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

[Versiroth]

All I do currently is...

- One low level roulette to level an alt = 30-45 minutes.
- One High level roulette to get the myth bonus = 30-45 minutes.
- One Main Scenario roulette to get Phil tomes to gear alts in DL = 30-45 minutes.
- One CT run to try to get that allusive piece of gear = 45-1 hour.
- Several tries at extremes = 30 minutes.

Now, I don't do all of this every day, but this can be a typical day for me playing this game very casually (I don't even run coil). That's any where from 3 to 4+ hours of content every day and again, that doesn't include special events, coil, dailies, helping FC members, etc.

In other words, this game offers plenty to do! If you've played since 1.0 and have everything at 50 already with awesome gear, of course there isn't much to do now. But, for most people that started 2.0 or later, there should be plenty to keep them logging in daily.

And personally... I can't wait until Coil is in the DF.

[Fendred]

I second Versiroth's motion on the party finder/no lockouts on Coil. I also second the nerf to Twintania, because throwing random stuff without warning or proper context at people isn't a boss fight. I have a somewhat unrealistic wish to see the extreme Titan primal battle preserved for future generations as an optional "legacy" fight, just because its an example of a really well designed, difficult boss encounter, but that probably won't happen without all three primals being involved. Not that I think extreme garuda and ifrit don't have their merits, but titan takes the crown when it comes to those three fights.

[ApolloGenX]

40-50 hours per week??

Seriously?

Considering the casual nature of this game... I am not sure why someone with that kind of play time would choose this game over a hard core grind game.... that is a LOT of time to be playing. That is like a full-time job.... I don't think that play style is typical and should be used as a model for any kind of development, honestly.

[Tazo]

There are people out there that are 'gamers' and play 50+ hrs a week...shocking I know

The point Xatsh is making is very valid. SE released a game where you can get 1-50 in less than a week, crafting jobs in 1-2 days. If their design allows you to lvl so fast and reach endgame then they better have the content at the end of that road to keep these players interested.

[MasamuneBranford]

Solution: Give the ability to play all content under its original conditions and reward an achievement for doing so.

Therefore -5 years from now - If i'm bored, I could gather my friends and enter the original turns 1-5 of BCB and be given the option to remove all echo buffs and be item level capped at ilevel 91.

Such an easy solution to implement that would literally please everybody.

[MasamuneBranford]

There are people out there that are 'gamers' and play 50+ hrs a week...shocking I know

The point Xatsh is making is very valid. SE released a game where you can get 1-50 in less than a week, crafting jobs in 1-2 days. If their design allows you to lvl so fast and reach endgame then they better have the content at the end of that road to keep these players interested.

Good points. However, I don't feel that it is in SE's best interest to rush out content to cater to the 5 or less% minority who plays an MMO more hours per week than the average work week.

[Tazo]

Good points. However, I don't feel that it is in SE's best interest to rush out content to cater to the 5 or less% minority who plays an MMO more hours per week than the average work week.

The sad thing is that they didn't rush 2.1(delayed actually) and it's nothing but recycled content and shit that should have been there on release.

[Swishytail]

There are people out there that are 'gamers' and play 50+ hrs a week...shocking I know

The point Xatsh is making is very valid. SE released a game where you can get 1-50 in less than a week, crafting jobs in 1-2 days. If their design allows you to lvl so fast and reach endgame then they better have the content at the end of that road to keep these players interested.

That's the norm now, and it will stay that way until the majority wants otherwise.
Don't get too excited for things like Wildstar, ESO, etc. There's a good chance you'll
be max level extremely fast in those as well. Same thing will happen end-game.

Not saying you mentioned those MMOs personally, those are generally speaking. The
amount of people that play 10 hours a week compared to 50 hours a week is probably
a very huge gap.

I'm enjoying FFXIV. I plan on staying for the long-haul unless they REALLY flub things up
in a real bad way. Just my two cents.

[Worm]

Instanced vs. non-instanced was "dodged" by me because it is completely, 100% irrelevant to the discussion. The way to make instanced content with horizontal progression isn't difficult to imagine, it would be exactly the same as non-instanced content with horizontal progression.

Without content being competitive how do you keep people out of say the 8th or 10th raid without spiking the difficulty to absurd levels? You must understand the importance of competition in limiting people's progression through non-instanced content. When everyone can raid all the time any time how do you stop them blowing through content? Non-instanced content has a limiting factor in that things might spawn only once a week or something like that. What are you suggesting? Super long attunements, limited number of attempts, resist gear, or massive difficulty spikes? I don't know if you haven't played many instanced games beside this one, but generally the end of each tier is as accessible as the last end of each tier, sometimes even easier.

However this constant raising of difficulty actually makes nerfs necessary to a point. You can see it a lot in WoW. If literally all you want is smaller ilvl leaps whatever, but if you think you can just foist horizontal progression into an instanced game without having the content suffer for it I have to disagree. Vanilla WoW was reasonably horizontal and Naxx40 was just not reachable for a lot of people. I don't necessarily have a problem with people not being able to touch content. However I think it's sort of disingenuous for you to go "man horizontal progression SOLVES ALL THE PROBLEMS" it just doesn't you'd have a lot of similar problems and people would be less likely to play the game because you'd have to go to huge lengths to keep them out of content.

[Susanoh]

Without content being competitive how do you keep people out of say the 8th or 10th raid without spiking the difficulty to absurd levels?

You don't. You create good content that people want to log in and play and have a good experience doing it. Gear gated content is one of the most boring, mind numbing aspects in the MMO genre. FFXI had plenty of content made specifically for a set group rather than open world (dynamis, limbus, nuzule, salvage, einherjar) and while better equipment helped, none of it was what modern gamers would consider a "gear check," other than possibly a few very specific strategies. If you don't like me using FFXI as an example, take a look at the original Guild Wars and to a lesser extent, Guild Wars 2.