Quote Originally Posted by Yenn View Post
There's basically none. If they continue with their mediocrity (really, sub-mediocrity in most cases), they'll eventually be handed the gear they couldn't normally attain, without making an effort to improve themselves.

Further, the developers' stance on 'strategies' like the Turn 2 enrage garbage makes it seem like they have no intention of challenging these players to improve; every turn of Bahamut's Coil, excluding Twintania, can be powered through just by having enough gear, which is handed out for free in Turn 1 and Turn 2.

This degrades the sense of accomplishment for everyone, both the skilled players who worked hard to down the bosses, and the bad players who are just whacking loot pinatas and patting themselves on the back.

I hate to bring in World of Warcraft as a comparison, but I think they did it right, with the three sets of gear (Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic). If you're a sub-par player who wants to whack a loot pinata, you get sub-par gear for it. Those who want to challenge themselves get regular gear, and those who want to really push the encounters get higher tier gear.

There's no way this is healthy for the game in the long term.
Just an FYI, WoW is the game that started the whole dumbing down raids and handing gear and making it easily accessible for casual players. As soon as a new patch comes out, they always gave everyone a way of getting the previous level gear.

And seeing as how WoW has been going for how many years? Yes it does seem to work. The problem is people are starting to want the hardcore back, the true MMO where you had to work to get what you wanted, but from a current money standpoint, that model no longer works, if you keep making games where everyone can get the uber loot, then more people will play, but what they fail to see if while initial numbers will always be high, they fall off very quickly.

Look at FF11, even now it still has a somewhat strong fan base, and that game you had to work HARD to get what you wanted, it was not designed for the casual players, and FF11's biggest complaint is also it's greatest accomplishment, it was HARD.. Same with Everquest, same with Vanilla WoW. Heck look at Rift, some of the new raids have been out for months and STILL haven't been beating, the game does have VERY loyal fan base, and is a great game (their fate/rift system destroys this insult of a fate system that ff14 has). But if you also notice, when it was pay to play it started out great, the game was too hard, and casual players dropped like flies. It is now free to play, and casual players have a way of getting the gear.. they can buy it for a few hundrend dollars.

Now the turn 2 strat, that was found by people LOOKING for an exploit because they couldn't figure out how to pass the rot while dpsing while avoiding lazers, etc. These strategies will ALWAYS be found because people need to exploit it. AK, first boss, have the healer jump up into the tree and now you don't have to deal with the golems.. really? Dealing with the golems was what made the boss fight interesting, but people couldn't do it, because they had to take their focus off the boss and lower their dps so they wouldn't do it and the healer would wipe from healing agro.