A comparison of combat content in Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

Liana.

Pay to win?

Really.???

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Yep. Really. Doesn't bother me to have that option in a fully online multiplayer game. We already have RMT and paid services here for clears so not like it doesn't already exist in an unofficial form.

So yeah, personally, I'd welcome it if it meant I could have control over all areas of my progression tbh

Edit: I take it back, we already do have p2w here in an official sense. You can buy a mount that makes you faster than others (which is basically the "BiS" for exploring all new maps), you can buy a level skip to 80 (soon to be 90) and skip the majority of the story. The Menphina Earrings from pre-ordering can be considered p2w as well since they give you an xp boost.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Edit: I take it back, we already do have p2w here in an official sense. You can buy a mount that makes you faster than others (which is basically the "BiS" for exploring all new maps), you can buy a level skip to 80 (soon to be 90) and skip the majority of the story. The Menphina Earrings from pre-ordering can be considered p2w as well since they give you an xp boost.

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Don't forget extra retainers which can bring you back more free crafting materials and the like.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

Liana.

Pay to win?

Really.???

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In what regard will you have p2w in this game in terms of PvE combat?

In order to have any so called "p2w" there is a need for following things:

1. Any official ranking of players regarding certain content (raids, dungeons, trials whatever it will be). This is essential otherwise p2w doesn't have any meaning.

2. Any of that content rankings mentioned in 1st point would need to be affected by anything you will get from the store.

Are there such things in this game? No.

FFXIV doesn't have any competetive content with rankings that is affected by PvE combat gear. So paying for any additional attempt of savage raids or whatever timegated thing it is going to be should not be considered p2w.
Since getting gear in 1 or 2 weeks doesn't affect any other player experience in this game or any rankings, because there are none.

Deep Dungeon ranking - is not affected by PvE combat gear
PvP ranking for CC - is not affected by PvE combat gear

Even buying a job skip to lv 70/80 whatever it will be later on in this game is not going to affect any other player PvE combat experience. The reason is that any PvE combat content in this game is meant to be done solo or via cooperation of certain amount of players in a group. The cooperation is the keyword here.

Let's say there are 3 players A, B, C and one of them, let's say A, buys job/story skip. Does buying these things affected any experience of B and C player? No

There are no official rankings of who finished the story first, raids first, dungeon first, who deals most damage on certain jobs.

Conclusion is simple.
Who cares if some other player was able to clear content in 1 week or 10 months or 7 years or whatever the timespan was for them to do that. Because that player is not affecting someone else progress in PvE content that is based on cooperation rather than competition between players.

If someone cares for some random player progress in noncompetitive PvE content or what they buy to skip some part of it, then there is an issue with the way they think of what p2w is.

P2W - is the practice of buying in-game items that give a player a very big advantage over others.

If there is only solo or cooperation in PvE content that is not competetive then there is no p2w. Since so called p2w player would rather be help for any f2p player in terms of clearing content in that case.

Having cash shop mounts that are faster than regular in-game mounts? P2W imo.

Paying cash for extra retainers to have more inventory and selling power? P2W imo.

Paying cash to skip leveling experience completely? P2W imo.

That said, FFXIV doesn't show any of that extra stuff in-game, so I'm mostly okay with it. Something like Diablo: Immortal on the other hand...

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Personally I'd rather have this than have my progress intentionally slowed down because some random people want to whine. If I have the ability to pump through getting a set of gear in a week, why shouldn't I be able to do that and then just go focus on something else or play something different? Timegates are probably the stupidest thing to ever come to video games which are generally supposed to be "progress at your own pace".

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I can think of 2 reasons it doesn't happen.

The first is to help ensure that players hitting the content late will still find others doing the content.

The second, and possibly more importantly from a developer point of view at least in the short term, is to prevent Raubahn EX from happening every time a patch is released. Can you imagine what a mess the instance servers would be in if everyone could farm as much as they wanted as soon as content was released?

Whether gear is time gated or not, there will always be those players complaining about a lack of things to do before the next patch but that's their problem to solve.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Yep. Really. Doesn't bother me to have that option in a fully online multiplayer game. We already have RMT and paid services here for clears so not like it doesn't already exist in an unofficial form.

So yeah, personally, I'd welcome it if it meant I could have control over all areas of my progression tbh

Edit: I take it back, we already do have p2w here in an official sense. You can buy a mount that makes you faster than others (which is basically the "BiS" for exploring all new maps), you can buy a level skip to 80 (soon to be 90) and skip the majority of the story. The Menphina Earrings from pre-ordering can be considered p2w as well since they give you an xp boost.

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Before anyone starts calling something pay to win, it's usually good to define what the win condition is.

So what is winning in FFXIV?

I don't see an XP boost from a pre-order bonus as pay to win. That simply gets someone to level cap faster. It doesn't confer the rewards that players usually set as win goals.

I don't see a mount with a speed boost as pay to win either. It also does not confer the rewards that players view as win conditions. It also becomes irrelevant once the player unlocks the ability to fly.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

prevent Raubahn EX from happening every time a patch is released [...] farm as much as they wanted as soon as content was released

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Literally what? No one was farming the solo instance. You weren't even there for it to know what happened. It was a DDoS + poor server infrastructure (because they put all the solo instances into one bucket), and just underestimation of the required capacity. Did you think people were farming a story instance lol??

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Originally Posted by GaiusDrakon

Literally what? No one was farming the solo instance. You weren't even there for it to know what happened. It was a DDoS + poor server infrastructure (because they put all the solo instances into one bucket), and just underestimation of the required capacity.

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Everyone was trying to hit it at the same time and it was overwhelming the instance server. That's why they started having two possible areas to go with Shadowbringers onward so we're not all funneled to the same bottleneck point. DDoS and poor server infrastructure didn't help, but neither did all the Early Access players getting to that bottleneck point quickly and all trying to hit it at once. It was also back when we still had gargantuan data centers which made things even worse.

Some of these limitations do help maintain some balance with instances and it's a legitimate concern that not having these limitations might lead to overwhelming the instance server again. There are still instances where it lags sometimes even now.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Everyone was trying to hit it at the same time and it was overwhelming the instance server. That's why they started having two possible areas to go with Shadowbringers onward so we're not all funneled to the same bottleneck point. DDoS and poor server infrastructure didn't help, but neither did all the Early Access players getting to that bottleneck point quickly and all trying to hit it at once. It was also back when we still had gargantuan data centers which made things even worse.

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That is not "farming". Unless you think people "farm" the MSQ. Their argument is that timegating prevents Raubahn EX but no one is doing the MSQ twice in the first week of 4.0. Raubahn EX has nothing to do with timegating.

Also the Grynewahlt instance (or however you spell his name) came after the two branches of the 4.0 MSQ merged together. It didn't start with ShB, it started with HW.

Look, I'm for sensible timegating but using Raubahn EX as a supporting reason is just bizarre

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Originally Posted by GaiusDrakon

That is not "farming". Unless you think people "farm" the MSQ. Their argument is that timegating prevents Raubahn EX but no one is doing the MSQ twice in the first week of 4.0. Raubahn EX has nothing to do with timegating.

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They're not talking about the MSQ. They're talking about things that are timegated now like weekly drops. We can go run an MSQ dungeon as many times as we want for drops, especially with the Trust system. And while some do run 8 or 24 man content over and over, a lot only run it for their weekly drop. Which serves to help keep the instance servers from getting too overwhelmed.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

They're not talking about the MSQ. They're talking about things that are timegated now like weekly drops. We can go run an MSQ dungeon as many times as we want for drops, especially with the Trust system. And while some do run 8 or 24 man content over and over, a lot only run it for their weekly drop. Which serves to help keep the instance servers from getting too overwhelmed.

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Raubahn EX isn't about the MSQ????