Self Destructing Game Design

General Discussion General Discussion
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I started out going into detail with all these issues and it turned into a massive wall… so heres an attempt to just one sentence sum up each thing.

Limited guild sizes at launch fracturing larger communities and encouraging solo play

One shot mechanics that make solo que an absolute nightmare (abyss/some guardians)

Resource farm meta of multiple alts making it very difficult to ever have time to play with guildmates- not to mention no room for alts in that guild…

raids optimized for using consumables most people refuse to use/cant afford/were told by youtubers not to use

daily activities on such a massive scale, making it inefficient/near impossible to group up for anything

a cap on knowledge transfers, making the concept of future class releases uncertain when deciding whether to use the limited supply on current alts- which leads to spending more hours running the same storylines on multiple characters (also a solo play situation)

theres more but ive reached my capacity to care or put any more time into this post lol

its unfortunate because the combat is really enjoyable and I would have been fine with just paying a monthly fee in the form of the crystalline aura and making some small purchases here n there to show my support- but its just not feeling like any new groundbreaking game, nor something thats fun in a repetitive type of gameplay.

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This is not a new groundbreaking game. It’s a 3 year old game that has seen great success in multiple regions around the world and is one of the most popular games in Korea. That’s not to say that things couldn’t be improved, but let’s not act like this is trash design that is dead on arrival.

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no, not on arrival… all the hype around it, treating it like some amazing new game to play- because the current games have become such trash that it looks like some great alternative. It’s not gonna die, but its not going to live up to the hype either… especially with all the solo player unfriendly design flaws it has.

Also think about the player count right now, and think about how there are still millions of bots adding to that “population”…

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Well learn the game, its normal, every mmo has wipe mechanics…

never have the problem, and if you cant afford them work for them?

oh no to much conted to do? well idk with who you play, but i do daylis with people from my guild that are doing the same

I think its good, now there a guild that need to work for something and dont have 100 player where are 70 not that active.
With alts in guild, why bother having them in the guild? you just said that you have alts to feed main. when you have 2 or 3 "Mains put them in.

idk know why people like to play MMO what is designet to be with groups and friends and than complain about why i need to play with people…

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Most bots play offline so they’re probably not inflating the numbers.

I agree 100% this game is overhyped. After my first couple hours in the beta I had one major conclusion. “Oh no, this is not going to be the game most people think it is”. I like it, but for sure this is not going to have mass market appeal. The game director said in an interview that they would consider it a great success if they settle on 60k active players in the West.

And the state of the forums is proof that that is the case. Instead of stopping playing and saying “this is not for me” there are a bunch of posts demanding the game be changed at a fundamental level.

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and that is like 3 times the active playbase that has eso or FF14. If we stay over 200k its a very good

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It’s so funny to keep seeing this “great success in multiple regions” line that people keep throwing around. A streamer said it, so it must be true, right?

It’s had decent success in Korea. In RU the game launched with 3 servers (only one was high pop regularly) and merged down to 2 after a year. And that’s including all the people from other regions that played with a VPN.

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https://activeplayer.io/lost-ark/ Well i look at this site for player count and not just steam, and 1,5 million people is ok i think

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I feel like your numbers for FFXIV are wrong. You might be correct per server. Not sure about ESO as I haven’t played in years.

You are correct though, people really need to stop comparing any MMO to WoW in it’s heyday. Or even now. WoW is an aberration that will likely never happen again, and publishers (and players) should never expect it to. 100 to 200k players is pretty damned good for a modern MMO.

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FF14 and eso i looked at steam charts https://steamdb.info/app/39210/graphs/ (ff14)
https://steamdb.info/app/306130/graphs/ (eso)

For lost ark i normaly look here https://activeplayer.io/lost-ark/ cause they count korea etc too
FF14 and eso are not even there (https://steamdb.info/app/1599340/graphs/)

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Unlike Lost Ark, FFXIV does have it’s own stand alone client and launcher. ESO used to, but I’m not sure since it moved to Tamrial Unlimited.

EDIT: it also has a client for PSN, since it’s a multi-platform game.

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What does that have to do with what I posted? The numbers on that site are predominantly from NA/EU and Korea. We were talking about success in “other regions” prior to NA/EU launch.

1.5 million is “ok” considering that’s NA/EU/KR/SA/RU/JP. Check back in a few months, and it will be a fraction of that if AGS and Smilegate don’t start making some smart decisions.

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Is FF14 or Eso Crossplay? If not we cant rly compare psn with pc. I dont know that rly.
But right now, Lost Ark is still popular right now

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I even postet just steam charts thats for na/eu and there its still popular

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FFXIV is crossplay and has been since PS3.

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Oh thats good
The Elder Scrolls Online - MMO Populations & Player Counts
(FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn - MMO Populations & Player Counts)
i just looked there and it seems better. Let us see what times bring

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Well learn the game, its normal, every mmo has wipe mechanics…

ok, good luck telling new people, every run, the mechanics of that guardian or abyss boss, and then after 5 wipes they dont get it and vote to quit… see how many runs in a row of that you can do, without wasting the entire play session getting nothing accomplished… oh and when they “learn” the fight enough that you start randomly getting grouped with people who know, then its time to move on to the next guardian/abyss boss to explain the new mechanics to all the people who just moved on to that one too…

never have the problem, and if you cant afford them work for them?
I have plenty of everything, and its pretty frustrating to waste them on the groups that cant get through the content, after I have wasted all my flares, a couple grenades, and all my potions while i try to solo a guardian that has 4-player HP levels as a bard after my team has run face first into massive dmg mechanics over and over and used all the revives…

oh no too much content to do? well idk with who you play, but i do dailys with people from my guild that are doing the same

imagine grouping with your guildies and being like “ok, i gotta bifrost over here and do this daily, then i gotta sail over here and kill 5 of these things real quick, oh and then i gotta go here and move a box, and then I’ll be ready to… oh crap sailing coop in 5 minutes hold on guys… hey you wanna do the chaos gate in half an hour? Maybe we can get some chaos dungeons in before i go to my stronghold to refresh my missions, then ill be ready to swap to my next alt and do it again if anyones interested…” yep… sure…

I think its good, now there a guild that need to work for something and dont have 100 player where are 70 not that active.
With alts in guild, why bother having them in the guild? you just said that you have alts to feed main. when you have 2 or 3 "Mains put them in.

imagine having 30 players in guild and only 7 of them inactive… but then within the actives… 5 of them are 1335, 7 of them are 1040, 6 of them just hit 802, and 5 of them are just about to hit 600 but alot of them running storylines to unlock the chaos dungeons that will give them the next set of T gear… oh and with a gaming community that had to make 30+ guilds and still had a waiting list… there is no “put more mains in”
thank god for discord-- since games these days require 3rd party software to facilitate grouping in their “MMO” that wants you to group (cough cough destiny 2 cough)

idk know why people like to play MMO what is designed to be with groups and friends and than complain about why i need to play with people…

See all of above…

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Idk about encouraging solo playing but agree the size is a tad small. Should have start with 50 and every level up adds 2 additional slots.

Well, why don’t you use matchmaking?

Can always set up a subsidiary guild for alts, thats what my guild does. Yes, it’s catching up levels to main guild but when its up to level 3 at least it’s more than good enough…

How you know people refuse to use them? Did they specifically type it out in chat stating screw battle items I’m not using them!, also can’t deny some people just don’t know what to use, where to equip it (i.e. starting circle to add/remove), and most importantly, maybe people are trying to do achievements. Those give roster exp if not some even have virtues and titles.

Never have I ever encountered issue there’s not enough players for daily activities, like ever. This is on you.

Again, let’s unlock it for everyone and have T3 all ready to go upon starting the game. Sure. Just admit if you don’t want to play the game and just want easy way out.

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Are we speaking the same language? For the third time, we were discussing how popular the game was in other regions (Korea, Russia and Japan) before NA/EU launched. Some streamer/youtuber was talking about how the game had gotten really popular in Korea after Tier 3 and legion raids and then made some comment about the “playerbase growing greatly in other regions” when it’s only done that in Korea. It was the opposite in RU and JP.

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I mean, most FFXIV pops are guesstimates based on what little info people can pull from various tools. The official numbers look more like

/shrug

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