Is anyone else worried SE has backed themselves into a corner?

[Zfz]

Ah, yes, in that sense then I am worried, although I'm less worried about it than I would be during beta.

It's clear that people accept the way WoW responds to the problem, and so FFXIV is clearly trying to replicate that "success". It's a design decision they've made and something that could only change (if even at all) by the second or third expansion.

I'm mostly playing this game for its graphics anyway now...but I'd be more than happy to see some innovative solutions coming out of SE regarding this problem.

[KraggyKor]

This is a phenomenon called Power Creep. WoW first became aware of it as a developer during their third expansion

Nope, the first expansion where level 61 greens obsoleted level 60 purples was where the rot started.

SE managed to avoid it for a long time in FFXI, seems they forgot the lessons of that game, I do agree with the OP that on release the item level was already way out of wack; end-game stuff was far too powerful in comparison to level-cap pre-raid gear, it's going to come back to haunt them down the road.

[Skies]

I don't know how PSO works, Dark-Saviour

But how do the devs define wether or not a certain encounter, let's say a mid-tier encounter, about 2/3rds though the planned progresssion, will have to account for Bringer's Rifle or Heaven Punisher?

Are all of those supposed to be something to account for only at high-end encounters?
Are you meant to HAVE one of those to be able to clear the highest dungeons?

Is the Frozen Shooter a weapon that the player will replace by the Anti-Android Rifle or only by the Bringer's Rifle? Or should those be something chosen according to the situation?

Those are still development guidelines, Item Level. If you tell me they are all equally as useful in different situations, you are just telling me they are the same Item Level.

[Arkghyom]

They're doing what they're supposed to do.

[Billie21]

I'm glad to see people are brining up Power Creep. Hope this video can help explain the very heavy and very real issues surrounding it to those still fuzzy on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw

"Incomperable" in this case would be things like horizontal progression and ELEMENTAL EFFECTS.

Ah ah I had to refrain from posting this when I saw this topic.

[Dark-Saviour]

But how do the devs define wether or not a certain encounter, let's say a mid-tier encounter, about 2/3rds though the planned progresssion, will have to account for Bringer's Rifle or Heaven Punisher?

They didn't.


Granted when talking about the variety of incomparable weapons, I was really only speaking of ultimate mode. There was a much straighter progression up to that point when you are using 'normal' weapons, with (IIRC) 5 distinct 'tiers' of each, so from Normal->Hard->Very Hard (and as you just start out in Ultimate), there was more of a traditional 'your stats vs. enemy stats' sort of affair. However, you could get normal weapons with special abilities which could offset even these tiers to a point. I entered ultimate mode early and literally did Ø damage with every weapon I had, save for a fake Agito, with which I could do a whopping... 5 damage? I think it was...

At the time, I tried to approach the game in the "Higher raw damage = inherently better" sort of way, but after realizing how ineffective I was, I got a rifle with the Arrest ability and was able to consistently paralyze enemies, which was far more helpful to my group. Once you were at an appropriate level for Ultimate content though, you could probably do just as well with most any special weapon you could find. As I said, there are exceptions to this, and I wouldn't think most people would want to play through with an Amorè Rose or something similar, but in general, it came down to 'how do you want to play'.

The game's encounters weren't balanced harshly, and that was great. Once you hit a threshold, it wasn't designed so that you needed X or Y or Z to succeed; pretty much any rare item would do, and a lot of lower-tiered 'normal' stuff as well (though for the particular instances of the latter which typically occurred, I... don't think things were working as intended).

Is the Frozen Shooter a weapon that the player will replace by the Anti-Android Rifle or only by the Bringer's Rifle? Or should those be something chosen according to the situation?

There are situations where one would be favoured over another, but in the end its more a matter of, "Which playstyle do you prefer?"
For rangers, 'Frozen Shooters everywhere' was the trend for a while, but I ran a Bringer's Rifle most of the time. Occasionally used S-Beat's Blades as well, but that was more for screwing around.
There wasn't a definitive, "When you get X, you stop using Y" sort of attitude for the most part though. Even if someone upgraded a Lavis Canon to Lavis Blades and then to a Twin Canon, using an original Lavis Canon was still plenty viable and, should they decide they would rather run with a saber than daggers or dualsabers, they had that option.

Those are still development guidelines, Item Level. If you tell me they are all equally as useful in different situations, you are just telling me they are the same Item Level.

If you wanted to describe things in the broadest terms (and I think you give Sega too much credit when it comes to balancing, as I don't think they put a whole lot of thought into it), then I guess you could say 'SPECIAL WEAPONS' were the same Item Level. Just with a really broad range encompassing them and in a somewhat similar way that the Fireflower, Raccoon Leaf, and Super Cape are the same Item Level in Mario. <_<

[Arkista]

Easy fix Which they seem to already do increase difficulty? So if your ilvl155 just need mobs to be higher than that ilvl180+ mobs sounds good.

snip.

This is why SE has to start enforcing higher ilvl Requirements on content. Walking into content with ilvl50 gear that rewards you with ilvl80 gear is just garbage.
It shouldn't matter if a player has to work a little longer to get the gear needed to do content, I mean hell SE is already giving us week long lockouts so I don't see why they can't add lockouts on content through gear.

Like Crystal tower should have been ilvl 68-70 even if that means people have to buy ilvl70 accessories. I Can't say that T1-T5 should have been 80+ cause we didn't have CT at launch but now that we do its time for SE to start doing it for new content that comes out.

[ReviiLagoon]

You know what is incredibly sad. Look at the amount of digits that the item level goes up to in the character window. It doesn't just go to into the hundreds, but into the thousands, this should be a very clear indication of where the game is going.....and a very sad one indeed.

[Kazahashi]

You are a fabulous person and I love your post! More of this sanity, please, and far less of the whining, sniveling crybaby tryhards who are butthurt that they're going to lose their specialness when 2.2 drops.

Funnily enough I see more of you running into every single thread calling anyone with a semblance of an issue with what SE is doing a crybaby tryhard, or elitist, butthurt gear mongers, all kinds of stupid, petty insults. You're not adding anything to the debate, you're simply running around insulting people that have genuine concerns for something they're passionate about (granted some are just whining, but still).

The iLvl increase debate has little to nothing to do with people being upset about losing "epic lootz" and more to do with the fact that making the game all vertical progression, especially this early, is dangerous to the lifecycle of the game altogether. Giving people horizontal progression until at least a year into the game would be better, as it gives people more time to gear their characters, alts, etc. EX mode primals were a good example of horizontal progression. Giving people the option to fight them, adding cutscenes for story fluff after the fights, and having them reward you with weapons that were on par or sometimes better then your +1, but the iLvl was the same. Having a major patch after a year into the life of the game, or even with an expansion that raises the iLvl, etc, would work much better then every 3-6 months going "Sorry guys, every piece of gear you have now? Trash."

People are pissed because they don't want to constantly be climbing a ladder at full speed....SE needs to slow it down a bit, that's all.

[Skies]

(I'm reffering to Dark-Saviour's post, btw)

Yes, Item Level is a very broad therm, it's just yet another method of balancingi n the game. You make your argument kind of weak if you say i'm giving Sega too much credit for their balancing, but I Also think that you probably don't give them enough credit, game balancing is hard.

No doubt they have certain guidelines of how useful a 'Rare' item has to be, otherwise it can't be called a 'Rare'. They have rules to guide them on how useful in a fight, more or less, an item has to be in order for it to be worth it. "It can take an enemy out of the battle for fourty seconds" can take many embodyments, freezing it in place, reducing it's damage greatly, making it turn on it's own allies, all of those have the value of disabling temporarily an enemy (last one also had the advantage of short DPS burst on party side, meaning it's an overall more useful ability, so it needs to be harder to use and/or more limited).
Without Item Level we don't see those guidelines, they're all devside.

Who knows, we can definitely have an eventual set of special abilities in our own items, once SE figure themselves out how to not fall into XI's pitfalls ("If you're a Warrior without Ridill you're gimped" [around 2009, according to a friend of mine who did play the game], "If you're a Samurai without Hagun you're useless" [Also according to others who played] despite there being a broad selection of weapons avaiable to you). But even then, the avaiable effect will be based on Item Level, you might see higher proc rates on greater IL weapons, or certain effects exclusive to them. But then you know that they follow the guidelines of "everything in this IL is useful".

Also, you need to remember they took the decision that content will be oblivated over time, there will always be something greater, a new shiny to go for. As you might have seen in this very thread already and in many others, a great majority of players would not do content without a "worthy" prize for them at the end.