Clearly you don't get what I meant.
Equates to saying: this cat is orange, but that's wrong because it's blue.
So my LS and I just got done Farming the NM who gives the Copper Zahar'ak key and we got the keys but no drops of the Wristband for mages. We farmed it for over 5 hours and some 45-50 kills later still nothing. Explain how this drop rate is even fair or works cause im baffled as to how the hell you can get numerous keys and open the chest over and over and over and be rewarded with crap gear but not the rare item, yet a person can go in and in 5-10 mins get the drop? I believe the drop rate of this item as well as others from the chests in Strongholds needs to be looked at closely and adjusted because come on who wants to farm something for endless hours each night just to not get the item after 100 or more tries?
It happens. Same thing happened to my LS at Sentinel Celata. 4+ hours with nothing to show for it. The next day though, we got 4 of them in less than three. Sometimes its just not in the cards.
I'm not one to agree with Answa, but he's right this time.
Now in any other type of game, I would agree that time spent at repetitive tasks is often a poor instrument to mete out difficulty. It's usually a factor that adds frustration, boredom, tedium to what should be a fun moment. (It's not always true, sometimes it can be even be enjoyably relaxing, but in general, it's usually not welcome).
However, MMOs have the problem of content that runs out fast. At some point, if you want rare, valuable treasures in the game that can't be breezed through by just anyone, you're going to have to use time as a way to keep it that way (rare, that is).
Time is the ultimate difficulty in any MMO. How much you have towaste--I mean--spend is the principle currency of any hardcore player.
(original by GalvatronZero)
I think I see what you're saying but it seems to be a misunderstanding. I wasn't talking about the definition of difficulty being subjective, I was talking about how some things are more difficult for some people than they are for others, which is exactly what the person I was quoting meant when they said difficulty is subjective.
As in, even if it takes one person 5 kills to get an item and it takes another person 50 kills to get that item, it is not any more difficult for the second person, just more time consuming.
Last edited by Pyree; 11-18-2011 at 02:03 PM.
I think the real question is, did the person who took 50 kills to get an item find it difficult to watch someone else get it in 5 kills?
The random rate at which these items drop adds to the motivation, and some will be lucky enough to end the grind early, but for the vast majority, it will be a test of patience. A difficult test of patience.
(original by GalvatronZero)
Exactly but that is the nature of an MMO, put in the time and enjoy the rewards. Its a time sink plain and simple, I just hope the devs put in enough enjoyable content so that I can have fun along the way. Ifrit was near impossible w/o the current strats available, then its killed, then its farmable by top groups, then pickup groups begin getting wins. Just because the fight can be won easily doesn't mean you can't push yourself every time. The problem with scaling drops by just increasing difficulty is at some point everyone starts bitching and moaning about how its too hard, in order to make things rare u either make difficulty so insane very very few can clear it or you make drop rates low enough to balance the drops in the economy.
I'm not one to normally disagree with you, but I will have to at this time. Strange world, isn't it?I'm not one to agree with Answa, but he's right this time.
Now in any other type of game, I would agree that time spent at repetitive tasks is often a poor instrument to mete out difficulty. It's usually a factor that adds frustration, boredom, tedium to what should be a fun moment. (It's not always true, sometimes it can be even be enjoyably relaxing, but in general, it's usually not welcome).
However, MMOs have the problem of content that runs out fast. At some point, if you want rare, valuable treasures in the game that can't be breezed through by just anyone, you're going to have to use time as a way to keep it that way (rare, that is).
Time is the ultimate difficulty in any MMO. How much you have towaste--I mean--spend is the principle currency of any hardcore player.
My personal beef with XIV right now is the fact that everything in the game is a time sink (and other posters, I KNOW MMOs are all about time sinks, so cut that argument out please), but it's not masked enough to be an enjoyable timesink; as Pyree just said, just because other MMOs do it doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing to do. Certain tropes for MMOs are indeed good to follow - an Auction House, a PC-friendly UI, easily accessible place to store your loot, etc, but others IMO are not.
The game in its current state doesn't keep you mentally engaged enough to want to keep doing the same things over and over and over again. I know developers put time sinks in the game to keep you wanting to play on a daily basis and to keep you paying your subscription fee, but there is a very fine balance for that line. IMO you could say there's an almost diminishing returns formula to it where as you make a game more grindy, tedious, and boring to play - ESPECIALLY an MMO that you pay money on a monthly basis for - the more players you will lose. SE has to find that fine line where they can keep the content engaging yet not to a point where it drives away players.
Time can be the ultimate difficulty in an MMO, I agree, but it shouldn't be the only means of progression/limitation for an MMO. Blarp made a great suggestion a few posts back: I would agree with a form of loot reward where they make you "work" for the content through stuff that challenges your ability to play over the course of several days (or even weeks), rather than challenges your mental capacity to deal with a silly RNG - that is a great way to keep you engaged and playing without reducing the game down to a lottery roll.
Proud member of the "why the the heck are giant obnoxious images allowed in signatures" club.
Originally Posted by kensredemption
I'd rather play solo than play with a bunch of elitists.
You think thats bad?
I went 40+ KEYS and nothing from the CHEST.
You got it easy friend.
BCNMs anyone?
You spend time farming seals and then you had to go through a difficult fight for items.
You didn't always get what you want but you almost always came out with something good.
This is how things should be done.
IMO
The amount of times you need to kill Ifrit to get a weapon shouldn't exceed by far the amount of times the fight is actually fun and thrilling.
(Because otherwise it means the game requires a sacrifice in boredom to give you items and that's just wrong)
Lag issues aside (where I would get blown up half a second after cracks appeared, or I would get blown up even if I had moved half the map away from them) Ifrit stopped being a challenge the very first time we managed to form a retard-free party.
By the 5th win it was nothing but boring routine.
So you have a fight that isn't even fun or challenging and you need to do it 50+ times to get the couple of weapons you want.
The fact that you can't pick your weapon only makes it worse.
I understand that the game is broken now and SE is trying to keep us busy, but at least for me this actually makes me less likely to stay.
Grinding bosses is still grinding.
I think I would be (gladly) willing to do an average of 10 ifrits per weapon, if being allowed to pick which one I get. I would likely do twice the ifrits I need, helping people get their weapons and I wouldn't mind either.
As it is now:
-Beating ifrit means nothing. It becomes routine because you are forced to do it ridiculously way too many times if you want a reward.
-The OCD kind of player who MUST have all weapons and switch the lights on and off 10 times is having a blast, too bad they are a small minority.
-The rest of the players are getting bored of having to grind ifrit over and over and over, to the point where the boredom of farming is so huge that the weapon reward is just not worth it anymore. It's not that killing ifrit is hard, it's not fun anymore and there are other games, on and offline where you can do more interesting/thrilling/rewarding things.
Bottomline: SE's idea of retaining players by putting the carrot on a really really long stick is absolutely stupid, it's nothing but negative reinforcement that in your customers' brains translates to:
"Beating ifrit in FFXIV gets me dark matter 95% of the time, that's 0.71% chance of getting each weapon that I care about"
Last edited by Ilean; 11-19-2011 at 01:08 PM.
Rarely Plays
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loltanaka: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOw2yWMSfk
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