A long objective opinion (warning!) about ARR and its futureFollow

This post is adapted from a post of mine in the beta forums General.

Disclaimer: There is no TL;DR version of this post. I don't want to sum up several topics in three sentences. If you are put off by this, feel free to skip the thread entirely.

Dear forum people,

I admit that I have not made hundreds of thousands of posts inside this forum, so that most of you will remember me, but I have a reputation for writing long, well-argued posts / comments / articles etc, in my life, so I would like to offer my insight to the community and the developers alike.

Now, inspired by Director Yoshida's latest comment (which was satisfyingly detailed and long) I feel that I have to describe my feelings about the game under two mantles:

Sovjohn the FF fan and beta tester

I am an experienced MMO player, but was never 100% hardcore, although I have several...months of /played in various games, which usually included PVE end-game raiding.

FF XIV: ARR is impressive, in my eyes and based on the conversations I have had with friends who also tested it. Not flawless, but impressive for a beta product at this point of time.

I believe that significant efforts have been made in order to make this look and feel a true Final Fantasy game, even with the challenges the series has faced in the past few years. Let's remember here that FF is a predominantly console-oriented franchise, and it has had relatively few games released in the PS3/X360 generation, with the actual numbered game being XIII only (and the others being sequels or spin-offs).

Now, there is definitely room for improvement in a lot of in-game functions, however, the progress so far is indeed impressive. The game does not innovate per se, however innovation is a double-edged knife in MMO's, with certain features exciting a part of their player base at first, but failing to excite them for the long-term, once the novelty factor wears off.

The crux of the matter is that, for a beta product, FFXIV:ARR is quite much exceeding expectations. Yes, I would like a global GCD of 1.5-2.0'' to be used instead, but I know all too well that these sort of elements are the ones able to be adjusted when needed without needing an expansion pack or what have you. Indeed, skills, abilities, cooldowns et al are the most frequently changing functions in any MMO, compared to say NPC's or music.

I feel confident that the FF XIV team will indeed produce a polished result by release and beyond, because I have seen what has been achieved from the "v. 1.0" era and the transformation is amazing.

Of course, there are many people out there who cannot and will not be satisfied from ARR, including F2P advocates or FF XI players who were hoping for a "FF XI v 2.0" type of experience, however, they belong in stakeholders due to be disappointed anyhow, for a variety of reasons.

Sovjohn the business development manager / product manager

The roles I have been most associated with, either as an employee or as an entrepreneur of a start-up company are business development and product management. Yes, they are awfully boring terms to throw about, but bear with me. There are several things ARR has done, and continues to do, which tick the right tickboxes in my mind from a business point of view. Let's have a look:

Pricing models

I have made another long post about pricing models, you can find it here:

Spoiler

Quote:

Well - I know subscription 'is a dying model', but mostly this has become the case when games could not justify the subscription. I mean - EVE Online is a prime example of a community-led game which boasts a healthy player base, a developer who listens to feedback and implements accordingly, and a subscription.I haven't seen it failing, and will not see it failing, so long as the player-developer relationship remains healthy. EVE players could not care less if a WOW "outsider", or even us, future "FF outsiders" ever join their game. As long as the company is happy with the status quo / makes money, case is settled.

Now, on the other hand - Games like SWTOR (which I played, and apparently paid a subscription for about 4 months), did not deserve their money. Allow me to elaborate:

• Leveling / personal quest were fine. Quality really.
• End-game did exist, in theory, but...
• ...there were FAR too many game-breaking bugs. Also, numerous balance issues. The game had 3 healing classes and the 1st one was as good as the other 2 combined.
• EA/Bioware had to recuperate development costs, so they left the game to die, from the very first months. Bug reports were not addressed for ridiculous amounts of time. A typo (Yes, a typo) made in a raid boss HP count meant that "Hard" was easier than "Normal" for about 6 weeks. And they wouldn't fix the bloody typo.
• The god-damn Hero Engine they used had serious issues rendering >10-20 people at the same time. The game had world PVP. Guess how well that went when it was running with 3 FPS (not a joke, literally 3 FPS).

Yes, when I saw the developers talking in an event EA launched in March 2012, I was disgusted by their responses. They seemed to stem from a know-it-all attitude which blatantly disregarded feedback AT ALL.

Sure, these douches did not deserve a subscription fee, ever, once someone went past leveling and experiencing the admittedly well-crafted story.

Does this mean that no game deserves a subscription fee? Hardly so. However, it's hard to justify such a fee if the game is buggy, unfinished, uninspiring on day 1.

That's why I applaud Yoshi-P and team's effort, because they have the actual chance to dazzle enough people to be happy.

And for the end, some numbers:

1,000,000 subscriptions: At least 120,000,000 (USD or EUR, depends on the country) per year. Not a small sum by any means. The actual money from the game purchase are not calculated in here.

3,000,000 "Buy-To-Play" purchases: Did you know that whenever you buy a game at retail, after the margin of the shop, the distributor, and the publisher, the developers get some 15% of total? Do find that out, then. For the sake of simplicity, I will say that 50% of these proceeds are able to be used for game expansion purposes (although the number is high).

3,000,000 X $30 (for a $60 game) = 90,000,000. GW2 has indeed sold 3,000,000 copies, however, if among them I include people like me and my friends, (about 10 people I know in total), out of which nobody played GW2 past 2 months cause "it got boring" "had no RVR system of note" or "gear had no stats, why bother collecting it?"...

...Something tells me it won't make near as much money in year 2. Whoops.

I won't present the case where, say, 2,000,000+ gamers buy a game AND then 1,000,000 sticks around with a sub, cause the number difference will be eye-watering.

And this, dear fellows, is why you should not be entirely sure "F2P" or "B2P" can generate more revenue. Cause if the game can't pull off a P2P model, it can only resort to F2P-ish, or die.ll off a P2P model, it can only resort to F2P-ish, or die.

Suffice it to say that a pricing model and approach for a game is not decided blindly. Projections are made, often using existing data (such as FF XI player base, conversion % of them to XIV, general data about sales in different markets, NA / EU / JP, and several other sources) and market experience / competition analysis.

SE is not a stranger to a "F2P-like" model. There's an iOS game, Guardian Cross, which is either F2P or B2P in theory, however it has an abundance of microtransactions built inside it. And it's a quite successful game, with tens of thousands of players shelling out considerable amounts of money to buy...the latest Bahamut card, the right to upgrade their Leviathan cards, and so on and so forth.

If the company felt that a game such as ARR would be better served by this model, they would build it this way. Still, there is no golden rule about any of these revenue models. Player word of mouth and perception goes a long way towards establishing a game as a success or a failure, and the signs are that, at the very least, the Final Fantasy community does not seem to be disappointed, as they were with 1.0, which was a mess.

Unique selling points

A debate has been started in these forums and elsewhere about the game's unique selling points. It's true, there are few "truly innovative features", although I would classify the multi-classing / jobs / shared skills element to be one of them. However, the best unique selling point, in business jargon, is the multi-platform model implemented.

There are very few MMO's on the PS3, and they are not recognizable enough (say, WOW) to make a difference on the console's marketshare. However, that is not to say that there isn't a market for MMO's in consoles.

In fact, consoles have become very dependent on internet connectivity and multiplayer gaming, and this is expected to be illustrated further in the coming years, with the PS4/XB1 generation. You should keep in mind that PS4 and XB1 are effectively "PC architecture", which is a significant change in console game and systems management, since consoles were ever created.

My personal opinion is that since ARR seems to be doing rather a good job on its PS3 rendition as well (and I would like to remind you all that PS3 has 512(!) MB of RAM - It's a Herculean task to be able to fit MMO features in that limited space, believe it or not), it should expect a healthy percentage of its long-term customers to also come from this pool (And PS4 in the future). If there was no PS4 in the horizon, this might mean a bleak future for the PC client or its graphics quality, but since PS4 will be DirectX 11, creating a powerful PS4 version and a powerful PC version will be very easy.

In terms of product management, the ARR team will have to support 2 products and 2 sub-products in the years to come:

1) PC DirectX 9 version - Today's version
2) PS3 version - Scaled down from 1) to fit PS3 constraints

3) PC DirectX 11 version - Future client for newer PC's
4) PS4 version - Can be exactly the same with PC version this time, only with different UI and functionality

Community interaction / Feedback

Finally, and I am ending this with this topic because making it any longer would probably mean you would need a week to read it, I find the community interaction and feedback responses a very promising sign. It was mind-blowing in my view to read the Phase 2 feedback list, where dozens or hundreds of remarks had been read, discussed internally, and replied, along with a status assigned to them ("Due for P3" "Continuing discussion", etc). I sense that SE has invested significant resources towards facilitating games that its player base wants to play, and this is frankly as good as it gets from a business point of view.

A company / developer who actively attempts to build a healthy relationship with its player base does never fail, financially or otherwise. A notable example of this is CD PROJEKT RED, the "Witcher" games RPG studio, which has built a name for themselves for being player-friendly and mindful of their community, resulting in extremely good results both from a business and a community point of view.

Why did I write this?

The answer is very simple. I'm not fond of trolls, so I would like to contribute a long, well-thought, analytical response to whatever I've seen as Phase3 beta tester thus far, combined with my real life occupational skills, in a way.

Thanks for your time!

I could indeed break it into several posts, but then it would not be a complete write-up of my views, especially on the business side of things.

Regardless, thanks for taking the time to respond, and I hope at least a...dozen people have read this (mustering up the courage to do so, and so on and so forth!) =)

I hope you dont mind me making a shortened version of your post i believe your being very possitive and want people to know what your saying simply than maybe they will go back and read the wall fo text.

Op likes the fact that yoshi-p is a avid MMOer and believes that things will be up to standards for the game.

He believes that they chose the subscription model for a reason because SE has used F2P model on there other games and have done there research and choose to keep it sub bases.

Not many "Unique" selling points but being able to use multi platforms is a huge plus. Also useing what they can from limitations and making things look great.

Like i said this is a snippet of what is in the OP's post but this is what i gathered from it.

A couple points:

The PS3 architecture is greatly different than a PC. Saying it is a "herculean task" is a gross overstatement. First, the major reason you require a larger amount of RAM on a PC is the bloat of the OS and all of the drivers required to run, not to mention the countless background processes. Consoles have a great deal of purpose-built items that handle games differently than a PC, even though they are moving closer to being a PC. Because of that, while they are restricted in some regards, it's not nearly the miracle you would think.

For subscription versus free-to-play, many games have become more profitable since the move from subscriptions to free-to-play, as gamers will willingly part with money more frequently if you give them small payments to make. While I feel that a subscription suits SE's development process better than free-to-play, the reason is more because of how the company is structured rather than the game. SE needs returning revenues to satisfy investors, where as most free-to-plays are run by smaller, less established companies.

Blizzard could go free-to-play, but they have a ton of investors as well, so the most they can put forward is an extended free-to-play section. Honestly, free-to-play is going to be where the games will all eventually go, but for now, we are still in that transitional period while the investors get more comfortable with the idea of no consistency.

Since i do not want to get into much talking i will just express myself wit this

(also on a side note keep rating me down it seems i have a personal stalker that rates me down go onnn make my day :P )

I realize that SE has investors. I just remember reading that not to long ago. I can also see how a company can use it's own profits (after investors have been paid back) to fund a project. In which case, if true, the above comment from Yoshida is correct.

Edit: Also, it horrible business practice to not make returns on anything you do.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2013 11:43am by Teneleven

The edit you made is the reason they aren't going to risk F2P. F2P is a dicey proposition to an investor. You are making a product with no intention of a direct profit. Tell that to an investor, and you will watch him get up from the table and take his money elsewhere. Turbine is a small, small cog, and so long as they cover operation costs (which they obviously are), and help to hold onto a licence for WB, WB doesn't give a **** what they do. And a smartly done, well executed Freemium model, allowing the gamer to essentially vote with their dollars, as well as keep your world filled with players to act as additional marketing and reason for other players to join, can actually be far more profitable than a subscription. Look at map packs for CoD games. Players will willingly spend to "keep up with the Jonses." You just need to offer the right incentives to get them to.

However, whenever a company as big as SE sinks money into a project, the investors are right there, watching the balance sheets. Their re-invention of FFXIV, I am sure, has given more than one investor pause. But likely, they are selling it as needed reputation rebuilding, and are using FFXI as a benchmark of what they can do in this market. So it become a "trust us, we know what we're doing" pitch. In fact, you can thank that sentiment for why you see goblins, pugils and the like in FFXIV, and looking more like their FFXI counterparts. It's equal parts fan service and investor soothing. They are basically saying "Look, we have this massive success, FFXI. We're adding stuff from it in FFXIV. It will help, wait and see!" And the investor is soothed. For the fans, it's "Hey, we're so sorry for 1.0, LOOK MOOGLES, JOBS, AIRSHIPS, MATERIA AND ****!!" And the fans are excited.

The reality is that Y-P was being a corporate tool in that post, giving a by-rote line of "We are a gaming company who makes the games we want to make." In reality, they are a traded company whose money comes from more than just their games. They still need to answer to their investors and backers, and that's why they even bother saying things like Tomb Raider undersold. Because they have to say that for rules of full disclosure. They need to make public record their sales figures, their expected sales figures, their profits and losses so that investors can see them.

Saying all that, I know that SE would let FFXIV wither and die as a F2P. Why? Because they would be just trying to recoop their cash and then get out before the roof falls in. It would be a straight up cash grab, more buy-to-win than free-to-play in the same way All the Bravest was nothing more than a cash grab. It would be bad PR, it would be poorly handled (All their freemium has been, why stop now), and then they would simply back away from XIV and let it die off by attrition. Making it a subscription means they need to answer to their investors. And by investors, I mean every single subscription holder. We become that the moment we give them this recurring revenue stream. They need that now, with the repeated botched releases and spending. They need a second FFXI. So with that subscription helping their bottom line, yea, they will dedicate a team to keeping us happy.

I don't mind the F2P model if done correctly. The consequence of F2P I find though is whatever game is filled with juvenile delinquents spamming up chat channels with inane childish drivel. I'm not saying P2P model games are free from this, but it does pose such a massive filter on the quantity of garbage spewing hormonal ragamuffins thinking they really are bequest from the divine.

Neither did Turbine, or most MMO makers. Venture capitalists aren't in the habit of investing in MMOs.

I know and understand a console architecture compared to a PC one. However, even so, a limited amount of RAM means that you have limited amounts of "temporary storage" so to speak. It is an entirely different story to have coded a game like, say, Witcher 2, where the objects needed to be tracked are one (you, the PC), and the remaining game is a combination of scripted actions and triggers mostly, and an entirely different story to have to relay information to the client:

X player, Y player, Z player, their names, their other attributes (classes etc), what are they doing at a particular time, where are the mobs, what's happening in the city, in your chat, blah, blah blah. I find it commendable that there are multiplayer FPS games with say 32 players online at the same time, on a console, imagine how I feel about a situation where you are in a FATE with 40 people and it magically works.



I agree with that, however as I said, if I knew that paying here, paying there, paying a little every day would basically cause me to spend 50 EUR this month on a "F2P game", I would actually be discouraged. And this is very frequent in certain F2P implementations.

Thanks for the response, as always =)

PS3 architecture is vastly different from a pc not just being a game system... It is the custom cell processor. Sony did not make the same mistake this time with the ps4 it is pretty much a out of the box AMD CPU and GPU and it has lots of memory and fast memory at that. Almost makes it look like the PS3 limitations may eventually hold back FFXIV like the PS2 did to FFXI..


I hate F2P it is being nickled and dimed to death.. Give me one fee and give me access to the whole game and everything in it...

Edited, Jun 23rd 2013 2:20pm by Nashred