Interim Report – Sorry to keep you all waiting!

[Arcon]

Oh it does, I just find it odd that Acron finds exping and obtaining gear not one in the same time sink.

Way to take some sound wisdom out of context to loosely support your argument. Simply put, I believe, you're not willing to put in the work for your rewards and only want to eat your cake and have it too just because in a perfect world, (your world), that's the way things would work out best.

I actually very much disagree with that. I told you before, the only problem I had with EXP was that it was boring, and nothing else. I don't mind grinds in themselves. There can be fun grinds, when there's a challenge involved. I didn't mind waiting months for an Arise scroll, because doing Legion was fun, it required a lot of skill and coordination of 18 people. Even in the old days, I didn't mind waiting a few years to cap out on AF2 from Dynamis, something that many people took heavy issue with, because it was fun to me. That was tough, and I endured and got a reward for it. EXP is not tough, it is just waiting. You do nothing for a few weeks and you're 75. Now you do nothing for a few days and you're 99. The less nothing you're doing, the better.

And in case you're wondering, I concur: Neither developers nor yourself have any idea what you're doing to the genre.

If you play a FF# game, expect the following: experience points, gear progression, ability progression and time sinks.

You're obviously not a FF fan, because that statement is untrue for the same reason Eyeballed's previous statement is untrue: FF games don't follow a formula. Sure, there's always some Cid and Chocobos, and Shiva and Ifrit are always involved somehow, but that's it. There have been FF games without levels at all.

And here's the thing, even if it did, who cares? You can't judge a game by its genre. A game is not good or bad depending on the genre. So what if it's not a traditional D&D style RPG? Does that mean it can't still have RPG elements that people are attracted to?

Treating an NM like a Pinata until the particular piece of candy you want comes out is not any less repetitive than stabbing crustaceans for experience points over and over again. I don't think it helps anyone learn anything either, other than spawn conditions.

Repetitive is not necessarily boring, if it's a challenge, or some sort of excitement involved. This is why I don't randomly bash pro-EXP people, because excitement can be subjective. Maybe you really enjoy these pointless boring fights? Who knows. It sounds strange to me, just as it sounds strange to most people that I enjoyed camping NMs. Personal differences. Only I know when I'm being subjective, and I know that objectively camping NMs (or at least HNMs) was a shitfest. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and if I was a game designer I sure as hell wouldn't implement it. Same goes for massive EXP grinds like FFXI had in the past.

Exactly my point. SE needs to add low-mid level content so the climb to 75 (end game) is not just the primary focus for new players.

When a developer makes that bold a statement, it's very hard to read what he thinks the playerbase is thinking as a whole. I can tell you from years of experience of mentoring however, unless you get a player somehow involved in group activities early on, they feel the game is out of touch to them... that anything worth doing is only achieved at level cap.

You can still do that. We get new players in our shell about once a week, and they are involved very early on, namely once they reach 99, which is a few days in (tops). The relevance of 99 content isn't bad, as you make it out to be. It would be bad, if EXP was still horribly slow as it was back in the day. But these days, even 99 content is not out of reach to anyone, not even complete newbies. And once they enter Abyssea, they have the time of their lives in there, because it's extremely accessible to them. It's a very newbie-friendly event, and they get introduced to the game quickly.

And what when the grind doesn't exist at all, as Arcon would have it?

See above. Boring grinds and grinds are not the same. I've been doing Salvage almost daily for the better part of a year now. I enjoy it, because it's still challenging. Not in a "Will I make it?" kind of way, but in a "I can do this better!" way. I can constantly improve, cut corners, get better, push myself. Occasionally I link 20 mobs and have to handle them somehow in between keeping myself and my mule alive. It's a long grind, but it's not dumbed down and it's not pointless, unlike EXP, which pretty much gives the definition of dumbing down an event.