Passing on Shadowbringers
880 words.
I probably won’t play Final Fantasy XIV’s Shadowbringers expansion. I’ve had a lot of fun in Final Fantasy XIV but it occurred to me that the game isn’t made for me anymore.
Bye bye spunky porcelain-faced Miqo'te in the Bain mask.
That became really clear when I watched the Square Enix event for E3. At the end of the event, Twitter exploded with excitement over a bombshell surprise reveal. I watched the entire E3 event. I didn’t have the slightest idea what the reveal was. Apparently there was one sentence spoken at the end of the trailer that caused an eruption of excitement and it went right over my head.
You may recall that I’ve played a significant amount of the story in Final Fantasy XIV up to this point. The game is currently at version 4.5 or so. I have seen and played every part of the story up to and including version 4.2. I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of that story. That the reveal was so obscure to me, a person who has had more than a casual interest in the story so far, is shocking, to say the least. Could there really have been such a dramatic shift in the direction of the story from 4.3 to the current endgame that it’s completely unrecognizable to me?
To my mind, it was Square Enix’s way of saying that casual players or tourists need not bother playing the game any further. Final Fantasy XIV has reached that MMORPG threshold point where you either have to make a lifetime daily commitment, or else back away and file it away under good memories.
After a certain point in the lifespan of every MMORPG, the game is not made for a general audience anymore, it’s made for the hardcore superfans who will follow the game wherever it leads, no matter what. The people who play the game every day, grinding dailies, leveling every job up to the cap. The people who pour over the forums every day, discussing theories and metas. The people who “live” in the game-who play the game not necessarily because it’s enjoyable but because it’s become a habit.
I’m not that person anymore. I just want to log in with my one character and one job and see where the Main Scenario Quest goes, and that’s it. I’ve done pretty much all the game mechanics already, and don’t have any particular desire to keep repeating them over and over again. I’ve “finished” that part of the game. I don’t need to replay the game yet again with a different race or job. There’s not going to be anything “new” in the new jobs, it’ll just be an alternate way to accomplish the same things that I’ve already accomplished. All that’s left for me to experience in the game is a continuing story.
That alone might be enough for me to re-subscribe and buy Shadowbringers. But unfortunately, as I’m sure everyone knows by now, Final Fantasy XIV gates the story behind dungeons and trials. If you’re below the level cap, the dungeons and trials are no big deal to get through. Other players will pretty much carry you through all the dungeons for their daily duties, even if you have no idea what is going on. (Although I wouldn’t try that with tanking.) It’s a little more complicated at the level cap, though. That’s where PUGs are farming the dungeons for whatever the currency-du-jour and gear-set-du-jour is, and expect everyone to know how to speedrun them. I’ve dealt with it all the way through version 4.2.
But I just can’t be bothered to deal with that anymore.
During the free week for returning players, I played the 4.3 Main Scenario Quest up to the point where you have to do that trial. (The story, incidentally, did not appear to be heading in any unexpected directions, which makes me even more baffled about that surprise E3 reveal I mentioned above.) I logged out and never went back, and my free week has ended. I just don’t want to do the dungeons and trials anymore. It’s extremely not-fun if you don’t have a static group to play with.
That might be what separates people excited about Shadowbringers from people who aren’t: Do you already have a static group of 3 or more friends you can depend on to group with or not? If you don’t, FFXIV is not for you. It never *has* been for you, but you can PUG your way through it if you have the mental fortitude for it. Eventually that endurance wears out, though, and it has for me. That leaves very little attraction to spend any more time in the game.
There’s just too many other ways to spend my time.
P. S. I don’t mean to single-out FFXIV here. Other previously-enjoyed MMORPGs that have reached and surpassed this same threshold for me: Guild Wars 2, RIFT. Arguably even relative newcomer Elder Scrolls Online may have already reached this threshold for me. I haven’t ever “lived” in them, but all the EverQuests most certainly have gone past the threshold, and Lord of the Rings Online as well. Obviously World of Warcraft goes without saying. Surely EVE by now. Probably others I’ve forgotten.
Archived Comments
Bhagpuss 2019-06-20T16:00:57Z
Yep, spot on. After a certain point all true MMORPGs become largely inaccessible to all but the installed base. It’s at this stage that developers have to decide to cater exclusively to the audience they have and stop trying to attract new customers, at least as a priority. Those that successfully make this transition stand a good chance of runing their game almost indefinitely, albeit in slow and inexorable decline.
Evidence suggests that, once locked in, the hardcore audience for an MMORPG will play for many years, so long as they keep getting what they expect - and the respect they feel they deserve. Most developers seem to have twigged that their best source of new players is old players who stopped playing, so all efforts at shoring up declining populations goes to enticing ex-players back. Any genuine new players are a real and unexpected bonus.
FFXIV doesn’t seem to be at the point yet where Square feel the need to do more than offer free login weeks to entice lapsed players back but they will get there one day. Actually, being Square, maybe they won’t. Square is something of a law unto itself. If they do, that will be your chance to return, if you still care. Until then, you can always wait until someone puts the entire Shadowbringers story in all its cut-scene glory on YouTube and just watch it like a movie, which is almost certainly the best way to consume any FFXIV narrative.
Jeromai 2019-06-21T02:28:29Z
The one thing that tires me out these days are all the new games launching (and old games updating) with the assumption that many players will have said static group of 3+ friends following them wherever they roam. Perhaps this holds true for the new millennial crowd constantly linked on social media; it’s a reminder that yours truly doesn’t fit into that player subset while more and more games are becoming less made for players like me.
I have joined statics in my time for specific games, to get over artificial hurdles I want to get over. They’ve never crossed games - enough folks simply aren’t interested in the same things at the same time. And when they leave or I leave from a game, snap go those bonds.
Telwyn 2019-06-21T07:04:47Z
Yeah, that was our experience of the welcome back free period too. We finally reached Heavenward (yay/what an unnecessary slog) but were so worn out on forced plugging. Even if they’re generally ok if rushed, that compares to WoW where we have a massive friendly guild with several good friends also playing.
I definitely been burned out by this assumption of heavy involvement (involvement curve is a thing?) with a game’s systems or lore - in Lotro, Rift and sometimes EQ2. The latter it hasn’t happened as much in recent expansions, so either I’ve changed or the Devs approach to non hardmode content may have.
Mailvaltar 2019-06-22T14:12:21Z
You described spot on what drove me away from FFXIV for good.
Being forced to do the main story before I can do anything else, and being forced to do those trials and dungeons to advance said story…yeah, no.
trininomad 2019-06-30T03:06:38Z
I understand where you are coming from. I left the game just after the release of Stormblood. I found the story dull at that point. I also grew weary of Square’s treadmill tome restriction which only allowed me to really gear up one class at a time. The game’s rigid structure just became too repetitive and suffocating.
Two years later, I am now back after a free trial as the story is focusing now on what it should have been all this time. The Ascians. The reveal that drove everyone crazy is something that you can understand even without Stormblood as there have been hints before then about that reveal being a possible theory. I do not think that it is something for just hardcore players as I have not followed the game in a long time and got excited about the prospect.
However, your main point does stand. That last sentence has no attraction for new players. This expansion is clearly geared towards the existing player base and getting them excited about the new content. Square seems to have decided to shore up its’ base rather than attract new players with a hook as they did with HW and SB. I think it is a smart move as new players have a long road ahead before getting into the new expansion. It does not help that Square has no new starting zones with each expansion either.
We will see how long I last. I have so many things to catch up on that the treadmill system has not weighed heavily on me yet.
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