Originally Posted by
AreeyaJaidee
Who dictates "intended behavior of mechanics"? The devs.
Who said they support PLing in FFXIV? The devs. (yoshi-p to be exact)
Who already changed the game mechanics to combat "too fast" PLing? The devs. (yoshi-p told em to do it)
So what are we missing now?
Another dev response?
Maybe this time they will take out any way to PL?
- cant heal ppl outside of your party.
- higher lvl players that join a low lvl party are auto level sync'd while in party.
Interested to see what happens... Imma sit over there *points east to a safe distance from the angry mobs* and watch the SE forums further genocide it's own morality.
*huggles* :3
P.S. and no I'm not Pro PL nor do I care about its outcome.
I would presume that giving us information about our own levels as well as giving information about mobs having levels would be a recommendation to how we should fight mobs in order to progress. Based on that logic, you should be able to take on more difficult monsters if you were to divy out responsibility equally among a group. The more players there are the more difficult it is to properly coordinate but the greater potential power you can wield against monsters you normally wouldn't be able to take on your own. You then create a balance between character level, monster level, and the ability to manipulate the context of the situation. Again, using only mob and character levels into account. Experience is then divided among the players involved when they successfully defeat an enemy. Harder enemies will generally yield larger amounts of experience while weaker ones will yield less experience all the way down to 0 experience depending on conditions.
So you have risk/reward mechanics at play here just by looking at player level and mob level, you can get a good idea of the risk involved to wager whether or not you will get a pleasurable outcome.
I agree with this kind of reward mechanic and believe it to be the "intention" behind the motivation of even including mob and character levels.
Non RPG's also have ways of building their own risk/reward mechanics.
Racing games use winding paths v time
First person shooters use weapon v opponent durability
Just as some examples. There are plenty more and sometimes there are multiple levels going on that happen in a very short period of time. There are also resource mechanics and strategic elements that go into making an informed decision on what to do and why. The ease/difficulty of a successful outcome is usually negotiated to fit a specific audience or demographic. So there's a bit of a balancing act with the developers as well. They have to make sure their players are sufficiently challenged so that they retain attention but also make sure that they aren't too frustrated to the point where they leave.
The levels that can be denoted are a general measure of how difficult a particular outcome will be. The game has been balanced so that an "even matched" adversary will net you a decent enough challenge if utilizing some of your skillsets learned while not being too difficult to frustrate you into quitting. The reward has been balanced accordingly in order to derive a certain amount of positive reinforcement from the successful defeat of an even matched enemy in order to keep you sufficiently amused according to their parameters. What the development team assumes and what the playerbase wants is another, but related, matter but to keep things simple we'll just stick to this.
So we have risk/reward and the reward gain is directly related to the amount of risk involved. The more risk, the more rewards.
This is where things get tricky in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, but you can still derive "intention" by the suggestions built into the game mechanics.
I know this is long but, so far nothing you said is actually false. I do not disagree nor could I claim that any of your phrases are false or even misinformed. It is true that the devs implemented, fixed, and remarked that PLing is an intentional form of play. Despite that, for some, it negates the concept of having a risk/reward scenario when it can be so easily exploited. The feelings of each individual player are different and they don't always agree with the game mechanics implemented. This is exemplified in any mulitplayer game where the player isn't the only player. The field of play should be made equal (and I'd argue predictable enough) so that players are encouraged to straddle that risk/reward line and clearly identify successful outcomes and understand how to fix failures.
I could go into risk assessment as well but that's another subject.
Despite Powerleveling being a permissible action in an MMO it's a mechanic that inherently messes with the intended balancing structure of the game. I would say in defense of the development team, the permission to allow it is a mixture of placating a broad audience, conceptual foundation for future content, and positive reinforcement for players who "stuck it out" at the cost of game balance in relation to progression.
SEGUE!!
Originally Posted by
AreeyaJaidee
What is the "balance of character progression"?
Im not asking for the definition. I'm asking how you're competent enough to know what a proper "character progression".
I don't mean "competent" in a negative suggestive term either. I really just want to know.
There are clues built into the system that define what the intended "character progression" is for any given game. It's especially apparent, and some would say frustratingly slow, in the form of "drop rates".
Particular items garner prestige in an MMO based on a mixture of their aesthetic quality, effectiveness, and availability. Here, we'll focus on the availability portion of perceived value (and do not ever forget that word PERCEIVED. At the end of the day none of it's real and isn't worth getting too upset about).
The development team has an idea in mind of how valuable an item will be based partly on it's availability. This they can directly control through a mechanism called "drop rates". Effectiveness being less controllable, and aesthetics being the least controllable of the three perceptions of value. By discerning how often an item drops based on successful completion of a goal you can derive a time period for how likely it is for a player to obtain an item. Lower drop rates requires more successful completions of a given task in order to successfully obtain the item. Drop rate combined with projected completion time (the time it takes to complete a task) can give you an estimate of how long it will take to acquire a particular item. With drop rates being partly randomized this will differ among players but there will still be a "mean" amount of time required based on all successful completions.
So via employ of "drop rates" you can derive a kind of "progression" to a particular goal. (randomizing it in my opinion is the dick move of it all as you can easily effect rate in other means through currency while still giving players positive reinforcement mechanisms for successful completion but that's another matter entirely.) By measuring the time it takes you can figure out a progression time required to achieve a given goal.
This also applies to leveling a character (even more directly when experience used to be random
). Through juxtaposing mob level v character level and measuring the reward outcome based on the risk (and time) involved you can derive a general intended progression from your data.
The intended progression is built into the game's mechanics. Power leveling exploits the intended progression by negating the risk/reward ratio. Despite Naoki Yoshida's vocal support of power leveling, the intended progression is still different than what power leveling can achieve. Unlike you I actually don't mind the practive of PL'ing. I don't do it myself because I don't actually enjoy it. I prefer the current intended progression because I'm sufficiently positively reinforced to do so. This is subjective only to me, but is also discernible through the mechanisms built into the game. Everyone's goals are different and to an even greater, less controllable extent, the needs of each player and the playerbase as a whole varies greatly given their context. Each player decides for themselves what they're willing to put up with based on this.
I actually applaud the SE team for being so open and understanding in their philosophy of game design. Where I disagree with them is the implementation of the current PL method. While it allows for a greater majority to play at their own pace, it also invited a means to grief one another easier than what was necessary in my opinion.
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