Alienation of Dedicated and Skilled players

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Try reading the examples. Older content needs readjusting if you add a stat at endgame of 4.0? Because that makes complete sense, and they totally care about how stat adjustments fit old content, right? That's why A4S became unclearable to some players after the VIT adjustments? Now, as for your argument that these aren't, as I claim, very easy adjustments, no they aren't. But you know what? Neither is most of the other coding that goes into this game. My point is that this is not nearly the amount of work that you assume, where it would take this extremely exaggerated amount of time to implement for an expansion. They've done adjustments before, even widescale ones, and never delayed anything as a result. But you think adding a new stat to endgame would do that because... Rogue was a massive drain to implement? Jeez, I wonder why you have to go with an example that actually did involve adjustments to gear and required a lot of work from a number of different teams rather than something that is entirely back-end in how it would need to be implemented. I guess it's because it's the only example you can give, and guess what, 2.4 wasn't delayed, so it still doesn't prove your argument anyway.

You should take your own advice. You are asking they include an entirely new stat(s), plus the possibility of various effects on the gear itself. This will impact old content and necessitate changing the current system-- none of which is remotely comparable to scaling down an existing stat. If you had any code experience, you would know that is no simple feat. And I'm not necessarily saying they couldn't, but that their majority audience won't care about these changes.

Because that example directly references how changes that required a full rebalance resulted in the devs outright saying they would never do it again outside an expansion. That statement alone demonstrates the amount of time needed.

Not relevant to the part you quoted, and I already explained how there are ways this can be countered. Not that you ever read them, but they are there.

No. It doesn't suit your narrative because if you accept people, on average, graviate to whatever the established norm is: i.e. ask veteran players what the best stat compolation is, it diminishes your whole argument.

And this takes away from none of that. In the same way that we didn't lose content in Heavensward despite all of our secondary stats being reworked nor did we lose content in 3.2 because of the VIT changes. You can try to claim that because this is a new stat it'd be entirely different and more similar to something that requires multiple different teams working on it like implementing Rogue did, but you won't get very far doing so. And while a lot of them might not have any desire for a new stat or anything like that, it wouldn't have any harmful effects for them either. Toxicity? Already exists, this wouldn't make it any worse. Confusion? Minimized by putting it at endgame, and then you can't argue this anyway if you're going to say that players won't care regardless or will follow whatever other people suggest them to.

How many times does it need to be repeated? This is not a stat adjustment. You want a new, non-existing, stat added to the game. You want non-existing status effects on gear. The game now how to calculate a new variable into the damage equation; new buffs the player might have; new effects the player could inflict. All on equipment that has never had it before. You presume this is a simple flick of the switch implementation. It wouldn't be. And due to budget, it would impact other bits of content in the game.

Hey, guys? Apparently we don't find the fights in Midas to be interesting enough. Huh, this is the most mechanically praised tier so far and most people wouldn't want mechanical complexity of fights to get any higher because it'd be overly daunting? But that can't be right, this guy on the forums who hasn't even touched the content told me so! Don't make raid arguments when you haven't done the content. And once again, I doubt you'll find many raiders who are against the idea of gear that's at least superficially more interesting from a gameplay perspective.

Uh... what? That isn't even remotely what I said. In fact, I said the precise opposite-- you literally quoted. "Most want the fights themselves to be more interesting." Mechanics are why Midas and Nidhogg have garnered praise not horizontal progression. The two are not synoymous. You perceive horizontal progression the solution to a problem you believe exists.

This entire paragraph is one massive strawman.

So you worked out what was the best for what you're currently doing. You figured out on your own where you want your gear to be right now. You don't feel like going further because you don't see a need for it. And in a world where BiS is becoming an increasingly not cared about topic, you're still going to try and argue that this isn't an example of not caring about what the absolute best is and settling for something else because of reasons that I already explained as part of why the everyone will just go for the best argument fails?

The expectation you claim was there was vastly overstated. In reality, most groups outside of the raid scene didn't care, and within the raid scene the content mandated it, so the choice actually didn't even exist. Yes, most people will work towards what is considered best to the best of their abilities. But to argue this as a reason for not even trying to give players who want a little something different something to try out falls flat. If this is how you really feel, then would you rather see secondary stats removed entirely as well? I mean, what's the difference, right? Everyone just goes for what's "best", why even have secondary stats at all? Except that idea sounds absurd.

You neglected one coveat here-- one I even mentioned previously. People not interested in raiding are the ones not worried over BiS, or the near equivalent (weekly lockouts). Therefore, they won't care about new stats either. The very system you want Square Enix to implement only applies to people who raid on a given average.

To quote from the video itself, "Most of the time you are running into these people, tt's a completely irrelevant factor to what you are doing."

Remember your mention of a buff that maybe allows for an early Geirskogul proc? I will only be relevant to a small percentage of what you're doing-- 1% if we pull from the very video you linked. And that has been my entire argument. If it isn't going to impact a larger enough portion of the FFXIV community, SE has little incentive to focus on it.

Hmm, most players, you say? Weird how you keep asserting this in the exact same way you assume I think most players want horizontal progression. You can't argue that forum thread posters are a minority that doesn't represent most players and then proceed to argue that because a forum thread exists about something that it must be the general case. You bounce back and forth between most players won't care and you'll be forced into playing the way that people consider optimal and trying to use both as arguments for your side. And neither works. Not caring isn't an argument against because there is nothing that suggests that doing this will take away from anything else (and something like this is likely to happen anyway, again, considering removing accuracy), and being forced into just doing whatever is best isn't an argument because there will always be reasons people don't fall perfectly into line with that as you yourself act as an example of. Want to hear how many people I've seen break 1k dps in Final Steps of Faith? Not many, even though it was something I could do at the minimum item level on an off job. Want to know how many of them I've kicked? One, and it was because they weren't even trying to dodge basic mechanics, not because they were underperforming in damage. Not relevant enough content for you? Because that's the type of content most of the people who play this game do. Wanna know how many healers I've seen dps in there? Not many. Have I kicked any of them or even heard complaints about it? Nope. Obviously my sample size isn't massive, but if it were the issue you claimed it was I'd probably be seeing a lot more of it than I am.

No. You continuously ignore context. Healers are expected to DPS whenever possible, and those who refuse are criticised. That doesn't mean in-chat or through a vote kick nor does it mean players overgeared for non-relevant content won't grudgingly deal with it the same way they do poor DPS. But once you step into current tier content, you're expected to contribute even as a healer... if you can.

Your example is a group where a healer couldn't DPS, not through their own refusal, but due to the content and/or group demanding enough healing to keep them occupied. Complaints arise when healers actively choose not to DPS and simply stand around doing nothing.

These aren't the same scenario despite you trying to make them one.

[zosia]

You should take your own advice. You are asking they include an entirely new stat(s), plus the possibility of various effects on the gear itself. This will impact old content and necessitate changing the current system-- none of which is remotely comparable to scaling down an existing stat. If you had any code experience, you would know that is no simple feat. And I'm not necessarily saying they couldn't, but that their majority audience won't care about these changes.

You should stop making arguments that have no merit. We already have gear sets. We already have ways to turn off gear effects in instances. Problem solved.

Because that example directly references how changes that required a full rebalance resulted in the devs outright saying they would never do it again outside an expansion. That statement alone demonstrates the amount of time needed. No. It doesn't suit your narrative because if you accept people, on average, graviate to whatever the established norm is: i.e. ask veteran players what the best stat compolation is, it diminishes your whole argument.

You're focused on one aspect of gear complexity. There is no reason we can't have weapon procs, trinkets, and set bonuses within the concept of optimization. You are assuming that adding stuff like this would require large amounts of work. Stop predicating your entire argument off of an assumption.

How many times does it need to be repeated? This is not a stat adjustment. You want a new, non-existing, stat added to the game. You want non-existing status effects on gear. The game now how to calculate a new variable into the damage equation; new buffs the player might have; new effects the player could inflict. All on equipment that has never had it before. You presume this is a simple flick of the switch implementation. It wouldn't be. And due to budget, it would impact other bits of content in the game.

The majority of active NA forum users want that change. It's worth investing in despite what the minority (you) want.

You neglected one coveat here-- one I even mentioned previously. People not interested in raiding are the ones not worried over BiS, or the near equivalent (weekly lockouts). Therefore, they won't care about new stats either. The very system you want Square Enix to implement only applies to people who raid on a given average.

To quote from the video itself, "Most of the time you are running into these people, tt's a completely irrelevant factor to what you are doing."

Remember your mention of a buff that maybe allows for an early Geirskogul proc? I will only be relevant to a small percentage of what you're doing-- 1% if we pull from the very video you linked. And that has been my entire argument. If it isn't going to impact a larger enough portion of the FFXIV community, SE has little incentive to focus on it.

Wrong again. Check the poll thread on this topic. Casual and hardcore players alike want these changes. A majority of players want these changes.
The minority opinion of "stay the course" does not matter and is not worth considering.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

We already have gear effects on GC gear, the game structure does not need heavy modification to add interesting gear effects.

Those are negligible boosts that I wouldn't qualify as "interesting stats," but sure, you could do that. Adding a whole new stat or procs to gear isn't the same thing. And even if it were, we're back to why the overall community would care? And how these new features wouldn't simply get broken down into "what is the best potency increase?" Look at the Anima weapon. We can customize the stats of our weapon. What does everyone do? Crit/Det.

As for the strawpoll. A sample size that small is not an accurate representation of the community. You're extrapolating a poll with roughly 150 votes to a population of 800,000+. An equivalent would be to use Steam's active game tracker to argue FFXIV is dying because it only shows 6-7,000 players on average when the overwhelming majority don't use Steam to play this game.

Another issue is by taking this poll, we have to consider others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...unity_discuss/

That was an in-depth study on active subs, player progression and Gordias clears. The latter scored less than 1%. Which suggests the devs should just scrap Savage entirely because it's content virtually no one can clear. Now I'm not saying they should, but only why you cannot grab a strawpoll and claim it proof of a majority opinion.

[zosia]

Those are negligible boosts that I wouldn't qualify as "interesting stats," but sure, you could do that. Adding a whole new stat or procs to gear isn't the same thing. And even if it were, we're back to why the overall community would care? And how these new features wouldn't simply get broken down into "what is the best potency increase?" Look at the Anima weapon. We can customizethe stats of our weapon. What does everyone do? Crit/Det.

Well, you don't get to qualify what's interesting stats. If SE can make a belt that increases spirit bond rates they can make a belt that modifies the rate of a fire starer proc or a free cure II proc. Apparently plenty of people care based off of the poll thread that has been up less than a day.

As for the strawpoll. A sample size that small is not an accurate representation of the community. You're extrapolating a poll with roughly 150 votes to a population of 800,000+. An equivalent would be to use Steam's active game tracker to argue FFXIV is dying because it only shows 6-7,000 players on average when the overwhelming majority don't use Steam.

At least I am using a skewed poll to back up my argument. you are just assuming players don't want interesting gear changes. Try again bub.

Another issue is by taking this poll, we have to consider others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...unity_discuss/

That was an in-depth study on active subs, player progression and Gordias clears. The latter scored less than 1%. Which suggests the devs should just scrap Savage entirely because it's content virtually no one can clear. Now I'm not saying they should, but only why you cannot grab a strawpoll and claim it proof of a majority opinion.

That's a red herring fallacy, can we focus on interesting gear choices please? To answer your misdirection though, I could not care less if they scrap savage, it killed the raiding community, I much rather have the coil system and I am a raider.

[Iromi]

I am 100% with the OP on this.

We want more RPG elements is what he's asking for. Customization options that can affect the way you play and make it more interesting.

I agree they need to put the RPG back in mmorpg ^_^ I am all for balance..but not at the cost of bland, boring stats

[Cynric]

They could literally just add a new inventory slot like how wow has trinkets and make only that slot be horizontal with silly situational buffs.

Would that satisfy you? I honestly don't see how new stats will make XIV more fun but whatever. Just gonna go with what's best if they do like I do with crit/det and nothing will change. Or I won't need it since 99% of content is easy enough without gear and if you get behind you can just wait 3 months and catch up no matter how long you're gone.

[Imakun]

I'm playing less and less frequently myself, and I don't even "raid". The streamlined direction the game has taken it's honestly almost unbearable for me, I basically only log in around patch days to see how the story goes and then come back months later.

I like options in what I can do when I'm in an MMO, but this game has none. I've been told what stat is the best, what should I use and what I should wear by the game itself. I like reading forums and see what other players discover while playing, share opinions and suggestions but there's none of it on here. The game straight out tells you what your best options are, heck we even have a button for it now so you have the option to use even less brain power.

Apart from mechanics during fights, and The Weeping City of Mhach was a great step ahead in that department, you could play this game blindfolded if you didn't need to avoid AoE with their Las Vegas signs-level indicators.
The token system is a good thing.. in small doses. When EVERYTHING revolves around farming tokens/currencies I'm logging in and mechanically doing roulettes just to log off as soon as I'm done.

Catch-up patches are another thing. I don't understand this concept and never will. When an MMO is built around the idea that everyone should be able to do everything you're not creating a healthy environment or giving players any reason to bother with high-end stuff because it will become trivial and useless in a couple of patches.
The fact that you don't need to talk to anyone ever if you want to doesn't help promote the growth of a solid community either.
The option to do everything alone (using the Duty Finder doesn't mean I'm interacting with anyone at all, how many dungeons/trials did you have that were mute?) doesn't help the situation. If I wanted to play alone I'd play a friggin' offline RPG not a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE RPG.
Of all the things they could have learned from XI, THIS should have been the first one. Build a game that's able to support a community, otherwise please Yoshi-P I'd love to play a single player Final Fantasy title from you. I'd rather see that.

I guess I can accept that this is a game that's not what I was expecting and just move on, but to me it feels like wasted potential. They could have created such an immersive and beautiful world, full of life that's not suddenly coming out of nowhere during Moogle side quests or the likes instead of being intertwined with a storyline that makes you actually explore and learn about people and places. The damn teleports are nice and convenient but the cost is too damn high for me in terms of interaction with the world and its many places. Eorzea is beautiful, but you barely have to move away from Idyllshire to do anything. MORE. OPEN. WORLD. STUFF.

Unless they miraculously make the next expansion something amazing and they manage to release it around the holidays I don't see myself playing much if anything at all anymore.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Well, you don't get to qualify what's interesting stats. If SE can make a belt that increases spirit bond rates they can make a belt that modifies the rate of a fire starer proc or a free cure II proc. Apparently plenty people care based off of the poll thread that has been up less than a day.

This whole thread emphasised "interesting stats," not minuscule boosts. Either way, what purpose do those procs serve? Say next patch Dragoons can get three equally powerful weapons, but each has a different proc for Blood for Blood, Battle Litany and Blood of the Dragon. People will eventually math out which proc offers the best potency increase, pick that weapon and throw away the other two. Fair enough if you think this is better, but we'll have to disagree.

At least I am using a skewed poll to back up my argument. you are just assuming players don't want interesting gear changes. Try again bub.

That's a red herring fallacy, can we focus on interesting gear choices please? To answer your misdirection though, I could not care less if they scrap savage, I much rather have the coil system and I am a raider.

And I showed an equally skewed poll you completely ignored (Steam). Statistics do not work that way. A poll with such a massive disparity between people is, frankly, useless.

[zosia]

This whole thread emphasised "interesting stats," not minuscule boosts. Either way, what purpose do those procs serve? Say next patch Dragoons can get three equally powerful weapons, but each has a different proc for Blood for Blood, Battle Litany and Blood of the Dragon. People will eventually math out which proc offers the best potency increase, pick that weapon and throw away the other two. Fair enough if you think this is better, but we'll have to disagree.

Again, these are your own arbitrary definitions, none of which has been publicly agreed upon. So, because optimization is a thing, we have to keep things kindergarten simple stat wise? Please! That's like saying since all digested food turns to fecal waste, best to only eat flavorless pudding.

And I showed an equally skewed poll you completely ignored (Steam). Statistics do not work that way. A poll with such a massive disparity between people is, frankly, useless

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring

If you have some steam data that relates to opinions on gear, I will respond to that. Otherwise, I don't care about novel comparisons between unrelated data sets that you have made. Show me where steam users talk about gear options.

These forums are used for feedback. I am citing a thread that precisely does that and that thread also includes a poll participated in by active FFXIV forum users. The population and topic of that poll/thread is relevant to this one. Your steam data only proves to point out that none of this data is scientific, something I already admit. At best, it at least gives us an idea (qualitatively) that the majority of active NA forum users want gear changes.

Your steam data, as fallacious as a point that it was, serves to prove what exactly? That the poll thread is skewed, biased, or unscientific? Again, I admit the skewing already, so your point on steam subs was moot on top of being a fallacy, that's why I ignored it.

[HeavenlyArmed]

You should take your own advice. You are asking they include an entirely new stat(s), plus the possibility of various effects on the gear itself. This will impact old content and necessitate changing the current system-- none of which is remotely comparable to scaling down an existing stat. If you had any code experience, you would know that is no simple feat. And I'm not necessarily saying they couldn't, but that their majority audience won't care about these changes.

Because that example directly references how changes that required a full rebalance resulted in the devs outright saying they would never do it again outside an expansion. That statement alone demonstrates the amount of time needed.

I've already explained why this is wrong. No rebalance of old content is necessary with my suggestions as none of them would exist in old content areas. Stats in the ways I explained were not just scaled down, they had fundamental changes in function such as Skill/Spell Speed affecting dots, Crit also affecting the bonus damage crits give, and Det no longer affecting certain aspects of certain jobs. You assume (incorrectly) that I have no code experience. No old content was rebalanced to adjust for Ninja, and Ninja had dozens of other aspects that made it difficult to implement alongside other things. No part of your argument here actually applies the way you think it does.

No. It doesn't suit your narrative because if you accept people, on average, graviate to whatever the established norm is: i.e. ask veteran players what the best stat compolation is, it diminishes your whole argument.

This is literally not addressing my argument, you're just saying you disagree because you disagree. I've explained this to you countless times as to why your complaint here doesn't work the way you think.

How many times does it need to be repeated? This is not a stat adjustment. You want a new, non-existing, stat added to the game. You want non-existing status effects on gear. The game now how to calculate a new variable into the damage equation; new buffs the player might have; new effects the player could inflict. All on equipment that has never had it before. You presume this is a simple flick of the switch implementation. It wouldn't be. And due to budget, it would impact other bits of content in the game.

And your evidence for this constraint doesn't exist. Did I ever say to replace all current instances of accuracy with a new stat? No. Do I think that even if they did they'd bother to rebalance older content? Totally, the same way they did when tank damage was changed in 3.2, wait, they adjusted literally nothing for that. So no. Are these changes even something that would play into damage formulas? Not actually, what they would play a part in is content balancing, but that's only for future content anyway.

Uh... what? That isn't even remotely what I said. In fact, I said the precise opposite-- you literally quoted. "Most want the fights themselves to be more interesting." Mechanics are why Midas and Nidhogg have garnered praise not horizontal progression. The two are not synoymous. You perceive horizontal progression the solution to a problem you believe exists.

This entire paragraph is one massive strawman.

It was a joke, but my point is that we've reached a level of mechanical intricacy that most players are happy with now. This means it's not something that most people feel the dev team needs to put extra work into now. Obviously horizontal progression isn't why things that aren't related to horizontal progression are praised. I perceive more interesting things besides just the battle content itself that are still related to the battle content will help solve the widely-perceived problem of the game stagnating into a boring formula when it comes to this content. Not that I think you're even capable of understanding my argument, again, we were at an impasse before you even spoke.

You neglected one coveat here-- one I even mentioned previously. People not interested in raiding are the ones not worried over BiS, or the near equivalent (weekly lockouts). Therefore, they won't care about new stats either. The very system you want Square Enix to implement only applies to people who raid on a given average.

False equivalency. Just because a player doesn't want to spend the time min-maxing their stats, doesn't mean adding a new stat would be completely worthless to them. Go ask a BLM who doesn't raid but still plays content at endgame if they think a chance to proc a Firestarter off of a Fire IV would be worthless to them. Go on, I'll wait. Adding a little more depth like this doesn't have the drawbacks you claim.

To quote from the video itself, "Most of the time you are running into these people, tt's a completely irrelevant factor to what you are doing."

Remember your mention of a buff that maybe allows for an early Geirskogul proc? I will only be relevant to a small percentage of what you're doing-- 1% if we pull from the very video you linked. And that has been my entire argument. If it isn't going to impact a larger enough portion of the FFXIV community, SE has little incentive to focus on it.

Continuing off of what I just said, there's already a basis for this being incorrect. If the stat is interesting to the players, they will want it. They may not be willing or able to min-max with it the way that raiders tend to, but that does not mean that it will be worthless to them, and it certainly wouldn't be enough of a drain on resources to implement that it should draw the level of concern from you that it does. On top of that, the fact that since 2.0 this question has been presented to them so many times people have stopped counting clearly does indicate enough of a demand to at least consider.

No. You continuously ignore context. Healers are expected to DPS whenever possible, and those who refuse are criticised. That doesn't mean in-chat or through a vote kick nor does it mean players overgeared for non-relevant content won't grudgingly deal with it the same way they do poor DPS. But once you step into current tier content, you're expected to contribute even as a healer... if you can.

Your example is a group where a healer couldn't DPS, not through their own refusal, but due to the content and/or group demanding enough healing to keep them occupied. Complaints arise when healers actively choose not to DPS and simply stand around doing nothing.

These aren't the same scenario despite you trying to make them one.

And your evidence to the healers in my runs that you haven't participated in being in the situation you describe is...? Wait, you have none? Yeah, if you honestly think people pay enough attention to whether or not their healer is doing damage that they care even in basic level 60 content, you're delusional. Even if they come right out and make it clear that they will not be contributing damage, as long as they're not actively preventing you from clearing whatever content you're doing, people do not and will not care in 99% of the content in this game. But of course this is where your mind goes, because you don't read my arguments with any intention of considering my side and only try to take down the things I say by repeating arguments that have long since been defeated. I understand clearly what concerns you have and why you have them. But when I examine those concerns I don't have them myself, because the reasons that you have them don't appear reasonable to me.