Stop the Grind-to-the-Endgame madness!

[Asgardx]

If 2.0 is a bunch of quest hubs. I will take my subscription else where. Part of the reason I play this game is the feel of the world and if towns / cool locations are just turned into crappy quest hubs it makes the world feel empty and shallow. Please - im begging you S.E - do not make quest hubs. I dont mind if lvling is based on content if the content is meaningful (story lines) and through dungeons but quest hubs are -not- content in my eyes. Content is too good of a word for what quest hubs are and do to MMORPGs. /end rant

[Jinko]

If 2.0 is a bunch of quest hubs. I will take my subscription else where.

Where you going to take them when ever other MMO is like that, I hope that 2.0 is quest hubs personally, I have been hoping for this since they first announced settlements.

if towns / cool locations are just turned into crappy quest hubs it makes the world feel empty and shallow.

What cool locations are you referring to ? they all look and feel the same.

but quest hubs are -not- content in my eyes. Content is too good of a word for what quest hubs are and do to MMORPGs. /end rant

Of course its content, thats like saying side quests aren't content, sure it might not be content you are interested in, if thats the case just don't do it.

[Nazrakin]

What i somewhat dont understand is that if majority of the people who played this game for awhile have couple of 50"s on standby for 2.0, and the level cap will most likely not be raised, are those majority just going breeze through it until their is nothing left to do? and hence what i hear others are saying about maybe their will be a new form of leveling in 2.0, whats the point if everyone got couple 50"s already, and then we will get hit with endgame stuff "only" in future updates from 2.0. I know others dont like ffxi reference but atleast it had a progression up to endagme, and you where more tuned to your character, and it felt rewarding in the end.

I keep hearing people talk about FFXI's progression and low level content. I don't think there was really that much?

- Quest for your Chocobo pass - FFXIV will have a quest *and* you'll be able to breed a chocobo as a companion.
- Unlocking jobs - FFXIV already has these.
- Story missions - Again, FFXIV will have these
- AF gear Quest - FFXIV has this, as well as other job quests for spells.
- BCNMs - FFXIV will have these in the form of dungeons
- Limit Breaks - These were more a consequence of the level cap being raised, we haven't reached that point in FFXIV yet.

This is all the stuff that I can remember.

[Payadopa]

In almost all MMO's including FF11 the fun really starts at end game, so why would you hinder players getting to the fun ?

I follow a reallllllly simple concept. If a game isn't fun I *gasp* don't play it.
So instead of making an MMO where you have fun while you play you find it okay to have fun at the end?

I cannot even fathom how one would come to such a conclusion. It defies everything a game (made to entertain, mind you) stands for.
Would you buy a single player game that bores you to tears because the last 10% are finally worth being played?

Gamers really have changed then within the last decade and not for the better from my point of view.

[Jinko]

Paya MMO's don't follow the standards seen in single player games, the reason why the majority of fun is at end game is because that's where the majority end up.

It's worth mentioning stuff like Easy Ifrit/Garuda and Toto-rak most of the time gets face-rolled by 1 lvl 50 player who helping out, many times I have seen comments such as "it's dead ?, I'm still in the cutscene!"

Would you buy a single player game that bores you to tears because the last 10% are finally worth being played?

How is that relevant ? mmo's are built upon via patches and expansions, there is no last 10%, in a few years when they raise level cap there will be plenty of mid level content.

I follow a reallllllly simple concept. If a game isn't fun I *gasp* don't play it.

Interestingly you play this < this is sarcasm

[Hyrist]

Unless your going out of your way to gain slow exp it's pretty dang hard not to if your actually fighting stuff. Even outside of powerleveling you can still get some extremely fast exp.

I'm far from a hardcore player, and again I solod my thaumaturg to 50 without even doing many leves. Took me about a week and a half playing a 1-2 hours a day.

I'm sorry, Jynx. But I'm going to have to ask you specificly which camps were you using.

I can tell you right now, I play an average of 10 hours a week, on Archer, and those are most definatly not my experiences.

Your issues may be unique to Thamaturge, which, as they are a massive damage dealer apt at dishing large a mounts of AoE damage in great bursts, I can see that.

However, this is not relevant to my Archer, which my choices are, either sit and tank monsters and forego combos, which delays kill time. Or I kite to get my combos, which delays kill times, but is safer during Leves where I have to hunt groups.

Same thing with my Lancer, which I soloed nearly to 50, but it still took me a matter a months rather than weeks, as you are claiming.

Seeming the basis of your argument hinges on this assumption that all classes level at the speed of Thamaturge, which could be considered a class balance issue, not a leveling speed issue. I'm going to have a much tougher time respecting the full of your statements. I will, however, go back and still break your reply down into the bullet points I wish to respond to.

[Payadopa]

Interestingly you play this < this is sarcasm

Nice one with the colour. lol

The fun fact is, I only play this game when a patch comes out, then I usually don't bother with it (maybe like once every three weeks). I've seen progess I like, though, so I'm staying. Can't neglect 6 years of XI-ness.
I'm only Lala .... human!

Oh and I already told my LS that I won't level another class to 50. After WHM I tried ARC and did some leves but no. Not for the life of me. Not again. The first time had at least some novelty to it. lol

And instead of speeding up the process we should reward MMO developers who actually care for the journey as much as the destination.

[Shurrikhan]

So in short, no the community cannot take care of itself and needs something to regulate it because it has proven time and again capable of great stupidity. I lose a lot more allowing such stupidity to come about, so I'm not going to support anything that tries to make the game lean in that direction.

WoW would seem a pretty poor example of this, given that it's community dictated the effective loss of freedom, not the mechanics. The mechanics were later adjusted to ensure loss of freedom.

Seems we wont ever be able to see eye to eye, considering I think the community can and will do a fine job of policing itself and you obviously don't.

Oh well I respect your difference of opinion I just don't agree with it I guess. From the sounds of your posts though you never seem to have had a group of friends to fall back on, you should really think about making some bonds in a MMO before you go on about how a MMO needs to only be friendly to PUGs.

It's a shame you think tighter restrictions are the way to go where I think more freedom is the way to go. Again no offense just pointing out how I think we both are seeing things.

I'd have to agree with Duelle that the community does not police itself well. However, it shouldn't have to. The game mechanics shouldn't function in such a way that things have overwhelming advantages and disadvantages between things that are supposed to be equal. The more complex the game, additionally, the harder these gaps are for players to distinguish, and therefore the gaps are often exaggerated and enforced by the community.

However, I also agree that the direction for any development should head for creation and freedoms, not "streamlining" those freedoms to make more lucrative choices but a far fewer total number. I've never seen something good come out of a company policing its game outside of small balances, and even then the question of net affect always seems to have been slightly left out -- and its effect usually on the minority of players or their setups. (That in itself might be pragmatic, but it's groin-shot to any idea of creativity or ingenuity.)

[SuzakuCMX]

Would you buy a single player game that bores you to tears because the last 10% are finally worth being played?

I, too, was surprised at FF XIII's sales numbers.

[Hyrist]

Not sure I understand this.

How do you put content in the mid-levels of the game, when the mid-levels of the game have been reduced to a casual afternoon?

We've already seemed to have established that your idea of leveling is faster than the perceived norm on several public accounts, but there is a secondary reply to this.

First off, creating enticing content delays leveling, especially if it is story-line relevant. You want to do an instance that has unique drops or Meteria you want, you pause and take the time to do it. The fuller this content is, the more you're interested in doing these side things that may, beleive it or not, be slower than grinding, or even faster than grinding, but because you're following the chains and the story, you're not even noticing or caring how fast you advance.

So long as there is content that you playthrough, the progress speed is pretty much irrlevant. It's the feeling of the journey that counts.

And this isn't even touching on more hardcore solutions like how they worked on Guildwars 2, which is a system that can reduce your level to that which is needed for the round. I don't particularly agree with the system but it is popular, and it works. Leveling speed becomes somewhat irrelevant as you're still hitting the content at the required level.

It's not about "Draging" the levels out it's about having them take a semblance of any time to even finish.

It takes plenty of time to do things normally in this game already, especially if it requires assembling a group. Things that can be soloed are going to take less time because it takes less preparation time. As more group content comes into the game, the slower it will seem to you. Solo content will, by contrast, always seem quicker - even more so the more skilled the player becomes.

That doesn't eliminate the feeling of progress, however. Skills can be quested to resemble the feeling of training. And I don't see why it has to be limited to just job skills. There could be class specific skills that could be learned in the game's future as well.

As it stands the game is a hillarious blurr at how quickly you can get most of the games content done

What content? Leveling? Subjective to which class. Single Player storyline? Seeming ti was designed so that a DoL or DoH could play it, yes, it would seem easy to go through.

Crushing the game into a tiny cube doesn't help the fact it fosters a even more hostile endgame enviroment because people are all idling at max level.

Considering you've no idea as to the breath of content in this game, this statement is speculation at best. Even now with the content we've got, very few people are just 'idling' at max level. They're leveling crafts, trying to organize runs, trying to get quests done, trying to make gil. All the things they were able to bypass on the climb to 50 that now become the bulk of adventuring, and they all do it more or less on the same level.

Content is designed so people don't have fun playing the job they want, they "Have fun" being forced to level every single job so you can be flexable and switch to monk at the end of Aurum Vale....

Jobs are close enough now so that a skilled individual at their job can and will out-preform someone who's just riding the coattails of a popular strat just to make it easy on them.

So you are aware, this game is play-tested with a various party (Read: One of every class with a flex slot for the 8th.)

The more saturated an endgame base is, the more variety gets experimented with because the more players of like-mentalities find each other and work together. Just because it's popular here on the forums does not mean the exceptions to the rule are not plentiful.

And again, this is also barring and assuming all updates will never exist. Have you considered Golden Saucer at all? Or Battle Regimine, or any of the other unknowns in the current working, when making these generalized statements?


I do realize that one can only speak for what he has experienced. I'm aware of that because I know my bad experiences with Endgame shells leave me jaded against the HNM scene.

You may well be jaded yourself having rushed levels as a THM -and I am going to have to say that it is a high possibility that it is coloring your perspective of the game.

Back on the subject of the thread at large. The "Grind to Endgame Madness." has two extremes. Taking too long without sufficient content, and taking too short without sufficient development.

If you fill the level span up with content, especially content that can be revisited at higher difficulties for those who are higher level, or have characters possibly revert to lesser levels to experience it at the initial difficulty, then so long as you have a reward system that can adapt itself to what level you are truely, then you've eliminated the issue without harming either 'camp' of the discussion.

Player who want to play more slowly have the option to grind less, play content more. Those who which to push to endgame have that choice to get quick responses.

There simply is no need to eliminate that choice. We can simply build upon our options and reach a more widely desirable solution.