lol
Is that your new thing now?
The obvious thing to do when your company isn't on top of its game is to create another experimental title using the XIII brand that is sure to divide the remaining players who would like to see the story come to an end.
I get the need to make the most of crystal tools but I feel like there were probably better ways to do it, and the fact that SE had nothing but concept art to show at its announcement (and for seekers of adoulin too for that matter) probably says a lot for the state they're in right now.
All this has me hoping is that SE is looking to 2013 and the next generation more than anything else, perhaps they're lining XV to be a launch title on next gen using luminous?! Yeahno.
Blame Kiarax
Even if FFXIV 2.0 would be good, I still dont/wont jump abroad from FFXI. I love FFXI because of the people I play with, thats what makes it fun and some battles/things are also fun. But after 10 years of FFXI I have huge trust issues in SE considering how they treat their customers and I think FFXIV would go the same shit road FFXI went... They started fixing shit in FFXI after FFXIV failed, because they had NO OTHER option left (KINGs fixed, other fixes etc), because frankly loosing FFXIV and then looseing most of FFXI playerbase would have been shit for them. And then Tanaka came back and everything went shitarded in FFXI again with RNG.
I seriously dont see why i should invest time in the FFXIV 2.0 when it will go shit at some point and they wont listen to their customers. I will wait and see how the new director of FFXI does with Adoulin and If he really truly stands to his words of less RNG and more point based shit etc. Tough its looking promising.
SE doesn't need to have WoW numbers for 14 to be successful and any game developer looking to get 10M subs to beat WoW is retarded.
WoW succeeds because it is a game people can play 2-3 times a week and accomplish all of their weekly raid timers. You can log in and do dailies real quick other days if you want, but it's not necessary.
14 can easily take all of the tools WoW/GW2 have perfected and make the game more in depth and require a bit more time to succeed at and it will fill that need for a niche/more hardcore MMO with all the western bells and whistles. For the content 1.0 had on the engine it had, I was satisfied paying them money to play it. From what I've seen so far with Alpha, I'm not concerned the game will be good. All that remains is finding their niche in the market. They sold a ton of copies of the game at launch and will sell more when 2.0/PS3 launches. If everyone loves it, people will try it out. If it's a good game, they'll stick around as long as it remains that way.
Edit: I too am wary that as soon as it is successful they'll pull the plug and treat it like XI. Hell, I was even reading GW2 did this with some of their RNG drop rates for recent content. I hope they don't, and the way the loot system appears it is at least wholly established in the year 2012.
at this point i dont see XIV as competing with XI anymore. Its a MMO built for a different generation with a vastly different feel and gameplay elements and now buffered by a decade. Given that times have changed, the old-school notion that playing MMOs has to be a mutually exclusive thing no longer holds water.
Lots of people play more than 1 MMO these days.. or even if they don't, are subscribed to them (if they use the subscription model) so that really shouldn't be seen as an issue.
I would say, even as someone who put up with the nonsense they gave us in XI, 1.0 was beyond that limit. It just sucked, and you didn't have any bittersweet memories, nostalgia or sunken time/money to cling on to for that. And as bad as the service to players in XI seemed, there was still a basic understanding between the players and the devs that certain things would still be done.
There were definitely low points in XI's history both in terms of development and connecting with players.. but we've actually gone past most of that. XI's infrastructure, player support and whatnot will still be considered subpar to any next-generation MMO or the market leader (WoW), but it's still improved by leaps and bounds since 10 years ago.
but the real issue is XIV. My expectations were pretty low of 1.0, and they still weren't met. They were considerably raised by Yoshi-P's changes (and charisma) as a producer/director and I'd been looking forward to it for months. And I'm very pleased because all my expectations have been both met and exceeded. Like, the alpha isn't just decent and playable, its actually fun - by todays standard, not XI's, or anything from 10 years ago. And that impresses me.
so for me, I can't wait for XIV to launch and play that. it might go to shit, but before that happens I know I'm going to enjoy it. Same goes for Adoulin really. XI hasn't been getting much in the past few months but the notion of an expansion with at least 9 new zones afaik excites me because they've gotten the infrastructure right. And that isn't even what i usually look out for in the game. i'm a story/cutscene whore.
the one thing i do know is that the "game" has changed. Square Enix is not who they used to be anymore. Neither are the XI or XIV teams.. so i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Quite frankly, XI may seem to be going in a better direction, but as of now (and as of the last 1.5 years consecutively) it hasn't been worth paying for. If you've been having fun, you've been having fun with friends, not because of anything SE has released.
oh definitely. the last year after abyssea has been pretty meh.. but like i said. there are peaks and lulls. abyssea was a peak, the add-ons before that were (imo) the biggest lull thus far.
even so, we are getting some new events, new mobs, gear and weapons.. so its something to fall back on. the reason why this past year or so is better imo than 2009 is because unless you've actually be on the ball with everything the 2 years before this, you actually have things to do, most of them are relatively new, and all of them have pretty good reward rates.
i haven't had time to play XI the past few months, but i do pop in during updates and stuff like that.. and one thing thats very obvious is they've made huge QoL/hygiene-factor adjustments to the game in the past year or so, like the most recent waypoints. some are things people have been asking for, whilst others were just pleasant surprises
When it comes to subscriptions most either stick to one mmo or are like me (mmo hopper), I know few who actually pay for two games at once. There's a video that has been floating around for awhile (pretty sure it was posted in this thread, but I'm too lazy to check) about why mmos fail and while people may complain about Wow or FFXI or EQ but still keep going back. It's simply because all their friends play WoW/FFXI/etc, and even though games try to be unique they aren't unique enough (in a good way) to keep someone playing it for a long extended period of time. They end up just going back to their friends. And, let's face it, Blizz is fucking smart. Everytime an mmo comes out, they play it, and see what is unique about it, and if they can fit it into WoW they make it too. Why play WAR for castle sieges when WoW now has it too and my friends are playing!?
Also, the "I am stick to ffxi, fuck them for making ffxiv" reminds me of the EQ vs. EQ2 players. Both found their niche, I think with these changes ffxiv will, too.
seriously have no problem that SE is working on FFXIV and releasing it good for them. The really only reason I will stick with FFXI is because I have been playing it for a long time and I dont want to put up again with SEs bullshit on a new MMO. I was really gonna give FFXIV another chance after abyssea was so great and i thought we got rid of the RNG, but we went after it straight back to RNG hell with voidwatch (and nyzul to some degree). The thing is SE reacted every time TOO SLOW to their playerbase demands. how long have kings been bottlenecked by a 24 hour pops? god seriously that shit should have been patched out the second CoP was released or ToAU hit the shelves, but we had to wait for abyssea (freaking 8 years!) to come for it, that they make kings popable via items. I mean its nice they are cleaning up FFXI with all the waypoints/VW warps/other warps/reduced ??? repop timers/augments etc etc. but all of it is way too late if you think about it logical. Not that I dont welcome this changes, but god... Do you need to fail hardcore as a Company first on ANOTHER game to polish the horse that is pulling you through all the dirt with the money it generates?
and I dont even buy anymore regular SE games, granted I got FFXIII and teathrythm, everything else went passed my ass, because I just dont want to give them my money. I didnt even get FFXIII-2 because I dont care anymore.
Yeah, you really have to understand that the team making this game has had all of that shit beat out of them and after that they were told to work, and that they would be working for a long time. They already have expansion planned for 1.5 years after release with content to be expanded in 2.0 before that.