Staggering Alexander Unlocks After Launch

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Originally Posted by desufin

For what purpose? No one is forcing you to rush to the content just like no one forced you to rush to The Binding Coil of Bahamut on launch of 2.0. If there is someone forcing you and you don't want to, perhaps it's time to rethink your priorities.

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Not true, people in statics would be forced to steamroll through content to be world first. By adding in a 2 week wait period everyone can enjoy the content at a steady pace and not feel forced to complete it as fast as possible to do endgame.

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Originally Posted by Airget

Not true, people in statics would be forced to steamroll through content to be world first. By adding in a 2 week wait period everyone can enjoy the content at a steady pace and not feel forced to complete it as fast as possible to do endgame.

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How can you be forced to do what you dont want to do...in a game? If you dont want to steamroll the new content, then dont. The choice is yours

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Originally Posted by SinisterJointss

How can you be forced to do what you dont want to do...in a game? If you dont want to steamroll the new content, then dont. The choice is yours

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It's called peer pressure. If your the only one in your static that wants to enjoy all the content added and take your time watching all cut scenes and reading all dialogue then odds are you will be replaced in your static. Yoshi gave his resoning and everyones ignoring it to say its so nobody gets a head start. He did it to prevent peer pressure from making players skip as much as possible. They didnt work hard on this expansion so people can skip everything in a rush to get to Alexander. He wants people to actually watch the cut scenes and pay attention to the story. The outrage over waiting 2 weeks for Alexander seems a bit much considering everything else there will be to do in those 2 weeks.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

Thanks, Hadley! (And long time no chat. I left Excalibur last summer. :( )

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Hey! I saw your forum name and wondered if that was you. Good to see you again! Do you still have a character on Excalibur? I thought I saw you when I was grinding out the gathering Lucis tools. Do you and N**** still play together? Tell her I said hi! Unfortunately, I lost touch with most of the PO people. Been trying recently to reach out to a few of them. Anyhow, hope all is well with you and that your new server is working out for you. ^^

I just assumed the "even ground" was targeted towards -just- the World First community. This allows for a higher potential number of groups to be in the running. As has already been stated, those groups are gonna eat up the new content lickity split anyway, but some groups may not be as quick as others in that area, which arguably takes longer than getting through one run nof an actual raid. Instead of it being a race to gear-up for the raids and then beat them first, the race simply begins with the raids themselves.

yea that's why it was done. I wouldn't be to happy either if I had worked on a project this large just for the player-base to steam role through it. He pretty much wants you to enjoy the beauty of heaven-sword and all it has to offer, pass behavior in this game shows that the player-base will try to rolle through this content as quickly as possible. Remember Castrium M and Pratatorium you had new players in a lot of those partys and what do you hear"you can Watch the cut-scenes at the Inn" This is what he is trying to prevent. In my opinion any time you have run a dungeon for the very first time they should remove the Skip-Cut-scene option untill you have seen the full cut-scene in its entiredy at least once.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

I just assumed the "even ground" was targeted towards -just- the World First community. This allows for a higher potential number of groups to be in the running. As has already been stated, those groups are gonna eat up the new content lickity split anyway, but some groups may not be as quick as others in that area, which arguably takes longer than getting through one run nof an actual raid. Instead of it being a race to gear-up for the raids and then beat them first, the race simply begins with the raids themselves.

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Pretty much this, if people didnt realise, the devs watched the road to world first for final coil and even congratulated the JP FC that got it first, if players dont care, well clearly the devs care.

Also I have not seen anyone mention the history of protecting players from players. No tells and more gated runs in newer dungeons. While more then likely speed runners will try to fight with the cut sceners. If all it takes is a two week window to help aleviate that. Would you be surprised at all.

Now if the raid is a buggy mess you will know they were buying time. Also anyone who has done a few expansions knows the game/servers are a crashing mess. If they haven't stabilized for the most part after two weeks I would also be worried we got a rushed product. Last one I did for WoW was Lich King and they either had maintenance almost every other day. Or they had to take wintergrasp off line so they could keep the servers up.

I don't really like this at all. I am one of those people who wants to level up their job as soon as possible and do new content dungeons for tomes and raid for gear. When FFXI raised the level cap above 75, I had 5 jobs to the new cap on the first day. I do not find it hard to level cap jobs in a mmo.

With not releasing raids or the new dungeons for new tomestones until 2 weeks after. They choosing for me what content I will do which will then be to level up all my jobs/crafts to 60 and the new jobs before doing anything else. I rather level up my PLD first focus on that gear it up with new content rather then doing a bunch of leveling grinding for jobs I won't really play much at all.

Blizzard did the exact same thing for their last 2 expansions MoP and WoD, delayed the raids for a couple weeks a lot of hard core players were not happy with this because they sat around leveling alts while waiting the few weeks for the raids to unlock so I don't know why SE is doing it.

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Originally Posted by Hadey

Hey! I saw your forum name and wondered if that was you. Good to see you again! Do you still have a character on Excalibur? I thought I saw you when I was grinding out the gathering Lucis tools. Do you and N**** still play together? Tell her I said hi! Unfortunately, I lost touch with most of the PO people. Been trying recently to reach out to a few of them. Anyhow, hope all is well with you and that your new server is working out for you. ^^

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Yup, still have Kero there, but trying to keep three characters relevant was burning me out, so I just log on her to chat with PO. And we do, and she says hi back! Really good to see you too! Sorry I took off without saying anything; it was a pretty sudden decision on my part.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

I just assumed the "even ground" was targeted towards -just- the World First community. This allows for a higher potential number of groups to be in the running.

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I'm not a 'world first' player, but I'd probably still feel pressured to plow through the new stuff. As such, I'm glad tomestones won't be immediately available either.

Edit: (Not all of my message pasted for some reason) I skipped over a lot of story stuff from the last couple of patches in a race to get new dungeons unlocked and start capping tomes etc. But anyway, I guess I'd still prefer if people had the choice to steamroll content. Two weeks is kind of excessive for the amount of time some people put into playing.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Blizzard did the exact same thing for their last 2 expansions MoP and WoD, delayed the raids for a couple weeks a lot of hard core players were not happy with this because they sat around leveling alts while waiting the few weeks for the raids to unlock so I don't know why SE is doing it.

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And a lot were just fine with it and found it fun to watch the top 10 battle it out for the world first, just like people are interested in watching the 100 m sprinters, you put them on the same starting line and see who does it the quickest.

The developers sure had fun watching it, why can't SE devs have fun with this as well.

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Originally Posted by raelgun

And a lot were just fine with it and found it fun to watch the top 10 battle it out for the world first, just like people are interested in watching the 100 m sprinters, you put them on the same starting line and see who does it the quickest.

The developers sure had fun watching it, why can't SE devs have fun with this as well.

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If its unlocked at the start everyone has the same opportunity. Its putting off like the major content to early July in a expansion that has already been delayed a month from its spring date.

Simple solution: bump up the release date. June 23 was bad enough but now we're looking at a July 7th release date.

I am okay with this information. I see the logic behind it and understand how it would be a good thing for SE and the game itself even if will annoy a few people who don't want to try the new classes, explore the new content outside of raiding or do the myriad of other things this expansion will bring. It is not like would have to wait long before the new raid unlocks, so instead of whining about a short wait why not take the time between the release and unlock to explore what SE claims will be content that doubles the size of the current game (I am not sure I believe them on that but I do believe will contain a vast amount of content some what comparable).

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Originally Posted by Snugglebutt

I am okay with this information. I see the logic behind it and understand how it would be a good thing for SE and the game itself even if will annoy a few people who don't want to try the new classes, explore the new content outside of raiding or do the myriad of other things this expansion will bring. It is not like would have to wait long before the new raid unlocks, so instead of whining about a short wait why not take the time between the release and unlock to explore what SE claims will be content that doubles the size of the current game (I am not sure I believe them on that but I do believe will contain a vast amount of content some what comparable).

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You see some people play FFXIV for leveling all their jobs and seeing the story others just play for the raids and skip all the cutscenes. Someone who plays for doing raids is going to be waiting 2 extra weeks.

Thank the Twelve, now I can enjoy some other things Heavensward brings and experiment with new Jobs before breaking my spine in Alexander.

casuals win again

Its a two week set up period to allow the racers to properly figure stuff out and gear up.

10 levels worth of new abilities are being added to all classes. This should change all rotations.
3 New classes are being added that some players may want to use in Alexander. It will take time to learn level and gear them.
Skill Speed and Spell Speed are being changed to be more useful. i130 BiS starting gear will be different from what it currently is.

It is a two week period that will allow people to get fully prepared instead of trying to cram it all into one day.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

You see some people play FFXIV for leveling all their jobs and seeing the story others just play for the raids and skip all the cutscenes. Someone who plays for doing raids is going to be waiting 2 extra weeks.

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Everyone who raids also plays to level in both the classes they want to raid with alongside the gear they use on that class so why not take the time to start or continue leveling on one of the new/old classes so you can experience that raid in a new way when it unlocks along side continuing with your other class currently raiding with. Who knows maybe you will love the new class and will make it your main. Do not forget the level cap will also be increased so you have to grind levels/new gear to continue raiding anyways in the new content.

I assume your main is a tanking class, are you not at all interested to even try the new tanking option of dark knight? Perhaps might enjoy it more than your current main so try that during the two weeks along with anything else that takes your fancy. Maybe you will like more than your realize, SE wants people to try new things, try new content and not stay hidden away in their metaphorical basements grinding only one thing. It seems to me they want to drag some of those people out into the light and bring them back into the larger community outside of their small groups that grind one type of content (based on your comment that some people only want to do raids which is people forming small niché groups in an effort to practice and grind one type of content).

All I am saying is it is not a lot of time between the release and the unlock, the game is supposedly going to double in size according to SE and the amount of things to do and experience will be increased. SE wants people to broaden their horizons, branch out and try new things in my opinion and I see no harm in taking that short period of time to at least try some of those things. If do not like anything outside of grinding raids then it is not like you have to wait long for it to unlock though and your going to have to level and re-gear your old raid character for it anyways. Now maybe SE has a different motive than the one I mentioned like making it a more even playing field in terms of more world first for clearing the content is not limited to only those who level from 50-60 first and have that head start but that's how I perceive this news and I see no real harm in it.

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Originally Posted by ConFlictz

casuals win again

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You have it all wrong. Real casuals couldn't care less about this. Many of them don't even cap their Poetics every week. It's the pseudo-hardcores who are feeling the pressure. True casuals feel no pressure on progression.

Stop blaming everything on casuals just because they don't even care to come to the forum and can't refute these outrageous smear campaigns! :3

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Originally Posted by Zfz

You have it all wrong. Real casuals couldn't care less about this. Many of them don't even cap their Poetics every week. It's the pseudo-hardcores who are feeling the pressure. True casuals feel no pressure on progression.

Stop blaming everything on casuals just because they don't even care to come to the forum and can't refute these outrageous smear campaigns! :3

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Which makes the decision even more bad and ironic. Decision designed for those who won't care about it hurting anyone who does.

As a raider who has had FCoB on farm for a couple of months now, I very much like this idea of staggering the raid for 2 weeks. This will give me and my group a good amount of time to get our mains to 60 (Shouldn't take long at all...) and also level the new jobs and really experiment and maximise their potential, I for one will be making the change from Warrior to Dark Knight and really tapping into Dark Knight, theory crafting how it plays, rotations, mp management, damage mitigation, etc. This will also give newer players time to catch up, say a player from WoW (Don't hate for using WoW as an example) who converted over to FFXIV and use to raid Hardcore on WoW and plans to do so on FFXIV as well. This will give them a decent amount of time to just see how the game plays and the how the jobs work. :)

Yeah obviously people wouldn't be raiding on day 1. But within the first week is not that hardcore of an idea to get your raid job to 60 and give it a shot. If you don't want to that's fine but they shouldn't be preventing those that do based on those that won't care.

I couldn't imagine the pressure to be World First.
At least that would alleviate the variable of "who can level fastest\skip all the things" for people who are into that sort of thing

Why are people so negative about this decision? I don't think it is bad at all.

I've been through 2 cycles of raid patches (SCoB and FCoB, not BCoB as I am not legacy player) where I have to juggle between patch day crafting and raiding. It is really shit busy for people like me, having to raid reasonably on week 1 and at the same time, churn out the new gears for myself, for sale, and FC groups who are gunning for Server/World rankings.

In Heavensward, not only you have to level your mainjob to 60, a lot of groups and players would probably want to see if the 3 new jobs will and new abilities/skills will present a change in group meta/dynamics or not, figuring out and optimizing rotations, while the top crafters also need to level several key crafting jobs to 60. There is just shit-ton of things going on at the launch of Heavensward. Without staggering, you will probably need an entire FC effort where the main team will focus on leveling their raiding jobs and focus in optimization and you will also need a handful of players who are going to sacrifice by gunning for their DoH/DoL classes and focus on churning out the materials and gears for raiding, assuming there are new recipes (which most likely will).

Of course you can say it is their choice, but again I think Yoshida is right about this decision. You can still choose to play 16hrs a day during the 2 weeks stagger and get all jobs to 60 or you can choose with less play time but only the core jobs to 60. I gives a lot more flexibility for players to decide what they should/want to do and less pressure on things.

I'm also glad about this decision since I'm going to be switching to astrologian when it comes out so it will give me time to learn my new class.

I am happy with this, as are the others in my static that were in TS when we were chatting about it.

Staggering the content like this allows the raiders who want to go through the story and take it all in to do so. It allows those of use who want to change jobs a chance to try them out and start to figure out what we need to do to raid with it. It lets us level and gear up and change our rotations properly, not in a rushed fashion with many potential errors.

If you want to rush through everything Day 1 and be ready to raid Day 1, you can do that. No one's stopping you. But there are many raiders who are also heavily interested in the story, in the environments, who want to take proper time and make sure they are ready to raid with all the changes. This is evening out the playing field between them.

If all you want to do is raid, stay away for another two weeks. Go ahead. Come back the day Alexander is released, try to level to 60 and get the gear you need then. And watch those who took the time to prepare properly push harder and faster than you can.

I love this decision. Takes away the pain a tiny, little bit of choosing DRK over SAM *sniff*.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

If all you want to do is raid, stay away for another two weeks. Go ahead. Come back the day Alexander is released, try to level to 60 and get the gear you need then. And watch those who took the time to prepare properly push harder and faster than you can.

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Only you can't get gear because no new tomestones from dungeons till the 2 weeks are up according to the interview tomestones are locked out too not just the raid. This will be like get level 60 then have whatever crap set you got when leveling till new tomestones and the raid become available.

Most people will just take this time to cap all their jobs to 60 and new jobs and crafts. If its anything like FFXI when they rasied the cap after 75 I got like 5 jobs to the new cap a day.

Oh and I watch all the cuteness and it sure doesn't take me 2 weeks to do that. Half my raid group doesn't watch them and they are done with the patches usually in 30 min to an hour if there is a dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

Which makes the decision even more bad and ironic. Decision designed for those who won't care about it hurting anyone who does.

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Not so. The problem is with the placement of the blame. There are seriously a large portion of the population feeling this progression stress. There is no doubt about that. But it is wrong to call these people casuals. They are actually "pseudo-hardcores" because they are looking at the game as a hardcore player yet only willing to or only able to invest into the game an amount of time that is more similar to the casuals.

They are designing it for people who care about it. But people on the forum are placing that blame on people who don't care about it.

The thing about the game is there are no leader boards for raids and you do them with a group in an instance you don't see other players doing them. This isn't like FFXI where you have competition and have to camp HNM vs the whole server. Maybe the top 3 groups get recognized by Yoshi P in a letter from the producer. You pretty much go at your own pace and go when you are ready. I don't get this whole being rushed to do endgame. Its pve content it really isn't a competition. Unless your group really wants to get that shout out from Yoshi P for getting in the first 3 kills most other do not really care they just want to do the content when they want to do it which for some is on the first day of the expansion.

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Originally Posted by ConFlictz

casuals win again

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This thread and subsequent interest in this was literally created by the guild master of BG, what are you smoking son?

Honestly, I'm glad.
Forget the world first clears and fairness the point is they have LOCKOUTS.
I don't want to have to make a choice of either getting my current class to 60 asap and get my alexander loot lockout/tome cap for the week or trying out one of the new classes. I want to switch from pally to DK, so if I have to go 1-60 as well as get an alexander drop/cap tomes it'll be a pain. People will skip stuff just so they can do all of that.

People are right, it is a choice, but you're going to have to level/check out new areas/flying mounts/airships/new dungeons to play with for a couple of weeks (2 weeks for early access 1 week for normal access I imagine) then you get the rest, I understand some people want alexander right away, but jesus christ in a week or two when you have boatload of other content to do is it actually worth complaining about?

i never liked this sort of aproach. who do you think you are to tell my how i consume the content i bought?
if its not ready for launch then just say so.

Like so much this idea. Good choise. :)

As a FC leader and a semi-casual raider I love this decision! Now we'll get two weeks to do main story to the point of unlocking the new raid, level jobs to 60 and gear them, and most importantly see what job everyone wants to main in HW and organise our raid groups accordingly.

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Originally Posted by razzgrizz3

i never liked this sort of aproach. who do you think you are to tell my how i consume the content i bought?
if its not ready for launch then just say so.

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They are the ones who designed the game, the rules of it and how the game works. You are the one who buys it or does not based on what they tell you it will contain and how it will work. If you bought it (which I imagine would be pretty hard to do given the expansion is not even out yet) based of your assumption about it working differently then that is your fault not theirs. You might as well have said how dare they tell me I am not allowed to buy gil from RMT without the risk of being banned. Their game, their rules...your choice to buy or not, subscribe or not based on the information provided between now and release.

They have given you more than enough warning about how this aspect within the expansion will work aka there will be a two week lock out, so buy it or don't buy it when it comes out but do not buy it and then make silly statements like have done regarding what right they have over the design of the content in the game they are making. They have every right to make the expansion how they want, you have the right to not buy it if do not like how it is made or how it works, even after it is released you have the right to cancel your subscription if takes a turn down a path you do not like.

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Originally Posted by razzgrizz3

i never liked this sort of aproach. who do you think you are to tell my how i consume the content i bought?
if its not ready for launch then just say so.

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Did you read Yoshida's response??

He says people rush through content and don't bother waiting for others to watch cutscenes. That is the key point.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

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Except you're can't buy anything other than an accessory week 1 anyway, so what do tomes really matter week 1? They're not going to make or break a run for a few weeks.

It's the preparation getting to lv60 and getting the best lv60 gear, learning the new skills/rotations and that sort that's what this is for

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Only you can't get gear because no new tomestones from dungeons till the 2 weeks are up according to the interview tomestones are locked out too not just the raid. This will be like get level 60 then have whatever crap set you got when leveling till new tomestones and the raid become available.

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No tomestone gear was involved in FCoB first clear.
And i'm sure level 60 crafted gear is not locked out during the first 2 weeks.