Yoshi P confirmed they CUT ultimate content from 6.0 not DELAY

[Shougun]

Wildstar

/endthread

Just in case someone didn't catch it, Wildstar died, largely (not a great launch didn't help either), because of the super end game focus - mmos can easily survive on casual content, they cannot easily survive on hardcore content, and what made it last longer than otherwise was because it's housing system was really cool (basically the best casual feature the mmo had was the main reason it didn't immediately implode but had a slow death).



Of course balance would be nice. I'm not in love with the idea that Ultimate was cut FOR farmville, seems like that is impossible for us to know and designed to make people upset, but if you were at a board meeting and you had to make a choice "best for the health of the game" it seems like you'd consistently choose not super hardcore content over casual content (which is honestly the case already, ultimate once or twice an expansion.. that's not a lot lol). That was what I was kind of trying to say on the front page. If one had to choose it makes sense that casual stuff wins out more often... but it would be nice if everyone is a winner.



There are games where casual is the minority but from watching this stuff for a while it's pretty clear to me that casuals are not just the majority but a hilariously large part of the majority. An example where something doesn't follow the norm and is probably better for it would be Dark Souls, or if we had to talk MMOs.. I suppose maybe EVE? EVE looks like a nightmare you'd have to pay me to play but I see some people really like that lol. I'm going to stick with Dark Souls though since I actually like that game rather than EVE which looks like I'd rather shovel chocobo dung (personal preference, not claiming EVE is factually a bad game, but it's a bad game "for me").

[RocciaSolida]

I wouldn't even be so sure we're getting two ultimates in EW, it may very well be the case that there's gonna be dragonsong war and nothing else

[Liam_Harper]

There is plenty of hard to do content... you could do the coils savage on minimum iLvl, you can do that with everything, then why are you not doing that? plenty of stuff to do, if hardcore enough that is.

The argument that you can gimp yourself and run outdated content from 7 years ago that is no longer anywhere near balanced around the current classes has always been a particularly weak one. The same argument could go both ways in that we no longer need to release casual dungeons or trials because players can unsynch coils with 8 people. There is also plenty of casual content, but if they decided to only add a Beast Tribe every 2+ years from now on, people would complain and rightly so. Both hardcore and casual content has its place and are important pieces of the overall experience.

I'm personally not in favor of cutting or delaying anything. I love the game and Yoshi's a great developer, but resource management has been absolutely appalling this expansion and it's not unreasonable to expect better going forward. There's only so much we can keep giving the same "the servers can't handle it" or "it'd be too much work for the devs" excuse to before we start asking ...why can't the devs handle it, this is the second largest MMO on the market?. Ultimate is not the only thing they've cut in Shadowbringers.

We also know well enough that if Ocean Fishing, lv70 BLU or Unreal were delayed until 6.0, most of us really wouldn't care that much and it would affect a minuscule number of players. Yet for some baffling reason people will defend this niche content to the death, yet are delighted to see Ultimate or other endgame content removed. This suggests a lot of feedback is less rational reasoning and more a subconscious dislike of high end raiders.

[Fourbestintoner]

I wouldn't count on it, the singular dude working on them will be busy with XVI after Thordan.

[Jeeqbit]

No one even cares about the story, I personally skip all the cutscenes and I know many others who does the same. The only thing that matters in this game is the battle content.

Edit: This is clearly the case in streaming platforms. Ultimate fights draws tens of thousands of viewers while people who stream the story only get like single digit viewers if any!

People who stream the story get hundreds of viewers teaching them how to play the game and then it drops off when they finish the MSQ.

Cinematic cut scenes are very watchable and a lot of nostagia. People like the story so much in this game that they like to enjoy it again with new players on streams.

I have occasionally gone to just find a random person doing the MSQ on twitch and watch them from ARR through ShB and they grow from a few viewers to hundreds in many cases.

You may skip the cut scenes but most people don't.

[Kaurhz]

The argument that you can gimp yourself and run outdated content from 7 years ago that is no longer anywhere near balanced around the current classes has always been a particularly weak one. The same argument could go both ways in that we no longer need to release casual dungeons or trials because players can unsynch coils with 8 people. There is also plenty of casual content, but if they decided to only add a Beast Tribe every 2+ years from now on, people would complain and rightly so. Both hardcore and casual content has its place and are important pieces of the overall experience.

I'm personally not in favor of cutting or delaying anything. I love the game and Yoshi's a great developer, but resource management has been absolutely appalling this expansion and it's not unreasonable to expect better going forward. There's only so much we can keep giving the same "the servers can't handle it" or "it'd be too much work for the devs" excuse to before we start asking ...why can't the devs handle it, this is the second largest MMO on the market?. Ultimate is not the only thing they've cut in Shadowbringers.

We also know well enough that if Ocean Fishing, lv70 BLU or Unreal were delayed until 6.0, most of us really wouldn't care that much and it would affect a minuscule number of players. Yet for some baffling reason people will defend this niche content to the death, yet are delighted to see Ultimate or other endgame content removed. This suggests a lot of feedback is less rational reasoning and more a subconscious dislike of high end raiders.

Whilst I agree scheduling has been appalling, aside from Ultimate I can't really see much content that has been cut that wasn't really a 'necessity' in the first place. They've just poured those resources into other avenues of content; Bozja, Ocean Fishing, Ishgard Restoration, and Trusts, for example. Whether or not we have fewer dungeons isn't really much of an argument since the quality is far above that of Stormblood, not to mention they're just a means to an end after the initial clear. You do them to get your weekly tomestones then you move on. Don't really spend much time admiring them otherwise. You could also argue that Hildibrand was getting a tad obnoxious, so probably a good idea they took a break from this to figure out what exactly to do with it.

If all the developers will be met with is incessant 'cut this, cut that' criticism, then it is only going to make them more inclined to make everything a whole lot more rigid with little deviating from that formula.

[Absurdity]

Almost everything is becoming easier: jobs.

This is probably my biggest issue, significantly bigger than the lack of challenging content.
It's not just that jobs are getting easier but that for some the skill floor is incredibly low and the ceiling isn't much higher, making a lot of jobs just feel uninteresting to play.

Even casual easy content can have more longevity if the thing you're experiencing it through, in this case the job you're playing, is enjoyable to play. On the flip side, if the jobs are sleep inducingly boring to play then the content needs to make up for that, unfortunately to me it currently does not.

Whether or not we have fewer dungeons isn't really much of an argument since the quality is far above that of Stormblood, not to mention they're just a means to an end after the initial clear. You do them to get your weekly tomestones then you move on.

I have to disagree.

First of all, why do we so readily accept that this is all dungeons are supposed to be? Just some boring corridors that you do maybe once a day for 15-20 minutes to get 90 tomestones and then forget about them.
If tomestones are all you want then it would be much more efficient to join hunt trains, they cost you the same amount of time, with just as little effort and give you more tomestones for that invested time. Sure, hunt trains aren't always available but with world transfer being a thing you have several of them going at different times of the day and you need to do less of them per week to cap your tomestones.
I also definitely disagree with ShB dungeons being above SB dungeons in terms of quality, you can argue about which one's visuals appeal more to you but they follow the exact same design pattern, there's just less of them.

But if we have to stick with dungeons being a boring joke of content only meant for grinding tomestones then having fewer of them just makes the problem worse, being boring on top of having no variety.

[Fourbestintoner]

It's actually pretty sad that I can't be excited for sage because I know it will be a 1 button job, only the melees are still kind of fun now, excluding monk.

[Lanadra]

If we only get 1 ultimate in EW then hopefully this leads to more high end casual content or something new entirely. Still they need to keep ultimates showing in X.1 and X.5 patches. The mere hype they bring to the game and community is outstanding. I wonder how they will explain this to us when they say we will only have 1 ultimate for all of 6.0

What if they simply don't?

[MPK]

If we only get 1 ultimate in EW then hopefully this leads to more high end casual content or something new entirely. Still they need to keep ultimates showing in X.1 and X.5 patches. The mere hype they bring to the game and community is outstanding. I wonder how they will explain this to us when they say we will only have 1 ultimate for all of 6.0

They'll tell us to enjoy all the great new PVP and mahjong content they choose to add by cutting Ultimates.

Man I do love me some mahjong and small scale PvP huh!? Who else gets excited every morning thinking about queueing for PvP in this game? It's great isnt it?! The netcode is just PERFECT for PvP in this game! Oh man, I am so glad they decided to add more PvP, Farmville, and mahjong content in this game instead of Ultimate!

I'm sure some Mahjong professionals would advertise this game or something so it's fine if we don't get the TOXIC raiders to join!~!@!!!!~`1`one

Thank you square for cutting ultimate in exchange for more garbage content that no one asked for!!!!