Quote Originally Posted by Sypherblade View Post
Not saying it would necessarily be painful unfun work. People seem to voice pretty loudly that they like grouping up with people and killing monsters in this game. Some even like grinding. But they just need a reason to group up. I'm just saying we need to create a long turn goal in the form of grouping up for people.

Don't get confused and think im suggesting that this idea becomes the center of the game. Cause thats not the case. A simple feature that requires time as a "side" thing.

FFXI did this to a degree with merit points. Yes it was much more rewarding to increase your stats and lower cool down timers and stuff.. but it was just to give people a reason to kill stuff with their cap jobs "in-between" things like sky and limbus etc etc.
The problem is that it creates a really s***ty dichotomy because of the rewards. If you remove the 'exciting' or 'fun' aspect (which is unavoidable in long grinds), the worth of the rewards is now based solely on the time and effort investment.

If they are worth the time/effort investment, and especially if the rewards are top notch, they become something that's required. Merits became required in a lot of FFXI's areas; some meripo parties and end-game LSes denied you if you didn't already have some merits, your class was incomplete, etc. The grind becomes unavoidable by the people who didn't want it or don't like it.

If they are not worth the time/effort, then very few people will actually do these events (think Voluptuous Vivian from FFXI).

Whereas if developers focus on making FUN content as opposed to just long content, people are more willing to overlook the time and effort they spend. Making long content just for the sake of having content is an extremely terrible way of developing a game and it sets the precedent that the devs are willing to throw in half-assed patchwork instead of making good content.