Patch 2.2: Let's Copy the Worst Practice of MMOs From the Last 10 Years...

[Fendred]

Linear progression sucks and gear treadmills suck.

Not because they take away from the 'prestige' of the high-tier items (which, in most such games are uninteresting crap with little personality), but because it continually focuses everyone's efforts on one particular 'thing'.
Just one (or in this game's case, two) piece(s) of gear per slot really matter in the end and it's just a grind through intermediary stuff you're not actually interested in until you can get those.

Collecting unique gear is far more fun, IMO. :-(

... and you hit the nail on the head! We don't see people using weapons from Stone Vigil at end game because they are weaker than the end game ones. Itemization is so important to overcoming certain end game encounters that it really limits what sets of gear people can use for it. Plus, the vanity system doesn't really save anything because the end game raiders want the prestige that comes with completing the hardest content, which takes so much time that they will rarely ever have the time to grind out the old gear for vanity's sake. Also, that sense of accomplishment is invariably attached to the gear they acquire from completing that content, hence the hurt feelings and general outrage at the developer's proposed method of "progression."

[Fendred]

Complains about no progression, gets new content, complains it's to much.

This is the current logic of the FF community.
Congrats guys.

It doesn't surprise me that you can't comprehend the problem, since you seem to lack reading comprehension as well. You have grossly missed the mark with your comment. No one is complaining about new content. They are complaining about HOW THAT NEW CONTENT CHANGES THE GAME. Of course we want new content. Who doesn't want new content? Stand up and raise your hand please!

oh look, no response...

Releasing new content is how MMORPGs stay alive and is an expected practice. But the fact remains there is a right and wrong way to do that. Final Fantasy is supposed to be a story centric franchise, and they are instead doing upwards grind progression instead of sideways story progression.

[Dark-Saviour]

the end game raiders want the prestige that comes with completing the hardest content, which takes so much time that they will rarely ever have the time to grind out the old gear for vanity's sake.

Plus, you can't show off if you're hiding the gear.

If it comes down to it, you can have a super-rare, hat that comes from the hardest tier of content that looks like a literal pile of feces, or you can wear something that looks more appealing, and a large number of people will choose the former for the simple sake that it's rarer and 'more prestigious'. :-/

Granted, if you have a system with a lot of genuinely unique, collectible items, I don't really like the idea of them being hidden via vanity, as it kind of kills their uniqueness, but that's kind of moot here...

[jars]

why are people even thinking about old content. when 2.2 comes out no one is going to care about turn 1-5, everyone will move on to leviathan and 4-9. all these 'great' ideas from ffxi sound terrible, I'm glad I never played that game.

[KiriA500]

i already gave up on SE. i wont be seeing 2.2.

And yet, here you remain...

[Ichimaru]

Replacing all this game sucks threads, with SE giving handouts threads. Everything is going as planned.

CURSE YOU!!!!

[Worm]

I tend to disagree with them lowering the difficulty, they certainly could have left the difficulty the same made it DF and let the better gear server as a soft nerf, which would have been fine. However I think most people who have an issue with the initial difficulty drop would have a an issue with that compromise as well.

This is just the nature of these games, if this didn't happen with a content patch it would happen with an expac ... people will go back and beat the content you've beaten and they won't have to work as hard to do it. I'm sorry, but that's the end of this story. Try to find some internalized value in your accomplishments rather than focusing on gear. There is never going to be a game where they take out the raids you've finished.

[indira]

And yet, here you remain...

well i have 3 more days. before im locked out.

[Fendred]

why are people even thinking about old content. when 2.2 comes out no one is going to care about turn 1-5, everyone will move on to leviathan and 4-9. all these 'great' ideas from ffxi sound terrible, I'm glad I never played that game.

You're glad you didn't play a game that you don't even know the slightest thing about based on a few sentences from a guy on a forum? You would be right that the game is terrible by today's standards, but that is no reason to discount the things that it managed to do right. The game you are playing now is using some mechanics that were pioneered in the Ultima RPG series from the 1980's.

You can have sideways progression in a story centric game. It's just that Squarenix's storytelling ability has been in decline since Final Fantasy X. FFXI kept old content valid for new players because it remained valuable to the old players. So you could still get people to come back from the new content to help you with the old stuff. On top of which, the people who accomplished the old content would get the same sense of accomplishment as the old generation did when they first did it, because the boss wasn't nerfed into oblivion and its drops were not rendered mechanically useless.

[Worm]

You're glad you didn't play a game that you don't even know the slightest thing about based on a few sentences from a guy on a forum? You would be right that the game is terrible by today's standards, but that is no reason to discount the things that it managed to do right. The game you are playing now is using some mechanics that were pioneered in the Ultima RPG series from the 1980's.

You can have sideways progression in a story centric game. It's just that Squarenix's storytelling ability has been in decline since Final Fantasy X. FFXI kept old content valid for new players because it remained valuable to the old players. So you could still get people to come back from the new content to help you with the old stuff. On top of which, the people who accomplished the old content would get the same sense of accomplishment as the old generation did when they first did it, because the boss wasn't nerfed into oblivion and its drops were not rendered mechanically useless.

It's a little hard to listen to you rag on someone's lack of knowledge when you didn't see this coming. I mean would you have even been happy if they didn't nerf the dungeon but put it in the duty finder? I mean really, what made you think this game suddenly was going to hark back to a MMO style which is more than a decade old?