My opinion on endgame gear progression : DRK i225, 4th month of subscription

[Kallera]

People want to win. At the end of the day, they want to have a rewarding experience and things that they can accomplish.

I found myself having logged in after clearing palace of the dead, yet despite not having cleared any floor of alex savage, I found myself with "nothing to do". Its a difficult subject, but ffxiv seemed to pride itself on having long grind so much that when it tries to have gameplay that isn't, It doesn't register.

I can spend lengths of time making and decorating a house in sandbox games like terraria and and starbound, but here it just doesn't register, I just make it, and leave it. I clear it, and unless there is some thing that insists I clear it over and over, I don't want to do it again.

[AlexanderThorolund]

Whats exactly the point of this thread.

There isn't one. It's prime blog fodder.

[TankHunter678]

-snip-

That was aimed at the "because they took feedback and gathered data and crafted a game that has longevity" part. Which they failed on leading to players being burned out within 4 months of playing. Unless they were willing to play a facebook game to maintain their WoW sub because they can.

The merger with Activision lead to a lot of the devs who crafted a game with longevity to leave, then over the years through cataclysm into pandaria they lost more of those devs. So blizzard hired a bunch of devs on, making it the largest team size WoW has ever had creating a 14 month content drought that... eventually shit out a rushed Warlords of Draenor and is doing the same thing with Legion.

And in legion they are doing a massive ability pruning that is causing large scale outcry from the community that is being mostly ignored by Blizzard. Blizzard removes dual spec and implements a gold cost on swapping specs the unfairly punishes people who play flexible classes with their guildmates, and unfairly punishes low level players trying to try out other specs. So the community complained, so Blizzard removed the spec swapping gold cost, only to implement a worse restriction in needing player crafted items to be able to swap talents... in a system where Blizzard had already purposely changed the talents to include the pruned skills so that people would change talents regularly on a pack by pack, boss by boss, basis. Creating a situation where it was better to play a pure class because you can deck one spec out to one extreme, and swap to a different spec for another extreme.

Oh and Blizzards method of getting people out in the world? World Quests aka max level only FATES have a low chance of dropping a piece of gear that is Warforged aka +55 ilvl boost. Letting people skip the first raid tier entirely. I bet that makes the raiders happy in a raid or die game like WoW.

WoW is not being made with longevity anymore. Its being turned into the MMO version of Call of Duty style development.

[Jetstream_Fox]

snip

So the previous 4 expansions Blizzard just completely ignored everyone according to you, and just made the game with zero feedback?

Your answer to why the game is hurting is clear in your second paragraph, Activision. Activision is the same reason Destiny Year 1 was a total mess due to the overwhelming lack of content, now with the house of wolves, dark below, and taken king all within the game Destiny has a more refined story and interesting lore. While the rest of the game has gotten tweaks, like I said for PvP earlier, the same issue happened with Bungie that happened with Blizzard, all the devs left, most of the team went to 343i after the Bungie and Activision merge. Leaving a new dev team to tackle a large promised game just like what Blizzard had to do with WoD.

If 14 was so much better why during the mass exodus of players from WoW, has 14 only advertised over 6 million? If 5 million players left WoW, who enjoyed MMOs, why only a small jump from August last year? WoW stayed up for all those years because they interacted with all their players, they listened, and had a dev team that was passionate for the world they made. 14 has a understaffed dev team that can't keep promises due to that reason, a 72 page post about how awful the EU promotion is, constant RMT issues that are finally after almost 3 years getting looked into, another failed patch with Palace of the Dead, just like Diadem, LoV, and the entire GS attraction as a whole AND a pure cheap sell out of a cross over event in Yokai Watch.

http://press.na.square-enix.com/rele...sers-worldwide

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/pr/sp/..._Of_The_Horde/

[CookieMonsta]

Can't anybody read? o: I said times now what I want as a reward. Better Equipment.

Don't bother with this forum, most players who are actually good at the game have been banned thus leaving a predominant population who either have not yet opened their eyes or are so casual they don't even know what constitutes longevity.

Given my opinion, people should be in tiers ranging from 210-245, if you want to move between tiers, you do the requisite hard work. Catchup patches should only exist once the 6 month cycle is over, the current system basically encourages laziness.

For those that argue the status quo is good, you will see it one day, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in 2-3 years even but you will see the sick ailment that affects this game. I opened my eyes when I saw casual FCs dropping like flies on my server whereas the midcore-hardcore raiding circles are sill going (albeit being very tired), this tells me that progression is not only popular but in demand regardless of player type. However, no one will raid or even attempt hard content if an equivalent reward can be earnt by simply waiting.

Weeping City and Alex Midas NM were the best things to date since ThordanEx to happen to this game. The ramp up in difficulty means you gotta work for your progression.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I stopped raiding because Alex wasnt fun. I did all of coil progression, and that was enjoyable, and I didn't do it for the gear :P

Not that I think they should give gear away. Weeping City is great because it is harder, but you also get a lot more failures because of it, and I have yet to see any PF recruitments for it.

As for non raiders not needing better gear, if you took that away, the casual core to the game would likely stop playing, since they no longer have the ability to get noticeably stronger. "But they are just running dungeons, and those are easy." Sure, but if you have a casual tank with an i200 weapon, because that's the current casual ilvl cap, and you pair him with a dps with a i250 weapon, cuz that's the current base raid weapon, that tank is not going to be holding hate very well.

Its also a means of balancing the parties in DF that the ilvl jump for raid gear is not that high.

I'm all for raiders having better equipment, but raiding just for the sake of having better gear than non raiders is just silly IMO.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

However, no one will raid or even attempt hard content if an equivalent reward can be earnt by simply waiting.

Correction. People won't raid when the mechanics are literally incomprehensible for the average players, when they require you devoting your life to the game like a job—which is a massive red flag in the first place—and have extremely boring aesthetics and premises like Alexander.

It's not a fun raid, people say it all the time. Had we another raid like Coil, I can guarantee you people would actually care about it, but Alexander is possibly the biggest failure of this patch cycle. Alex is boring, uninteresting, the Goblins are something most players don't care about at all and unless Alexander's 3rd tier mixes things up, that will remain the case until the next raid tier in 4.X.

We don't avoid Alexander because we're lazy, we avoid it because Alexander is literally garbage in comparison to Coil. It's not fun or interesting

[KitingGenbu]

...

What?! You're not excited about fighting a mini-alexander inside of Alexander???

[ADVSS]

If i had spent as many weeks on the anima quest doing raiding, id probably have 4 or 5 245 weapons. but i dont raid, i have my reasons

[OmegaStrongtan]

So OP. No catchup for non raiders?
Which means the EX Primae will never be seen by non-Raiders while it is relevant content. This or it has to be toned down so much it will be faceroll at release for people with raid gear.
Also no new raiders ever. Imagine a new raider has to find a group to learn and farm Gordias before he has a chance to train Midas just because non raid gear has to be much much weaker to satisfy raiders.

It is already hard enough to get new people into raids since the difficulty spike between normal content and EX/savage is just hilarious. Normal content does not teach anything needed to stand a chance in hard content. Know your class? Fully optional, pay attention to mechanics? Maybe sometimes bot most of the time someone will do it for you. AoEs? No need to dodge since it will hit for like 2k. Raiding in general is in a bad place here.