A Realm Reborn: A Look AheadFollow

I don't think that it's impossible for an MMORPG to survive--I think that if your game is inevitably going to go free to play, then it's a really poor investment to spend so much on the infrastructure required for a subscription service only to switch models later. I also think it's much harder nowadays to get players hooked when there's so much competing for their attention. The threshold for getting players invested in your game in the 2005 era was much lower than what is required today. Even $1 smartphone games and facebook browser games are competing against MMORPGs for screentime.

I don't know that I'd agree that FFXIV is on the same page as both demographics either--plenty of hardcore players will be disappointed by the news that they're doing away with open world competition for NMs. And people said the same thing about SWTOR, about GW2--hyping up fans into believing that THIS will be the game is nothing new to an upcoming launch.

The news I find most alarming is that which is most central to the gameplay--in many cases it's not the news, but the lack thereof. What I've seen of combat, crafting and gathering totally underwhelms. These are the things that players will spend most of their time doing! If they are merely above average, then most subscribers just will not stay. Most players don't care about FFXIV the way the people here do--you get a strong confirmation bias in a community like this, people who are so excited that they're already imagining how great it will be to play the game for years to come. And most of their beta testers are going to bring them that same bias, because that's their primary pool of testers.

I can't fully grasp the incentive structure of the game until there is much more information, and that's the thing that always tickles me about the hype of a new game. Players hear about all the features and strengths of the game and get really excited, overlooking the fact that there will be no information regarding one of the most important elements of the game. When you go to set goals for yourself as a player, the incentive structure determines what actions you will take in order to achieve those goals. If it's bad, then the game will have you doing content over and over until it bores you, or it won't give you any incentive to do the really fun stuff, or no incentive to repeat the fun content, or it will bottleneck good content--there are many ways in which all of these good features you hear about can be implemented terribly, and you just don't know yet.

Now, you're welcome to give the game the benefit of the doubt. You're welcome to be optimistic without reservation. But if you were asked to make a prediction, and you predicted that these things will all be great, then you're taking some long odds, because most games do not do them well AT ALL... don't even know they're doing wrong. So remind me never to give you any gambling money.



To an extent, you're right. I won't be convinced that the game will be a success until I know more about the gameplay and the incentive structures. I won't be convinced that I should get my hopes up until I know that the most important elements of the game were well-designed. And why should I be? There's nothing wrong with being skeptical. Blind faith is what gets you into trouble.

But if you're implying that I'm not convinced that the game is even worth trying, then you're dead wrong. I plan to try the game regardless of how it looks. So, sure, I could just as easily take no time at all to limit my replies to, "We'll see," but then, this is a FFXIV general discussion forum, and I came here to have discussions about the game. It's not like I have any real stake in whether or not other people agree with what I have to say. I just enjoy talking about game design and Final Fantasy, like many proper geeks do.





If I have to suffer this automated double-quoting, then so do all of you!

The Secret World specifically suffered from subpar gameplay and couldn't do much in the short period of time it had due to their small developer team. It was also pretty niche given its style of progression.

TOR just suffered due to a ton of idiotic bugs, half-complete ideas, lack of content, broken PvP and bad relationships with their playerbase. The "scandals" we've seen since TOR launched didn't help at all. Then there's the Mythic urban legend, which I have a hard time believing but should be noted.

Neither failed because of anything you mentioned.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2013 12:59am by Ruisu

I think I'm the only one bummed out by lack of add-ons at launch.

Did you read what I wrote at all? Nevermind the fact that I was only demonstrating that a well-established lore could not save a game, I specifically cited the importance of gameplay. SWTOR -definitely- had problems with the gameplay... there was very little challenge to it at all, and the "broken" aspect of PvP was specifically balance-related. And if you don't think SWTOR had problems with its incentive structure, I don't know what to tell you. Lack of content is an aspect of the incentive structure, for example. You don't understand how incentives work, maybe?

All that aside, you're supporting my point perfectly. All of those things that you just cited as the reasons for the failure of those games are still 100% up in the air regarding FFXIV. So I reiterate: why shouldn't I be skeptical about FFXIV?

Then you started talking about accomplishments for some reason, which makes your argument not that different from the sillyhead that made a thread about how TOR failed because it had quested leveling (lol).

I don't deny that. TOR's issue on that end was that at launch half of the game's content was either not properly tuned (like the bosses in Esseles) or bugged (several bosses in Eternity Vault). There were also gameplay bugs like getting stuck on the ground and crashing whenever your ship went to lightspeed, aside from eyesores like lightsaber clipping on PCs and companions. Back in 2003 people would just trudge through and suck it up, but in 2012 people said "***** this, I'm gonna go play WoW/LoL/Pogo/Facebook Games".

It sounds to me like you're trying to brush it off. Broken PvP is what pretty much killed Warhammer Online, and TOR took substantial damage from not only Sith outnumbering Republic during the first 6 months post-launch (which made being repub on PvP servers painful at the higher levels), but because the OPness of certain classes was left untouched despite the continuous feedback that was presented during beta. So yeah, there were people who got mad and left over that.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. Presentation is what pretty much hurt anything after the class story. Aside from that, there was little to do for the first several months because the game had been rushed to launch. The engine couldn't even handle Illum (the lv50 PvP planet) and had to be taken offline to be remade, so people lost that part of the game for a while.

Not really. I'm more arguing against the assertion that lack of challenge hurt TOR, when it had much bigger and much more tangible issues that BW decided to ignore or could simply not fix. Given the myriad of real problems TOR had/has, people got fed up and left.

Which is fine. The point I'm trying to get across is that the lesson to take from all of this is not silliness about challenge or accomplishments. It's about the fact that an MMO in 2013 will not get away with having notable bugs and lacking content from the moment it goes live. Everquest and WoW could get away with it because at the time alternatives were few. Now, there's a lot more games out there vying for people's attention, which leads to players being a LOT less forgiving about mistakes in design and lacking gameplay.

PS: Maybe I'm not understanding your post, and if that is the case I apologize

Edited, Feb 22nd 2013 4:29am by Ruisu

I didn't say anything about accomplishments. I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Accomplishments are pretty unimportant in the big picture; I would never harp on them as a major factor in a game's success or failure.



I'll just have to disagree then. TOR was an easy game, and many players grew bored with the gameplay as a result, causing them to leave. Combined with a lack of proper endgame incentive and really a pretty mediocre incentive system throughout, you had an amazing foundation for a game that rang very hollow due to all the dead space.



The presence of novel and appropriate challenges are the most well-studied and established foundation of enjoying pretty much anything. So there is no silliness to it at all. That aside, the arguments you're making really don't disagree with what I'm saying at all; in fact you seem to agree with most of what I'm saying. Perhaps my language was too formal, leaving you to make inferences that were incorrect.



Perhaps. I certainly don't pretend to know with certainty, but I wouldn't call them worse-case-scenarios by any stretch. I would call them incredibly likely scenarios. These things don't need to be the worst case in the slightest to ensure that the game will flop... a look at other major MMO releases will tell you that. They were certainly not awful--many were pretty good.

Edit:

Ah, well there you go.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2013 1:41am by Kachi

Sounds like they've revamped this. From what I've read, all the cross class/job abilities will be available at or below lvl 30. Anything higher than that would be class/job specific.

Here are some good/interesting articles.

http://gamerescape.com/2013/02/21/gamer-escape-talks-to-naoki-yoshida-on-the-ffxiv-media-tour/

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/02/21/massivelys-comprehensive-preview-of-final-fantasy-xiv-a-realm/

Reason why "challenge" or lack thereof are not good speaking points is because challenge is subjective. Different people look for different things, and since the dawn of MMORPGs not all players have wanted the exact same thing from the game.

The issue was not incentive, but presentation. You play 1-50 immersed in a story and then suddenly you're 50, your story ends (or put on hold) and you're given a bunch of endgame instances that are not connected to the story you built up during the level climb. Even vanilla WoW did a better job in tying raids into their zone storylines. Well, unless by incentive you mean "why should I care about Soa in Eternity Vault enough for me to go there?".

Again, this is a dangerous assumption to make.

I would personally be more worried about what SE is doing to not repeat EA/BW's mistakes. I single out BW because TOR and XIV were launched somewhat close to each other, both having the same issues but SE and EA took different approaches to solving it. SE through Yoshida has gone to great lengths to build trust with the community, while BW sequestered themselves to their castle in the clouds. SE admitted they were wrong, EA went F2P because they said people could not afford to pay the 15$ sub for TOR (rather than admit their game is a rushed clusterf*ck and people aren't willing to pay for a game with that many problems). Even if its PR the community's reactions are near polar opposites.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2013 5:08am by Ruisu

I'm no gambler myself, and fortunately we don't have a lot riding on this (other than our hopes for a good MMO). What it really comes down to for me is that I see problems, and I see blanks that are currently empty, but very likely to be filled in with problems. When I see those things, I would rather call attention to them so that they are noted and corrected early on. After the game launches, it will be too late. I would vastly prefer that we are all happily playing FFXIV than to hang around here in its dying days saying, "I told you so." And yeah, sorry to say I would totally be doing that, to everyone else's dismay.

It's just a statistical truth that most games will be mediocre due to underwhelming design. And an MMO really can't afford to be mediocre because its profits don't come from initial box sales, but continued play. Older games got away with being mediocre because players developed an attachment while the genre was new and interesting. Now the genre is ubiquitous, and no one will stick around for a mediocre game.

Also, I swear I'm not doing this. Though I don't mind becoming known as the guy who quotes everything twice, I would rather not be viewed as more of a nuisance than I probably already am

Kachi we've opened a ticket on the double quoting thing, it's Firefox 19 specific oddly enough.

For my part I have decided to give this a go, I bought the game when it was first released, but it had so many faults that I quit playing after 1 month. This time around I think SE has adressed a lot of issues ( after all you can count the past 3 years as a gigantic testing phase ), maybee not all and also keep in mind this game or any other game wont be a 100% nonfaulty game, but lets say it has progressed enormously since it was released back in 2010. So for me personally, as long as they have made sufficient progress since 2010, I will be supporting them from this point and forward. Of cource this does not mean that I won't be complaining if I see aspects of the game that still needs improvement, but I hope that the starting point and the level of refinement of ARR is much better then the release of 2010.

Thanks, Wint. It's true that I always wanted to be a Mime, but this is not quite what I had in mind.





I know I've said a lot, so I'll forgive you for overlooking the fact that I WILL be giving ARR a chance. This is not about me convincing anyone that the game will fail--this is me making an educated prediction as a game designer.

And I agree with Xoie. The fact is, the game will succeed or fail on word of mouth. If the game is great, no skepticism now will overshadow that fact. Players will tell others about the game and they'll try it to decide for themselves. If anything, it will be that much more meaningful to the people I know that a skeptic like me actually manages to be enthusiastic for the game. If I like it, they will give it a shot.

As I said before, I see a lot of things being done well. That gives me hope and some small confidence that the design team knows what they're doing. However, none of these elements that I'm seeing done well are gameplay, and gameplay is what will make or break ARR. What will kill ARRItalic Text are die-hard fans who let poor design slide by without coming together to identify gameplay that is boring and grindy--if this happens, the design team will go ahead with it, and then all of those potential players who aren't FF diehards are going to leave the game.

This is an incredibly risky move. Most new MMOs fail because of poor gameplay design. XIV has already failed once. Gameplay design is not some really simple thing that would just go well if X didn't happen, or Y was there, or Z didn't do it's job. Lots of game designers just flatly don't know what to do. The stars could align in their favor and they still wouldn't get it right. I couldn't get it right in a game like this either without testing and refinement of the majority of content, so if that doesn't happen, I don't even need to play the game to know that it won't be right. If, as you say, arguments about gameplay aspects will have no effect on the product's release, then the game is probably doomed. Fortunately, I don't entirely agree with that assessment.

My guess is that a year from now, if that, people will be saying that the reason ARR failed was because the majority of their beta testers were loyal fans who couldn't give the dev team the actionable criticism that they needed. If you're going for mass appeal, you seek feedback from the masses. A player like yourself probably couldn't provide the necessary kind of feedback if they wanted to.

I think your attitude couldn't be more wrong, but I will agree on one point: You're wasting your time if you're trying to convince me otherwise. You don't have the information or the insight to do so.

Bear in mind, again, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. It's not like I come here to convince people not to play the game, and I doubt I have a particularly meaningful influence insofar as that goes. I've stated many times that I hope I'm wrong to be pessimistic about it. I'm just discussing game design and FFXIV on a forum with whoever wants to talk about it. If you had some other purpose for talking to me, then yes, your efforts would be fruitless.

Also not sure how many times I need to state that I will be playing ARR.