Patch 2.2, Accessibility, Difficulty Levels, and Throwing Away Content

[synaesthetic]

What if they put a small symbol on loot that gets acquired from the nerfed coil during an echo buff? Everyone would know that you acquired it with echo and did not click it off. I think it's a great idea. Make it happen SE.

WHO CARES?

Why do you tryhards care so much about marking people who beat something after it's nerfed? Why does it matter that much to you? What is your actual motivation here? Why do you even care that they're nerfing something you're already beating easily? What difference does it make?

You have no legitimate reason to be upset by this unless you derive pleasure from the misery of other players.

There is something wrong with you. Seek psychological help.

[Taruranto]

-cut-

You speak like all WoW-Clone/Theme Park MMORPG or how do you want to call them (in which FFXIV belong) in recent years haven't crashed and burned after a successful start. :P

[Tazo]

Lol I'm not mad or upset, I know what I signed up for playing a game with vertical progression. You missed the point of a humorous suggestion and you are the one that is obviously upset. I think you got your shit pushed in by the hardcores one too many times, and on behalf of the hardcores, I apologize.

[synaesthetic]

Lol I'm not mad or upset, I know what I signed up for playing a game with vertical progression. You missed the point of a humorous suggestion and you are the one that is obviously upset. I think you got your shit pushed in by the hardcores one too many times, and on behalf of the hardcores, I apologize.

My problem is not so much with the players, though they certainly have a share of the blame, but with the genre and the gaming industry as a whole. I really, really enjoy these games. There aren't many multiplayer games anywhere nearly as social as an MMO like XIV.

But the genre is dying. It's dying and being taken over by the zombie free-to-play infection.

XIV is one of the very last, very few subscription-only online RPGs without a cash shop. Even WoW has a cash shop now. Everyone has one. Every MMO is slowly becoming a Credit Card Arms Race. This is one of the two left (the other being FFXI) that isn't like that. I don't want to see it die, and what ya'll want will kill it dead. If XIV started trending towards FFXI logistically, most of the casual players would leave, and with most of the money gone, Square-Enix would have to either go free-to-play, thus joining the zombies, or shut down entirely.

I don't really want that to happen. I don't want to write off the entire genre, but if there are no subscription options left...

[Susanoh]

I mean I really wouldn't mind seeing a game in the style of EQ or FFXI however I think it would fair poorly in the market and I feel that if it didn't non-instanced EQ playstyle can't stand up to millions and millions of players. There'd have to be either an insane amount of content with huge landmasses OR they'd just have to give up and instance things which is the REAL reason content obsolesce happens, since each raid is going to be around a similar difficulty, naturally people won't run the one that drops worse gear.

That each new piece of content must drop vastly superior equipment is the mindset that causes older content to become obsolete, not whether content is instanced or not. If new content were to come with different rewards that accommodated different play styles or offered alternatives to what already existed, it makes for a game that has quite a bit of relevant content for players to choose to do and get cool rewards while doing it. The methods used by some modern games and now FF14 make for a game where no one wants to do old content. It becomes a joke to complete because of how easy it is with superior equipment, and doesn't drop anything that anyone wants, because all drops are inferior to whatever just came out. What's left is the only content people care to do at all, which is whatever was just released. Some people might want this style of game, but it's incredibly easy to see why some wouldn't. A game that gets constantly updated like an MMO does has the potential to build itself into an experience with lots of things to do and get some nice rewards while doing them. A game that uses the power creep method becomes only as good as its latest patch, since no one wants to do any old content, as it becomes easily out leveled and unbalanced and has no relevant rewards. We don't even get anything nice in exchange for these methods. It only serves to make the amount of relevant things to do in game feel incredibly restrictive.

[Tazo]

snip(

I see what you are saying. I consider myself hardcore and don't care about the nerfing, it's vertical progression....it is bound to happen.

But we don't want vertical progression.....EVERY mmo that was released with vertical progression, has died. WoW made it work because it coined it along with the stupid BS to make everything instanced. It gets boring....people quit, simple as that. Now combine that with recycled content, failed economy, crafting being useless, the world being nothing by eye candy, latency issues for many.....you have a sinking ship.

[Naberrie]

1) Patch 2.2 adds the "medium difficulty" to end-game content that should have been there from day one for players who just want to see the story, but at the same time takes the higher difficulty of that content away from the players that wanted a grinding-their-teeth challenge and some kind of trophy for doing it to show off to their friends. So they are actually taking away accessibility to the content.

Think of other games with difficulty levels. You may not ever play on super-chillidog-my-innards-are-dying extreme mode, but you could still try it if you wanted to. That is what access is. This is a game where you payed for the higher difficulty on those bosses, but now they are going to remove the higher difficulty at the same time they activate medium difficulty on the same boss. That sort of flies in the face of what "accessible" is supposed to mean.

accessible
[ak-ses-uh-buhl]
adjective
1. easy to approach, reach, enter, speak with, or use.
2. that can be used, entered, reached, etc.: an accessible road; accessible ruins.
3. obtainable; attainable: accessible evidence.

[synaesthetic]

*words*

That's actually not true. RIFT was profitable for many years, sustaining itself on a small playerbase about the size as FFXIV's (a little bit bigger, I'm pretty sure RIFT was around a million active players). RIFT went free-to-play not because RIFT was a modern MMO. It went F2P because Trion overextended themselves and lost a lot of money on Rise of Nations and Defiance. They didn't have a choice but to lay off a bunch of people and convert RIFT to free-to-play, so that people would be less likely to revolt over the sudden loss of content.

Every MMO that was released and has died has done so due to logistical incompetence, budget problems, unrelated profit losses and general mismanagement. The gameplay models are not what caused these games to fail.

[ApolloGenX]

The main problem seems to be that people want others to know they beat coil before the nerf so they know what an accomplishment they achieved.

No one cares. You think they do- that's the problem. There is no accomplishment or achievement here. No one is looking at you. No one is admiring you. No one cares. It's a casual game.

Besides, there will be new gear for you to get- if you want to feel special, go get that gear. No one will care then, either- but you can pretend they do while you pose and show off in Toll, while no one is looking.

Don't like those old games with grinds and epic content? Then get used to no one caring about what you did in game- because there is no elite here. That's the byproduct of a watered down game... when everyone is special- no one is.

[synaesthetic]

The main problem seems to be that people want others to know they beat coil before the nerf so they know what an accomplishment they achieved.

No one cares. You think they do- that's the problem. There is no accomplishment or achievement here. No one is looking at you. No one is admiring you. No one cares. It's a casual game.

Besides, there will be new gear for you to get- if you want to feel special, go get that gear. No one will care then, either- but you can pretend they do while you pose and show off in Toll, while no one is looking.

Don't like those old games with grinds and epic content? Then get used to no one caring about what you did in game- because there is no elite here. That's the byproduct of a watered down game... when everyone is special- no one is.

This is the best post.

This is the byproduct of this game, and the vast majority of us like it this way. We don't need to inflate an e-peen. We don't care about looking special. We don't care about pissing on the "noobs." We don't care about any of that crap.

What do we care about? Having fun with our friends. That's all.

Those of you who want to achieve fake goals and false accomplishments to feel validated by other players in a virtual world? Uhm, seek help immediately.