Staggering Alexander Unlocks After Launch

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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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It's to avoid putting pressure on players who might want to enjoy the content at their own pace but feel unable to due to the pressure from their static / FC / perceived competition. Like it or not, the game is multiplayer.

At first I didn't quite understand the point on staggering the release of end game content, but after reading a few responses to the thread and the interview in question, I can appreciate the sentiment a bit more. I personally like the idea of it in that respect.

The way I see it with some content that is released like EX primals for instance gets cleared by all the hardcores and players that keep up to date within the first week (the hardcores naturally clear it and the ones that want to keep up to date know they have to clear it quickly in the first few weeks to have a shot at winning) After the first few weeks you find the majority of players able to complete the content have moved on or are on farm mode, which then makes creating a learning party for newer players much more difficult. So it generally forced people to go straight to clearing through the story line to unlock the hard mode fight to unlock EX before all the decent players had cleared it and left you sitting in a half empty learning party a few weeks later.

I attacked all EX primals as they were released except ramuh and I regret that. The most competent players were still doing learning parties where they learn the quickest and generally understand concepts, dps and dodging the best. I left Ramuh out because it had no rewards (i100 ring at that time was not an upgrade) Ignoring the fact that people were getting easy wins on ramuh with titan tanking, I still found it very difficult to get a good learning party that even made it past adds to practice on tethering around the time they upped his reward to i110.

On coil I am not so sure, but I guess it does kind of hurry people along into forming statics and charging ahead. What will be nice is if the normal mode/hard mode on alexander is much like normal/hard on the primals it will atleast for the first 2 weeks give people a chance to figure out how the fight goes and then most of the regular attacks and abilities won't come as a massive surprise to every newcomer allowing learning parties to pick up the harder content quicker and easier. Plus you then don't have to spoil every fight by watching the necessary guide video as you will already know the enemy and storyline of the fight from normal mode so watching a guide video on the hard mode doesn't spoil the first time viewing of the battlefield and enemies.

If I had to choose between leveling up quickly and maxing my tomes for the weeks, or reading the story, I'd pick the tomes any day. Getting strong is my reason for playing, story is only a secondary thing that invests me into the content I'm doing.

That being said, I'm a massive lore junky (spent a few hours studying the 1.0 story - even watched a 2 hour video of cutscenes posted on youtube) and am completely glad that I get the enjoy the content before the items are released. I now even have time to try out DK to see if it fits with my style. This is a great decision on SE's part in my opinion.

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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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tbh I'm hoping this is the real reason; at least if that's true we won't necessarily expect it to repeat in subsequent expansions.

I like how people took my response as some form of attack on OP. I'm personally quite neutral to the approach of how tomestones/Alexander are added but I wanted to know why. I fully understand and appreciate the reasoning Yoshida gave for delaying it two weeks however and even if they didn't delay it I still wouldn't mind. I say this as someone with a static clearing FCoB weekly and unless anyone quits/leaves anytime soon, will be doing Alexander in the expansion as well.

I do find it a bit contradictory however to want content to be staggered so you can enjoy it at your leisure when you are part of a very small percentage that aim for world firsts of said content. You are kinda in the wrong business in the first place to want both, no offense.

Eh it seems most of my FC would actually prefer it this way, with the staggered launch. Gives everyone extra time to level/invest in crafted gear/enjoy the story. I'm in DnT and it seems like a LOT of the grops (even the world 3rd group) actually likes the idea of havingt to wait.

World Firsts would come down to a couple extra factors which arent skill -
1: How laggy the servers are (or even how long teh queue is, if you start 3 hours late, gg you lose)
2: Who levelled most efficiently (this one is fair as it would be considered a test of player ability, but still..)
I'd rather have stable servers and everything before thbe race would begin. We don't know the load that there could be on the servers at tht point, wouldnt it suck to be on the run of runs on the world first attempt and boom, everyone DC's and now you're fucked? I know I'd hate to lose to the server crashing when we were rightfully first.

I'm glad for the delay. Definitely would like to get at least my main jobs to 60 and do the story without being pressured.

Let's not kid ourselves, everyone of you has bought this hook line and sinker. The real reason it will be delayed is because they will have to patch this thing a week after launch for all of the stuff they missed. Especially balance. They are mitigating risk of releasing broken end game raid content, due to class imbalances, lvl 60 issues, or other tweaks that need to be made. This gives them time to focus on the launch and server stability, and then a few last minute fixes before they open it up.

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Originally Posted by MythToken

Let's not kid ourselves, everyone of you has bought this hook line and sinker. The real reason it will be delayed is because they will have to patch this thing a week after launch for all of the stuff they missed. Especially balance. They are mitigating risk of releasing broken end game raid content, due to class imbalances, lvl 60 issues, or other tweaks that need to be made. This gives them time to focus on the launch and server stability, and then a few last minute fixes before they open it up.

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Good point, they had quite a few issues with bugs in the first turn of coil which stopped some of the world first groups actually completing it earlier than they did AFAIK. I guess it's better to make everybody wait a week and play a bit more lesiurely then have the majority get frustrated at bugs that stop progression anyway.

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Originally Posted by MythToken

Let's not kid ourselves, everyone of you has bought this hook line and sinker.

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Except that just a few posts ago I commented on someone else's post saying basically what you said. So that's 2 that see through it at least. Even just from a balance perspective it's a good choice (without considering whether or not there will be glitches), so they've learned from their miscalculations on NIN tp use, even though that minor. 3 new jobs and 10 new levels on all the rest and you have a lot more chance to end up with some broken strat like how Titan-egis were tanking Ramuh ex at first.

But none of what you say excuses the decision to lock tomestones out the first couple of weeks. That's a whole different line of thought.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

But none of what you say excuses the decision to lock tomestones out the first couple of weeks. That's a whole different line of thought.

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I think most of the reason they are locking tomes is because of early access, they may be able to get a weeks worth of tomes before everyone else who did not pay for early access. That creates a kind of pay to win scenario that most people do not like.

It would likely be negligible but an extra 450 tomes can get you an accessory or left side piece ahead of everyone who did not pay.

You might reply with "well I paid for early access I should not be locked", but...basically when it comes to MMO's you have to remember that they cannot make every player happy with every decision they make. I've had my ups and downs with some of their decisions for the game and content, but my overall experience has leaned more towards 80% happy with their decisions.

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Originally Posted by ConFlictz

casuals win again

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Almost every MMO does this. Hell, even WoW does this. It's nothing to do with casuals and everything to do with making sure content is balanced and correct before letting people go balls to the wall on the raids.

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Originally Posted by ConFlictz

casuals win again

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Oh the people that keep the game afloat? Yeah damn them to hell.

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Originally Posted by Miste

-Snip-

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Not only that, but some people might have troubles purchasing the extension itself when it comes out. Would it be because they just don't have time until the weekend or that the store is out of stock.

Delaying the "weekly stuff" also smooth the release process which can bring queues to login, massive lags and such. Nobody wants to raid with these kinds of things.

So, letting people casualy starting to enjoy the new content is indeed the smartest thing to do for the vast majority of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

Except that just a few posts ago I commented....

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My apologies Alistaire, I totally skimmed this thread, and missed your post.

And I think the tomestones is definitely a different issues for sure.
In fact I would think they would want to encourage people to be running dungeons early on, not discourage it.
So not sure why they decided to do this, other than the reasons mentioned earlier.

As for the pay to win, 1 piece of gear isn't going to = win. The people who would be inclined to lvl to 60, and max tomes in 3 days, and skip the entire story ect, are going to beat you to the end anyways. Because they will be raiding 5 days a week or more. So its not like the playing field has ever been level. More time in game = more/faster rewards. So I still don't like the balance argument, unless they really do plan on giving world/server firsts a real reward beyond a title.

That is the only reason I could see them doing this. (still not a great reason)

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Originally Posted by Miste

I think most of the reason they are locking tomes is because of early access, they may be able to get a weeks worth of tomes before everyone else who did not pay for early access. That creates a kind of pay to win scenario that most people do not like.

It would likely be negligible but an extra 450 tomes can get you an accessory or left side piece ahead of everyone who did not pay.

You might reply with "well I paid for early access I should not be locked", but...basically when it comes to MMO's you have to remember that they cannot make every player happy with every decision they make. I've had my ups and downs with some of their decisions for the game and content, but my overall experience has leaned more towards 80% happy with their decisions.

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but then that would just dictate locking tomes out till early access is done.

I have done a lot of fates since they patched, still no alexandrite drops and I use nov shield and the sword to try.

Its best to stick to the hunts.

the fun thing is its 2 weeks, seeing how much new content we will be getting along with the new story trials etc, i don't think ANY of us will really be done by the two weeks , if people skip everything to just do alexander, then they should look at the story to learn WHY they are there, plus with all the new items crafts classes jobs levels, i think 2 weeks will give everyone enough time to get us to the point where the story is done and we want to raid. 2 weeks is not a long wait

2 weeks should give me enough time to level the 3 new classes and learn how to play them to a basic understanding and get my main of monk to level 60 :D

TL;DR all the comments. But pretty much there will be a two week delay so everyone isn't rushed to hit level 60 in 24hrs to do the new raid?

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Originally Posted by Arkista

TL;DR all the comments. But pretty much there will be a two week delay so everyone isn't rushed to hit level 60 in 24hrs to do the new raid?

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I edited the OP to include the relevant information in bold. TLDR is yes.

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Originally Posted by Ryans

Um... everyone is on even ground already. Everyone starts at the same place and the people who devote more of their time to the game are going to get more completed. Do you want the servers to go down when you aren't logged on or something? I don't really see why that would matter though. So what if someone has better gear than you. There isn't a limited number of items per server that drop from a raid so someone having an item you want doesn't prevent you from getting it.

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F#@$ quoted for truth. This times one thousand.