Your thoughts on the direction of this game?

[WizardShotTheFood]

These threads go nowhere. Some hate, some like. I hate the game as of how it is now so I quit. Anyone else who can't see a future with the game because of how care bear and pathetic it is for an MMO should also leave and wait for another. Let Yoshi do whatever he wants with the game. He will sink the ship along with anyone who thinks this game is good, a haha.

nobody cares how terrible you are at this game

[MilesSaintboroguh]

nobody cares how terrible you are at this game

People do care, otherwise we wouldn't have a slew of topics complaining how hunts promote bad players.

[IgnisFatuus]

So I don't think it's really accurate to think of it almost anything as "1.x" content - because the huge majority of the content seems to have been produced with 2.0 in mind beginning around 1.18 or 1.19.

Not that I expect this to sway anyone's mind because this thread is a pit and people are dead-set on convincing themselves that 1.x was somehow a superior game, but.

I saw that gdc postmortem where he basically said that 1.x was a beta testfield for content with paying customers. but he also sees ARR as an ever-evolving piece (or chocobo kid or whatever analogy he made about it), so that's not much different, especially in hindsight with the balance trainwreck that is hunts as the prime example.

sadly, I never got the chance to play 1.x so I can only go by records of other people. it certainly seemed to have some interesting ideas and some pretty terrible ones too - but the battle system seemed to be much better.

[Roris]

T6: you dodge Devour, you dodge Bloody Caress after Spit, you dodge/move away from the other person chained to you to break chains, you dodge bulbs if they get too big, you dodge Acid Rain. Replace dodging bulbs with running into bulbs if you do it the intended way.

T7: you dodge Circle Blade, you dodge Fireballs by not standing near ranged party members, you arguably dodge Tail Whip if the adds get in front of you, you dodge Shriek by moving in front of the petrified Renauds, you dodge the floor AoEs, you dodge Petrifaction by looking away.

T8: the only exception is T8 where you have to run into stuff when the rest of the game teaches you running into stuff is bad. Even then you dodge Homing Missile if you aren't the designated person to grab them, you dodge mines if you aren't the designated person to grab them, you dodge Ballistic Missile if you aren't the designated person to break them out, you dodge everything if you have Allagan Field unless you also get Gaseous Bomb on you during that.

T9: you dodge meteors by not standing where the meteor will fall after the marker disappears, you dodge Iron Chariot, you dodge Lunar Dynamo, you dodge Raven Dive by not standing near the tank, you dodge more than one Meteor Stream by not standing near other targets, you dodge Earthen Heart, you dodge Heavy Strike, you dodge Heaven's Fall, you dodge Super Nova, you dodge the AoE after the Ghost of Meracydia dies, you dodge players with ice/fire/lightning depending on which one is on who, you dodge Divebombs.

So much for dodging not playing a big role in Second Coil, try not dodging any of that and see how that goes.

[Krr]

So much for dodging not playing a big role in Second Coil, try not dodging any of that and see how that goes.

This is probably my biggest complaint. First Coil involved mechanics other than 'dodge the x by doing y' that involved different classes developing unique, if somewhat disparate, roles. Rather than expanding on that to make everyone's role within their job (not just trinity) important we just have more 'dodge the x' mechanics that are supposed to put every class on even ground.

Dodging used sparingly as the icing on your team awareness cake is A-OK in my book. No one wants to do a fight standing still 24/7. But the meat of every encounter since 2.2 and beyond has felt like "new bullet hell pattern!"

If I wanted Touhou I'd go play it where 7 other people can't waste my bombs and lives.

[ExponentialDecay]

Personally, Leviathan is my favourite fight. Minimal dodging. If only you didn't need to dodge dashes it would be the perfect fight...

[Luvbunny]

So much for dodging not playing a big role in Second Coil, try not dodging any of that and see how that goes.

Is this a game of dodging or something? A Dodge Ball competition? Seems like thats the preferred mechanic on hard endgame? dodge dodge dodge, dance dance revolution

[Morzy]

Unfortunately this is what Yoshi-P decided to build the battle system on.. Mechanics. And I doubt it will change. It seems to me all you need to worry about is a possible tank hp/deff, DPS damage or healing CHECK. Other than that you can just win by knowing the mechanics and, well, dodging..

[Eej]

Personally the game has fallen into the most obvious trap with constant progression only being focused on endgame item progression with power creep allready becoming an issue.

They have caught themselves in a perpetual cycle.

-Release new content
-Invalidate content
-Release content that isn't even relevant to anyone
-Repeat.

They need to break out of the power cycle and focus on more of the games subsidary systems, they release some things but they always feel less than half baked with the brunt of focus going into the endgame raid that you can progress in once a week with only a select group of players.

They need to focus on community building IMHO.

Their cycle is done on purpose and it is:

Release new endgame content for people to beat.
Release new content that allows people who aren't at the bleeding edge of progression to catch up and potentially do the previous patch's end game content.
Release new endgame content for people to beat.
etc.

This is perfectly fine for an MMO meant to bring in new players towards end game raiding, as the catch up patches allows players to see what they have been missing and potentially get them interested in progression.

As for "subsidiary systems" would you like to elaborate? Chocobo breeding, Gold Saucer are already coming in but they aren't replacements for actual content for your characters.

[Velthice]

Ignoring the now comically robust definition of dodge, this sounds like every mmo ever.

I'm still waiting for some examples of other mmos with amazing encounter designs that don't involve dodging but are somehow still awesome and skillful. Is there an mmo based on rock em sock em robots? I would play the heck out of that (for like 10 minutes).