I sure hope HW is not going to be more armor grind treadmill!

[Luciano_Bozzelli]

I've been telling people man... Dynamis, and some sky or limbus type place, with great gear grinds, that whole free companies can go to once every 2 or 3 days would be a game changer, and give us a reason to communicate and chill with our free company. Legendary cursed artifact gear or something.

[Cidel]

Not trying to necro-bump the older thread, but a lot of good arguments have been brought up previously on the topic of the "gear treadmill" and how endgame has been handled:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...re-interesting!

I've been telling people man... Dynamis, and some sky or limbus type place, with great gear grinds, that whole free companies can go to once every 2 or 3 days would be a game changer, and give us a reason to communicate and chill with our free company. Legendary cursed artifact gear or something.

God forbid we get relevant content to do with our FC that isn't fluff or vanity. The small FCs would revolt!

[Magis]

I agree. I'm fine with some vertical progression (its good to always have something to work towards), but it is disappointing that every patch's combat content replaces what came before it instead of adding to it.

That's the point of vertical progression though. You don't progress horizontally; adding armour to choose from to design a build for a certain purpose, but rather replace armour over and over to increase a basic stat layout.

I prefer horizontal cause "make the number go big" is boring.

[Shurrikhan]

The thing I hated most about the treadmill was how expert roulette was handled. Doing the same 3 dungeons for the entire patch period get old real quickly and was the reason for my most recent break. It really needs to be handled better from here on out.

This; Expert Roulette wasn't so much a way to actual have a higher difficulty playlist as a means of punishing players who were behind by limiting their rate of patch-relevant gear growth, increasing the proportion of gear purchased nearer their own, current ilvl before moving into "current" gear. I'd really rather see the ability to random any dungeon, ilvl-synced, with the ability to remove up to 3 dungeons (and any you've already played that 'day') from the playlist. If a second roulette type is needed, make it include only a few particular random dungeons (differing per day), tending towards the newer and/or more difficult ones, requiring you to have all dungeons unlocked and enter-able or giving part of its bonus as a percentile of the dungeon's base rewards in order to further favor new dungeons.

[Sapphic]

To some extend sure, but if you compare the typical theme park MMO´s to older stuff like Everquest, FF11, SWG or Daoc you can see a big difference.

Everquest and FFXI where ALL about the gear. Everquest was all about getting better and better gear to allow you to raid to also get better gear. So was FFXI, only difference is you got numerous sets for gear swaps to optimize, until an expansion or new content dropped then you would start anew. Both of those are vertical. SWG and DaoC where totally different as the main end game of those 2 was PVP. Not PVE. So the ability to get players to the same level of gear was a main focus so PVP wasn't inaccessible for a protracted period of time.

[Alipoprocks]

I prefer horizontal cause "make the number go big" is boring.

I totally agree with you. This is the main reason I hated WoW - so boring - and why I played XI for years. That game kept me frustrated and busy! Was a total love/hate relationship. But the community was tight and I loved that and miss it very much.

[Iromi]

Because those people resub within a couple of months, and building enough content to keep those type of players subbed for those extra couple of months it going to be way more costly than missing a couple of months of sub fee...

Not always. All my friends (and I know a lot of people heh :/) who left, never came back. My FC has more "MIA" then active players..and these people are def not subbed. Still unacceptable to say imho! You never want people to take a break from a game like that, because there is a good chance they won't ever come back.

[kyuven]

I've been telling people man... Dynamis, and some sky or limbus type place, with great gear grinds, that whole free companies can go to once every 2 or 3 days would be a game changer, and give us a reason to communicate and chill with our free company. Legendary cursed artifact gear or something.

Pretty sure that's what FC airship content will do, but Dynamis content is a consequence of game limitations, not an active design choice.
See, back then games didn't instance their raids. This caused MAJOR problems.
In fact it still does in XI, just on a slightly smaller scale since Dynamis is soloable now, and they just recently got rid of entry limitations.
Add to that, I've looked at those dynamis grinds. The MONTHS required to get anything meaningful are horrid.
We already have raid content you can do with your FC, it's just on a smaller scale so as to not discriminate against those with smaller groups, and said content is getting its systems adjusted in Heavensward to promote getting more "butts in the seat" so to speak. Not every FC has over 100 members and should not be actively punished for not pursuing that number.
Which creates the question of what exactly constitutes "whole free companies."

Not always. All my friends (and I know a lot of people heh :/) who left, never came back. My FC has more "MIA" then active players..and these people are def not subbed. Still unacceptable to say imho! You never want people to take a break from a game like that, because there is a good chance they won't ever come back.

I'd be more worried if people DIDN'T leave. That's the nature of MMOs. Many, MANY people are just going to leave after a while. It was true in Ultima Online, it was true in EverQuest, it was true in WoW, and it's true in this game.
The fact that people that cite worry about this still manage to maintain FC numbers over 100 should offer you insight into how this type of community works.

[Iromi]

snip

Leaving is fine and all on their own accord. I was just referring to the producer (Or so someone claimed on the first page of this thread) saying that he is okay with people unsubbing. That has to be a mistranslation because that is really a strange thing to say. If he said, "As long as we retain subs but people take breaks" yeah, that is fine..but not unsubbing lol. If I ever made a MMO I would understand that people would unsub, but I would never encourage it. >.>

[Blissa]

The fact that people that cite worry about this still manage to maintain FC numbers over 100 should offer you insight into how this type of community works.

That's just it what community? You cant build a community if people are quitting and joining weekly/daily. If I wanted to play games like that I would play Call of Duty! MMORPG's are about making friends and doing things together. Which is hard to do when every time I make a friend, they are quitting 1~3 months (sometimes weeks) later.

Granted I give you times change and people change and no one is going to play the same game forever. Having said that people should not be quitting left and right every 1~3 months. Something is wrong with the game if that happens. I had the same Everquest, Everquest 2, FFXI friends for YEARS! Did people come and go? Sure a few did but not on the scale of this game!