You have enough casual/fluff content now, how about that endgame progression SEnix?

[ruinedmirage]

it's relevant to what defines a game as successful or not.

I have to disagree there. If 500k people are willing to stick with your game for 20 years, I think that's worth far more than 10 million people quitting after the first month or two (exagerration to an extent, of course). Maybe I'd make a terrible business person with that logic, though, but at least I know some people are happy. Happy players are a success, if you ask me.

[Baneus]

it's relevant to what defines a game as successful or not.

Well , in that case, SWTOR* and WoW. Both of which have much larger players bases than FF and are a lot more diverse in their communities. SWTOR has held steady after it's disastrous launch and reconfigure (oh hey, what other game had to do that?) and WoW is dropping to reach a sustainable subscription base instead of the hideous aberration it's had to deal with until now.


*still a P2P game, though with a crappy F2P** option
**"free" as in "it costs twice as much as a monthly sub to get the same game options"


Happy now? :P

Oh, and if you want a bit more info, the only MMOs I haven't played in the last 15 years were Lineage, Guild Wars (though I don't consider this to be a real MMO), Tera and Aeon.

[Sapphic]

Phew some actually discussion.... I'd lost hope. I was not aware of this. lets hope it goes well. but In my mind, that is a poor way to "Judge" wether there is a demand for the content.... because as you said, its recycled, and the reward is a title...

Well theres no point in allocating production time on new gear for savage coil for a test. If the test is favorable they stated they will look into adding unique gear to further additions. If the test turns into an abject failure then no time was wasted, as the content was already made seeing as it was the first, unbalanced version of coil before they adjusted and balanced it to a release level.

Savage coil is just part of the development cycle for content and thus requires minimal production time to implement, which, of course, the addition of new gear would extend that.

As stated, this one is a test.

Off topic, anynone knows of any progress being made in it yet?

[Ryans]

To be fair, their casual "fluff" is kind of gated behind a lot of hard core gameplay too so...

True casuals didn't really get much out of this. I agree there needs to be a lot more done at end game, but SE seems to be playing catch-up in ALL aspects of the game and maybe Yoshi-P's eyes are a little bigger than his stomach atm. So much feels so half-asd.

What's blocked behind hard core content? You don't even need to have beaten Titan EX to do Leviathan anymore. I guess Ultima? He can be a pain if people don't know what to do, but I wouldn't call it hard core content. I think that is just... content...

SE's biggest mistake to this day has been that bug in the first CT preventing it from being released at launch instead of coil. That completely ruined the entire gear progression for the last year. Should have been CT>coil>ST>2nd Coil with primals thrown in there.

[ToffeeCoffee]

If the intent in dropping UAT/Oils to casuals is so they are encouraged to gear up more to tackle SCoB, then SE has missed the point once again.
The prime reason people aren't doing SCoB is because of the restrictive lockout and being forced to organise a group prior to entry (with only a pool of players who haven't yet cleared to choose from).
I had to quit doing SCoB because I can't stay up half the night waiting for my static to come online (and have people show up late, or cancel at the last minute and spend even more time finding suitable PUGs).

I understand a lot of casual players are happy to just do things for the sake of doing them and have no real ambition to tackle SCoB (in it's current restrictive state) or understand why they are even gearing up in the first place. What I want to know is, why can't SE unlock SCoB without Echo buffing or nerfing it so everyone can at least have access to it?

Geared statics already have full SCoB loot and are gearing their subclasses/alts (and salivating at the thought of selling carries) so the whole "you gear up too fast by spamming it" is pretty much invalid now. Lack of content at endgame is evident, retaining a weekly lockout on to mask this fact is poor form on SE's part. Let people play and enjoy the game.

[HakuroDK]

This is more of a casual patch though. I felt the same way about 2.2 that you feel about 2.3. I was disappointed with second coil because I don't have the time to commit to learning it so I couldn't really experience that content. So now with 2.3 there is new content that I can experience beyond just grinding soldiery tomes.

I was frustrated after 2.2 and almost took off, but someone on the forums reminded me that pretty much every other patch is casual > hardcore > casual > hardcore. Maybe 2.4 will be more your style

Pretty much this.

Yoshi has pretty much stated that patches will be taking turns between hardcore endgame raids and casual endgame raids. There simply are not enough people in the game willing to participate in 24-man hardcore content on a regular basis with a healthy playerbase in the same way as Crystal Tower content. I HATE Coil, to be perfectly honest, because it requires a level of focus that I simply cannot put out. I haven't even cleared T5 yet because, even as an MT, I have to be a hell of a lot more careful than I have to be with most other content, and it can be very, very stressful, and not at all in a good way.

Hardcore combat content is just one facet out of several that this game has to fill. There's Hardcore Combat Content, Casual Combat Content, Questing, Open World Content, Crafting Content (Both Casual and Hardcore), Gathering Content (Both Casual and Hardcore), and the list is only getting larger.

I mean, if you're getting tired of a lack of hardcore content, why not just unsub for a few months, pick up Dark Souls 2, then come back later when the next bit of Coil comes out?

As for the above post about giving Sands/Oil of Time and UATs to "Casuals", it's pretty much the third weapon option.

Option A: Relic Weapon
Option B: Coil Weapon
Option C: Equal-Strength Weapon

Relic is the weapon that requires the least skill, but the most time. Coil is the weapon that requires the most skill, but the least time. The equal-strength weapon (Rowena's Token Weapons, EX Primal Weapons, etc.) are the middle ground. Have been since 2.1. And to be perfectly honest, there should not be more than one set unlockable by a single specific dungeon, especially if said specific dungeon is supposed to be the hardest content in the game. So really, Sands/Oil/UATs are the only way "casuals" can get i110 armor and weapons, where it originally used to be that we'd have to farm Myth for AF2 and Relic Zenith in order to get gear on par with Coil drops. It was a mistake on SE's part to put Sands/Oil/UATs in Second Coil, and I am glad that they opened it up to drop in more content.

[Nel_Celestine]

snip

Thank you very much for a well constructed post. I was considering chiming in here but I'm glad someone was able to speak my own stance in such a well produced manner. Kudos to you sir.

[Verranicus]

oh please, you live in some alternative reality. the most successful MMO on the market done Casual, Hardcore and PVP right and oh look... it peaked at 14 million SUBS ... whereas ... here... 2 million registrations with a brand like final fantasy. Wildstar now takes the spotlight in most circles because again it does both. even SWTOR does both... even LOTRO did both....

You know the games that failed... have failed to do? BOTH. The down turn Guild Wars 2 took ... most MMO gamers are PvErs... and need to be catered to on all levels.

But yea... those of us that want a few raids are sooo ruining these games right? sheesh... talk about delusion.

Guild Wars 2 is still going strong. You're wrong.

[Yshnal]

In other games, most people raid because they're "forced" to do so, not having any other means of meaningful progression. Truth be told, the raiding community is the (vocal/passionate) minority there, as not everyone enjoys it as we do (regardless of our aproach for both loot-challenge-fun, and time investment). Most players just want to play the game, improve their characters, and even unfold the game's story, all in the somewhat living world of a game that "never ends" (MMOs). Usually, raiding is for them just the only alternative they have to achieve that, so they have to cope with it.

Over many years I've seen quite some requests of people asking for more small-team content as an alternative instead of fully focusing on raids, and with reason I must say. There has been an obsession in theme-parks over making their endgames fully raid-oriented disregarding any other kind of content, and that not only does not suit everyone's tastes, but ends being a bit weary for many others as well. There're many resons for that, starting with people's tastes, as I said, and ending with the dramas and/or drawbacks related to having to deal with more people, for example (the later is one of the reasons why I think that we won't see any hard content for more than 8 players). For these players, ARR is a breath a fresh air, as every patch brings them something else besides raids, raids, and more raids, even if they like them.

Personally, I find both Syrcus Tower and the new dungeon and hardmodes fun (and all the other quests too!), so these are all welcome as that's my main reason to play games. I can understand that those of you more "closed" to or centered in just raiding might not be happy at all with this approach, but you have to keep in mind that here it's numbers what matter. Yoshi-P chose this design direction about having the current balance over all kinds of content and not focusing a lot into hardcore raiding on every patch, and it seems that it's working for him and his company (regardless of the actual sub numbers).

[Alise]

While I agree that currently after each group won T9, they barely log in anymore, and seem my friends not interest much of Ramuh either because they said level 100 item only. But I want to ask "who are you" to tell other that their argument are weak or bad? This is all simply opinion vs opinion.