Hardcore, easy mode and the XI veteran

[Zane]

I cringed when I seen this, but I got to admit after reading it you hit the nail square on the head.

Maybe there's hope for the community after all.

Same here. I rolled my eyes and inevitably resigned myself to reading a post of drivel that would have made me shake my head at the mind numbing "logic" and contradictory posts that seem to be running rampant from many XI players.

However, that was not the case. As a fellow XI player who's also done it all, I couldn't agree with the OP any more. I feel that he and I agree 100% on all of the topics he posted and I hope that the dev team takes notice of this post.

[Corrderio]

I feel that he and I agree 100% on all of the topics he posted and I hope that the dev team takes notice of this post.

Would be nice, but wishful thinking. Yoshida already said he plans on going the shit drop rate way. :\

[NoctisUmbra]

people do want hand outs, and everything easy as hell or people will just avoid it.
people dont want to play they just level cap thats why RMT powerleveling and gil buying is making shit loads of money maybe even more than the games host.

people cried about fatigue cuz it was too slow to level now they took it away and speed it things giving you SP/EXP at the end of a leve. grinding partys mobs die as soon as you pull out your weapon at times. auto attack people cried about when they lost there infinte MP, cried about archer being gimp from it.

at the end of the day people want to log in and get everything right now and cry about i dont have time to play, when in reality they shouldnt be playing a MMO anyways.

I disagree with people asking for hand-outs and easy drop rates just as much as people asking for insanely low drop rates and content that requires long hours just for the sake of long hours.

Content shouldn't be about the drop rates. The content itself should provide a healthy challenge. The Darkhold is a solid template for content. It is far from perfect, but the idea that a lot of it is accessible to all players, yet mastering it is rewarded. Future content can follow that template with some tweaks to difficulty in various aspects - both increases and decreases throughout - and would be very successful.

[Aenarion]

at the end of the day people want to log in and get everything right now and cry about i dont have time to play, when in reality they shouldnt be playing a MMO anyways.

I don't want to log in and get everything right away, but I also don't want to log in thinking I need 4+ hours of free time to do anything, or that I need to kill this 72hr NM spawn for an item with a 0.01% drop rate that are camped by 23842937 claim bots for the next 20 years either.

[Roaran]

The only logical position to take on this matter, is that of a business, more specifically, Square Enix.

MMOs around and before FFXI's time consisted of a playerbase that had, on average, more time than the typical player. Thus, it makes sense for the developers of such a game to make a game largely for that player base.

Today, however, the playerbase for all MMOs have changed. The regulars are still there, but with the addition of other player groups the proportion has shifted and it is necessary for SE to change as well. Imagine if FFXIV playerbase was 90% teenage girls. SE, if it wanted to be successful, would develop primarily for their largest group of players and largely ignore or merely appease, so long as it does not prevent them from catering to their largest base, the 10% left over

SE has statistics for how long people log in, and probably are able to get a wealth of information that allows them to decide more clearly than any of us what direction they should take.

Seeing as how SE plans on developing the majority of the content for players with a few hours of playtime per day/wk, and also developing a few places where players with more time can play... I would guess that the vast majority of players are 'casual' (Less time to play) and a small minority consist of the 'hardcore' (More time to play).

Now, there is ANOTHER group of players that are both made up of casual and hardcore players. And this is of the Good and Bad players. Casual players have little time on their hands, but they can still be good players. Hardcore players have more time on their hands, but they can still be bad players.

My personal opinion is... that THIS is where the debate lies. On how difficult the content should be, as there lies areas where both good and bad players can enjoy content... and on both extremes the very bad players will not enjoy the most challenging content, and the very good players will not enjoy the content that is least challenging.

The proportion of challenging and unchallenging content is the single most important issue, not the hardcore/casual regurgitated argument that serves no other purpose than for personal venting.

Now, what proportion should the challenging and unchallenging content be??? It should be based 100% entirely on the playerbase. I could only guess at this, while SE can actually bring up statistics to see who killed Batraal and how fast, for example. So, SE is in the best position to make these decisions, and it follows that they would be implementing them in this manner DESPITE any effort on the forums no matter how vocal.

[Exni]

Being that you supposedly played XI for 7 years I had hoped that you would be able to at least backup your very first sentence.. what a waste reading that unsupported horribly opinionated wall-of-text rant.

There is no doubt that currently XIV is on easy mode compared to the actually DIFFICULTY of the endgame content in XI. To try to agrue that it only 'seemed' more difficult because of lower drop rates just shows that you yourself were a casual inexperienced player, who prolly just leech'ed at events contributing nothing but a body. Then you claim XI's 'motto' was "allow few to participate..." when XI both launched with more larger scale events than XIV and obviously has plenty of extra large scale events currently. I guess you, for whatever reason, had no friends/ls to run with regularly.. or the desire to create/run/strategize your own events.. because you clearly missed most of the game.

3-5k/hour grind..? Seriously? Even waaaay before SMNburn/Abyssea came in and jacked XI up that's just completely terrible. I see what happened.. you must have been one of those ppl.. ya kno.. who spent 7 years just leveling 4 jobs..

[Aenarion]

...The proportion of challenging and unchallenging content is the single most important issue, not the hardcore/casual regurgitated argument that serves no other purpose than for personal venting.

this is spot on, not that the talking heads who can't see past themselves will realize it.

[weeble]

this is spot on, not that the talking heads who can't see past themselves will realize it.

swear that was what i was saying.

[Burn]

Totally agree with the OP.

I was in a LS on XI that had done everything outside of AV back when it was unkillable, none of it took any skill, it was just a roll of a dice on drop rates or claiming the mobs. There was hardly ever any thinking into any of the encounters that ranged from Vrtra, Tiamat, Jorm, Khim, Cerb, Fafnir, Nidhogg, KB, all sky gods, sea NM(outside of AV).

XI's endgame is and always was a joke, there was nothing challenging besides getting claim on the mobs and hoping the dice rolled in your LS's favor with drop rates. The only challenging fight was pre-tp zerging Bahamut V2 because things could go very wrong but everyone and their grandma started melee burning him.

[Wolfie]

Being that you supposedly played XI for 7 years I had hoped that you would be able to at least backup your very first sentence.. what a waste reading that unsupported horribly opinionated wall-of-text rant.

There is no doubt that currently XIV is on easy mode compared to the actually DIFFICULTY of the endgame content in XI. To try to agrue that it only 'seemed' more difficult because of lower drop rates just shows that you yourself were a casual inexperienced player, who prolly just leech'ed at events contributing nothing but a body. Then you claim XI's 'motto' was "allow few to participate..." when XI both launched with more larger scale events than XIV and obviously has plenty of extra large scale events currently. I guess you, for whatever reason, had no friends/ls to run with regularly.. or the desire to create/run/strategize your own events.. because you clearly missed most of the game.

3-5k/hour grind..? Seriously? Even waaaay before SMNburn/Abyssea came in and jacked XI up that's just completely terrible. I see what happened.. you must have been one of those ppl.. ya kno.. who spent 7 years just leveling 4 jobs..

I like how your attempt to argue your points is just ad hominem attacks.

He's completely right about FFXI's motto about allowing few to participate. Here's some of the major limits FFXI had on end-game content:

Dynamis:

Only one group at a time per server.
Insane gil sink as entry requirement.

Open world HNM:

Spawns every 24-hr/3 days/1 week
Only one group gets to kill it

BCNM/KSNM:

Insane farming required to gain entry
Only one group at a time can enter

Sky:

Similar to open world NM, only one group can fight at a time
Harsh farming requirements
Requires long quest chain to access

Sea:

Similar to Sky, requires an even longer quest chain

I mean, I could go on and on, but I think you realize that if you weren't part of one of the few privileged/hardcore/botting end-game LSes, you were screwed. The fact that FFXI had more content on release or by the 1 year mark doesn't mean FFXI had decent content, it means FFXIV is worse than FFXI in that aspect. Compare FFXI to other MMOs' end-game model, and you'll see how terrible FFXI's model is.