2.0 "A New Hope" for an old set up.

[Vaymathias]

I recently found an AMAZING website that analyzes some of my favorite games, and a short paragraph essentially points out what I always find to be a real drag on MMO's.

"The problem is that the cumulative effect of mastery is palpable even in a mediocre action game, whereas the cumulative acquisition of simulated skills can easily come off as boring. In the case of mastery, every twitch of the thumbs causes the player's brain to recall all the skills that went into the action they are performing now. In a mediocre RPG, however, a player replaces all of their gear with gear from the next shop. And then they replace all of that gear with treasure found in the last or second-to-last dungeon. This is the worst kind of linearity. Because the best gear (or most of it) in this circumstance is simply plopped in front of the player, their impression of the game will suffer, in retrospect. For one thing, the game is too easy; it's just a series of inflating stats that are placed, unavoidably, in the way of the player's party. For another thing, what is the player going to remember about their agency in the game? That they pressed "A" at all the right times? They didn't have to be clever, or curious, or work for their skills and gear. That can be really disappointing."

And then shortly after provides something that I knew I loved, I was just never focused enough on the problem or solution to put it together.

"Of course, in FF6 there is no real second-to-last stop to provide this gear. If there were such a dungeon, it would destroy pacing of the second half of the game to have one dungeon filled to the brim with enough gear to deck twelve characters out. Why would the player go anywhere else, when they can simply do that one dungeon to get all the gear they need? Instead what you see is a division of permanently useful gear into a number of dungeons, starting even before the retrieval of the airship."

In FFXIV, the devs release content, one after another (duh), but each time releasing new gear that practically removes the reason to spend time on getting the old. Why should I spend weeks on end (my unfortunate history with Ifrit) doing the Bowl of Embers to get his harpoon for my Dragoon, when I could waste the same amount of time/effort getting something stronger more useful?

Today, it's all about darklight gear, and next it'll be all about "whatever comes next". Final Fantasy XI had this issue (damn you Dynamis!), WOW suffers from it, practically every MMO does.

I hope that with 2.0, the devs jump off this band wagon of releasing new gear with just inflated stats to give reason to do new content, and removing reason to do old content. I hope they design the end game with multiple "today's end game.....for now" instead of just one.

SOURCE: http://thegamedesignforum.com/featur...ign_ff6_4.html

[Rutelor]

I recently found an AMAZING website that analyzes some of my favorite games, and a short paragraph essentially points out what I always find to be a real drag on MMO's.

"The problem is that the cumulative effect of mastery is palpable even in a mediocre action game, whereas the cumulative acquisition of simulated skills can easily come off as boring. In the case of mastery, every twitch of the thumbs causes the player's brain to recall all the skills that went into the action they are performing now. In a mediocre RPG, however, a player replaces all of their gear with gear from the next shop. And then they replace all of that gear with treasure found in the last or second-to-last dungeon. This is the worst kind of linearity. Because the best gear (or most of it) in this circumstance is simply plopped in front of the player, their impression of the game will suffer, in retrospect. For one thing, the game is too easy; it's just a series of inflating stats that are placed, unavoidably, in the way of the player's party. For another thing, what is the player going to remember about their agency in the game? That they pressed "A" at all the right times? They didn't have to be clever, or curious, or work for their skills and gear. That can be really disappointing."

And then shortly after provides something that I knew I loved, I was just never focused enough on the problem or solution to put it together.

"Of course, in FF6 there is no real second-to-last stop to provide this gear. If there were such a dungeon, it would destroy pacing of the second half of the game to have one dungeon filled to the brim with enough gear to deck twelve characters out. Why would the player go anywhere else, when they can simply do that one dungeon to get all the gear they need? Instead what you see is a division of permanently useful gear into a number of dungeons, starting even before the retrieval of the airship."

In FFXIV, the devs release content, one after another (duh), but each time releasing new gear that practically removes the reason to spend time on getting the old. Why should I spend weeks on end (my unfortunate history with Ifrit) doing the Bowl of Embers to get his harpoon for my Dragoon, when I could waste the same amount of time/effort getting something stronger more useful?

Today, it's all about darklight gear, and next it'll be all about "whatever comes next". Final Fantasy XI had this issue (damn you Dynamis!), WOW suffers from it, practically every MMO does.

I hope that with 2.0, the devs jump off this band wagon of releasing new gear with just inflated stats to give reason to do new content, and removing reason to do old content. I hope they design the end game with multiple "today's end game.....for now" instead of just one.

SOURCE: http://thegamedesignforum.com/featur...ign_ff6_4.html

I agree with much of what you post there.

For more, check this post I made in a thread I also started. Actually the backs and forths in the whole thread are often interesting, and frequently pertinent to what you post here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...829#post758829

[AmyNeudaiz]

This actually made me leave the game for about 3 months when they released Garuda because the 400+ runs it took me to get all my Ifrit weapons and the 300+ runs it took me to get all my Mog weapons were all for absolutely nothing.

I seriously hope they don't keep doing this.

[Firon]

You obv don't play the game then cause some old items still are not replaceable.

[Vaymathias]

You obv don't play the game then cause some old items still are not replaceable.

You know if you don't log in every so often you can't post here right?

And there will almost always be exceptions.

[Firon]

You know if you don't log in every so often you can't post here right?

And there will almost always be exceptions.

Well if you did play you would know a lot of old gear is still good.

[Vaymathias]

Well if you did play you would know a lot of old gear is still good.

"Good" isn't so much the point. Content keeps getting harder and harder, stat wise, requiring that, more often we get lucky and get stronger gear, to do the new content to find stronger gear. Okay at first, but sooner or later the stuff that's good now will be trash forcing people to somehow get something better and with the current drop rate, leaving casuals (like me, since I do play the game, just not as a full time job) SOL when it comes to newer content.

Second, it also leaves little to no reason to go back to old content. The next dungeon that comes out with gear that trumps Dark light, has to be more difficult than AV, which means that unless you're trying to get dark light to make it easier to do the newer dungeon, there will be little reason to go back.

They should split up set gear across multiple dungeons, like have the dark light helm in one dungeon and the heavy body piece in another, then in those same dungeons have pieces of other gear sets.

At the same time, have multiple ways to get this gear. Maybe a new "Dungeon Crawler Guild", every time you beat a dungeon you get DCG points, and you can also turn in gear from those dungeons for more points, and they would be used to purchase gear from and "completed" dungeon. This way, getting screwed on drops constantly doesn't feel like you're just wasting your time.

[Jynx]

Personally I think (at least as far as 1.0 is being treated) SE is going to have serious issues battling power creep. Once you hear "Level cap raise" you know they pretty much exhasted all their option to battle power creep and are moving on to the next tier of game to "Wipe clean" the slate.

Hopefully when they do that they don't make the same mistake twice and start giving players gear that is good in some situations and bad in others, give us the chance to have more than a singular "Best" item. Sure some people will be all about DPS but some other people may find utillity to be a notch above raw damage.

AF gear is a good example but they are singular examples and often are poor choices for a slot compared to what else you can aquire.

[Forerunner]

Good luck trying to do future content without that next upgrade from AF to Darklight/Melded gear.

[Kafeen]

In FFXIV, the devs release content, one after another (duh), but each time releasing new gear that practically removes the reason to spend time on getting the old.

What would you suggest? Release gear that isn't better than the last and have the community cry out that the new gear and new content is useless. Release gear that only suits some jobs (such as in the FF6 example) and have the community cry out that SE hates their job. Release gear that focuses on different stats? People already Min/Max to the extent that stat allocation is pointless since every job has everyone throw all their points into the same two attributes making any choice pointless.