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

[Konachibi]

yes. in a village people know each other and rely more on long-term relationships. If you were to screw someone over or hurt someone and spend much of your life living around them it would negatively impact your future. You're brain realizes that and thus makes decisions unconsciously to rationally maximize your future happiness. If you've spent your life in a village reputation means more to you than someone in a city. Thus you're brain will have developed better ways of maximizing your happiness inside a somewhat closed community. If that makes sense.

The only culture/societies to display a majority of people willing to "share" instead of seeking relative gains were i believe tribes in south america and eastern africa that live in jungle-type areas and have almost no content with the outside world. And even those studies were preformed by anthropologists and may not be 100% scientifically sound.

But its nothing about todays world. It's a universal and timeless part of cultured humanity. Its kind of ingrained into human genetics, just like reflexs are.

Funny that, where i live I have an arsonistic alcoholic mother living next door with her druggie son, on the other side there's a nosey moo who goes around spreading rumours about everyone, across the road there's some total prat who swings around the corner of the street on the wrong side of the road even though it's a blind corner.

I feel no desire to associate these people or develop any type of long-term relationship with them, yet I am still the way I am. Possibly because of the extra isolation from disliking most people in my area (for perfectly legitimate reasons) I reach out and try to be nice to those I find aren't.... for lack of a better word... idiots. I guess in a sense you could say even I'm affected by 'the happiness of gaining', as I'm more happy when I gain friends and can share lifes experiences with them.

Still a lot of people do seem to imagine villages through stereotypes now, they aren't like the small communities they used to be back 'once upon a time'. Many of the things spread around in todays world promotes or causes negativity. Think about it, when was the last time you heard a 'happy' song on the radio? when was the last time you saw a 'happy' program on terrestrial television? Even childrens cartoons are infested with negativity nowadays, always focusing on action fight scenes and violence, even disney can't escape it. you'll never get the funny childrens comedies like back when we had Trap Door or Transylvanian Pet Shop. It's mostly quiz shows where someone is trying to outdo someone else, reality T.V shows where judges sit around being rude to people just because they slipped on a note whilst trying to sing Blondie, or soap operas where nobody smiles and everybodies cheating on everybody else and getting into arguements. That kind of stuff is not healthy for the human brain, and that's why I avoid that stuff, and possibly why I'm a generally happier person because of it.
And the only time you're going to hear a properly happy and upbeat song that makes you feel good now is when the radio plays Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' on very rare occassions. Seriously, if you know the words to that song, load up that link and sing along and see how good you feel, you'll be smiling before the song even starts!

So I don't think the whole problem is inherently within the human genus, I think most of the problem is the content people experience in todays world. This could also account for the way people act in video games, like when people insult each other on CoD or how... most of the trade chat is entirely negative in WoW, in fact WoW is a haven for pure negativity and due to how huge it's player-base became, a lot of people that still play it or have left have been affected by it in a bad way.

P.S sorry for typing my own wall of text XD

[Konachibi]

I think Azury's point was that relative gains appeals to a primal urge within us all, or at the very least some of us all, and hence an MMO that doesn't want to exclude a huge portion of human beings ought to satisfy that.

As ashamed as I am to admit, I have had a couple server-firsts in FFXIV, and I actually did enjoy lording it over other people, but at the same you have to realise that something should be fun in and of itself and not just when comparing the rewards you got. And it's a bit ignoble to derive your pleasure primarily from the leverage it gives you over everyone else.

From a marketing standpoint it makes sense to include relative gains if it is true that humans enjoy this, but its a bit sleazy.

Anyways, I'm not sure I understand what this has to do with gear becoming obsolete every 3 months?

Simple, by dungeons being introduced every 3 months that causes the previous dungeon gear to become obsolete, players will keep going to new dungeons so that they can 'gain' more gear, thus fulfilling the desire to keep gaining more stuff.

[NoctisUmbra]

Simple, by dungeons being introduced every 3 months that causes the previous dungeon gear to become obsolete, players will keep going to new dungeons so that they can 'gain' more gear, thus fulfilling the desire to keep gaining more stuff.

The issue with that is gear being devalued. Rather than escalating gear value with each additional content, it should be the goal to add variety. Different optimal gear for different styles of play. New content should not make previous content obsolete - the same goes for its gear.

Good thing nothing suggests that we will face such a scenario in FFXIV. The only scenario we have possibly ahead of us that would devalue gear is difficulty adjustments. If they allow the difficulty of content to decrease naturally simply by means of community pioneers sharing strategies then that is fine. However if they reduce difficulty of previous content upon the advent of newer content, then all the gear obtained thus far will become devalued.

In the end it comes down to what exactly the team is thinking about when they say difficulty adjustments on older content. The magnitude of this adjustment is everything,

[Azurymber]

Funny that, where i live I have an arsonistic alcoholic mother living next door with her druggie son, on the other side there's a nosey moo who goes around spreading rumours about everyone, across the road there's some total prat who swings around the corner of the street on the wrong side of the road even though it's a blind corner.

I feel no desire to associate these people or develop any type of long-term relationship with them, yet I am still the way I am. Possibly because of the extra isolation from disliking most people in my area (for perfectly legitimate reasons) I reach out and try to be nice to those I find aren't.... for lack of a better word... idiots. I guess in a sense you could say even I'm affected by 'the happiness of gaining', as I'm more happy when I gain friends and can share lifes experiences with them.

Still a lot of people do seem to imagine villages through stereotypes now, they aren't like the small communities they used to be back 'once upon a time'. Many of the things spread around in todays world promotes or causes negativity. Think about it, when was the last time you heard a 'happy' song on the radio? when was the last time you saw a 'happy' program on terrestrial television? Even childrens cartoons are infested with negativity nowadays, always focusing on action fight scenes and violence, even disney can't escape it. you'll never get the funny childrens comedies like back when we had Trap Door or Transylvanian Pet Shop. It's mostly quiz shows where someone is trying to outdo someone else, reality T.V shows where judges sit around being rude to people just because they slipped on a note whilst trying to sing Blondie, or soap operas where nobody smiles and everybodies cheating on everybody else and getting into arguements. That kind of stuff is not healthy for the human brain, and that's why I avoid that stuff, and possibly why I'm a generally happier person because of it.
And the only time you're going to hear a properly happy and upbeat song that makes you feel good now is when the radio plays Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' on very rare occassions. Seriously, if you know the words to that song, load up that link and sing along and see how good you feel, you'll be smiling before the song even starts!

So I don't think the whole problem is inherently within the human genus, I think most of the problem is the content people experience in todays world. This could also account for the way people act in video games, like when people insult each other on CoD or how... most of the trade chat is entirely negative in WoW, in fact WoW is a haven for pure negativity and due to how huge it's player-base became, a lot of people that still play it or have left have been affected by it in a bad way.

P.S sorry for typing my own wall of text XD

the content that's popular today in the west is popular because it directly appeals to human psychology.
Guys like fighting, competition, etc (war games, sports, etc)
Girls like shopping, attracting "cute" guys, etc (brand names, makeup, fashion, TWILIGHT, etc)

put really simply, throughout history its clear humans always have a tendency for sex, drugs (alcohol), violence and partying. And marketing has just used mass media to exploit those desires.

Now thats totally sexist in a way and definitely not a true representation of everyone, but the point is marketers have been given the green light in a fairly secularist society and as such have used psychology and neuroscience to maximize profit by appealing to our "unconscious" desires which under most religions may be seen as immoral.

Even the jonas brothers with their purity rings are a marketing creation based on sex appeal... and thats for like little girls. which is really creepy.

you can't put down society and culture because it properly represents humanity.

[Hikozaemon]

I'm more annoyed by the misc armor set/pairs being released....... FFS please start adding full sets or w/ new dungeons adding to existing armor sets ie for lower tier Dungeons add to poachers/ wardens/torts and higher add too claret/warlocks etc... mismatched unsightly characters is gettin to me.

[Murugan]

The issue with that is gear being devalued. Rather than escalating gear value with each additional content, it should be the goal to add variety. Different optimal gear for different styles of play. New content should not make previous content obsolete - the same goes for its gear.

Good thing nothing suggests that we will face such a scenario in FFXIV. The only scenario we have possibly ahead of us that would devalue gear is difficulty adjustments. If they allow the difficulty of content to decrease naturally simply by means of community pioneers sharing strategies then that is fine. However if they reduce difficulty of previous content upon the advent of newer content, then all the gear obtained thus far will become devalued.

In the end it comes down to what exactly the team is thinking about when they say difficulty adjustments on older content. The magnitude of this adjustment is everything,

As is the difficulty of the top tier goals of endgame content. Think getting 5 chests in Darkhold as an example. The content itself can be accessible to a relatively larger group, but it is very difficult to accomplish the highest tier goal (which doesn't always have to involve speed, and almost certainly won't).

The problem with Darkhold, and something acknowledged by Matsui, is that it took place before combat changes were finished and so balancing screwed it up. Mainly the armory system being unbalanced leading to characters with multiple 50's and a wide variety of high level and powerful abilities, as well as Archers being overpowered (my opinion at least as someone who plays Archer) causing certain setups to complete this "highly difficult goal" a little easier than they'd like and hopefully will be possible under the final more balanced battle system.

So when they say adjustments I'm hoping (and in the context of how they talk about their vision for a highly challenging endgame) they mean simply making the most extreme goals slightly easier so not just the top tier can experience them if at that point several months down the line it was still a case of only a small few being able to complete it. It still should not be easy or trivialized, but as someone interested in endgame/competitive progression raiding I'd be fine conceding to that.

I don't need to feel superior, I just want a genuine challenge and for my hard work to not be completely meaningless. I think they can strike a balance between that desire and making content more accessible so that more people can experience it and move on to new stuff without being stuck forever at a particularly difficult point in endgame.

I personally prefer minor adjustments if they are absolutely needed over the next likely scenario which is people needing to piggy back/be carried by more skilled players just to access wide swaths of content (as was the case in XI), because then it is still trivialized.

[Cichy]

Gear can still be useful even if new alternatives will be constantly added.
Example:
Lets take some rank 50 dungeons.
You begin with a beginner type dungeon that drops above average gear.
You implement a advanced dungeon in which having gear from previous one is greatly beneficial.
You implement a expert dungeon that requires gear from advanced to even stand a chance.
Raise rank cap to 55, rinse and repeat.

Furthermore, you can spread each level (beginner, advanced, expert) into few instances as probably dont want 100 different items to drop in one dungeon.

As difficulty progresses the drop rate should be adjustable.
In this case people who want to progress to expert can do so, people who don't can just keep leveling.
You make expert gear from rank 50 dungeon little better than advanced gear from rank 55 dungeon so that people don't get completely screwed.

Lastly, you make this fun. Gearing up should be part of progression through out the game. Not something you only do after you grind fest to the cap like in XI. You should not mind slowly progressing towards the cap because you have stuff to do, not only party all day because there is nothing else to do.

[Konachibi]

the content that's popular today in the west is popular because it directly appeals to human psychology.
Guys like fighting, competition, etc (war games, sports, etc)
Girls like shopping, attracting "cute" guys, etc (brand names, makeup, fashion, TWILIGHT, etc)

put really simply, throughout history its clear humans always have a tendency for sex, drugs (alcohol), violence and partying. And marketing has just used mass media to exploit those desires.

Now thats totally sexist in a way and definitely not a true representation of everyone, but the point is marketers have been given the green light in a fairly secularist society and as such have used psychology and neuroscience to maximize profit by appealing to our "unconscious" desires which under most religions may be seen as immoral.

you can't put down society and culture because it properly represents humanity.

Not to sound totally weird here but I don't like any of those things at all... well, mostly.

I do play Warhammer 40k which is a tabletop wargame but I play it for enjoyment and spending time with my friends, along with putting them together and painting them. As for actually playing the game, it's ok, but I wouldn't say it's amazingly enjoyable.
i generally have a disliking for sports, I don't mind snooker 'cos it involves more 'the science of angles', sports like football I detest, I don't see any entertainment value in them and can't understand why people like them so much.
Brand names I hate, most of the products they create are of poor quality and break easily, none branded stuff is cheaper and tends to last longer and those are the things I go for, I'm not going to be ripped off just because the bottle of energy drink reads "Red Bull" instead of "Emerge".
Makeup I have no need for, if people can't deal with what I look like naturally then that's their problem, I'm not going to cover my face in chemicals just to please the eyes of onlookers.
The only fashion I have an interest in is visual kei and cyberpunk, and neither of those are accessible in my country, all the crap they wave around in magazines and on T.V are just money-leeching wastes of time. Most of them can be bought from a cheap clothes store with no brand names at half or even a quarter of the price, people who pay top dollar for something that looks exactly the same as something that can be bought from Tesco or Asda is too blind to see they're being dumb.
Twilight was a pathetic movie appealing to all the emo and wannabe Anne Rice crowds that thought miserable vampires were sexy. Movies nowadays are a poor excuse for entertainment and most throw in so much CGI that anyone with an eye for detail will know the company that made the film put a totally bog-standard effort into it's creation. If Disney Pixar can spew out all these 'high detail' CGI cartoons that are just a repeat of the Alladin story with different characters every 6 months, then clearly if they spent like, a year or two making it, it could look amazing, but Disney would rather have money than respect at this point.

So as it is I have no interest in sex (I totally decided to avoid intimate relationships after the second failure, no interest in dealing with that kind of stuff), drugs, well, o.k, I smoke and do have the odd bottle of wine every now and again, violence I don't care much for and would rather avoid it, sure it's unavoidable in some situations like playing an MMO or watching an anime, but I can skim past it and pay more attention to the stuff I do like. And as for partying, really can't stand it, partying usually involves alcohol and when a lot of people get drunk there's nearly always something go horribly wrong, other types of parties usually end in arguements, in fact I can't think of a party I've been to where there hasn't been something to ruin the mood.

Does that make me any less human?

[Azurymber]

Not to sound totally weird here but I don't like any of those things at all... well, mostly.

I do play Warhammer 40k which is a tabletop wargame but I play it for enjoyment and spending time with my friends, along with putting them together and painting them. As for actually playing the game, it's ok, but I wouldn't say it's amazingly enjoyable.
i generally have a disliking for sports, I don't mind snooker 'cos it involves more 'the science of angles', sports like football I detest, I don't see any entertainment value in them and can't understand why people like them so much.
Brand names I hate, most of the products they create are of poor quality and break easily, none branded stuff is cheaper and tends to last longer and those are the things I go for, I'm not going to be ripped off just because the bottle of energy drink reads "Red Bull" instead of "Emerge".
Makeup I have no need for, if people can't deal with what I look like naturally then that's their problem, I'm not going to cover my face in chemicals just to please the eyes of onlookers.
The only fashion I have an interest in is visual kei and cyberpunk, and neither of those are accessible in my country, all the crap they wave around in magazines and on T.V are just money-leeching wastes of time. Most of them can be bought from a cheap clothes store with no brand names at half or even a quarter of the price, people who pay top dollar for something that looks exactly the same as something that can be bought from Tesco or Asda is too blind to see they're being dumb.
Twilight was a pathetic movie appealing to all the emo and wannabe Anne Rice crowds that thought miserable vampires were sexy. Movies nowadays are a poor excuse for entertainment and most throw in so much CGI that anyone with an eye for detail will know the company that made the film put a totally bog-standard effort into it's creation. If Disney Pixar can spew out all these 'high detail' CGI cartoons that are just a repeat of the Alladin story with different characters every 6 months, then clearly if they spent like, a year or two making it, it could look amazing, but Disney would rather have money than respect at this point.

So as it is I have no interest in sex (I totally decided to avoid intimate relationships after the second failure, no interest in dealing with that kind of stuff), drugs, well, o.k, I smoke and do have the odd bottle of wine every now and again, violence I don't care much for and would rather avoid it, sure it's unavoidable in some situations like playing an MMO or watching an anime, but I can skim past it and pay more attention to the stuff I do like. And as for partying, really can't stand it, partying usually involves alcohol and when a lot of people get drunk there's nearly always something go horribly wrong, other types of parties usually end in arguements, in fact I can't think of a party I've been to where there hasn't been something to ruin the mood.

Does that make me any less human?

nope, i don't fit anywhere into the norm either and neither do 1000s of people.
But the majority do. and thats why the majority of tv shows and movies and games are built to appeal to them.
Look at how successful mtv is and how stupid the shows are.
jackass is guys kicking each other in the nuts
16 and pregnant is 16 yr old girls being horrible mothers for the most part
and my sweet 16 is whiney rich bratty 16 yr olds complaining about pointless things

and thats where kids get "rolemodels"

look at some of the "star celebreties"
paris hilton = party hard get drunk act stupid
snookie = party hard get drunk act stupid
Kesha = be a hooker?
pretty well 99% of rappers = hey yo its cool to shoot people and commit crime, Eff the cops

the majority of the population falls for that type of marketing and eats those products up.

and this game needs to appeal to the majority to stay competitive sadly

[User201109011315]

I love those MTV shows (as an anthropologist might).

Anyways, I dont think you have to appeal to the majority, but you DO need to appeal to a certain demographic.

FFXIV needs to appeal to enough people to be profitable, and a niche audience can still be enough.

Their biggest decision is what niche they want to appeal to.

But even in the most obscure niche, there is an underlying physiology/neuroscience common to all humanity which game-designers should probably to appeal to.