The (Broken) Promise of Tomorrow - 7.3 Expectations

[Hallarem]

it's depressing how people unironically believe this.

Classic jingling keys manouver from SE, distract enough to ignore other problems that have been problems for years.

[Arrius]

it's depressing how people unironically believe this.

I do look forward to it as well.
Isn't the 'Hell yeah, this alone is the Patch I need!' level, but I take it.

[HyperiusUltima]

Honestly the only way they’ll get my trust back is when we see in the long term that they’re willing to dedicate resources to where the game is struggling right now for both the casual head and the raider head because that’s the duality they’re struggling to feed right now for both jobs and raids. If anything I’d like for them to make more content for the casual right now since we’ve got a whole ‘nother patch to plow through a raid tier(which is awesome on Normal and Savage btw, including the story). Also, where’s Variant Dungeons?

[Absurdity]

So why exactly did SE feel like the delubrum savage entry system was bad. In the live letter translations I am reading something about not wanting to railroad people or give them as much support and for groups to form "organically".

The thing that is railroading people into organizing on discord is the raid itself being very strict and unforgiving, not the method of entry. I realize I'm asking a "what where they thinking" question when they clearly have not put any thought into this but I feel like the question needs to be asked regardless.

It feels a bit like they're trying to bring "friction" back into the game after the casual experience has been toothless for 2 expansions.
But they're doing it in such a bumbling way that it is giving me whiplash.

They have spent years basically telling players they can just press random buttons from level 1 to level 100 and be just fine, to breeze through the entire game with no difficulty and access everything with the press of a button unless they try to tackle the hardest content it has to offer.
And now they turn around and expect those same players to organically form parties with strangers, then tackle content together that actually requires learning and coordination, content that will easily kill them when they have barely ever experienced failure for 100s of hours.

As if they think they can change ingrained player mentality overnight.

Any one of us would look at this and ask "what were they thinking?"

And I honestly applaud them for trying, but it needs to be a slow and gradual process or we get the situation we have now.

If it was the idea that we talk to strangers, it doesn't work when zones have limits.

This might've had some merit if this were Eureka Anemos, where people were chatting during the significant downtime between NM spawns.
But OC's core design runs counter to talking to strangers in the first place, you spend the entire lockout sprinting from Fate to CE and back to Fate, you don't even have time to chat because that means missing out on some kind of active event.

[Daralii]

It feels a bit like they're trying to bring "friction" back into the game after the casual experience has been toothless for 2 expansions.
But they're doing it in such a bumbling way that it is giving me whiplash.

They have spent years basically telling players they can just press random buttons from level 1 to level 100 and be just fine, to breeze through the entire game with no difficulty and access everything with the press of a button unless they try to tackle the hardest content it has to offer.
And now they turn around and expect those same players to organically form parties with strangers, then tackle content together that actually requires learning and coordination, content that will easily kill them when they have barely ever experienced failure for 100s of hours.

Any one of us would look at this and ask "what were they thinking?"

It's something you can see even in content from 5-10 years ago. A lot of people in lower end content are used to just being able to ignore mechanics because they tickle and do almost nothing else, so as soon as you reach any duty finder content that has actual lethality(Lahabrea and Igeyorhm/Ascian Prime, the Nier raids, etc), people will sit in the AoEs, fall over, and then just keep falling over because they never learned what to watch for. I even made callout macros for Aetherochemical Research Facility because people, sprout or not, couldn't understand what to do for things like Dualstar and we would keep wiping until someone left.

[DynnDiablos]

I do look forward to it as well.
Isn't the 'Hell yeah, this alone is the Patch I need!' level, but I take it.

I don't even wear hats, but I am happy we will have options and I may just adjust some glams to include them. We take the crumbs we can!

[Carin-Eri]

It's either Meracydia(though I have zero idea what the framing could be) or another shard, but they're running out of those. 9 is for all intents and purposes a dead world, 1 and 13 are recovering from their Floods, and 5, 12, 2, 3, 6, 10, and 7 were all Rejoined.

A possibility that's been rattling around in my head, especially with all the references to FFV more recently, is that the key will be used to justify random chunks of other shards being grafted to the Source and treated as new continents to explore.

You just made a really good point there.

They could, technically, kill two birds with one stone.... namely have the Warrior of Light and company need to visit Meracydia because we discover that a large chunk of another shard was grafted onto it. I mean, we don't know a great deal about Meracydia - but we do know, from limited in-game dialogue and encyclopaedia Eorzea, that a large part of it is a inhospitable wasteland; it would therefore lend itself pretty well to having a large chunk of another shard 'grafted' onto it.

Which would lend itself well to a few storylines - I don't know - maybe a large number of Allagans somehow escaped to the shard the chunk is from - I doubt anyone would be happy to see them again, least of all the native Meracydians who are described as being reclusive and "attack any who approach". And Tiamat is likely back in Meracydia too, which could bring Dragons back into the spotlight somewhat - it could even be the case that we find out about all this through her telling Vrtra about it.

[Turethir]

If we go to Meracydia, I just want it to be that - Meracydia. I'd like an expansion which is just focused on one region and doesn't have to drag in the Shard plot (I have so little interest in the Shards and I honestly think they've hurt the overall narrative) But that's just me...

[Carin-Eri]

If we go to Meracydia, I just want it to be that - Meracydia. I'd like an expansion which is just focused on one region and doesn't have to drag in the Shard plot (I have so little interest in the Shards and I honestly think they've hurt the overall narrative) But that's just me...

Same really, although have to say that the Allagans being back in Meracydia would be interesting, and having a shard chunk deposit them there would be one way to do that.

[Catwho]

Forked Tower is a reversion to how old Dynamis worked in FFXI, whereupon everyone needed a special item to get into the raid.

Except even that was scheduled on demand and you didn't have to wait for weather, so in that respect it's even worse.