Trials of the Magians and casual players.

[Sarick]

In the world of FFXI old content is a stepping stone to the new content, that's how SE wants it.

I think that falls along the lines of poor implementation. It's one of the reasons the game lost it's frill towards new commers and another reason why the game is gasping so hard to maintain it's audience. The developers have forgotten how to recreate content. Instead they've gone for making a bigger weapon for bigger monsters. A loop purely meant to suck in a select group of core fans.

No more diversity because the stepping stone is a leap to end game content. It's much like joining a monopoly game with everyone owning 90% of the board having hotels on everything. Within a few turns the new player joining the game already in progress is bankrupted. New comers, returning players and casuals are a lost stepping stone. Old content isn't relevant, most players only care for #1.

No one wants to stay in a rat race or join one that's this hostile towards them. This is a subscription service they might as well join Free Realms, or DC Universe Online. At least those games have content growth that remain relevant to the overall world not just a single expansion.

Trials are something everyone had access to even casuals up until the point where the weapons needed stones. Up till that point weapon trials only had to kill monsters. They didn't need gil large groups of allies or special setups weird KI collecting task. Most of them could build weapons with little or nothing in a few days or a week. I myself managed to create two wind agility daggers to 99 in <24 hours. (weather was awesome that day!) Even the starter weapon was free. Without content updates they don't even amount towards a decent stepping stone.

[RAIST]

1. How does a system that requires set times when it can be done actually benefit the type of player with limited play time?
2. If you're expecting or wanting it to just be something lame like collecting X items then why not be up front and say that?

These questions pertain to the OP's logic of TotM being great for casual players. Answer them as that's the only way you'd be able to enlighten me. Anyone who finds themselves to fit this "casual" player feel free to answer. I'll even go first even though I don't consider myself casual:

1) It doesn't outside of the Weapon Skill paths or until you get to the current final 3 stages of collecting Geodes/_ites as you can farm to make gil and buy them removing the day/weather requirement from those stages.

2) If these were to be further upgraded to match new weapons then I would expect them to require killing unique monsters in SoA zones. Why? Because there is no reason to facilitate making a player even more over powered when taking on old content that was designed to be taken on without SoA weapons/armor.

Mostly to the first question. Not sure the value of having things on a predictable schedule is getting through. This is VERY important for a casual player, as they can research and plan when/where to work on their trial, and when/where to work on other content. And yes....for probly 90% or more of Magians, it IS predictable in some fashion. Lots of tools/mechanics to help one plan better for completing stages...be that a game calender app, weather tracking, or using a wiki to help track respawn times/conditions for an NM and planning according to the last known conditions in which the target spawned. This is geared almost specifically with the more casual player in mind. They quite literally can progress according to their own schedule, with virtually no reliance on other players (unless they can't solo a target well, they may team up with friends or other people they find that happen to be there for the same targets).

In contrast, the hardcore player may have no issue with standing around shouting, trying to get into pickups, or pushing his/her friends to help build a higher tier weapon--in most cases it's easier for them because there is a lot of tit-for-tat trade off for doing these things. They are in with a crowd that frequently teams up to do the types of things they need done, and so are more comfortable/familiar with the expected protocols for participating in such grouping events. On the other hand, the casual player is more familiar/comfortable with frequently being left to their own devices (unless they have a few friends on the same schedule they team up with from time to time, or put up a /seacom or search other /seacom's and casually team up with others there for the same targets).

So basically, you have always had two vastly different camps. One group has become very dependant on this more laid back, low-pressure approach to gearing and progressing through content. The other group is more accustomed to a more aggressive, faster pace, "scratching each other's backs" approach to barrelling through content. The rewards have always been appropriate to the approach taken for progressing. The slow and steady is stuck with a slow and steady progression through content--but always have the expectation of being able to complete it on their schedule/skill level. The aggressive players are better able to rush through the content, and are more open to the challenge of facing an overpowering foe in order to progress significantly. The main difference here being one group that enjoys a slow /steady progression while facing moderate difficulty along the way, and another group who embraces hardcore mechanics and revel in the prospect of facing a foe that can really f*ck up their day at the drop of a hat.

Basically, in the past the content difficulty and availble gearing options have scaled appropriately for both camps. Both groups could always see a path for progression that suited their expectations and playstyles. But with SOA, that balance has been grossly upset. Now there is a tremendous gap between the groups. The die-hards are rushing it, completing it, and will soon be tired of it and not want to revisit the older entry levels once they've moved on to the newer, harder tiers and are focused on me-me-me and trying to get the next tier of new shinies. The casual, slower progressing players will be reaching the point when there is basically no one willing to lend them a helping hand when they will desperately need it because their gear has not scaled to an appropriate level against the new challenges as has been the case up until now. As content, level caps, and new gears were introduced over the last few years, Magians progressed on par with those advancements, keeping the gear relevant and balanced with the new challenges. That is clearly not the case now with what has happened with SoA.

THAT is what is at the crux of the problem here. The major shift in scaling--or, rather the lack of scaling-- for the players in relation to the new content. Pet issues, accuracy issues, damage output issues, damage mitigation issues, all of it stacking up to big reward for effort issues. HAve to see the bigger picture, projected further down the line as the trend continues with future SoA content additions. At present, it is all grossly skewed to benefit the die-hards and to penalize anyone who is not. What is at risk here if they don't take corrective measures soon, is the potential to drive out anyone who is not "1337". At the very least, it risks dissuading a lot of people from participating in a significant enough way to progresss through the new content at a satisfactory enough rate to keep them subscribing. Effectively, locking a lot of people into just doing older content that soon becomes unrelevant enough for them to continue playing the game. It is basically setting things up for more attrition, which is not good for a company that has been bleeding money for the last 3 or 4 years.

[Sarick]

It is basically setting things up for more attrition, which is not good for a company that has been bleeding money for the last 3 or 4 years.

I cut out a lot of this but wanted to give RAIST KUDOS, spot on. You enveloped everything and put it in a context thats relevant and understandable. You've clearly been reading this and thinking about it quite a bit.

[Demonviper]

I'm getting rather tired of hearing "Look, stop complaining and go do delve if you want a decent weapon" I for one have little to no interest in taking part in the event and I think it's rather sad that the game now boils down to one or two new content events that have made the wide range of existing content obsolete. I have absolutely no intention of taking part in events I do not enjoy or indeed, leveling or playing jobs that aren't enjoyable to me as a method of gearing up my main, I've been that route with the old HNMLS scene back at 75 and I'm no longer willing to do something I don't enjoy a hundred times to gain reward that benefit my main. For me this expansion seems to have made the game far smaller and much, much less pleasant to play.

TLDR: I don't want to do delve and I'm butthurt that the game and elements of the player base seem hell bent on that being the only way to avoid being gimp.

[Randnum]

Yeah, also, you have to note that casual players easily can just 'stop'. Act like an expansion never happened. After all, all our old content can be beaten by the gear appropriate for the old content. But that's just it.

While some of us can entertain ourselves for months with everything that existed before SoA, the simple fact is that the new expansion gives us nothing. For many casual players, they have to question if SoA gives them anything at all (not saying it doesn't, one way or another).

I sort of understand it, because I can't think of anyone who will quit because 'the new expansion only has like one thing I care about', so there's a good business sense in catering to the hardcore first, but it's just plain strange to cater to the hardcore only (we will have to see how Monstrosity and the new 'farming' works out but these are fundamentally different types of content anyway).

The other reason is really insidious though. A casual player that has kept themselves at least within some 'acceptable range' of gear/weapons and performance, can respond to a shout, particularly when the group is near full, or has some of their more 'hardcore' friends in it, and expect a response of 'eh sure come along you look decent at least' from some people.

They do get to experience this new, large scale content when it happens to fit into their schedule without needing to climb the ladder in the same way. Sure they're 'being a leech' by some people's standards by not having top gear, but they could usually expect their output to be a contribution. At least enough that 'rejecting them and waiting longer' wasn't automatically a better option.

By not providing as many ways for casuals to 'keep up' without sliding more to the 'hardcore' side of the scale, it increases the rift between the two types of players when dealing with heavier content, and technically makes building groups and fostering friendships harder.

"Hey that guy's doing pretty good for someone without X weapon." - can lead to friendships or at least allies.

"Why did you even invite them? They can't do anything to this." - can easily lead to indifference or worse, toward that player.

We don't need that rift increased, and this is speaking as someone who doesn't even care about it. There's simply no equation in which making casual players completely irrelevant to the point of 'incompetence' in new content can benefit the game as a whole.

Well, at 'least' everyone will have a weapon from the next tier eventually when they are more affordable, right?

[Bardiel]

This entire thread is quite possibly the best discussion I've read in a very long time, as most MMO-related forums tend to lean towards the "wretched hive of scum and villainy" end of the spectrum. Thank you, ALL of you participating, for the excellent read.

That said, I'd consider myself in the casual camp. I mostly solo or low-man things I'm interested in. Also, I run an event shell where we've worked on several members' Empyrean weapons, helped a few of them get Relics, even managed to eek out a Gandiva for myself.

Then SoA was released.

Within a matter of weeks on my server, nearly all Voidwatch shouts decreased and on some days completely stopped. Neo-Nyzul shouts are fewer still. This, I believe, is one of the points several of you are trying to make: the mad dash for SoA-related "god-gear" has all but killed every other group event in FFXI.

Now, don't get me wrong, I've tried Reives on several jobs, with and without friends there, and found it pretty ridiculous. A friend mentioned it was a lot like Campaign but the way mob hate works (for fails to) in Reives proves otherwise. I even joined a shout or three for Delve. For the remainder of this post, I'll use my Ranger as an example. I am absolutely not an expert at knowing how Delve works, but as a Ranger, I expect to shoot a mob and it takes damage. One group I was in fought that Oboron. In full Ranged Accuracy+ gear with sushi and fully merited as far as I'm concerned there should be ZERO reason I miss a shot and certainly not weapon skills (as far as I know, Jishnu's Radiance doesn't have an accuracy penalty).

1-2 shots would land for minimal damage out of 12-15 shots fired. NOW I understand why SE changed Recycle and Scavenge! I also fully missed not one but TWO Jishnu's Radiance. THAT is ridiculous. and I was so infuriated by the end of it I wanted to crack my Gandiva in half and throw it away. I wasn't the only one either, as fellow Ranger was with me and experiencing the same "fun, exciting new content."

That example, along with the lack of fun to be had doing Reives on any particular job cemented the following in my mind:

1) to be successful at Reives, you must either be an Aegis/Ochain PLD or have one on-call (thankfully, I do have several in my LS).
2) Delve is a vicious circle: to be reasonable at it, you need to have Delve gear. To get Delve gear, one has to be reasonable at it. Round and round. Or just level a job you'd rather not play and prostitute it for plasm farming sessions.

Neither of these are optimal for someone with limited play time. For a player to have a sense of value in a game, especially an MMO, I believe they'd rather not feel as their time is being wasted, especially if it's a limited resource. Additionally, a sense of accomplishment towards an overall goal would be nice instead of a feeling that every job you bring to the table is functionally useless - even with top pre-SoA gear. This I believe is also part of what Randnum, Sarick, RAIST and other have touched upon with their contributions to this thread.

Zagen, I'd like to state here I appreciate your suggestions for alternatives to obtain this new gear and participate in Fracture/Delve. You've given me hope that even a rag-tag group like my shell can eventually Delve it up. I think all of us can agree on one thing, that the SoA content is pretty unbalanced, and noting the post count on this thread, certainly not fun for casuals.

[Sarick]

I love your use of prostitute. The first thing that popped in my head was Prostitutes of Adoulin. Needless to say I know a lot of people in your exact position. My profile used to have several Linkshells listed in it several where very prominent. Now those are gone they vanished soon after the latest expansion. It's become a train wreck. My home nation is empty and Jeuno is nearly dead most outside the bazaar players shops.

The I think the trials need to be extended not only to allow players alternative route but bring. casuals up to speck. Other armors could also be upgraded from other expansions in a casual slow paced way. new trials such as damage taken from enemy attacks, elemental damage taken by party, damage cured by party, damage dealt by party, elemental damage dealt by party, successful evasions by or even time equipped while in combat.

The party part isn't to force grouping but to make teaming up acceptable. When people was doing WS trials it made them NOT team up unless the other player had the exact same WS trial. Bad choice of trial.

Look a this quote below from Alhanelem. He also recently made a topic about PVP older content being abandoned.

The only thing I've found boring is waiting for the chance to be able to participate in new content. When I actually do get the chance to play it, it's fun. The problem is the content requires such high end sutff that if you didn't get skirmish/wildskeeper stuff when people were still doing it, you're in a bad spot because your only chance to participate is support role jobs e.g. whm sch brd cor.

I posted it in full. This player is always posting. He's enjoying the content in the hardcore way. He also admits the casuals won't have a chance to really enjoy it unless they prostitute another job. Is this all that's left for casuals?

Look at this one.

Seems like they have no clue how to make this work successfully, whoever is in charge of this train wreck did a fine job to ruin my first and very last game makes it easy for me to quit it is not fun nor do they want to hear out players at all .

This game is bleeding real players, unless something is done to diversify the player base play style it's heading for a quick death. Reast said it best.

At present, it is all grossly skewed to benefit the die-hards and to penalize anyone who is not. What is at risk here if they don't take corrective measures soon, is the potential to drive out anyone who is not "1337". At the very least, it risks dissuading a lot of people from participating in a significant enough way to progresss through the new content at a satisfactory enough rate to keep them subscribing. Effectively, locking a lot of people into just doing older content that soon becomes unrelevant enough for them to continue playing the game. It is basically setting things up for more attrition, which is not good for a company that has been bleeding money for the last 3 or 4 years.

Something needs done trials worked in the past they can work now.

[MakkotoParinne]

I feel kind of bad for not posting in my own thread often, but I believe I've already said my piece.

That said, thank you everyone who is keeping the discussion active. Based on the likes on the main post, I'd say that a lot of people are in favor of positive changes.

[Zagen]

I didn't specify the 'we', any more than you specified.

Your 'we' isn't defined, I think it's accepted when left undefined it pertains to the circle of people (i.e. friends) that person does stuff with. However I didn't make that assumption I assumed 'we' was 2+ people.

My 'majority' on the other hand when left undefined does have a finite range, more than half but less than the whole make up a majority (i.e. 51%-99%). So I actually did define it, I asked for you to explain how 51% or even 50.01% of the player base didn't want there to be a progression through content.

I think that falls along the lines of poor implementation. It's one of the reasons the game lost it's frill towards new commers and another reason why the game is gasping so hard to maintain it's audience. The developers have forgotten how to recreate content. Instead they've gone for making a bigger weapon for bigger monsters. A loop purely meant to suck in a select group of core fans.

No more diversity because the stepping stone is a leap to end game content. It's much like joining a monopoly game with everyone owning 90% of the board having hotels on everything. Within a few turns the new player joining the game already in progress is bankrupted. New comers, returning players and casuals are a lost stepping stone. Old content isn't relevant, most players only care for #1.

No one wants to stay in a rat race or join one that's this hostile towards them. This is a subscription service they might as well join Free Realms, or DC Universe Online. At least those games have content growth that remain relevant to the overall world not just a single expansion.

Trials are something everyone had access to even casuals up until the point where the weapons needed stones. Up till that point weapon trials only had to kill monsters. They didn't need gil large groups of allies or special setups weird KI collecting task. Most of them could build weapons with little or nothing in a few days or a week. I myself managed to create two wind agility daggers to 99 in <24 hours. (weather was awesome that day!) Even the starter weapon was free. Without content updates they don't even amount towards a decent stepping stone.

You mentioned many other games and you're telling me they don't have content that's out grown? I haven't tried Free Realms but DC Universe I know for certain has zones/gear that become useless once you've leveled to a certain point, i.e. content = stepping stones.

As to the stepping stones being leaps and jumps I disagree, when you take on content in a similar order to how I outlined a few pages back you'll see a more linear progression (except NNI that's just BS luck and gear only reduces the need to bank on said luck).

I completely agree that SE is using an archaic game model but there's a few reasons for that that I can see right off the bat and they all boil down to 2 main reasons:
1) The game is 11 years old.
- Back then Pay to Play was the standard (not that there was much competition), this is an issue as the whole game (including the engine) is built around this system and would require a lot of revamping to make it more up to date with the current trend in the MMO market.

2) The development company doesn't see value in spending resources to revamp their (only?) cash cow.

I think we can agree these are weak reasons if the game was expecting to hit it's 20th anniversary but I don't see that as a goal.

As to RAIST I only caught 2 major points that sort of explain a few things as to where my disconnect is:

predictable schedule

This is the issue, the reason for that is when I had a limited play time I found myself being able to log on at random times in other words having a predictable (day of the week) schedule didn't mean anything to me I couldn't plan accordingly.

The major shift in scaling--or, rather the lack of scaling-- for the players in relation to the new content.

This is something I disagree with, if you're up to date on previous content then taking on SoA content before acquiring SoA gear isn't a problem (I'm not talking having a R/E/M either). I get that the difference from pre-SoA gear and SoA gear is huge but unless you're in SoA high end you don't need SoA gear. Oh and at the moment "SoA high end" is Delve Fracture Bosses.

[Randnum]

You're quite right, Zagen, but I don't think putting the burden of proof on someone else works either. I'm not sure what makes you think that 50% or more of the playerbase did want high gear progression?

Your point to RAIST is also very valid, in that if you are high enough in content, SoA content is probably no problem. The issue is that if you are not, multiple unfavorable things start to happen. Do you also believe that 50% or more of the playerbase are 'up to date on previous content'? Even if we look only at the last Census and make two extrapolations, it can't be so.

1. The number of players with RME weapons across all servers is considerably less than half of the playerbase.
2. It apparently was enough of a problem with elitism to get into groups without one of these weapons, that an overhaul was required.

By this metric, we can jump to two possibly erroneous but very likely conclusions.

1. Damage Dealers without RME, especially without RME at certain levels (90+) are not likely to be up to date on current content.
2. Support Job players (i.e. just 'people with support jobs to play') don't need to be up to date on current content to get SoA gear or even expect to be able to, and furthermore, may be used to this.

So, players who perceive it as 'I'll just go WHM/BRD/COR and support people who have top gear until I get the gear I want', have no reason to bother with older content now. Players who don't perceive it that way but don't have top gear are told to do this. Result, everyone aims for SoA content because either they are used to playing support jobs and advancing through content even when they don't have top gear, or they are DDs with top gear.

Result: Exclusion of DDs without top gear.