Content Finder

[Estellios]

Food for thought: when the SWTOR devs brought up the upcoming dungeon finder at today's guild summit, they specified it was single-server only. The result? Huuuuge applause.

From my understanding any kind of dungeon finder at all was an extremely requested feature that the devs were giving dumb reasons for not implementing. I think the community there would be willing to take what they can get, I know I would.

[Jinko]

For a good example of how a gameworld changes after a crossrealm dungeon finder implementation you can take a look at WoW, where you'd barely see anyone at max lvl outside Stormwind or Ogrimmar, they all stand around in town waiting in que for PVP battlegrounds or PVE dungeons/raids.

Lies, people at max level were always out gathering and doing daily quests.

It's so annoying how everyone assumed that people just stayed in a city and queued in the dungeon finder, for many people this wasn't the case.

[Firon]

wrong. people used the search in that game only shouted when no one was on or need help, selling stuff. you even got invites when you were not looking.

So being able to travel tot all 4 other cites didn't make it a hub ok right... and ppl shouted for plenty of things. I could sit in whitegate and see shout all the time for Nyzul isle, dyna runs, enm, bcnm, to sell stuff, to buy stuff, all kinda of content. no one shouted for parties but it was tons of shouts for content like the ones i mentioned.

[Choyi]

Still playing FFXI now people do spend the majority of time in Jeuno. SE expanded the shout channel to all 4 zones of jeuno and its called /yell. So you see shouts in any Jeuno zone. Pick ups for VW and Abyssea and exp form in Jeuno all day long. But now with that live shout monitoring thing on ffxiah http://www.ffxiah.com/shouts people can not even be logged in the game and if they see a shout they are interested in they can log in and send the guy a tell.

The thing about FFXI was there wasn't any hard content in the game at all. Everything was really easy or impossible see AV (until the level cap raise). However people did stuff with linkshells because people wanted to control the drops, play with their friends, or gear out people in the same group in hopes of getting gear themself. Now in current FFXI we have Abyssea and Voidwatch where people pug stuff like crazy. You see shouts all the time for AF3 seal farming in abyssea and 18 man VW groups forming in Jeuno all day about.

Not sure SE is the type of company that makes really hard content where only less then 1% of the playerbase can even finish like Blizzard does in WoW with heroic hard mode raids.

Heroic mode being accessed by a small % of playerbase makes sense, since its the exact same fight as the normal modes except the encoutner will have 1-2 more adds and the bosses will have hp and do more dmg, and the reward being the very exact same gear(recouloured) with imrpoved stat bonuses.

So casuals can atm see and beat pretty much any content in WoW with ease, heroic mode isnt all that different from how achivements work, its artificial extension of the very same content.

So for its intent it works great, alltho the day heroic mode raids where introduced is where WoW end game started to roll downhill and alot of peoples passion to raid started to die off.
I'd realy hope S-E just implements balls to the walls hard content w/o easy mode option and don't go this route for end game, and add their own version of some kind of WoW's 5man style dungeon content for the more casual players.

I quit XI for the last time about 6 months before abyssea so I can't comment how the game have changed since personaly (alltho from what I've heard from my friends who still play(ed), it changed alot for the worse).
Agree that XI never realy did have much hard end game content bar a few exceptions, however the game as a whole had a higher level of challenge due to the learn to swim or sink gameplay, compare to SWTOR, Rift, WoW etc where you can be a godawful player and still easily hit level cap(as well as finish majority of dungeons) in a fair amount of time.

[Firon]

Heroic mode being accessed by a small % of playerbase makes sense, since its the exact same fight as the normal modes except the encoutner will have 1-2 more adds and the bosses will have hp and do more dmg, and the reward being the very exact same gear(recouloured) with imrpoved stat bonuses.

Wait how can it have better stats but still be the same gear?

[Jinko]

Heroic mode being accessed by a small % of playerbase makes sense, since its the exact same fight as the normal modes except the encoutner will have 1-2 more adds and the bosses will have hp and do more dmg, and the reward being the very exact same gear(recouloured) with imrpoved stat bonuses.

You clearly never played wow for long or didn't do many heroic raids.

I'd realy hope S-E just implements balls to the walls hard content w/o easy mode option and don't go this route for end game, and add their own version of some kind of WoW's 5man style dungeon content for the more casual players.

Yea because casual players would love this.

Now I know what you are thinking, like you care about that .... right ?

Well SE care about casual players because its where the money is, but you seem to be ignoring that fact.

Nevermind the fact that you are seeing it back to front, WoW didn't add easy mode they added hard mode.

[Choyi]

You clearly never played wow for long or didn't do many heroic raids.



Yea because casual players would love this.

Now I know what you are thinking, like you care about that .... right ?

Well SE care about casual players because its where the money is, but you seem to be ignoring that fact.

Nevermind the fact that you are seeing it back to front, WoW didn't add easy mode they added hard mode.

I played WoW from vanilla up until a year ago, I completed every raid both normal and heroic up until Cho'gall HC in the Twilights raid while the content was the current tier, so yeah I do in fact now what I am talking about.

And thats more or less what heroics boil down too, first spend a few weeks farm the bosses in normal mode to get everyone geared up, then once ready you start doing heroic/hardmode where you fight the exact same looking and sounding boss monster with most of the same fight mechanics bar what I mentioned the extra gimmick tossed in along with more DMG and HP.
And the heroic mode for the most of it drop the exact same gear recoloured with higher ilvl that gains you about 5% more stats per item.
Sure the tactics do change from normal mode to HC, but its still the very same boss.
Ask any long time raider to compare the feeling of first time downing pre nerf Twin emps, Kael'thas, Gruul and others to the feeling the have when downing a firelands boss HC for first time, its not the same at all if you alreayd seen that boss die plenty of times in normal mode and then killing it in harder difficulty as there is seing a hard boss get nailed for the very first time.

Even killing the Lich King first time in ICC just didnt get that feeling cause we'd know we still needed to beat the heroic version, and once the heroic version was defeated we where already sick of it the raid and it felt more of a relief then a joy.
The only boss in recent years to come close was Algalon, being only avaliable in HC as well as being hard and limited to access.
And you seem to ignore that casuals already have their favorite MMOs which is either one of the WoW, SWOTOR etc or are jumping on the newest flavour of the month MMO, aiming purely for casuals without already having a strong ground to do so isn't realy as profitable as you might think, the competition is quite fierce in todays market with even more on the horizon.

And whats wrong with having casual content(ala 5mans in terms of accessibility and difficulty) and raids(more challenging and harder to access), or are you hell bent on having no hardcore in a MMO whatsoever?

I stand behind having both casual and hard content, as long as hard content isnt just recycled fights with trimmed difficulty.

At their implementation the raids pre WotLK was as hard or in some cases harder then the heroic modes of WotLK and forward, so while its not labeld as such by blizzard, easy mode is the default which nowadays is the new standard.
If you'd raided over the course of WoW's lifespan you'd know this.

[Choyi]

Wait how can it have better stats but still be the same gear?

Visual wise its more or less the same items recoloured, and the stats are more or less the same as in example;
Normal version = STR+50 ATK+75 AGI+37
Heroic version = STR+55 ATK+85 AGI+40

[Mychael]

Well SE care about casual players because its where WoW made its money, but you seem to be ignoring that fact.

FTFY.

You can make money off non-casuals too. Not that casuals need to be ignored, but they don't need the entire game catered toward them.

Frankly, here's what it boils down to: A dungeon finder doesn't inherently support casuals or hardcores, even if it is more suited to casual content. The problem is that implementation is tricky (if it works too well, so to speak, it could easily eliminate the need to do anything other than sit in a city; and if it doesn't work well enough, it would be just the same as not having one). Also, making content that can be completed with a Dungeon Finder group puts a limit on how challenging the content could be, as practically any setup would be able to win, or we'll end up with "OMG WHT IS TH POINT F HAVING A DUNGEON FINDR IF IT CANT MAKE A DECENT GRP" threads everywhere. So it can't be available for all content.

So instead of fighting over whether the casuals or hardcores should win the game (since that's all either side of this pointless argument seem to be capable of--not just you, Jink, I just happened to quote your post. :P), why don't you try to put forth ideas for a system that could please everyone as many people as possible? I don't think it's an impossible goal...

[Choyi]

As in responce to "casual gaming is popular thus it must be easy to profit off!" heres a real life comparison:

A city has six different burger resturants, one of the burger resturans is very popular and pulling huge profits, the other five are doing more or less okay, struggling abit but still making some profit.
The population in this city obviosly likes to eat burgers judging by how well the biggest burger resturant is doing.

You want to open a resturant in this city, would you open a burger resturant yourself facing tough competition from six others, or would you try to appeal to the people of the city who are either tired of eating burger or who just want to try something diffirent?