Zepla: The Players Endwalker Left Behind

[R041]

There was neither condescention nor bitterness (I could see you thinking snark, but no bitterness at all). And funny you praise the brevity while two people above, one who routinely gets annoyed at my post length, are asking for longer. So I edited to add it in.

.. You posted this thread out of spite, and didn't start with talking points - Only disdain. That's what bitterness looks like my dude. lol

[caffe_macchiato]

Didn't read the OP, just wanted to give thanks for Zepla for speaking the truth at the risk to her own personal safety. Fighting the mob is hard and fighting a multi-billion dollar megacorporation is even harder, but someone's gotta do it if we want a fun MMO to play. If Blizzard can be brought to heel with some constructive criticism, so can Square Enix.

[R041]

Didn't read the OP, just wanted to give thanks for Zepla for speaking the truth at the risk to her own personal safety. Fighting the mob is hard and fighting a multi-billion dollar megacorporation is even harder, but someone's gotta do it if we want a fun MMO to play. If Blizzard can be brought to heel with some constructive criticism, so can Square Enix.

It's pretty clear Zepla feels she finally broke free of the fear, after knowing she can actually play other games and retain views - In some cases surpass them. So she's speaking her mind appropriately. If that sounds like an exaggeration, it's not. We have a pretty abusive community here that tend to love-bomb, but completely trash you when you don't do or enjoy things exactly the same way they do.

(I'm a Eureka enjoyer)

[Recon1o6]

assuming ren's summary is accurate her takes about what counts as midcore are fairly off but her point about no midcore content is spot on


Extreme fights are midcore. In theory. They run the gamut of being barely above casual to harder than some savage floors. Zodiark for example is a joke of an extreme but Sephirot is harder than some savage fights.
BA is hardcore. Too big punishments for death, too much prep work in terms of study and grouping requirements. Its closest competitor is delubrum savage.

Delubrum normal however is just an alliance raid with inflated hp bars and not in the duty finder for some bizarre reason.

Dalriada and Castrum are midcore. They have some penalty and the fights can trip you up sometimes and some coordination is neccessary but the lack of enrages means a couple of people can scrape an eventual clear.

Shes completely correct on criterion being normal, savage and ultimate difficulty instead of normal (easy) extreme (medium) hard (savage). Some of those mechanics are killer.
Fun fact: alexander was supposed to have 3 tiers of difficulty but time constraints meant they had to cut it to 2.

[Zairava]

Snipped the OP for length

Again, I agree with essentially most if not everything she's had to say in the video. You summarized what she had to say and she put them more refined and detailed than I will here.

I've discovered, too, that I'm definitely a midcore player that just naturally leans towards more difficult content, I revel in the chaos. Endwalker's fatal flaw is that it does not have this content for reasons Zepla mentioned.

Without it, there's only two separate extremes: piss easy casual and break-neck hardcore. There is no medium difficulty that actually helps players try to get into harder content. Eureka and Bozja fit this bill, especially when you include the likes of NM's, Critical Engagements, CLL, Dalriada, Baldesion Arsenal, and Delebrum Reginae. However, that isn't here this expansion.

I'm of the same mind when she says she expected for Variant/Criterion/Criterion Savage to be Casual/Medium to EX/Savage and not Casual/Savage/Savage to Ultimate, and I'm of the belief most other people did as well. Criterion had the potential to be another form of medium difficulty content to help ease people into hard-core raids, but they missed the mark miserably by both making it too hard to perform that purpose and excruciatingly lacking incentives BOTH releases so far.

Eureka/Bozja were something anyone could go without the requirement of going in with a group every single time, and always have something to do and gain. I do believe that loss of exp/whatever progression system in the next field zone should not be included in as well. That seems to be a common complaint even if it doesn't bother me that much.

Relics, in my opinion, are the epitome of casual content with incentive to go and do without involving high-end raiding and such. You had to put in effort in prior expansions, so that you felt accomplished when you obtain it. That's gone as well, there is no sense of accomplishment with the manderville relics because of it literally just being a glorified tome weapon. It's even easier to get than the tome weapon because it only requires the prior tome currency, not 7(reduced to 4 later) runs of the latest last-fight of the raid tier and 500 of the current tome currency.

I also appreciate her actually putting in the effort to ask casual players on their input and opinions, it helps open my eyes to how varied their time is spent (obviously differs from person to person) as well as other people who may not actually have thought that openly otherwise.

[Renathras]

...

I don't disagree with you, though I think it's a bit more nuanced. I remember Extremes not being AS punishing in the past. Maybe it's rose tinted goggles, but I remember being able to recover from deaths and clear, and now, they seem to have a lot more body checks that lead to wipes like Savages do and a lot more overlapping mechanics. I HAD to watch a guide for Ex5's big combo attack at the end because the X/Box expanding pattern just isn't visually obvious while also trying to deal with the stack/spread things. Extremes used to be more midcore content than they are now, so we had that bridge better in the past, even as recent as ShB. Emerald Weapon (the fight that is now Golbez) was hard, but that's because it hit hard. Other than the balls at the start, if you had a death or two, you could get those people back on their feet and keep going. If you're short a person in either Gales 2 or 3 or the meteor/flare/knockback (either one of them) or the skyfall thing then two man circles (that are immediately followed up by said body checks), then it's a wipe. In Emerald, if someone died to the sword cross attacks, you could raise them and you could survive the group stack marker that came after it even if down a person.

It was hard (in a way, harder), but it wasn't as pass/fail, which I think is the line between midcore and hardcore.

I would disagree with BA being midcore, it has the same hallmarks of what makes something generally hardcore.

I kind of agree, but that's why I pointed out Bozja. CLL, DR normal, and Dal were a lot more midcore. And for all the complaints at the time, Bozja was largely a huge success.

.. You posted this thread out of spite, and didn't start with talking points - Only disdain. That's what bitterness looks like my dude. lol

Oh? Are you psychic, friend?

No, I didn't. But I'm not going to entertain attempts to derail the thread. If you want to personally go after me, please do so in the other thread so this one can stay on topic and not be derailed.

[FenyxRising]

.. You posted this thread out of spite, and didn't start with talking points - Only disdain. That's what bitterness looks like my dude. lol

Exactly, he starts by framing the entire narrative wrongly.

[FenyxRising]

Two things:

1. If you really want discussion, leading with the snarky "takes Zepla's word as law" isn't the best idea

2. Mind giving a summary of her points in point form? I'm not going to watch that as I think it's probably just rehashing everything for the 1000th time but maybe I'm wrong.

This you ?

Snark is always the best way to argue your point.

[FenyxRising]

Oh? Are you psychic, friend?

No, I didn't. But I'm not going to entertain attempts to derail the thread. If you want to personally go after me, please do so in the other thread so this one can stay on topic and not be derailed.

Why are you asking him if he's psychic when you psychoanalyze everyone all the time ?

thank u, next

[Renathras]

assuming ren's summary is accurate her takes about what counts as midcore are fairly off but her point about no midcore content is spot on

Thanks. You can watch it to verify if you like, but I tried to keep it slim and her points without interpretation.

I agree that BA was more like DRSav. I disagree on Extremes. Zodiark was the only Extreme this expansion that I would call midcore. One reason I tried P1S (and cleared P1S a bunch, P2S a few times, and later P5S; the first time I've ever done at-level Savages) is because of friends telling me that HydEx (which I had cleared) was Savage level, so if I could do that, I could do Eric Savage. Zodiark is also the only Extreme this expansion that doesn't actually have a body check. This was somewhat countered, though, by the mechanic being weird. To this day, people still have trouble with the Snakes. Something about the rotating battlefield really throws people off.

I would also say DR normal was on the same level as Dal. If anything, CLL is the easy one. But all of them have penalties (Mettle loss, which IS significant to people; for a while people wouldn't run CLL because the rewards were small, you got very little Mettle for clearing, but lost a ton from deaths doing it. The Devs kept saying the Mettle loss was insignificant, but apparently they realized the playerbase disagreed, so they boosted it and people started running it again).

Interesting fact on Alex. I didn't know that.

Again, I agree with essentially most if not everything she's had to say in the video. You summarized what she had to say and she put them more refined and detailed than I will here.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with most of what she said here (again, other than the BA thing). I also have discovered I'm apparently a midcore player that just enjoys chilling most of the time. And obviously I very much agree we need something in the middle that we're lacking, and as you say, it's really good that she went to casual players and asked them how they feel to get a more informed overall viewpoint.

I also kind of agree on Relics. I think the beauty of all past Relics - all of them, honestly - is that they are for all difficulties. ARR was FATEs and Roulettes, though you could also farm Light in Coils if you really wanted to. HW, you could get the parts from either buying with Poetics (random roulettes) or doing Savages (hardcore) or everything in between. In Eureka, unless you wanted the +2 versions (same visual model and effect, so no need for glam), you didn't even have to do BA. Bozja let you collect parts doing easy content (including FATEs) all the way up to DR Savage still dropping the Timeworn Artifacts. Though it didn't always get it right, it had a spread you could do.

The beauty of that kind of content is that it CAN be a grind that all skill/commitment level players can engage in together.

EDIT:

Exactly, he thinks everyone bullies him, he even thinks Zepla is personally bullying him, that's why he's so bitter, it's really weird and I don't know why he thinks that.

No, Fenyx, I'm not going to entertain your derailing. You have a whole 140 page thread to do that in. Go there and I'll give you the link to my OP in that thread - AGAIN - and ask you to quote where I said I was personally attacked - AGAIN - because I never did and you made up that lie the last time.

Do it in that thread. This one is for serious discussion, not your pot stirring.

I'm sure several of us read the thread before you edited it. It was purely venomous.

Oh, I still have it.

No, it wasn't "venomous". I thought it was funny the people who have spent months saying Zepla and Happy can't be trusted suddenly saying she's so spot on when she just agrees with them but nothing else about her changed. I didn't edit it to save face or whatever you're arguing, I edited it because someone asked and I want productive discussion.

Clearly, you do not since you've not yet mentioned the video nor Zepla's points and seem to want to engage in a personal crusade against me to derail this thread.

I might also add that taking screenshots so you can use them as future attacks isn't exactly something one would consider good faith...it seems to speak to a mind wanting to attack someone else and looking for evidence they can bring up in the future to hammer them with. You make a far better Umbridge than I, my friend.

I have no interested in entertaining it. Again, we have a 140 page thread for that. Go there if you want to continue. This thread is for serious discussion, not your vendettas and venomous derailing attempts.

Damn, busted, OP. It was a nice try I suppose.

"busted"?

1. If you really want discussion, leading with the snarky "takes Zepla's word as law" isn't the best idea

Someone gave an honest suggestion, and I adapted the OP since they asked since I think Boblawblah was right. I didn't hide it, so there's nothing to be "busted" about. Someone made a good faith comment and someone else took that on board and made a change based on that good faith comment.

Unlike the attempts to derail that have followed.