Item level / vertical progression query

[Jerbob]

I would like to take this opportunity to more formally request a developer response to the concerns held by a large proportion of the playerbase regarding the new item level and vertical progression model. It is increasingly apparent that a significant proportion of the population is very much against these changes - a lot of the more popular threads at the moment involve discussion on the topic - but as of yet there is no official recognition of this discontentment from SE. Server population levels are falling rapidly; this is a subject that needs to be dealt with, and soon.

On a personal level, my future participation in the game hinges upon this factor and, judging by other people's feelings as expressed on this forum, I am not alone. In order to secure our continued subscription to your service, these changes need to be either revoked or significantly altered. To that end, we would appreciate developer insight into these questions:

1. Is there any developer recognition of the lack of player support for the new game direction?
2. Do the developers acknowledge that recent changes in game direction are at least in part responsible for the game's decline, or do they consider this exclusively due to the recent release of XIV?
3. Are there any plans to modify, reduce or remove the influence of item levels and vertical progression from the game?

Any response would be appreciated. Ultimately, I am tired of subscribing to a game that I no longer play just so that I can participate in forum discussion and hope that things will change. Thank you.

[Zumi]

I for one disagree with you. I like having actual upgrades and actually getting better gear and the ilvl system is more modern and works better because they don't want to raise the cap past 99. It feels like the power of your character goes up as you get higher level gear and you actually see noticeable performance increases. Every mmo these days uses a ilvl system because it just works for gear progression. I don't mind replacing all my gear because it means I actually get to do something, work toward farming another gear set.

Sidegrades like they done in the past seemed pretty pointless when all this gear was released that wasn't much of an upgrade. Often players would avoid doing a lot of new content because they were sidegrades and didn't offer any advantages over what they have now. Limbus 2 / Odin 2 is an example of sidegrades that most of the community ignored.

[leorez]

I for one disagree with you. I like having actual upgrades and actually getting better gear and the ilvl system is more modern and works better because they don't want to raise the cap past 99. It feels like the power of your character goes up as you get higher level gear and you actually see noticeable performance increases. Every mmo these days uses a ilvl system because it just works for gear progression. I don't mind replacing all my gear because it means I actually get to do something, work toward farming another gear set.

Sidegrades like they done in the past seemed pretty pointless when all this gear was released that wasn't much of an upgrade. Often players would avoid doing a lot of new content because they were sidegrades and didn't offer any advantages over what they have now. Limbus 2 / Odin 2 is an example of sidegrades that most of the community ignored.

Your one of the very few, he is correct, its crazy how many threads come up about disliking it...and the giant sudden drop off of players when they started it is just proof of that. You play 14 and enjoy Ilevel, let it stay there and you can enjoy it there.

[Jerbob]

I can respect that. I think that the playerbase is varied enough that we're going to have lots of different likes, dislikes and expectations, and it's not always going to be possible to appease everyone at the time. The problem here lies in the fact that the game has changed so completely without any warning, and changing something so fundamental as level progression in a way that is so utterly opposed to the status quo is gong to upset a lot of people. With a game that has so little in the way of new players, it's going to be a dealbreaker.

A lot of people played XI precisely because of the progression model. I never realised it before, having little experience with other MMOs, but it probably did a great deal to keep me interested. I'm not a fan of working towards something that's going to be worthless before I even finish getting it, no matter how fun the event may be. Not saying that your opinion of vertical progression is objectively flawed by any means, just that I don't think it's suitable for XI.

When it comes down to it, this whole mess is the result of someone at SE deciding that it was time for another level cap increase. That in itself is a flawed premise - I'm not sure why that was necessary. They argued that vertical progression was a requirement simply because the existing system had "run out of scope" or some such. In other games perhaps there is not the variety of equipment stats and the system of equipment swapping on the fly to accommodate horizontal progression, but I would argue that equipment system is one of XI's strengths (despite the lamentable macroing system and inventory restrictions) and should be held to as a foundation.

[Afania]

I can respect that. I think that the playerbase is varied enough that we're going to have lots of different likes, dislikes and expectations

Those who disliked FFXI model would leave XI for WoW years ago, and those who wanted FF in WoW mode would leave for XIV too. Current XI playerbase are players liking old XI, mostly.

There's no reason to please WoW model fans, they're not coming back to XI even if XI changes to WoW model. Change XI back to the way it was, a game with gear complexity, immersion and longevity, that's the best way to keep current playerbase.

[Afania]

I for one disagree with you. I like having actual upgrades and actually getting better gear and the ilvl system is more modern and works better because they don't want to raise the cap past 99. It feels like the power of your character goes up as you get higher level gear and you actually see noticeable performance increases. Every mmo these days uses a ilvl system because it just works for gear progression. I don't mind replacing all my gear because it means I actually get to do something, work toward farming another gear set.

Sidegrades like they done in the past seemed pretty pointless when all this gear was released that wasn't much of an upgrade. Often players would avoid doing a lot of new content because they were sidegrades and didn't offer any advantages over what they have now. Limbus 2 / Odin 2 is an example of sidegrades that most of the community ignored.

If you like vertical gear progression, FFXIV is that way---------------->

You argued that vergical gear progression is "more modern and better", but it's not, it's just different model that works differently. It's not better nor worse, just different.

If you often visit major mmorpg gaming website like mmorpg.com, many players there hated vertical gear progression like how you hate FFXI system, if it's really "better", then everyone should love it no?

I can name many disadvantages of vertical gear progression model too:

1. You can't do next tier of content until you have current tier gears. GL spamming same content over and over and unable to do different stuff until this tier is over. It's boring as fuck IMO.

2. A gap between community. I can only play with players on same tier, because there's no reason to back and farm lower tier lv gears. If my friends/LS mate want to do tier 1 content, and I'm on tier 2, I see no reason to go back and play with them.

3. Vertical gear progression makes old content extremely boring after you climbed to certain tier. Right now in FFXIV majority of players in XIV can kill garuda HM in 6 min, or beat WP(a 90 min dungeon) in less than 10 min. If I go back to solo salvage 75, I can still die if I'm careless and pull too many mobs that I still have to focus and pay attention, that makes the content more fun to do as long as there's a reason to do it. Personally I don't find facerolling WP in less than 15 min(again, a 90 min dungeon) is fun at all.

4. You don't really need to climb everything, you can have just have someone carry you and start from highest tier. That killed the sense of character progression.

Also you're fooling yourself if you think nobody wants to do content if it's sidegrade, gear swap system/sidegrade and situational useful gears is exactly what keeps old content alive. Vertical progression model is something that WILL kill old content fast. Players still do limbus2/Odin2 for maybe 1~2 pieces of gears before SoA, now nobody do them anymore.

The point of FFXI system is that your character grow as you collect as many situational gears as possible, that's how your character get strong. A job with 10 gear set is much stronger than 1 gear set. Most of the gear remain useful for very long time, not just a ticket to next tier content, that's what makes FFXI fun.

If you like to faceroll old content in god mode with gears 3 tiers higher, just play FFXIV. And please keep XI the way it was so whoever enjoys old XI can keep playing XI and vertical gear progression fans/wow fans go play XIV. One of the worst thing in XI community is players wanting XI to become next wow and bitch at dev for not turning FFXI into WoW, and when real wow clone FFXIV released they just end up playing XIV anyways, now whoever likes old XI has no game to play because XI is slowly turning into WoW lol.



tl;dr:

Nobody want to play FFXI in WOW mode, those who wanted WoW in FF style are playing XIV, those loved old FFXI can't tolerate current XI. This game is dying because it's turning into WoW, and it's not appealing anyone since whoever wanted vertical progression are playing XIV already.

[Zumi]

If you like vertical gear progression, FFXIV is that way---------------->

You argued that vergical gear progression is "more modern and better", but it's not, it's just different model that works differently. It's not better nor worse, just different.

If you often visit major mmorpg gaming website like mmorpg.com, many players there hated vertical gear progression like how you hate FFXI system, if it's really "better", then everyone should love it no?

I can name many disadvantages of vertical gear progression model too:

1. You can't do next tier of content until you have current tier gears. GL spamming same content over and over and unable to do different stuff until this tier is over. It's boring as fuck IMO.

2. A gap between community. I can only play with players on same tier, because there's no reason to back and farm lower tier lv gears. If my friends/LS mate want to do tier 1 content, and I'm on tier 2, I see no reason to go back and play with them.

3. Vertical gear progression makes old content extremely boring after you climbed to certain tier. Right now in FFXIV majority of players in XIV can kill garuda HM in 6 min, or beat WP(a 90 min dungeon) in less than 10 min. If I go back to solo salvage 75, I can still die if I'm careless and pull too many mobs that I still have to focus and pay attention, that makes the content more fun to do as long as there's a reason to do it. Personally I don't find facerolling WP in less than 15 min(again, a 90 min dungeon) is fun at all.

4. You don't really need to climb everything, you can have just have someone carry you and start from highest tier. That killed the sense of character progression.

Also you're fooling yourself if you think nobody wants to do content if it's sidegrade, gear swap system/sidegrade and situational useful gears is exactly what keeps old content alive. Vertical progression model is something that WILL kill old content fast. Players still do limbus2/Odin2 for maybe 1~2 pieces of gears before SoA, now nobody do them anymore.

The point of FFXI system is that your character grow as you collect as many situational gears as possible, that's how your character get strong. A job with 10 gear set is much stronger than 1 gear set. Most of the gear remain useful for very long time, not just a ticket to next tier content, that's what makes FFXI fun.

If you like to faceroll old content in god mode with gears 3 tiers higher, just play FFXIV. And please keep XI the way it was so whoever enjoys old XI can keep playing XI and vertical gear progression fans/wow fans go play XIV. One of the worst thing in XI community is players wanting XI to become next wow and bitch at dev for not turning FFXI into WoW, and when real wow clone FFXIV released they just end up playing XIV anyways, now whoever likes old XI has no game to play because XI is slowly turning into WoW lol.



tl;dr:

Nobody want to play FFXI in WOW mode, those who wanted WoW in FF style are playing XIV, those loved old FFXI can't tolerate current XI. This game is dying because it's turning into WoW, and it's not appealing anyone since whoever wanted vertical progression are playing XIV already.

I do play FFXIV honestly I think its a great game but I already capped out almost everything there is to do in it. It's just a difference of opinion I know people who quit FFXI because of side grades and there was no gear progression. I am very happy with the way FFXI is now, I don't see anyone in my LS complaining about it. They even updating relics/empyreans/mythic because people complained about it. Also I can distinctly remember lots of people complaining about how there were too many side grades in the game. Most of the people who didn't like upgrades quit when the level cap was raised I thought because abyssea was direct upgrades to gear.

SoA is really no different then Abyssea just the power level gap is bigger this time around. I think they wanted to raise the level cap again but they couldn't due to PS2 limitations.

Also 10 min WP is only beatable by a very small fraction I mean less then .1% of the population and takes a very specific set up, pld, whm, brd, blm. 2 dps classes that are very good at aoe. I done it countless times and have darklight for every class, but the majority of the playerbase does not have the ability to do this. This is only accomplished by taking those 4 jobs geared with at least some ilvl 90 gear.

If you don't want to help people get on the same tier as you, then your obviously not a good friend/ls member. When abyssea came out I helped a lot of friends get caught up with seals and +2s.

Lots of people are fine with the upgardes they just don't sit here and complain about it on the forums.

[predatory]

I do play FFXIV honestly I think its a great game but I already capped out almost everything there is to do in it. It's just a difference of opinion I know people who quit FFXI because of side grades and there was no gear progression. I am very happy with the way FFXI is now.

You don't see the irony in this at all do you? You're paying for two games, and you want them to be exactly the same, and bedamned to us who don't want to play ffxiv

[leorez]

You don't see the irony in this at all do you? You're paying for two games, and you want them to be exactly the same, and bedamned to us who don't want to play ffxiv

They also dont realize that this sharp vertical climb is what made them say "but I already capped out almost everything there is to do in it". Thats what that style of progression does, it quickly makes everything useless, turning it quickly into a single event game that people get sick of really fast. The beauty of FFXI was that there was so much endgame to do...because all the events provided gear that was useful, even if slight upgrades happened, you could be just as effective if you did the older one (as for how it is now, your not nearly effective enough so you need to be left out).

It seems Zumi loves XIV's style of game....thats great, so play it and play the 100s of games exactly like it with its style of progress that are out on the market. Your wasting your time on XI if thats the type of gameplay you like. I just want what made FFXI great back then along with many of my old friends who all pretty much quit because of its crap.