Yoshida-san: Please Give Us a BETTER System for Relics and Future 2.0 Challenges!

[Jynx]

Lol people getting all analytical about who they run with.

How about I just play the game with my friends wether they are masters of their craft or not? I find knowing my teams strengths and weaknesses to be more benificial than just assuming we are all pro-tastic players.

Then again I game for the fun of it, failures and no drops don't really matter to me. At the end of the day if we died because our tank rofled into a sandpit mid-battle it's not a bad thing it's just hillarious and we will never let him forget the day he drown in a pit of sand while tanking a boss.

[Enfarious]

Just an example of a system that allows players to play "their" way. As the current Relic weapon quest does, it takes advantage of existing content. Rather than "forcing" players to engage specific content, it "encourages".

At some point during the relic weapon quest, you are provided a de-activated relic. In order to activate, you have to acquire 10,000 relic seals (it could be any number really). You can only get relic seals when the de-activated relic is equipped.

Relic seals are rewarded via a variety of ways:
1. Killing mobs that are of at least level 50 have a random chance of dropping a relic seals. In this case, RNG would be driven by the level of the mob and the number of players in the group (high level mob, more players = more likely to get a seal).
2. Completing leves would also provide players with a chance of getting a seal. Faction and Company leves would offer the best chance.
3. Completing hamlet would guarantee a certain number of seals. A higher score would randomly increase the number of seals rewarded.
4. Attempting hamlet with some degree of success would randomly reward seals.
5. Completing Ifrit, Moogle and Garuda would guarantee a certain number of seals in addition to randomly rewarding more.
6. Attempting Ifrit, Moogle, and Garuda with some degree of success would randomly reward seals.
7. Completing any of the high-level instanced dungeons would guarantee a certain number of seals.
8. Attempting any of the high-level instanced dungeons with some degree of success would randomly reward a number of seals.
9. Earning an achievement would provide you with a seal.

This is just an example. But, it rewards a variety forms of gameplay. Progress is measureable. Randomness is sometimes involved (but only to provide an *extra* reward). It still requires time and the "higher risk" content would provide the best rewards. It recycles already established content mechanisms. Players aren't "forced" to engage content that already has a barrier of entry (full group, time, etc...). In this case, the only crux is having to use a de-activated relic which may increase the challenge of some content.

Some of the best I've seen yet^^

[Dominar]

thats very innacurate.

I've been driving 10 years, have 7 years no claims, zero points on my licence and do maybe 6000 miles a year.
my brothers been driving 14 years, has no no claims, 6 points on his licence, 3 accidents and he does maybe 15000 miles a year.

He's by far the more experienced driver more hours behind the wheel etc etc but i'm by far the better one which is why my insurance is 20% of what his is...

so which one would you trust to drive your car?

Yes because one example explains every possible situation. Look at you own example and tell me if you take 100 eighteen year olds ans 100 thirty year olds what percentage of each sample are safer to drive with. Some eighteen year olds might even be better but experience will come into play a lot.

The point is that as a rule experience makes you better. Thats why when you apply for a job they want experience. Just because you can bring up examples that say otherwise doesnt make that any less true as a general rule.

[Seirra_Lanzce]

i prefer grinding my way out to get Relic... :\ seems more better than RNG... ><

[chrillix]

Agree with the OP! I can't all the completely luck based systems currently in the game. Garuda was definitely a step in the right direction. I have no problem working longer for something if I'm guaranteed a little bit of progress.

[Elexia]

Seems you haven't played a lot of mmos lately except ff11 and 14.

Seems the only MMO you've played is WoW.

[rwyan]

Luck based systems can work. There is nothing wrong with the RNG. The problem is that progress has become heavily reliant on full-group based content which doles around rewards based on the RNG. The problem is exacerbated when new content relies on the old content which relies on the RNG!

Progress in FF14 can be measured in a variety of ways:
1. Class Level
2. Achievements
3. Job "level" (ability and AF acquisition)
4. Company "level"
5. Acquisition of Crafted Gear
6. Acquisition of Raid Gear
7. Acquisition of Hamlet Gear
8. Acquisition of NM related gear (faction leves and open world)
9. Acquisition of Gil
10. Emergent goals (goals defined by each player due to sandbox elements of the game).

This is great! There really is a lot to do in the game, plenty to keep most any player occupied. But alas, options 3-7 all become dependent on completion of content that take a full group. And, its repetitive at that. You have to engage the same content multiple times in order to progress in a variety of different things.

Repetition isn't so much an issue. The grind isn't so much an issue. But its been my experience that organizing a group together within an LS or a PUG can take significant amounts of time. Sometimes the LS has things scheduled and I'm fortunate enough to be able to join - but usually not. If I could play many hours in a day - I would probably be willing to put up with it.

Now, coupled the amount of time it takes to get these things rolling and the RNG - its extremely demotivating. The less time you have to play, the more demotivating it is! As a physical trainer and someone who used to be over 300lbs - I know what happens when someone is demotivated.... they just give up!

My job is to keep my clients motivated (and hopefully moving). The devs job is to keep us motivated (and hopefully playing). I hope the developers do not stay on this path through 2.0 as many players will inevitably lose focus and any motivation to log in.

So yes, Jynx, I am my own worst enemy here. I'd rather log into Rift because I can better occupy my time in a variety of gameplay activities (though I much prefer the style, ambiance, combat and crafting of FF14). Just because I can't find a group for a raid, it doesn't prevent me from progressing in other areas. Just because the RNG bit my tail, it may prevent me from getting that cool item, but it doesn't prevent me from progressing other areas. And if I can't find a full group for a raid, we can at least attempt other content that is just as fun, engaging and appropriate for 3-4 of us.

Come 2.0, the dev team should really re-think things. It's fine to have content that has a high barrier of entry. It's not fine to rely on that content over and over and over again. In fact, having a wide range of content with a wide range of rewards is usually the best route to take.

Most casuals accept the fact that they will likely miss out on some of the really cool rewards. However, all they want is some engaging content to enjoy (and most are okay with grinding away) The occasional barrier is fine - but when it becomes an almost every day part of the game experience - its demotivating... blocking...

I hope what we're seeing here is only an innate result of the game being built with FF14 1.0 technology (it seems so).

[Biggs]

LOL did you just compare the outcome & importance of open heart surgery to a video game, surly my eyes deceive me.

Besides I would rather pick the one that has had the most success rate, as others have said casuals are quite capable of being good players, they just have less time to game.

Same analogy then but instead with a group of soldiers. Its an analogy for a reason, i don't think gaming is anywhere near as complex as surgery, but clearly you missed the point. And no, your right, not all casuals are bad at all. Some are very experienced players who just can't log on as much. Totally get that. BUt my point is, if you gave me 2 large groups of players i didn't know, one hardcore, one casual, and said, pick 7 random people, your about to do content you have never attempted before, myself, and many people i would think, would pick the players with more time logged. Thats all I was saying. Didn't mean to make some broad generalization about any specific casual player. Just talking strait up odds.

[Dragon]

Lol wtf do ppl have over 500 post on these forums do you post while crafting or something? This like your sec job? Play game for 8hrs then post for 4? ALL PPL WANT IS A FUCKING PROGRESS BAR!!!!!!!!!! Can you idiots that keep saying they want it easy read that and understand what it means? PROGRESS BAR....PROGRESS BAR!!!!!

QQ about post counts elsewhere, probably preferably where someone may care.

Pretty sure if someone asked me If I wanted the guy that was gonna do my open heart surgery to have 1000's of hours of experience or some asshat fresh outa medschool, I would pick the guy with more hours every time. SO would you.

I wouldn't take either of them; I have my own trusty heart surgeon. XD

i prefer grinding my way out to get Relic... :\ seems more better than RNG... ><

Absolutely agreed.

[Silvano]

Dunno if anyone posted this...not reading 40 pages of posts:

1UP: A couple things in the game right now that seem to be, as Final Fantasy XI players might say, are "haunted by the ghost of Tanaka." For example, the Relic weapon quests that were just added yesterday seem to rely very heavily on luck. And this kind of thing is really discouraging to a lot of players. An element of luck is okay, but effort is more important. And there's always the thought that, yeah, if I do this enough times, I might get lucky and get it, but there's always the fear that they won't. Especially after the Ifrit and other boss battles. I know people say that they fought 75 times and they haven't gotten a weapon yet, and they're just really frustrated, and they're upset to see that same thing happening in other systems. So are there any plans to adjust the luck/effort balance of high-level content in the future?

NY: We can tell you that at version 2.0, a lot of things are going to be changing in this aspect. For example, like a token type of system, where if you do it enough times, you're going to get rewarded for doing it that many times. We also have something else prepared as well that's going to address this… we can't talk about it now, but we have many things in place that will address that issue.

And the other thing being that, the real need for the Need, Greed, and Pass type of system when things get dropped, things that are pretty much a global standard that we haven't achieved yet on Final Fantasy XIV. We understand that we have those problems, but with the current system, we can't address them. But we will be able to address them in 2.0 with the new system and the new engines. And so you can go back and tell the community that, come 2.0, we will actually have that global standard and you won't have to worry as much about these types of things. But again, that doesn't mean we're going to forget about our current version players. We're going to listen to the voices of the players, look at the forums, adjust drop rates to reduce as much stress as possible for the players so they can experience this grand finale, the Seventh Umbral Era story, that ushers in 2.0.