Thoughts from a casual

[Alhanelem]

I hope that SE doesn't forego the journey leveling a character can bring to attract more players.

I don't feel this level up "journey" you speak of is what attracts players to an MMO. Some people do have fun just leveling (why they think it's so much fun I have no idea personally) but for most people it's simply a vehicle by which you travel to the content the game has to offer. the content is the meat and potatoes of the game, not the level-up experience. Leveling never has been, and should not be, difficult. Leveling up is the time when you're learning your character and its abilities. Taking something you do over and over and making it unduly difficult will scare more players away than it will attract.

Leveling slower doesn't mean leveling is more fun. Take mapleStory for example. in the early days of the game it took forever and ever to reach the highest level, to the point where only a handful of people actually did it before they nerfed the exp curve, and made exp faster, etc. And when you died, you might lose hours of work. Maybe you'll disagree but that sounds like the exact opposite of fun to me.

[Solace]

You make some great points. ARR doesn't need 10M subs, so I wonder why SE would create this potentially "watered down" MMO when you already had a subscriber base big enuff to support a long run for this game without ripping its balls off? I guess 250K+ long term (2+years) subs isn't as good as 1M+ short term (2-6months) subs, but MMOs today have a habit of failing, and this game can't survive another disappointment.

SE's saving grace is going to be the ps3 version, as it can pretty much go uncontested as the new mainstream MMO for the console so I bet alot of ppl will pick it up. If your new to the MMO genre (which alot of PS3 users will be), I couldn't imagine they'd find anything majorly wrong or disappointing about it, so alot of them may begin to feel about ARR the way we felt about XI or other mmos. But for the rest of us who've been around the block a few times, it may not be able to live up to the expectation.

A saving grace that will cause ARR to not be as great as it could be? I don't consider the ps3 a saving grace at all.
I consider it a burden.
So many limitations we have to deal with now because they want to make a ps3 release.

[finiteHP]

I'm astonished you where actually able to solo in XI. How where you able to even find creatures that gave any experience past level 30? Was it that book quest feature I've heard about?

Also, be careful when mentioning XI and difficulty, not a lot of people agree.

Soloing in XI was very possible. I soloed RDM from 51-75. This was before the Tomes were introduced. They just made soloing even easier.

A saving grace that will cause ARR to not be as great as it could be? I don't consider the ps3 a saving grace at all.
I consider it a burden.
So many limitations we have to deal with now because they want to make a ps3 release.

The PS3 version isn't a burden until it prevents them from doing things they want to do. This hasn't happened (partly because the game isn't even out yet). I might not be remembering correctly, but they didn't even trot out "PS2 limitations" until many years after XI came out. I never really figured out the PS2 limitations anyway. It's not like it prevented XI from getting more content. I mean they're coming out with a new expansion that's even going to available on PS2 in Japan. Maybe it's just false optimism on the part of the dev team, but they've said that the PS3 is less likely to hold them back because ARR is way more scalable than XI was. Maybe they should have thrown out the PS3 idea if the PS4 isn't backward compatible, but I haven't seen any limitations we have to deal with due to the PS3.

[Alhanelem]

The PC is the primary platform for this game. If the PS3 can't do something, it won't get it, or it will be specially designed on that system to work around the limitations. PC users won't have to sacrifice for the PS3's sake.

[Zenaku]

The PC is the primary platform for this game. If the PS3 can't do something, it won't get it, or it will be specially designed on that system to work around the limitations. PC users won't have to sacrifice for the PS3's sake.

yep and thank god we get addon and DX11 ps3 would get the most used addon later added to ps3 by SE so at least ps3 is not that left out.

[Exn]

A saving grace that will cause ARR to not be as great as it could be? I don't consider the ps3 a saving grace at all.
I consider it a burden.
So many limitations we have to deal with now because they want to make a ps3 release.

Well I meant saving grace for SE, in terms of dollars in their pockets (sales).

[schism]

ARR is really missing the magic. Its not going to be there ever again if we keep catering to these CASUAL players hahaha. I really hope they dont take that casual stuff too serious because I really want this game to last longer than 6 months.

[VitoScaletta]

A saving grace that will cause ARR to not be as great as it could be? I don't consider the ps3 a saving grace at all.
I consider it a burden.
So many limitations we have to deal with now because they want to make a ps3 release.

Fact is they've been beating the console vs pc horse since '03. Yoshida promised Sony it would happen, it's happening, let's move passed that.

[Rau]

thank you for summing up my feelings toward the discussion in this thread.

[AmandaHuggenkiss]

thank you for summing up my feelings toward the discussion in this thread.

You are very welcome.