ARR often feels very contradictory in its design (long)

[Zeno_McDohl]

From reddit (credit goes to GrahamBelmont):

ARR has a number of strengths (Primarily from a production value standpoint) but the more I've played it and the longer I've been exposed to the direction of the game and Yoshi's standpoint and design philosophies...I can't help but feel that he's not sure what he's doing. Not that he's a poor director, but more like they don't have any clear direction for A Realm Reborn.

I'll give some examples:

The biggest is the Armory System. One of the game's major selling points. The idea is (at least how it's described on the main website) that, one, you can play every role on a single character, and two, can mix and match skills. But as we've seen at every point, they're intent on designing content lockouts (Coil once a week, Crystal Tower once a week, Extreme Primals once a week, treasure maps once a day, beastmen camps once a day) around individual characters. Not role based as would compliment this design choice. You're actually punished in a sense for making use of the Armory System in that having alt characters per class avoids the lockouts.

Additionally, the idea that classes can 'cross class' skills from other classes is greatly stunted in numerous ways. For one, classes are built around a very central rotation. It makes it hard for cross class skills to function beyond fairly generic buffs like Raging Strikes because you can never differ from the core idea of the class. In 1.0, ignoring the critical reception for a moment, the class design was built around the idea of cross classing skills. People felt that characters became too samey and ended up not caring for it, but the point is they had a vision and designed around it. In ARR, it feels like they simply disliked the armory system but felt obligated to keep it. It doesn't mesh with the game well at all.

And then you have crafting and gathering. Compared to most MMO's, these systems are really fleshed out in ARR. There's a lot of depth there. There's almost more crafting classes than battle classes, they have their own skill sets, their own gear, hundreds of recipes and materials... yet they are intent on making crafting and gathering have no place within the game. They don't want players forced into it, they feel as if they don't want players to avoid running dungeons for gear, they feel as if a strong player market promotes RMT abuse, so they've made it completely arbitrary and bypassable. Why put all of this effort into their crafting and gathering systems if they don't intend people to take full advantage of it? In my own world, if I were directing ARR, I would take this massive strength and roll with it. I would push the game heavily around crafting and gathering and player economy, simply because, hey, I have this really well done crafting and gathering aspect of my game.

And taking that further, I'll bring up Dye and Materia. Both systems that form the game's biggest fountain of potential depth and customization, both visually and mechanically. They designed these systems and advertised them heavily...but pigeonholed them into an aspect of the game they clearly don't want people to use. Both dye and materia only apply to gear that is crafted (Mostly), and since they don't want people to progress their characters with crafting and gathering, both systems are doomed to go widely unused. Why take the time to develop three massive concepts and purposely build them to be unusable? Crating, materia, and Dye together have such a massive pool of depth. The game could be designed around crafting and materia with the systems they've built and could truly work. But they didn't.

And finally I'll talk about the open world. The biggest, or second biggest complaint about the game's original release was its world design. How there wasn't much to see or do and it was visually uninteresting. So they literally made a new one...and then decided they didn't want people to play in it. They don't want players 'monopolizing' open world content, so they want everything instanced. The open world loses all meaning once you finish the story by design. I adore the open world in this game, but from mounts and teleporting, to cramped maps and numerous camps, and the complete lack of threat from mobs, the entire game's world comes off as even more sterile then its predecessor. While 1.0 was heavily copied and pasted, there were elements in its design that made it a tangible experience. Mobs were dangerous, there were rare things to hunt, you had to travel it to reach content. Why, why take the effort of making something as visually rich as ARR's open world when you don't want players to spend time in it?

Does any of this make sense? Does anyone agree? Am I the only one that feels ARR's design comes off as incredibly backwards? I'm open to discussion and appreciate any civil comments whether they agree with me or not.

[PallasLloyd]

I'm open to discussion and appreciate any civil comments whether they agree with me or not.

Oh dear, then you posted this on the wrong website.

[Skyhound]

The game hasn't fully fleshed out, we barely have half of the total jobs meant for the game. Give it some time, sheesh.

[Starplayer]

Hey, I completely agree with you. You make excellent points. Sometimes it feels as though the devs really don't have a clear vision for this game.

I absolutely adore the in depth crafting system, I just wished it was more involved with the rest of the game.

[Battlewrench]

I agree and I dont think time can cure all these problems.

[synaesthetic]

I would fully support making the crafting system worthwhile and a necessary part of the game as long as they made it so people who did not want to craft would not be forced to craft. Something that combat-only players could use to make money... for instance, the best crafting recipes would have materials that only drop in dungeons and endgame raids. Bosses would directly drop "good" loot, and give tokens for equally good loot as they do now, but they would also drop materials for crafting the "best" loot.

[Katiyana]

I would push the game heavily around crafting and gathering and player economy, simply because, hey, I have this really well done crafting and gathering aspect of my game.

On that note: I would not play your game. I detest crafting. Gathering isn't so bad tho...

More on topic... well.. I can't really say much because I enjoy this game a lot, and fail to see things in the same light as you--but that's more of a problem on my part because I'm simple-minded (seriously) and easily pleased/amused. This MMO is the first one I've actually dedicated more than a couple months to exclusively. I used to hop around from game to game to game.. never getting anywhere really. That has changed with this game. I wish I could speak more intellectually about your points, but I cannot.

EDIT: What the person above me said too

[hallena]

Give it some time, sheesh.

Hmm, i wonder where i heard that before.

Oh right, Swtor

[Starplayer]

In my opinion, the armory system is actually the problem. If you're gonna make it so that everyone can be everything, then you at least have to make it somewhat difficult to reach level cap. The way it is now is just a faceroll and it promotes a horrible in-game economy since nothing has any real value. I mean, with enough gil, anyone can max out all crafts in 2 days without ever actually crafting anything, am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible, flawed design??

In the end, the games many problems stem from SE's fear of RMT. They made the economy garbage on purpose to discourage RMT

[Tsukino]

Since I've personally posted about the contradictions in the open world and in the crafting systems, yes, I agree. I also have another one to add, although as of 2.1 it's becoming less of a problem: endgame focus.

The entire game seems built to rush you through the 50 levels as fast as possible and get you started on "endgame," yet most of the actual varied content is contained within the leveling process. There are more dungeons, more quests, more storyline cutscenes, and more places to go and things to do (including the open world and crafting/gathering) during the leveling up part of the game, yet they want you to be done with that in three weeks. Then you spend the rest of your time, months between patches at least, repeating the last 10% of the game which consists of a few dungeons and boss fights only. It feels like, if all the content is in the leveling up part, then that's where the game's time should be focused, or if they wanted an endgame-focused game from the start, they should have created more content for it and less for the first 50 levels.