had a schedule, so I felt like I was doing this not out of my free will. I had to manage people, have a schedule.. wait a sec, that feels like work! It began to feel like work to me when the managing and the schedule and the drama became more of a hassle for me than the content.
I was part of three statics, the last one I created myself. I left the latter two due to this.
I created a static back in January because I was so freaking tired of not being able to be taught Turn 9 and not being able to put myself in a position to beat it (because no static would accept someone who didn't have experience, and Second Coil was supposed to be less hardcore because Final Coil was out, but I had to gate through T9) that I made my own, got taught by being a replacement for another one of my FC's statics for a night or two on a dps job (DRG) when I wasn't gonna be dps (PLD) and I just sucked it up, learned it the best I could, recruited my own people and we blasted through T13 the day after I got home from my graduation trip in May.
But the baggage that comes with a static killed me.
The schedule killed me. Having to be the sole leader killed me. Having to manage people killed me. Everything outside of being in the fight itself killed me. Going to bed at 1-2am or later even because of after-raid meetings and getting up at 7am every day killed me. I became a stressed out, RP-starved madman and I had to leave.
I realized that it's not 2013 anymore. I'm not a fledgling college student with too much free time anymore. I couldn't do it. I bailed. I'm not that hardcore to lead a static and I will never be.
I left the static I created in July, cut that stress out of my life and my blood pressure loves me now. I feel free. I feel like I can relax. I feel like I can roleplay more than I ever have. I feel like I can do what I wanna do. That's casual mentality. I don't want anything to feel like a job.
But I still have that passion for being the best, for bettering myself and doing some hard ass content that can kick my butt because at the end of the day I still love this game and doing that stuff.
That's why I classify myself as midcore now. I have that urge to be carefree and take a breathe and not take things too seriously, but I also have that edge (kill me for using that word) to 'git gud' and blast through some content hard enough to satisfy that passion yet not where I need to call up seven people four nights a week every week to do like I'm doing it to keep the lights on.
I know that's a terribly long answer, but this is the first time I truly wrote out my feelings about that question and why I feel like I need those things.
![[Image: 8wQ4Jkf.png?2]](http://i.imgur.com/8wQ4Jkf.png?2)
![[Image: orVQTe3.png?1]](http://i.imgur.com/orVQTe3.png?1)
