How would you feel about end-game gear only being useful for 3 months?

[Visch]

How is he pathetic for going off of what you actually wrote? lol. Yeah you're talking about a dungeon, but you listed a fairly common Falchion versus a simple misspelling..

I just can't see how they're justified personally attacking me yet whatever I do is "trolling" to them because it's not what they want to hear.

This game OBVIOUSLY needs to have something to do for ALL PLAYERS to enjoy. It's an MMO and it makes money off people playing it, not having nothing to do. Just because some people are more "causal" than others and don't have the dungeon items or w/e they're mad about doesn't mean everyone has to wait for them to catch up.

I am so sick of this "hardcore" vs "casual" argument and it being brought up in every thread.

It's just getting sad honestly.

Look at FFXI in the later years, it had content for everyone. We don't need a WoW clone.

[Murugan]

How is he pathetic for going off of what you actually wrote? lol. Yeah you're talking about a dungeon, but you listed a fairly common Falchion versus a simple misspelling..

Have you ever heard of something called context? As in: "in the context of Noctic's post it was pretty obvious to anyone who knew what the Templar's Falchion was that he was referring to it and the Verdant Shortbow since those are the only 2 items in the chest."

I just can't see how they're justified personally attacking me yet whatever I do is "trolling" to them because it's not what they want to hear.

This game OBVIOUSLY needs to have something to do for ALL PLAYERS to enjoy. It's an MMO and it makes money off people playing it, not having nothing to do. Just because some people are more "causal" than others and don't have the dungeon items or w/e they're mad about doesn't mean everyone has to wait for them to catch up.

I am so sick of this "hardcore" vs "casual" argument and it being brought up in every thread.

It's just getting sad honestly.

Look at FFXI in the later years, it had content for everyone. We don't need a WoW clone.

One post from Yoshida about how he views gear progression working in an MMO does not mean a "WoW" clone. First of all it says nothing about strictly vertical progression, it says nothing about all gear from the previous dungeon being made "useless" as this thread and your previous one suggests. It is merely a post about MMO design which be applied to all MMO's to an extent including FFXI.

You are trolling because rather than responding to people's actual posts, and arguments you take things out of context for the purpose of provoking a reaction and refuse to have a legitimate discussion, on any topic (which is why your last thread on this topic was locked), you simply post the same thing over and over again without anything to back up your claims. The equivalent of a spoiled child plugging their ears and screaming to drown out anyone who disagrees with them.

At least that is why I had to put you on my ignore list, it's a waste of time responding to you since you clearly have made up your mind on the issue and no matter how much people offer you direct contradiction to your claims from the developers themselves you are going to keep up your crusade of ignorance.

Other than your posts being personally annoying though I don't really care since I certainly don't want this game to be easy-mode/a WoW clone/or casual focused. So as misinformed as I think you are, by all means keep it up.

[Visch]

Have you ever heard of something called context? As in: "in the context of Noctic's post it was pretty obvious to anyone who knew what the Templar's Falchion was that he was referring to it and the Verdant Shortbow since those are the only 2 items in the chest."

...? What is with all the mad. Get over it. Stop crying.

One post from Yoshida about how he views gear progression working in an MMO does not mean a "WoW" clone. First of all it says nothing about strictly vertical progression, it says nothing about all gear from the previous dungeon being made "useless" as this thread and your previous one suggests. It is merely a post about MMO design which be applied to all MMO's to an extent including FFXI.

I am so sick of hearing this. For the 100th time: IT DEVALUES THE GEAR. IT MAKES PUTTING FORTH THE EFFORT WORTHLESS.

Why can't it just continue to be the same for everyone?

You are trolling because rather than responding to people's actual posts, and arguments you take things out of context for the purpose of provoking a reaction and refuse to have a legitimate discussion, on any topic (which is why your last thread on this topic was locked), you simply post the same thing over and over again without anything to back up your claims. The equivalent of a spoiled child plugging their ears and screaming to drown out anyone who disagrees with them.

Wow are you going to cry?

I keep posting the same thing and all I get back from people like you is how mad you are and how you want to be better then other people without trying.

I don't know who exactly you think you are but if you're not going to at least acknowledge someone's opinion why are you on a forum?

At least that is why I had to put you on my ignore list, it's a waste of time responding to you since you clearly have made up your mind on the issue and no matter how much people offer you direct contradiction to your claims from the developers themselves you are going to keep up your crusade of ignorance.

LOL. Now you're trolling me.

1) Why are you writing this if you "ignored me"

2) I'm so happy I've upset you. It makes me feel good inside.

3) No one has given me any real answer as to why gear has to be devalued so quickly. Other then they're bad and want the same gear as everyone else without having to work for it.

Other than your posts being personally annoying though I don't really care since I certainly don't want this game to be easy-mode/a WoW clone/or casual focused. So as misinformed as I think you are, by all means keep it up.

You sure act like you want it to be easy mode.

[NoctisUmbra]

Have you ever heard of something called context? As in: "in the context of Noctic's post it was pretty obvious to anyone who knew what the Templar's Falchion was that he was referring to it and the Verdant Shortbow since those are the only 2 items in the chest."



One post from Yoshida about how he views gear progression working in an MMO does not mean a "WoW" clone. First of all it says nothing about strictly vertical progression, it says nothing about all gear from the previous dungeon being made "useless" as this thread and your previous one suggests. It is merely a post about MMO design which be applied to all MMO's to an extent including FFXI.

You are trolling because rather than responding to people's actual posts, and arguments you take things out of context for the purpose of provoking a reaction and refuse to have a legitimate discussion, on any topic (which is why your last thread on this topic was locked), you simply post the same thing over and over again without anything to back up your claims. The equivalent of a spoiled child plugging their ears and screaming to drown out anyone who disagrees with them.

At least that is why I had to put you on my ignore list, it's a waste of time responding to you since you clearly have made up your mind on the issue and no matter how much people offer you direct contradiction to your claims from the developers themselves you are going to keep up your crusade of ignorance.

Other than your posts being personally annoying though I don't really care since I certainly don't want this game to be easy-mode/a WoW clone/or casual focused. So as misinformed as I think you are, by all means keep it up.

Essentially what I've been trying to say. Thanks for the clarification Murugan.

[Visch]

Essentially what I've been trying to say. Thanks for the clarification Murugan.

You know what's cool?

None of this still explains why they have to devalue hard earned equipment so soon after it is released.

It's just the same "NO ONE SAID IT WILL BE WORTHLESS, ARE YOU DUMB?????".

No. No one is saying that.

It's DEVALUING the gear because it is EASIER to get so soon after it comes out.

And the over all content is not intended to last.

It's going to be like a used tissue after 3 months.

And if this game needs something it's people continuously interested and playing the game.

Short term 3 month get items and log out is not going to keep people interested if they're anything easy mode like darkhold.

The game needs LONG TERM GOALS. To KEEP PEOPLE INTERESTED.

[Krin]

Visch and Azurymber, just a few notes.

From your arguments, I can definitively say that you have not taken a single course in Game Design. I wrote introductory Game Design classes for my alma mater's (Columbus State University, TSYS Department of Computer Science, Columbus, GA) new Game Programming Bachelor's of Science while under mentoring from several professors in the Game Design program at Savannah College of Art and Design. It is with these credentials that I say the following: Final Fantasy 14 is not for you.

There's a very good reason the main source of World of Warcraft theory crafting is called ElitistJerks.com. It's actually a bit of Game Design slang. We also like to capitalize the word "Fun" to define a unique view of what someone considers to be enjoyable in a particular game design. The Elitist Jerk, is a sort of "that step child we all love but really get annoyed with" person we have to consider in most multi-player environments. It describes a person who subscribes to one, or derives a super majority of Fun from this one, type of Fun. This type of Fun centers around being directly, provably, better than everyone in your play group, in your case either your server or the entire group of Final Fantasy 14 players.

EJ's when placed into an MMORPG will channel their competition into one of two ways: Either directly challenging players in Player versus Player play, using undefeated counts to prove their skill, or creating races and ways of proving "World Firsts," in order to say, "Since I did it first, I am better than you."

I'm not discounting this type of Fun. It's a valid type, and one that many games are designed for. In fact, designing for the EJ type of Fun is amazingly easy at first. All you need is to make some *thing* take an inordinately massive amount of time doing something only mildly Fun to deter all but the EJ type from doing it. In this way, the EJ's will have these *things* and the non-EJ's will not. However, the problem means that EJ's only feel that things are Fun when there are non-EJ's to show their trophies too. So, I need both EJ content and non-EJ content in order to make EJ's happy. Non-EJ types will come to resent both the EJ's and the game designers if they never get to get the things the EJ's have been showing off. This generally comes in a 3-6 month time frame. Eventually, you'll see a divide in your community and people will start to leave. The most logical solution, in current Game Design thinking, is to give the current things the EJ's have to the non-EJ's by introducing newer, and better, things for the EJ's. With newer gear, the EJ's usually then help the non-EJ's to obtain items from the older content. This further ensconces the EJ as one of the better players, since they're helping other players get things, and continues the "I have the best things" definition of Fun.

This is where games such as Vanguard went wrong. All technical issues aside, Vanguard's central game design commandment was to cater directly to the EJ. Severe penalties for death, lack of anything considered "Easy Mode", etc. Vanguard, even after the technical issues were solved, found itself with very few players who all felt bored because they were all the best players. There was no "Worst" to play with and show off in front of.

In the end, Visch and Azurymber, I point to several aspects of Final Fantasy 14 to prove it is designed to chase EJ's away. There is no Player versus Player combat, the game promotes a slow, relaxed pace to content, assuming you will only spend a few hours here before wandering off to cook dinner or study for class, etc. I spent hours, almost days, reading the forums and Letters from the Developer before dropping the money a few weeks ago on my first online Final Fantasy title. The development team at SE, albeit more subtly than you probably have the industry experience to understand, have made it clear that they detest EJ's. However, they believe that EJ's are too influential over casuals in their sphere of friends to completely drive away. This is something that the previous team completely disagreed on. They thought the casuals would show up without the EJ's recommendation. So, the current team is developing some very simple and poorly disguised carrots. They want you to play the game just enough to tell your casual friends, "Eh. I don't like it, but you probably will."

Furthermore, even World of Warcraft has resorted to some pretty sad attempts to design lasting content. Already, the "Expansion Spike" is wearing off. The EJ's have finished Heroic (Hard Mode) Raids and now have wandered off, taking their followers with them, to find something else to play. EJ's are nomadic by nature and will not play content for very long, no matter how hard. At that point, to further improve their "Best" status in the community, they will share strategies and how-to's (Doctor Mog). Don't think this is charitable or sympathetic, it's purely an ego stroke. "Everyone can beat raid X, because I told them how." It's cool, though. These people flock to these sort of community games because they want to be leaders and recognized as the best. This is, again, their Fun.

In conclusion, the issue of making content that remains Hard for EJ's is non-trivial and endemic to all genre's of game design. It's very difficult to design non-random, strategic content without this happening. The only viable solution in the industry right now is to just continuously design new stuff. Introducing random content usually boils down to either A) you die a set percentage of the time and only win when you're lucky or B) the fight boils down to a set of "When enemy X does Y, party member A does B" rules that are equally teachable as non-random content. For part A of the previous sentence, if you die < 50% of the time, it has been proven the content is perceived as "easy". If you die > 75% of the time, it's perceived as "really hard". If it becomes obvious the randomized fight is based purely on luck, no matter the ratio of success to failure, it is perceived as "unfair".

Designing content for you is both easy and hard. The current continuous design paradigm is generally easy for the first few years. As MMORPG's with long runs are noticing, there comes a point when "bigger numbers" just doesn't cut it. The Gear Grind is wrong, I concede that. The point is, no one knows what to do to make it right.

Perhaps in future replies, you may give the developers some insight into what you want. How do they keep the same content hard for more than 3 months? Should they introduce the two-tiered difficulty levels other MMORPG's are using? Should they scale content to your current gear, so you could manage the difficulty with more granularity yourself? Stop telling them it's wrong, and tell them, in terms of actual game mechanics, what you want.

Also, consider what I've tried my best, albeit in a meandering fashion, to explain to you. You need casuals for your Fun. It's always amazing that your archetype detests casual players and content designed for them so much. You always seem to discount them. See Vanguard's current population. Without them, no one will buy your elite items. No one will ask you for advice. No one will "ooo" and "aaah" over your +3 Rod of Enormous Jettison. Please keep in context that the developers need to keep them happy and playing so you still have Fun being first and best. Having Casuals around are your invisible Easy Mode, without which you would quickly be eclipsed and ranked at the bottom of a tightly contested barely changing pecking order.

Now that I'm done criticizing your arguments, allow me to complement your person.

Now, me personally, I tend towards freedom and allowing emergent behavior then tweaking to balance emergent with designed behavior without penalizing. I love EJ's. EJ's, and their drive to be better than others, drives game design far faster, far better, and far more creatively than any other player type out there. EJ's are, by their drive for their type of Fun, the people who will pick apart your system from the outside and exploit it, showing you what is truly broken and what is merely a reward for good play style.

If I had my way, the game would do away with the Leve quest limits and Fatigue. Why fight it? The "hardcore" element can go and write "Level 50 PUG/GLA in 24 hours" guides. Completely inept players can hand over account credentials to total strangers so they can get a level 50 EVERYTHING character in 3 days for $200 and then sit around and wonder why no one takes them on NM hunts**. In the long run, it doesn't matter. EJ's will always be EJ's, and they will always be your most vocal and critical gamer. It's a given. However, if you cultivate the right relationship with your EJ's, interact with them, and get them to start saying, "This is wrong. Here's what would be Fun for me..." instead of "This is wrong. Fix it," they become invaluable.

In the end, I don't completely fault you personally for not presenting viable solutions to things you see as problems. I give SE the majority of that blame. It's a known issue that the relationship with SE is they say stuff, you criticize, and then everything goes quiet. Months later, something is changed that may or may not have taken into account your criticisms. This is an unhealthy relationship with any type of gamer, but especially with your type.

Continued in next post...

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

Krin's super awesome wall of text.

Ugh! Thank god you're here! ; ;

[NoctisUmbra]

That epic post.

Very good read. If only I could +1 this hundreds of times.