Game/Event design.

[Rezeak]

After thinking about I've come to a conclusion that the recent game design of events like Legion, Meeble burrows and Neo nyzle isle is really poor or flawed in some way in my opinion.

Honestly, I feel each piece of new content should be designed as it's own game with the main goal being the gear and access to the entire event and as it's own game it should be fun and involing for more than 10 mins a day. A good example of content that is it's own game is imo Abyssea and VW while some of the stuff there is hard if you have no buffs or knowledge of the system with time you get atmas, complete abyssea and learn the stagger system giving you the tools to complete abyssea and finally reap the rewards which helps you outside of this event.

Now, personally I don't want every piece of content to be abyssea V2 or VW V2 they do some aspects that could be carried across to other event to make them more accessible for example lets take Neo Nyzle, for some this event is impossible yet with some simple tweaks it could of been fixed and even made more fun by making the floor 20,40,60,80 bosses drop helping items you can store and trade to a lamp to make things easier like for example if you kill a floor 20 boss you'll get an item that will reset any floor so you can shuffle your objective, on 40 it's a +3 min time extension item, on 60 it's instant free floor and for 80 floor +10 item. Either way, these are just random ideas and i easily believe there more fun than what SE wants weaker player to do and that's get to floor 80 375 times instead of clearing floor 100 15 outside of that being ridiculous it's just plain boring doing nyzle for 375 days+.

With this kind of game design in mind it would be easy to add over powered mobs with the time sinks being party's killing mini bosses and building points or event only items/gear to finally challenge this monster and of course the great side of this is that the risk/reward it set by the players and while we do see some of this in action like for example meeble burrows square likes to put a nice time restriction of just building up your buffs. Easily a better way to do this would be to say you can only fight each boss once a week so it's up to you if you want to spend 2-3 hours building up all your buffs until your a demi god on par with the boss or risk it all and challenge the boss straight off the bat in some David vs Goliath match.

Either way, I guess what i'm trying to say is I'm getting really bored of the old fashioned game design that is being used i'd rather my time sink in an event be the building up and getting ready for the ultimate challenge rather than waiting 20 hours for some gob to milk a mole :(.

As for the worries i'm sure SE has about people burning through there content well if it's fun and designed well then people are more likly to replay and help there friends making it last even longer and also make a little gil by selling the event only gear making the event more accessible for new players. Honestly, if content lasted 1-2 months and i was done with it i'd feel alot less ripped off than being forced to play it repeatedly for a low drop rate or only allowed to play something I've payed them to develop for 15 mins a day it's like buying a new game that turns it self off every 30 mins each so that it can make it's 10 hours of content last longer than a 50 hour game.

Thanks for reading ^^ and this is just my opinion on how i feel the new content has gotten were it feels SE values the length of time it take to complete over how fun it really is thinking it'll keep people playing. You know what has kept me playing most games is that there fun :P

[wish12oz]

Legion is awesome, Neo Nyzul is awesome, Meebles would be awesome if it wasnt for the 20 hours between runs thing.

[Infidi]

I think it'd be awesome if they don't set a cap to how many sacks you can have built up and just limit each 'mission' to once or twice per day. That way you could do all boss runs in one day if you have enough built up, and won't be err.. Unbalanced? XD...because of only being able to do each 1-5 run once /twice a day. It'd be different if it was something harder but it's been designed around the fifteen minute difficulty philosophy. I dunno, what do you guys think?

[Caketime]

I'm hoping they rework Campaign before the expansion drops. It most likely won't happen, but it would be nice. There's some great threads about it already so I won't waste anyone's time with my bad ideas, but it was an awesome time killer at one time and could be again if the dumb aspects of it were addressed, like forts and skillups. I've always found the "hit the wall with your axe" phase of battle to be rather retarded. Would be much better if we could order Sappers, or use siege equipment.

New content feels like it was designed as filler specifically, with dumb restrictions thrown in to slow people down. Makes me wonder if the expansion will be worth it or if it will be filled with more of the same tag systems and timers.

[Demon6324236]

New content feels like it was designed as filler specifically, with dumb restrictions thrown in to slow people down. Makes me wonder if the expansion will be worth it or if it will be filled with more of the same tag systems and timers.I think we all know the answer to that.

[Rezeak]

Legion is awesome, Neo Nyzul is awesome, Meebles would be awesome if it wasnt for the 20 hours between runs thing.

Legion is just boring imo.

5 areas all the same.
Over buff + Embrava + Stun lock (add PD for hard mobs)

Did it solid for like 2-3 months then recuiting got harder and harder till it wasn't worth the effort.
poor design side of legion imo is it's inaccessible by lesser players and all other endgame is 6-12 pple.

Neo-Nyzle is fun but the all or nothing aspect to it is kinda shallow if there was a point to go for 20,40,60,80 bosses or have ??? item change into insane gear it would of been cool.
It's easy enough with enough practice too just i feel it's too harsh on lesser players.

I guess the point i'm trying to make is events could be made more fun while at the same time made more accessible to lesser players cause while i have no issue with doing neo-nyzle or legion or w/e it's kinda lame that i can't play with the other half of the server cause they don't have a relic,can't do neo-nyzle isle or they want to play monk :(.

meeble was definitly a step forward but the 20 hr time sink was a step back.

[Arbalest]

SE has been releasing bad content - VW is a prime example, and my favorite thing to hate - for quite some time now. It's all filler until SoA, so it would seem.. but what happens when the expansion drops?

My guess is SoA will be almost entirely unfinished (as is the norm with FFXI expansions) so SE can trickle the story to us every 3-6 months for several years, just to lengthen the life of that stuff.

Though, my hope is that Matsui really brings this game up to speed, listens to the players, and actually makes FFXI fun again..

[Luvbunny]

When a said content is fun, you will not even care if you have to repeat it over and over. Abyssea for me is fun, you get to test multiple atma combinations, you can test yourself against many myriad NMs, solo or with small team. And you always get rewarded for something, you can measure the progression and you feel good at helping new people clear zone bosses since you need the drops as well. As casual players, you can always find stuffs to do in abyssea and more gears to upgrade. The same can be said to neo-dyna, sure it is quite a grindfest and it is a farming activities so to speak, but when the zone is not over crowded, it's quite relaxing in its own monotony. A good example is Phantasy Star Online, a game that is even shallower than FFXI and build upon repeatable grind, something that is akin to Assaults mission had SE did a proper translation of PSO game mechanic. Instead we are given bad contents after another with massive invisible walls designed to halt player's progression in any ways possible. I can guaranteed you that SoA will be released with nary a content to do and you can pretty much ignore it for a good 6 months to a year after released. It will not be like Abyssea where everything is done and there for you to consume immediately upon release.

[Demon6324236]

Though, my hope is that Matsui really brings this game up to speed, listens to the players, and actually makes FFXI fun again..Well, that sounded good a few days ago, things have changed a bit since.

[Luvbunny]

Well, that sounded good a few days ago, things have changed a bit since.

He certainly did show his true colors LOL, cannot wait for a perfect storm of bad news after another. Kinda wonder which team or person came up with Abyssea in the first place and why is this said team/person is nowhere in sight now.

[Demon6324236]

Abyssea wasn't perfect by any means but Abyssea did make things more enjoyable imo. VW was... ok... besides the stupid low drop rates it would have been fine, they just basically ended that though, abyssea in general just got hit hard for anything outside of Seals/+2s/Emps/gear farms, FCs basically cost alot more since you cant do blinkers, xp parties have no incentive for high level well geared players. Many new events in general either don't last long enough, or are so screwed up they become more of an annoyance than fun, that is if you can even get the group together for them!

[Luvbunny]

I think they fail to realize that between 2010-2011 the game changed 360 degree. It is no longer a 18-36 events, but morph into 3-6 people events for most activities. The big grand events that everyone can do together are dynamis, walk of echoes, campaign and besieged. THOSE said events are not touched....even if they actually bring strangers together where you get to meet them and "socialize" with them. Instead we have been given craptastic events with unrealistic drops and batshit insane NMs that one shot you right and left, which forced players to rely to PD and Embrava strategy of zerging everything and survive in the first 2 mnts or get wiped.

There are many ways they can fix these so called filler contents with barely any thoughts put into creating them, and we know these will be swept under the rug and forgotten so fast when new expansion come, remember Moblin Maze and Assaults? Yeah don't think anyone care for those anymore. Voidwatch is actually pretty good in paper, and very accessible, and they did good with their promises, but the drop rate still sucks, and the HMP incentives are so few and far betweens, when you need 1500 to upgrade - their lack of competent strategy in prolonging the activities become quite clear. We are not idiots that would just take everything at face value, we can see turd even if it is wrapped in nice little shiny repackage (pretty much all new contents since Abyssea, which in itself, a repackage old zones).

Why they even care if the 1% of the population can consume the content at crazy fast pace, the 99% of us still doing it at our own pace, which is quite leisurely. If anything they should make it their top priority to have all content accessible and stop putting invisible barriers. I actually found their strategy of releasing new contents at harder difficulty for those hardcores to complete first - then adjusting it six months later and open the flood gate for everyone with weakening items - very very good idea. So far they only implement this to voidwatch, and yet ignore the plea to make HMP drops available to all top tiers VW NMs.