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

[Azurymber]

I just don't understand why there is always such personal anger on here. And I agree.

a lot of people don't know how to express their views without personally attacking others who have much better arguments than them.

[Allistar]

Found the post with my idea:

Here's an idea.

'Random encounter' world bosses. What would happen is before a world boss spawns in a particular area, their coming is announced by an announcer in all 3 cities. Then any parties that want to take part sign up to it on some kind of task board. They must then travel to the area the world boss was reported to be in and battle it. All parties will take part in it's battle as if one giant party, it could consist of up to 100 or even more people, no real limit, and the difficulty and health of the boss would scale to how many players it had to battle. However a minimum player size would probably be an idea since soloing it would be silly.
Once defeated the boss would give each party a random part of a legendary item. The overall size of the battle party from how many players were involved overall could even dictate if a HQ version of an item part is obtained. The party would have take part in many of these 'random encounter world boss' events that would happen say.... 2 or 3 times a day, maybe 5 times, and get all parts to the legendary item, the bosses would differ in what it was and where it appeared in the world, thus 'random encounter'.
They are then notified when all parts of the legendary item have been obtained by a quest being given to them automatically upon aquiring the final item.
This quest would entail them going to a special dungeon that you could not enter without a completed set of legendary item parts, and once completed, would allow the player with all the items to forge the completed legendary item and wield it.

This would mean that getting a legendary item would take quite a while and be pretty difficult.

Getting a High Quality legendary item would be EXTREMELY hard to obtain, as you'd need to have taken part in very large scale world boss encounters multiple times and had the luck to obtain a full set of the HQ parts to the legendary item. It would also be nice if that high quality version had something slightly different about it's appearance that marked it as 'the legendary of legendary' items. (something like an awesome glow etc.)

This way casual gamers would be able to get legendary items if they spent enough time working towards it, it would still take months though.

Hardcore gamers could get the awesome legendary items though, so both types of players would not be ignored for their dedication to the game.

What do you think? ^.^

I'd also say this is on topic as it's a suggestion as to the possibility that would take 3 months just to obtain, therefore filling the gap the other gear could possibly cause. :3

This sounds like it could be a lot of fun...hopefully SE sees this and takes it into consideration and maybe give it some serious thought

[MeowyWowie]

a lot of people don't know how to express their views without personally attacking others who have much better arguments than them.

Lol I just caught up on reading the posts I've missed in this thread over night.

It's really sad when you're called a troll and insulted just for having a different opinion on something. Some people are just so close-minded it's ridiculous. Funny how I never see this kind of behavior in game.

[Renshi]

I just don't understand why there is always such personal anger on here. And I agree.

It's because you punch ponies.

[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.

[Jennestia]

I like that gear will need to be continually upgraded. For those who don't, since I don't really want to read through the last 30 pages what would you prefer?

A. No new gear is added
B. New gear is added but is worse than that currently available.

See this is where most "yeah I'm all for throwing my gear away every update!" people are confused -- It doesn't mean new gear won't be added, it means gear will be added that doesn't throw your previous accomplishments away but instead something new to work for, in other words, your last set of gear will be useful just as well as the new set of gear you're working for.

Making content that people will repeat needs to have a reason to repeat it to encourage people to continue to play, this means that there needs to a reward for doing so. If that reward is worthless to you, what is there to keep you playing?

I ask you the same question:

If you know doing Valberd's Dungeon will produce great gear that will become useless the next update (which could happen as little as a month away) then Hyzonia's Dungeon produces even better gear but will become useless in 2 months...why would you play? Why would you do things that will be utterly pointless in the grand scheme of things?

[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...

[Krin]

Final conclusion: Better, well formed alternative solutions would go a long way to making your arguments more valid. In their current form, you've come off as a broken record and a mere contrarian that has no interest in being happy with the game. I know this is not true about you from what I've seen so far in this thread.

Maybe this will provide some insight to others and restore a bit of peace to this thread.

On the other hand, the ad hominem attacks will flay me where I stand. Either way, it's just the internet, it's just a game, it probably wasn't worth the 20 minutes it took to write this whole post.

-- Krin

Side notes that didn't fit in anywhere:

* Game Design is a very weird field. They want to break stereotypes, but teach stereotypes. In the end though, creating stereotypes for highly represented play styles in the world at large makes for very good game designers. Game Design is still an art that requires raw talent, but tempering that talent with an understanding of how People Who Are Not You define the all powerful Fun in games is invaluable.

** RMTs in this context really don't matter, the true RMT issue is Gil for real money and items for real money. This is a game breaker. I've noticed myself that the in-game economy is completely decoupled from Gil inputs, but it appears that things are still balanced, at least on Karnak. An Optimal Rank 11 gladiator weapon sells for 30,000 Gil, which is about 15 rank 10 leve quests, which feels about the right pacing from other elements of the games. (2 days at full out do everything possible and a bit of grind.) However, the fanatical fight SE has against RMT's is another post entirely.

[Kafeen]

I ask you the same question:

If you know doing Valberd's Dungeon will produce great gear that will become useless the next update (which could happen as little as a month away) then Hyzonia's Dungeon produces even better gear but will become useless in 2 months...why would you play? Why would you do things that will be utterly pointless in the grand scheme of things?

The same reason why you don't keep your starting gear all the way through the game.

All the way through the game your character advances along with their equipment. You improve your gear in an attempt to strengthen your character for future challenges. If at a point this suddenly stops happening, your character can't advance any more in either physical strength or strength of equipment then you hit a wall, you effectively completed the game. No more challenges for you to face, no further way to improve.

If you keep adding new challenges with increased difficulty but also increasing the strength of the rewards for these challenges then you can continue the growth your character has experienced since the start of the game.