More Horizontal Progression please

[Iagainsti]

World of Warcraft loses almost 70% of its playerbase a month after an expansion. Then gains it all back after a new expansion. That is VERY bad.. FFXIV is the same way actually. So many people are just.. bored.

I'd like to point out that 86% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

I'd like to point out that 86% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Yes they are. However, the problem is this.

Games these days are not made for long-term.

A large number of the playerbase joins, does the content then runs out of things to do, becomes bored and quits or does not play. That is BAD.

In older games.

Players still play, and play, and play, and play. They do not run out of content because content is designed to last longer and players make their own content.

[Iagainsti]

Yes they are. However, the problem is this.

#wayoveryourhead it seems. Back on point;

I made my point back on page 3, so no point expanding here, just as happy to log in, do my roulettes, some pvp, and work on my desynths/mining. The system of FFXIV vertical progression has been in place since the launch, and if you know how to work the system, it's easy to work around.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

#wayoveryourhead it seems. Back on point;

I made my point back on page 3, so no point expanding here, just as happy to log in, do my roulettes, some pvp, and work on my desynths/mining. The system of FFXIV vertical progression has been in place since the launch, and if you know how to work the system, it's easy to work around.

That is fine for you. I am happy you enjoy that.

On SWG.
- SWG had no levels when it first came out. So all content was relevant and often enough you needed to do the earlier dungeons to farm gear or components because the best component resources came from lower level dungeons and creatures.
- I explored the dynamic world for random tapes and upgrades. Farmed creatures for gear which I could reverse engineer for better gear.
- Farmed Schematics.
- Had 25 fully contested dynamic dungeons to do. No duty finder so you needed to make your own groups and interact with other players. You also needed to get buffs so you needed to visit a dancer/docter/musician and an officer later in the game's life.
- Had a full changing world to explore.
- The worlds are huge, running across them takes 2-3 hours if your walking.
- Make your own city, build anywhere on the world and place down houses, become a Mayor (actually a class!)
- Crafted Items and Crafted gear you could spend hours trying to experiment.
- PvP in the galactic civil war. This is nothing like pvp in the other games. You "opt-in" and PvP can happen anywhere in the world. Even in cities. The side which controls a city has "faction npcs" and they can go overt and declare themselves as pvp right in the city. However attacking players have to come in from other places to get overt. So defenders always have an advantage. Defenders also have NPCs in the city. PvP is not instanced and all Open World.


- PvP Ranks, which were real ranks. However they were not a really long grind like FFXIV. However if you do not pvp the ranks begin to go down until rank 0. However you only need ranks to buy the gear, not use it. So if you get high rank grinding it out quick you can get the gear you want then stop caring about ranks.
- Space PvP, you can declare your faction in space then fight other ships. SWG space PvP combat was some of the best space and ship combat i've seen in any game today.
- Completely randomized resources and item drops per server for hours of entertainment.
- Having to go around the world farming monsters "Monster Hunter" style to skin them because I was a scout and "Skins" were required to make armor. Bones were as well.
- Decorating and taking care of my house.
- Galactic Civil War: Go to any city every 2 hours there is an event in the world where a city is attacked by a faction. Factions that win control that city and if you perform and defend or attack the city you get special benefits.
- Going to space.
- Go do a Zombie Event on Dathomir which was a halloween event they added to the game but stayed in the game. It was a Mini-game in itself and turned the game into a zombie survival horror. For doing the event (WHICH WAS very hard .. not many people could do it.) you got a special Mini-Bike Swoop mount and appearance gear. It wasn't a "GRIND" The event is actually only 3 hours, it was just so hard only a few people could do it.
- Farming for randomized ship parts in space that were also random level.
- Reverse engineering the ship parts with a ship wright.?
- Asking for the latest ship upgrades.
- Since there was no duty finder: Helping people with quests.
- Roleplaying and building a city.
- Using the "Storymode" content to make my own stories, quests, events and rewards.
- Making missions other players could do for rewards.
- Player events people made with crafted rewards.
- Farming Death Watch Bunker for super rare Mandalorian Armor.
- Farming Blacksuns on Yavin IV for Rare Blacksun armor pieces.
- Hunting people across the Galaxy (Players, actually going in and going around killing other players) for bounties.

Social Classes and alts:
- Dancing on my alt for money, doing docter buffs on my alt for money
- Making and performing music on my alt to buff people for money.
- Image Designer (a class designed for customizing other players.) You customize and change players appearance for money. Like a plastic surgeon.

There was just.. SO MUCH TO DO. I can GO on for hours AND hours. That is why the game was so fun. It wasn't just a "game" it was a world.

I was not a crafter, but it had the best crafting system in any MMO to date.

SWG was a game designed where you needed multiple players to help you.

The PvP was well balanced for the most part but world changing. Imagine being able to play Garleans and going into "Ul'dah" and literally taking over the city. If you attacked an enemy PvP, even if your not pvp flagged you gained a temporary flag which allowed opposing factions to attack you even if you are not flagged for PvP. Which made the game immersive, but if you killed enough people in a city you could take it over. Which taxed people hardcore until you took the city back. Imagine 50% tax on all items in the market board and 100% tax for repair. Fighting in the streets of Ul'dah also made events which put the cities on guard but it made the game feel more real since all PvP was open world. SWG until the very end of its life had little to no instances.

[TheUltimate3]

SWG Rant

As a fellow, former SWG Player (Ahazi!) I would like to point out that telling someone how SWG was is pointless.

As great a game it was, the game's numbers overall were abysmal and it would, in no way, survive the MMO market of today. Hell it barely survived the MMO Market of it's day.

Added to that, the two games are, by design different. SWG was a sandbox, through and through and XIV is not. You can turn a sandbox into a vertical game with ease, but the same cannot be said about a vertical one.

[Zarzak]

#wayoveryourhead it seems. Back on point;

I made my point back on page 3, so no point expanding here, just as happy to log in, do my roulettes, some pvp, and work on my desynths/mining. The system of FFXIV vertical progression has been in place since the launch, and if you know how to work the system, it's easy to work around.

My point to this would be.. But does ANY OF THIS improve your main? That is the problem.

Even pvp.. You get rk 50 do a little dance then realize "welp.. too bad all this pvp gear is worthless because they somehow think it makes sense for higher rank pvpers to have an advantage over lower rank pvpers." I pvp now for my esoteric instead of expert roulette because I find it more fun... But every time I buy a new piece of pvp gear and it goes instantly to the "glamour stash" I die a little inside. A brand new top pvp tier item is COMPLETELY worthless as a piece of equipment. They could put no stats on it and it would be as useful as it is now.


I'm not saying to you roulettes/pvp/desynth/mining isn't fun.. That is great that you enjoy it. But I would wager a majority of players want to be able to pick 2 points in their play time and say "I am stronger now that I was then" Sadly XIV does not provide anything to make that happen.

The day my main hit ilvl 190 is the day he stopped having opportunity to improve in any way besides 4 events a week. Anything else I do is just to be a completionist. I have pld/whm to 50.. I HATE pld/whm.. But I did it because the alternative was paying for a game I don't play and sinking undetermined amounts of money into buying a console and some single player games to keep me busy in down time when I don't have any RL things to take care of and the wife/daughter are busy.

SWG was a game designed where you needed multiple players to help you

Assuming that was about crafting...

When the workshop for FC crafting was released I was excited "oh this could be cool group crafting".......................

I bought a stack of iron rivets off a merchant, crafted some steel, clicked a turn in button and then we all had to be in the same room to see a 5 second cutscene. Literally the only "group crafting" was watching that cutscene.. You need 1 person with lvl 50 crafts to make everything and 3 other people on lvl 1 crafters to sit afk in the room.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

My point to this would be.. But does ANY OF THIS improve your main? That is the problem.

Even pvp.. You get rk 50 do a little dance then realize "welp.. too bad all this pvp gear is worthless because they somehow think it makes sense for higher rank pvpers to have an advantage over lower rank pvpers." I pvp now for my esoteric instead of expert roulette because I find it more fun... But every time I buy a new piece of pvp gear and it goes instantly to the "glamour stash" I die a little inside. A brand new top pvp tier item is COMPLETELY worthless as a piece of equipment. They could put no stats on it and it would be as useful as it is now.


I'm not saying to you roulettes/pvp/desynth/mining isn't fun.. That is great that you enjoy it. But I would wager a majority of players want to be able to pick 2 points in their play time and say "I am stronger now that I was then" Sadly XIV does not provide anything to make that happen.

The day my main hit ilvl 190 is the day he stopped having opportunity to improve in any way besides 4 events a week. Anything else I do is just to be a completionist. I have pld/whm to 50.. I HATE pld/whm.. But I did it because the alternative was paying for a game I don't play and sinking undetermined amounts of money into buying a console and some single player games to keep me busy in down time when I don't have any RL things to take care of and the wife/daughter are busy.



Assuming that was about crafting...

When the workshop for FC crafting was released I was excited "oh this could be cool group crafting".......................

I bought a stack of iron rivets off a merchant, crafted some steel, clicked a turn in button and then we all had to be in the same room to see a 5 second cutscene. Literally the only "group crafting" was watching that cutscene.. You need 1 person with lvl 50 crafts to make everything and 3 other people on lvl 1 crafters to sit afk in the room.

Crafting in SWG would take a 60 page spreadsheet. So I don't think I could possibly explain it that way. However what I can say is a few words.
- Sub Sub Components.
- Sub Components crafted from Sub Sub Components.
- Components crafted from Sub components.
- Enhancement slots to add further customization to said items.
- Assembly/Experimentation.
- Being able to put Experimentation points in every sub sub, sub, component. End Result Greatly determined end stat.
- Completely Randomized Resources, PER server. Each server had its own resources.
- Being able to name and color crafted items and fully experiment on them.
- Item Decay - No item lasted forever. So even super duper legendary items left the game. This made crafting relevant forever.

Each server had its own completely randomized resources spawns which took place around the worlds. Crafters had to go around the worlds surveying it to find the best resources which could take hours.

They placed down harvestors and had to hire combat players to protect them for hours as they mined their resources.

Crafted players even had their own gear like combat players to craft and mine gear.

Servers had their own unique resources so some items were not even able to be made on some servers. T21s were not able to be made on Tarquinas for over a year because of this.

SWG to this day, has the most deep and complex crafting system out of any MMO by far.

[Ibi]

For more real numbers (already posted a couple posts ago)

70% of players quit after playing WoW for 20 months.

"70% of players quit after playing WoW for 20 months" is clearly not the same thing as "World of Warcraft loses almost 70% of its playerbase a month after an expansion", which were Nektulos-Tuor's words.

Also, while the data you have provided for that statement does look sound, there's no equivalent data to support your statement that "apparently EQ/Xi were good enough to keep a lot of the SAME people engaged for YEARS." Nor does it address the fact that the 30% of players that did not quit with 20 months (~1.7 million, based on a subscriber base of 5.6 million at the time the survey began) is a population several times larger than even EQ/XI's peak player bases.

It's possible that the number of players who have played WoW continuously for a period of years (however long you think that window should be for it to qualify) is at least as large as the peak population of EQ or XI, with the population of players that come and go, or play for a while but aren't retained, are simply a bonus on top of that for Blizzard.

[Airget]

Why not just use 2.0 bosses, upgrade them to 60 with a few new mechanics and have horizontal gear progression?

It takes resources to create and balance new boss mechanics, their thought process is why reuse old bosses/old areas again and again when they can just make new ones. What's missing from the current 2.0 line is a reason to do them at restricted IL. Horizontal progression wouldn't fix this, what would fix this however is offering challenges that change weekly and are based doing older content under the IL restrictions with the DF.

One thing they'd have to work on however is allowing DF to be used in a way where you can cross server people doing the same challenge.

You know instead of horizontal progression, call them Challenge points and you could exchange those challenge points for vanity, minions, mounts or maybe even some semi relevant gear for the current IL.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

In SWG though. You needed other players for everything. Even crafting.
Armorsmiths needed "Tailors" to make certain parts for armor for them. Tailors needed Armorsmiths and Bioengineers to make clothing and special clothing with stats. (example!)

Combat players needed other combat players and social classes to buff them.

Social Classes needed all players to come watch them to make money.

As a fellow, former SWG Player (Ahazi!) I would like to point out that telling someone how SWG was is pointless.

As great a game it was, the game's numbers overall were abysmal and it would, in no way, survive the MMO market of today. Hell it barely survived the MMO Market of it's day.

Added to that, the two games are, by design different. SWG was a sandbox, through and through and XIV is not. You can turn a sandbox into a vertical game with ease, but the same cannot be said about a vertical one.

Numbers don't mean anything. SWG never advertised and SWG was released and was popular when MMOs were not. There were very few people in the world playing MMOs when it came out and was at its peak. Its subscription rate for its time is actually amazing.

WoW came out at the same time the developers were told to change the game, and that is when SWG lost over HALF ITS PLAYERBASE.

Nobody realized this yet, but SWG completely overhauled and revamped the entire game to make it less sandbox and more like World of Warcraft, which *gasp* made all said players move to world of warcraft. That is when they lost so many people.

You played SWG. You should know that WoW came out just before SOE changed the game. Which made them all MOVE to WoW.

They made EVERY single item in the game WORTHLESS, they made crafters worthless by removing decay. They did SO much to hurt the game. All Endgame gear was made worse then anything new crafted. They hit the reset button.. OF COURSE PEOPLE QUIT!