Why can't Dungeons be longer/harder, but more... piecework?

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. The roulette is not an obligatory daily task now. Spamming the highest dungeon you can enter is sufficient for experience points and/or tomestones (and may even be better in terms of keeping up with gear upgrades as you level), not to mention the other means of gaining said rewards.

Yes, but why would most players, say, spam the latest dungeon(s) 7 times when they can just do their daily expert roulette 4 times (over 4 days, ofc) for the same result?

The daily bonus and others like it try to oblige a daily playtime requirement. It isn't much, but it is a pressure that devalues playing for potentially longer periods at whatever time you wish to play in favor of daily chunks which are quickly made less efficient after the first 20-40 minutes (unless doing a MS roulette for leveling, ofc, in which case we should add on another 40 minutes).

So the simple question was, would it be better if the game left your playtime more flexible by not encouraging daily log-ins, and instead only weekly completions or the like?

[linay]

Yes, but why would most players, say, spam the latest dungeon(s) 7 times when they can just do their daily expert roulette 4 times (over 4 days, ofc) for the same result?

The daily bonus and others like it try to oblige a daily playtime requirement. It isn't much, but it is a pressure that devalues playing for potentially longer periods at whatever time you wish to play in favor of daily chunks which are quickly made less efficient after the first 20-40 minutes (unless doing a MS roulette for leveling, ofc, in which case we should add on another 40 minutes).

So the simple question was, would it be better if the game left your playtime more flexible by not encouraging daily log-ins, and instead only weekly completions or the like?

Well, like I said, gear, for one. You can do all the roulettes and not get a single gear upgrade unless you just want tomestones.

And something being more "efficient" than another in one thing does not make it obligatory or put pressure on you. You have complete control over how you spend your time. What puts pressure on you is yourself (or your friend if your trying to rush to be able to play with them).

I think the game is pretty flexible as it is, depending on your goal and how fast you want to get to it.

[PyurBlue]

And something being more "efficient" than another in one thing does not make it obligatory or put pressure on you. You have complete control over how you spend your time. What puts pressure on you is yourself (or your friend if your trying to rush to be able to play with them).

You have control over how you spend your free time, not necessarily all of your time. Time gated bonus do influence what is or isn't efficient and can persuade you to play in a way that you'd rather not. You don't have to play the game at all of course, but avoiding it entirely would just be silly if there are parts of it that you enjoy.

I find daily and weekly rewards to be inflexible at times and I'd prefer not having to take them into account when trying to progress through the game.

[linay]

You have control over how you spend your free time, not necessarily all of your time. Time gated bonus do influence what is or isn't efficient and can persuade you to play in a way that you'd rather not. You don't have to play the game at all of course, but avoiding it entirely would just be silly if there are parts of it that you enjoy.

I find daily and weekly rewards to be inflexible at times and I'd prefer not having to take them into account when trying to progress through the game.

It can persuade, but does not obligate you to do anything. Also, specifically to the topic of this thread (dungeons), the only dailies are the roulettes, and all the rewards from roulettes can be gained by other methods that are not time gated. So you indeed have flexibility in how you want to play depending on your situation and goal (how much time you have to play or whether you need gear upgrade/MSQ completion/experience points, etc).

[PyurBlue]

It can persuade, but does not obligate you to do anything.

That depends on your goal. If you're trying to level and want the most XP/time, you need to make use of roulettes. Without a roulette bonus, it wouldn't matter if you logged in for roulettes once a day, or just ran a bunch of dungeons at the end of the week.

Also, specifically to the topic of this thread (dungeons), the only dailies are the roulettes, and all the rewards from roulettes can be gained by other methods that are not time gated.

Roulette rewards aren't exclusive, but that's not the problem, it's that they make one way (or schedule I guess) of obtaining those rewards better than others in terms of efficiency.

So you indeed have flexibility in how you want to play depending on your situation and goal (how much time you have to play or whether you need gear upgrade/MSQ completion/experience points, etc).

There is some flexibility, but time gating isn't contributing to that at all.

[Shurrikhan]

It can persuade, but does not obligate you to do anything. Also, specifically to the topic of this thread (dungeons), the only dailies are the roulettes, and all the rewards from roulettes can be gained by other methods that are not time gated. So you indeed have flexibility in how you want to play depending on your situation and goal (how much time you have to play or whether you need gear upgrade/MSQ completion/experience points, etc).

Sorry, I was using the term similarly to "If you want to do Ultimate, you are obliged to be well-geared and choose a job that isn't distinctly sub-optimal", but in this case "If one wants to grind tomes efficiently, roulettes are obligatory."
They are not strictly necessary (you can get carried even in Ultimate), but you'd certainly never be able to complain about your inability to achieve those ends if you didn't first use those means.

Looking at roulettes specifically, we are systematically encouraged to spend less time on content of our choosing as to benefit the content of others. It largely cycles back to where we all at many point have benefited from roulettes (even if we do still get the conspicuous party of all 80s doing Titan for a Trial roulette), backing it balance back while also giving us some variety.

If that were the end of it, I wouldn't see even the slightest issue. But...

• What about the people who want to random content and/or content that helps people (for them, that "random" is then still "chosen" content, in a sense)?
• And, what does the massive disparity in EXP efficiency between just doing dailies and actually progressing through content at your level do for your sense of progression when leveling a job?

Or, more simply put, why don't Roulettes just attempt to make other content just slightly more efficient than your own on your first use per day and only slightly less efficient thereafter, instead of initially far more efficient and then nearly worthless?

Would that added flexibility, by less noticeably conditioning the player or skewing their decision with the relative carrot (efficiency for doing what roulettes ask of you) and stick (inefficiency for doing what you want), be better or worse for the game?

[linay]

That depends on your goal. If you're trying to level and want the most XP/time, you need to make use of roulettes. Without a roulette bonus, it wouldn't matter if you logged in for roulettes once a day, or just ran a bunch of dungeons at the end of the week.



Roulette rewards aren't exclusive, but that's not the problem, it's that they make one way (or schedule I guess) of obtaining those rewards better than others in terms of efficiency.


There is some flexibility, but time gating isn't contributing to that at all.

There is always a most efficient way of achieving a goal. Flexibility means you can sacrifice that efficiency if you value other things and it won't be such a detriment to your goal. If you want the most efficient method, then of course you've limited yourself to whatever is the most efficient method available.

And again, time gating is only a problem if you limit yourself to the time gated content. The only time gate you cannot overcome is the weekly tomestone cap and weekly raid drop, which has nothing to do with the roulette. You can do the roulette and supplement it with other contents if you want to continue farming whatever it is you want.

Sorry, I was using the term similarly to "If you want to do Ultimate, you are obliged to be well-geared and choose a job that isn't distinctly sub-optimal", but in this case "If one wants to grind tomes efficiently, roulettes are obligatory."
They are not strictly necessary (you can get carried even in Ultimate), but you'd certainly never be able to complain about your inability to achieve those ends if you didn't first use those means.

Looking at roulettes specifically, we are systematically encouraged to spend less time on content of our choosing as to benefit the content of others. It largely cycles back to where we all at many point have benefited from roulettes (even if we do still get the conspicuous party of all 80s doing Titan for a Trial roulette), backing it balance back while also giving us some variety.

If that were the end of it, I wouldn't see even the slightest issue. But...

• What about the people who want to random content and/or content that helps people (for them, that "random" is then still "chosen" content, in a sense)?
• And, what does the massive disparity in EXP efficiency between just doing dailies and actually progressing through content at your level do for your sense of progression when leveling a job?

Or, more simply put, why don't Roulettes just attempt to make other content just slightly more efficient than your own on your first use per day and only slightly less efficient thereafter, instead of initially far more efficient and then nearly worthless?

Would that added flexibility, by less noticeably conditioning the player or skewing their decision with the relative carrot (efficiency for doing what roulettes ask of you) and stick (inefficiency for doing what you want), be better or worse for the game?

I don't think the comparison with the requirements to do Ultimate is valid. For one, being well geared and using the right job is either a duty or a party requirement. To say that they're "not strictly necessary" would be to ignore item level requirement that the duty has as well as the attitude of many potential group recruiters. The roulette is not a requirement in that way as it's entirely a personal choice. It's an activity that gives you incentive, but doesn't require you to do it to achieve that incentive.

If all you care about is efficiency, then feel free to do the roulettes. But if you also care about something else, that you can also do that other thing in place of the roulette or in addition to the roulette. Tomestones, for example, you can cap easily if you're active at doing hunts or Eureka (in Stormblood) or even treasure maps. You're not required to do roulettes every day to cap tomestones. Or you can just do 5 expert roulettes for 5 days and not touch the other roulettes. That gives you plenty of time to do other things.

[Shurrikhan]

There is always a most efficient way of achieving a goal. Flexibility means you can sacrifice that efficiency if you value other things and it won't be such a detriment to your goal. If you want the most efficient method, then of course you've limited yourself to whatever is the most efficient method available.

And again, time gating is only a problem if you limit yourself to the time gated content. The only time gate you cannot overcome is the weekly tomestone cap and weekly raid drop, which has nothing to do with the roulette. You can do the roulette and supplement it with other contents if you want to continue farming whatever it is you want.

Nearly all content in this game is time-gated content unless one ignores any and all rewards. Raids, Trials, Dungeons, challenge logs, PvP, side-content, etc., is all in some way time-gated. While not all players will care about the cappable rewards, most do consider reward systems as at least a nod to the intended direction of the game, if not a blatant pointer.

Your comment about there always being a most efficient means likewise seems a bit disingenuous. Is it most efficient by .3%? By 3%? By 30%? The difference in perceived obligation between those is huge. 0.3% isn't noticed, period. 3% is noticeable under constraint. 30% is noticeable even to the most casual pursuit of a goal. The question isn't whether a most efficient means should exist, but rather whether it should be so much more efficient that it's apparent and significant to everyone. No one's railing at the fact that a meta may exist, for instance, but merely that it may effectively forces out everything else for what seems too large a portion of the player base. As the differences in performance increase, so does the operant conditioning. Our relative freedom then diminishes proportionately.

I don't think the comparison with the requirements to do Ultimate is valid. For one, being well geared and using the right job is either a duty or a party requirement. To say that they're "not strictly necessary" would be to ignore item level requirement that the duty has as well as the attitude of many potential group recruiters. The roulette is not a requirement in that way as it's entirely a personal choice. It's an activity that gives you incentive, but doesn't require you to do it to achieve that incentive.

I was only explaining the use of a term you took issue with. No more, no less. Clearly, our warrants differ, but that's better discussed in a more direct context. See below.

If all you care about is efficiency, then feel free to do the roulettes. But if you also care about something else, that you can also do that other thing in place of the roulette or in addition to the roulette. Tomestones, for example, you can cap easily if you're active at doing hunts or Eureka (in Stormblood) or even treasure maps. You're not required to do roulettes every day to cap tomestones. Or you can just do 5 expert roulettes for 5 days and not touch the other roulettes. That gives you plenty of time to do other things.

Again, the reason I posed the question about roulettes, and how much systems should condition their players towards particular choices in the duration and locations of their playtime, is that as the game is increasingly streamlined, efficiency increasingly takes priority over engagement. We see this in the developers' designs and that does trickle down into player and community perceptions as to the shape and therefore intent of the game. (They then make requests for efficiency over engagement in ways that are easier for the devs to meet than requests for engagement over efficiency, and the feedback loop spirals on.)

I like that they exist. I just feel that given their current efficiency bonuses, they take too large a part in the game. Or, if you want to look from the surrounding content inward, I feel that too many other systems have seen their rewards stagnate as to be made increasingly less a part of the seemingly intended experience, which then narrows the game -- excessively, in this case.

I feel that excessive narrowing of the game harms the experience. While some structure is certainly a boon, and in catching up there are some parts that must be dispensed with to focus on a more core shared experience between players, when the shape of any game centers seemingly on efficiency or just the tools to accomplish something, it makes the means seem that much less important. Sure, players can go against the grain and ignore the signs and try their best to perceive things purely on their own criteria, but most experience games largely through their shape and apparent intent.

Now, is that all centered on Roulettes giving X bonus tomes? No. But I think we need to be less eager to ignore the fine details in favor of stark changes alone. Most losses veteran players will have noted to their experience over the years, especially if playing more than a single or few jobs, can better be attributed to the dozens of cuts of indirect changes than any one direct change.

[linay]

Nearly all content in this game is time-gated content unless one ignores any and all rewards. Raids, Trials, Dungeons, challenge logs, PvP, side-content, etc., is all in some way time-gated. While not all players will care about the cappable rewards, most do consider reward systems as at least a nod to the intended direction of the game, if not a blatant pointer.

By time gated, do you mean the release schedule of content or how much of the content (or how often) you can do to receive its reward. I was under the impression the latter was being discussed, so trials and PVP are not time gated in that way.

Your comment about there always being a most efficient means likewise seems a bit disingenuous. Is it most efficient by .3%? By 3%? By 30%? The difference in perceived obligation between those is huge. 0.3% isn't noticed, period. 3% is noticeable under constraint. 30% is noticeable even to the most casual pursuit of a goal. The question isn't whether a most efficient means should exist, but rather whether it should be so much more efficient that it's apparent and significant to everyone. No one's railing at the fact that a meta may exist, for instance, but merely that it may effectively forces out everything else for what seems too large a portion of the player base. As the differences in performance increase, so does the operant conditioning. Our relative freedom then diminishes proportionately.

I would consider the difference in efficiency as not being significant enough to warrant complaint, especially when you can do all of it or mix and match what content you do.

Again, the reason I posed the question about roulettes, and how much systems should condition their players towards particular choices in the duration and locations of their playtime, is that as the game is increasingly streamlined, efficiency increasingly takes priority over engagement. We see this in the developers' designs and that does trickle down into player and community perceptions as to the shape and therefore intent of the game. (They then make requests for efficiency over engagement in ways that are easier for the devs to meet than requests for engagement over efficiency, and the feedback loop spirals on.)

I like that they exist. I just feel that given their current efficiency bonuses, they take too large a part in the game. Or, if you want to look from the surrounding content inward, I feel that too many other systems have seen their rewards stagnate as to be made increasingly less a part of the seemingly intended experience, which then narrows the game -- excessively, in this case.

I feel that excessive narrowing of the game harms the experience. While some structure is certainly a boon, and in catching up there are some parts that must be dispensed with to focus on a more core shared experience between players, when the shape of any game centers seemingly on efficiency or just the tools to accomplish something, it makes the means seem that much less important. Sure, players can go against the grain and ignore the signs and try their best to perceive things purely on their own criteria, but most experience games largely through their shape and apparent intent.

Now, is that all centered on Roulettes giving X bonus tomes? No. But I think we need to be less eager to ignore the fine details in favor of stark changes alone. Most losses veteran players will have noted to their experience over the years, especially if playing more than a single or few jobs, can better be attributed to the dozens of cuts of indirect changes than any one direct change.

Please explain the part in bold. By stagnated rewards, do you mean there are too many contents giving the same reward? If so, how does that make them less a part of the intended experience because I would think the opposite is true as then you can choose what you want to do and it would still be a valid choice.

On the other hand, it's true that if every content gives the same reward, you can favor the content that is more efficient, but again that is your choice. If every content gives the same reward, you can still make the choice to do the content that you prefer and sacrifice some efficiency while still working toward the same reward.

[Shurrikhan]

Please explain the part in bold.

Think of it like the more general concept it belongs to, content obsoletion. When rewards stagnate, by not growing with the new options presented or being integrated into new reward systems in some other way, their content generally dies out except over their course of leveling where they briefly remain the most efficient option to some set of players.

Now, that 'problem' is normal for any MMO. Each expansion spreads its prior content thinner and thinner. Many things will undoubtedly have to be sped up, made optional, or trimmed entirely. That on it's own isn't the problem, though. The problem is when something exists in such a way that it signals to the player that it isn't important in its own right; it's just a stepping stone to the real thing. We then go to the next stone, but it's shaped in such a way as to hint that it's not the real thing either. So on and so forth. The pre-cap game then becomes increasingly less about what you're doing, in any sort of way, as how you're doing it, and that "how" becomes increasingly narrowed towards speed. Anything that doesn't lend towards greater efficiency is then devalued, not because of any problem necessarily with the thing itself, but because it doesn't get you to the promised thing in the future (which we don't know, but have to assume, is coming and is better because of how watered down or thinned out what we're doing now is).

Now, only part of that can be fixed through later reward systems. It cannot fix how content feels the first time through. It certainly cannot fix how the early game combat experience amounts to so little of what it did before pruning. But it can at least make it feel like those past pieces of content are meant to be seen as part of the game's world, instead of just something to move past.

Both in ARR and HW, the game took more care to reinvigorate old content that would otherwise go obsolete. That seemed at least something of a design concern back then.

Now, that too was through shaped reward systems -- the same thing I've been critiquing the use of in my last few posts -- but there are differences in both context and application we should account for.

In ARR, for instance, relic books gave specific dungeons, raids, FATEs, and trials of greater value to a particular player. (That could have been improved by making you complete only the majority, rather than all, tasks per book, but at least it got the ball rolling.) ARR's Light system for later periods of relics then rotated densities of light, making it a community effort to quickly find out which few dungeons, couple trials, and which raid had bonuses for the two-hour period -- cycles of spreading and repeating that gave players plenty of reasons to group up and to socialize over shout and FC chats. In HW, Wanderer's Tail did basically what books probably should have done from the start -- their random choices gave more options in how to fit your random tasks alongside those of friend's while pursuing a row or column reward. Put simply, given where and how those systems were applied, shaped reward systems at that time benefited variance without detracting too heavily from player choice, all while encouraging social interaction. Though, as with nearly everything, it could have been improved upon, that's a fair sight better than we see now. Now, as with so much else, only the barest "essentials" remain, but they seem devoid of any larger purpose. They aid rare queues, and that's good, but the benefits could be far more and the negative effects nearly inexistant. Those benefits could include boons to social interaction and letting the player feel like they have 6+ years' worth of world to explore and enjoy. The negatives need not include, through systemically encouraged playtime intervals and durations, the relative discouragement of all else for anyone with little time per week; it needn't assert control without a plan to actually benefit the player's experience.

But that's what we seem to see so much of now: too much is given as if by obligation without an actual plan for how the player will benefit in the long-term and little caution for long-term consequences. "Dungeons don't matter because they're almost immediately obsolete." Design used to indicate a very different thought-process, even if it was mere coincidence to some plan to merely increase time played hours, and the game benefited for it.

To answer fully, though, content provision is just one many "other systems" that I feel has been shorted over the years. These also include things for which payoffs are increasingly diminished and therefore start to feel removed from the intended experience, like difficulty curves, combat complexity curves over class/job levels, positionals, crowd control, the (former) nuances of tanking, healing, and so much else. But the impacts of those things on the game -- save that most are not fixed with time or levels -- are surprisingly similar to the impacts felt in devaluing (or letting be devalued) past content or portions of the game world over time, and usually follow from similar design philosophies.

By stagnated rewards, do you mean there are too many contents giving the same reward? If so, how does that make them less a part of the intended experience because I would think the opposite is true as then you can choose what you want to do and it would still be a valid choice.

A stagnated reward is one which has stagnated; it has stopped growing -- or doing anything -- with or based on the circumstances around it. It's dropped out of the race, so to speak. It just... sits there forevermore.

As to how that makes it seem like less of the intended experience, read the above or the previous couple posts.

If stagnation meant balance, then yes, it would provide less pressure upon our choices, making them each potentially valid. The only demerit of such would be a less shared experience and longer queue times as players are less funneled into each other. Of course, those demerits are basically the only reason the devs would direct our actions in the first place. Thus, we should aim to strike a balance between the two based on our current player populations. (Of course, those funnels could probably be made more effective, too, by changes to our queue system.)

On the other hand, it's true that if every content gives the same reward, you can favor the content that is more efficient, but again that is your choice. If every content gives the same reward, you can still make the choice to do the content that you prefer and sacrifice some efficiency while still working toward the same reward.

If all content gives the same reward, no one is more efficient than the others. Reward, to anyone seeking its accumulation, takes into account the time spent achieving it. A piece of content is more rewarding when it provides the most over the time spent in and in preparation for it, not just per run; the last is generally irrelevant.

Yes, of course one can choose a less efficient choice. But as the disparity between, say, leveling content options increases in a game that increasingly signals to players that it doesn't really start until endgame, that choice is increasingly pressured. That's why the how much is so important. A difference, say, of 3% is going to the affect the decisions of more players than would 0.3%, and 30% far more than the 3%.