Golden Corral buffet or high quality dining...Which do you prefer?

[AreeyaJaidee]

OP is pretty lamely vague. If you're going to complain about something atleast do it with more of an explanation than:

"i hated thet thingy! Itz brokerz why so broked? Because like a fewdz?! Im angry :/"

[Xoo]

OP is pretty lamely vague. If you're going to complain about something atleast do it with more of an explanation than:

"i hated thet thingy! Itz brokerz why so broked? Because like a fewdz?! Im angry :/"

The interesting part is, is that we all know exactly what he's talking about in spite of his vague commentary.

[KiriA500]

Golden Corral has more options for a fixed amount, while a fancy restaurant charges you depending on what you get, which could cost more or less.

I'm way more inclined to go for the best value, as I like options instead of limitations.

(Also, this is a terrible analogy...just saying!)

EDIT:
On top of that, you're only seeing it in the short run. Let's use fast food (fast battle system) vs. fancy restaurant (slow battle system).

I love, and I mean LOVE sushi, but it's very expensive (the kind I get, I don't eat like a busta...I order like a thug!). I tend to only eat it once every few months, as a nice treat for myself.

I eat fast food much more often than I eat sushi. That doesn't mean I love it more, it's just cheaper and more easily accessible.

If we apply this to battle mechanics, I feel that some fights, such as bosses, should be fun and challenging, requiring more than just spamming a weaponskill whenever the timer is up. Most other fights, such as grinding off mobs in Natalan for EXP should NOT be as time consuming. So, you can have your fancy sushi while fighting a dungeon boss, and you can eat your Burger King while leveling up low jobs. I see no point in making all the fights in this game into tedious chores.

[Efrye]

Most other fights, such as grinding off mobs in Natalan for EXP should NOT be as time consuming. [...] I see no point in making all the fights in this game into tedious chores.

Huh? Brainlessly spamming random skills against hordes of monsters that die within seconds is not a tedious chore to you?

I think it would be great to have something like boss fights for EXP. Or maybe advanced guildleves* that require a well-rounded party setup to complete. Whatever they do, I'd like to see longer, more engaging fights while leveling up. And of course a befitting EXP reward to compensate for the increased duration and higher risk of failure.

You can still keep the trash mobs in the game - I don't think anyone here is asking for them to be removed. But there should be other options that actually require a bit of skill and coordination, and these options should yield more EXP or other rewards.

* Yes, I know, I could just increase the difficulty of the leves. But usually that just ends up with people getting one-shot, and the EXP still don't match up to chain parties by far.

[KiriA500]

Huh? Brainlessly spamming random skills against hordes of monsters that die within seconds is not a tedious chore to you?

I think it would be great to have something like boss fights for EXP. Or maybe advanced guildleves* that require a well-rounded party setup to complete. Whatever they do, I'd like to see longer, more engaging fights while leveling up. And of course a befitting EXP reward to compensate for the increased duration and higher risk of failure.

You can still keep the trash mobs in the game - I don't think anyone here is asking for them to be removed. But there should be other options that actually require a bit of skill and coordination, and these options should yield more EXP or other rewards.

* Yes, I know, I could just increase the difficulty of the leves. But usually that just ends up with people getting one-shot, and the EXP still don't match up to chain parties by far.

Yeah, leveling isn't super fun, which is why I want it out of the way. Grinding levels isn't MMO content to me, it's what I do with the class/job I've leveled that I care about. If you want to make the journey to get there longer than it needs to be, by all means, go for it.

[Efrye]

If you want to make the journey to get there longer than it needs to be, by all means, go for it.

Who's saying anything about taking longer to get to 50?

What I'm talking about are fights that last longer and give more EXP/hour. It will/should be more fun than what we have now, and it will/should be better EXP than what we have now. Win-win?

The length of the journey is a completely different matter. (It's still nonsense to say that if someone wants a longer journey, s/he can just go slower. A few rare exceptions aside, there's no value or sense of achievement in taking longer than everyone else.)

[Darshu]

The problem is, most players like KiriA actually do not enjoy the game, and most people do not realize the game is not the end of it, it's not supposed to be showing off your character in town or whatever else kids do, you're supposed to play it through and enjoy the journey.

I really don't understand what goes on inside one's mind when they completely ignore the journey for some benefit in the end. The journey is dynamic, it changes, it tells a story. The end is static, repetitive. If you switch those two up, it happens precisely what this post complains about. People do not care about enjoying a good meal everyday, because they want to live the end of their lives now, and the faster way to do it is not spending any more than 5 minutes eating their food. Fuck it if it's not healthy or enjoyable, I don't give a shit about food being enjoyable, they will say.

This affects modern society as a whole and it could not be different when that same society plays games. People are just anxious for something in the end, so anxious in fact that they do not realize how enjoyable getting there can be. The biological pace personal to each individual might affect it but I believe that it is also mostly some result of education, culture and life experiences. Society changed as a whole to this new style of "get there as fast as possible" and we can still see the disparity between city folk and country folk in that regard.

So as long as we continue to live like this, consuming frenetically, it's very unlikely that gamer's minds will change and prefer to consume little for higher gain instead of a billion mobs per second.

I personally enjoyed FFXI battles way more than any other MMO I've played, and only there could you clearly see when a party was doing it's job right and when it wasn't. Not only things could go completely wrong when someone did not know their job right, but even a party that survived could earn exp incredibly slower than an excellent party. And it never stopped the game from having even stronger boss creatures that required an even greater amount of people, and even greater skill. That's what I miss in this game, where every little thing you can do affects the game ever so slightly, but in doing it right and using all you got, in the end the difference becomes enormous.

Fighting multiple enemies is something I've always wanted after I played XI, because every other FF did that, and I thought it would be a great idea. But it doesn't seem to work on a MMO style of gameplay.

Far from wanting the game to be a hassle, I want it to be enjoyable all the way through, and not just at the end. Fighting is a big part of any Final Fantasy game, and it should be as enjoyable as it possibly can. The way it is now is not, by any standard, enjoyable. Even those who prefer it like it is do so because it gets them to what they perceive as "enjoyable" much faster. And it's even crazier when the end game right now is so limited you can be doing nothing new in a month, so why the hell rush it?

I think the analogy fast food vs high cuisine is good, but not quite perfect. It would be more like fast food vs what the Brazilian said, a decent balanced home cooked meal, that takes you time to do it, but it's way more beneficial and rewarding. It can't just reward your tastes, it needs to get you through the day, too :P And neither junk food nor 20g of rare expensive mushrooms can do that.

Square needs to show gamers it can actually be fun to level up and play, because as it is now, it will be hard to convince any one to slow down and enjoy.

[Xoo]

Everything that was said in Post #50

Holy crap man. If I could hit the like button 100+ times I definitely would. +1000!

EDIT: Pasting into my Lodestone blog so others might read it as well. It's really the best piece of insight I've had the pleasure of reading on these forums.

[Khal_Drogo]

Yeah, leveling isn't super fun, which is why I want it out of the way. Grinding levels isn't MMO content to me, it's what I do with the class/job I've leveled that I care about. If you want to make the journey to get there longer than it needs to be, by all means, go for it.

Syntaxlies was right, Kiri, you're missing my point lol

As many ppl have stated, I shouldn't have been so vague w/ the post. But, ppl don't want to read a wall of txt, so I didn't have much leeway there.

Anyway, while I'm all for bringing back XI's 1 min+ long battles, that doesn't mean I want the exp to be the same. I have no problem with the pace of leveling. I just have a problem with the way it's being executed. Here's the way I explained it in the Player Poll:



The pace is about appropriate, in terms of the "time spent" in a leveling scenario. However, the amount of *kills needed to level is terribly flawed, making leveling UNBEARABLE. In XIV's current state, leveling feels like a repetitive, meaningless process. Enemies die too quickly, FORCING party-roaming and eliminating any opportunity for players to take a break (w/o disrupting gameplay). Multiple party camping is not an option (unless the area is oversaturated with mobs). It's a major issue.

The only thing I was forced to leave out was my issue with WS spam, ab/magic spam, etc., which I brought up in the final question of the poll.