Alienation of Dedicated and Skilled players

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I had the attitude to begin with because you're being the textbook definition of obtuse about this. Even in terms of a more moderate stance, one that asks for things to be changed in such a way that harm cannot possibly be done, you still feel the need to argue against it because you don't feel that it'd be worth anything, despite plenty of people telling you it'd be worth something to them. Do you have full BiS? No? But why not? Everyone says that set is the best thing for you to have, why don't you have it?! Do you see the problem with your argument yet?

Yeah, exclusivity is one of the many reasons that not everyone will gravitate 100% towards what the community deems "the best". There will also be some people who don't like how it feels to play with that certain bonus, who can instead choose the very slightly less optimal set. Will those people ever get into a world first guild? Probably not, but they don't want to anyway. The point about flavour is just that we want there to be some flavour at all. We've been fed the same thing for so long that anything we could once taste in it has long since been adjusted to and now it just seems bland. But you argue against trying a different spice because... you don't think it'll help unless we use so many different spices that we may as well be tearing up the original recipe, and then most people won't like it anyway? All we want is for SE to try giving us a new flavour. Why can't we have that?

Your introductory post essentially called people idiots who post here because they have a differing opinion. News flash, your ideas of how things ought to be improved are not necessarily the end all be all. And in spite of your smugness, you have yet to refute my "textbook definition." Plenty of people? Do you mean a handful in this thread. The raid and forum communities make up a decidedly small portion of the overall fanbase. I'm not debating against horizontal progression out of some personal vendetta towards the system. I'm point to the statistical disparage between players such as yourself and the majority.

Let's take a step back and consider something. The most popular server in the entire game is Balmung; a server dedicated to writers who create characters as though they were writing a story. Likewise, glamour is exceptionally popular-- to the extent people were elated over a maid outfit and the release of FFX minions. Sleipnir has brought in an estimated million dollars since being put on the Cash Shop. That's the equivalent of nearly 80,000 one month subscribers for a horse that cannot even fly.

Simply put, the overwhelming majority prefer casual to midcore content. If the amount of people your post implies cared about horizontal progression, or their gear at all, FFXIV wouldn't continue to be as popular as it is. This has nothing to do with my personal interests or preferences, but statistics.

And in response to your question regarding my gear. No, I don't. Why? Because I don't need it yet to progress from where I am in the Main Story. In fact, I am overgeared, and will remain so for a longtime still. The only reason I don't have Eikon gear on MNK is because it isn't level 60 yet. I opted to level crafters so I could make it all myself. Once I reach 60, I'll craft it and work on my weeklies to upgrade to eventual BiS. Like everyone else interested in some form of raiding.

I fail to see the point you're trying to make here. People who do not have ilvl 220+ gear either don't care about raiding, and therefore gear stats are irrelevant to them, or are newer players who simply haven't progressed far enough.

Despite your prior rebuttal several pages back, you just described the STR vs. VIT debate that inevitably saw STR tanking cannibalize its counterpart when new tanks asked veteran players what gear they should choose and were told STR accessories. The same will happen with putting buffs or traits on equipment. New players will ask veterans what they think is best, or look it up themselves, and grind for it. After all, why wouldn't they? And yes, I'm aware you could balance things better so one stat didn't dominate the other so readily, but people will still opt for the perceived "best" because of the aforementioned reasons.

An even better example of this is healer DPS. Look at how quickly people who refuse to DPS as healers are frowned on or outright shunned. No content in this game actually requires any healer DPS, but those who refrain are deemed "lazy" for no other reason than their preference isn't considered optimal. In fact, you'll often see people more forgiving of inexperienced players messing up mechanics than if a prefer says "I only want to heal because I don't like DPSing." Melding is another comparable example. DPS and Tanks are toward Crit and Det no matter what despite having other options like Skill Speed. Why? Crit and Det are better.

Redesigning the current gear structure so some pieces can have a trait buff or stat effect that serves no real purpose beyond an illusion of choice will pull resources away from new content, fights and etc. And the majority of players either won't care about it whatsoever, or determine the BiS and choose that.

[Braden]

I agree with the OP. The variety of current endgame content is pretty dull.

What's funny is the fact that the OP is not asking for devs to delete all the minions, mounts, glamours, fluff, etc. He's just asking for more stuff to do.

Whether you loved it or hated it FFXI had tons of content over the years of level 75 cap. Sea, sky, limbus, dynamis, einherjar, salvge, znm, annm, mmm, nyzul isle, salvage, ksnm, hnms, campaign. Hell im probably missing some of the content during that time period before the level cap was raised. All these events were ways to get new gear and crafting materials for years. 6 or 7 years of horizontal growth, probably went on for too long. But it gave value to the gear you earned. I always felt like I had something to do, some area to improve.

I don't want a carbon copy game, but using some parts of ideas aren't always bad.

[ToasterMan]

NOPE! Horizontal progression in this game won't work, and here's why.

Players will find the best sets or whatever someone like Mr. Happy tells them to use and just use only those sets for raiding, nothing else. I saw it happen in PSO2 myself. That game had different skill trees for each class, and guess what? There was a meta, there were certain skills that you were expected to take, or you would be shunned and disadvantaged. People are just going to find the best combination of pieces to use and just roll with that.

Same reason why all the dungeons are linear now. People will just find the fastest route to the finish so they can just get it done. So why bother?

[Caelum_Dragguell]

Alright so here we go... @Endeavor

Basically what I'm seeing in you is a casual player who hasn't experienced all content (this especially is apparent by you saying healer DPS isn't necessary for ANYTHING... haha, funny, if you actually did do all that the game had to offer like people suggest to me, oh wait I have participated in nearly all content this game has to offer at least once). There is nothing wrong with this, HOWEVER, this does not warrant one to make blanket statements on the state of the game, its depth and what content should or shouldn't be added, and make assumptions on how the games community will react to it in a manner that offers no counterpoint and serves only to just say NO to what is being suggested, and outright disregard the desires of others who HAVE done just about all this game has to offer.
So people who don't have i230+ gear don't care about raiding... yeah they probably don't, your point being? that has nothing to do with this.

We want more content for a portion of the community that would add depth and longevity to the game? "NO" Says the uninformed player who only participates in a portion of the game

We want a change to gameplay to keep the game we love fresh while still appealing? "NO" says the uninformed player who only participates in a portion of the game.

We want anything whatsoever that could possibly make us feel some sense of reward instead of having everything we worked for turn out to be obsolete and worthless after its completion? "NO" says. the. uninformed. player. who. only. participates. in. a. portion. of. what. the. game. has. to offer.

People act as if the players who consider these things are in the minority, but newsflash, it's probably around AT THE VERY LEAST 10-20% of the playerbase that's tired of this formula whether they say something or not. You know who those players are? those who like running the EX fights and other content that's even harder, and guess what a lot of those players have all level 60 crafts classes etc... and participate in all content this game has to offer and are STILL BORED. now I'm not sure if you're aware of how many players are subbed to this game but let's just say that 10-20% is not a number of players that a game developer is just going to ignore, or should ignore. When players asked for PVP (a minority mind you) guess what, they got it. And back then people were even saying that they DIDN'T want PVP, just like you're outright rejecting the concept of simply having more worthwhile and lasting content. IMAGINE THAT.

The dev team once stated that one of their motto's was to "Always seek to amaze", and you know what? I was amazed in the beginning. But guess what, 4 years of the same thing is boring and it's about time for a change. Idling around all the time is only gonna last so long before people move on.

But apparently none of the suggestions we've given such as from Heavenly_Armed mean anything to you since you're so inclined to just disagree for the purpose of arguing. So you know what? what the hey, why don't we just make the game only story content, only glamour, no challenges, just cutscenes and cute cat girl poses. Hell this game isn't about overcoming challenges or anything. Let's give everyone a house too. While we're at it, YOU ALL GET 100 MILLION GIL. Let's let the game stagnate.

So I just have one more word for you.

NO

[SpookyGhost]

NOPE! Horizontal progression in this game won't work, and here's why.

Players will find the best sets and just use only those sets for raiding, nothing else.

This is only a problem if there is one overall best set for all content (which there shouldn't be), and if other builds aren't viable in that content (IE, in simple terms, preferring more healing power at a certain point of the fight vs being able to increase Presence of Mind duration/reduce recast time/whatever). This is called "balance" which basically means that horizontal progression can be handled horribly in one game, and perfectly in another. Single player RPGs actually have tons of horizontal progression and various strategies on how to handle bosses.

I saw it happen in PSO2 myself.

Haven't played PSO2, though it's worth considering that maybe PSO2 just handled horizontal progression in the wrong way.

That game had different skill trees for each class, and guess what? There was a meta, there were certain skills that you were expected to take, or you would be shunned and disadvantaged. People are just going to find the best combination of pieces to use and just roll with that.

Right... this sounds like early WoW to me when it was imbalanced and broken. But if you look at Talents in WoW now, you use certain ones for certain content to give you an advantage in some part of it... which is how actual choice is meant to work.

Same reason why all the dungeons are linear now. People will just find the fastest route to the finish so they can just get it done. So why bother?

If this is about XIV, the dungeons have always been linear since 2.0. The only thing that's changed is they decided to put roadblocks to stop us from pulling all the way to the boss, which I frankly don't see the point of when we have only 2 dungeon options to run every day but w/e. If this is about PSO2, I've no idea what those are like so can't comment.

e: Also, just throwing this out there, I don't see the problem with introducing say 3.4 with a new ilvl that people want to achieve (i260 or whatever) but have a bunch of ways to actually obtain i260, with varying stats depending on the content you tackle. Look back to when they gave us i90 rings in Garuda EX - another option for getting an i90 ring with different stats allowing for more build variety. People loved those rings. I think everyone has this concept that vertical and horizontal progression can't exist in harmony - they can, it just requires a slight effort to make the balance not magically go out of whack. Even with the secondary stats we've got now, it'd be cool to have multiple paths to go down to get different pieces. Put rings in one piece of content, earrings in another, weapons in another, branch us out a bit instead of forcing us into a raid for all the gear.

[ToasterMan]

This is only a problem if there is one overall best set for all content (which there shouldn't be), and if other builds aren't viable in that content (IE, in simple terms, preferring more healing power at a certain point of the fight vs being able to increase Presence of Mind duration/reduce recast time/whatever). This is called "balance" which basically means that horizontal progression can be handled horribly in one game, and perfectly in another. Single player RPGs actually have tons of horizontal progression and various strategies on how to handle bosses.

Perfect balance can never be achieved, and do you really trust SE to balance these sets fairly after the disaster that was Wanderers Minute,Gauss Barrel, and 3.0 Enochian? (I'm sure there's much more) I sure don't. They have proven time and time again that they have difficulty balancing core jobs together. You expect them to be able to balance multiple sets for these different jobs together?

[SpookyGhost]

Perfect balance can never be achieved, and do you really trust SE to balance these sets fairly after the disaster that was Wanderers Minute,Gauss Barrel, and 3.0 Enochian? (I'm sure there's much more) I sure don't.

Doesn't need to be perfectly balanced.

Also patches exist if they mess something up, it's not like if they put something out there it has to be X way forever.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

Sigh.

You continuous keep trying to twist this into a "Me vs. You" scenario-- as though I'm arguing against additional content on the basis I, personally, dislike it. That isn't the case nor has it ever been. What I am saying is the vast majority of people currently playing Final Fantasy XIV do not care about the content you like. That is a statistical fact, and has nothing to do with one individual players' preferences.

Redesigning the entire gear structure to accommodate for a portion of the community that makes up only a fraction of the overall subscriber base makes no sense. Their priority objective is the financial viability of FFXIV. When people prefer midcore content and glamour, that is who they will cater towards because those people make up the majority. You don't. This game doesn't have infinite resources, thus they must allocate their budget based on what will garner the most profit.

You're approaching this from a player perspective-- specifically a bored raider wanting more content you enjoy. While I certainly appreciate that, my argument has been on the profitability of FFXIV. I'm not speaking about it as a player, but a business. Put another way, if we estimate 5% of the community raids (current clear rates suggest it's less, but semantics), whereas the overall active playerbase is 800,000 (an in-depth reddit survey concluded such an amount back in January). This shows 40,000 people raid, and therefore prioritize gear. 760,000 don't.

If you're a business, who do you invest the bulk of your resources towards? 40,000 raiders or 760,000 "casuals"?

Bear in mind, this are only rough estimates.

Now that doesn't mean the game should remain static and not explore new content. But "new content" is things like Deep Dungeon and Aquapolis not putting buffs or stats on gear.

[ToasterMan]

Doesn't need to be perfectly balanced.

Well then like everyone has said, people are going to find the best set of gear and use it if it isn't balanced well enough.

Also patches exist if they mess something up, it's not like if they put something out there it has to be X way forever.

Yes 3-5 five months later. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's how long it took for WM and GB to finally get fixed, I think PLD is STILL getting passed over in raids, and of course a raid wouldn't THINK about going without a Scholar, leaving the other two healers to fight over the one spot.

[Dextro]

Give up.
Your fate has already been sealed.

You shall get no new additions to the battle system; the trinkets you desire are of no substance or benefit to us.

Come back when you have schematics for a flying Sleipnir.

Balmung has spoken.