Twinfinite Interview

[Shougun]

my g.f played ff11 for 7 years, and told me she was harassed for not having the "o-hat" (idk what that is) and black belt. She would be replaces as rmd for not having ele staves. (again idk what that is) They don't work because of community rules not allowing it. Then you had gear swaping which ppl would swap out gear with each attack. My g/f was harassed for not doing that simple due to not having the gear or inv space.

My g/f is of the opinion that playing your character, and gearing up said character should be easy. That the challenge should in the content. The reason we have a large gap is people can't master their job like people want. Simply due to how complex it is to master them, and rather not see it with gear. She is also not used to the way gearing works in ff14 and restarted a few times because of the Post gap gear grind being confusing to her.

FFXI's gear swapping is a whole bag of issues when it comes to gearing up, instead of having a set of acceptable gear you have to have ALL SETS and the game was horizontal lol. Nightmare easily. However I would like to suggest looking into WoW if you're only focusing on gear having interesting affixes, since FFXI may be harder to peal apart due to the can actually use everything .. thing (like I had macros for individual spells, whole gear sets for single spells - sometimes I would just flash through the whole battle XD).

WoW is definitely far more linear in growth than FFXI and they not only have ability affixes but they have a lot of them through relics (basically special materia), enchanter, and items (trinkets almost always having something nifty to them). Its true certain abilities and trinkets are trash, and sometimes the options become super freaking specific --- BUT, as it is linear most of the time it is upward while still having what I guess I'd call breath mints, the ability affixes can freshen the game's breath after certain hours of playing around with mechanics.

Because of a certain set of weapons I acquired for like 5 levels I had a melee hunter because it literally did more damage lol.

Affixes do not have to be associated with horizontal progression, although I would like to see semi-horizontal so I don't go from one primal to the next with each one before it always being entirely trash items. FFXI was (was) years of horizontal, I'd rather not have that because it really makes end game for those who have A LOT OF TIME (something your GF is probably picking up on, which is less to do with affixes and the fact that it is both horizontal and you could gear swap).

So I'm not saying she didn't have issues, I'm just suggesting a major portion of those issues probably came from that you can gear swap and there was a big wall of horizontal content. So you want one staff for this spell, another staff for that, this chest for swiping with your sword, these for TP, etc etc.

[BigRed5392]

snip

I did play WoW a bit, what I saw was "whoever had the biggest boot would win" lol. WoW wasn't hard content wise imo but I didn't play it long. ff14 my first long term mmo.

meta over choice tends to happen most. People need to accept it and realize there is no choice. Play OW sometime... you will be cussed out and reported if you use the less played heros.

[EdwinLi]

meta over choice tends to happen most. People need to accept it and realize there is no choice. Play OW sometime... you will be cussed out and reported if you use the less played heros.

That a issue I find with Meta and how hypocritical some people can be when asking for new and more options when they themselves will only use that new options when it can fit into a new Meta to replace old Meta.

Meta is like a disease that can ruin a game for anyone and puts a set up imaginary expectation on people to follow or they will become a outcast to the community.

[Stanelis]

That a issue I find with Meta and how hypocritical some people can be when asking for new and more options when they themselves will only use that new options when it can fit into a new Meta to replace old Meta.

Meta is like a disease that can ruin a game for anyone and puts a set up imaginary expectation on people to follow or they will become a outcast to the community.

The fact that there should be options isn't exclusive with the fact that a meta will appear. The point in having option is to provide both gameplay related diversity on an individual class scale (in order for a player who play a class not to become bored if he doesn't want to switch class) and on a group based scale (by allowing different strategies to be used on any given content).

[EdwinLi]

The fact that there should be options isn't exclusive with the fact that a meta will appear. The point in having option is to provide both gameplay related diversity on an individual class scale (in order for a player who play a class not to become bored if he doesn't want to switch class) and on a group based scale (by allowing different strategies to be used on any given content).

But there is a problem which is once Meta sets in the "gameplay related diversity on an individual class scale" becomes almost non-existent because people become expected to play the Meta way of things. People can try to be "diverse" but if they don't follow the meta they will become a outcast because they are not "meta" for the specific content.

[Shougun]

But there is a problem which is once Meta sets in the "gameplay related diversity on an individual class scale" becomes almost non-existent because people become expected to play the Meta way of things. People can try to be "diverse" but if they don't follow the meta they will become a outcast because they are not "meta" for the specific content.

Meta is not going anywhere unless you make everyone the exact same. Adding linear affixes will barely change the kick you meta (won't make it better but it will freshen up periods of time with different takes on your mechanics).

Also people against the talents still miss that there is usually at least two some classes threes for valid options, 2+ >1 . (So talents are not pointless they're just not 10,000 lol)

Does it suck you can't do what you think is fun in savage ? Sure, but regardless of what you do no matter what the meta people hate will never go away unless we are all exactly the same. Not suggesting we need talents but if you can add one more option to the meta, that's better than one option to the meta.

"I can't do what I want therefore I want zero options, even though I could have had two or three" is what I hear when blind hate to meta/character building. Also meta doesn't really effect lower tiers of content so options much larger there.

I guess it isn't blind if people literally want no options but meh, sounds boring.

[Stanelis]

But there is a problem which is once Meta sets in the "gameplay related diversity on an individual class scale" becomes almost non-existent because people become expected to play the Meta way of things. People can try to be "diverse" but if they don't follow the meta they will become a outcast because they are not "meta" for the specific content.

That's why in well designed games that have customization on the player's scale, several situations calls for different builds that can coexist. If there is only one gameplay situation like in FFXIV (where every boss start to be similar in terms of gameplay), that cannot work, but if the game is well designed and has several gameplay situations (like different types of encounters), it perfectly works out.

Also you could imagine customization to allow the same class to perform several roles (as an example, war could have talents to be either a DPS or a tank depending on the player's choice).

Look at other games with talents points and how people will kick you for not having the best build.

Nobody is saying that you should be able to put point randomly and still have the best build, but that there should be several options for several gameplay situations (of course, the options must be logical and easy to grasp without having to read guides). It would also allows for classes to be more specialized in what they do, allowing for better flexibility in encounters design.

[Zojha]

That's why in well designed games that have customization on the player's scale, several situations calls for different builds that can coexist.

Followed by the ability to more or less conveniently swap builds so you can have the meta build for each situation >_>
Because those builds don't really "co-exist": They replace each other. In one situation one is better, in the other situation the other is better, so the best strategy is to switch to the currently better one every time. If you can't do that? You pick the one for the most common situation.

For two builds to truly co-exist, they need to be roughly equally good, i.e. balanced. That is the entire crux behind customization: It needs to be well balanced. Your choice essentially needs to be irrelevant to performance, it needs to be mostly an aesthetic or gameplay choice. I can tell you that even in this game, where the only customization you have is choosing a job to main, jobs will be left in the gutter if the team fails to balance them. Because that's what already happened with AST at the start of HW.

The same would naturally apply to builds within a job. If the choices are balanced? Great! Bring it on. Once performance deviates significantly, issues arise.

The degree of balance needed is decided by the tolerance threshold of the community for subpar choices. Some have higher, some have lower. You just have to guess that one when making decisions.

[Driavna]

The fact that there should be options isn't exclusive with the fact that a meta will appear. The point in having option is to provide both gameplay related diversity on an individual class scale (in order for a player who play a class not to become bored if he doesn't want to switch class) and on a group based scale (by allowing different strategies to be used on any given content).

Look at other games with talents points and how people will kick you for not having the best build.

[Naunet]

Look at other games with talents points and how people will kick you for not having the best build.

I can also look at games with talent-like systems that have managed to create something where there are multiple competitive builds. In WildStar, for example, the spellslinger class has 5+ perfectly viable builds that people can use depending on their familiarity with the class, the class runes they have available to them, or the buff/debuff needs of their raid group.

It's possible, but it takes a bit of effort on the part of the devs, as well as a less rigid community.