The Official Forum fail thread: This game wasn't meant for alts.

[Ratatapa]

And you dont get 30 min penalty if you leave when you join an I progress pt

[Vinroke]

who the fuck queues for in-prog EX's in the 1st place? That's just asking to be trolled.

[Cutriss]

This isn't from the OF but the conversation got so dumb that I thought it belonged here. It originally spawned from a discussion about Titan being cancelled.

AAA MMOs aren't as viable as they used to be, especially in the West. XIV is doing "ok" thanks to have no competition in Japan, being on console and having the FF brand. It's far from doing amazingly however. No new servers have been created so population is at best stagnating. They still only have 8 servers in Europe while being localized in German and French and available on consoles. WoW had more than that JUST for France back then, and servers were all full.

Pfft.

Not to hijack this thread but you're using "success in Europe" as a metric for a game at large. By your estimates, EVE is the best thing since the metabolism of carbohydrates.

At this point it went to PMs.

Replying in here to avoid going OT too much.

EU/NA Markets aren't that different, however it's way easier to measure success when looking at smaller samples for the general audience (when publishers refuse to disclose proper metrics).

On a sidenote I worked at SQEX in the past (precisely on XI and XIV (pre-ARR)) and I'm still in the industry as of today so I have a good understanding of metrics believe me. I still have former colleagues/contacts in just about every major publishers in the world, including SE. And I can tell you that when someone in customer support is idling 5 hours out of a 7.5 hours shift, your game doesn't have as many players as you pretend to.

As a consumer, all you can do is eat the numbers PR are carefully cherry picking to serve you when proper metrics aren't available to the general audience (like CCP giving CCU to everyone). These endless debates on MMOs forums where players are trying to "guess" the amount of subscribers/revenues generated by a project are always amazing due to how everyone is disconnected from the reality and completely off.

Hell even for employees, unless you are in a publishing department + at non-entry level job, you will NOT get any insight on how the product you are working for is doing. (Obviously Managers+ of others dept. have a certain level of insight, but that's it.)

The "proper metrics" should be out any day now. I will agree that it's a bit disturbing/suspicious that they said "we'll post them during TGS" and now TGS has come and gone but they're still missing.

A couple of things you're probably already aware of - SE's customer support is likely idling because many of the customers already know they're absolutely pointless. The CS staff are so shackled by process and bureaucracy that they're an infuriating waste of time more than anything.

Further, growth/decline in one market isn't necessarily a predictor in other markets. Especially considering that the EU servers for XIV are in name-only, but still located in Montreal. Basically the only reason an EU player would go to an EU server is strictly to play when more of their compatriots are online. A four hour difference is a lot easier to tolerate than a 10-12 hour difference that the Asians and Oceania residents would have to deal with (let alone the latency issues). I'm not on an EU server but I know that a large amount of our population is still EU. If people already had established communities, then there wasn't really much of a need to leave their current homes to go to a "dedicated" EU server.

So, while in principle I'd agree with you, I think in this case it doesn't mean as much as you might speculate.

SQEX has actually one of the best CS of the online industry (mind Blizzard). Saying that they're useless is a typical reaction from a consumer point of view which can only judge something like CS based on few personal experiences and what he reads on forums. Cannot really blame them for that though.

One dedicated team of 24/7 in-house, full time and fully trained GMs per region. All of that with competent supervisors, leads and managers. Most of tickets are handled in-house at SQEX unlike almost everywhere else where tickets are often outsourced.

Billing support used to be in-house as well and of quality. It changed a bit in the past years when billing support has been outsourced. Still. Average response time are way above average, the satisfaction rate was amazingly high during the years I was there.

The only thing CS was lacking was maybe efficient tools but that was largely compensated by the manpower. Neither EA/Bioware, Trion, NCSOFT, or SEGA is using as much resources as SQEX does and their tools are not always better either.

As for servers, EU Customers play in vast majority on the EU DC. There isn't a 4 hours difference between EU and NA also, unless you live on a different world than mine. There is a 5 hours difference with the UK (and Portugal which is non significant). That's ~20% of the market FYI. 6 hours difference with the biggest chunk of Europe and that is a lot. Have you ever checked EU hourly PCU data (for any game, doesn't matter)? If yes you'd have an idea on how EU players behave.

Finally, if you believe that metrics given out by the same entity that is trying to sell you a game are "valid", you're way too naive. Unless metrics are stated in an official quaterly/FY report which was audited by an external and independant company, they have absolutely no value. For online titles, showing that your game is healthy is more important than having a healthy game itself. As long as people believe that a game works well and is active, it will sell. Off course, you cannot lie/manipulate data too much (i.e. not like we could say "XIV 1.0 is thriving and doing super well!" when the game was dead ), still.

There is a reason why almost no one is communicating their EXACT amount of fully paid subscribers (that mean excluding free trials, free 30 days, lapsed accounts etc.) There is a reason why we removed the line stating how many players were online when using "/sea all" during the XIV 1.0 era. Community was starting to compile and archive global PCU and DAU and execs were afraid of the bad PR this would bring.

I'm curious about what metric, aside from "bottom line" or "shortest call times", could possibly have SE's staff rated as "best".

But not curious enough to consider such a fucking stupid conversation.

[Alistaire]

And you dont get 30 min penalty if you leave when you join an I progress pt

Was not aware of this; thank you thank you thank you.

Edit: although tbh now with 2 alts it takes a special day of derp parties to be concerned about this now. When I only had 1 alt there was only once I had to ditch twice within half an hour.

[Korialstrasz]

Leaving a duty finder group should be a bannable offense!

[Modoru]

How dare you not want to stick around after waiting for two hours for a group that couldn't even beat the first phase? You should be banned.

[Lokus]

I legit facepalmed irl:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-on-their-gear

Some lovely snippets:
In regards to being told that nothing in coil be stunned

Then you thought wrong, on trash even auto attacks are stunable from what I've seen.

apparently trash is worth giving a fuck about.

And my personal favorite:

Um.. lol. You wouldn't know this but getting relic in 1.0 shows that I cleared all of the hardest content the game had to offer before it went super casual. Getting all content leveled in 1.0 shows that I was min/maxing years before that other person started playing, and as such I am the final authority.

Seravi leading the good fight but you can't fix stupid.

[Seravi Edalborez]

I'm an idiot for having posted in that thread for as long as I did. I hit post limit.

[solracht]

I think I remember that poster being an idiot from the original OF but I'm too lazy to dig through old posts

Might be reading too much into quote this but I laughed:

and take comfort in the fact that SS reduces the cool down of other skills besides 123.

Also the guy being retarded about the t8 mapping achievement was glorious, especially with his "oh well I'm still better" rebuttal, lol

[Arthars]

wow this mijin guy

i give him 11/10 for being so defensive. hes like a irl hallowed ground

if anything, i want +44 mijin on my shield

EVEN WHEN HES WRONG, HES RIGHT

[Hiroishime]

I remember him from 1.0 thread, he was just as stupid.

[Cutriss]

I'm 99% sure I've seen his name on a poster here.

Also: I had to do a double-take here on reading the words "CHR on PLD". Took me back like ten years...

[Ratatapa]

I don't agree Jin mori, I still think nael hard mode in 1.0 is harder then most of arr content

[Elcura]

I don't agree Jin mori, I still think nael hard mode in 1.0 is harder then most of arr content

You're kidding right? Because...no. If anything, battles were difficult because the game played like a piece of shit. Hardest thing about 1.0 was not dying while using WS.

[Ratatapa]

No game was harder because fight were more randomize then this one

Garuda was a good Exemple after aerial blast she had 3 moves she could've done, you never knew what she would do until she teleport and had to watch were she would appear.


Now you just need to learn the rotation and you can almost not loose


There was a mission i can't remember the name. Standing something iirc which was genually hard compares to any story mission we have.

[Elcura]

That doesn't make the game harder, it was still piss easy because you could outrange most of the danger (hey, remember stacking 90% ranged for most of 1.0? I do!) The hardest part of Garuda was trying to play a melee job and keeping up with DPS. If there was anything to dodge you could do so mostly just by not being in the bosses face. Whereas now you generally have to pay attention to the boss throughout the fight and not just your own rotation.

And the only hard part of Garuda 1.0 was phase 2 with Mistral Shriek, and that was because you moved like a slug and the games responsiveness was ass. The hardest fights of 1.0 (Darnus hard and Ifrit Extreme) were all an exercise in whether you could figure out how to WS without dying. They were fun, but once you learned the fight (and you didn't learn a fight by memorizing a pattern, you learned how to deal with each attack separately and reacted accordingly when it was used...kinda like now!) you dealt with it just as easily as anything else.

Also, if 2.0 were as easy as you say, why do so many people complain about not being able to complete fights? Even with a set pattern that you can memorize people STILL suck at this game generally. If this game played out like 1.0 with 2.0's control scheme there wouldn't even be a challenge.

1.0 was difficult because it controlled like shit and had the responsiveness of a coma patient.

[Ratatapa]

That doesn't make the game harder, it was still piss easy because you could outrange most of the danger (hey, remember stacking 90% ranged for most of 1.0? I do!) The hardest part of Garuda was trying to play a melee job and keeping up with DPS. If there was anything to dodge you could do so mostly just by not being in the bosses face. Whereas now you generally have to pay attention to the boss throughout the fight and not just your own rotation.

And the only hard part of Garuda 1.0 was phase 2 with Mistral Shriek, and that was because you moved like a slug and the games responsiveness was ass. The hardest fights of 1.0 (Darnus hard and Ifrit Extreme) were all an exercise in whether you could figure out how to WS without dying. They were fun, but once you learned the fight (and you didn't learn a fight by memorizing a pattern, you learned how to deal with each attack separately and reacted accordingly when it was used...kinda like now!) you dealt with it just as easily as anything else.

Also, if 2.0 were as easy as you say, why do so many people complain about not being able to complete fights? Even with a set pattern that you can memorize people STILL suck at this game generally. If this game played out like 1.0 with 2.0's control scheme there wouldn't even be a challenge.

1.0 was difficult because it controlled like shit and had the responsiveness of a coma patient.

People sucking =! Make game hard

[Elcura]

People sucking =! Make game hard

Random =! Make game hard

Also, did you even read what I wrote, because if that's all you took from it... ahh hell I know the answer already.

[Ratatapa]

Biggest reason why people are bad at this game, is well the OF.

People who think they are right and refuse to listen to tips that helps them become better.


A hard game would be a game that even with everyone 90%-100% on point and good gear! that they would still have problem clearing ( and the reason of the lost wouldn't be due to people seeping or refusing to follow strategy)

[Elcura]

Biggest reason why people are bad at this game, is well the OF.

What does having an official forum have to do with people being terrible in-game?

People who think they are right and refuse to listen to tips that helps them become better.

A hard game would be a game that even with everyone 90%-100% on point and good gear! that they would still have problem clearing ( and the reason of the lost wouldn't be due to people seeping or refusing to follow strategy)

I agree, but I don't think that's the point exactly.