I have decided to discuss and debate certain aspects of FFXIV: ARR in a series of articles debating its design choices, marketing elements, approach and factors of success (or failure). The blog main page can be found here, and it's hosted on the friendly FFXIVRealms community site! If you actually read the article series, which begins today, feel free to leave your feedback in this thread!
Thank you :)
This post will be updated with links to the articles as they come online. You can click on the dates to read the article discussing the relevant points.
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Introduction
Welcome back to "A Genre Reborn".
Starting from today, the blog’s direction changes somewhat, towards providing food for thought for a debate, and will involve less of “fan points of view†arguments in articles. For the sake of maintaining updates, content will be written but not posted altogether in one go. Somewhat smaller pieces, but more frequent ones, is the new mantra.
Since Beta Phase 3 is approaching its final day, with Beta Phase 4 and beyond being some weeks away, we should concentrate on the big picture.
FFXIV: ARR is a unique proposition in the decade-plus long history of MMORPG’s. It’s the first MMORPG ever to launch, deliver a sub-par product as the general consensus went, and rebuild it with a totally different design vision in mind.
All too frequently, past competitors of FFXIV: ARR have preached about “innovationâ€, “revolution, not evolutionâ€, and “radical changes to the way we play†the genre. More often than not, the end result of these forays has been stagnation.
In the next few days, following a large article to kick-start the series today, we will examine the effort and resources put behind FFXIV: ARR through a variety of topics.
Welcome back to "A Genre Reborn".
Starting from today, the blog’s direction changes somewhat, towards providing food for thought for a debate, and will involve less of “fan points of view†arguments in articles. For the sake of maintaining updates, content will be written but not posted altogether in one go. Somewhat smaller pieces, but more frequent ones, is the new mantra.
Since Beta Phase 3 is approaching its final day, with Beta Phase 4 and beyond being some weeks away, we should concentrate on the big picture.
FFXIV: ARR is a unique proposition in the decade-plus long history of MMORPG’s. It’s the first MMORPG ever to launch, deliver a sub-par product as the general consensus went, and rebuild it with a totally different design vision in mind.
All too frequently, past competitors of FFXIV: ARR have preached about “innovationâ€, “revolution, not evolutionâ€, and “radical changes to the way we play†the genre. More often than not, the end result of these forays has been stagnation.
In the next few days, following a large article to kick-start the series today, we will examine the effort and resources put behind FFXIV: ARR through a variety of topics.
Article Series: Can FFXIV: ARR create “A Genre Reborn�
Saturday, July 13th:
- Beta Phase 3 – Are there any critical failures so far?
- A Gamble Worth Taking – Square Enix defends the Final Fantasy brand so passionately –and expensively
- The “Million+ subscriptions†scenario – Can it ever be achieved?
Article follows (unformatted)
Let’s dive right in, with your permission.
Beta Phase 3 – Are there any critical failures so far?
There are differing opinions on the level of polish FFXIV: ARR beta builds have had, especially in Phase 3 where the testing audience was much larger than in earlier phases.
The percentage of “things done right†is often quite subjective. Some testers are not satisfied with game elements (graphics come to mind), others are very happy with what they see. Some testers cannot fathom this game being far away from their beloved FF XI, while others are glad the “catch-an-airship-every-15-minutes-like-waiting-for-a-damn-bus†phenomena are a thing of the past.
Individual opinions aside, however: Beta phase 3 does not have any critical failures. Inconveniences are certainly there (The issue with /tells and limited social interaction while inside instanced content has generated quite a lot of controversy), but there are no game-breaking elements to be found.
It is quite amazing to see a small number of bugs in an unreleased game. People are not getting stuck all the time, and there have been several MMO’s where “/stuck†command was quite popular until patch 1.1 or thereabouts.
The PS3 version, which is first tested in Phase 3, seems to be handling the game rather stably thus far. Of course, there are more bugs to be found that are PS3-specific, but with no previous mass-testing from the community, this is quite the expected result.
The feedback I have had from friends who decided to test the game with me is quite positive. The world seems to offer enough immersion and character for them to overlook a variety of small problems still existing here and there. While naysayers have been quick to dub FFXIV: ARR “A WoW cloneâ€, it does not quite fit in this category.
Rift was much more of a WoW clone than FFXIV: ARR is. SWTOR attempted to directly use many and more of WoW’s mechanics –and was often found lacking. FFXIV: ARR is positioning itself to become, perhaps, a unique proposition: A well-thought out, polished to perfection MMORPG, from a development team that cares about the world they’ve made.
There are certain elements about a game which prominently display the developer’s culture behind it. Guild Wars 2 attempted to thinly vein its PvP “focus†by including a “story†and PvE elements, but they were not up to par. Players reaching the max level whilst not being PvP fans were not really catered for.
Guild Wars 2 is not the sole example, it just happens to be one of the recent ones. Frankly, initially I intended to dedicate this article to these many MMO’s who (not so) valiantly fell on the battlefield. But it’s quite pointless to go over their failures in detail.
Suffice it to say that the MMORPG with the most gigantic budget and heavyweight brand name launched in the past few years, Star Wars: The Old Republic suffered from a multitude of problems, above and beyond merely horrible project management.
It did actually employ developers and team members who did not know how to manage such a game, and turned a blind eye to knowledgeable community members, despite the quality or quantity of their feedback. It suffered in the QA department much more than FFXIV: ARR already does. It tolerated in-game support tickets to be answered after two weeks, and even trivial –yet game-breaking- bugs being addressed during the course of several weeks, instead of immediate hotfixes.
No matter where your opinion about FFXIV: ARR stands, one thing’s for certain: What we’ve seen thus far doesn’t feel much like a game in beta. Even “features just out from internal QA†such as the Duty Finder are usually functioning correctly. All in all, this is a positive indication for the near future, since several MMORPG games plagued with more bugs than a reasonable human could keep track of plunged right to the bottom of the sea as a result of “being unplayableâ€. When these games fixed their issues, they found out only two or three servers with players remained, out of the dozens planned at launch. Tough love, there.
A gamble worth taking? – Square Enix defends the Final Fantasy brand passionately –and expensively
There is a universal truth behind Square Enix’s stance regarding FF XIV and its subsequent rebirth as FFXIV: ARR:
The company has never released a numbered Final Fantasy title which was deemed a commercial (and critical) failure.
Certainly, spin-offs or derivative games may have had different levels of success, but even if we merely begin by considering the 32-bit era games onwards (Sorry, FF VI fans), they have gone from strength to strength in terms of revenue and brand awareness.
Case in point: Final Fantasy XIII, which was not exactly the crown jewel of the series, did perform quite well both in reviews and in terms of generated revenue / sales. Its sequels, XIII-2 and the upcoming “XIII-3â€, Lightning Returns have received quite some praise in reviews and previews respectively. And what has been the secret crown jewel of the “Final Fantasy XIII: Fabula Nova Crystallis†era, XIII: Versus has now become the next numbered game – and stunned industry observers and players alike with its first footage in E3.
All things considered, letting FF XIV die and moving on might seem like the sensible thing to do. The initial game’s reputation was tarnished, several aspects seemed unfixable, including the game engine’s suitability for an MMO environment, user interface, lack of quests and story, and stupid mechanics such as the “EXP fatigue†had created an explosive mix.
In fact, it’s worth pondering how such a massive FUBAR situation could evade attention before the game was released. Even the open beta was scheduled suspiciously close to release, causing a lot of grief to people who had already preordered the game.
But condemning this game to a swift, silent death did not conform to the company’s philosophy. Decades of success in the Final Fantasy brand, and then suddenly the company would have to skip from XIII to XV for all eternity, denying it ever existed. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened in the entertainment industry, however, since Squaresoft (and Square Enix later on) always prided herself on the quality and spirit of the numbered Final Fantasy games, this could prove a mighty blow to them, their marketing strategy and the series in general.
This ought to partially explain why the (for all intents and purposes) new game is still called FFXIV, even with smaller letters on the logo than “A Realm Rebornâ€. A numbered title cannot afford to be viewed as a perpetual failure.
Instead, they committed to attempt and turn this sad state of affairs into a memorable (marketing and otherwise) experience:
The world (and game) revamp is both reflected in the game’s story (with the usual quality of Square Enix FMVs abundant in the storytelling) as well outside the game, with failed version 1.0 remaining subscription-free for what seems like an eternity in MMORPGs, players offered permanent incentives to subscribe for as little as three months with the Legacy system, and a vision being slowly put together by the game’s new producer/director, Naoki Yoshida.
No one in their right mind would ever foresee a project involving Electronic Arts to do anything of the sort. In fact, Warhammer Online has been in “autopilot†status for a long time now, and even the future Star Wars: The Old Republic content will cut down significantly its production values, abolishing class quests entirely in favour of just two faction storylines overall.
In terms of funding, with Square Enix’s financials not being at their prime, this endeavour has certainly cost the company some millions it did not want to have to spend. However, as a “brand-repairing†exercise, the cost is not that large. As an added bonus, if FFXIV: ARR performs decently well, it will offer to Square Enix the capability to actually recuperate its investment in a matter of months, or a year. Provided of course the subscription numbers stay strong, which brings us to the next point…
The “Million+ subscriptions†scenario – Can it ever be achieved?
One million. This is a number which, before World of Warcraft came along, could only be described as an “out of the question†scenario for many fledgling MMORPG games. After the “WoW era†came along, suddenly achieving such numbers seemed to be within the grasp of any decent game on the planet. After all, a naïve publisher or developer could have forecasted, if Blizzard is able to pull several millions, why can’t “we†manage one?
Reality in most cases was not as forgiving. There have been many games which tried, and failed, to sustain a meaningful numbers of subscriptions in the past 5 years or so. Ranging from games with theoretically strong IP behind them (Star Wars: The Old Republic, Warhammer Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and others) to aspiring efforts by veterans or relative newcomers to the MMORPG scene (Age of Conan, Tera, Aion). Many tried, ultimately everyone failed.
It has been discussed quite often in the past few years, but several games were originally developed under the subscription concept. In fact, in the majority of the cases, the companies behind an MMORPG vehemently denied it operating under a different model (“Cash shop / micro-transactions / “Free to Playâ€â€) until the week they announced that different model.
So why FFXIV: ARR could do better when so many tried their luck, and ultimately gave up their noble goals to sustain a percentage of subscribed population making them, as companies, happy?
Normally, we would examine EVE Online here. It is a case where a “niche†game has managed to sustain and expand its player base admirably over the years, and the company behind it has also managed to build a fruitful relationship of trustworthiness with its players.
However, there is no need to do that, since Square Enix actually does have a game in circulation even today, before FFXIV: ARR came along. And its name is, Final Fantasy XI.
Final Fantasy XI shares some of the attributes FFXIV: ARR has (namely, cross-platform play, with PC / PS2 and Xbox360 versions offering players access to the same worlds without restrictions in community interaction), but could also be dubbed a “niche†game in itself.
While artistic style, music, and other elements did in fact point to a Final Fantasy numbered title (which incidentally has been the most profitable FF game of Square Enix ever), several elements of FF XI could not exactly be dubbed as offering “an easy learning curveâ€, at least in its earlier iterations.
Regardless, with all its barriers of entry, it surpassed the very respectable 500,000 subscribers mark in its lifetime, probably turning several other MMORPG publishers and developers relatively green with envy.
Here are some factors which can significantly contribute towards FFXIV: ARR “magic million†number:
Multiplatform, and then some: FFXIV: ARR launches on PC and PS3, with PS3 being nowadays an aged console, however boasting a very impressive install base of over 95 million consoles worldwide. PS3 has no MMORPGs to speak of, and although such a genre is traditionally PC oriented, the consoles’ install base is nothing to sneer at. PS4 version, which should be out quite shortly after the console release (3-5 months could be a good estimate) and provide a very welcome level of graphic detail ought to further help things roll in Square Enix’s way.
A “flight to qualityâ€: Not everyone is a fan of “Pay-to-win†games, or micro-transactions in general. As long as Square Enix understands that content is king, and players engaged in the game do not lose interest (due to lack of updates, or lack of QA, or lack of things to do in general), the odds are that they will continue playing for a variable period of time which could well stretch into months or years.
FFXI: A percentage of FFXI players will migrate to FFXIV: ARR. At some point of time –although I would not expect this to be soon, seeing that FFXI received its latest expansion pack fairly recently, the company might officially end support for FFXI once FFXIV: ARR gets its bearings right.
The Asian Factor: Japan is a coveted target market for FFXIV: ARR, naturally. The game seems to already “click†with gamers in the land of the rising sun, and launching in China after the international release –although Chinese players will not be on the same servers- does not hurt the game’s “million chances†one bit.
Accessibility First: FFXIV: ARR seems to have taken great pain to welcome new players aboard, granting them this “sense of progress†very rarely seen in recent MMORPGs of any shape or form. Even Final Fantasy fans who have only played console single player iterations of the series may find themselves tempted to try out the game. The brand may hold less sway in 2013, but we wouldn’t be having the same discussion if the game was called “Knights of Eorzea†instead, created by ObscureGames.
That’s all for today. Stay tuned on the blog for the next articles to come in the next few days, provided you enjoy this kind of reading, of course!
Sunday, July 14th:
- Lies, damn lies, and statistics – How does number-crunching help optimise an MMORPG?
- People who know their game – FFXIV: ARR appealing to MMO veterans
Article follows (unformatted)
Lies, damn lies, and statistics – How does number-crunching help optimise an MMORPG?
You are being watched. We all are. Before your mind starts drifting towards fancy surveillance agency acronyms, however (NSA, FBI, or what have you), I should warn you that we’re not talking about this manner of surveillance. In the context of being an MMORPG player, however, you –me, everybody really- are being watched, probably in a degree you haven’t stopped and thought about.
There is an impressive wealth and breadth of information that is usually silently collected, logged or extrapolated based on numbers, in all MMORPGs in existence. This data collection may at times (especially in beta periods) tax the client or the server more than it should, making gameplay feel slower or less responsive than usual.
Imagine if one action your character took, one single ability used on an enemy of yours, created some dozens of logging lines. What we, the players see in our combat log does not resemble the information the developers can have in their hands.
Usually, number-crunching affects long-term development and features of a MMORPG game, but this is not always the case. A development team can trust hard numbers much more than user sentiments, so if they saw, for instance, that 95% of all parties attempting the Ifrit storyline quest at level 20 died a horrible death in 10’’, they would proceed to adjusting this in a minor patch.
If something had gone really amiss, such as Ifrit killing all groups with a Gladiator player in them because of a bug, that fact would be reflected in the numbers quite universally, as well –and probably be scheduled for a fix in an emergency patch.
Why this is relevant to FFXVI: ARR, you ask? Several threads exercising vocal criticism can be very neatly summed up in an Excel worksheet of numbers.
Players from Europe are crying foul regarding the non-existence of proper European servers in European soil. I am inclined to agree with this complaint, mainly because I view Europe as an important market which actually gets its own editions of the game (English, French, German, too!), but in a blatant cost-saving or complexity-reducing exercise, Square Enix has decided to bundle all of EU players to Canada, along with their North American brethren.
Lack of responsiveness has been particularly talked about during the beta period, despite this issue being only indirectly linked to ping times or latency. It seems that parts of the infrastructure (instanced content more than open world servers) feels the strain in some parts and probably responds in a non-instant manner to the player. In other cases, the server needs to send a result to the client before the client will illustrate the result. Try jumping from somewhere relatively high, and watch your character be hurt from fall damage. It won’t happen instantly, though.
Even class balance and battle skills most often hinge on numbers collected and analysed. Did you ever believe that someone in an MMORPG company made the call to “Reduce damage generated by Backstab by 15% and decrease its cool-down by one second†out of some personal, dark, masochistic way of living who had him obsessing with numbers every waking second of his life?
Of course you didn’t.
We definitely know that all sorts of data are being collected, and to refer to the problems or issues mentioned above more directly, data such as ping times per hour of the day per country of the client / player, or percentage in % of players who were burnt to a crisp by Ifrit’s ground fires, or system load of instance servers, or damage numbers per encounter and per class, are really quite easy to collect and analyse further.
Now, according to the severity of the findings (remember, numbers do not lie or exaggerate themselves, while frustrated human beings in a message board can and will do both), the data collector (in our case Square Enix) can decide to make any change they consider appropriate.
In an ideal world, they would take the plunge and establish a small European datacentre, and patch future versions of the client to be more independent or synchronise better between animations and actions, by needing less server interaction… And then of course, make all magic classes as overpowered as Warlocks used to be in World of Warcraft for insane amounts of time.
Okay, scratch that last “ideal world solutionâ€, it’s only fair for me really, who likes to play caster classes.
Regardless, remember – Unless you get an explicit “We will not consider this change†when posting feedback, the developers usually have an ******* of numbers to back your claims up, or shoot them down unceremoniously. Whether they will take action on an issue perceived as “serious†by the community is another matter, but numbers tend to steer them to the right direction.
If a balance / ping / gameplay request can be corroborated by numbers, it has a much better chance to be addressed, or at least officially responded to in a proper manner.
People who know their game – FFXIV: ARR appealing to MMO veterans
We’ll take this a notch higher now, and put ourselves in a roleplaying situation. No nurse outfits shall be involved, fear not.
Let’s assume that you are outside, drinking a coffee, or beer, or tomato juice, or whatever makes you feel good, with your friend, Mike. You have seen coverage of FFXIV: ARR and perhaps even have played the beta, but he hasn’t, mostly because he’s not interested in the game.
Mike used to play World of Warcraft for some years and eventually stopped. Perhaps he had a look at some other MMORPGs, such as Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, or Guild Wars 2. All in all, he has spent quite some time of his life gathering EXP, “farming†points or gear, and admiring his various characters at “end game†status, chock-full with relics, epics, legendaries, and the like.
Now, you might wonder –as I did-, why would an MMO veteran find FFXIV: ARR appealing? At first glance, there aren’t many arguments to begin with.
You may find yourselves straining to think of that single gemstone, that single undisputed feature of FFXIV: ARR that ought to make people sit up and listen. SWTOR had “fully voiced storylinesâ€, Guild Wars 2 had “No holy trinity and PVPâ€, and Rift had, well, rifts… There ought to be something you can mention.
If Mike has any former experience with Final Fantasy games, your job just became a lot easier. Chocobos, Magitek, and some classes or jobs such as Dragoon, Black Mage, et al should instantly make Mike interested to hear more.
But…what happens if Mike was never a major Final Fantasy fan? How to begin capturing his interest?
There is a way: Utter these magic words for a critical +100% effect:
“So, I played / watched a video / read about FFXIV: ARR and it seems a very good MMOâ€.
The hardest part is over. A myriad of small details can follow, and Mike can be quite tempted to try –if not buy- the game after that.
In all fairness, if Mike is transfixed on playing a game with a 1’’ GCD and using his keyboard as a piano, out of the so many concurrent actions he’d have to do, I suspect he will be disappointed. He will call you names and insist that you wasted his time with a “game for casuals†(gasp)!
However, if Mike is a fan of the genre, an MMO player who just wouldn’t subscribe –again- to WoW because he’s sick of its concept after spending some years of his life, eager to see something different, a Final Fantasy world coming to life as a quite polished MMO –for an unreleased game, offering cross-platform play and easily playable from the comfort of his couch…
He’s hooked. And you know what? I have friends matching Mike’ profile 100%. Even if they appear hard to get “An online Final Fantasy? How idiotic that must beâ€, they will surely sense this feeling of world immersion within less than an hour.
If, after all that, they do not want to play the game, you’re out of luck. Best start looking for some new friends =).
For reference, the friends I talked to about the game did progress quite much in the Beta Phase 3 and plan to play on release, despite having had no connection with FFXIV or ARR 30 days back. I think this is a moderately good sign for the general appeal of the game to these so-called veterans. What do you think?
That’s all for today. Stay tuned on the blog for the next articles to come in the next few days, provided you enjoy this kind of articles, of course!
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Monday, July 15th:
- Challenges of the marketplace – Is it necessary for a game to use micro-transactions to succeed, in both the western and eastern markets?
Article follows (unformatted)
Challenges of the marketplace – Is it necessary for a game to use micro-transactions to succeed, in both the western and eastern markets?
This topic is controversial, and rightly so. At this point of time, seeds of confusion seem to have been sown all around the brains and hearts of MMORPG stakeholders. And by stakeholders, of course I do not refer to the players – or at least only to them.
Thinking about the games development food chain rationally, we could draw the conclusion that there’s an awful lot of stakeholders, interested parties, individuals or organisations invested in the success (or lack thereof, where the competition is concerned) of a game.
Their investment differs greatly, with publishers bankrolling the project more often than not, developers turning it from a concept into a tangible product, and consumers just feeling aligned –or not- with their favourite brand or company, but it’s still there in all cases.
Some stakeholders could be the following, for a typical game:
- The publisher: The fact that this stakeholder is mentioned first has its own special significance. Many players may detest, abhor or despise (see what I did?) …certain industry behemoths (A random Electronic Arts executive must be suffering from a bad case of the hiccups right now), but there is a solid logic behind this love/hate relationship.
As budgets of newer and most polished games skyrocket, publishers become much more risk-averse and stick to tried and true formulas of profit. You can now imagine that funding the next expansion pack of an “industry leading†FPS is a safe bet for a publisher, while funding something that might be found appealing to players donating on Kickstarter would never be quite the same ordeal.
- The development studio & employees: Nobody really likes to be involved in a major failure, let alone be coerced into heavy drinking, substance abuse or worse, just to be able to remain sane during their crunch times at work.
However, although several examples exist, both inside the MMORPG genre and elsewhere, where developers just miscalculate or fall short of their community’s expectations, quite often they are not to blame for a game’s descent into the abyss.
There is usually a publisher in the equation, pushing the developers to “pack everything up to launch before the Christmas periodâ€, or what have you. Yes, this sort of forced labour can quite often end up being a messy ordeal.
- The competitors: You do not really believe that when a leading, say, FPS developer / publisher hears about another FPS falling short of expectations, they will burst into tears and send official letters of condolences, chocolates and flowers to their competitors, do you? Yes, you’d better not.
Competitors are indirect stakeholders in any major release of a game, but they are actually secretly hoping for the game to fail. Carry on now.
- The rest of the food chain: Other parts of the industry may feel perversely happy (or devastatingly sad) if a certain game does well or not. They may be the manufacturers of the game’s merchandise and see a surge in orders for the New and Improved Action Figure ™. A gaming website seeing their advertising revenue soar because a publisher just increased their advertising budget threefold.
Smaller retailers who just believed their gut and ordered dozens of copies of a game, only to see them sell like hotcakes. Or the girlfriend of the studio head, planning her vacation to Caribbean with the bonus her boyfriend will get any day now. You know. All sorts of people left, right and centre.
- The gamers: Last but not least, people like us. Whether a devoted fan is borderline stalking his favourite gaming company, and knows more about the staff’s personal lives than their spouses do, or just “enjoys games by X companyâ€, it’s important for all of us to see our favourite type of games continue being made.
After all, in a way, throwing a certain amount of money down the drain to buy a sub-par game makes for a universal sinking feeling.
So, competitors and archenemies aside, generally speaking, many people want a given game to do well. That’s the proper thing to want, after all.
There’s a catch, however…
There have been many cases where games, MMORPGs not excluded, have not done well at all. Perhaps the game was released prematurely. Perhaps the budget run out, and the developer was forced to wrap things up more hastily and over a weekend. Perhaps the game was crippled by bugs, and by the time they were resolved, all the players had moved to greener pastures.
MMORPGs are even more sensitive than other genres to the Syndrome of 30 days. If they don’t present a particularly engaging and well-implemented vision in the first month of play, the player(s) can and will abandon them.
Do note, for starters, that this sort of behaviour is persistent despite the monetization model a game may elect to use. A single player game, poorly executed, with frequent crashes and a good percentage of the game delivered in “Day 1 DLC’s†will suffer the same fate with an MMORPG failing to keep its player base engaged and interested.
Of course, the problem is more evident in subscription games, since they have the audacity to ask for recurring payments. A fair proposition, on its own, but it may summon sirens singing of “Rip-off†behaviour if the game is not up to scratch.
As previously discussed, the majority of the MMORPGs aimed to the Western market had been developed with the concept of a subscription in mind, at least until 2010/2011. The last game that launched with great fanfare, a monstrous marketing budget and high hopes in the subscription marketplace was Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Most impressively, even that behemoth succumbed to the so-called “hybrid†model within a matter of months, with its “Free-to-Play†implementation being acutely limited compared to the competition, locking great portions of the game behind either a subscription or micro-transactions.
Considering FFXIV: ARR, and the fact that it wants to continue using a subscription model, things may be looking bleak, so to speak, for the game’s success and longevity. But is this really the case? It’s somewhat more complicated than a mere case of “pros and consâ€, however let’s approach this directly.
Goals and Targets of Free-to-Play or Buy-to-Play implementations
- The company managing the game would like to offer instant gratification to the player base. You are walking idly in the central town, and see a player wearing an awesome armour with a positively frightening two-handed axe.
Fear not! By the powers that be (Among others, Visaâ„¢, MasterCardâ„¢, American Express â„¢ and their brethren) you are able to have this item set for your character within minutes! This is also called “Pay to Winâ€, especially when it yields high quality items that should normally be obtainable through an in-game effort.
- The company actively encourages people to maintain subscriptions, while also offering a part of the game accessible “for free†to the masses. This is the majority of the Western games nowadays, with Rift™ being the latest game attempting this.
Through this “clever ployâ€, dedicated fans of the game will maintain a subscription active, and countless others who are not-that-dedicated will still provide sporadic revenue here and there.
It’s a win-win scenario especially for smaller developers (Rift’s Trion fits that description) or publishers / companies looking to recuperate their investment faster. (EA and Bioware for The Old Republic belong in this category.)
- The company wishes to focus their “shop†to vanity, convenience or temporary benefit items. Guild Wars 2 goes here, and even the almighty World of Warcraft goes here, by selling various pets and other vanity items on its store, having recently declared that they will expand the selection in certain territories and make them buyable in-game as well.
- The company reserves a significant number of features behind a paywall, including functionality features or quest packs, or the ability to retry a dungeon after “a wipeâ€.
Players in that scenario are actually forced to pay, just not through a recurring, flat-fee model, if they want to “experience the game fullyâ€. Various Korean-developed games go here, and a variety of smaller Western games, too.
- The company cannot actively force a player to buy something, since the player is not billed in a recurring fashion. However, the prices of items, add-ons or vanity items are quite specific, generally beginning from $3 or $5, making it quite easy to buy a relatively small number of items or services, and exceed a “normal†$13-15 monthly payment.
Caveats of Free-to-Play or Buy-to-Play implementations
- If a player likes the game, they may spend considerably more money than if they had subscribed to it. However, these “spending sprees†are not scheduled in advance. Hence, even if a player spends $100 on a given game in July 2013, they might just as well spend $0 for several months after the occasion.
All that being said, where a subscription option still exists, it tends to provide more value for money than “buying game features a la carteâ€.
- MMORPGs have recurring costs, and significant ones all things considered. Datacentres, bandwidth, hardware, IT management, in-game and out-of-game customer support, development, quality assurance, graphic design, music design, art direction, and the list goes on.
A successful MMORPG will be able to provide content on a regular basis, and it needs to be able to pay for a small army of expenses in terms of infrastructure and staff.
Operating with any model other than a subscription one provides less clarity on projected revenue, and forces the hand of game developers to create “shiny new items or shop content†every so often, to lure the fan base into buying just a little something extra.
- A certain community tends to gather around F2P / B2P games. For every 10 players who have decided to pay exactly $0.00 towards playing a game, there are some others (approximately 4) who have decided to pay a particular amount of money.
The players who opt to pay zero for a game with running costs and infrastructure will also spend significant amounts of time attempting to “farm†their way out of paying. “Farming†perpetually is not exactly a fun activity. The players opting to operate inside a game like this are most often “rude and abrasiveâ€, to remain polite.
This is not always the case, however a certain attitude tends to exist in F2P / B2P games’ communities, even if they are not MMORPGs.
- Content suffers. Before attempting to convince the world that “F2P games are doing just fineâ€, consider for a second how many of these games have zero / extremely limited avenues of monetization.
Guild Wars 2 is unlikely to ever get an expansion pack. However, expansion packs are the standard-bearers of content in MMORPGs. A company can, and will, gradually introduce, say, a new dungeon here, a new area there, and 5 new daily quests beyond the corner.
But a company will not introduce a couple of continents, an expanded selection of many new areas, some new classes or races, new abilities, new mechanics in general, significant volumes of content with a high production quality, in the form of patches alone.
They can call them “digital expansion packs†as Star Wars: The Old Republic has done with its first one, but they don’t have the depth usually associated with one. This particular one is not priced expensively, but its content is so limited, that it’s unable to keep busy “even the most casual of players†for more than two weeks. Hence it should not be called an expansion pack at all.
Where FFXIV: ARR stands
The main objective and purpose of an MMORPG is to keep its players engaged, active and glad to be a part of its world, at all times. While playing styles can and will differ, with different players showing a preference to PvE, others swearing by the adrenaline rushes PvP offers to them, yet others deciding to embrace a merchant’s role and craft items and spend their days and nights in the market…
The most notable failure of past attempts of nowadays “Free-to-Play-in-theoryâ€, or rather “micro-transactions fueled†games is incorrect world and activities design. Content that is bite-sized and can be consumed by the players in the course of a week, lacking any replay value, is incorrect design to boot, and does never rationally justify the price of a subscription.
However, games which are funded in bursts, and occupy their own designers, artists, and gameplay engineers, attempting to create new cash shop offerings for the players, in order for the developers to…get their salaries paid, win their bread and all, more often than not cannot provide content in the magnitude, scope, or quality needed for them to really succeed. They can "remain open / up and running" but will never become truly successful.
Blizzard may have shaped the MMORPG genre in the past 9 years, but they have done this right more than anything else: Keep their game updated, and the game’s content plentiful.
If FFXIV: ARR walks down the same path, it has all the potential in the world to do great. If, on the other hand, it delivers too little, too late to keep players busy, immersed and happy, the Fates shall not be that favourable and will not hesitate to deliver the game into Ifrit’s inferno for all eternity.
For all the analysis of this article and the factors “for†and “against†micro-transactions and the like, it boils down to just that little paragraph above.
That’s all for today. Stay tuned on the blog for the next articles to come in the next few days, provided you enjoy this kind of articles, of course!
Tuesday, July 16th:
- From hardcore to casual: A gamer’s (and consumer’s) journey through MMORPG land
- Demographics of FFXIV: ARR target group
Article follows (unformatted)
From hardcore to casual: A gamer’s (and consumer’s) journey through MMORPG land
There isn't a universal meaning for what someone may mean as “a hardcore gamerâ€. Or at the very least, there isn't a universal quantification of the term.
In my eyes, people who spend over 8 hours a day playing a particular game (MMORPGs are infamous for their time sink effects, at least the good ones have caused many a player wonder “When the f**k did 5 hours pass? What do you mean it’s 3 a.m.?!â€) are comfortably sitting at the round table of hardcore gamers.
Then again, if you actually ask them if they consider themselves hardcore, they most probably will say “noâ€. In their eyes, hardcore is only someone who plays from dawn to dusk, and probably participates to e-sports leagues and such.
To someone else’s eyes, even a person playing 2-3 times a week a game devoting 2-3 hours at a time may be considered hardcore. Why, they could spend their time productively at… the gym, someone –not me, I swear! - might argue.
There are several interpretations. We should just consider a typical case which could be considered hardcore by the majority’s account:
A person playing a given day most of the days of the week, for an amount of time which is definitely higher than 1-2 hours at a time. They may participate in PvE raids, or train in endless PvP arena matches, but they’re dedicated to the cause.
They’re also increasingly absent from Square Enix’s best target group:
Long-time Final Fantasy fans (More about the target group at the second part of this article).
Consider this: Regardless of someone being classified a “geek†or a “jock†in U.S. high-school standards, they were bound to be able to –it’s another discussion entirely if they did- spend more time on average playing computer games at that age.
Student years are also infamous for their wild partying, high levels of alcohol consumption…and for the gamers of us, endless burn-out sessions of our favourite game(s) at the time.
However, there’s a realisation to be made at this point. Time able to be devoted to gaming is considerably less as gamers (and consumers, at the same time), grow up.
Just to set this straight from the very beginning, I do not mean that anyone over the age of X cannot play games. Far from it, I certainly wish I will have the mental and physical resolve to play games for many decades to come.
But the fact is, it’s quite easy to find oneself in a situation where gaming for 50 hours a week can’t really happen, or at least happen every week of the year.
Day-to-day obligations, including work, university –at higher years especially-, family, friends who we’d like to drink a beer with every now and then, all take their toll at our dream schedule of gaming time per week.
Let’s use an example from my student years: Once, me and my flatmates (most of them were far more obsessed with World of Warcraft than I was, back then in 2007 when The Burning Crusade launched, it burnt us as well), run a “levelling instance marathonâ€.
I believe we were running dungeons non-stop for a good deal of 12 hours, and had generally played, gone out, eaten etc. for some 24 hours before that, so at roughly 36 hours awake, and with our eyes obviously strained from the ordeal, we all collapsed at 7 p.m. and slept this off.
(Fun fact: On exactly that day, an annoying neighbour decided to file an abuse report at 8 p.m. accusing us of making “excessive noiseâ€. The report concluded that a couple living inside the neighbour’s flat was having sex at the time, and he thought “it was our flatâ€, as he usually thought. It was quite hilarious for all our flat to be asleep at 8 p.m., yet it happened. The fine the annoying neighbour got served him right!)
The reason I mention this is because it wasn’t particularly planned. We just felt like it and did it. Today, if I ever wanted to run a similar marathon, the steps I would have to take would broadly be the following:
- Inform the people I’d like to participate at least a week in advance, to schedule it.
- Schedule it within a weekend, of course. Fat chance of pulling it off on a weekday.
- Ensure people could indeed attend.
- Run the “eventâ€. Then proceed to not repeating it. For like a year at least.
There are many days where sheer fatigue, physical or mental or both, prevents several people from even gaming a little bit. They’d prefer to spend such days moving as least as possible, eat a pizza and watch their favourite movie. And they would be right to do so.
The reality is that people in the primary target group of Square Enix, people like us, to a large degree cannot don the mantle of the “hardcoreâ€. At least not if we compare ourselves with the year Final Fantasy VII or VIII came out (at the very least). Now, about that target group…
Demographics of FFXIV: ARR target group
The target group for FFXIV: ARR is quite broad, in reality, and includes console players (in two separate consoles, one of which “next-genâ€), PC players, MMORPG players, random people who might fall in love with the game, or play it ‘cause a friend nudged them to play it, and last but not least, Final Fantasy fans.
Now, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that inside that target group, there will be a very small percentage of 15-year olds. You might love or hate the fact, but it’s still a fact.
Why is that? Considering that people tend to develop their long-lasting loves from somewhere in the age of 7-9 (kids as young as 5 will grow bored of something and rush for ‘the next big thing’ pretty soon), there haven’t been enough Final Fantasy games out there, enough hype bombardment out there, for such an age group to become a franchise fan.
Exceptions always apply, but I would frankly expect to ask a random sample of 15 year olds what might their favourite RPG game be and get “None. LoL rules though!†or “Dunno, does LoL count?†as possible answers.
RPG games in general are facing a sort of transformation, to the point of creative decline in the past decade. Do not get me wrong, we have seen and enjoyed excellent releases, surely we have, but their actual number, well, that’s another story.
It’s not a genre-specific phenomenon, either. As production values soar, game quantity goes down the drain. See what happened to Final Fantasy XV a.k.a. Versus XIII for 7 years, and that’s not the only example.
So, long-story short, younger fans of the series are significantly less than older fans are. 15-year olds would actually have had the chance to get acquainted with the franchise either with the help of a friend or a family member, or with trying, playing and liking –to an extent at least- Final Fantasy XIII or XIII-2.
I hope you’re not wondering “whyâ€. The answer is that the game launched before that would be Final Fantasy XII, some whopping 7 years ago. Yes, that’s a seven. Today’s teenagers were toddlers in some early stage of primary school when the last game before XIII was released.
Is this a fatal blow for the game? Should the developers be worried because they may be unable to indulge the, potentially even more “hardcoreâ€, 15-19 age groups?
Hardly. The true target group is composed by long-time Final Fantasy fans, people who might actually recognise a Chocobo for a Chocobo, not mistake it for a…lama, as I heard a foolish younger friend of mine call my amazing Kweh! (From beta phase 3.)
In fact, and the precedent of Final Fantasy XI will further aid to that direction, FF XIV: ARR may well boast one of the most mature communities for a MMORPG.
Mature not necessarily in age, but in way of thinking as well. I mean, that community even includes insane people who have scheduled updates to their blog in the middle of the summer, on a daily basis, even though the content posted is certainly not bite-sized!
Right?! Imagine how crazy this target group is, now.
On the bright side, I still haven’t seen people calling others “f*cking noobs†or call them to “L2P FFS lolâ€. Oh, I’m sure this will not be avoided in the future, but well…
Can I be honest with you? Having spent the time I've spent in various MMOs in the 2003-2013 decade…
…I expected much worse. Much, much worse!
That’s all for today. Stay tuned on the blog for the next articles to come in the next few days, provided you enjoy this kind of articles, of course!
Wednesday, July 17th:
- Community interaction: Lessons from Naoki Yoshida
- Initiating the Uninitiated – The importance of group quests
Article follows (unformatted)
Community Interaction: Lessons from Naoki Yoshida
This article series would be severely incomplete if it did not mention the man behind FFXIV: ARR and the brand reparation task Square Enix set themselves to accomplish. Naoki Yoshida is the irrefutable architect behind the game’s eventual success or failure, and he has coordinated his teams in a quite astounding manner since late 2010.
Yoshida (colloquially known as “Yoshi-Pâ€), where FFXIV was concerned, was certainly not granted a king’s throne and a kingdom to quietly rule at a time of peace. His appointment was more of a war-related affair.
Back in late 2010, with the original release of the game being entangled in a web of shortcomings, pitfalls and design problems, situation looked dire. He was brought into the battle of Waterloo and ordered to stop the enemies’ advance, muster the army’s strength, and turn the scale of the war around, if you will.
This might seem to be an exaggeration at a first glance. Yet, if you consider merely the features Yoshida brought into the original release of FFXIV (v. 1.0), just to bring the game up to his personal standards, you can bet that he was not lying when he stated that he slept very little to not at all:
Completely rebalanced all stats and gear
Completely remade the battle system
Personal chocobos
Added a Materia system to let players customize and optimize their gear
Added a job system that lets players turn basic classes into advanced Final Fantasy staples like Monk and White Mage
Revamped crafting
Added many sidequests
Added three epic boss battlesAdded four instanced raid dungeons, for mid- and high-level players
On top of that, he had to coordinate with the design, implementation and technical testing of FFXIV: ARR. This certainly seems daunting, and a quite Herculean task, reviving a game from the underworld it had plunged itself into, and at the same time working towards the renewed client, engine, and feature sets found in FFXIV: ARR. Who said high profile employees have their job cut out for them?
The impressive aspect of Yoshida’s reign however is not the fact that he volunteered to forfeit sleep, infuse himself with the spirit of the Primals and never rest until he had “fixed this messâ€, no.
It’s the fact that, as of today, he has written no less than forty seven Letters from the Producer to FFXIV’s community, and delivered 6 live Q&A sessions of considerable length in video format.
Those are just the activities directly referenced on the game’s forums. The hundreds of posts he has made and all the external events (interviews, Q&A’s, presentations, et al) are not tallied towards these totals.
Working at a large gaming corporation, it would not be inappropriate to compare Naoki Yoshida with Jeff Kaplan or Chris Metzen of Blizzard (and World of Warcraft) fame. However, Yoshida has broken all counters of interactivity with “his†community, being omnipresent at all times, at all requests or questions directed his way.
Regardless of how the game actually ends up being, superb, mediocre, or an absolute flop, Yoshida has already set a quite brightly shining example on “How to interact with a game’s communityâ€.
We’re talking about a game director who regularly –or at least more than once a year, that’s still ‘regularly’ compared to the status quo usually in place- plays (!) the game he’s associated with, and responds to player questions, without such events being advertised far and wide as “events†at all.
And let’s put it bluntly – This sort of extremely open, extraordinarily “by a gamer, for gamers†attitude has helped FFXIV: ARR score an array of points to anyone keeping tabs on it. By now, Yoshi-P has infused the game with his own, personal credibility.
May he be lying blatantly to all the community? The majority of the posts and articles I’ve read in the past few weeks would not believe so. The general consensus is that, if Yoshi-P promises something, he will do his utmost to deliver it. It remains to be seen (“end gameâ€, hey there!), but even the radical transformation FFXIV v. 1.0 underwent is, on itself, a beacon of hope for the future. Of course, the fact that he seems to “get†the decision to use a subscription payment model is only a bonus element.
If all else fails, the guy can always launch his consulting firm, offering to coach traditionally very private and cagey Japanese executives on how to communicate with their audiences.
Initiating the Uninitiated – The importance of group quests
A considerable debate has been stirred in the past few weeks, and especially from the launch of FFXIV: ARR Beta Phase 3 onward, regarding group quests and their necessity / contribution to the game mechanics.
An important element of MMORPGs today (and not just today, since their invention, back in the stone years of Ultima Online or the original Everquest) is the fact that they’re exactly that – massively multiplayer online games.
However, as the sands of time shifted, several games took considerable steps towards isolating the game’s progression from their social aspects.
I can’t help but notice Guild Wars 2 being a very predominant example of this. Dynamic events aside, since the “communal participation†in dynamic events was a combination of luck, time of the day, and levelling zone one found themselves in, the rest of the game pretty much seemed to offer a quite unmemorable, yet entirely solo-friendly, story and progression.
Woe unto the game designer who would try and encourage community interaction or tackling of common issues! Players were reassuringly patted on the back, and told that “should they wishâ€, they could progress all the way to “the endgame™†all on their own.
Then again, if we exclude “the endgameâ„¢â€, that was the exact same task one could accomplish in The Witcher series of games. In Dragon Age. In Mass Effect. In Baldur’s Gate. And so on and so forth.
What is the point of an MMORPG treated as a single player game? Who might benefit from treating it like so? I am already imagining the response:
“Certain players may not feel comfortable in social situations or people interaction. They should be provided with ample chance to progress in the game without any artificial barriers raised around them.â€
Really?
Who exactly has believed and endorsed this tomfoolery? In case you didn’t know, MMORPGs are hardly the epitome of socialising. Yes, guilds –or Free Companies as they’re called in FFXIV: ARR- may exist, yes, there is a party system, and yes, people can play together.
But this is a far cry from calling a group quest “an artificial barrierâ€. There’s no intrinsic need to perform extreme degrees of socialising, even under the context of a group quest. Duty finder makes such tasks even more straightforward:
Are you a person who doesn’t enjoy, or does not have the attitude / capacity to enjoy social interaction? Perfect! Here’s a patented Three Steps to Finishing a Group Quest® approach for you:
Use duty finder and find a group for the quest.
Enter quest. Optionally say “hey†when you begin it.
Finish quest successfully, and leave. Profit!
Not so hard, now, was it? Actually, for the relatively fewer people who might enjoy group content, this could also (hard to believe, but bear with me) prove to be a positive experience! Yes, it’s amazing really, but a good portion of MMORPG players do tend to lure their own friends in, or make friends within the game. I know that this is the Devil’s talk, and vow to never again talk about such sinful issues in the future.
Woe unto the game developer who attempts to harbour a community feeling by gently encouraging players to work together towards a common goal! This wicked man, or band of men, should summarily proceed to Ifrit’s Ninth Hell and burn for all eternity… Or should they?
That’s all for today. Stay tuned on the blog for the next articles to come in the next few days, provided you enjoy this kind of articles, of course!
Thursday, July 18th:
- An all-encompassing battle system: Challenge Accepted
- Flair and nostalgia: Satisfying (and converting) Final Fantasy fans of old
Article follows (partially formatted)
An all-encompassing battle system: Challenge Accepted
Quote:
The sky is dark, yet an amount of starlight manages to find its way to your feet. Lacking official training in areas which never interested you, such as tracking, or silent movement, you stride forward carefully. The derelict building stands defiantly before you. How many souls perished on these very grounds? You knew that the objective of the Grand Company mission was held in the basement.
After so many years, someone decided to put this place to the torch, finally. Which perverted mind might keep an elder Marlboro as a pet? Certainly, these naturalists, these botanists seemed to viciously protect and defend any species as their “brethrenâ€. But you knew better than that, you knew that beasts and plants would never tip the scale to their favour, no matter what a guild of lunatics proclaimed.
Marlboros become a menace if left unchecked, if left to grow. When they are younger, they actively attempt to sap the life out of small animals with their deadly c**ktail of poison, and then consume them whole. When they are older, it’s quite natural to them to escalate their attacks to all humanoid species. They seem to ignore lalafells, however, possibly because they cannot easily sate their nutritional needs. Roegadyn are at the other end of the spectrum, sadly.
As you have entered the abandoned farmhouse, you notice planks of rotten wood all around you, and several bones littering the floor. Some of them are so large, they could only belong to a horse, a large chocobo, or… You gulp. A roegadyn.
The path to the kitchen is dark and the musty smell unpleasant, penetrating your nostrils on every breath you take.
At last, you made your way to the cellar stairs. The iron door screeches as you unbar it and pry it open. After a few, short steps, you find yourself in a derelict room, once used for storage, but relegated to an elaborate cage for a while now.
The smell has grown tenfold in intensity, churning up your insides. You boldly move forward and start casting a Fire spell. The spell hits its target and the elder Marlboro seems to silently scream in pain. Before you know it, it has pointed its many tentacles towards you, and spit a volley of poisonous liquids your way.
You continue casting tirelessly, switching to Blizzard spells to cool your mind and regain your mental strength every so often, then continue to burn the abomination with fire. Fire is doubly familiar to you right now. Apart from your mind enabling you to cast it, your skin also feels as if it’s on fire. You understand that if this keeps up much longer, your lungs, your skin, your entire body will betray you.
Determined to banish the monster once and for all, gathering all your strength, and focusing your mind so intensely you can feel your entire being attuned to your magical energy, you take a few steps back, look again at the Marlboro, and gently whisper:
Meteor.
The primal fires of creation, the breath of the universe have finally attended to your aid. The Marlboro is burning from tentacle to tentacle, emitting sounds which you interpret as its deathly shrieks of desperation.
It is finally over, but you are still poisoned. No matter. Back in Gridania, the Conjurers ought to take good care of you.
Oh, the sacrifices you make for the Order… The Matron Nophica had better keep you will comfortable in the afterlife. With a bitter smile still on your lips, you sigh and teleport away.
After so many years, someone decided to put this place to the torch, finally. Which perverted mind might keep an elder Marlboro as a pet? Certainly, these naturalists, these botanists seemed to viciously protect and defend any species as their “brethrenâ€. But you knew better than that, you knew that beasts and plants would never tip the scale to their favour, no matter what a guild of lunatics proclaimed.
Marlboros become a menace if left unchecked, if left to grow. When they are younger, they actively attempt to sap the life out of small animals with their deadly c**ktail of poison, and then consume them whole. When they are older, it’s quite natural to them to escalate their attacks to all humanoid species. They seem to ignore lalafells, however, possibly because they cannot easily sate their nutritional needs. Roegadyn are at the other end of the spectrum, sadly.
As you have entered the abandoned farmhouse, you notice planks of rotten wood all around you, and several bones littering the floor. Some of them are so large, they could only belong to a horse, a large chocobo, or… You gulp. A roegadyn.
The path to the kitchen is dark and the musty smell unpleasant, penetrating your nostrils on every breath you take.
At last, you made your way to the cellar stairs. The iron door screeches as you unbar it and pry it open. After a few, short steps, you find yourself in a derelict room, once used for storage, but relegated to an elaborate cage for a while now.
The smell has grown tenfold in intensity, churning up your insides. You boldly move forward and start casting a Fire spell. The spell hits its target and the elder Marlboro seems to silently scream in pain. Before you know it, it has pointed its many tentacles towards you, and spit a volley of poisonous liquids your way.
You continue casting tirelessly, switching to Blizzard spells to cool your mind and regain your mental strength every so often, then continue to burn the abomination with fire. Fire is doubly familiar to you right now. Apart from your mind enabling you to cast it, your skin also feels as if it’s on fire. You understand that if this keeps up much longer, your lungs, your skin, your entire body will betray you.
Determined to banish the monster once and for all, gathering all your strength, and focusing your mind so intensely you can feel your entire being attuned to your magical energy, you take a few steps back, look again at the Marlboro, and gently whisper:
Meteor.
The primal fires of creation, the breath of the universe have finally attended to your aid. The Marlboro is burning from tentacle to tentacle, emitting sounds which you interpret as its deathly shrieks of desperation.
It is finally over, but you are still poisoned. No matter. Back in Gridania, the Conjurers ought to take good care of you.
Oh, the sacrifices you make for the Order… The Matron Nophica had better keep you will comfortable in the afterlife. With a bitter smile still on your lips, you sigh and teleport away.
Quiz: Having read the short story above, which of the elements described do not exist in FFXIV: ARR?
a) Marlboros?
b) Conjurers?
c) Personal Limit Breaks? <---
Yes, you guessed right! This is a hotly debated feature, and should the game ever accommodate it, it would allow for stories of personal bravery and conflict to become ever more abundant, both in regards to available lore and the layers of strategy introduced.
I do not share the opinion of certain members of the FFXIV: ARR community regarding the battle system being “a failed oneâ€. It’s a solid system that fulfils its purpose at this point of time. That is not to say it’s perfection impersonated.
Battle systems continuously evolve in MMORPGs, however. There is hardly any major patch to be found, in any game of the genre, where abilities, cool-downs and whatnot are tampered with. Part II of this article series discusses the capabilities number-crunching and logs provide to development teams.
This is the main reason one can remain optimistic about “concerns†voiced about the battle system. Now, if you expect the global cool-down (GCD) to drop to 1.0 second, you will be sorely disappointed. FFXIV: ARR is aimed to controller-wielding players as well (In PS3, PC if they prefer it, and PS4 in the future), so drastic modifications on this mechanism would not be expected to make their appearance.
Of course, it is quite conceivable that eventually GCD may drop to 2.0 seconds or thereabouts, since FFXIV: ARR developers have already confirmed “it drops under 2’’ in certain scenariosâ€. Skills can, and most probably will, be tweaked accordingly, either having their individual properties adjusted, or excluded from GCD altogether.
Let’s get it out there: Final Fantasy XI fans, people seeing requests of yours calling Square Enix to “slow down†elements of the game, combat included, you are making a grave mistake. It’s not that fun to have to endure through endless combat rounds just to kill an “Incredibly Tough†mob with a full party, out in the world. Sorry, but this is the way things are.
In raids or instanced dungeons, however, the story changes. Longer battles usually mean harder battles, as the instance / raid boss has the chance to wear out the players and decimate their resources. The addition of personal limit breaks and party combos would greatly increase the tactical element in the grander fights of the game, and would be quite welcome.
Regardless – If the numbers show that the system is not working correctly, or as intended, it can and will be properly adjusted. Consider how many things were in a limbo state in FFXIV 1.0 before the “new team†took things over. Consider how many things changed in just a few patches.
Understand that if they want to make modifications, they would first need to have a significant sample of lv. 40+ or lv. 50 players using their skills to overcome certain barriers of difficulty. Remember that numbers don’t lie.
Then, get up, go pour yourselves a glass of your favourite drink, sip it, and hope a community of several hundred thousand potential players has not been utterly deceived by a charming development team.
If the development team decides to ignore both numbers and community sentiments in one go, takes none of the above rational actions, and becomes responsible for the battle system somehow sinking the game permanently…
…We can always Kickstart a campaign of several thousand fans, dressed as chocobos with sad faces, to go and camp outside Square Enix’s offices in Tokyo.
That’ll show them, no?
Flair and nostalgia: Satisfying (and converting) Final Fantasy fans of old
There’s something to be said about FFXIV: ARR’s world design. It’s most definitely screaming “Final Fantasy†even from the 10 first minutes someone spends in the game.
Everything works the way you’d expect it to: Hop on a rental chocobo or hire a chocobo porter, and you hear yet-another-remix of the infamous chocobo theme. Get your own personal chocobo, and – that was a surprise-, you are graced with yet another chocobo remix to keep you company!
The music is… … …
Where were we? Ah, the music! Definitely one of the strong points of the game. In certain cases, the fact that Square Enix does not contract staff on a single project basis, but rather keeps on retainer / occupied on multiple projects notable professionals such as artists or music composers, tends to show.
The world is also designed intelligently, and with a certain amount of flair. Since the greater part of the Final Fantasy fans of older games are now at their twenties (at the very least), the underlying scenery and atmosphere tends to bring back wonderful memories from years past, when other Final Fantasy games had launched.
When achievements and the like are activated (they already existed in the game, but were not functional up until Beta phase 3), I expect that there will be additional incentives offered to players who enjoy exploring and discovering little bits and pieces of the world.
Oh, and the language and quest stories are definitely Final Fantasy – related. Although by now it’s totally evident that the localisation team of the English version are actual Englishmen. Or Scots. Definitely not Americans, though! Bugger that, mate!
This world design and treats for Final Fantasy fans are a selling point on their own. Granted, as we’ve previously discussed, few 15-year-olds without prior knowledge of the series might care to even try this game, however I can foresee several “single player Final Fantasy†RPG players to check FFXIV: ARR out.
Depending on who you ask, the “last great numbered title†was FFIX. Or FFX. In some cases, FFXII could be mentioned. Even grey-haired veterans of the series will admit that FFXIV: ARR integrates wonderfully many cornerstones of the series.
Apparently, we are not done, either. Future raid instances will feature Bahamut, and the Crystal Tower, an infamous dungeon of times…ancient past, from early Final Fantasy numbered titles.
Does Lightning from FFXIII belong here? This is debatable, and would depend on her implementation. A more reasonable explanation would be that Naoki Yoshida lost some sort of bet, and had to include her in FFXIII – If he won, perhaps he would have forced Lousoix from ARR to make an appearance in XIII-3, instead.
Perhaps the most exciting features still to come include further interaction with chocobos (Chocobo raising? Chocobo racing? Both?), and of course the additional of such iconic places like the Gold Saucer. Would that come with its very own FFVII-themed Cait Sith? Hard to say yet.
At the end of the day, it’s fair to say that someone not being a Final Fantasy series fan, trying the game for the first time in 2013, would be at an unfair disadvantage, for not being able to appreciate all the pieces of the mosaic used to create FFXIV: ARR, from previous games and series lore.
Better late than never – They can catch up on the previous 13 games! Now that…would take some time to accomplish.
That’s all for today. Stay tuned on the blog for the next articles to come in the next few days, provided you enjoy this kind of articles, of course!
Friday, July 19th:
- Interaction out of the game:Keeping an MMORPG always connected to the players
- Luring the less bloodthirsty gamers in - Welcome to FFXIV: ARR’s crafting
Article follows (unformatted)
Interaction out of the game: Keeping an MMORPG always connected to the players
It’s a brave new world. Scratch that, it has been a brave new world for some years now. Companies associated with computer or console games have attempted in several cases to keep their players “engaged†with their titles even when they are not actively playing.
Why bother to form a strategy of the sort? The answer is simple, and it’s loosely related to the marketing principles of loyalty schemes. Consider the case of any store in the world offering you a loyalty card. Why do they offer it?
Firstly, if you keep such a card in your wallet(even if it’s loaded with stamps like some older iterations did, or small stores still do when they do not want to invest to an electronic system), and see it from time to time, it reminds you that you “have to†re-visit. Perhaps the 10th visit will net you a free sandwich, or amassing 1,000 points will provide store credit for a few bucks.
Secondly, even if you do not immediately re-visit, you tend to remember such an establishment more fondly than, say, its competitor which seemingly is manned by humanlike robots, never bothering to say “Good dayâ€, much less so offering you a loyalty scheme.
Thirdly, if you consider the scheme a successful one –and especially if you are offered an additional referral incentive within the scheme somehow-, you are bound to spread the word to friends or relatives. If you pitch this right, they may become interested, visit the store, start amassing loyalty points / stamps / credit, and then continue the circle.
Games which invest to keeping their customers (the gamers) engaged operate in a similar manner, and in certain situations such a makeshift scheme will even form itself without a company actively endorsing it. Notably –and often-, people will always attempt to lure friends, spouses, colleagues or relatives to play together, and if their interests match, this will happen even when no loyalty schemes are explicitly available.
In the MMORPG marketplace in particular, approaches of “out-of-game interaction†tend to vary. The most advanced iterations can boast mobile apps, browser-based character management or access to in-game auction house whilst out of the game.
Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft has offered a considerably broad suite of tools to be used on the go, including remote auction house access, armory and even guild chat. Since mid-2012 the aforementioned suite is also free of charge, increasing its potential user base considerably, since this sort of functionality is not mandatory to play the game.
Square Enix has made a right call in attempting to create an out-of-game community hub of their own, the infamous Lodestone. While its design and user interface up until now seemed to resemble FFXIV v. 1.0 quite much (and this is not a positive fact), the new and improved Lodestone Beta, which became available along with Beta Phase 3 of FFXIV: ARR provides new functionalities and improved features, including multiple character support, character emotions, blogs & comments, a character navigator system similar to WoW’s Armory, and more.
An argument could be made at this point on the necessity of such tools altogether. Perhaps resources ought to be better spent by focusing them on the game itself?
Hardly. While every MMORPG in existence does have a semblance of an official community / forum, very few actually take out of game interaction any further, to their loss.
Imagine if you were able to craft (an activity which is far more involved in FFXIV: ARR compared to other games, however poses no risks if carried out from a mobile screen’s monitor. Nobody will kill you or die due to lack of heals, for instance) while commuting to work or school, for instance.
The recently revamped and updated Lodestone is a step forward, and can conceivably provide an advantage in player interaction to Square Enix in the future, especially if they continue polishing it regularly and adding new features as well. Going the extra mile as a developer / publisher of a MMORPG tends to yield favourable results in the end.
Luring the less bloodthirsty gamers in - Welcome to FFXIV: ARR’s crafting
There’s a typical “crafting scenario†existent in several MMORPGs. Usually…
- You are forced to have an X number of crafting “professions†“occupations†“skills†active at any given time. This is quite usually a small number, such as 2 or 3.
- Your active “professions†frequently include both gathering and actual crafting classes.
- If you are aiming for an optimal result, a character is therefore forced to take up the gathering profession supplying materials for his crafting profession. Although this is not strictly mandatory, and alt characters may help greatly bridge the gap of choice, it is quite common.
I have crafted in several MMORPGs of past times. In World of Warcraft, I had become an Armorsmith, which was a sort of a prestige sub-class for a Blacksmith, back in its early days, when managing to become one did mean a rather lengthy questline and a very significant number of materials “wasted†just to procure the crafted items the quests requested. Of course, later on they changed this whole concept to simply talking to an NPC and becoming an Armorsmith, driving people like me slightly insane, but no matter.
Understandably enough, becoming a miner was the only option to pursue, in order to keep the levelling up costs “manageableâ€. That is not to say that one had no need to pay –and pay handsomely- for raw materials or recipe components, merely to level the profession up. The yield of mining was considerably worse in higher level areas, especially with “mining veins†being shared among players.
In Star Wars: The Old Republic I was also an armortech, the game’s armorsmith of the future. This game tried to go down a different route in regards to professions. Yes, a limit did exist, however, the “mining equivalent†of the game, scavenging, took place in a “metal skinning†fashion, harvesting junk from dead robot enemies.
What was even more important was that one’s spaceship crew could be sent to “missions†designed to fetch you valuable ingredients, while you were occupied with other tasks –or were doing exactly nothing.
While those missions cost money, their actual cost was considerably higher than “mere moneyâ€: They cost time. A high level “mission†could mean your companions sent to it were unavailable for 2 hours at a time. And if the mission failed, as was the case sometimes, they returned empty handed, having cost you both time and money for no profit at all.
Admittedly, FFXIV: ARR seems to have the most promising systems of crafting yet, compared not simply to the MMORPGs mentioned earlier, but generally speaking.
For starters, there are no limits. Much like the combat classes, a character can also become proficient in absolutely every single crafting and gathering class they choose to. The classes, themselves, are quite plentiful, offering a wide diversity of things to gather and craft.
I cannot speak out of vast personal experience, since in Beta Phase 3 I only dabbled in a couple of crafting classes and no gathering yet (since I found the time poorly invested with a character wipe looming), but still, crafting looks to be fun.
Time is definitely not the sole metric differentiating an “easy†to craft item from a “hard†one. There is an array of choices, skills and abilities, that can be used to craft the item, providing players with both a relative freedom of choice (Somewhat different skills may be used to produce somewhat different results) and a degree of skill introduced in the equation.
Combine higher quality base materials with the appropriate skills, and the chance to end up with a “HQ†or “High Quality†variant of the item rises. It makes for a satisfying challenge for both the players looking to spend some “alone time†in the game, and the dedicated crafters who would rather live a mercantile life to the end of their characters’ virtual days.
Improvements in some quality of life areas will be most welcome, once again, especially in the form of a “shortcut†to mass-create several basic items in a queued manner, or the introduction of some gathering-specific quests which will make these professions a tad easier to level up, compared to their crafting equivalents.
But one thing is for certain: If anyone I knew fancied to inform me of “a game where crafters are classes of their own and use crafting rotations, buffs and abilitiesâ€, a couple of years ago, I would probably still be laughing to the absurdity of the idea, imagining a hilariously broken system with a million things going wrong.
I am glad I seem to be proven wrong thus far.
That’s all for today. Stay tuned on the blog for the next articles to come in the next few days, provided you enjoy this kind of articles, of course!
I hope you enjoyed this article. If you'd like to leave a comment, or generally get back to me about it:
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Saturday, July 20th:
- Identity Crisis - Has the MMORPG genre been fundamentally changed with the concept of “MOBAs†in existence?
Article follows (unformatted)
Identity Crisis - Has the MMORPG genre been fundamentally changed with the concept of “MOBAs†in existence?
Where (massively) multiplayer online games are concerned, the status quo has certainly been altered in the last decade.
After World of Warcraft’s all-time high numbers, suddenly creating MMORPGs became quite common, quite mainstream, compared to the obscurity the genre found itself in until the early 00’s.
Some years passed. Several strong brands attempted to challenge World of Warcraft’s dominance. There were certain universes which, lore-wise and as a foundation, offered much more than Warcraft, notably the Warhammer universe, or the Dungeons & Dragons collective universe (Forgotten Realms included).
Ultimately, it became crystal-clear: No, creating new games which lacked clear vision, considerable amounts of resources, a talented development team backing the effort, and a strong brand name, was not a profitable endeavour necessarily. Or at least as profitable as publishers might prefer it to be.
The reasons are many, but can be summed up to horrible project management, miscalculating the needs and skills of their respective community, remaining set on a particular course come hell or high water, dubious quality assurance processes, and of course attempting to compete with a behemoth, where World of Warcraft was concerned, swimming in money and able to freely devote weeks or months of brainstorming for certain features, without the fear or anxiety of financial woes present.
Eventually, both payment models and the very scope of several games changed. Apart from following the “Free-to-Play†route (which has been discussed in previous articles and elsewhere – but this comic strip seems to take the bull by the horns on how such a model truly operates), the very trends of games changed, or seemed to change, in the past few years.
The advent of micro-transactions and impulse purchases, championed by Apples’ AppStore™ and aided by Google’s Android as well as several other “shops†helped fuel a new genre of games on its own, the so-called MOBA.
What is a MOBA? First of all, a funny-sounding acronym, invented to describe something that could only be described as “DotA†before. It stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.
What’s its relation to an MMORPG? None really. It’s infinitely more repetitive. Infinitely more boring. Infinitely more stagnating. But it can be played competitively, like an RTS built to do that (StarCraft™ comes to mind) can.
There have been articles from respectable electronic publications heralding “The death of traditional MMORPGsâ€, using examples of MOBAs as “their successorsâ€. Some other games offering persistent worlds, but not belonging to the RPG genre at all, have also been dubbed “the next big thingâ€. Is this logic sound?
This depends on the viewing angle: If the question of our days is “Will an MMORPG ever reach the population of a medium country playing it, at any given time?†then – The answer is no, no it will not. Role playing games, by their nature, have an appeal which can be realised best with specific audiences.
Certainly, there are competitive elements inside MMORPGs. The desire to rise up in PvP rankings, or the desire to be counted among the select few members of a caste who have successfully brought down a hard PvE encounter. Even the desire certain people link with associating their player names as “quality craftingâ€. There are many cases to be found where people will compete, and will do so gladly.
However, will large-scale communities be formed on account of MMORPG inherent elements? By defining “large-scale†to a few million players worldwide, for the genre as a whole, they will. Still, overthrowing League of Legends’ 32 million registered players, and 5 million concurrent peak players, will simply not happen.
There is a simple reasoning behind this, and this is the age and attitude of players enjoying each genre. A great majority of teenagers will flock to a MOBA type of game, pursuing endlessly instant gratification and a sense of empowerment only quick victories may provide. That is not to state that there are no teenagers enjoying role-playing games, but they belong in a minority, compared to sheer numbers enjoying first-person shooters or MOBAs.
While these arguments may initially sound prejudiced, or biased, this is certainly not the case. Riot, the League of Legends developer, has spent unprecedented amounts of money attempting to both analyse psychologically, and offer a solution to, its community’s behavioural problems. Simply put, players indulging their instant gratification competitive play needs, are not ordinarily well-behaved, orderly or willing to function at higher level.
Response times (in the area of milliseconds, of course) are all that matter. Endless spamming of abilities, fine-tuning of strategies and the dogma of “practice makes perfect†reign over anything else.
Comparing MOBAs or other persistent world games which are not really an RPG with MMORPGs is somewhat offending, since they were meant to cater to quite different audiences. In raw financial terms, publishers and development teams are probably getting their money’s worth out of MOBAs at this point of time…
…But even this landscape is already dominated by industry titans, including Riot, Valve and even Blizzard, who are all launching their own flavours of the instant gratification competitive play arena genre.
Can this ordeal be compared with a player investing hours of his or her time into shaping a character into an avatar of their own, participating in glorious battles against notorious foes? Of course not.
But companies looking to create the “next big thing†luring a couple dozen millions of players to try it out will not find it in MMORPGs, since it can be easily admitted –and proven- that all role playing games in general, massively multiplayer online or single player, cooperative or solo, pen and paper or digital…
…Do have passionate fans, but not 100 million of them.
Can FFXIV: ARR create “A Genre Reborn� - Epilogue
After an array of eight articles thus far, and some 10 days instead of the initially forecasted 8, it is time to complete this series with an epilogue, discussing previous articles summarily.
Can FFXIV: ARR create “A Genre Reborn� This question may appear somewhat deceiving and incoherent, since ARR is not a game forcing its players to play it whilst nude on their respective town or village squares, dancing mad in an attempt to summon Shiva upon the land.
Innovation does exist in this game, however it comes in a form of several little touches around the world, the gameplay and the provision of an immersive, enriched experience.
Even after several thousand words of analysis, touching aspects of the upcoming game as well as the logic behind them, we cannot magically isolate one single element which FFXIV: ARR provides and promises to be the next best thing since sliced bread.
The game seems to take a modest route, avoiding statements ridden with illusions of grandeur such as “The killer game†or “The destroyer of Blizzard Entertainmentâ€. And this is a positive sign.
Despite one great looming issue, associated with client / server logic most probably, the lack of perfect responsiveness when executing actions, and the combat system’s potential to become great –rather than simply edging from “adequate†to “good†as it does until now-, there are no huge show stoppers affecting the game.
If Square Enix continues to show long-lasting care into the game, under the guidance and leadership of Director Yoshida, they have a winner in their hands.
If they decide to take the easy way out, renege on their promises of well-paced and substantial updates, and leave Eorzea to die a horrible death, they will of course fail to turn this around.
The company deserves all the support it can muster from long-time fans and newcomers alike, for undertaking an unprecedented move, attempting to radically redesign and tune a failed MMORPG into something fun.
However, trust goes both ways, and should the gamers / consumers honour their end of the deal by happily subscribing, Square Enix remains liable to honour theirs.
That’s all for “The Genre Reborn†series of articles. After a few days of deliberation on where to continue this endeavour, an update will be posted on this blog, and in certain forums where this series of articles was posted for their readers’ pleasure, informing you on where you may find future articles and musings by yours truly.
Continuing to run these in a similarly frequent and “burst†fashion is unsustainable, considering that free time or lack thereof dictated their length and focus, more so than the author’s personal quality standards. In the future, it would be better for you to be able to read content including more references, images, and such, something which could not fit under the “broadly an article per day†premise.
I hope you enjoyed this series of articles and would consider reading more content from me in the future, and who knows, even cure your insomnia incidents if deciding to read it late at night!
Feedback is always welcome on both this particular article and the series as a whole. If you'd like to leave a comment, or generally get back to me about it:
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Edited, Jul 22nd 2013 7:48pm by Sovjohn
