Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[SaberMaxwell]

Duty Finder, or Party Finder, (or anything that make you play with random people) does not negate social interactions even when most people stay silent. I really don't understand your point, after all, DF is not that different from PF or spamming a general channel.

No need to go around looking for a party when you can just push a button and BAM, you're in a queue. No need to hang out near the dungeon or raid entrance and possibly--I dunno--socialize with people nearby who might have similar interests and goals to yours, possibly making some friends.

Just click, queue, enter, and never see that party again once you're done.

[RoyalBeef]

I mean in that case why don't we abolish df entirely to enforce those social interactions? :shrug:

I'd love that. I made more friends in 2 weeks of grinding Eureka than I made in the 1.5 years prior doing stuf via DF and PF lol.

[Dzian]

No need to go around looking for a party when you can just push a button and BAM, you're in a queue. No need to hang out near the dungeon or raid entrance and possibly--I dunno--socialize with people nearby who might have similar interests and goals to yours, possibly making some friends.

Just click, queue, enter, and never see that party again once you're done.

This is why so many free companies and groups of friends fall apart. because the game is essentially encourages anti social behaviour..

In a party with some friends. well i'm sorry you can't proceed on this quest until you tell them to sod off..

in a piece of content in general i'm sorry you cant ask a question cos you must mash the hell out of your skills.

oh 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, or 10+ of you want to go do something. hahahahah not a chance.... 4, 8 or GTFO. unless you counts fates or unsyncing dinosaur content.

got your weekly raid clear well sorry you cant go help your friend get his because you'll screw his loot drops.....

everywhere you look you're discouraged from being social

[Driavna]

No need to go around looking for a party when you can just push a button and BAM, you're in a queue. No need to hang out near the dungeon or raid entrance and possibly--I dunno--socialize with people nearby who might have similar interests and goals to yours, possibly making some friends.

Just click, queue, enter, and never see that party again once you're done.

I was about to edit my topic to acknowledge your point. And you are not wrong, however, players are to blame too. Some will rather complain over and over about how bad all dungeons parties are, how all extreme farm parties are traps, how the new loot system sucks over and over than solving the problem by joining others with similar objectives. In fact, that behaviour was also present in many MMO's before the standardization of similar tools to FFXIV DF.

Anyway, since you asked: Yes. In fact, if Phanteon is released at some point and turns out to be an acceptable game I will leave FFXIV for good (ok, perhaps I will sub from time to time to finish the current MSQ plot :P). But I will also leave FFXIV if at some point they do something similar to GW: Nightfall, that's my line (even if I agree with many of Dzian points).

[Machi_Machiavelli]

Probably less to do with common mmo dynamics and more to do with you no longer, or never, liking those dynamics. This is operating like every sub based mmo I've ever played. Not sure what the problem is.

[MaraD_]

On the topic of balance I always thought that if there is this really good job and this really bad job then please don't bring goood job down to be closer to bad job but instead bring bad job up to be closer to good job.

I agree with u on homogenisation, that would suck, when I play DRG I want it to feel a lot different then when I'm playing RDM and the difference not being just melee/ranged, I want it to feel like a new experience and so far for me personally the game achieves that.

the "bring up, not down" is a good mentality, but it doesnt always work.
in fact, its the very reason tanks got so homogonized in the 1st place.
-X% dmg taken style mitigation, rather than +X% stat mitigation led to PLD being way more broken. (Not just simply better than WAR)
they uppwed WAR to match, but this now makes all tanks have to have -X% dmg taken styled mitigation.
Which, in turn, limited uniqueness options in tanks. There's still plenty of options, but SE doesnt seem to notice their pool of options atm.
But none the less, going by basic RPG/MMO standards, this eliminated many options that could have worked for tanks.

sometimes you do need to nerf down to another job.

[linay]

This is why so many free companies and groups of friends fall apart. because the game is essentially encourages anti social behaviour..

In a party with some friends. well i'm sorry you can't proceed on this quest until you tell them to sod off..

in a piece of content in general i'm sorry you cant ask a question cos you must mash the hell out of your skills.

oh 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, or 10+ of you want to go do something. hahahahah not a chance.... 4, 8 or GTFO. unless you counts fates or unsyncing dinosaur content.

got your weekly raid clear well sorry you cant go help your friend get his because you'll screw his loot drops.....

everywhere you look you're discouraged from being social

Free companies and groups of friends fall apart because they choose not to socialize with each other.

You don't need to be in a party to socialize.

There is room to ask question even in combat, and can use voice chat if you're with friends/FC/static.

3 people can run any non-solo content together, 5-7 people can run any 8-man content together. Any combination of people can separate into multiple parties, including the 3 people doing solo content at the same time. Being social can be flexible.

The last part is true, but that's for a reason, and you could've gotten your clears together if you wanted.

Everywhere you look you can find a way to be social, even in a randon DF group that you may never see again. Being social is a player attitude, not a game mechanic. I've seen people socialize during an MSQ roulette run.

[Dzian]

You don't need to be in a party to socialize

Generally you kinda do. Socializing to many people means doing things with other people. and in xivs context that generally means being part of a group.

Seperating into multiple parties isn't really socialising either ts segregation. if you and 8 or 9 of your friends all got together and went to a restaurant for a meal would you split up into 2 or 3 groups or would you have 1 big table for the whole group?

XIV is much the same. if 5 of you want to go and do something together what do you do? do 4 of you go do expert and exclude the 5th? of you go with some random pugs to fill the group that might have there own agendas that dont mesh with your goals.

XIV is much the same this is why people have wanted FC content since early beta's. content that wholegroups of people can be a part of and take part in. that was one of the ideas behind the old concept of FC's having the power to summon primals. and it's that kind of group interaction and team work that people have wanted for a long time.

it's been a long standing complaint that it's impossible to include everyone in things because there's nothing to do. the closest thing to fitting content would be canals/aquopolis with its flexible party sizes but even thats limited.

It's not sociable if a player has to leave a group of friends in order to progresss in a quest. sociable would beif that palyer and his friends could actually go do that whole quest together. rahter than each of them having to do it alone...

how often do players leave free companies because they dont feel a part of the group? how can they when it's impossible to include them..

recent example of personal experience was when HoH came out and 5 of us wanted to static it.... ummmmm?

[Lium]

And yet the Old School Runescape is still going strong and it's combat system is simplicity incarnate. Since I grew up with Runescape, I never saw the appeal over pushing dozens of buttons to do damage vs pushing one. When I played Halo PC, only 3 buttons did damage, shoot, grenade and melee and that game was a masterpiece. I don't see Homogenization as a big problem. Players do want simplicity and accessibility, but I also think players want more variety in the challenge levels. At the moment it's a bit binary on the difficulty, normal / extreme. Some players I think are willing to engage in more challenging content, without it being an extreme level fight.

Yeah, this is the side of the argument that I fall on. People are always complaining about simplicity and lack of difficulty in their games, and also, lack of originality and innovation, and yet, the market has shown consistently that whenever an MMO does come out that caters to a more hardcore crowd (WildStar) or is original and unique (The Chronicles of Spellborn) no one plays it, and the games are shutdown.

I'm all for challenging content but it should be optional like it is now. Savage and Extreme content are there with great rewards if you want to try and tackle it. But the normal mode of the game focuses mainly on the story, which for me is perfect. I do agree class identity is something I miss in older games like vanilla WoW. And I never understood why anyone would cry about nerfing another class in PvE. PvE is coop. You're all on the same side trying to down the same bosses.

PvP, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast. That's where class balance is MUCH MORE important, in my opinion.

[Xatsh]

To comment on the FC issue:

Free Companies in this game honestly do not function as guilds. They function as chat channels. There is honestly no guild content in FFXIV, literally 0.

The problem in Free companies is if you are attempting to building anything besides a social casual guild it is destined to fail, simply due to the game makes it impossible to really build a guild. FFXIV is one of the only AAA mmo games where this is the case.

Statics are the anti-guild honestly, a click within a guild almost always destabilizes the greater guild as people only want to do things with their group of people thus leaving out huge chunks of the guild making members not in statics leave. I had to kick a whole static of 8 ppl out of my guild in HW due to them wanting to Sell clears at a discount to the guild instead of helping them, because they did not want to "Carry PPL"..... This crap is the problem.

You do not have that feeling of a guild in ffxiv. It is I am in X static. Thing is I cannot blame the shift to static mentality, the game forces you to prioritize statics over guilds. The game actually punishes you for attempting to do endgame as a guild. Aka loot penalties for helping guild members clear content. In my guild even when it had 80 ppl in it... most static groups made their own discords and hung out there. So with 30-40 ppl online 6-7 would be on the guild discord while 20-25 would be on private discords. <= this is toxic as hell to the guild btw.

Guilds in mmos have always been the backbone of your social circle, what made mmos different then another online game. yes you can socialize in DF and such but it is not even close to the same as doing content with your guild.

Free Companies in FFXIV die or fail to actually grow because there is nothing for them to build on. They are not needed in this game. Honestly in the mmo world... FFXIV has the absolute worst guild system and guild support I have ever seen. At least from my experience from mmos I have been a guild leader in or officer in. EQ, WoW, FFXI, FFXIV, Archeage, RO, Aion.