Comments from the Devs

[Celeras]

500k-ish. If you're talking online at once I have no idea, but Ragnarok was usually 3000-4800 during the heyday iirc.

[Patriarch]

500k-ish. If you're talking online at once I have no idea, but Ragnarok was usually 3000-4800 during the heyday iirc.

I was thinking something in that range. Which, in comparison to WoW, may seem like a miniscule number. But SE was obviously keeping a vast amount of players at least semi-entertained. Why they discared their strong points and went with this mess still confuses me. I honestly hope that this "3rd" MMO ends up being XIV PS3, because I really don't need another SE MMO to be dissapointed with. At least fix this one first.

[Kaylia]

FFXI numbers were diving over the last few years, they probably wanted to secure a steady income by bringing back a few players for another 4-5 years.


Sadly, they don't understand their playerbase and made this mess that no one want to play.

[Lordender]

I think if anything FFXI's popularity has gone up over the past year or two especially with people returning to it, just look at the returning to FFXI thread lol.

I mean yeah, they've done world merges and shit but theres quite of bit of people returning to it especially with the fail of 14.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Maybe their plan was to entice players with a new FF MMO (XIV), have it fail hardcore, people would be all "I miss XI!", BAM XI updates and it's more solo friendly, new people playing XIV sub to XI, and now SE is making money off the people who hate XIV but want to play a FF MMO! I know a lot of people resubbed to XI this month cuz they're so bored.

SE... secretly brilliant! With a master plan all along!

[Hyan]

Well, this'll end up benefiting them in the long run either way. I figure every dev team is going through a major shift in way their games are developed, but only in the case of XI and XIV it is most apparent so far as they're more transparent compared to the rest.

[Dooom]

I think if anything FFXI's popularity has gone up over the past year or two especially with people returning to it, just look at the returning to FFXI thread lol.

I mean yeah, they've done world merges and shit but theres quite of bit of people returning to it especially with the fail of 14.

A lot of people are returning, but at the same time a lot of people are quitting; my LS on XI has had maybe 10 people come back to the game over the past few months, but at least that many have stopped logging on because they've cleared the content/don't like it/whatever.

[Tomino]

An FF MMO (either 11 or 14) will still gather users because it's a multiplayer world based on a very popular franchise with certain unique perks such as visuals / classes / plot style.
It has been said many times before but the only title close to bring players a "FF feeling" might be GW2 and its mix of west and east. TERA, Rift, Aion, WoW, etc are a whole different thing and so, at least, they will always have less hold on FF fans, and by that I mean fans of certain looks and worlds. Not to mention trademark content like Chocobos or summons.

My comment about content wasn't meant to celebrate casuals, just to point out that the *only* decent event that you can design which cannot be cleared at day1 is any kind of progression tiered system with a certain weekly lockout or limited trials. Nyuzl, Assault, Dynamis, Limbus almost every major event in FF11 was designed that way.
They sure have something like that in store, but I doubt it'd be what the game needs right now.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Just seems stupid to me how obnoxious XI is getting with that proc shit concept. It's like they found something different to use for abyssea and now it's gonna be in every event? Redid dynamis to include that shit too? Fucking dumb making the game the same all over.

[Gokulo]

Well, it works a little differently in Dynamis, isn't so limiting like Abyssea, but yeah, they're copy&pastying ideas quite readily...

[Hyan]

That's the key to success!

[Dooom]

Just seems stupid to me how obnoxious XI is getting with that proc shit concept. It's like they found something different to use for abyssea and now it's gonna be in every event? Redid dynamis to include that shit too? Fucking dumb making the game the same all over.

Absolutely, I hate the effect it's had on NM fights too where it's no longer about killing the mob, but holding it long enough for all applicable triggers to be done.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

An FF MMO (either 11 or 14) will still gather users because it's a multiplayer world based on a very popular franchise with certain unique perks such as visuals / classes / plot style.
It has been said many times before but the only title close to bring players a "FF feeling" might be GW2 and its mix of west and east. TERA, Rift, Aion, WoW, etc are a whole different thing and so, at least, they will always have less hold on FF fans, and by that I mean fans of certain looks and worlds. Not to mention trademark content like Chocobos or summons.

My comment about content wasn't meant to celebrate casuals, just to point out that the *only* decent event that you can design which cannot be cleared at day1 is any kind of progression tiered system with a certain weekly lockout or limited trials. Nyuzl, Assault, Dynamis, Limbus almost every major event in FF11 was designed that way.
They sure have something like that in store, but I doubt it'd be what the game needs right now.

If (not really a big if) XIV still sucks this fall I'll be jumping ship to GW2 for sure. My concern is with the content being released. Like you said, unless there's a lockout timer of a few days people are going clear this shit fast. After everyone clears it we'll be back to people not playing again. The more and more we wait the more and more I think that, unless they have an expansion planned for ps3 release(pretty low chance of that) with some decent content, this game is going to fail.

RoZ XI was fun because you had a bunch of NMs that you could solo(lizzy, emp, kote, etc), some HNMs to party up and kill(serket, sim, bune, etc), Dynamis, and Sky with xping jobs between all that. There were lockouts for dynamis, farming of pop items for sky, long respawns for HNM, and multiple hour respawns for NMs(not saying I want that exact system). This 8 man party stuff max seems pretty beat as well. Going out on a limb here with this example but with Warhammer online instances, the most annoying thing were the 6 man groups for everything. It was just too small and too many people got left out. I really hope they add in 'allliances' so that small groups can still farm certain events(dynamis from XI comes to mind) but big groups are the way to go.

[Patriarch]

Zilart and CoP were their best Expansions imo.

They brought about more jobs, to exp with, thus time consuming keeping players online. Areas, NMs, and said HNMS. Quests, that in some sense, were actually fun and relatively challenging at the time. And CoP brought about copious amounts of stuff to spend time on. The key with both of them was an asston of content.

Maybe, and a huge maybe here, they might be stockpiling content and possibly releasing some of relatively soon.

There are plenty of other games to play for the time being, but if, and when XIV finally starts to shine I will most definitely be back to test the water.

[Lordender]

If (not really a big if) XIV still sucks this fall I'll be jumping ship to GW2 for sure. My concern is with the content being released. Like you said, unless there's a lockout timer of a few days people are going clear this shit fast. After everyone clears it we'll be back to people not playing again. The more and more we wait the more and more I think that, unless they have an expansion planned for ps3 release(pretty low chance of that) with some decent content, this game is going to fail.

I think its safe to say it will still suck by the time fall comes. How much battle reform can we expect in 1.18, 10-20%? I would assume from how it was worded its going to take a few patches to get it all out to live servers. I wonder just how much content they'll be able to push out while in the middle of massive reforming of mechanic's.

With lack of info I wouldn't want to speculate too much, I just can't see them pumping out anything but very basic stuff until that battle reform is complete and working properly.

[Hyan]

2 dungeons, a primal battle and some form of basic campaign/besieged style content, possibly in the beastmen regions.

But that's just a blind guess, of course.

What makes things so mysterious, at least for me, are the things not in that list of theirs but which are quite obviously being worked on. I don't know what decides whether a feature makes it into the list or not.. perhaps it is based on their need for feedback regarding the subject.

What we know is that they aren't going to start implementing server-based features before their server improvements are done, but on the other hand I figure that would be a crucial part of making the combat system work as well. One can't forget that the engine is supposedly getting tweaked as well.

Either way there are things going on in the background and I'm not sure what to expect, and when. I hope Summer will clear things up a bit.

[Corrderio]

Ac-XI had min/maxing gear swaps for every thing you did, so they gave you a debuff for switching gear in combat.
-XI had fights that required a lot of people switching in and out of parties and the ability to 'hold' for backup with low numbers, so they made it so you can't invite/disband while in combat.

You make it sound like those are bad things

[Grey Jorildyn]

You make it sound like those are bad things

Gear swapping mid-combat is a pretty dumb concept imo. Their system are implemented to simply extend the utility of certain pieces of gear and keep you busy forever with little-to-no forward movement in gear (and that was the way it was for years--people going after the same crap for X situation).

People should not have to switch parties and the alliance should not have to swap around all the time. This mentality is bred out of open world content and lack of instanced raiding where you go in with the same group and exit with the same group or less of that group. If you lose your place in a party because of a disconnect, you place should be held in a ghost spot like many other mmos, so when you reconnect, you're back in the party automatically. Holding parties are complete BS and the only way they've tried to appeal to us in stopping that is to make rage timers 30mins. IMO rage timers should be 15 mins, but SE panders noobs a lot.

[Corrderio]

They do need to fix getting back in a PT after a DC no doubt, but other than that I don't see much else wrong with it.

[Hyan]

Gear swapping mid-combat is a pretty dumb concept imo. Their system are implemented to simply extend the utility of certain pieces of gear and keep you busy forever with little-to-no forward movement in gear (and that was the way it was for years--people going after the same crap for X situation).

So, why is it a dumb concept? The aesthetic flaws are easily solved, they can give us a bag of 1000 slots if they want to and it's not hard to balance it better than it was in XI, where some jobs were stuck with ebody while others like DRG had more upgrades during the years (the way they should do it here for all jobs).

It's why I don't like RotZ that much. It set the bar too high right off the start for many jobs when something less would have been fine just as well. Purple belt should have been the current black belt, with upgrades every expansion.

They gotta figure out something else here, tho. We'll probably need to say good bye to variety of events stacking along the years, and say hello to assemblyline content that can be designed, balanced & tested fast and efficiently.