Blue Mage is a masterpiece of game design.

[Shougun]

When I post in that other blue mage thread for DF support one of the items I was going to add was how to prevent grind being exceptionally horrible for DF spells, but seeing people talk about it a bit here (for non DF part)...

What about this as an "easy (ish- the third one particularly)" solution for everyone including SE.

Idea 1) Spells have tiers (as one would expect, and as they do). Any content that is exclusively from within an instance will automatically has a beginning minimum ~50% learn rate. This rate is modified twice, first based on frequency cast (based on # of enemies that cast the spell in said instance and how often), second based on rarity (rarer = could mean 30% minimum chance)). Outside world has a minimum learn rate of ~25% (modified up and down based on the same rules).

- This means the harder spells will likely on average be the ones you can solo and are in the open world. Meanwhile there should be no spell ever that is 5% deep within an instance (perhaps someone's reported data was wrong but I believe that's true currently, from what I read.. could be false lol).

Idea 2) Add a unique ability to sync to the lowest level engaged monster (can be turned off at anytime, cannot be turned on during combat). When synced to any monsters at your synced level or above will have an increased chance to drop items and spells.

- Encourages one to play the content in the least OP "OP" way possible, adding to the most fun that might be possible (if you're an OP class that is overleveled, then.. well.. lol).

Idea 3) Every failed dungeon spell will drop an item to blue that when used increases the chance to learn a spell by 10%, the entire stack of items is consumed on use. Meaning if you have 5 of these items you will gain 50% increased chance (possibly up to 100%). On success the items are removed and not returned. On failure the items are returned +1.

- A single variable ("item" really) system that works for /all/ spells, such that SE doesn't need to add a bunch of systems to help prevent RNG issues (but can also lower the % of some content further).

To be honest the third idea could hold the whole system up by itself, just make it so any failed spell (dungeon or not) adds to the item stack. I just like the idea of all three working together for personal balance and smoothing.

FFXI Blue Mage was pretty rough so I haven't had issue with the failure yet but it certainly could be "modernized" a bit if they wanted lol.

[Reynhart]

Pretending it adds any difficulty to content is inaccurate.

Literal difficulty is not the only way to challenge player dedication, and the value of any content is measured by how dedicated players are to do it.

[Reveria]

As long as you can cheese it with unsynced 70s carrying a posse of BLU, I don't think the rates need to be changed. They'll be serviceable since you can do things like kill Leviathan HM in 20 seconds or so with a couple helpers. Any higher and you trivialize BLU even more than it already is.

What I'd prefer, so that BLU can meaningfully contribute to its own progression, is make spells unlearnable if you've got a 70 unsync in your party, or drastically reduced, while raising the base rate on the rarer spells to promote actually doing the content, while removing the chance someone could lose days of time on some of these low % spells (assuming current rates).

[Zephera]

Literal difficulty is not the only way to challenge player dedication, and the value of any content is measured by how dedicated players are to do it.

I personally think the BLU dungeon and trial learning parties will die out after about 2 weeks like Diadem died once the hype died down. There'll still be dedicated groups every now and then that might be charitable and have a little community run event but that'll be a minuscule fraction.

It just takes too much time investment to only have a slim chance of getting a skill that might not even be useful, much like running Diadem and hoping that you got an aetherial armour drop with decent stats. People will get tired of it pretty quickly.

I myself already burnt myself out pretty hard grinding things like mounts in the past, and not just in this MMO either. I can't do that anymore though, it depresses me these days to put a ton of time into something and not getting what I want out of it and I've long lost the ability to feel satisfaction once I do obtain the time consuming thing I'm after, I just feel really tired instead.

As proven by how several 2000's MMO are still out there while more modern one absolutely bombed, sure.

Aren't a lot of them kind of struggling though? WoW itself for example has fallen far from the WoTLK days, it's all doom and gloom there now it seems.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Literal difficulty is not the only way to challenge player dedication, and the value of any content is measured by how dedicated players are to do it.

It's the only legitimate one thought.

Time sinks are just that, wasted time, it proves nothing... Maybe it proves some people still in high school or have no job, we know probably a huge chunk of the japanese player base are NEETs. That so many elements of this game revolve around the idea of content lasting prior to content being fun is worrying. SE is so scared to run out of stuff to do, but at the same time is so obsessed to make content a RNG grind that content gets abandoned quicker due to that.

We need the: "Finally i finished my relic, i won't do this anymore" to become a "Cool, my relic weapon is finished, this wasn't so bad, took me a few hours, now i can do the other ones and enjoy CONTENT." Instead of making players to feel so fed up at the end of the processes that they drop them. Lower grind, faster progression, for a game that revoles arround progressing in all it's classes, will only encourage replayablity of content, higher participation, for longer times, encourage player to play other classes instead of "just level cap them". Since now gearing would be a real possibility and not something relegated to people that can drop unlimited time into the game.

Time sinks are never good game design, this is not 2002 anymore. MMORPGs need to improve.

[Reynhart]

It's the only legitimate one thought.

Then it's a good thing you're not the one designing the game because you'd lose a lot of players if that was your only incentive.

Time sinks are never good game design, this is not 2002 anymore. MMORPGs need to improve.

As proven by how several 2000's MMO are still out there while more modern one absolutely bombed, sure.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Then it's a good thing you're not the one designing the game because you'd lose a lot of players if that was your only incentive.

Is not my fault that people now wants to play game that require nothing from them, not even attention. One thing is casual gaming, other is wanting the games to be so mindnumbing easy that i can do content watching netflix - Ops. Let me guess, you loved Eureka right?
Games ARE fun because they present players CHALLENGES, be it technical, tactical, puzzles, problems, ethical, etc. If a game can be allowed to be played while doing something else, hardly qualifies as a videogame anymore, is little more than a clicker software.

As proven by how several 2000's MMO are still out there while more modern one absolutely bombed, sure.

That games are out, doesn't mean they are good. Steam has 30k game, 95% of them are trash.
The only MMORPGs worth talking today are 2: WoW and FFXIV. No one is talking about Ragnarok Online or Ultima Online. Only one of the current MMORPGs market leads can be considered "Classic", and is only alive because is a monster just to big to die. The day World of Warcraft "dies" and people really agree so, will be when it reaches the current concurrent playerbase of FFXIV, let that sink.

This genre is dying out, half the coming games are near vaporware crowdfunded projects that appeal to niche populations or are korean clone grinders that are hard to distinguish as they all look the same. While the big established MMORPGs are getting stagnated in their design and progress.
Every year less and less expected MMORPGs are being released, people is fleeing this genre enmasse almost. For years i've seen "Top MMORPGs to play XXXX" and the same games repeat over and over and over, while the promise of "the new generation" never arriving.

I don't know about you, but i want FFXIV to be succesfull, at least for another 5 years. And for that, it really needs to start doing that go against a model of thought that is being proven, by sheer numbers, to not be engaging to gamers anymore.

[ToriiMiyuki]

Is not my fault that people now wants to play game that require nothing from them, not even attention. One thing is casual gaming, other is wanting the games to be so mindnumbing easy that i can do content watching netflix - Ops. Let me guess, you loved Eureka right?
Games ARE fun because they present players CHALLENGES, be it technical, tactical, puzzles, problems, ethical, etc. If a game can be allowed to be played while doing something else, hardly qualifies as a videogame anymore, is little more than a clicker software.




That games are out, doesn't mean they are good. Steam has 30k game, 95% of them are trash.
The only MMORPGs worth talking today are 2: WoW and FFXIV. No one is talking about Ragnarok Online or Ultima Online. Only one of the current MMORPGs market leads can be considered "Classic", and is only alive because is a monster just to big to die. The day World of Warcraft "dies" and people really agree so, will be when it reaches the current concurrent playerbase of FFXIV, let that sink.

This genre is dying out, half the coming games are near vaporware crowdfunded projects that appeal to niche populations or are korean clone grinders that are hard to distinguish as they all look the same. While the big established MMORPGs are getting stagnated in their design and progress.
Every year less and less expected MMORPGs are being released, people is fleeing this genre enmasse almost. For years i've seen "Top MMORPGs to play XXXX" and the same games repeat over and over and over, while the promise of "the new generation" never arriving.

I don't know about you, but i want FFXIV to be succesfull, at least for another 5 years. And for that, it really needs to start doing that go against a model of thought that is being proven, by sheer numbers, to not be engaging to gamers anymore.

It's surprising how many companies are willing to fall for the same exact things, time and time again and those that appear to be different are literally also the same.

The only ones that survive are those that have such a vicious financial profit that they chug along, but I feel people are becoming more 'awake' to predatory designs and avoiding them.

[Reynhart]

Is not my fault that people now wants to play game that require nothing from them, not even attention.

No, it's your fault that you only view the game from one point of view, which is far for the legitimate only one.

Let me guess, you loved Eureka right?

Yes, I love Eureka, but not because it's difficult or easy, but because it's more social than everything else in the game combined.

Games ARE fun because they present players CHALLENGES, be it technical, tactical, puzzles, problems, ethical, etc.

Ok, so not only you have one strict POV on "dedication", but now on "fun" too.

I don't know about you, but i want FFXIV to be succesfull, at least for another 5 years.

For an MMO to be successful, it needs players. And for that, it needs to understand that different players have different legitimate tastes and legitimate expectations. It also need to have more long term goals, and difficulty is the shortest timesink of all.

And for that, it really needs to start doing that go against a model of thought that is being proven, by sheer numbers, to not be engaging to gamers anymore.

You realize that the "sheer number" of people engaged in difficult content is a single dot on XIV's demography, right ? The problem of FFXIV is not difficulty, it's stagnation. And for that, BLU (and Eureka) are far better solutions that another Savage raid or a third Ultimate.

[Zephera]

For an MMO to be successful, it needs players. And for that, it needs to understand that different players have different legitimate tastes and legitimate expectations. It also need to have more long term goals, and difficulty is the shortest timesink of all.

Timesinks aren't actually a very good idea these days though. Gamers are spoiled for choice on games that give rewards in much less time, lots of free ones too that can reward you pretty quick like Path of Exile. It's a serious challenge for an MMO to retain casual players through timesinks, they'll get bored and leave to find a quick fix. Timesinks only worked well in the past because you had relatively limited choice for quality games in certain genres, you practically couldn't lose the casual players because that was all they had at the time.

I agree that stagnation is a major issue though, but I think the best way to solve that would be to have a massive influx of fresh content released at a quicker pace. Unfortunately this isn't going to happen with the budget any MMO these days has. BLU is good for the novelty value but that will die off as it falls into stagnation waiting to be drip fed new content like everything else in MMO's these days. It's a real shame.