SE stop doing the "norm"

[Abriael]

I really hope it is based on skill.....

*Every* game is based on skill. What varies is just the skillset required. Twitch skill isn't the only kind of "skill" there is, nor the only valid one to base a game on.

The funny thing is that a twitch based MMO like TERA is actually way easier than FFXIV.

[KiriA500]

Solo- Craft, Gather, Explore, Map quests, quests, NM hunt

Crafting: Unless you were rich (which you didn't get that way by playing solo), you had to farm materials. The higher level the recipe was, the harder the materials were to obtain, thus making the mobs higher level. You couldn't solo these mobs unless you had a high level job. High level jobs = required partying.

Gathering: Like above, if you didn't have a properly leveled job, maneuvering around zones to gather would require either Sneak/Invis, or items to provide said buffs. Sneak is 20WHM/20RDM/20SCH and Invisible is 25WHM/25RDM/25SCH. Unless you wanted to fork out the money to buy Silent Oil and Prism Powder to farm, you were forced into leveling a mage job. You could possibly level Red Mage to 25 solo, but it would take quite some time, especially before the huge EXP boosts to EP/DC mobs, on top of being able to wear certain armor that provided nice DEF boosts. White Mage and Scholar would take even longer to solo to those levels as they were not meant to take damage. So, if you want to farm without spending money, you had to party in order to harvest in certain places.

Explore: See argument about Sneak/Invis above. You couldn't explore without spending money or having a mage leveled.

Map Quests: See above. Couldn't reach the Stone Monuments without Sneak/Invis, or a high level job.

Quests: Some of these required an item you got off a level 1 mob, some required stuff with high level mobs. You could also buy the items, but that cost gil.

NM hunt: Yes, but you needed a job leveled in order to hunt the NM's you wanted items from.

Even though this stuff is "solo" according to you, it still required you to party with others in order to progress your character to the point of being able to solo.

[Babydoll]

*Every* game is based on skill. What varies is just the skillset required. Twitch skill isn't the only kind of "skill" there is, nor the only valid one to base a game on.

The funny thing is that a twitch based MMO like TERA is actually way easier than FFXIV.

Yeah that is what I thought! Gear should just enhance the skill...haha not make up for a lack thereof.

[Soukyuu]

TERA. And as much as I personally love it, it bombed.

IMHO, TERA is B&S lite, combat-wise.
I tested B&S and B&S combat is much more demanding. Screwing up a block usually leads to massive damage even on lower levels and you have to learn the attack patterns of each mob to be able to block efficiently. In TERA, I just spammed hits most of the time and could then recover my hp pretty fast.

Also, unlike TERA, B&S is highly popular in Korea, so that gives me a shimmer of hope. Maybe B&S will deliver not only combat-wise but also overall.

*Every* game is based on skill. What varies is just the skillset required.

Yeah... sure... That's why people don't want you in endgame groups if you don't have high-end gear, even if the dps difference is not that high?

FFXIV's "skillset" is too much crippled by gear. If you don't have the right gear in FFXIV, you'll deal less damage and take more damage, even if your skill as a player is higher than of a min-maxed player. Evading/blocking is also gear based.

That's why B&S's system appeals to me, you take damage largely depending on how much your player skill is, not your gear. Gear should be supporting you, but not defining you.

[Babydoll]

Crafting: Unless you were rich (which you didn't get that way by playing solo), you had to farm materials. The higher level the recipe was, the harder the materials were to obtain, thus making the mobs higher level. You couldn't solo these mobs unless you had a high level job. High level jobs = required partying.

Gathering: Like above, if you didn't have a properly leveled job, maneuvering around zones to gather would require either Sneak/Invis, or items to provide said buffs. Sneak is 20WHM/20RDM/20SCH and Invisible is 25WHM/25RDM/25SCH. Unless you wanted to fork out the money to buy Silent Oil and Prism Powder to farm, you were forced into leveling a mage job. You could possibly level Red Mage to 25 solo, but it would take quite some time, especially before the huge EXP boosts to EP/DC mobs, on top of being able to wear certain armor that provided nice DEF boosts. White Mage and Scholar would take even longer to solo to those levels as they were not meant to take damage. So, if you want to farm without spending money, you had to party in order to harvest in certain places.

Explore: See argument about Sneak/Invis above. You couldn't explore without spending money or having a mage leveled.

Map Quests: See above. Couldn't reach the Stone Monuments without Sneak/Invis, or a high level job.

Quests: Some of these required an item you got off a level 1 mob, some required stuff with high level mobs. You could also buy the items, but that cost gil.

NM hunt: Yes, but you needed a job leveled in order to hunt the NM's you wanted items from.

Even though this stuff is "solo" according to you, it still required you to party with others in order to progress your character to the point of being able to solo.

I dunno...I did all of the above just fine with the proper amount of work put in. I first leveled up WHM (to 60) so I could do the avatar fights and then took Summoner to 75. I farmed my own stuff for crafting also and leveled up clothcrafting.

I did a lot of EXP parties with JP back then(in 03-04), learned quite a lot and had my main to 75 within a few months (or less) and by then learned how to play and do stuff efficiently. Maybe not to others but to me FFXI felt like you got from the game what you invested. I played alone as often as I liked...or duo with a close friend and we made quite a lot of money off NM's before RMT and SE destroyed that.

Exploring was easy for me since I leveled up WHM for the magic spells sneak and invisible. I also leveled up alchemy so I could make my own powders/pots. Its all about investing time into it. If folks didn't wanna invest time into the game then they would really struggle and suffer.

[KiriA500]

I dunno...I did all of the above just fine with the proper amount of work put in. I first leveled up WHM (to 60) so I could do the avatar fights and then took Summoner to 75. I farmed my own stuff for crafting also and leveled up clothcrafting.

I did a lot of EXP parties with JP back then(in 03-04), learned quite a lot and had my main to 75 within a few months (or less) and by then learned how to play and do stuff efficiently. Maybe not to others but to me FFXI felt like you got from the game what you invested. I played alone as often as I liked...or duo with a close friend and we made quite a lot of money off NM's before RMT and SE destroyed that.

Exploring was easy for me since I leveled up WHM for the magic spells sneak and invisible. I also leveled up alchemy so I could make my own powders/pots. Its all about investing time into it. If folks didn't wanna invest time into the game then they would really struggle and suffer.

I got you a book.

[Abriael]

IMHO, TERA is B&S lite, combat-wise.
I tested B&S and B&S combat is much more demanding. Screwing up a block usually leads to massive damage even on lower levels and you have to learn the attack patterns of each mob to be able to block efficiently. In TERA, I just spammed hits most of the time and could then recover my hp pretty fast.

Also, unlike TERA, B&S is highly popular in Korea, so that gives me a shimmer of hope. Maybe B&S will deliver not only combat-wise but also overall.

I tried B&S too. Didn't find it any harder than Tera, especially comparing high level dungeons. Also, Tera was highly popular near launch as well. B&S still hasn't delivered to the test of time.

I like it, but that doesn't make its approach any more valid or superior than MMORPGs based on different skillsets.

Yeah... sure... That's why people don't want you in endgame groups if you don't have high-end gear, even if the dps difference is not that high?

Yeah, try to find a group for Argon Corpus hardmode in Tera with tier 12 gear, see how well it goes for you. The same goes for B&S.

FFXIV's "skillset" is too much crippled by gear. If you don't have the right gear in FFXIV, you'll deal less damage and take more damage, even if your skill as a player is higher than of a min-maxed player. Evading/blocking is also gear based.

That's why B&S's system appeals to me, you take damage largely depending on how much your player skill is, not your gear. Gear should be supporting you, but not defining you.

Every MMORPG depends a lot on gear, no matter how much the developer promises it doesn't. A MMORPG not depending on gear would lack a crucial progression factor and would bomb because people would lose interest faster.

In high level encounters of both TERA and B&S (in B&S a little less than Tera, but just a little and not nearly losing it's content gating factor) you can be a master twitcher, but if you go undergeared into an endgame instance you die. No question asked.

In Final Fantasy XIV you can have the best gear you can find, but if you screw up positioning or reaction in most of the hard mode boss battles you're dead. No question asked.

Tera and B&S are based on gear AND on twitch. Tera is a little less based on individual twitch and more on party synergies.

FFXIV, The Secret World and many other MMOs are based on gear AND positioning/tactics/party synergy. Mind you, their advanced encounters (at least for the two I named) are actually way more challenging than anything B&S and Tera offer.

Gear is still a determining factor. The skillset on its side is just different. Neither is more "skillful" than the other.

Twitch does not necessarily mean challenge.

A MMORPG not dependant on gear is simply nothing else than a pipe dream. You have to give people things to look forward to and the only really viable gating factor is gear. If everyone can access every piece of content off the bat (or even as soon as they leveled to the cap), they'll check it out, lose interest and quit to the next MMO released that offers them new content.

There's no way any developer can create new content at a fast enough rate to make the gear grind obsolete.

That's simply the reality of this genre, and you don't make successful MMORPGs with pipe dreams that sound good only on paper.

As a conclusive note, the more you base a MMO on twitch and "action", the simpler group encounters can be. Even if you optimize your netcode to the maximum, there's only so much data the server and the client can pass each other reliably in a certain amount of time. Action combat takes a lot more of that bandwidth for itself, limiting what can be used for actual boss mechanics.

In addition to that, the more you force the player to pay attention to action, the more balancing and accessibility dictate you keep the bar low in term of mechanical complexity.

IE: a MMO with action combat is invariably less challenging, tactically, than one with target-based combat.

Which one is "better" is simply an individual matter of taste. They simply challenge different kind of skills, but saying that Blade & Soul or Tera require more "skill" than FFXIV, TSW, SWTOR or even WoW mind you, is simply conceptually false, and is as valid as saying than an FPS requires more "skill" than XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Mind you. All MMORPGs are actually "easy" in terms of amount of "skill" required (whatever skillset they cater to), simply because their developers have to keep them as accessible as possible, as their revenue and continued success is directly proportional to the number of people playing.

Want a really challenging "mmo"? Try iRacing. Blade & Soul and any other MMORPG will suddenly look like child's play.

[Elexia]

You realize all you have mentioned here took 10 years to be added?

Most of the stuff added came into FFXI in 2003 - 2007, the only major addition to FFXI after WoTG launch was in 2009 then later 2010/2011 (Voidwatch) I'm no math major, but 2003 - 2007 is not 10 years, if you want to get technical most of the major systems in FFXI were implemented in 4.7 years.

[Abriael]

Most of the stuff added came into FFXI in 2003 - 2007, the only major addition to FFXI after WoTG launch was in 2009 then later 2010/2011 (Voidwatch) I'm no math major, but 2003 - 2007 is not 10 years, if you want to get technical most of the major systems in FFXI were implemented in 4.7 years.

Yeah, because we can definitely wait for 2016 for ARR.





Or not.

[Babydoll]

I got you a book.

Doesn't really help >.< But I see the word sexual in there!

I really do not see how I am missing the point. Your point was that it is hard to play the game? Everything I see in your post is saying how you were forced to level up jobs to do stuff. Well...yeah? I don't know I am just guessing because you only tried to link me to some book to help see your POV. Or was it about soloing?....Again I soloed just fine in FFXI.

I will stick to my point...if you wanted stuff in FFXI you had to work very hard for it. o.O I liked working hard and getting a nice reward...meh I dunno lol.

Not trying to start anything or be a jerk...just stating my pov and experience from FFXI