(01-02-2016, 04:19 PM)Erik Mynhier Wrote: (snip)
The only thing I think that can get things in this game rolling again is if one of the new MMOs coming this year hits it big. Such competition would cause SE to funnel new resources to FFXIV.
As long as they are the sweetest smelling turd on the shit pile, they will not listen and will not change.
That's precisely how I see it. FFXIV is the only computer game I'm playing at all right now, and for that reason - for whatever its flaws (and yes, I talk about those enough) I consider it the best option for the genre right now, after having burned through so many MMOs in the last ten years.
I fully concur with the competition thing. I take SWTOR as a comparison - they started hinting at and promising housing and guild ships within a few months after release, and 2 years after release... nothing. Then, right as Wildstar goes live and GW2 is draining their player base, gosh, they suddenly had the resources offer BOTH housing AND Guild Ships, timed PERFECTLY to fight the player drain, in a game that was apparently putting 90% of its dev time into PVP-only starfighter combat and cash market items. Perhaps it was coincidence, but the timing was just too convenient to dismiss completely as such.
The market loks to be in quite a lull for MMO development; the latest generation of greatly hyped ones (ArcheAge, Wildstar, Defiance, etc.) tanked fast and hard, which was a double-whammy on the industry after seeing how SWTOR's $5 Mil in development didn't seem to give it what it needed for the long haul. The ones that people had been watching have turned nearly into vaporware (Star Citizen JUST NOW putting out an actual sort-of Alpha, and Everquest Next going radio silent). Though we still have a few curious and upcoming releases (Blade & Soul, Black Desert, etc), these seem comparatively conservative in gameplay features. The market's not in a risk taking mood, and those projects which are trying for innovation are wracked with funding, personnel and technical issues. What that means is that ain't much o' nobody wants to risk money on MMOs, especially when the market seems willing to dump major money into mobile games and the Candy Crush wannabes.
For FFX14 itself, my personal curiosity is the effect that the FF7 remake and FF15 will have on its maintenance. If the new titles take off (and hype looks really promising for SE in these), maybe some of the money will be diverted to maintaining 14 as at least a cross-promotional tool (motorcycle mount, Cindy outfits, trying to help the FF15 Boy Band get out of Eorzea, etc) worth maintaining. Finally, there is and remains the issue of the target market - who's SE going to want to please in 2016?
And so, we play, hope, and wait... at least, until something better comes along to take us away. There just isn't a LOT of "better" on the immediate horizon.
"But in the laugh there was another voice. A clearer laugh, an ironic laugh. A laugh which laughs because it chooses not to weep."
![[Image: 3610850.jpg]](http://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/1266293/pics/original/3610850.jpg)
