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Square Temporarily Paused Digital Sales of Final Fantasy XIV Due to So Many People Trying to Play

Jeeves

Member
Uh, what MMO doesn't have those things? FF14's cash shop is literally the most non-intrusive I've ever seen. Nothing on there is even close to necessary, and there's hundreds of mounts in game to get along with the thousand pieces of "glamour".

Weird complaints to stop playing an MMO. You didn't know there was a monthly fee going into it? Lol
Mm-hm, I almost never feel compelled to even look at XIV's cosmetic shop, and indeed they give you tons of legitimately awesome skins and mounts to unlock just by playing the game.

I've played a F2P MMO before, and over the years it just got greedier and kept tying important progression aids plus any remotely cool cosmetic item to the cash shop. It felt like having things constantly dangled in my face and taunted with "come on, just spend a little more!" It felt like the game was nakedly trying to groom its players into becoming whales.

In comparison I barely spend anything on FFXIV and I distinctly feel like a valued customer in the game just like everyone else.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
It’s really the only good mmo out. Everyone else listening to the loud minority who won’t even play a month and trying to take more depth out of the games and making them action adventures.
 

Paasei

Member
Good news! Finally an MMO to compete with WoW. Not to mention that it's beating it, too. That is the game that I'm still playing.

I'm not interested in FFXIV. I got into WoW thinking I bought a different kind of game back in 2005. It is the only reason I stuck with it.
Generally not even interested in MMO's.
 
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Can't say I'm happy about a MMO that charges a monthly fee doing well. Hardly what the industry needs more of, both in terms of business practices and quality. Are people really all lining up to pay 15 bucks a month for this game on top of the initial purchase price?
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
40 hours of rushing through things while doing no side quests and only focusing on a single job / class. If you take your time and do multiple classes and such, the free trial could easily be a 100 hour experience. Probably 500 hours if you max out all the classes and do all the story content.

The leveling experience for introductory content has been DRASTICALLY reduced. And not doing the sidequests is hardly rushing the game; the Main Scenario Quest is meaty on its own and gives you the background of the world that you need. It can easily be done in around 40 hours without feeling like you blazed through the game.
 
So how good is it actually? Haven't played a MMO in years but I might if i can convince the wife? Playstation or pc? Is there crossplay?
It's only cross-play. The reason it isn't on Xbox is because Microsoft refused to allow cross-play at the time of its initial release.
 
Can't say I'm happy about a MMO that charges a monthly fee doing well. Hardly what the industry needs more of, both in terms of business practices and quality. Are people really all lining up to pay 15 bucks a month for this game on top of the initial purchase price?
Yes! Every MMO should follow this model. F2P sucks as they're going to try to get their money either way. I'd MUCH rather pay up front and everyone have the full game and be on level playing fields.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
Yes! Every MMO should follow this model. F2P sucks as they're going to try to get their money either way. I'd MUCH rather pay up front and everyone have the full game and be on level playing fields.
Agreed, if you don’t have 5 bucks a month to play what is likely to be your only game I don’t know what to tell you. As always what is free has no value.
 

Kenpachii

Member
Is this solely because of that Asmongold guy?

Pretty much, dude has massive reach in the mmo community, he also pulls tons of big streamers into the game because of the extra viewers they can gather. Which again results in even more people.

Then endless video's on youtube gets made about how people are moving to FF14 and people will try it out and a massive influx will happen.

Twitch is huge, valheim for example sold near 7 million because of some streamers playing it for a while.

All those BR and other survival games like RUST became massive because of twitch.

It's a chain reacdtion of content creators, streamers, influencers that push the game forwards and catapult it into people's view.
 

The Snake

Member
My problem with FF14 is that it also has cosmetic DLC on top of a montly fee. Reason why i stoped playing after my 1st month that came with the game expired.

The game has alot of content and is the best MMO i played, but the monetization is savage. Pay for the game, pay for montly fee to keep playing the game u already paid for, pay for especial costumes, mounts, house decorations and other DLCs. And if you managed to buy a house ingame and dont login in the game for a certain amount of time (1 or 2 months) u lose the house, that costs a shitload of ingame money.

You stopped playing because they added the option to buy some entirely optional, non-important moogle hats and school uniforms?
 

PhaseJump

Banned
I'm going to read the headline only and declare it's due to their poverty infrastructure. They need to be bought saved by Microsoft.


Is it Wednesday yet?

giphy.gif
 
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Mister Wolf

Member
I really want to play this but I just don't have the time to devote towards it. Can this be played like a traditional single player offline rpg or is it mmo grindy?
 
Yes! Every MMO should follow this model. F2P sucks as they're going to try to get their money either way. I'd MUCH rather pay up front and everyone have the full game and be on level playing fields.
Honestly, this weird race to the bottom of price with the mentality that everything should be free/included as part of a cheap subscription is going to ruin gaming way before a high quality content rich regularly updated MMO charging a monthly fee will.
 

Bryank75

Banned
Yeah, I have a few people on my friends list that have been playing consistently, I must try it out.

Looks like Blizzard attacking a fan and streamer wasn't such a good idea......now they can go back to helping China hide their genocide.
 

Aenima

Member
You stopped playing because they added the option to buy some entirely optional, non-important moogle hats and school uniforms?
Stoped playing because aparently paying for the game plus a montly fee is not enough to have access to all content. It felt greedy and turned me off to renew my sub for another month. When i played WOW for 1 year and ESO for another 6 months the monthly fee gave u access to all game content.

Losing the house u buy if u dont login in the game for a certain time was another turnoff as well, as buing a house was one of my objectives but unless u plan to stick with the game for a very long time without big interruptions, buing a house is just a terrible investment.

I still recommend the game for ppl that want 1 mmo to play for a very long time.
But for ppl that casually plays and hop from game to game, then a F2P game would be a better option.
 
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PhaseJump

Banned
What? Pretty sure SE leverages AWS, which has the largest market share in the public cloud.

That only matters if they are not wallowing in poverty, and being too frugal to pay Bezos higher rent money so their mirrors perform better than a handful of Playstation 3's duct taped together. You can't fool me. Azure is blue, and so are my balls after playing this game over the years. It would be a better match.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
So Square paused sales because servers were getting rammed and they wanted to give gamers with a copy a better chance to play.

Typically, every game company just sells as many copies as possible and doesnt give a shit if servers are bogged down or not.

Is this the first time a game maker purposely tried to gimp sales for sake of better server access?
 
I really want to play this but I just don't have the time to devote towards it. Can this be played like a traditional single player offline rpg or is it mmo grindy?
The story is basically a singleplayer RPG but you have to group up with others for dungeons and boss fights. But it's all automatically done through something called a Duty Finder - it's completely painless.
Try the free trial - it goes up to level 60 so you can take as long as you like. And there isn't much grinding for XP in the game anymore, unless you're trying to level up alternate classes/jobs. Going through the Main Quest should give you enough XP and gear to just power through, especially if you start on a Preferred server for boosted XP.
Yes, just 2.0 content plus all the filler till Heavensword.
None of post-ARR is filler. Literally everything that happens between ARR and HW are sowing the seeds for what comes later - that's one of the things the game's storytelling excels at. It just seemed like a drag because you wanted to start leveling again lol

Now, the Company of Heroes questline around 30-40... THAT was filler lmao
 

Jeeves

Member
So what makes it better than other mmorpgs? I can’t take it seriously. the whole look and feel of the game is silly.
From your avatar I'm assuming it's not the "anime" styling (which I think is debatable) turning you off. But I don't know what else you'd be talking about either.

It's got a great story, not just among MMOs but among all RPGs. The community is probably the least toxic you'll find in an MMO. You can play every class on one character and they're all fun to learn, and endgame has content to test the abilities of players of each skill level. The gameplay is as deep as you want to make it. The game keeps topping itself in all aspects with every new expansion...when you think it can't get any better, it just exceeds your expectation anyway.

I guess check out the Endwalker trailer and decide for yourself.
 

Derktron

Banned
If only it came on the Xbox cause honestly I heard so much from this game but to be honest I can care less for PC gaming.
 

CAB_Life

Member
I haven't played this in a while, since I'm mostly on Xbox these days due to time limitations and the sheer simplicity of services/ software being fed to me via Gamepass, but I'll play this again in a heartbeat soon as the Xbox port comes out (supposedly in the development queue after the next Expansion, then PS5 version).

I am phenomenally happy for this game's success. It really is a labour of love even if the content drip can get a bit old. But why fix what ain't broke? So many games spend millions and collapse on their own arrogance trying to reinvent the wheel instead of perfecting it, which XIV has done with the EQ/ WoW formula.

Asmongold's XIV streams are entertaining as fuck to watch, too.
 

CAB_Life

Member
It’s really the only good mmo out. Everyone else listening to the loud minority who won’t even play a month and trying to take more depth out of the games and making them action adventures.
ESO is very good and probably the only other game as populated as WoW or EQ. Combat isn't really comparative, though, as it's arcadey.
 
Honestly, this weird race to the bottom of price with the mentality that everything should be free/included as part of a cheap subscription is going to ruin gaming way before a high quality content rich regularly updated MMO charging a monthly fee will.
Yup. The complaints about stuff like this is starting to remind me of mobile gamers who complain that actual high-quality games cost $9.99, when they think everything should be 99 cents or free. Is that what we want console gaming to become?
 
R.6c0c681ba687673525b2a5d5b3d81ca4


(and yes this was crossplay with PS2 and PC)
I'm well aware. I played that game to the exclusion of everything else for around 7 years. Most of that was on the 360, although I started on PS2 and eventually went to PC near the end.

That doesn't change the fact Microsoft said no to cross-play for FFXIV. That's not a theory or guess on my part, it's fact. Microsoft made an exception with XI, in order to finally have a Final Fantasy game on their platform.

They were not willing to do that when FFXIV first launched at the height of Xbox's popularity. They've obviously done another 180 on this since then, but it was too late for this game.

Also, FFXI > FFXIV. Fight me.
 
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ethomaz

Banned
So how good is it actually? Haven't played a MMO in years but I might if i can convince the wife? Playstation or pc? Is there crossplay?
It is amazing good even when it released on PS3 years ago (that was already the remade version).
The game just become better and better.

It is imo the best MMORPG in the market by a long shot.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Blows my mind that an online game where you have to pay a monthly fee + have to buy the damn thing is so succesful at this day and age

Where every online game is free while aiming money by microtransactions

FF XIV model is archaic, but I think that it working tells a lot about the game's quality
It is way better than the "modern" P2W model lol
It is actually how it should be.
 

YukiOnna

Member
I really want to play this but I just don't have the time to devote towards it. Can this be played like a traditional single player offline rpg or is it mmo grindy?
The grind is not that bad. There are plenty of freebie exp boost items around and if you're playing in a less populated server, that provides a further exp boost. You do your roulettes (Duty Finder) once a day and that already nets you a ton of EXP, which is also what keeps old content alive. While you still group up for instanced content, by Shadowbringers, dungeons at the very least can be done with story NPC's. At the very least, give the free trial a shot since its one of the best out there.
 
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ethomaz

Banned
I disagree FF XIV is archaic, the industry has simply tried to move on to predatory free to play with microtransactions models that is new not modern. A country getting destroyed and the new state rebuilding by removing health care is not modern compared to an archaic previous health care system.

The game is good and it is not constantly trying to squeeze your or manipulate you into paying more and more and more after the first free hit… meant first download :). Same thing about the even older model of buying a game full price and enjoying it vs the evolution towards F2P that games like NBA 2K took…
If FFXIV model was F2P it probably have focused on player engagement and not fun.
It should be a way different and bad game with what it is today.
 
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