What happened to fun for fun's sake?

Does everything need a material reward now? Do we all only care about how fast we clear battles so we can move on to the next battle faster?

Every time I go around advertising for eccentric activities in FFXIV, such as 4-player Royal Menagerie, I get bombarded with the same responses, and it blows my mind. Here are some examples:

"Why 4-man it?"
"You can't undersize current content."

What blows my mind is that people somehow don't seem to comprehend the fact that they, and all of us, are playing FFXIV for fun. It's not our job. We don't just do this for money (not that everyone hates their job, of course). All of us are playing for fun. So why 4-man? Why not ask "Why 8-man it?" It's the same response: because that is what the player feels like doing, and it's fun for them.

It also blows my mind (though somewhat less so, seeing as people so rarely actually do anything outside of the norm) that people don't even know how to undersize current content. I've actually had people continue to deny that it's possible even after I give them the very logical explanation of how to do it (which is launching with 8 players, four of whom drop out immediately).

The same problem applies not just to doing odd party compositions, but also to any content that doesn't have a reward. A vast amount of the playerbase seems to consider anything that doesn't have a material reward as being completely pointless. All old content is done unsynced because it's faster. And faster is always better, right? Because the only thing that matters is getting those WT rewards faster so we can go get that gear faster so we can go get those materia faster so we can go get those mounts faster.

So what do you do when you've already finished WT and already have the gear and already have the materia and already have the mounts? Judging by how people get bored after they 'finish' a new expansion, and how the game population declines over time, the way it was before Stormblood released, I'd say they quit. So then, we're all speed-grinding the game to max everything ASAP... so we can quit. Does this make anyone else's head spin? I mean, if your end goal is quitting, then why play the god ____ game in the first place?

/rant end

something something instant gratification

....hwat?
/10

I don't think it's even possible to 4 man RM. O_o

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

So what do you do when you've already finished WT and already have the gear and already have the materia and already have the mounts? Judging by how people get bored after they 'finish' a new expansion, and how the game population declines over time, the way it was before Stormblood released, I'd say they quit. So then, we're all speed-grinding the game to max everything ASAP... so we can quit. Does this make anyone else's head spin? I mean, if your end goal is quitting, then why play the god ____ game in the first place?



/rant end

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vs7AVPLjBY

actually yeah you try to do it on WAR with the new changes

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Originally Posted by Mikhaill

I don't think it's even possible to 4 man RM. O_o

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTWoy2MxNDQ&t=9s

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTWoy2MxNDQ&t=9s

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Why is it always the hero in the pig outfit?

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTWoy2MxNDQ&t=9s

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Well, I stand corrected...GJ.
What was everyone Ilvl? No one is hurting as hard as I thought they would.

While I'm not about to four man RM anytime soon--I'll be doing it for the first time tomorrow--I do agree with the core of what you are saying. So many people seem grumpy and impatient and unhappy in game and it kinda baffles me. Of course, it's possible that this is because I returned to ffxiv about a month before Stormblood and went through all the 2.0 add-on content and all of Heavensward before going through Stormblood at launch. Everybody needs to play however will make them happy, but I definitely do random things that don't necessarily tie into getting my next piece of gear.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are early in a new expansion. Most people are either strolling through the story, or they've steamrolled it already because they want to raid.

I don't find varying motivations a problem--I'm generally more concerned by the attitudes that can accompany it.

At any rate, I wish you the best of luck with your RM group!

MMO players are weird because they do things for the rewards.

I think this post from TERA forums explains it nicely. The person is talking about 3v3 arena, but I certainly think it applies in general, at least from what I've seen.

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I agree with most of what you said but not this part. Its a weird thing in MMOs that people just don't do things because doing it is fun. They have to get some kind of reward or they won't bother. I don't like any kind of reward system in pvp because the reward should be pvping. If it isn't rewarding the game is broken.

The irony is that Tera has by far one of the best action combat systems in any game of this type, but the combination of ELO, bragging rights, gear disparity and the reward systems mean that 3s is never going to get an influx of new players. At best you'll get a slow trickle as players no longer need to be driven by incentives like gearing up. There are so many reasons not to play 3s. Protecting your ELO rating, grinding credits for better gear etc.

Competition naturally develops over time if a game is active and has healthy reward systems and player match making. So later on when you have a healthy scene, you can bring in ratings and bragging rights and prize money. but if you introduce these things too soon with the wrong incentives at play, it can really break a game.

Going back to Counter-Strike before the leagues and clanbase and all that, there was a game that lots of people played because it was fun and fair. You didn't care about losing, you weren't doing it to get something else. You wanted to play just 1 more match because it was really fun (after playing for 2 hours straight).

But theres nothing really fun about waiting 30 minutes in queue to get wrecked by a team thats 300 average rating above you and has better gear. The goal is to get more people hooked on the game, not turn them away from it.

The first time I played 3v3 was like 4 seasons ago and we were all in newly minted Conjunct. Literally the only players who were queuing during EU primetime and morning/weekends were Overpower teams because Overpower and feeders were the only teams we ever played in that season. So we got wrecked by Bluepoo and friends because they had better gear and more experience and we wiped afkers every other match. The experience has been off putting, even though some of the best times I've had in Tera were in the arena.

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Combat in this game isn't all that great. Especially when SE decided to copy paste every single dungeon with the same formula. So doing the dungeon without rewards feels pointless when the dungeons are the same since LVL 15.

It died when video games became online multiplayer.

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Originally Posted by Mikhaill

Well, I stand corrected...GJ.
What was everyone Ilvl? No one is hurting as hard as I thought they would.

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Honestly, I can't remember. I'm i314 with full Rank VI materia. But I didn't put any IL requirement on the party. I just advertised it as something to do for fun, but that they had to know the fight. It's hard enough to get a party together for it. If I started restricting it to high IL only, it'd be even worse. Besides, IL has little to no correlation to a player's skill.

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Originally Posted by Katryn

While I'm not about to four man RM anytime soon--I'll be doing it for the first time tomorrow--I do agree with the core of what you are saying. So many people seem grumpy and impatient and unhappy in game and it kinda baffles me. Of course, it's possible that this is because I returned to ffxiv about a month before Stormblood and went through all the 2.0 add-on content and all of Heavensward before going through Stormblood at launch. Everybody needs to play however will make them happy, but I definitely do random things that don't necessarily tie into getting my next piece of gear.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are early in a new expansion. Most people are either strolling through the story, or they've steamrolled it already because they want to raid.

I don't find varying motivations a problem--I'm generally more concerned by the attitudes that can accompany it.

At any rate, I wish you the best of luck with your RM group!

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Yeah, it's definitely worse because of Stormblood. I know a lot of people, especially the more casual, non-grinders, are still doing the story and enjoying the new content. I'm in a bit of an odd class as a casual hardcore. I play as much as the hardcores, but I have values closer to that of a casual. In any case, pre-Stormblood, it was still extremely hard to find a party for anything oddball. However, there were more options. For example, DF queues for all of the ARR primals actually popped. Nowadays it's very hard to get those to pop.

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

Combat in this game isn't all that great. Especially when SE decided to copy paste every single dungeon with the same formula. So doing the dungeon without rewards feels pointless when the dungeons are the same since LVL 15.

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Well, ultimately any game that isn't PvP boils down to patterns, since that's all AI can do. I do enjoy the choreography of it, but I also play Healer because it adds more unpredictability when my job is to not just DPS and avoid mechanics, but also to fix the mistakes that my party makes. The tighter the fight gets, the harder it is for the healer, and therefore more entertaining. I think tanks and DPS can get some of the same effect as healer, when playing in an undersized party.

You need a larger context for the psychology of mmo players. Mmos attract depressed people, people that feel like they underachieve, people that don't have fulfillment in their daily lives,etc. These people dive into a persistent fictional world as a means to exert some control and chase a sense of achievement.

This is not a single player or mobile game. People don't play to kill time. They play to fill a void. Rewards, achievements, and goals fill that void.

This doesn't apply to every single player, but it's a clear and persistent trend. You're barking up the wrong tree.

Had a bunch of 3.0 maps left over that are mostly worthless to sell. 2k on MB and give 5k in gil for kill. So decided to see how aquaoplis changes scaled. We 2 manned to the 5th floor 3 times. Just didn't have enough something to get past the extra dps mobs have at that point. Was kind of 11 kiting healing dotting and a little praying. It was fun for mostly worthless stuff.

I have a question for people though. So they removed Ilvl sync. So you synced down to 60. But the sync at 60 is below 235. When we got in switched around on jobs to see what stats looked like. The level 70 monk synced down to level 60 had less stats then my unsynced level 60 monk that was 235. Is that right for all content I had never paid that much attention? But I though if we got synced down to 270 might have made it past floor 5.

If you want to die over and over again no one is stopping you from 4 manning royal menagarie.

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

Honestly, I can't remember. I'm i314 with full Rank VI materia. But I didn't put any IL requirement on the party. I just advertised it as something to do for fun, but that they had to know the fight. It's hard enough to get a party together for it. If I started restricting it to high IL only, it'd be even worse. Besides, IL has little to no correlation to a player's skill.

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Well, as I said, they weren't getting hit as hard, that's the only reason why I asked the Ilvl. o_o
The whole trial itself is memorizing the patterns. All I wanted to know lol.

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Originally Posted by SnugglesD

You need a larger context for the psychology of mmo players. Mmos attract depressed people, people that feel like they underachieve, people that don't have fulfillment in their daily lives,etc. These people dive into a persistent fictional world as a means to exert some control and chase a sense of achievement.

This is not a single player or mobile game. People don't play to kill time. They play to fill a void. Rewards, achievements, and goals fill that void.

This doesn't apply to every single player, but it's a clear and persistent trend. You're barking up the wrong tree.

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Well, that's certainly a depressing way of looking at it. Though it's probably true to some extent. People enjoy the sense of achievement. Heck, I do too, and I can't say I'm all that successful in my real life at the moment. But I don't think that that's the only reason most people play. Plenty of people play games because they are passionate about games, not because they can't 'succeed' in life. The public perception of gamers does tend to paint that depressing picture onto gamers though, and it can get so bad that many gamers actually start believing it of themselves - that they're worthless and just hiding from their problems by playing the game. That it's just an addiction. I'm sure many of us have had people tell us such things.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

I have a question for people though. So they removed Ilvl sync. So you synced down to 60. But the sync at 60 is below 235. When we got in switched around on jobs to see what stats looked like. The level 70 monk synced down to level 60 had less stats then my unsynced level 60 monk that was 235. Is that right for all content I had never paid that much attention? But I though if we got synced down to 270 might have made it past floor 5.

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Yes to some degree being synced down hits a point, that is often lower than optimal gear and level for that unsync. Or at least the stats get scaled down to medium type gear of that level as well. This happens at level sync.

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Originally Posted by SnugglesD

You need a larger context for the psychology of mmo players. Mmos attract depressed people, people that feel like they underachieve, people that don't have fulfillment in their daily lives,etc. These people dive into a persistent fictional world as a means to exert some control and chase a sense of achievement.

This is not a single player or mobile game. People don't play to kill time. They play to fill a void. Rewards, achievements, and goals fill that void.

This doesn't apply to every single player, but it's a clear and persistent trend. You're barking up the wrong tree.

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I don't think you're entirely wrong. But that's not necessarily true of every player either, at least from the people I've met. But that is definitely a very depressing way of looking at things.

But I think, in some ways, it feels better than a job in real life.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461...-addicted.html

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Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);

Complexity (so it's not mind-numbing repetition);

Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).

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Join a FC or make friends. My friends and I do tons of stuff just for fun. I two manned all of the ARR EX's and most coil turns with one friend. Undermanning content is sort of our thing now.

My FC has a yearly event that includes a modelling contest -- we even made a run way in our FC house.

tl;dr you just need to find the right people.

In addition to your points, i am utterly baffled by how some players also want the game to stagnate because they want their gear to be revelant longer. Asking for deveopers to stop patching the game this fast, so they have time to enjoy the gear they earned.

Which in practice turns out that they get their gear and mostly do not even use it, afking in current hub-town to showoff. Why do anything else when you have cleared the hardest challenge? And then they actually loathe to be "forced" to get new, better gear in the next savage patch, instead of, you know, looking forward to the fight themselves.

They literally ask for a content drought so they could do nothing more. Why would you ever want that if you liked the game?

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

All old content is done unsynced because it's faster. And faster is always better, right?

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I either ran it a million times or didn't bother because it didn't look interesting. Why would I suddenly be super excited to go do it 10 levels later? It's not reasonable to expect me to suddenly find it really appealing.

Its a bit sad,... tight DPS race and iLvL restrictions made it much harder to go for fun.
We used to do things like this in past: https://youtu.be/7TUm4F4dhuY

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

What blows my mind is that people somehow don't seem to comprehend the fact that they, and all of us, are playing FFXIV for fun. It's not our job. We don't just do this for money (not that everyone hates their job, of course). All of us are playing for fun.

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There is one key thing you are missing here.

Fun is subjective.

The way you have fun might not be the way another has fun. So I mean...it shouldn't blow your mind that some people might not think or have fun the same way as you. Maybe others have fun by getting their rewards faster or they have more fun in full groups than undersize. Everyone is different.

Someone asking you a question doesn't always mean they are looking down on your idea...(unless they be openly hostile/rude about it). They may actually just be trying to understand your thinking or your way of having fun. Why 4 man? Well just answer them honestly...you want to try it for fun. Pretty simple to answer really...why does it get you so upset that they ask?

I love silly challenges. The problem is that the game designers actively discourage having fun like this - locking undersized to unsynced makes it hard to balance lowman challenges properly (min ilevel is still a joke for most content and overkill when it's not). And then there's the lockout for all current content; not everyone has friends who want to spend their evening joining lowman groups just to make up eight people, then not actually playing. The lack of ability to even join 24-man content at all undersized is another problem. I don't expect to clear Void Ark with 3 people, but can't I at least just go in and take some pictures and have fun dying to raid bosses with my equally-stupid friends?

It's no wonder the players themselves become so skittish about these activities when the very game engine seems to discourage it to protect people from the risk of being unable to complete a duty due to their own foolishness. Let me embrace my own foolishness! My FC's 'ultra hard mode' evenings are the most fun I have in this game and I'd love them to be easier to run.

Don't you know that MMOs are all about racing to the cap (level and gear) as quickly as possible, and then stand around complaining there is nothing to do? </sarcasm>

While rewards are nice to get and all, some of my best experiences in MMOs have had nothing to do with any rewards.

No, I don't really get the "racing to the top" mentality either.

Another big thing here is opportunity cost, for a lot of players, just keeping up with the pace of the game is the majority of their playtime. They don't get to the point where they'd find it worth just messing around doing silly things when they still feel the need to cap tomes, level other jobs, work on crafting/gathering..
Obviously, silly things give no rewards whatsoever, so people are generally not up for it until they've got what they wanted for that day/week, which makes it hard to find people to do silly things, or not feel like you're losing out on something when you do it (which diminishes the fun you could have from it).

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Originally Posted by Miste

There is one key thing you are missing here.

Fun is subjective.

The way you have fun might not be the way another has fun. So I mean...it shouldn't blow your mind that some people might not think or have fun the same way as you. Maybe others have fun by getting their rewards faster or they have more fun in full groups than undersize. Everyone is different.

Someone asking you a question doesn't always mean they are looking down on your idea...(unless they be openly hostile/rude about it). They may actually just be trying to understand your thinking or your way of having fun. Why 4 man? Well just answer them honestly...you want to try it for fun. Pretty simple to answer really...why does it get you so upset that they ask?

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I understand the subjectivity of it, though I admit in my rant I don't make it obvious that I do. But even though I understand that some people consider it fun to speedgrind to max gear, the issue still remains that, ultimately, the end goal for many of these people is to quit. They just don't seem to realize that that is their true end goal. Presumably they see their end goal as maxing out. But then when they max out, they quit and go max out on some other game. If that floats their boat, then fine, but at that point my own subjectivity comes in and my argument on that point is that such a view of fun is distorted. Maybe people genuinely enjoy being like that. But as someone who has hardcored games in that manner in the past, I'm looking back at years of speedgrinding to max then quitting and laughing at myself for not actually realizing that I should be enjoying the game as it is, rather than only playing to quit.

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Originally Posted by Elim

Join a FC or make friends. My friends and I do tons of stuff just for fun. I two manned all of the ARR EX's and most coil turns with one friend. Undermanning content is sort of our thing now.

My FC has a yearly event that includes a modelling contest -- we even made a run way in our FC house.

tl;dr you just need to find the right people.

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I have an entire linkshell and Discord group dedicated to running eccentric content. But despite that, I still can't find people to join my parties. It might pick up a bit post-Stormblood release, once the people in my group finish all the Stormblood content. But it would seem I'm alone in tiring so quickly of Stormblood's new content. I'll play Omega for maybe 4-5 days tops after it comes out, but will likely tire of it quickly again.

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Originally Posted by Serilda

I love silly challenges. The problem is that the game designers actively discourage having fun like this - locking undersized to unsynced makes it hard to balance lowman challenges properly (min ilevel is still a joke for most content and overkill when it's not). And then there's the lockout for all current content; not everyone has friends who want to spend their evening joining lowman groups just to make up eight people, then not actually playing. The lack of ability to even join 24-man content at all undersized is another problem. I don't expect to clear Void Ark with 3 people, but can't I at least just go in and take some pictures and have fun dying to raid bosses with my equally-stupid friends?

It's no wonder the players themselves become so skittish about these activities when the very game engine seems to discourage it to protect people from the risk of being unable to complete a duty due to their own foolishness. Let me embrace my own foolishness! My FC's 'ultra hard mode' evenings are the most fun I have in this game and I'd love them to be easier to run.

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Finding volunteers is the easy part. It takes them a couple of seconds. Just asking in an FC or some other group of friends is the easiest way. But random strangers will even join to help because they're bored. Or in the case of my 4-man runs of Royal Menagerie, I just open the last 4 slots to the public and advertise it as "Free carry clear if you suicide and AFK" and they come flooding in faster than you can blink.

I think it's not that ppl don't want to do oddball stuff, I think it's more on the side that most of us don't have enough time to play the game on our daily lives, so we want to at least feel that we accomplished something with the time we spent playing the game and while some content might feel like a chore for some, others might enjoy it.

I personally like doing the old EX fights unsynced now, they are really fun to do now since you don't feel that massive stress that if you fail you will be dragging others down, since a lot of ppl can practically solo em and they won't care if you make a few mistakes. (Sure, there are still some toxic ppl that still rage hard on them but you can just leave that party and find another one)

Farming for the birds/ponies has been really fun for me so far, since I've learned a lot of the mechanics of the old EX fights and some of those are way more enjoyable if done unsynced, like Ravana EX, I enjoy seeing all the people that die on the first run (myself included) when he starts dashing all over the place, and after a few runs, it so awesome to see everyone running along not getting hit by him.

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

But even though I understand that some people consider it fun to speedgrind to max gear, the issue still remains that, ultimately, the end goal for many of these people is to quit. They just don't seem to realize that that is their true end goal.

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Different people are different. Optimising a process, such as a dungeon run or the acquisition of BiS, in and of itself is fun for some. They are playing the game in a way that offers entertainment to them, just as you are. That doesn't mean their end goal is to quit. That may be a consequence, but not necessarily their goal. Their goal is to play efficiently, which equates to fun (for some). The consequence of reading a book is that at some point you run out of pages; doesn't mean you can't enjoy the process of getting there.