[DEV] Time sinks and satisfaction, a plea from one of your hardcore fans

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Anty

in most mmos you are considered "gimp" if you don't wear "purple" gear of some sort or don't meet special requirements. That is nothing new and happens in almost every game. Or something like " we doin hardmode XXX dungeon, ABCDXXXXX required, don't bother applying if you dont have YYYY gear...

---

Which is fine in the context of endgame raiding. I've been part of that scene, as I was a full-time raider in WoW at one point.

FFXI used it as a cockblock in the leveling process. Not to mention it was either that or nothing, because no piece of gear ever came close to Leaping Boots or Emperor Hairpin. I wouldn't have been so against it if there had been a couple of pieces per slot that came somewhere close to fill in instead of being "super awesome stats" vs "useless piece with elemental resistances". I'll even avoid going into how the systems in XI allowed RMT to thrive, and instead of saying "maybe we designed a bad system and we should fix it" they decided to hire a group of people whose sole task is to monitor transactions in-game.

Quote:

---

You had something to do in ffxi in every lvl, and you had many choices. Most mmos don't offer these choices.

---

Which doesn't mean much when the majority of the choices are the wrong ones. Farming sessions were tedious and boring. Sitting around camping NMs was boring.

It'd be one thing if you were talking about building stuff like relics, mythics or the legendaries from WoW (all of which require the LS/guild putting their efforts together to make it reality). You're asking for Leaping Lizzie and Valkurm Emperor, instead.

camping sucked, camping and losing pulls sucked more, the fights were easy, and usually camped by over leveled people. Gear thats good for 30 levels is bad, living at level cap forever isnt that entertaining.

Please leave the ovbious boring time sinks out of the game. You want to make a monsters that has the rarity of a two hour pop, make it something that pops claimed when you kill 2 hours worth of monsters. There would still be the exact same number of lizzies spawned, if not less, but it wouldnt be about sitting around for two hours hoping you get the pull over some one else.

time sinks that are actually just you sitting at your comp waiting to pay attention for 30 seconds, and then doing nothing again for 15 minutes are stupid.

If they want to set up competive item getting, there are much better systems, like gambling, pvp, mini games, puzzles, getting an NM pull is exciting for about 10 seconds, boring for 2-3 hours, and annoying for most of the life of the game. Thank god i got my black belt before people started selling drops, and i feel sorry for all the people who never even had a chance to fight nidhog, behemoth, and admantoise, because people spawn camped them to oblivion.

The OP sounds more like a list of problems than a list of good features.

The HQ system for crafted gear where we can create +3s depending on our own personal investment or just a NQ is one that separates the people who actually try and the people who just get lucky.

Camping a mob for ten days for one item is pretty boring, whereas running around trying to accumulate enough +3 materials for a HQ attempt is actually engaging. It also fosters community as you are constantly calling in favours etc.

But to each their own, I guess!

Hi Meowy,

Good topic, and one I can empathize with you on. :)

I think there are valid points on both sides for what was "great" or "bad" about FF XI's HNM Camps.

While I loved the excitement at claiming Nidhogg against a bunch of other LSs, there was just as much frustration / angst / disappointment on not claiming the HNM, reflecting back and realizing you just wasted HOURS of your life with no claim. And even if you got the claim, you had a high chance of getting no drop.

I realize that's part of the "charm" of FF XI's HNMs and I certainly hate the opposite, which is what we're seeing in FF XIV. I agree with Meowy that right now in XIV, these new R30 NMs with their 2 *Minute* Respawn Times and generous drop rates, make it really... boring and kinda sad. We go in, get a kill (if no drop, then wait 2 minutes, try again and usually get it within 1 - 5 tries), and we're done.

There should be a balance, and I think Physic brought up a great example with something like Relic Weapons.

THAT was an overarching goal / time sink that really felt rewarding as you built up for it (a little too epic maybe (^_^; but still a good, long-term goal). Or multi-step Quests and Challenges with interesting Puzzles and Boss Fights, that may take multiple tries and planning, but at you feel great after beating it.

I enjoyed Sky / Kirin & Sea and Dynamis (64-player version when it first came out), and Relic Weapons. I loved *aspects* of the HNMs, but I *hated* the wasted time and loss in claims and the whole "JP server advantage"-type arguments that came out of that, or Bot Claims, etc.

So, I definitely vote "YES!" to overarching, grand, long-term Goals and Content. Stuff to allow those that want to invest the time to work towards. But probably not 24 Hour Respawning HNMs that would probably be overcamped and overclaimed with today's advanced Bot programming.

Ok I like Kiara's idea or whoever mentioned it first. I don't care for specifically long NM spawns, just something that takes a long time to accomplish, is fun, and is rewarding at the end and because of its longevity and difficulty in obtaining it it makes it unique to some degree as well.

I think I'd prefer having HNMs similar to WoTG's, which could pop in lots of different zones but on fairly long timers. They'd obviously have to have a lot of different locations they could spawn, they'd have to be able to roam a lot and there'd have to be quite a few of them.

Might make for a more spontaneous feel.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Duelle

You're asking for Leaping Lizzie and Valkurm Emperor, instead.

---

I think I speak for many hard core gamers when I say this: We don't care how something is obtained. We just want something to invest our time into. FFXI did some things well and some not so well. There's plenty of room for improvement.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vesperia

The OP sounds more like a list of problems than a list of good features.

The HQ system for crafted gear where we can create +3s depending on our own personal investment or just a NQ is one that separates the people who actually try and the people who just get lucky.

Camping a mob for ten days for one item is pretty boring, whereas running around trying to accumulate enough +3 materials for a HQ attempt is actually engaging. It also fosters community as you are constantly calling in favours etc.

But to each their own, I guess!

---

Item's don't have to be accessible only one way. They could have Rare/Ex version drop of NMs and normal, tradable versions come from something like BCNMs. If NMs aren't your thing then you can farm the seals (for lack of better word) for the BCNM. Or spend your time making some gil to buy it. You'd essentially be doing the same thing as farming HQ mats for a +3 synth.

FFXI did this down the road and it helped alleviate the overcrowding on certain NMs. Again, there's plenty of room for improvement.

To recap on Kiara's post and Physic's idea, this is what we want. Being a former Mandau owner myself, I have to say it was probably the most rewarding thing I accomplished in that game. It was a long term goal that kept you occupied for at least 6 months. For many the process took up to 2 years. But it was still accessible to everyone. Though I think goals like this are better suited for end game items, more specifically "the best of the best," simply because of the enormous time investment involved. But that's not to say they can't be used for earlier content, as long as the reward holds its value over time.

The materia system they're working on now seems to be a good concept to keep us busy for a while and I hope we see more things like this. It doesn't matter what form of content it is, as long as there's some things that take time to work for we'll be happy. Make it accessible to everyone, but don't just throw loot at us like it's Christmas morning every day. It gets boring very quickly.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MeowyWowie

Aside from the fact that many of the best items in FFXI lasted for levels upon levels, they also remained the best option for a number of classes together. For example, when you finally got Homam Hands, your PLD DRK and THF all obtained their best TP hands at the same time. Well worth the time and effort you put into getting them. The sense of satisfaction that came with it always seemed like a huge achievement. When you camped Valkurm Emperor for a week straight, hours on end with no drops. Then one day you log on and he is hovering right in front of you, unclaimed, you grin to yourself and begin to kill him for upwards of the 30th time and it happens, "You find a Empress Hairpin on the Valkrum Emperor." Within seconds you're screaming in your LS "OMFG I GOT IT!!!!! WOOOOO!!11!!!1!!" Your THF and NIN were good to go all the way to 70 now. Again, well worth the time and effort you put into it.

The same can be said for nearly everything in the game. There was a reason the best stuff took so much time to obtain. Nothing could compare to the satisfaction you felt when you finally got your hands on it. Byakko's Haidate, Optical hat, Kraken Club, E. Body, Relic weapons, the list goes on and on. There was always new goals for you to complete, and you knew that if you kept at it you would be handsomely rewarded. You wore that gear proudly as you walked through town. It represented the dedication you put into obtaining it. And in turn it further added to your reputation, if that was something you cared about.

---

HOW FUN AND EXCITING. I really hope they keep that kind of stuff away from FFXIV, what did you REALLY accomplish? You wasted a week doing absolutely nothing but camp an NM that is easy to kill, i'd rather see NM's that are DIFFICULT TO KILL - not be a major waste of time.

They should implement HNM type of mobs with atleast 12hr respawn, either that or make the respawn less and make the drop rate less as well, like 5%. why? when you see rest of the server wearing same epic gears as you, there is a no feel of uniqueness. HNM in FFXI had 21-24hrs and 48-72 hr respawn, but thats what made the item they drop rare and unique, having these 5 min repop timers and high drop rate pretty much like handing everyone the item.

Instances, these shouldnt be everywhere, like HNMs/NMs shouldn't bet instanced, whats the point of killing something in an MMO when no one knows that you killed it or how you killed it, all the struggle and saves from wiping. Even the players who are in the fight, do the fight properly because they have an audience, and also under pressure to do it properly or have the claim lost to someone else.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MeowyWowie

I think I speak for many hard core gamers when I say this: We don't care how something is obtained. We just want something to invest our time into. FFXI did some things well and some not so well. There's plenty of room for improvement.

---

Again, you can focus on long-term projects like relic weapons (and believe me, I was fine knowing that I would never in my life see Excalibur or Murgleis in my inventory). Make it not require ridiculous amounts of currency but build off drops from dungeons or something like that.

Quote:

---

Instances, these shouldnt be everywhere, like HNMs/NMs shouldn't bet instanced, whats the point of killing something in an MMO when no one knows that you killed it or how you killed it, all the struggle and saves from wiping.

---

Not necessarily. You can put an HNM in an instance with a seven day lock-out after being killed. All open world mobs do is create needless drama and competition. Instances at least put failure directly on you and your group instead of it being that you had the slower claim bot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MeowyWowie

Give us goals, long term goals. Give us a reason to continue playing, something that is rewarding in both an emotional and material sense. We want to feel like we actually accomplished something sometimes.

---

Yes!
That's exactly what we need! That's the stuff I liked best about XI. Attaining far away goals that expanded the game and your character. Chocobo and Airship licenses, AF armor, fantastic new regions, and deep storylines all served as reasons for me to keep playing. XIV doesn't really have any of that at the moment so there really isn't much point in playing it besides the story quests which really just feel like an introduction to the story than anything else.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Totobi

HOW FUN AND EXCITING. I really hope they keep that kind of stuff away from FFXIV, what did you REALLY accomplish? You wasted a week doing absolutely nothing but camp an NM that is easy to kill, i'd rather see NM's that are DIFFICULT TO KILL - not be a major waste of time.

---

I was just using those two as an example because just about everyone knew what they were. I loved camping NMs and beating people to the claim, even if I didn't get the drop. Many others loved it too. These same players would likely agree with me that we HATE the way NMs were implemented in XIV. So whatever argument you have about XI's NMs, we share the same frustration with XIV's, but on the opposite end of the spectrum. There's NO reason we can't have both. Nobody's saying delete all the quick-to-beat content. We're simply asking for something we can also enjoy, to keep us entertained.

Content is only difficult when it's first released. Over time people develop strategies and it slowly turns into a routine. This is inevitable. So, while they're designing "hard" content, they should also be looking at the replay value of that content. This is where time sinks come in. If they want to turn a profit with XIV, SE needs us stay subscribed for as long as possible, period. That's what it all comes down to.

I really like how you separate both hard to get and easy to get items, when I started reading this, at first I was worried this was another thread that was so hardcore for the sake of being hardcore it thinking players who aren't, shouldn't play. But after reading the whole thread I have to agree, that you raise some good points...

I hope that there will be gear that takes a lot of work to get, and by a lot of work, I mean it... I guess you could "tier" items (colors seem to work from other games) - but I'll use numbers in this case:

T1 - Normal Items, very common
T2 - HQ versions of Normal items, common
T3 - Rare Items - not very common, but still available with enough work put into it - 10% drop rate
T4 - Very Rare Items - not common at all, lots of time and effort put into getting these items. Drop rate varies with weather/day and items drop around 1% of the time.
T5 - Ultra Rare items - items that have a less then 0.1% drop rate - players might have to meet special requirements to have a chance to have the item drop. Quests, Company Rank, etc...
T6 - Impossibly Rare - items that have a less then 0.00001% chance of the item dropping. Mostly these items would be so rare that special events might increase the chance of getting the item in and of itself.

With more and more harder to obtain items working off of drop rate, jobs like thief would really come into play if they had traits that increased the drop rate of items on mobs.

Anyway, the above is just some random examples, so take it for what you will. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Delmontyb

I really like how you separate both hard to get and easy to get items, when I started reading this, at first I was worried this was another thread that was so hardcore for the sake of being hardcore it thinking players who aren't, shouldn't play. But after reading the whole thread I have to agree, that you raise some good points...

I hope that there will be gear that takes a lot of work to get, and by a lot of work, I mean it... I guess you could "tier" items (colors seem to work from other games) - but I'll use numbers in this case:

T1 - Normal Items, very common
T2 - HQ versions of Normal items, common
T3 - Rare Items - not very common, but still available with enough work put into it - 10% drop rate
T4 - Very Rare Items - not common at all, lots of time and effort put into getting these items. Drop rate varies with weather/day and items drop around 1% of the time.
T5 - Ultra Rare items - items that have a less then 0.1% drop rate - players might have to meet special requirements to have a chance to have the item drop. Quests, Company Rank, etc...
T6 - Impossibly Rare - items that have a less then 0.00001% chance of the item dropping. Mostly these items would be so rare that special events might increase the chance of getting the item in and of itself.

With more and more harder to obtain items working off of drop rate, jobs like thief would really come into play if they had traits that increased the drop rate of items on mobs.

Anyway, the above is just some random examples, so take it for what you will. :)

---

abysmal drop rate is a bad mechanic for ff i think

Monster Hunter did a fantastic job with gear.

Balancing attributes in order to get bonuses meant that every piece of gear had potential use depending on what setup you were going for.

I'd like to see a similar approach taken in FFXIV.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Physic

abysmal drop rate is a bad mechanic for ff i think

---

Abysmal drop rates aren't new to FF at all. From their older games, I can recall 2 items that were EXTREMELY rare, as well as the enemy encounters that rewarded them.

In FFIV there was a secret room in the Lunar Subterrane. In that room was an extremely rare encounter of 5(?) Pink Fluffs (1/64 chance to be exact,) which (if you were extremely lucky) dropped a pink tail (1/64 chance again) which can be used to synthesize the BEST armor in the game (I'm talking like taking only 1 dmg from any attack lol.) The fight itself was unlike any other fight in the game. After a few attack rounds you lost control of some of your party members and they started to fight without your input, made the fight harder, but more often than not you'd survive. The plus side to this was you could farm Alarms in The Tower of Babil, which can be used in the room to automatically spawn the encounter, but you only had once chance at farming these as you could not return to the tower at this point in the game. It was not uncommon for people to go 0/1000+ on the drop. Evil, evil Squaresoft XD

In FFV the best whip in the game was again an extremely rare drop from an extremely rare encounter. The Dragon beard, as it was named, was obtained from a bat encounter (Stingray) in a small area on the wold map while you were on your boat. It seemed to be even more rare than FFIV's Pink Fluff encounter, at least from what I remember. And also like the Pink Tail, it was also not uncommon to go 0/1000 on it. Fortunately it was also obtainable from the toughest optional boss in the game, Shinryu. But if my memory serves me correctly, once you got to that point in the game there was no turning back.

But this is extreme, and while I'm really glad Delmontyb understands what this thread is about, his examples are a bit extreme as well. I think 0.00001% is too much and will likely never be obtained by anyone over the course of the entire game. But if you got it, you would be a FFXIV GOD lol. But his example are just that, examples. This is what I'd be happy with, though I'm not really a big fan of tiered gear. I'd be happier if it was completely different gear but with slightly better stats increasing with time and effort required to obtain. Delmontyb nailed it though.

Camping is a bad bad idea especially when the RMT shows up, nostalgia aside, they can make hard to get gear through hard dungeons, we don't need the mess that was FFXI from 2003-2008'ish. It is almost like people forgot what sky was like on FFXI for the 2-3 years RMT controlled Ullikummi spawns, there is no defending the system, it was TERRIBLE.

Getting salvage armor was hard, you didn't need to camp against people unless you were mining your own Khroma ore's. I much much rather the dungeon/raid system route in FFXIV while they build on ideas that they had from FFXI such as nyzul, salvage, dynamis like systems.

The HNM system only worked in early FFXI because only a few guilds were high enough level to camp, as time went on and leveling got more streamlined for being quicker we saw 205 people for day 1 Fafnir's, that was nothing but a ridiculous bot fest.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Duelle

Again, you can focus on long-term projects like relic weapons (and believe me, I was fine knowing that I would never in my life see Excalibur or Murgleis in my inventory). Make it not require ridiculous amounts of currency but build off drops from dungeons or something like that.
Not necessarily. You can put an HNM in an instance with a seven day lock-out after being killed. All open world mobs do is create needless drama and competition. Instances at least put failure directly on you and your group instead of it being that you had the slower claim bot.

---

Now i do like that lock out idea on certain mobs that would be cool but it would have to be an instance fight and only allowed to do it every 3/5 days. I still do agree with what MeowyWowie said I am an former owner of an Aegis Shield and when i got it, it was so awesome, but I would still like a few big game NM's in the open world nothing wrong with having both as a lot of people say.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MeowyWowie

Abysmal drop rates aren't new to FF at all. From their older games, I can recall 2 items that were EXTREMELY rare, as well as the enemy encounters that rewarded them.

In FFIV there was a secret room in the Lunar Subterrane. In that room was an extremely rare encounter of 5(?) Pink Fluffs (1/64 chance to be exact,) which (if you were extremely lucky) dropped a pink tail (1/64 chance again) which can be used to synthesize the BEST armor in the game (I'm talking like taking only 1 dmg from any attack lol.) The fight itself was unlike any other fight in the game. After a few attack rounds you lost control of some of your party members and they started to fight without your input, made the fight harder, but more often than not you'd survive. The plus side to this was you could farm Alarms in The Tower of Babil, which can be used in the room to automatically spawn the encounter, but you only had once chance at farming these as you could not return to the tower at this point in the game. It was not uncommon for people to go 0/1000+ on the drop. Evil, evil Squaresoft XD

In FFV the best whip in the game was again an extremely rare drop from an extremely rare encounter. The Dragon beard, as it was named, was obtained from a bat encounter (Stingray) in a small area on the wold map while you were on your boat. It seemed to be even more rare than FFIV's Pink Fluff encounter, at least from what I remember. And also like the Pink Tail, it was also not uncommon to go 0/1000 on it. Fortunately it was also obtainable from the toughest optional boss in the game, Shinryu. But if my memory serves me correctly, once you got to that point in the game there was no turning back.

But this is extreme, and while I'm really glad Delmontyb understands what this thread is about, his examples are a bit extreme as well. I think 0.00001% is too much and will likely never be obtained by anyone over the course of the entire game. But if you got it, you would be a FFXIV GOD lol. But his example are just that, examples. This is what I'd be happy with, though I'm not really a big fan of tiered gear. I'd be happier if it was completely different gear but with slightly better stats increasing with time and effort required to obtain. Delmontyb nailed it though.

---

Hunting rare game in XII was also awesome as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Firon

Hunting rare game in XII was also awesome as well.

---

{Yes please} rare game was awesome and XII in general had some MMO mechanics or ideas that were implemented well....like gear (weapons) that were hard to obtain. For an offline game it did a much better job than XIV.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Firon

Now i do like that lock out idea on certain mobs that would be cool but it would have to be an instance fight and only allowed to do it every 3/5 days.

---

3-5 days is too short a period, IMO. 7 days is about right because it could coincide with maintenance/grand company tally (provided they are in XIV like conquest tallies were in XI).

I won't be against open world mobs, provided there equivalents that can be earned through instanced boss fights. As someone who has a limited amount of time to play, I could run all the raid dungeons in the world and get the drops im looking for, but I can't camp an NM and then try to outclaim other people.

Quote:

---

Camping is a bad bad idea especially when the RMT shows up, nostalgia aside, they can make hard to get gear through hard dungeons, we don't need the mess that was FFXI from 2003-2008'ish. It is almost like people forgot what sky was like on FFXI for the 2-3 years RMT controlled Ullikummi spawns, there is no defending the system, it was TERRIBLE.

---

There's also this, too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Duelle

3-5 days is too short a period, IMO. 7 days is about right because it could coincide with maintenance/grand company tally (provided they are in XIV like conquest tallies were in XI).

I won't be against open world mobs, provided there equivalents that can be earned through instanced boss fights. As someone who has a limited amount of time to play, I could run all the raid dungeons in the world and get the drops im looking for, but I can't camp an NM and then try to outclaim other people.
There's also this, too.

---

I agree with you BUT people like to hunt NM's why should that be taken away from them. If you can obtain the same item from a instance event why have both unless its like XI how they did the emp hairpins and such. But their should still be some big game mobs that spawn open world like Tiamat for instance.

I always felt the open world nm's gave life to the world.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Firon

I always felt the open world nm's gave life to the world.

---

And created huge gaps between the haves and have-nots. Which boiled down to not skill at playing the game, but free time and a good claim bot.

Ok so I've been brainstorming for a bit now and these are some of the ideas I've come up with. It's kind of long, but I'm sure many of you will like them.

Open World Content

XII's Mark System +1

Take XII's Mark system and improve upon it. Give each City State a Mark board, listing various NMs and hints to their locations (Please, don't tell us exactly where they are, we'll find that out on our own eventually.) Each NM will be unique to its own City State (gives us reason to travel more.) Have each NM have requirements and cool down times. The cool down times are self explanatory, can be anywhere from an hour to 7 days.

For the requirements, add certain loot to all the mobs in the open world. Give us a big variety of them and don't make them take up inventory space. For each NM make us trade this "special" loot in order to flag the NM fights, maybe even charge us some gil (we need more gil sinks lol.) Have some easy ones only require a small amount of maybe just 1 specific item, and the harder ones require a larger variety of loot and maybe some rare loot as well.

If they want to expand on it even more, make the loot tables from each mob family fluctuate. Make it random, and reset once a week or so. As an example, Gobs drop Item-A one week, the following week they drop Item-B and Item-A is moved to Ahrimans' loot list. This way a certain family isn't always heavily camped for the best loot.

Accessable to all, keeps us busy, and overall I think it sounds like it would be a lot of fun.

NMs that claim you

This idea was taken from a post I made a few months back. A number of people showed interest in it. I will just copy and paste my original posts.

We could have rare NMs that give an hour warning to the population of Eorzea before they are about to spawn. Such ways to implement this could be the skies becoming blood red while the city of Uldah's citizens begin screaming and running in panic as the legendary fire dragon Tiamat begins his rampage and is headed their way. They can even add a short cut-scene before its attack if they wanted to. At such a time the heroes of Eorzea can then opt to sign up to battle this fearsome creature in an attempt to halt its attack on the city. This can be done with a small popup on the screen, similar to how we have the NPC Linkshells. When you sign up for it you will have a chance at your LS/party/alliance be given the opportunity to vanquish this foe. But here's the catch, you can't claim it, instead he claims your party and will do so randomly. They can disable invites for those signed up after its attack so people can not abuse the system and have multiple solo characters signed up for the fight then form a party afterwards.

The hour waiting time (theoretical) is plenty for our casual player-base to put up a party recruitment for the upcoming battle. This would also be nearly impossible to bot, effectively ending claim bots, at least on these types of rare spawns. The rewards can be quite impressive, fit for those skilled enough to defeat it. If one party is unable to emerge victorious, Tiamat will choose his next target as long as they are still signed up for the fight.

I just used Tiamat as an example, but I think you get the general idea. If they add a number of NMs like this, it will be a normally occurring thing and yet again keeps us busy.

Large scale Company vs Environment fights

Again, taken from the same post. This one is a similar system to the one mentioned above and may remind you of Beseiged from FFXI. Copy & pasted again.

Other forms of large scale battles can take place in a similar way, but more focused on your city of allegiance. This is where I think Grand Companies can have a huge effect on content. Same scenario, obviously under different circumstances, but instead your whole nation can battle these most notorious of NMs. These NMs do not have to be tied to their "parent" nation, but will randomly attack one nation at a time in which only members of that nation can engage it. Rewards can be given to all parties partaking in these events, the chance of which increases with your party size. Again, casuals will be given the time to recruit people for the battle and hardcore players can rest assured that the best drops will remain rare enough to keep them occupied for months, or years to come.

Again, another fair concept for both casuals and hardcore alike. This also promotes people to spread out evenly between the 3 Grand Companies.


Instanced Content

Tiered Dungeons

I loved the way XI did their dungeons and I think they should take a lot of the good parts and put them in XIV. I won't go into specific detail about dungeon designs or anything but just general things.

First off, keep the tiers similar to how XI did it. I don't want to see linear tiers (1 leads to 2 leads to 3 and so on.) As an example I'll refer to Limbus. There were 2 seperate "master dungeons," Apollyon and Temenos. Each master dungeon had a number of wings in it and one boss room. At the end of each wing was a boss which dropped one of the boss room's keys. You could complete the wings in any order you wanted to, one part I loved about it.

Within each wing, during your advancement to the boss, you also got mini rewards (AF-1 armor.) So even if you weren't interested in the main boss you could still farm for these. I used to love soloing there lol.

Again, keep time restrictions on it, though maybe not as sever as XI's. I'd much rather see a tiered dungeon system like this than one where once you complete the first tier you never have to return. It gives us reason to keep coming back, an effective time sink.


Long term Quests

Collect and turn in XXXX amount of an item

This has been mentioned already in this thread. And also, as I commented on them before, these types of quests will likely be best suited for top of the line gear because of the immense amount of time involved in completing them. Again, I won't go into detail, because XI already has perfect examples of they would work.

Relic weapons were the ultimate quests. They took months or even years to complete, and by nature were not intended for everyone, not to mention they were extremely expensive. The same goes for Lu Shang's rod. While I would love to see XIV's ultimate weapons take a similar amount of dedication to complete, they can give us smaller scale quests of similar nature, something accessible to everyone.

The satisfaction of finally completing quests like these does not compare to anything else in the game. Its something you dedicate many hours to, no matter how long it actually takes you to complete it. For me, when I started working on my first relic, it was my labor of love. I loved farming in general already, but this just made it more worth while. I would love to see casual players get the same satisfaction as I did when completing something like this.

Tactical fighting quests

This idea takes its roots from XIV's enemy incapacitation system. Similar to the previous long term quest suggestion, these types of quests will require you to incapacitate a certain number of enemies. It could be something like "Break 1000 crab shells" or in more extreme cases "Completely incapacitate 10000 Ahrimans."

Quests like these should probably be implemented for mobs that would not normally be sought after otherwise they would seem to be more like achievements than actual quests. I haven't really thought much about this idea so I'm sure some of you may have better ideas of how it could work, but the general idea is there.

To cap, all of this content is available to everyone, regardless if you choose to devote some of your time to completing them. All of it has the potential to keep us occupied for long periods of time. All of the rewards from content like this could leave you with a sense of satisfaction.

When we say we want hardcore content we don't necessarily mean 72 hour re-spawn NMs with 37 10 second windows over the course of 36 hours. We want something to invest our time into, and we want you to enjoy the same content as us. Keep an open mind and don't automatically think "Oh god, not another HNM thread." We don't claim to be better than anyone else, many of us just want to be the best we can be and we enjoy content like this. We don't care if the entire game is centered around hardcore players, but we'd like some of the content to be worth while for us.

Yoshi-P, if you happen to read this, keep making casual content like you are. The game was advertised as casual and you should stick to it. But you still have plenty of hardcore fans that would love to see content that gives them a reason to keep playing. Find the balance between the two and this game will flourish with casuals and hardcore alike.

I'd like to see some more ideas from you guys. Ideas that are accessible to everyone but that require dedication. Right now is the time for content suggestions. Let's hear what you got.

MeowyWowie I love the idea's but it's not for everyone but does that mean we cant have it? No, some people will never say yes to both open world HNM's and instance cause they don't wanna be left out on anything and i find this sad tbh. It's almost like me saying don't add casual stuff to the game cause i don't like causal stuff. If its not for you its just not simple as that, even if they have long pop timers everyone has an fair chance to get.

Okay listen.. the target players of the game was always intended to be general..
By the time they start adding too much stuff that casuals cannot possibly take on.. the target playerbase will change, and the casual players will say " f-word this..!" and leave.. get it..?

I want to make the game fun, but adding too much of that hardcore stuff could ultimately bring it to its demise.. let me tell ya..

Once again.. this is not FFXI..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lenneth_Valkyrie

Okay listen.. the target players of the game was always intended to be general..
By the time they start adding too much stuff that casuals cannot possibly take on.. the target playerbase will change, and the casual players will say " f-word this..!" and leave.. get it..?

I want to make the game fun, but adding too much of that hardcore stuff could ultimately bring it to its demise.. let me tell ya..

Once again.. this is not FFXI..

---

And FF XIV's current "casual player" appeal is obviously helping so much... Leves are a joke and the niche market that plays the Final Fantasy series needs more then repetitive, EZ mode, bland game play.

FF XIV will not become XI for borrowing successful mechanics from said game, FF XIV is all ready its own game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lenneth_Valkyrie

Okay listen.. the target players of the game was always intended to be general..
By the time they start adding too much stuff that casuals cannot possibly take on.. the target playerbase will change, and the casual players will say " f-word this..!" and leave.. get it..?

I want to make the game fun, but adding too much of that hardcore stuff could ultimately bring it to its demise.. let me tell ya..

Once again.. this is not FFXI..

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MeowyWowie

Yoshi-P, if you happen to read this, keep making casual content like you are. The game was advertised as casual and you should stick to it. But you still have plenty of hardcore fans that would love to see content that gives them a reason to keep playing. Find the balance between the two and this game will flourish with casuals and hardcore alike.

---

Perhaps you should read everything before jumping to conclusions. These are mearly suggestions for different types of content that could please hardcore players. Every single one of them is accessible to everyone, regardless of their play style. I don't understand why so many casuals are so selfish. It's a game, it should cater to a certain crowd, in this case casuals, but it should also be fun and worth playing for others.

Seriously, this selfishness I'm seeing from many casual players absolutely disgusts me. Hardcore players will be here for the long haul, if the game is to their liking. But from my experience, casuals tend to jump from game to game. It only makes perfect sense to create content for everyone, while still catering to a certain crowd.

Sry had to skip to the end.. My wife and I are just as "hardcore" but dont believe time sink = challenge. I hated the mass time sinks but enjoyed the serious challenge of certain boss fights in FFXI. They can bring difficulty here for the hardcore players without being something retarded like... bring me 10,000 fish....

I think we can all agree that long term goals are exactly what this game needs. I personal do not think placing nms on elongated spawn timers is a good example of this. Long spawn times coupled with low drop rates are just a waste of time. I personally went 1/50+ on mee degi its definitely a higher number then 50 but i just quit counting after that point it was to depressing at that point to think about the time i had wasted going after a pair of gloves. hell i could have farmed/crafted my way to buying multiple pairs in the time i threw away on them. Now i know some one is going to ask me if i felt all warm and fuzzy about getting my o.kote. If i still had my rose colored glasses firmly affixed to my hind sight i might say yes. but in reality no, the only thing i was happy about at that point was only having to go back to castle o if a mission or quest made me go, and shutting people up about me being a "Gimp" for not having them. only to have some start in on the snide remarks about me not having a particular belt.

I think the best example of a rewarding long term goal is xi's Magian trials. A long winding road to a very excellent reward, there are easier routes with in the system but they produce less potent gear, but its still a pretty decent reward. They can be done at the players pace and they generally encourage team work.

This thread isn't about giving us a challenge. It's about having content that lasts longer than a few days or weeks. I also don't believe that time sinks = challenge, I'm sure nearly everyone would agree on that.

As I stated before, though you probably missed it since you skipped to the end, challenging content is only challenging until we develop strategies for it. Even still, any content can be made challenging. Once your done with that content though there's no reason to do it anymore.

I'm all for difficult content, but it would be nice if there was some content that could keep us busy for extended amounts of time.

In my opinion they should of just built upon ffxi, when it comes to quest layout. This "easier to solo/casual gamer" thing is killing the game. Soloing/casualy playing the game should only yield you a generic gaming experiance due to the fact that your not putting in any effort. and lack of effort = lack of or no gratification.

Why should you get the same reward as the hard core gamers? they are putting in more work than the casual. when you do this the hard core finish the game real fast with a sense of "wow that was it?.".

this is an MMO not a single player. a single player-multiplayer dosent make sense.
-PRIORITIZE MULTIPLAY and leave singleplayers in the back burner for a while
-Do all the things the op stated
-Demolish the black shroud
-USE FFXI AS YOUR "BASE" TO WORK OFF OF.

I agree with Carzilla. If they took what was good from FFXI and made it their foundation for FFXIV and improved upon it, we wouldn't have only 200 people on our servers at prime time.

For the casuals, I'm deeply sorry that SE screwed up with FFXI in the sense that it was made for only hardcore fans. But don't hate on us for it, we didn't design the game.

A good MMO has content for everyone. If SE decides to go strictly with the casual route the game will die. Don't believe me? Look at every other MMO that has tried it, they all failed. If you think that the Final Fantasy name is what will keep this from happening, you are sadly mistaken. It only acts as bait to lure new players in.

I want this game to succeed, and it well never happen if SE is just doing the same thing every other developer is. Aside from the multi-class per character and the Armoury systems, FFXIV has nothing to offer that stands out. The same can be said for many other games out there. The only exception to my knowledge would be GW2 because of their attempt to make their game seem like a real world which is actively and constantly changing.

The more players SE pleases the better, clearly this is their only option now. For them it's likely too late for revolutionary changes. The "New MMO" novelty has faded and they need to look into other options now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MeowyWowie

For the casuals, I'm deeply sorry that SE screwed up with FFXI in the sense that it was made for only hardcore fans. But don't hate on us for it, we didn't design the game.

---

In the same vein, "hardcore" players (a laughable term if you ask me) need to realize XIV is not failing because it was a game for casual players. It is on life support because most of their ideas and systems were released broken, half-finished, and not fully tested.

However, that being said, I also agree I would like to see some challenging content because, yes, games should have a variety of content to satisfy many different gaming tastes. But challenging content is not the stupid take 4 years and the support of an entire linkshell to obtain items variety. It is not camp the same mob for 3 months until that .00000001 percent drop appears variety either. That's not challenge, that's just a waste of time. Games are supposed to be fun.

Hard content = good. I just don't think the things I mentioned above mean hard. Instead, it means tedious.

BTW I like your idea of NMs that claim you!

Casual gamers may seem like alot but they are not the ones sticking with the game and giving the game longevity, its the hardcore players who does. Casual is just as it sounds, they want everything in game fast, gets bored, find new game.

..whats with people not wanting to compete with others in a MMO(yes fighting for a claim is a competition too), what is this some sort of happy land, where everyone is nice and have everything they want?

Stop bringing the statement "i dont want end game like FFXI cause its all about who has better bots", im tired of seeing this, its a sad little excuse, i played FFXI for 7 yrs and 4.5yrs were HNM, and i never owned a bot and i was one of the top claimers in shell, all i did was spam provoke. All the had to do is implement HNM, but kill the window timer or make it shorter so people don't stand there for 3 hours.

again, screw putting HNM or any other NMs into instance(if ppl hate camping, thn implement a type of instance with extremely low drop rate or increase drop rate and give 7(w/e) days cool down to enter again), players now a days got their cherry poped by these casual games out there and now worship it , afraid to go out and hunt, they rather kill a caged animal, or want the same pay as a guy who works double the shift.

FFXIV will flop if it goes down this path, its so bad even casual players think this is easy. balance the game for both gamers!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Synapse

Stop bringing the statement "i dont want end game like FFXI cause its all about who has better bots", im tired of seeing this, its a sad little excuse, i played FFXI for 7 yrs and 4.5yrs were HNM, and i never owned a bot and i was one of the top claimers in shell, all i did was spam provoke.

---

That is super skillful and sounds like tons of fun. Or not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wynn

That is super skillful and sounds like tons of fun. Or not.

---

Haha, yup, having 80% of the gear in the game is fun.

Beats standing around doing nothing a majority of the time at a camp.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Corrderio

Beats standing around doing nothing a majority of the time at a camp.

---

Yup, all they had to do is remove the windows and time sink is gone. It seems most of the players who is against open world NM are those who tried HNM few times and failed claimed after waiting 3 hrs.

Another way to make even claim for everyone, make the spawn location large and NM should spawn raged for the first 10 sec, so if there is a solo claimer(who may or may not be using 3rd pt program) he cant claim without his entire pt there to back him up, if he does he will die.

Well with the current system they got rid of most of the cheap tactics (Boot KOed members to replace them for example) but no matter what SE does people will find a way to bot them sadly.