Sub Count is debatable. Square Enix announced it when 3 of their MMOs combined hit 1 million subs a handful of years back, and we have heard nothing since. Does that mean FFXIV never hit 1 million or any other milestone on its own? Who knows. Player estimates from just prior to Shadowbringers put sub count just under 1 million, and given that they were basically armory scraping, it probably included a fair number of alts (although that’d be less impactful than in WoW given you don’t NEED alts for anything). FFXIV is also just… VERY cyclical in nature. The devs actively encourage people to finish a patch then go away until the next one, unlike WoW where they desperately want you to stay.
FFXIV patches are probably more consistent than WoW, but the content provided in each one is pretty small. The non-LFR raids are usually, what, 4 bosses, for example?
Because it didn’t have it from the start. It’s less work to maintain a feature than it is to develop it from scratch for an expansion. It becomes a tradeoff to other content rather than just being something that was already there when the game launched.
It’s one of their most popular titles. It’s all but certain they would do it. The ability to sell a JPG for effectively pure profit is tempting. But NFTs and crypto in general, are used for money laundering quite often. Because governments aren’t really getting a cut of the money, you can expect tax legislation in the near future. (This may include regulations). The risk of regulation is that a company’s scheme might be legally defining them as a bank, which opens them up to banking regulations. (Which no company should ever want. Audits suck.)
But yeah, it’s all speculation. I’m honestly baffled they still want to push NFTs to the point of selling some of their IPs just for the sake of reinvestinginto the blockchain.
Well, when that happens, I will certainly agree with you then. However, this doesn’t change much about the fact that FFXIV is still a game for FFXIV players, which was my whole point.
This was the case before ATVI really took over Blizzard as a parent entity. I do hope FF14 doesn’t fall that way in the future. Yoshi P is effectively the Metzen of FF14. While some of the old guard is gone for good reasons, I hope future successors uphold that commitment to player-first excellence.
Different design philosophies really. WoW tries to spam new all the time when it’s really not. Blizz also focuses on quantity over quality for raid bosses as late. SE on the other hand only has 4 bosses per tier with just normal and savage (which is not heroic equiv but something between heroic and mythic). Savage is much more tightly tuned because SE expects people to progress over a much longer time, they also don’t have lockouts you’re expected to re-clear every boss in savage every week. So all said in told SE has 36 bosses per expac (12x alliance raid, 12x Normal, 12x Savage) that they have to worry about total in comparison to blizz’s 44 boss tunings for SotFO alone. So blizz is making way too much work for themselves IMO personally. They also have a systems issue that has been dragging them down because they have the system of the patch problem. Something SE doesn’t have because their systems are consistent and have been in use for ages. The only expansion specific “system” they introduce is relic weapons but they’ve been reusing that system for multiple expacs now so it’s not new and players are well used to it.
They do so at the expense of the world. They don’t have open world content at all. fates are more like world quests with even less effort out into them. Gathering nodes are always in fixed locations, there are no rare spawns (discounting the world bosses), there are no secrets to find or hidden loot piles. You do the chore quests and the main story and that’s it, world abandoned. You can’t even use it to level new jobs unless you really want to grind mobs or solo fates (extremely inefficient)
Wow for all the hate it gets, does a good job of using the world map, I would say only gw2 uses it better with jump puzzles and far more organic world quests.
if blizzard dedicated the insurmountable amount of time that it would take to create player housing it would pretty much break the game. well except for moonguard.
ion said himself that it would take not 1 not 2 but multiple expansions to implement. the amount of resources that would have to be poured into player housing to get it to the “asking players” standard would obliterate the game as a whole.
pvpers have no interest in player housing
mythic plus players have no interest in player housing
raiders have no interest in player housing
the vast majority of open world collectors have no interest in player housing
and guess what all of these players will have to give something up every patch for it in the process.
nobody wants the developer team to halt production on open world content, dungeons, arenas, battlegrounds, raids and hell even class specs and talents for a glorified log out location that you can select the curtain rods and ceiling fans for.
another thing about player housing that would happen if they ever did decide to do it is that there will for sure be achievements. there will be pets tied to it. mounts, titles and so on. then people like myself who have no interest in this “BORE” of a concept that is player housing will be forced to do it because as a mount collector, pet collector and collector of all things in wow, we will have to do it to get them giving blizzard the impression that “oh they must like it because they are doing it”
player housing suggestions needs to be shut down and go against the tos for anyone that mentions it from here on out. the vast majority of people that want it are the part timers anyway. and if they get it they will log in do it and log out again. then the rest of the hard core collectors will be stuck doing it.
Something stable does seem to go against the design of WoW. Every expansion seem to be an attempt to delete the last.
I don’t personally need player housing, but they could keep some features relevant, garrisons would be a good one. Just the ability to plant herbs or set the mine to work with any material from any expansion would be cool. Setup mission tables from every expansion, maybe with a small quest line for each, nothing major just make it useful.
I think you’re wrong in every way. nor do I think you speak on their behalf.
All of these groups exist in XIV and they all participate in housing when they can (XIVs housing is honestly terribly implemented)
PvPers can build their own arenas
Mythic players can display trophys to better swing their epeen or link achievement
Raiders can do the same
Open world players will for certain use it because it’s part of the open world and decorating your house with stuff found in your travels is absolutely an enticing offer.
None of this is new. Every game with housing has these groups and they all use it in different ways.
The reality is that FF14 is not the game of S-E, it is the game of Naoki Yoshida, who is a member of the S-E table, it is this Mr. who takes great care of the game and its players, and has a position that allows him to do so. The day Yoshida is not in FF14 it will be over.
WoW for its part doesn’t really have anyone fighting for it and its players in a good position within Activision Blizzard.
Having a way to centralize all the tables together would be a boon in saving time but you know, something would bound to break so why would they bother.
There’s no dye system in WoW because the textures are handpainted (digitally ofc, but you get the point). It’s an older artstyle, but it’s what helps make WoW look like WoW.
This is why a lot of feedback on FF14’s art is “It looks like every other game.”
No offense to Ion, but he routinely exacerbates and blows things out of proportion to make his arguments seem more valid. He has consistently said things, only to go back on them not even three months later.
The disconnect with this argument is how it just ignores problems that the game currently has. You know what’s destroying the game right now? Systems that nobody wants to engage with but are forced to anyways. These are taking up more development time than anything else and aren’t even needed to make the game fun; development time that could be used to make player housing, which is typically a one and done concept beyond occasionally adding new furniture and cosmetics for players to obtain. But Blizzard insists time and again that this is how it has to be, when we all know well enough that it doesn’t.
You mean like how people are forced to do content they don’t want to do because it’s the only substantial thing they have in the game?
And if they can have spare dev just like that, I’d rather they put them in stuff that’s proven to work for WoW. More dungeons, sub raids, quests, bigger zones etc.
If the teams they have now have a hard time pulling those off, one more person won’t make a big change unless they were a co-Team Leader that actually listened to players and made sure the other team members knew what was wanted.
