Fixing The MW 3-8 Cashgrab

I get that. Lingering bugs etc that may be high hanging fruit. It's reasonable to say that you don't intend for people to have a bunch of max level geared jobs back when it used to take some people months to level 1 job to max but as Bosworth stated, can level a job in an hour... even faster if someone blu cleaves your levels for you. It's pretty reasonable now that people will gear up many jobs, even if they're not BIS.

save yourself the hustle, i'm not doubting you heard/read a dev say it. i'm saying if on of them said that it was either a miss phrasing, translation error or simply a lie.

There's no point at which "they didn't intend for people to gear multiple jobs" is anything but the stupidest of takes. You don't design a game with over a dozen jobs, advertise the fact that you can play all these jobs on one character as a selling point for your game, and then say "Oh, we didn't intend for people to play multiple jobs!". That would be immensely dishonest or immensely incompetent.

Square Enix's Ethos right there

Dishonest, Disingenuous, Incompetent, but still thriving because the customer base is Naive. (most companies, really)

Truest post in this whole thread.

I have to ask. I've been around on these forums for awhile now, I legitimately can't think of any posts you've made that implies you're happy to be here or play FFXI in general. You've basically been shitting on the game and the devs, and SE as a whole, for years.

why are you here?

This isn't ***talking, this is genuine curiosity.

I was not saying because I know this for sure but that "rumor" was floating around that Yoshi or someone else apparently said that. I cannot confirm but IF... and only IF that was true, it would not be a valid statement today.


I'm not going at you as I agree with several things you've said. I can just see someone answering this with something like "Mind ya biz with a side of nunya rings!".

People ask things like that on the WoW forums often and a common reply is "I like forums" or something else.

If it were all sunshine and rainbows and a constant positive feedback loop you'd have nothing to talk about.

Keeping it balanced. (and real) Notsosubtle constant reminder that you're setting for less than they could give you and substandard service with it.

The people on the Lisa Frank subreddit would like to have a word with you.

This is going to come as a shock, but you can enjoy something enough to pay for it and still feel that you are being over charged.

I'll buy the wardrobes because they offer me convenience and I can afford them. Not because they are an objectively good investment.

They aren't.

Don't like hearing people complain about FFXI business decisions?

Enjoy the official forums where they just ban everyone who complains about the game.


It's a subscription service. They're still billing us. We're not demanding time travel to fix mistakes in the past. We're complaining because we want better service in the future.

FFXI was made for the ps2 as a ps2 game, it was supposed to end with the ps2. It is only sheer force of will that it lasted beyond the ps2.

Ironically, the thing that made XIV a success with its cash shop was not impressing the XI playerbase enough for us to go over. Not having us migrate allowed them to fully embrace a cash shop with little resistance.

So in the end, it worked out great for both sets of players.

I shudder to think what Tanaka would of done to XI if he had not made XIV and instead "modernized" XI. Holy crap.

Complaining that you're getting ripped off while willfully handing over the money. . . good grief.

I hate posting in this thread since it's a duplicate but oh well 7 pages in already. A modernized XI in my opinion would have been a great success, FFXI is unique with its battle system and that's what puts it in a class of its own. Majority of the modern MMOs now revolve around the WoW battle style model, sure it's nice, but I also cherish and enjoy how the battle system in FFXI works. All FFXI needs is modernization, it takes a lot and I mean a lot of dedication and effort to be end-game hardcore in todays FFXI due to the requirement to become accustomed with the third party tools that make the vast quality of life improvements. Problem is many people are not up to put such level of commitment, and it's understandable. Sometimes I think FFXIV 1.0 was supposedly the 'modern' upgrade to FFXI but they flopped and didn't get it right? Interestingly though, there are still many players who choose to remain vanilla and still make the best of the game.

I don't understand why this is a difficult concept for people. I enjoy FFXI enough to pay for it monthly. I would enjoy it more if SE didn't kneecap me with limited inventory space. I don't think I should have to pay extra for SE to not kneecap me.

I understand all that. It's really just the whining that I take issue with.

Should people not complain when they're being fleeced?

Whining is condescending terminology. Rightfully complaining that you're being upcharged isn't really whining. SE objectively provides worse service than any of the major competing MMOs, including their own, while charging more. Not only is this implemented in a halfassed manner, and low effort to begin with, they've decided to charge monthly for it despite it not having any ongoing costs. (I realize some idiot will try to chime in with the idea that every feature has ongoing costs, but the reality is it's just extra database rows using existing data structures and it really won't change anything in terms of future development or database function.)

Despite years of saying the load times would prevent adding more wardrobes, they did add them without even doing anything to fix the load times. The halfassed solution regarding individual bags was implemented like ***, and their server spams the packets constantly when there's no need to, while the game is already choking itself out in instances due to poor packet prioritization and throughput.

It's still a unique MMO experience, and people who prefer it to others will play it. Those who have enough jobs to feel like they need the wardrobes will buy them. The argument that niche interests should cost more, and paying SE to support them decreases the chances of FFXI going offline, is a perfectly reasonable way to look at things. I can't disagree with any of that. But, I still don't understand why it's a shameful thing to recognize that they're taking advantage of your addiction to push questionable practices and be discontent about it.

You're not getting fleeced. The phrase "getting fleeced" implies fraud or a hoax. And that would typically be exposed after the fact.

For me the situation is simple. Square-Enix is offering a service. I decided that I want two wardrobes and $4/mo. is a price that I am willing to pay. I bought them. If the calculus were different, I wouldn't buy them. I wouldn't complain.

Now, if they forced me to buy them, I might complain. If they opened them up for several months and then locked them back up behind a paywall, I might complain. But that's not what happened. . . It's a simple deal. Take it or leave it.

Taking advantage of our addiction? What, is SE our crack dealer?? Got us hooked and jacked up the price!

They realize they have a captive audience and are not required to perform competitively to keep that audience. You can make flippant comments, but it's the truth. As long as you're still willing to accept the bare minimum, they'll keep providing the bare minimum. If you aren't willing to accept that, it is perfectly possible they'll shut the game down entirely. It's a no-win situation, and complaining won't change it. But, the idea that you shouldn't be bothered by it is silly.

Perhaps that is the point of a disagreement in this whole conversation: addiction.

SE isn't offering you a service, SE wants you to go play FFXIV.

The reason they want you to play FFXIV, is because it is the single
most heavily monetized game that exists.

The FF11 developers decided to do this and they have stated many times that their strategy is to cut costs and improve revenue to keep the game viable.

To the player, I don't really see a functional difference whether the XI team loves us and is being forced to let us down by their SE overlords or whether they're doing it of their own volition. Their business viability shouldn't be the concern of the consumer, unless that consumer is so invested in the game that they can't bear the thought of it ceasing to be viable.

This thread.

They don't love us, they love the game they spent the last 20 years creating (if you read the recent interviews you can see that). To them, it's very simple. They need to cut costs and increase revenue or the company will simply cut funding and force them into retirement.

They know the costs of the game and demands of the parent company better than we do, if they need to charge then I see that as simply them needing to charge to keep the product viable.

Some are coming at this as seeing the developers as crooks that want a few extra bucks out of you, I see it as people who love the product trying to keep it running. They personally don't benefit from your extra $2 or $8 a month, the only benefit is they keep working on it.

Again, you always push this idea that people are hopelessly addicted and it's just not the case. There is simply no other game most of us find enjoyable, ff14 is straight up trash to many of us.

Being militantly against any price increase is as stupid as being pro any and all price increases, the company needs to stay profitable.

I'm really just making the idealistic argument that a miniscule amount of work could fix most of the problems FFXI has today. Let me at the servers by myself and I'll have packet flow fixed, prismatic wardrobe, and tons of other great QoL improvements in a matter of months. Never mind that there are people much more talented than myself such as Atom0s, Arcon, Iryoku. The best improvements FFXI has had over the last few years have been primarily UI development by people who are neither employed nor paid by SE. Maybe you want to think they're doing their best, but I don't think their results show that.

If the revenue thing was a sticking point and the wardrobes had to come out that way, that would be fine on it's own. But, they could have mitigated it by fixing some of the other problems while they had a developer available(since apparently they need the stars aligned to get one). Instead, they continue to provide the bare minimum, outputting significantly less than unpaid, largely unskilled volunteers do.

I'm not saying everyone is hopelessly addicted, but the fact you're concerned about SE's business viability rather than what you're being provided as a consumer shows that the scales are very tilted in your case. I can agree that it is a unique gameplay experience, and I don't fault you personally for feeling that way. There were periods of time where I considered it the only game I would ever play, and I still consider it the only MMO worth playing. I just don't think that validates them draining all resources from it while still increasing costs for basic services.

Well, OK. I'm 100% behind you on that part.

Ultimately:
One side either doesn't care since it's optional or thinks price rises are acceptable over time to keep the game viable (due to less players).

The other side thinks price rises are completely unacceptable under any circumstances, and square should charge 12 forever. If the game shuts down because they can't raise revenue that's ok.

It's not even a discussion anymore, just arguing the same points

You're playing semantics here. Charging for inventory space in a game where playing effectively requires large amounts of inventory space is a shitty business practice, especially in a game where you already have to pay a monthly fee just to play.

You're free to pay for the wardrobes if you want, just as others are free to point out that it's a shitty practice. If enough people express dissatisfaction, SE might actually do something about it(unlikely though, considering SE's piss poor record of addressing player grievances).

welcome to the internet, at least we aren't spreading germs like ppl who meet up in person to argue.