[DEV] Time sinks and satisfaction, a plea from one of your hardcore fans

[MeowyWowie]

Lol, I was thinking the same thing.

[ShinChuck]

Examples please, I know of no other MMOs that do this. But I'm fine with being proved wrong.

It's fairly common in offline RPGs, going back at least as far as Dragon Quest III in the 80s. Off the top of my head, the first MMO I can think of that I recall having it in was Dragonrealms, which has been out since the mid-90s (and it's precursor Gemstone may have allowed it as well, although I don't recall for certain). For more recent examples, Phantasy Star Universe (and it's spinoffs Phantasy Star Portable 1 & 2), Eden Eternal and Dream of Mirrors Online allow you to change to any given class.

Various other games do it on a smaller scale. Rift allows you to switch at will between jobs within a given set (four main jobs, cleric, warrior, mage and rogue, which each have nine different jobs you can switch through - so out of 36 total jobs, you can do nine).

Subjobs have existed in pen and paper RPGs for years, and current games like Guild Wars and Lineage have comparative systems.

Don't get me wrong, I agree entirely, being able to change jobs is an awesome concept (sub jobs too, done right!), and I love it. It pains me to see games like WoW being sooooo limited in that regard, having come from the school of Dragonrealms. So while it's not a Square original, it's not an entirely standard mechanic either, so I genuinely applaud them for going that route!

[trinta]

/em waits for those two to scurry off. lulz

[MeowyWowie]

It's fairly common in offline RPGs, going back at least as far as Dragon Quest III in the 80s. Off the top of my head, the first MMO I can think of that I recall having it in was Dragonrealms, which has been out since the mid-90s (and it's precursor Gemstone may have allowed it as well, although I don't recall for certain). For more recent examples, Phantasy Star Universe (and it's spinoffs Phantasy Star Portable 1 & 2), Eden Eternal and Dream of Mirrors Online allow you to change to any given class.

Various other games do it on a smaller scale. Rift allows you to switch at will between jobs within a given set (four main jobs, cleric, warrior, mage and rogue, which each have nine different jobs you can switch through - so out of 36 total jobs, you can do nine).

Subjobs have existed in pen and paper RPGs for years, and current games like Guild Wars and Lineage have comparative systems.

Don't get me wrong, I agree entirely, being able to change jobs is an awesome concept (sub jobs too, done right!), and I love it. It pains me to see games like WoW being sooooo limited in that regard, having come from the school of Dragonrealms. So while it's not a Square original, it's not an entirely standard mechanic either, so I genuinely applaud them for going that route!

Thank you, Shin. And no Trinta, I'm not going to scurry away. I already said I'd welcome being proven wrong.

Though I still think that out of today's current MMOs, FFXI and FFXIV did it the best, and you seem to agree as well. Rift's system is sort of half way there, jobs within classes, but you still have to create new characters if you want to experience everything. But they're also running into the same problem, people completing everything within 2 months and quitting from boredom. Funny, Rift was advertised as having content ready too lol.

Anyways, thank you again for the contribution Shin.

[Corrderio]

As long as they don't make anything like Kings/Wyrms/SW/DI/etc. I don't care what they do. As long as they don't pull a salvage.

[ShinChuck]

Thank you, Shin. And no Trinta, I'm not going to scurry away. I already said I'd welcome being proven wrong.

Though I still think that out of today's current MMOs, FFXI and FFXIV did it the best, and you seem to agree as well. Rift's system is sort of half way there, jobs within classes, but you still have to create new characters if you want to experience everything. But they're also running into the same problem, people completing everything within 2 months and quitting from boredom. Funny, Rift was advertised as having content ready too lol.

Anyways, thank you again for the contribution Shin.

Thank you. And I apologize about my original post, it came off confrontational. Sorry about that, I let the passion of the forums get to my head, and I could've made my point without doing it in the way I did. : )

The only one I can think that personally compares with XI's is PSU's. You could change jobs at will there, and it was sort of a mix between XI and XIV. You had a Physical Level that that went up to 180 last I checked, and you had Job Levels that were separate and went up to 20. So you could swap to a different job, and while you'd have to level the job itself, your physical level's stats carried over so you didn't need to start from scratch. It was a fairly cool aspect in an otherwise unremarkable game.

But then again, PSU didn't have subjobs, every job was basically static, so being able to switch jobs *and* mix and match, I'd still have to give XI the edge when all is said and done!

[MeowyWowie]

Personally I loved doing those NMs Corrderio. I'm curious if it was the long re-spawn times or the long windows that bothered most people who didn't enjoy it. If they completely did away with the mini windows and still had long re-spawn times how would you feel then?

Obviously the competition would still be high, but at least you wouldn't waste 3-24 hours just sitting waiting for pop. I'd be totally fine with that.

[Bled]

Personally I loved doing those NMs Corrderio. I'm curious if it was the long re-spawn times or the long windows that bothered most people who didn't enjoy it. If they completely did away with the mini windows and still had long re-spawn times how would you feel then?

Obviously the competition would still be high, but at least you wouldn't waste 3-24 hours just sitting waiting for pop. I'd be totally fine with that.

I personally loved the NM spawn times for the soul fact of supply and demand. NM loot was in high demand but there was a pretty small supply which made these epic drops just that EPIC and of course rewarding.

However on the flip side RMT's make it impossible for this design as far as i know, strictly speaking from my experiences with FFXI.

[Corrderio]

Personally I loved doing those NMs Corrderio. I'm curious if it was the long re-spawn times or the long windows that bothered most people who didn't enjoy it. If they completely did away with the mini windows and still had long re-spawn times how would you feel then?

Obviously the competition would still be high, but at least you wouldn't waste 3-24 hours just sitting waiting for pop. I'd be totally fine with that.

People would still bot the hell out of them then take their sweet assed time killing them to keep them in their time zone as long as possible.

[MeowyWowie]

Agreed, Bled. The long re-spawn times alone are what made the rare stuff rare and that much more desirable for the person who wanted the best of everything. This is what I mean by giving us long term goals. Imagine if Tiamat spawned as quickly as XIV NMs, the shoes would be worthless lol.

Also I wouldn't worry about RMT. If they make the fights difficult they won't stand a chance. Many of them are multi-boxed characters, and generally lack the skill needed to defeat them. At least that's how it was on my server.