I'm sitting in Port Jueno and even the new players and players with little time on thier hands admit that the game is too easy, mundane. I didn't even comment this time, I just listened to what was being said it it seems to me I'm not the only one with regrets and even new/returning players are upset with the lack of good challenges vs. rewards. New ws that require next to nothing to acquire (even a million xp is a joke with abyssea), auto-reraise in WOE, uncapped COP. They mentioned the COP part and trains of mobs wiping people in Crawler's Nest before you even spawned you were dead. But the game meant something. I don't want to die just by zoning, but I would like to die more often.
I was reading online that an MMO programer for Blizard stated that MMO's have no point really, and that's kinda true. However, I enjoy playing 11, but there is absolutely no challenge in this game whatsoever. At least before it required some skill and organization.
The other day we took 2 empyrean sam, a whm mule, a smn for alex, and my blu and trashed dl. Granted, Alex wore at around 5% and he came after me first, soon as I died (he didn't appreciate my multiple stuns) he wiped the rest, but we had him at 1 hit point before the other DD's wiped. The whm mule reraised and killed him with dia. We are not sure why he didn't drop anything, maybe because he went white at 1 hit point, i'm not sure, but I got the ki/clear. LOL, we decided we'll spam him with 2smn from now on, and no blu, and get everyone the drops and some hundreds for a relic or three, but there's no rush.
I remember doing a pick up group, before dyna xcarbard became open with the ki, and the purpose was to beat DL/clear. After which, we farmed. It was a full alliance, with a few rdm's using Chainspell. We wiped to Dl and then farmed. It wasn't even as close as the low man my ls/friends and I did.
But, as much fun as I had with my friends killing DL the other day, I had more fun wiping to him with the full alliance. I realise that if it was a linkshell event (back then) we probably would have won vs. the pick up play style, but it was a blast back then.
I've said before that I understand SE is making the game to cater to more people and that's good up to a point. If there is absolutely no challenge at all anywhere in the game even casual players are going to tire of it fast. So what's the deal, is this mismanagement or on purposeis because SE doesn't care as long as they can get people to play for another five years and hope they switch to 14?
PS- While I like that the new WS can only have 3 of them fully merited, if this is true from what I'm hearing, I'm still embrassed that they match the WOE weapons/WS. Please consider giving mythic/relic/empyrean another boast in damage, it's completely unacceptable to have a hundred plus hours of farming going into a WOE/empyrean/relic and who knows how many months/years to make a mythic, only to have a pearle sam put up similiar numbers. (Please don't post a resonse saying, I guess your ws set isn't that good or something to that effect, the perle is an example, and current tests are showing some of these new ws to be complete power houses when done on the test server, with the same ws set and using the WOE weapon to compare the empyrean ws to the new ws. I like that some of the new ws are going to be very useful and I'm looking forward to that, but don't shaft the people that worked hard on their super weapons just to appease the masses. SE talks about balance all the time, so please use a little here). Thank You.