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

[chococo]

It's funny how ppl see ffxi as a grind, but the continuous ilevel increase, old gear getting obsolete, having to grind new content, cycle repeats, in ffxiv is not a grind. I would say any negative RNG effects aren't as easily noticed by the player in the former than the latter.

[Espon]

I used to love this genre. I still do. But the irony is I found games like FFXI and Vanilla WoW FAR more casual friendly than mmos today. Casuals don't have a chance in hell to see any of the content in it's original form these days. And that fact I find really depressing.

How was classic WoW casual friendly? Most guilds that even attempted raiding couldn't get past bosses like Vaelstrasz the Corrupt and Princess Huhuran so they never got to see most of those raid dungeons. In fact, Vaelstrasz was the second boss in Blackwing Lair so that's 6 bosses people were blocked from ever seeing. So few people made it into Naxxramas that Blizzard decided to re-release an easier version of it it 2 expansions later.

SE really needs to take advantage of the future changes WoW made to raiding, such as having multiple difficulties... and I don't mean like how the primals are set up. Having an easy and hard mode of the same dungeon allows most people see the content while still providing a challenge to the more hardcore players, with different ilvls of loot for each. It also means they don't have to nerf the hard modes either. And lastly, it saves a lot of development time since you're not catering to just one demographic.

[BoltNixter]

Just wait a year or so and all the white knights will want to shoot themselves with boredom. There's a limit to repetition for everyone.

[chococo]

Just wait a year or so and all the white knights will want to shoot themselves with boredom. There's a limit to repetition for everyone.

I am already seeing this trend. There are so many new threads day-by-day saying that certain things/design concepts are bad whereas in beta forums they were called good.

[Galliano]

I'm not bothered about them making old content easier as it will enable people to experience the story elements and give them something to progress though that they couldn't before. What I am bothered about is new gear making old gear obsolete, causing me to look back and think why did I even bother running Coil every week for gear and farming myth tomes?

It's nice that we will have new gear to aim for but it would be much better if the new gear was gained by horizontal progression for a little while, letting us mix and match it with our current ilvl90 gear for an optimal set up.

[BrandoH]

There is your problem. You want horizontal progression, whereas the designers clearly stated from the beginning that that's not the game they were going for. Horizontal progression for most people that play this kinda game (or used to play WoW) is really annoying. With itemization as it is right now, what's the point of horizontal progression? To farm more of the same for content we can already one-shot? Nonsense.

See, it goes both ways. However, the people who want vertical progression are gonna be happy when 2.2 hits because we have something bigger and better to aim for. We already worked during 2.0/2.1 to have the best, and we succeeded. We need another "best". That's what we're here for. That's what we're waiting around for.

If you like more horizontal/linear progression games, check out GW2 or EQNext when they roll around. Idk if FFXI is still linear, but if it is, it's certainly still chugging along and people still sub away.

I'd like it if they made the bosses in this game the way linear games do, with brutally difficult mechanics instead of gearchecks everywhere, but you can't have everything I suppose.

[Davionx]

Hard work? Accomplishment? This games content is entirely instanced and a joke.

Just wow...

[Beetle]

Only way to keep gear around for long term would be to bring materia/gear break system again or bring out gear swaps during battle and modifire stats for actions and abilities.

[Worm]

Hard work? Accomplishment? This games content is entirely instanced and a joke.

Just wow...

This guy gets it, the real important thing in an argument is to prove you're superior to both sides.

gear swaps during battle

People don't even want to have resistance gear anymore, much less multiple sets they macro into abilities. Honestly when I read these posts I wonder if you're all willfully ignorant of the current market or just don't care and want some game that's a mishmash of decade old idiosyncrasies that you yourself wouldn't even play.

[Davionx]

This guy gets it, the real important thing in an argument is to prove you're superior to both sides.

This guy knew what he was buying.

A casual mmo with laughable raid content.