Can Square Enix stop killing off old content

[Brightamethyst]

This is something that I wish SE would realize.

We have plenty of systems and if they could just expand or innovate on them slightly then they would generate more longevity without necessarily costing a lot of resources.

If they could expand on guildhests, it could literally act as a pretty good tutorial system, just as it did in low levels. Just a shame there is not any incentive behind it. Same with levequests. Same with Desynthesis, same with Grand Companies, the list of abandoned systems goes on and on and on. Why not expand the essences and logos systems to actually be present outside of exploratory content rather than having it stay an exclusive?

You have to remember that a lot of those thing are either 1.0 holdouts, have been replaced by a better system, or both.

Battle leves were phased out because beast tribes and daily hunts filled the "daily exp activities" without also competing against crafting for resources. They didn't "forget" about leves, they intentionally replaced it with a more efficient system.

Guildhests are basically just combat mechanic tutorials. Sure they could keep adding more, but to what end? Unless they drastically up the exp/tomes, which they probably won't on account of them being to short and easy, why would anyone bother running them more than once?

Same with Grand Companies. IIRC, the last time the devs were asked about it in a Q&A the answer was something along the lines of "since GCs don't really do anything, there's no point in adding more ranks until we decide how to proceed with them in the future."

As for things like Eureka and Bozja, personally I'm okay with content having a shelf life. Not everything needs to stay relevant forever. I don't know about you, but I was already tired of Bozja long before ShB ended and was more than happy to let it go and move on to something new. It'll still be there if I ever feel like grinding out another relic.

[Shurrikhan]

You have to remember that a lot of those thing are either 1.0 holdouts, have been replaced by a better system, or both.

Guildhests are themselves new to ARR+. Of those Kaurhz listed, only Leves and Grand Companies are "1.0 holdouts".

I don't see the fact that there are also crafting/gathering leves as being an excuse to remove battle leves entirely. I'm not miffed by their removal, as at worst it means more FATE-runners and dungeon-spammers, but the warrant doesn't really seem there. We're free, regardless, not to spend our leves on DoW/DoMs, and the costs to allow for those options are already quite minimal:

Set nodes, grab some mobs from the zone's table Choose which of the 4-6 generic objectives to use. Assign a preexisting mosaic. Give it a name. Done. Of course, for that same reason (they're basic af), again... not too sad to have lost them.

(Also, when are we getting crafter/gatherer FATEs and, say, Workshops [group crafter content, using a shared pool of resources, mildly coordinating orders to try to maximize speed and customer happiness, for instance? Just saying. I'd love to see a FATE chain that includes at least one part that actually coordinates, at minimum, Gatherers to be protected and sourced with consumables by crafters, etc., along its chain. Back in 1.x, crafters and gatherers felt more out there, integrated, of the field and frequently closer to the fights. I kind of miss that.)

[Denji]

i'd like to note that guildhests won't come back because it lacks randomness.

its the same reason reason why quests don't give much in the way of exp is because if you remember ARR or played any other MMO, you'll know that it's very easy to set a bot up to do those things automatically. in fact you'll still see bots doing it to this day... albeit much less than there used to be. by forcing the player to do dungeons and providing daily bonuses for doing a roulette, you make it so that botting in the long run is unsustainable and won't get you far enough to make the account or whatever you're farming worth to sell.

unless they manage to make guildhests more than just "kill these four things" they won't ever return.

[Shurrikhan]

i'd like to note that guildhests won't come back because it lacks randomness.

its the same reason reason why quests don't give much in the way of exp is because if you remember ARR or played any other MMO, you'll know that it's very easy to set a bot up to do those things automatically.

Tbf, I don't think anyone was looking for them to be farmable content. They're tutorials. They just need to be stringent enough to function as such.

They'll probably remain one-and-done, but there's plenty more than can be taught through them, if we so wished.

That said... we easily could introduce randomness to the later ones, and actually have those be like slightly-randomized short-but-difficult puzzle-like fights. Personally, though, I feel like we might as well then give them a different name.

[Denji]

Tbf, I don't think anyone was looking for them to be farmable content. They're tutorials. They just need to be stringent enough to function as such.

They'll probably remain one-and-done, but there's plenty more than can be taught through them, if we so wished.

That said... we easily could introduce randomness to the later ones, and actually have those be like slightly-randomized short-but-difficult puzzle-like fights. Personally, though, I feel like we might as well then give them a different name.

but they give excellent exp up to a certain point as well as actual items/equipment. they can be abused and exploited even with a trial account which is the point i was making.

you can see bots teleport it and then clip back underground in both quarrymill and costa del sol and then momentarily appear out of the ground to interact with things before moving on.

[Shurrikhan]

but they give excellent exp up to a certain point as well as actual items/equipment. they can be abused and exploited even with a trial account which is the point i was making.

you can see bots teleport it and then clip back underground in both quarrymill and costa del sol and then momentarily appear out of the ground to interact with things before moving on.

Isn't that "certain point" just the first-time completion bonus? Admittedly, that's less a gate for rapidly recycled RMT bots than players, but it still limits them.

Also... Guildhests are only entered through the matchmaker. They don't exist in the open world.

Are you sure you aren't thinking of Guildleves? Guildleves are the barebone farmable content. Guildhests are the once-through "learn how to CC", "learn how to focus down this enemy", "learn how to move the boss to avoid facing a soft-enrage from ground effects" tutorials.

[Krojack]

What's the point of developing whole-ass systems if you're just going to abandon them and never build on it? Chocobo racing? Minion battles? Levequests? Expert recipes?

Maybe there wouldn't be a lack of content if we get iterations and innovations on existing content types instead of them trying to build a whole-ass new system every expac. Please realize that when people complain about those types of content, that doesn't mean they want it removed or for the developers to stop making such content forever. They want it improved upon. They want better iterations.

Do you even play the game? They literally just added some new expert crafts in 6.4. They have been adding them in the past as well. Also they are adding new minions too.

[Elissar]

A finished system is not an abandoned one.

[Shurrikhan]

A finished system is not an abandoned one.

A system is rarely 'finished' though; such can usually only be said of implementations.

For instance, Pandaemonium is now 'finished'; Raids, though, are not.



Only if a type of content existed only to serve a specifically transient purpose, such as learning the game, would it likely be 'finished'.

...And even then many components of those systems that content type carried would likely be worth repurposing.

[Absurdity]

People brought up the gold saucer a little bit, and I think that's a huge missed opportunity too. It's been ages since a cute hairstyle was released from the gold saucer, and hell -- the minigames themselves are like, "who cares" tier.

Ignoring the systems that were entirely abandoned like Lords of Verminion or Chocobo racing, the minigames got basically power crept out of relevance.

Why would I do the wood cutting minigame for maybe a measly 600 MGP when I can just do an easy GATE for 4000 or weekly fashion report for 60000?