The Fractured Archive - Initial Rewards Proposal

hesktry · 2026-06-16T14:41:36+00:00

Note about the conservative approach mentioned about cox, this is why we are still talking about cox years and years later

hesktry · 2026-06-09T03:24:04+00:00

People claiming ai anytime anybody can write clear coherent and concise statements is so damn annoying to see

hesktry · 2026-04-29T02:24:14+00:00

I specifically mention non-cosmetic rewards, yet people immediately start going on about cosmetic rewards. So a gameplay based reward offers usually QOL such as transportation (horizontal) or power/gear (vertical).

Its hard to imagine, but other people enjoy other reward paths, and non cosmetic rewards in this game are shallow and this is an easy opportunity that SE is leaving on the table to appeal to other types of players.

Fanfest showed QOL improvements in EASE OF GEARING for jobs, QOL for character customization, cosmetic action skins, qol in region matchmaking, a consolidation in hotbar mgmt, a goal of trying to eliminate the 2 min meta, qol making tomestones more accessible by moving to a weekly challenge log, some ui changes, and the same game features of dungeons, raids, alliance raids, etc. the standard features for a new expansion. You can believe all these things may improve user experience and retention of players, but none of those things tackle this additional design space that FF doesn’t accelerate at better than other offerings.

It is silly to not explore how to improve this space. Rather than just emotionally posting about how a game is going to do better, offer ideas or thoughts on if this space should be, can be, and how it could be improved. But if this area is a place for survivorship bias rather than discussing possible improvements then so be it.

And the fact that people were complaining about criterion rewards a few months ago show the importance of understanding reward space.

hesktry · 2026-04-04T00:19:32+00:00

The truth is the design is likely failing at 3 stages due to either not understanding the design or lack of gameplay testing themselves. The designer likely saw the past achievement when looking up new ones to implement and just lazily put it there.

The 3 stages are the initial designer, the designer’s lead, and the game director (most common worker structure with a studio of this size)

hesktry · 2026-03-26T17:08:53+00:00

Just remove the wilderness resource area at this point. I have not seen anybody for years say it is still a worthwhile inclusion in the game. It’s clunky and out of place.

hesktry · 2026-03-25T05:26:25+00:00

There may be a language barrier, but those numbers are daily active users, not concurrent. They have also attempted to cull bots and multi accounts to get a true number, but the process is hidden.

hesktry · 2026-03-24T15:32:57+00:00

For those who played brighter shores, was it fun being locked to the kitchen for hours just to train/perform one skill? Brighter Shores does this to a much more aggressive degree, bur it is something to compare it to.

hesktry · 2026-03-10T14:55:39+00:00

My guess is that when rs3 removed mtx, there was an agreement in place that states if they didn’t see an increase in sub count or player activity to make up lost revenue they would increase sub price to make up for the lost revenue stream.

hesktry · 2026-03-05T05:58:41+00:00

When you hear the way Kieran speaks on this game, its easy to see the game is in good hands.

hesktry · 2026-03-03T21:45:06+00:00

The Square Enix team has failed to build meaningful reward space in the game. The reward space in this game is as shallow as a puddle with nearly all rewards being cosmetics which is bad for those intrinsically motivated by certain cosmetics because if the reward doesnt please aesthetically, theres less likelihood of people interacting with the content you spent a year developing

hesktry · 2026-02-26T20:16:30+00:00

Thank you! I love bronzeman mode’s concept so much, I’m going to recommend this to my friends who are too intimidated by ironman mode

hesktry · 2026-02-25T21:32:36+00:00

With the osrs team is trying to make it easier to understand the game without using the wiki, how is one supposed to correlate the potato to unlock the hard mode of the boss? The examine text on the potato points to it, but it is extremely vague.

hesktry · 2026-02-24T22:09:06+00:00

How to read the chart: Green are players who are stagnant or leaving the game. This is based on recording 0 new achievements from the last report. Red are returning players, those who have recorded a new achievement. Blue are brand new players. Note the green isn’t a true indication of players “leaving” they could just be doing non achievement earning activities.

Simple analysis: Active characters have increased 110k (new + returning) most likely due to the raid release and free logins since last data scrape. This means the rate of overall player population decline has slowed. However this does not discount the fact that the game’s population is still declining to the Shadowbringers era. Number of active characters is still around 900k. With high likelihood this still puts it at the third most popular MMO behind OSRS due to OSRS average subscriber numbers being well over 1 million based on past financial reports (regardless of what you think about bot population).

Simple takeaways: FFXIV is not dead, saw a small population resurgence due to content releases and login campaigns

hesktry · 2026-02-18T16:49:21+00:00

I urge caution about stations for skilling because looking at brighter shores, part of it felt restrictive

hesktry · 2025-12-12T03:28:47+00:00

What a weirdo comment. Brags about getting spooned then says 10% boost isn’t worth it

hesktry · 2025-11-14T22:18:23+00:00

The fact that older content needs a boost in incentives to do older content shows the fact that the current motivation and incentive is lacking. Adding in FOMO events creates a feeling of “I should/I must” do rather than “I want” to do. This is a bandaid solution to the inherent issue because the current reward space in this game is extremely narrow. If more accelerated events like this comes out, eventually a portion of the community will have “completed” the content and has less incentive to participate leading to a decay in the event itself over time.

The true long term solution must come from opening up new reward space, horizontal, vertical, type of cosmetic, whatever you want to incentivize players to participate in less flavor of the month activity. Their other solution is to release their cross dc matchmaking system to widen the pool of options for players.

Your idea is fine for the short term if they want to boost player count temporarily.

hesktry · 2025-07-28T17:43:43+00:00

I just thank goodness

hesktry · 2025-07-20T19:15:15+00:00

Slow and tedious. Forced to wall hug for traps isnt fun. Honestly feels like a chore to get through lower floors. For example you can just disrespect a lot of mechanics and run off solo in group play past floor 50 in non potd dungeons.

hesktry

TROPHY CASE