Instant-gratification, and the "Time Sink Here, Time Sink There" song. VERY LONG

[Kopuno]

Holy hell wall of text, but the parts I did read made me "lol" and true enough, +10 to you sir.

[Volsung]

Its not that I want instant gratification, its that I don't want to go 30+ fights at ~30-40 minutes each (including turning in the win, getting new lantern and waiting for reentry time, if i have tapers ready) without getting "anything" to show progress.

It's hard to balance, I realise that, but that ends up being 15 HOURS of actual gameplay. I have done way more than the above random/out of my ass numbers and have 3 random weapons to show for it.

(I have done ifrit a lot, for exp on other classes mostly :/ lol)

[fusional]

OP, i salute you. i wish i had a dozen mules to like your post with.

(related tangent: it's powerfully interesting to me how we have 8 times as many threads in the english general forum than they do in the japanese general forum. could it be NA players and japanese players are using these forums for very different purposes? could it be this ties directly into the underlying theme of OP's post? i strongly doubt there are 8 times more english players than japanese...)

[chocothief]

I would understand the analogy if a goal had a 1% chance of scoring a point. Right now people are winning the fights and getting nothing at all.

[fusional]

I would understand the analogy if a goal had a 1% chance of scoring a point. Right now people are winning the fights and getting nothing at all.

i would understand your beef with the analogy if the actual drop rates were anywhere remotely close to 1%. but they're not.

and as far as people winning and not getting anything... so?

i logged 78 King Behemoth kills in my FFXI career. you can't farm KB every 30mins. it doesn't even pop every day. 1-1.5 times a week on average. in that time i only saw two Defending Rings drop. i didn't win the roll on either of them.

that's not to say this loot system should be like that. but it is to say: quit your bitching. you don't know pain. (and, as OP said: for those who DO get the defending ring, the elation is UNMATCHED)

[Ilean]

i would understand your beef with the analogy if the actual drop rates were anywhere remotely close to 1%. but they're not.

They actually seem around 5%, which in my book is close to 1%, in a scale of 1 to 100.


It's one thing to "know pain" and another, sad, to like pain.

[Betelgeuzah]

Opposing thoughts:

Complexity=/=Difficulty. Sometimes this is the case, sometimes it is not the case. That is the fundamental problem with game design in general. Is the fact that this feature is complex beneficial from a game design standpoint? What exactly does it add to the gameplay experience? If an empirical answer (or a theory that can be assumed to work in reality) can not be found, the feature is complex for no good reason whatsoever.

The OP does not define what exactly he is going up against. In fact, he has two separate subjects paired with analogues that, like with analogues in general, can not be applied to this game. Let me explain why that is.

In the case of chess and soccer, the rules he mentioned add a great depth and strategy to the games in question. The benefits are clearly demonstrated if necessary and the justification for their existence is valid.

That said, like I mentioned in my first paragraph it is completely inaccurate to generalize complexity with depth that actually adds to the game. People here have been, for the past year, asking for the devs to simplify any and all sorts of complex gameplay features, as well as given ideas for new features, with both justifiable and unjustifiable complexity. Personally, I feel that this thread is attempting to greatly over-simplify and generalize the subject, oblivious to the fact that the topic at hand is quite multi-dimensional in nature.

That said, in my opinion it would do the community good to stop thinking of these definitions in such a black-and-white fashion, and to start discussing them from the standpoint of "what does it add to the gameplay?" The answer to that question determines whether there is proper justification for keeping a feature, simplifying it or outright removing it completely.

As far as time sinks are concerned, a lot of variables exist too. Something people could ask of themselves, would be to think what exactly is the dev team trying to accomplish with the recent changes to the primal fight formula. Outright stating that it is there for no reason would be an insult to any designer. It is clearly not so simple, and even though the hundreds of game design experts that have gathered here would lead us to believe otherwise, it never really is.

[fusional]

They actually seem around 5%, which in my book is close to 1%, in a scale of 1 to 100.

obviously your book didn't pay attention in statistics class

[TheFatHousecat]

OP, I pray a flock of beautiful women find their way to your crotch by day's end.

[fusional]

OP will you make me an honest Miqo'te?

(it's a trap)