Dev Tracker - Discussion

I think the idea behind having so many books is that you should have more than enough that you never really run out of places to macro commands. For instance, I have several Macro lines on BLM for boss-specific nukes: Marmorkrebs (all thunder nukes), Ongo (all Earth nukes). On Bard, I have a similar set of lines depending on what I am fighting. It's not necessary, as i could have nukes or songs or whatever split by tier (I have other lines for these), but it makes it convenient that I have enough macro lines that I can afford to use a couple for specific fights. It can be a pain to flip through books looking for one song among dozens, so the fact that you can always throw your current-activity's actions into a quick line via copy/paste is very handy. The book capacity was never an issue for vanilla players. The equipset limit of 100 has always been, especially if you play several jobs and keep them all relatively up-to-date.

When I used to play Ballista, I would have a book dedicated solely to ballista macros, split between jobs. There's uses for the lines if you choose to use them, but it would be odd if someone complained that there was not enough macro lines to fit their commands.

Adoulin was the last paid expansion, and that was almost 9 years ago (March 2013). They've done the more recent expansion-ish content for no additional fee, when it wouldn't have been totally unjustified to charge something - even if that's a lower cost like the past paid "mini-expansions"/battle content like Abyssea and the ACP/Moogle/Shantotto trio.

Rhapsodies was no additional cost, and is IMO at least as worthwhile of an expansion as WotG. Included Escha/Reisenjima zones (analogous to the paid Abyssea mini-expansions), a mission storyline, and a significant endgame event in Omen.

Voracious Resurgence is also free. Although it's not exactly packed with content, they've said it will be connected with the next endgame event (likely tied to reforged Empyrean armor), there is a lengthy storyline, and we may even see a new ultimate weapon class out of it by the time it's finished.

I can see considering stuff like Dynamis - Divergence, Ambuscade, and Master Levels as part of the core game, but they're giving some value and keeping up the game content (as much as realistically possible for such a small team) as part of your base monthly fee. And keep in mind that we've been getting monthly updates for years now, when back in the day they used to happen on a roughly quarterly schedule. Some months have more significant updates than others, but they've added ML and higher level exp camps, lots of job adjustments, constant Ambuscade rotations, etc. All in all, to me they've made a pretty solid effort to give some value for money for the players who want to stick around.

Yes, other (mostly bad) MMOs go F2P or haven't had the same monthly fees. But you're no longer playing a mainstream game, so there's a bit of a premium for any consumers of niche products. We keep paying the monthly fee, they keep the game running and do what they can to make content updates. With no monthly fee, there's no possible justification to keep FFXI running.

>complaining over the cost of the new wardrobes

Is it just 1 extra wardrobe or 5-8 like the datamine?

it's true, we got "free expansions" although if you compare it to paid ones like seekers of adoulin, abyssea, ToAU, RotZ, wotG the amount of content doesn't compare in the slightest. they did the barebones of a storyline to have a excuse for new endgame activity and for 3 "new" zones of which 2 were re-used old ones in black and white.
the free ones came also in a time or are the cause of the highest amount of sidegrades and inventory clutter ever in FFXI and conveniently enough it's also about the same time where they introduced wardrobes for a extra monthly fee.
i don't know about you but i'd much rather make a one time purchase for a reasonable price and get a proper expansion than get a lack luster one for "free" in order to get lured into another subscription trap.

there is also the thing that some ppl (or a lot of them if the new content is bad) don't buy the new expansion and quit/take a break. even if they stayed and kept themself busy with old content it would still cause further devide of your already small playerbase. the players who bought the expansion get a smaller pool of ppl to do the new content with, get frustrated which causes more ppl to quit/take breaks.
that's something all multiplayer game devs should want to avoid like the plague.

so please, let's not pretend it was a decision of generosity, it was simply a business decision and it most likely paid of handsomely.

SE is a business, not your friend. You're just now realizing this?

If you don't want to spend the extra money, *don't*. If you're that pissy about the FFXI devs trying to bring in more revenue to justify the game's continued existence, simply don't spend the extra money. It literally can't get any more simple than that.

Ideally, they could have given 1 free wardrobe and charged for the other, similar to how they worked Wardrobes 1,2 and Wardrobes 3,4. Two were free, two we pay for. Wardrobe 5 could have been free and Wardrobe 6 could have been pay, if they are in fact giving us 2+ more.

A new paid expansion for XI would probably actually be media worthy. Would have all sorts of exciting clickbait such as "20 year old MMO still kicking: and they're about to release a groundbreaking new expansion pack"

Think of the dozens of new players this would draw in! Or if we're lucky, a FotM streamer would pick it up and get a few hundred on board.

not sure if this was directed at me but in case it was don't worry, i didn't book wardrobes 3,4 and i don't plan on booking the new ones either. if anything then it's ppl like for example capuchin, who's post i was responding to, who just tried to frame SE as a patron for releasing "free" expansions who aren't aware that they are in fact a business.

i'm aware SE is a business but if your business needs to resort to upselling, nickel-and-diming and gambling, often targeted at children, on every corner in order to stay profitable like we seen it for a while in the games industry (and many others) then there is something very very off.
by the way, squaresoft was a business too and the managed to keep themself afloat by making great games without resorting to those aforementioned business practices.

Yes, but we're talking about FFXI specifically. The reason they are investing more money into FFXI than they have in years is because it remains profitable. As soon as this ceases to be true, they pull the plug, or at the very least stop updating the game and it truly goes into maintenance mode. In a game with no cash shop, to remain profitable they have to do this by adding more monthly revenue bumps. It just is what it is. By now, this long should have been accepted by the player base. This is just how it is.

I choose to pay the few extra dollars in the case that I find I actually need it, and take solace in the fact that we're getting a new storyline (they easily could have charged for TVR but didn't) and still get nice updates to a game that was supposed to die in 2015.

They seriously should have done this. Hell, they could have made MW3 free and MW4 5 6 7 8 pay and that would still be fine.

Advertising your game as "you can play any job on one character" and having the primary focus be horizontal progression is some serious *** if you're not going to give us the inventory to handle those features.

I'm probably disproportionally pissed about this, but it just infuriates me. I'd like to add another job or two to my repertoire but playing the jobs I already do has my inventory stretched to the limit.

Maybe SE should start charging a fee to participate in Intense Ambuscade and V15+ Gaol as well. Think of the revenue they'd drum up!

You're comparing storage expansion to participation in battle content.

You're right, you're disproportionally pissed.

There would still be Normal Ambuscade and lower vengeance levels of Gaol available, what's the problem?

Gonna offer up any rationale? Battle content would still be available for the some purpose, but if you wanted to pay for a little QoL boost in the form of faster accrual of hallmarks/gallantry/RP, go for it! Nobody is forcing you!

I really don't want to say you're comparing premiums for -optional- storage to battle content a third time...but....yeah....

Battle content is optional too though. You keep parroting your phrase but offer no actual explanation.

Battle content isn't optional if you want to progress, storage is. You're comparing completely different things because you're foaming at the mouth for not getting free storage expansions that are completely optional. Being bitter isn't going to get you what you want.

homsars argument was hyperbole, but probably less hyperbole than both of you realise. his proposal still grants everyone access to all the content except the higher rewarded ones, you can still attain all the rewards, it's just a lot more grindy (not sure if that's the case with the odyssey example but i suppose that's what he proposed).
if you look how ambuscade and other content is designed and how multiboxers take advantage of it then you see a similar concept, just more subtle implemented. apparently subtle enough to fool quite a few ppl into believing it's not just a variation of pay2win with extra steps.

Idk if anyone has mentioned such but I counted all my Inventory locations which was like 6 to 8 locations idr but everything is capped at 80 slots.

Inventory 99 would had drastically reduced the Inventory burden as is w/o this forced PAY wall gimmick to further milk our pockets w/ +2 more Wardrobes.

Though I must admit I will be paying for such cuz it’s not seriously unaffordable. It’s just a matter of principle is all. Just give me 99 inventory slots in all locations NEXT time & Problem Solved.

What I suggested still allows just as much progress though. Just takes longer.


Cue dollar signs in SE's eyes.

I agree w/ everything you said but you should recognize too that SE is making BANK off of ourselves via SMALL cost to update old hardware specs via a SMALL team yet we paying the same exact Subscription costs as FFXIV if not more than them.

14 might have a vastly superior player base atm yet it’s also a much greater financial burden just to keep that game running w/ Updates compared to FFXI. In a 1:1 monthly Subscription payment comparison our money paid in FFXI vastly outweighs that paid by FFXIV player base just due to the low cost to update 11 compared to 14. If SE could some how resurrect the old FFXI glory days of maximum subscriptions I am sure they would.

I fully expect SE to milk FFXI for all Eternity if we so choose to continue paying them to keep the game Updated. I’m perfectly ok w/ such yet I know it’s not that SE is continuing to do such out of the graciousness of their heart.

I agree asking for FFXI to be F2P would be THE END of FFXI. At least w/o an updated Remastered Edition on PS5 that is. Recreate the game on PS5 1st & PC and THEN go F2P. That actually works.

Uh... maybe you're misunderstanding what I said. I was just responding to Sechs and his statement that "All expansions of FFXI have been sold, not for free". Because I don't quite agree with that, as I would consider Rhapsodies at least on the same level as previously paid content like Abyssea and the trio of mini-expansions (and TBH, the quantity and quality of Rhapsodies content is arguably on a similar level to the WotG full expansion). TVR, by the time it's done and includes the related battle content, also feels like something they might have charged extra for in the past.

I'm completely in agreement that SE is a profit seeking company, and money is the basis for all of their decisions. Never said they made any of these decisions out of pure kindness. If they thought they could get away with charging for this stuff, I'm sure they would have. But they probably figured that with the low amount of other content for a monthly fee, they'd better include Rhapsodies/TVR in that standard monthly cost as a way to avoid losing customers.

If you're pissed about paying for more storage, nobody's forcing you to buy it. If this is morphing into some argument about "why do we even have to still pay a monthly fee for FFXI", it's absolutely pointless. Regardless of how much new content (or lack thereof) is introduced, this game is going to have a monthly fee until the day it's no longer officially supported by SE. I kinda thought we all knew that by now. FFXI is a monthly cost I've been paying for years, and adjusted for inflation it costs me less now than it did when I was a broke *** student. I'm fine tossing a couple extra bucks SE's way each month to get extra storage, as well as vote with my wallet to keep the game operating.

FFXI has had the same sub cost for 20 years now. That's a big deal, the sub cost has gotten nothing but cheaper if we factor in inflation. Realistically, they should have increased the sub cost a long time ago, but they didn't.

They need to bring in enough revenue to justify continued investment in the game's development from SE. That's just how this works. The extra revenue they bring in from the people that pay for the extra wardrobes helps with that. FFXI doesn't have a cash shop where they charge $30 (more?) for mounts that bring in a metric ***load of money like FFXIV does. People pay more for a single mount in FFXIV than they do for 7 months of wardrobes for FFXI. And this is assuming they only buy a singular mount, not the myriad of other ***you can buy on the FFXIV cash shop. I really just can't understand why people are so surprised/offended that SE, a business first and friend second, would be looking for ways to increase revenue on from FFXI, especially since it's seen more investment recently than it has since 2015.

As others have mentioned many times since this conversation started, the extra storage being added isn't needed, it's just a nice QoL improvement to have. If you don't want to pay for it / can't afford it, don't. It's that simple. We have managed all these years with what we have now just fine. These are optional. I'm highly doubtful that people would actually need to purchase 6 additional wardrobes to play the game. Even buying 1 more wardrobe for $2 would likely be sufficient for anyone who isn't completely ***at keeping their inventory organized.

Nobody is asking SE to be a friend. People are asking that SE, since we pay a fee to play their game, maybe, just maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe, toss some of the exceedingly rare QoL features they implement our way without nickel-and-diming us. Isn't customer satisfaction part of running a business?

Ironically, SE could do a mount-based cash shop for FFXI mounts pretty easily and they'd probably make some good cash and not piss anyone off. Absurdly easy. Furnishings, mounts, lockstyles, maybe UI customizations.

It's also absurdly presumptuous and disingenuous for you to decide that extra storage isn't needed when it's been a top gripe of the player base for years.

god no, please don't turn this into XIV... We don't need all those micro transactions. This was already enough.

Personally, in terms of increasing the game's revenue, I'd rather XI get a micro-transaction shop filled with stupid mounts I'd never have to engage with or think about, than have to double my monthly fee for basic QoL that should be in-baked.

Hell, offer paid appearance changes too like WoW did, for all I care. Not like DressUp would go away. Again, vastly preferable to doubling our subscription if we want to play more than X jobs adequately and conveniently.

I'll just e-gangster inject a fake packet so the client mounts me on a premium one. I don't care if people see me on a raptor if I'm blazing around on a $24.99 Bahumut mount.

The simplest way for them to add an extra income stream (besides charging for extra wardrobes) would be a name change option. It's already possible but ends up costing, at the very least, $18 during a discount campaign or $36 outside of those campaigns.

They could also add race change options, but I think this is less feasible than name change since you can already name change - they'd just need to make the option available without having to transfer servers.

Man - *** SE bro for charging me for another Mog Wardrobe -

Like they are fen greedy as ***... makes me sick to my stomach.