Alienation of Dedicated and Skilled players

They're never going to make gear last longer because gear treadmills drive subs while everlasting gear gives people the feeling that they've "beat the game" once they have a fully optimized character and then they quit. Very few people care about adding "interesting stats" because most people realize that it all gets fed into a optimization simulator and the best build is found and enforced by the community anyway.

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Originally Posted by Underdog2204

Yes there will be choice but that is only until someone does some number crunching and all of that choice is gone, it's just an illusion of choice like skill trees are. I would prefer things not be overhauled for what will end up being a pointless exercise... I'm not even touching on the massive balance issues that tend to occur frequently with such a system.

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Perfect balance is impossible to obtain, even FFXIV as it is now is not perfectly balanced nor even are the most competitive esports in the world. Since that level of balance isn't possible, I would say inbalance with interesting choices/complex stats is to be preferred to inbalance with no choices/boring stats. All that's needed is a fair margin.

Bleeding edge raiders would likely make their choices on number crunching, absolutely. That's the nature of their game, but the vast majority of players don't stress over performance like progression raiders do. We can see evidence of that looking at FFXIV's jobs, which is the one gameplay choice we do have. Some jobs outperform others, but all are played, because numbers aren't the only factor. Paladins were the worst tank for months after Heavensward launched but I still mained a pld because I enjoy the lore, it's design, it's style, over the other tanks who were more efficient at tanking. Bleeding edge raiders might have chosen not to bring a Paladin, but there are still a huge amount of paladin players. The same would happen if we could customize our gameplay even more.

I would argue that it's also possible to create interesting stats that are hard to quantity. If you had to choose between an ability that roots one monster for 15 seconds or an AoE that roots everything it hits for 5 seconds, which would be objectively better? Wouldn't they both excel in different situations that would change from encounter to encounter?

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Originally Posted by Lorielle

I don't even... Alright. Sure. No one likes gear lasting longer. You clearly understand. Sorry. I shouldn't have argued.

Again, this can be flipped. Careful not to walk into your own trap. Of course the path of least resistance is going to be the majority. That's human nature. And there are people that sought out XI(former XI). I already mentioned that, but I guess you ignored that already, yeh?

But you're saying that the minority doesn't matter because we're a smaller voice? That's cool. And you're calling me arrogant.

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Context. You completely ignored why I said what I did. It isn't "people don't like gear lasting longer," but what purpose does it serve? Those old relic weapons are only good if they immediately help clear new content upon its release. This can only be achieved in horizontal progression if ilvl remains static. This has the immediate drawback of restricting the difficulty of content because everyone will already be equipped to handle it. Say ilvl 240 remained our definitive gear level from 3.3 onward. Now no difficult can eclipse Brute Justice otherwise players won't have a means of upgrading. To the current raiding playerbase, this means the next stage of Savage would be significantly easier as they would only need to learn mechanics. Gear simply lasting longer doesn't accomplish anything. That's the point.

And? You keep saying it can be flipped, yet ignore the financial implications and any other compounding factors. SE didn't arbitrarily decide on the current system based on a whim. The MMO market shifted towards a more casual demographic due to demand of its audience. People simply aren't playing heavily grind oriented games like they did in the heydays of FFXI and Vanilla WoW.

Pragmatically speaking? Yes. That isn't arrogance, but the reality of business. When arguably 95% of your audience prefers a certain style of content, you would be foolish not catering towards them. I actually prefer games where I can die if I mess up, and would love to see harder dungeons. I'm the nut who wants to queue into content with a pre-made group of friends at the lowest ilvl we can get away with just for fun. It would be a blast if mobs hit hard enough that healers even thinking of DPSing results in a dead tank. I also know very few people feel the same way, thus why I don't expect SE to cater to that particular preference of mine. It doesn't make financial sense of them to do so. Which has been my point. People like the current game as is. You telling them "well, you'll adapt to what I like because it's better" is what I cited arrogant.

Tbh while I would enjoy some gear lasting a little bit longer I HATE the idea of a weapon lasting for years or so.

I feel I would get bored with just the same gear like that

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Originally Posted by Hix

They're never going to make gear last longer because gear treadmills drive subs while everlasting gear gives people the feeling that they've "beat the game" once they have a fully optimized character and then they quit. Very few people care about adding "interesting stats" because most people realize that it all gets fed into a optimization simulator and the best build is found and enforced by the community anyway.

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Try reading my explanation as to how you're entirely wrong on this and there's plenty of evidence showing otherwise.

P.S. Bourne has a point. If you think SE would rather change an entire system of the game to cater to a very small minority of the community rather than keeping the current system which the majority are fine with and/or enjoy, you are foolish.

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Originally Posted by Zari

P.S. Bourne has a point. If you think SE would rather change an entire system of the game to cater to a very small minority of the community rather than keeping the current system which the majority are fine with and/or enjoy, you are foolish.

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The thing is, as I explained, it's very easy to make changes that would both please people like OP to some degree and not only not alienate the casual playerbase, but also not take a whole lot of extra dev effort. In fact, they're even making room for a new stat anyway if they end up deciding to remove accuracy like Yoshi-p suggested they're considering at a recent interview.

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Originally Posted by Zari

Tbh while I would enjoy some gear lasting a little bit longer I HATE the idea of a weapon lasting for years or so.

I feel I would get bored with just the same gear like that

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The joy of a good horizontal system is that you wouldn't have just the one weapon to pick from, but perhaps dozens of different weapons that all played slightly different. One sword's auto attack might be a small AoE, another sword's attack might occasionally apply a dot to the enemy, another sword might funnel emnity from your party to yourself with each blow, another could have a small chance to summon a friendly Beastman to help you fight for 10 seconds every time you parry, etc. It wouldn't be one weapon that lasted, but a whole collection all with different strengths,

"The MMO market shifted towards a more casual demographic due to demand of its audience. People simply aren't playing heavily grind oriented games like they did in the heydays of FFXI and Vanilla WoW."

This is, unfortunately for some, absolutely correct. Some players do recall the months of slow grind. It wasn't complained about - because that was just the accepted way it was. People went into these games with a different approach to what appears to be the modern norm.

That previous mentality is still there - but in a far smaller percentage.
Now the nuts and bolts of running a modern multi-payer game - Make it popular for the main demographic - Then accommodate where possible others outside this.

Also can you guys shove off with trying to make excuses for someone not agreeing with you. "You just dont agree with me because you are a rper" is something Ive seen a couple times here, and although I, myself, am not a rper it really feels like you are trying to claw for reasons that someone else can, GASP, have a different opinion than you on the game!