A letter to Yoshida and the development staff of ARR

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Originally Posted by Sadana

I seem to recall people saying that XI had been out for a year in JP prior to it's being released in NA. Are you counting this? (just wondering)
(I'll admit I'm a bit fatigued by the "new CT/Coil, 1 new dungeon, & 2 hm dungeons though actually kind of all the same thing" per update as well.)

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Yep, it was out end of 2001 (JP beta) 2002 > Released in NA in 2003 , which it launched with the expansion pack together which the Japanese had to buy separately.

Somehow posted on the wrong thread! derp :P

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Originally Posted by Ryel

I think you're misinterpreting me, i'm in no way saying that we should be forced to work together via exp parties and such (while i do miss those things nostalgia wise) I understand fully that isn't everyone's cup of tea.

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I think we should be forced to work together for those things. People whine about being forced to work together with people in FFXI or 1.0 but then forget that because they were forced to do those things they ended up meeting people and making friends that they never would have otherwise. In 2.0 with the way it's designed there is barely any room for any sort of community to form. Just makes you feel like you may as well be playing with npcs. I'm also sick and tired of people going into a mmo wanting to solo. I mean sure make a solo option so you're not stuck without anything to do if you can't find anyone to party with but it shouldn't be anywhere near as efficient as doing things with a party. The genre is called Massively Multiplayer for a reason and there's far too many mmos being built to completely ignore that part.

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Originally Posted by Sonofbaldo

XI had flaws but it was overall superior to XIV.

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-_-

https://38.media.tumblr.com/7c6535ac...olxo1_1280.gif

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Originally Posted by RoninDarkchild

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It's always ironic when people try to state rose colored glasses.

There are a few systems in the game that need to be ironed out for the overall replayablility of FFXIV. I echo the discussion started here in favor of a loot lockout for coil much in the way that the echo got rolled out.

First 4 weeks: Instance Lockout so that the mystery is still maintained for the world first FCs

Second 4 Weeks: Loot lockout so that the mid-core can start to experience/experiment with the mechanics (because now pretty much everyone parrots the world first strategies instead of actually getting their hands dirty)

Post 8 weeks: Loot lockout until the echo nerf.

I also drafted a sample of trying to work EXP into endgame as opposed to a low RNG. Think of it as a Bonus level system. Thread here

EXAMPLE One Leviathan Mirror would cost 3 bonus levels Post level 50 (1,500,000 exp) to purchase while the weapon drops from the fight. You would be free to exp however you wanted to but you would need to have the fight unlocked and beaten at least once.

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Originally Posted by Sadana

Hmm... from a purely emotional standpoint, it seems as though the person being left out is excluded due to not being good enough. :/ Let's say Coil-dude A gets through turn 7 with his static and helpfully sets up his friend with a PUG that fails miserably. If he says "Sorry friend, that sucks", but doesn't go with his friend next week, he is telling his friend he isn't good enough to raid with. If he abandons his static to go with his friend, they will be left in the lurch and he may be kicked from the static. :( I think the point is that people shouldn't have to make this choice.

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You're making Ryel's point much better than he has been. Thank you. I can understand the frustration with this. I think we can all agree that it would work better if the Coil lockout worked like the loot lockout when Crystal Tower first came out - you can only receive one item a week, but you can run it as many times as you want. This would mean that Ryel can run it with ALL of his friends and isn't limited to just one group.

But I'd also like to say to Ryel, with regards to wanting to play the content with all of your friends, that's very magnanimous. You feel terrible when you can't help them. Sadly, I think this is a detriment to your own play. I'm sure your friends understand your situation, and I really doubt they're hurt too much when you have to turn them down for not being able to run Coil with them. Try offering to run something else with them instead so that you're still interacting and cooperating with them, since you want to help them so badly. I think placing the blame on the game/developers is not the answer here - I think there are very few players who are like you.

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Originally Posted by Ryel

Why is the only true endgame encounter gated behind an eight person weekly lockout when Free Companies can hold 512 people, friends list can hold 200, and Linkshells can hold 128 people x 8 linkshells?

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YES. 1 group "raids" are getting really old really fast. Holding out until the expansion but if its limited to 4 encounters with only 8 people I'm done and know a good many people who are in the same boat.

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Originally Posted by NaliaBrown

You're making Ryel's point much better than he has been. Thank you. I can understand the frustration with this. I think we can all agree that it would work better if the Coil lockout worked like the loot lockout when Crystal Tower first came out - you can only receive one item a week, but you can run it as many times as you want. This would mean that Ryel can run it with ALL of his friends and isn't limited to just one group.

But I'd also like to say to Ryel, with regards to wanting to play the content with all of your friends, that's very magnanimous. You feel terrible when you can't help them. Sadly, I think this is a detriment to your own play. I'm sure your friends understand your situation, and I really doubt they're hurt too much when you have to turn them down for not being able to run Coil with them. Try offering to run something else with them instead so that you're still interacting and cooperating with them, since you want to help them so badly. I think placing the blame on the game/developers is not the answer here - I think there are very few players who are like you.

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While i thank you for the compliment and wish it was honestly the case the complaint is and has been far too common for this to just be me, a page or so back i linked in a response multiple threads that have come up regarding this since the first coil was introduced (and one still going on the front page as we speak)

In fact i would like to link these two threads one of which i linked earlier, and another which is talking about a similar thing:

This:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ts.-Right-now.

And this:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...t-community...

If i was unclear in getting my point across i apologize but the reality of the situation is there are a large number of people steadily leaving the game because of this, and i wish i could say that I'm the only one to have noticed. The truth is many people see the cycle and simply decide to take a break until it opens up for more people rather than continue to deal with the hassle as it is now.

I guess all of my close friends are in my static group. I'm not lucky enough to have as many close friends as what is apparently a large number of people. My apologies for assuming otherwise. I have other friends in my FC, but we do other things together - like treasure hunts, Coil 1, primals, etc.

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Originally Posted by Sonofbaldo

XI had flaws but it was overall superior to XIV.

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Agreed. And sadly most of the flaws were not addressed in XIV and all the good things about it were changed.


FFXI mostly just suffered because of being put on the PS2 when console online gaming was still new. Very limited UI/no custom channels/etc. Also no visible guild tags (a colored dot next to their name didn't help -_-) so finding a good end game guild on your server was pretty difficult.

The leveling experience was the most fun I've had in an MMO though. "eh I'm tired of playing X class for now" run to town and swap to something else for a while.

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Originally Posted by SirEdeonX

I don't mind how it is now, but I can't seem to get over the fact that it seems they want us to only play one class. The tome system, the relic quests, gear lockouts, it all comes down to making sure you don't gear up another job, which is stupid since the armoury system is there so you can be everything, and that's the uniqueness and beauty of it.

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Don't forget the shared MND/INT for Summoners and Scholars, it gets badly justified as "important decision making" or "specialization" but it's also just more railroading into a single class, even sillier when the armoury system is one of the game's most promoted features.

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Originally Posted by Ryel

All of the features included in 1.23 were under the direction of Naoki Yoshida and his team. Features like Skirmish and Hamlet (that are no longer around), and gear like Darklight and the relics as well as fights like the primals were all fruit borne during that time

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It feels like a couple of those features were already planned to be implemented since before 1.0 launched and were either in advanced concept stages or early implementation and coding, they were just allowed to complete them. Hamlet for instance was announced way back since the very early 1.0 days, other stuff like Primal fights including Titan who was even in one of the first 1.0 trailers and Leviathan were almost completed but unimplemented due to various issues, dungeon assets for Dzemael, AV and CC were already in the game since the beginning, most of the music too. A couple of other additions were definitely created from scratch farther along 1.X like job gear and relics though.

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Originally Posted by Ryel

I should NEVER have to answer someone who asks me for help by saying:

"I'm sorry the game won't allow me to help you, tough luck you're on your own"

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I totally agree. I've been saying this game desperately needs Dynamis, Limbus, Sky, Sea, Nyzul Isle, ZNM's... All these great options, not because we want the game to be like FFXI, but because there were no limit to the number of people who could come to these events.

In FFXIV, an FC member logs on and says "What you guys doing?" We are gonna do some primals for Johnny. Can I come help? We are full... No matter what activity you put in place of Primals, the answer can always be we are full...

In FFXI, an LS member logs on and says, "What you guys doing" We are hunting for Sky pops to help Johnny get his Byakko pants. "Can I come help?" Sure, we have a full alliance, so Johnny is gonna drop and form the 2nd alliance, and he'll send you an invite...

I like the things the OP said... We really do need something large scale, end game. Larger and harder than Crystal tower. Where the free company can work as a whole to get better, and not just a few groups of 8 out of hundreds of players.

After the discussions from my previous thread in both the English and Japanese forums (here and here if you missed it. Please don't bump them though, it's a done discussion I think) I think I reached some conclusions about these things.

There is no way for the devs/Yoshida to address these concerns in a direct manner without creating more problems (whether perceived or real) elsewhere. At a fundamental level, they cannot afford to divert resources and energy away from creating new contents to deal with these complaints because while it is still debatable that the issued raised in these forums are serious enough to require an overhaul of the system, there is no doubt that an effort to deal with these things at the expense of fewer updates and a lack of new contents will kill the game.

Ultimately, all they can do is to continue to fill out the game with more and newer contents and hope they can do so quickly enough to direct people's attention away from the existing bottlenecks. Instead of focusing on trying to "fix" what is currently there and potentially upsetting even more people if they don't do it well, they really have no choice but to focus on making better contents for the future instead.

In short, you'll need to just stick it out and hope there will be more interesting things for everyone to do in the future.

Things are good as is, if coil didnt have a weekly lock out the servers will be filled with sale runs to carry bad people through hard content.

The gear obtained from these instances are top tier and should go to people that earn them, having people that beat it help you isn't going to make you better.

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Originally Posted by Luciano_Bozzelli

I like the things the OP said... We really do need something large scale, end game. Larger and harder than Crystal tower. Where the free company can work as a whole to get better, and not just a few groups of 8 out of hundreds of players.

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If they can do what they're doing for Frontlines, then why can't they do it for another dungeon? Granted, it would be something that couldn't be done on a whim, but it would be nice to see some larger player "required" instances that aren't FATEs.

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Originally Posted by EmiliM

There is no way for the devs/Yoshida to address these concerns in a direct manner without creating more problems (whether perceived or real) elsewhere. At a fundamental level, they cannot afford to divert resources and energy away from creating new contents to deal with these complaints because while it is still debatable that the issued raised in these forums are serious enough to require an overhaul of the system, there is no doubt that an effort to deal with these things at the expense of fewer updates and a lack of new contents will kill the game.

Ultimately, all they can do is to continue to fill out the game with more and newer contents and hope they can do so quickly enough to direct people's attention away from the existing bottlenecks. Instead of focusing on trying to "fix" what is currently there and potentially upsetting even more people if they don't do it well, they really have no choice but to focus on making better contents for the future instead.

In short, you'll need to just stick it out and hope there will be more interesting things for everyone to do in the future.

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So it's a choice of slower updates but making this "mmo" more like a real mmo and possibly die or continue down the fake mmo route with faster updates and eventually die off anyways because the game has no real longevity in its current state >.>

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Originally Posted by Ikeda

So it's a choice of slower updates but making this "mmo" more like a real mmo and possibly die or continue down the fake mmo route with faster updates and eventually die off anyways because the game has no real longevity in its current state >.>

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^

Never got why people think releasing mroe content every 3 months is a good thing. Especially when it totally invalidates the older content instead of building upon it. Throwing away everything I've done every 3 months isn't a good thing to me.

Though at least my retainers get to sit in full Allegan/Myth gear.......................

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Originally Posted by LilaAquillina

I don't remember skirmish much - wasn't that the one thing high level players would swoop down and destroy beforelowbies got to it?)

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No, Skirmish was instanced
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fszBu29QHE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh9Se-gv8S0

Hi Ryel,

Great OP. I definitely agree.

1. Regarding No /tells in Dungeons: This is mind-boggling. Yoshi P's excuse is that he's afraid of harassment. Huh?! We have /Blacklist, but regardless, this was NEVER a rampant problem in XIV 1.0. I don't understand why it suddenly was used as the main reason he won't allow it.

It creates isolation and lockout from friends who may want to get a hold of you, or vice versa. The community is on "MUTE" when you enter an Instanced Raid.

2. More Community Events: Definitely agree that there should be more content that promotes that sense of "community" amongst friends, strangers across any FC/LS. FATEs have turned into mindless mass-zergs and everyone just leaves immediately after.

3. Non-Restricted 8 Person or Less Content. I know we have "Frontlines" (PvP), but for general PvE content, it's really Crystal Tower or bust, and even then, we can only go in with 7 people of our choosing.

One of the best things was the FLEXIBILITY to allow players to Change Jobs in Dungeons in 1.0. It promoted creative thinking, and ways to overcome challenges. But I think it's all tied in to how overly restrictive Yoshi P is making 2.0. He bragged in one Producer Letter that he was monitoring the DPS down to the fraction, in "balancing" various fights. Think about it: He's restricted and locked out players from EVER exceeding what Yoshi P wants for their [Main Stat (STR, DEX, INT, etc.)] per Item Level. Everything feels overly CONTROLLED and "by the numbers / scientific" more than soulful and dynamic and exciting.

4. Repairs: It's a small thing, but "yes," it's baffling that we no longer can help Repair other people's gear. It's minor and people just go to NPCs, but this small thing *helped* build a sense of an "MMO," and community where you could shout or ask for a repair and help others.

How is this a bad thing? :confused:

Ultimately, more content, more horizontal content, and less restricted content (not just locked to 4 players, or 8 rigidly), along w/ the above tweaks would go a long way to making Final Fantasy XIV: ARR a much better game.

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Originally Posted by Brainberry

Things are good as is, if coil didnt have a weekly lock out the servers will be filled with sale runs to carry bad people through hard content.

The gear obtained from these instances are top tier and should go to people that earn them, having people that beat it help you isn't going to make you better.

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I read this as "Gear is more important than people interacting. If I can't feel special then there's no point to playing".

You know, there are other options... such as larger scale encounters. Who cares if someone gets carried? It happens now. People are so deathly afraid of others getting their precious... Newflash, that wasn't a problem in EQ... and there were much more elite players there.

Sorry if someone has already pointed this fact, but to me, being able to change class -excuse me, job- in dungeon would mean drama for loot every time, because people will change just to greed everything.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Sorry if someone has already pointed this fact, but to me, being able to change class -excuse me, job- in dungeon would mean drama for loot every time, because people will change just to greed everything.

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Maybe if they locked your Need class to whatever class you entered the dungeon as, then that would help. For example, if I came in as a tank but changed to dps, I could still only Need on tank gear throughout the dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Kiara

1. Regarding No /tells in Dungeons: This is mind-boggling. Yoshi P's excuse is that he's afraid of harassment. Huh?! We have /Blacklist, but regardless, this was NEVER a rampant problem in XIV 1.0. I don't understand why it suddenly was used as the main reason he won't allow it.

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Try to blacklist someone from another server you meet in DF

They should leave no changing jobs in dungeons. Otherwise people may expect you to not only have, but be willing to change and or require you to change mid run for something. I'll stick with how t is. To. Much drama. That can come from it

I really don't mind that the newest pieces of the hardest endgame content has a lockout. I understand and share the frustration but think that opening it up would cause more problems than it solves. Currently my static works on 2nd coil twice a week and helps out our friends and LSmates with turns 1-5 (as well as primals and other things) on other nights. We go so far as to try to synch up free nights in our FC's so we can help each other out. I think its ok for 1 piece of content to be locked down as long as we are free to help out with the large amount of other content out there.

What I would really, really like is for there to be some meaningful content for a flexible number of people. It is always sad to be the 5th or 9th person in the FC to log on. Some activity where you could log on and join the party in progress even though you were the 9th person to log on. Where you could be done for the night and the rest could still carry on with whatever event.

I know I am committing a deadly sin but here is the example I have used many times. I remember when MY LS in FFXI did sky. I would log in early and see who else was on, I could go up to sky and sneak around and obtain the pop items I could get solo, note what NM's were currently up, what was being killed by other LSes. Once a few more people logged on we would take on some of the stuff a single party could handle then more people logged on and we would fight gods. We could even do this if we were short a body or two that day. There was meaningful things to do for 4 hours that could be completed if I was solo all the way up to 18 people.

Good read, I wouldn't worry about the devs not reading your letter. While they may not be able to read it directly, people that work on the community team will most likely relay your feedback in one form or another.

Now that being said many of the issues you brought up all stem from one problem from both a development standpoint and a community one, and that is fear. A game company has to worry not only about longevity of its game, but the people that play it as well; as the community are not of one mind. Every one has their own opinion of how things should be run, different play styles, and expectations. The trick is getting the community to unite and make them overcome what makes them uneasy.

Lets look at the simplest problem you brought up first, no tells in dungeons/instances. For the sake of argument lets say there isn't a restriction from coding side of things, and this was a developer decision due to harassment concerns. One side will claim people are less likely to be harassed due to you would have perform threw means of party chat. While others believe this harassment intensifies threw mob mentally in party chat; that others will likely join in to harass the said person in question. Yet another side of the community believes the others now being aware of the harassment will come to the aid of the harassed player and vote kick the one harassing.

Truth be told all of these situations have occurred. Some one has not harassed another person due to not wanting to do so threw the means of party chat, a player has been ganged up on due to mob mentality, while another was vote kicked for harassing in party chat. There is no wrong or right side of this argument as with most its just a shade of gray rather then black and white. The problem becomes making the community as a whole feel comfortable with the tell feature being enabled in instanced areas.

Edit: Apologies for multi post text limitations. :P

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Originally Posted by Zarzak

Never got why people think releasing mroe content every 3 months is a good thing. Especially when it totally invalidates the older content instead of building upon it. Throwing away everything I've done every 3 months isn't a good thing to me.

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Probably because people don't want to do one major piece of content for the next three years. Can you imagine the state this game would be in right now if all we had to do was what the game originally launched with?

Anyway, I think Coil is the way it is because SE wants people to actually take part in other content the game has to offer instead of running just Coil all the time. Maybe to a lesser extent, what someone above said as well: if anyone could jump in to help someone get their clear and loot then people would be getting bent over in merc services and it'd further promote RMT.

I know they've claimed harassment for the no /tells in dungeons 'feature', however, I think that is mostly just an excuse of convenience. I'd imagine that given the way the DF works (nevermind the way it used to work before data centers) coding for /tells was a bit difficult since party members in the instance could have the same name as other players on your server. Rather than implement a means of differentiating them it's obviously simpler to just disallow /tells. Clearly it's not just to prevent harassment because you can't send /tells even to people on your friend list while in a dungeon whether they're there with you or not.

As to the group content, I seriously hope they add something less rigid in the future. My currently defunct static was formed essentially of the first 8 people in our group to get to 50 and finish our relic weapons (thus unlocking Coil). Shortly after, a couple of other friends got to the same point and we had to politely tell them to find other people to play with (for that content at least -- this was 2.0 so basically other level 50 content was CM/WP/AK spam). Before long one person left so we needed to pick 1 person of the 3 available to join the static. It wasn't made any easier by the fact that we needed a DPS and they were all 3 DPS.

That kind of rigidity works the other way too, unfortunately. The group broke apart when 1 person was absent a couple of weeks (grabbed a pick up in PF) which led to resentment and other members loosening their commitment to play at the agreed upon time. Eventually only half of the team was reliably there and eventually nobody even expected each other to log on.

It's nice how tightly balanced the content is, but it sometimes becomes absurd to have to schedule around 8 people's schedules with very little leeway for substitutions (because of experience, class and gear) and no leeway for additions.

Lastly, for changing classes/ jobs in a dungeon, while it might create drama you could at least prevent some trolling by requiring a unanimous vote in favor of the change, with the specifics of the change being determined before the vote (ie. Player A wants to change from Monk lvl 88 to WAR lvl 92. Approve?). You'd need to be careful not to unintentionally deny someone though as again, to prevent trolling, you'd need to restrict job change requests to only outside of battle (obviously) and by time like they had to do with 'ready check'.

I disagreed with a lot of stuff the OP said, but the last bullet point, the one about lockouts and content, I couldn't possibly agree more.

The way content is designed in this game (as well as many other things), is excessively toxic, and will end up having a net negative effect on the game, even if its effects aren't obvious to the dev team just yet.

It will absolutely kill the longevity of the game.

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Originally Posted by Keeg

Edit: Apologies for multi post text limitations. :P

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You can edit your post to get past the 1000 character limitation. Creating a new post has that restriction, but editing does not :)

On topic, I'm mainly going to say I largely agree with the last point. However, to prevent my static from breaking up (it's a one-of-a-kind static, we're not the most progression focused static, but I'm really lucky to have them), I've decided to make a second character so I can learn a new role, and help out people with Second Coil, as a sort of free agent on free nights.

I agree with the OP about the lockouts and content as well. I work a retail job with a random schedule(I have no control over what hours/days I will have to work) this more or less prevents me from being in any kind of weekly based static group, which in turn(haha get it? turn!) prevented me from doing coil.

So when I unlocked the first set of coil I couldn't ever find a group for it because everyone was either already locked out or they had their own group which hadn't run yet but had no room. I joined an awesome FC and everyone was super helpful, got Garuda EX down and then was going to do Titan EX... well Titan EX was super hard and we didn't end up killing him that time, and I just never got around to trying again because I didn't see the point... I didn't really care about his loot and after him I'd do Ifrit then what? Levi/Mog and Coil2? but then I would just end up in the same situation that I was in before, looking for a group that I wouldn't be able to join because scheduling.

so what do I have left to do in FFXIV that I can actually do? Crafting, Running X dungeon for the Y time for tomes, leveling/gearing other classes, grinding PvP, making vanity sets(CT), Relic quest, Daily beast tribe rep grind. Sure this is a decent chunk of content, but after a while it gets boring. Frontlines will help a little bit assuming the queues aren't insanely long like wolves den is (waited 1hr+ for a pvp match). I would love some challenging/fun PvE content that didn't have a lockout... I honestly don't see why Coil cant follow a similar loot system to CT, then someone who has already done/looted Coil could party with their other friends and do coil with them.

Hopefully something changes soon, more and more people are leaving to go play other games, new MMOs and Expansions for existing ones are coming out and I really don't want to see FFXIV die out :(

I think the lock-out timers would be a little more forgiven if there were other alternatives for the same gear.

Why not have Crystal Tower drop the same level gear as Coil? Or, even different stat gear? (See WHM vs SCH gear as an example). Release Coil first, then CT later (as it is now). This gives the playerbase more content to play together for the same gear without excluding some of thier friends. When the next tier of content hits, continue to have "Completed T9 to enter" and "Completed CT2" as prerequisites... This gives people more content to do and they can swap people out as needed since (at this point) the lock-out timers should no longer be in place as its obsolete content.

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

I read this as "Gear is more important than people interacting. If I can't feel special then there's no point to playing".

You know, there are other options... such as larger scale encounters. Who cares if someone gets carried? It happens now. People are so deathly afraid of others getting their precious... Newflash, that wasn't a problem in EQ... and there were much more elite players there.

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I would love large scale encounters. I'm for that, never did I say I was against it. I was just replying to the SCOB whine in OP's post. Having the weekly lockout for SCOB removed this early before the next tier would be a terrible idea for various reasons, just be patient and after next patch people can start farming with echo it like you can with 1-5. Let the premier raid content stay as is, its not difficult if you're not lazy.

The reason why people want to have the weekly lockout removed from SCOB is because they want help getting loot, lets be serious, and you can actually already do this with alts. Its already bad enough they're starting to nerf past encounters with echo and making new encounters easier to down(like Levi Ex). This community just wants everything handed to them and its pretty pathetic. But as for more large scale encounters I would love to see that also, but they wont be as challenging as 8 man content due to balancing issues.

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Originally Posted by FritoBandito

Which they will likely never read.

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Obviously. Apart from that, I agree 100% with the OP, both the praises and the questions/suggestions. Very good points.

Basically I would suggest lockout on raids which drops weapons like t5 and t9.
Others shd be available on df or
with a weekly lockout on loot like CT.

With Novus weapon system, perhaps we shd hv a novus armor system
where we can customize gear's secondary stats, maybe?

all the things mentioned are conscious design choices. SE does not want you to send /tells in dungeons nor change classes. they fear abuse/misuse for a lot of reasons listed above

I do agree though that we could use a little more endgame variety. I don't know if lockouts for the top tier gear should be dropped but give us more to do than just coil & CT? Hamlet was one of the quirkiest things I've ever seen but it was really interesting. Something open world we could do with our FC with a dynamic number of people that is a little more complicated than the oversimplified fate system would be nice

I don't necessarily agree with the other points, but Coil lockouts absolutely need to go. They're encouraging seclusion. They make no sense with the FC system. They're discouraging, when not outright preventing, people who'd like to participate to the content to do so because they can't commit to a static, don't have one, or because theirs disbanded with 2.2. They're promoting that unfriendly mentality that is prevalent in all sorts of content now. They're slowly but surely killing the community. Please dump the lockouts, it's terrible design.