SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[Kiara]

The truth is that if only 5% of your player-base can reasonably expect to run the current content, that's a whole lot of wasted resources.

On that note, I find it amusing that the "hardcore raiders" are complaining that this game is not challenging enough. The designers were, and are, very clear the game is currently aimed at newer players and "filthy casuals". What exactly were you expecting?

BTW, Delily, not once have I mentioned making the game more punitive. I actually think Coil encounters are pretty obscure and awful game design. The overuse of Insta-Kill / One Shot mechanics is a handicap that the design team has been using to basically make you do things exactly the way they want or else.

I'm hoping for more organic encounters. There's a place for Instant Death, but not to the level of over usage that was in 2nd Coil pre-nerf. Reducing the over reliance on them makes the fights less tedious and grants room for all types of players to potentially recover and just go in and learn the fight (instead of a totally scripted experience where most players resort to watching Youtube videos to learn the Dance Dance Revolution pattern for that fight).

[Delily]

BTW, Delily, not once have I mentioned making the game more punitive. I actually think Coil encounters are pretty obscure and awful game design. The overuse of Insta-Kill / One Shot mechanics is a handicap that the design team has been using to basically make you do things exactly the way they want or else.

Well, the whole ilvl concept is design failure in my opinion, but that's for another day...

I'm hoping for more organic encounters. There's a place for Instant Death, but not to the level of over usage that was in 2nd Coil pre-nerf. Reducing the over reliance on them makes the fights less tedious and grants room for all types of players to potentially recover and just go in and learn the fight (instead of a totally scripted experience where most players resort to watching Youtube videos to learn the Dance Dance Revolution pattern for that fight).

More organic encounters would be great, the only caveat is that you do have to train your players via more scripted fights, and then provide them with some clues. Think "wax on, wax off" from the original "Karate Kid" movie. Theoretically, you'd use leveling to teach people those mechanics, but that would require some significant design to not only slow people down, but also to encourage them NOT to rush to the end game.

[Atomnium]

http://mud.co.uk/richard/The%20Decline%20of%20MMOs.pdf.

Very interesting reading, thanks for the share.
I loved the part where he described relationship between raiders and casual players :

People play MMOs for different reasons which can be characterised as player
types (Bartle, 1996). All of these player types are needed if an MMO is to be healthy.
For example, an MMO with achievers but no socialisers will shed achievers, because
low-level achievers will find that there are no players that they are “better” than and
so leave. Likewise, an MMO with socialisers but no achievers will mean players have
little to do and will leave.

[Akiza]

The article about the Decline of MMO's was a good read. The most interesting part was MMORPG's don't have to have certain features like character classes and levels. If SE wanted to be story driven all they have to do is remove character classes and levels and just have an ability grid and ability points instead. Then SE add new abilities and increase the max ability point cap whenever they want.

[Felis]

If SE wanted to be story driven all they have to do is remove character classes and levels and just have an ability grid and ability points instead. Then SE add new abilities and increase the max ability point cap whenever they want.

Isn't it the same like exp and skills?

[Delily]

Classes and levels are artifacts from pen and paper RPG's that were created to simplify the real world mechanics. In reality, a person using a sword go from wildly swinging it around to more deliberate strokes, he would learn to parry, and when to thrust, slash, jab, etc. He'd learn how to handle different swords, etc. Also the more one is in combat, the greater one's pain threshold becomes. But all of this is too complicated of a system to model using calculators and die. So the designers developed levels as a way to mock out how humans over time can get stronger, smarter, more agile, etc. The classes system is meant to reflect the fact that we all have strengths and weaknesses. I am bad at poetry, but good at programming computers. But again too nuanced for PnP games. Computers could do all those calculations, but it would be expensive and people are accustomed to levels and classes.
My problem with the gear grind is that gear is the end, and not the means. Gear is really nothing but a soft leveling mechanism, that lets the developers build tougher bosses and gate content. I understand why they did it, but that doesn't mean I like it.

[Delily]

Also, Bartle is definitely someone you should know if you're at all interested in MMO design and development. He takes a more academic approach to the genre than either Yoshi-p or Greg Street (ghostcrawler), but that approach definitely gets one to think more critically about the games.

[BlaiseArath]

The benefit from "Critical hit Damage +3%" varies heavily with Critical hit rate and current Critical hit damage percentage. At 50% critical hit chance and +50% base Critical hit Damage it is a 1.2% increase in average damage, but only a .25% increase in damage with a 10% and +200% Critical hit damage. "Fire Spell Potency +10" may sound simple but has varying effects based on when, where, what and how it is applied.

Its not complexity that is the problem, but Balance.

Please understand, I'm not attempting to be rude, I understand what you're saying when you mention this, so If i sound rude, I assure you its mostly in good humor and nothing else.

A BLM spell going from say 300 potency to 310 isn't causing T13 to collapse and casuals run wild in it, and my critical hits going from 1000 damage to 1030 damage isn't causing the sky to fall or allow my NIN to solo the world. Sorry, but I don't buy the balance excuse. They're MMO designer, Not ignorant children, I'm sure if they wanted too they could easily balance these extra stats. Its not that much of a challenge so long as they look at it in the long term and not the short term.

Gear variety and itemization... These things were not what made 1.0 bad at all. The stats were fine and even though they weren't the general copy paste of WoW, I bet most of you would actually like a stat system like 1.0/XI if you gave it a shot... I mean, if any of you enjoyed Diablo 2 you should understand the basic concept. Heck, even early FF Titles had armor/weapons with high positives for a trade-off like extra damage taken or something. There's nothing wrong with picking the brain of your consumers in a way that makes them feel smarter for figuring something out. We've all got our brains so turned off at this point because we can pretty much assume every new MMO will be the same gear wise.

You'll have your Primary and HP Stat, always important, and you'll have your secondary stats which will mostly be the same priority for every job... and thats it... I'm just not in support of the ever increasing stupification(This is a word now too) of gaming... As I stated before, I'm not supporting gear swapping or needing a math major to figure out which piece of armor is better(though I did enjoy some of these aspects in XI)... but any level of complexity at all would be nice. Don't you guys ever get sick of playing literally the same MMO over and over with just the names changing? Doesn't the exact same copy and paste itemization and gearing system ever get stale to you? I do enjoy playing XIV, but it doesn't mean I like everything about it. The gameplay itself is fun enough (except low level ._. when its just 1212121212121212), but I still wish they would give me more to be excited about each patch.

I mean really, how much excitement can you muster for +4 Primary Stat and VIT?

When people .dat minned in XI, i was legitimately giddy with excitement at all the new gear possibilities they could be adding. Would my THF get a better dagger? Would my SMN get some more Avatar Perp- or some Avatar damage buffs? Will they add new stats? (Like when Quad Attack was added, or Increased Blood Pact potency, or the exceptionally epic Empyrean Armor set bonuses) These sh*t was so exciting to find out, was exciting to see in action... when you compare something like this:

http://www.ffxiah.com/item/19953/vajra

to this:

http://xivdb.com/?item/9247/Vajra

How can you not feel like you're missing something? You know Bravura, the relic weapon for WAR in XIV? Main stats, etc... in XI it had a hidden effect of dealing double damage 10% of the time, insane Accuracy bonus, chance of lowering enemies evasion on hit, and a unique weaponskill which granted the WAR a 20% Damage taken reduction. These weapons were unique and interesting for a lot of reasons, even sometimes reasons you didn't know about til you got it.

I understand fun is subjective, but what about itemization, in moderation, do you dislike? Are you excited to see new armor released in XIV when you know its just going to be +X to primary/VIT, and if so, why? I'm asking any of you who open object to more variety in armor (not fully horizontal progression, just more variety).

[Deathscythe343]

Please understand, I'm not attempting to be rude, I understand what you're saying when you mention this, so If i sound rude, I assure you its mostly in good humor and nothing else.

A BLM spell going from say 300 potency to 310 isn't causing T13 to collapse and casuals run wild in it, and my critical hits going from 1000 damage to 1030 damage isn't causing the sky to fall or allow my NIN to solo the world. Sorry, but I don't buy the balance excuse. They're MMO designer, Not ignorant children, I'm sure if they wanted too they could easily balance these extra stats. Its not that much of a challenge so long as they look at it in the long term and not the short term.

Gear variety and itemization... These things were not what made 1.0 bad at all. The stats were fine and even though they weren't the general copy paste of WoW, I bet most of you would actually like a stat system like 1.0/XI if you gave it a shot... I mean, if any of you enjoyed Diablo 2 you should understand the basic concept. Heck, even early FF Titles had armor/weapons with high positives for a trade-off like extra damage taken or something. There's nothing wrong with picking the brain of your consumers in a way that makes them feel smarter for figuring something out. We've all got our brains so turned off at this point because we can pretty much assume every new MMO will be the same gear wise.

You'll have your Primary and HP Stat, always important, and you'll have your secondary stats which will mostly be the same priority for every job... and thats it... I'm just not in support of the ever increasing stupification(This is a word now too) of gaming... As I stated before, I'm not supporting gear swapping or needing a math major to figure out which piece of armor is better(though I did enjoy some of these aspects in XI)... but any level of complexity at all would be nice. It would also be nice if they translated "Skill Speed" and "Critical hit rate" into actual percentages instead of large meaningless numbers. I mean really, in a game that values simplicity its stupid that I have to go online to figure out the tiers for these two things. Why can't "Critical Hit Rate" just be a % in your Character screen? "Skill Speed" Could show the % Reduction to GCD as well instead of the stat value.

I mean, seriously, don't you guys ever get sick of playing literally the same MMO over and over with just the names changing? Doesn't the exact same copy and paste itemization and gearing system ever get stale to you? I do enjoy playing XIV, but it doesn't mean I like everything about it. The gameplay itself is fun enough (except low level ._. when its just 1212121212121212), but I still wish they would give me more to be excited about each patch.

I mean really, how much excitement can you muster for +4 Primary Stat and VIT?

I agree with you 100%. Even with more options for stats in Games like Wow it was balanced. Not only that, but players easily knew how much +hit they would need for fights. They could easily see how much crit they have. Even when WoW changed their haste stat to encompass melee, casters, and GCD you still knew exactly how you were effected in those areas.

If you really want to see secondary stats run away with themselves look at this:http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=88239. Even with all of those stats EQ still found a way to balance them. It is possible. Give the development team some credit. This is the type of stuff that they do for a living.

If players are so truly concerned about lack of something to do or progression ask the development team to change something or add something. I know personally, every MMO that I have played since EQ, I have wanted those games to implement some sort of AA system like EQ has. It provides players a pretty extensive way for them to improve their characters beyond just having the best gear that he/she can possibly get. Here is a link to give you a basic understanding, http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/aaskills.html. Last time I checked EQ some 8,000 AA points that players could obtain for each of his/her characters. That sounds like a lot, and it is, however it is something that players there strive for. It is something that keeps players logging in day after day. What do players have to do in this game after they have maxed out on poetics for the week?

[Ultimatecalibur]

I understand fun is subjective, but what about itemization, in moderation, do you dislike? Are you excited to see new armor released in XIV when you know its just going to be +X to primary/VIT, and if so, why? I'm asking any of you who open object to more variety in armor (not fully horizontal progression, just more variety).

Nothing, but I also know that a bunch of procs, secondary stats and weird bonuses doesn't necessarily make good itemization. They makes itemization complex and can unnecessarily obfuscate things.

Why would you be excited for an item when all an items stats mean in the long run are increase dps/healing and survivability/endurance by some amount? What is the difference between an accessory set that gives you a +10% bonus to damage at a cost of taking +10% more and swapping Vit accessories for Str accessories to the point where you have -10% hp and +10% damage?

I would not mind seeing the following Accessory sets be added to the game:

• 1/2 cap Str/1/2 cap Vit with Parry/Det/Crit/Acc
• 1/2 cap Vit/1/2 cap Mind with Piety/Det/SpSp/Acc
• 1/2 cap Vit/1/2 cap Dex with Piety/Parry/SkSp/Acc
• 1/2 cap Vit/1/2 cap Int with SpSp/Crit/Det/Acc