PAX EAST: I was the person that asked the "Challenging content" question at the end.

[BigRed5392]

snip

issue is not everyone enjoys raids but does need to increase their ilvl as cap content has ilvl restrictions, like need to be 230 for story, and if you are a fresh 60, getting that 230 can be overwhelming. More so if you are not used to the system, remember not everyone played WoW. If the community was less cut throat, things would be better.

Instead of asking for this for the right now, look to suggest things for the long term, and be willing to go back and help people through.

challenging content is subjective, and things get easier. Which is why yoshida said what he said.

I'm all for adding more content, but i rather they do things to promote a better community on NA side. Or NA side do better as a community.

[Istaru]

I apologize for the length of this, it wound up much larger than I thought it would.

issue is not everyone enjoys raids but does need to increase their ilvl as cap content has ilvl restrictions, like need to be 230 for story, and if you are a fresh 60, getting that 230 can be overwhelming. More so if you are not used to the system.

Everyone doesn't have to enjoy raids. Not a requirement, I don't think anyone said that it was a requirement. What I think that is being asked for, is to have content other than the latest savage to have some difficulty to it. They could make the same thing have more variety of difficulty. An example:

Going to play with the Nidhogg fight, with the following things:
Weapon = same ilvl as current tomestone ilvl +5
Weapon upgrade makes it tomestone+10 to match the powered up tomestone weapon
bird is the Nidhogg bird
crafting material would be for making a Nidhogg glowy or for furniture or whatever
VE=Very Easy, E=Easy, N=Normal, D=(Difficult and VD=Very Difficult

• Nidhogg VE (ilvl-10) - 0% weapon, 0% upgrade, 0% bird, 0% material
• Nidhogg E (ilvl-5) - 25% weapon, 0% upgrade, 0% bird, 0% material
• Nihogg N (ilvl) - 50% weapon, 1% upgrade, 0.5% bird, 0% material
• Nidhogg D (ilvl+5) - 75% weapon, 5% upgrade, 1% bird, 0% material
• Nidhogg VD (ilvl+10) - 100% weapon, 10% upgrade, 5% bird, 5% material

For the same fight, the ilvl+10 has all the moves of the current EX, and the I-10 has the current moves of the Normal mode. They add and remove parts of the fight mechanics and lower and raise stats based on the difficulty.

It did not require much more dev time since all the same assets are used for all 5 difficulties.

Part of your challenge to catch up in ilvl is the extreme verticality of gearing in this game. We ended with Gubal library gear at i148, Dun Scaith is i235. That is 87 levels to make up. That is a lot.

Compare that to the end of ARR, the last dungeon rewarded i47 gear, and WoD required i90. It only needed 43 levels to make it.

You are also limited by the limited number of options you have to make ground up. They are factors of how they design and deliver content. That is something I would like to see them change, slow down how fast we progress through gear. I still want gear progression, just not so fast, it does harm new players in their ability to catch up.

Remember not everyone played WoW.

I never played WoW. I am probably in the same boat as you on that. FFXI, FFXIV 1.0 and FFXIV ARR/Hw.

If the community was less cut throat, things would be better.

An answer to that can go many different ways. I will only look at one part of it, someone could write a book on that subject. A really big book.

Part of that goes back to how they handle progression in this game. They do not release a lot of content in each patch. That is ok. Problem is that they invalidate so much content so quickly. Content does not need to stay relevant for years and years and years like in XI. But longer than 3-6 months, or less, could help with that.

I am going to continue responding to this after another part of your post taken out of order.

challenging content is subjective, and things get easier. Which is why yoshida said what he said.

That is part of progression. It is totally ok.

Here is the problem, when your content starts at very easy, where it goes next is not particularly good, especially when every encounter is highly scripted and unchanging. It goes to boring, dull, tedious, a chore, tiring, I could go on, I hope you see where I am going with this.

Back to the other part of what you said about the community. They keep funneling us back into old content for the relic and for tomestones as examples. They are requiring that we go back and do content again, that is just not fun. It isn't, there is no excitement in going back and doing ARF for 160 runs to get one step of that item completed. It is a chore and time consuming as it is used to give people something to do. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that the fun is missing.

This is supposed to be a form of entertainment, it does not do a very good job of that at times due to how they distribute that entertainment. They need to address that.

Part of the toxicity between the players comes from the lack of enjoyable content that lasts and has multiple uses. A lot of content in this game is one and done for the excitement part, after that it is just going through the motions with predictable mechanics and results. There isn't anything to get excited about.

Instead of asking for this for the right now, look to suggest things for the long term, and be willing to go back and help people through.

I do go back and help people with things. I have put this in other places. One of my favorite things in this game is actually something with my FC. It is "movie night". Where we take a new player who has reached the end of ARR through the 2 level 50 MSQ dungeons. Wait for it.

We do it min ilvl, which syncs us to level 42. No gigantic pulls, no faceroll start to finish. We actually have to do mechanics and not mess up too much or we will wipe. That is fun.

Failure is fun. Failure is what makes success taste so good when you finally get it.

I'm all for adding more content, but i rather they do things to promote a better community on NA side. Or NA side do better as a community.

Look at all of this in another light please.

I like harder content. Due to how they create and distribute that content, there is not much for me to do. I also like glamours (the relic is a glamour to me), mounts and minions.

How do you obtain those items, especially the relic?

Go back and grind old content, a lot. Remember earlier, the content starts at very easy and goes to boring and tedious. For the relic, you have to go and do a lot of tedious work. It is not fun. For things that are not fun, people want to get them over with and out of the way so they can go have fun (kinda like work), when you mix those people with people who, due to being new, lesser geared or skilled, problems ensue. The person working on a relic has spent the last 4 hours running ARF with friends who are as well geared as they are and achieved 20% of their goal. They spend the next 4 hours in DF, we will assume instant pops, and in the same amount of time, they only achieve another 5%.

Repeat this over and over, on content that is not fun. You will see the attitudes of many people rapidly make their way into the toilet.

I think that for a lot of what you mention, the lack of interesting content is part of the problems you are mentioning.