dev1031 You are losing your main playerbase by making things too easy/fast/casual

[Mugiwara]

all games are basically a time sink (especially any MMO), You play games for fun, and the accomplishment of achievements/ personal goals. So saying something like this game won't be a timesink is kind of silly IMO. ^^

[Abriael]

all games are basically a time sink (especially any MMO), You play games for fun, and the accomplishment of achievements/ personal goals. So saying something like this game won't be a timesink is kind of silly IMO. ^^

A timesink is an artificial way to *waste* the time of the player, and can be more or less hidden. Time -> Sink = wasted time.

If you are required to spend an extended amount of time camping an NM, waiting for it to pop, that's a timesink, because the game isn't conductive to fun, you're just staring at the screen and wasting your time while you wait for it to happen.

If you have to play all the way through a dungeon for the same amount of time, having to avoid traps, solve riddles, fight challenging and varied bosses and generally having fun, you're still *spending* time, but you're not *wasting* it. Ergo, you're not being subject to a timesink.

Some hardcore gamers are ok with timesinks because they have a ton of time in their hands, and wasting some waiting isn't that bad. Even worse, some advocate it to exclude other people from accessing the same content as they do.

Casuals have more limited time, and this means that they want to spend their limited gaming time *actively* having fun. No matter how hard or challenging that content may be. Dead times are not fun, ergo good game design excludes them.

It's really that simple.

I don't know how many times I've said this but a 21-24 hour NM doesn't mean you sit around for 24 hours. It means it can pop 21 to 24 hours after it's killed so 3 hours max.

Sitting around for 3 hours staring at a screen is still an enormous amount of *wasted* time. Even ONE hour of sitting and staring at a screen is nothing else than an hour of my life that I'll never get back. That's simply bad design.

Honestly there shouldn't be this division between "hardcore" "casual" w/e... There should be content no matter how much time you have to play. The problem is everything thing is easy right now. From leveling to killing NMs. Nothing requires much of any thought at all, just time but far less time than FFXI.

Realism and logic would dictate not to expect elite-level content in a game that still *radically* lacks content that can be enjoyed by everyone. Really challenging content will come when the easy/average content will be in place.
Even more so, realism and logic would dictate that hard/elaborate content can't come before the combat system is final and in place. The more tactical an encounter is, the less generic, the more specific it becomes in regard of fighting mechanics. If you changed combat around AFTER difficul/complex content was added, they would have to redesign the content *again* after the new battle system is implemented.
The development team is hardly in a position to waste development time doing things twice.

[Ostia]

A timesink is an artificial way to *waste* the time of the player, and can be more or less hidden. Time -> Sink = wasted time.

If you are required to spend an extended amount of time camping an NM, waiting for it to pop, that's a timesink, because the game isn't conductive to fun, you're just staring at the screen and wasting your time while you wait for it to happen.

If you have to play all the way through a dungeon for the same amount of time, having to avoid traps, solve riddles, fight challenging and varied bosses and generally having fun, you're still *spending* time, but you're not *wasting* it. Ergo, you're not being subject to a timesink.

Some hardcore gamers are ok with timesinks because they have a ton of time in their hands, and wasting some waiting isn't that bad. Even worse, some advocate it to exclude other people from accessing the same content as they do.

Casuals have more limited time, and this means that they want to spend their limited gaming time *actively* having fun. No matter how hard or challenging that content may be. Dead times are not fun, ergo good game design excludes them.

It's really that simple.



Sitting around for 3 hours staring at a screen is still an enormous amount of *wasted* time. Even ONE hour of sitting and staring at a screen is nothing else than an hour of my life that I'll never get back. That's simply bad design.



Realism and logic would dictate not to expect elite-level content in a game that still *radically* lacks content that can be enjoyed by everyone. Really challenging content will come when the easy/average content will be in place.
Even more so, realism and logic would dictate that hard/elaborate content can't come before the combat system is final and in place. The more tactical an encounter is, the less generic, the more specific it becomes in regard of fighting mechanics. If you changed combat around AFTER difficul/complex content was added, they would have to redesign the content *again* after the new battle system is implemented.
The development team is hardly in a position to waste development time doing things twice.

This! X10000! You nailed the issue to the Core!!

[Visch]

Sitting around for 3 hours staring at a screen is still an enormous amount of *wasted* time. Even ONE hour of sitting and staring at a screen is nothing else than an hour of my life that I'll never get back. That's simply bad design.

Well there is 7 30 second windows. So:

1) You're not always there for anywhere near 3 hours unless you're super unlucky
2) If you have a real life it's great because you can go afk for 29 minutes lol (because we all know how busy you are)

If you sit there staring then you must be really hardcore

[Abriael]

1) You're not always there for anywhere near 3 hours unless you're super unlucky
2) If you have a real life it's great because you can go afk for 29 minutes lol (because we all know how busy you are)

Lemme spell it out for you. No matter if you waste the whole three hours (or any number) staring at the screen or going afk for 29 minutes. You're not playing, and you're not having fun.

Good game design is fun for the whole time, not for 30 seconds every 30 minutes.

My time isnt worth answering you.
if you find the game difficult then i stand for what i said before.
Mario 3 is hardz.tanking is hardz.I dont need a degree on internetz to know what is hard and what is not.
I enjoy playing to some extent, but saying tanking isnt a joke here is like saying ffxi wasnt a huge time sink.
Saying 99% of FFXI mobs are tank and spank only comes to show how ignorant you are.

You (quite conveniently) forgot the "grind" parts of "99% of FFXI grind mobs". In any case, lovely to see that you (quite conveniently again) refuse to bring in even just one argument to counter what I say or to prove the personal accusations you throw (I'm still waiting to see you quote where I said that the game rocks).
The "my time isn't worth answering you" sunds a lot like the typical forum warrior excuse used when he doesn't know what to write.

Oh, and I despise Mario with a passion.

[Zkieve]

Lemme spell it out for you. No matter of you waste the whole three hours (or any number) staring at the screen or going afk for 29 minutes. You're not playing, and you're not having fun.

Good game design is fun for the whole time, not for 30 seconds every 30 minutes.



You (quite conveniently) forgot the "grind" parts of "99% of FFXI grind mobs". In any case, lovely to see that you (quite conveniently again) refuse to bring in even just one argument to counter what I say.
The "my time isn't worth answering you" sunds a lot the typical forum warrior excuse used when he doesn't know what to write.

What exactly is your point , cause i fail to see one , let me retype it to you , FFXIV is easy. Tanking is easy.You find it hard, then maybe an IQ test is due.We dont have an end game, We dont have balanced classes, the devs say so themselfs, but you want to argue even with devs who say the games is in a bad shape and they are catering to the casual-mid level crowd atm.

What is your argument, that keeping guard up and managing stamina is hard, get out of here.Just becouse you find it fun ( and i can acept that completly ) it does not make it hard.Stop labeling people of hardcore or casuals.


EVERYONE NEEDS A CHALLENGE.

time sink=/= challenge
current ffxiv =/= challenge.

is it clear enough for you ?

[Abriael]

What exactly is your point , cause i fail to see one , let me retype it to you , FFXIV is easy.

because you say so?

Tanking is easy.You find it hard, then maybe an IQ test is due.

Besides the usual personal attack, I never said that I find it "hard" (again, misconstruing an argument because you can't counter it isn't exactly a good way to discuss). I said that I find it harder than FFXI. Which it is, for the several reasons I listed, that you still didn't counter once.

We dont have an end game

Who ever talked about end game (besides the fact that we DO have an endgame, we just don't have a sufficent endgame)?

We dont have balanced classes

Very true. That's why they're fixing it. But what does this have to do with difficulty? Besides "absolutely nothing of course".

What is your argument, that keeping guard up and managing stamina is hard, get out of here.Just becouse you find it fun ( and i can acept that completly ) it does not make it hard.

And where exactly did I say it's "hard"? Stamina management requires a degree of awareness. Degree of awareness which is completely absent from FFXI (and most other MMORPGs), and is one of the elements that makes tanking rank & file mobs more challenging than in FFXI, where tanking during normal leveling is a completely routinary exercise.

I never once said that tanking in FFXIV is "hard". I said (and I stand by it), that the *mechanics* of tanking in FFXIV are quite evidently more challenging and require more awareness than those in FFXI.

EVERYONE NEEDS A CHALLENGE.

And who exactly denied this?

[Zkieve]

because you say so?



Besides the usual personal attack, I never said that I find it "hard" (again, misconstruing an argument because you can't counter it isn't exactly a good way to discuss). I said that I find it harder than FFXI. Which it is, for the several reasons I listed, that you still didn't counter once.



Who ever talked about end game (besides the fact that we DO have an endgame, we just don't have a sufficent endgame)?



Very true. That's why they're fixing it. But what does this have to do with difficulty? Besides "absolutely nothing of course".



And where exactly did I say it's "hard"? Stamina management requires a degree of awareness. Degree of awareness which is completely absent from FFXI (and most other MMORPGs), and is one of the elements that makes tanking rank & file mobs more challenging than in FFXI, where tanking during normal leveling is a completely routinary exercise.



And who exactly denied this?

Clearly you have no clue about ffxi , at least pre raise of 75 cap, so further discussion is pointless.
I wish you a good day sir, find some one else to troll.

[Mugiwara]

A timesink is an artificial way to *waste* the time of the player, and can be more or less hidden. Time -> Sink = wasted time.

If you are required to spend an extended amount of time camping an NM, waiting for it to pop, that's a timesink, because the game isn't conductive to fun, you're just staring at the screen and wasting your time while you wait for it to happen.

If you have to play all the way through a dungeon for the same amount of time, having to avoid traps, solve riddles, fight challenging and varied bosses and generally having fun, you're still *spending* time, but you're not *wasting* it. Ergo, you're not being subject to a timesink.

Some hardcore gamers are ok with timesinks because they have a ton of time in their hands, and wasting some waiting isn't that bad. Even worse, some advocate it to exclude other people from accessing the same content as they do.

Casuals have more limited time, and this means that they want to spend their limited gaming time *actively* having fun. No matter how hard or challenging that content may be. Dead times are not fun, ergo good game design excludes them.

It's really that simple.



Sitting around for 3 hours staring at a screen is still an enormous amount of *wasted* time. Even ONE hour of sitting and staring at a screen is nothing else than an hour of my life that I'll never get back. That's simply bad design.



Realism and logic would dictate not to expect elite-level content in a game that still *radically* lacks content that can be enjoyed by everyone. Really challenging content will come when the easy/average content will be in place.
Even more so, realism and logic would dictate that hard/elaborate content can't come before the combat system is final and in place. The more tactical an encounter is, the less generic, the more specific it becomes in regard of fighting mechanics. If you changed combat around AFTER difficul/complex content was added, they would have to redesign the content *again* after the new battle system is implemented.
The development team is hardly in a position to waste development time doing things twice.

So you want to turn a MMO to an "online Multi-player with instant satisfaction, your are better off playing a single player where these ridiculously timers would make sense, but it doesn't atm. Unfortunately, time sinks are needed to increase the life of any MMO, not having them at all is BAD DESIGN. This will do nothing but decrease the life of the MMO itself since its easier to acquire everything. If you wanted to have things given to you within 30 min of gameplay, a single player sounds best for you because clearly MMOs shouldn't be designed without "timesinks".

[darkstarpoet1]

A timesink is an artificial way to *waste* the time of the player, and can be more or less hidden. Time -> Sink = wasted time.

If you are required to spend an extended amount of time camping an NM, waiting for it to pop, that's a timesink, because the game isn't conductive to fun, you're just staring at the screen and wasting your time while you wait for it to happen.

If you have to play all the way through a dungeon for the same amount of time, having to avoid traps, solve riddles, fight challenging and varied bosses and generally having fun, you're still *spending* time, but you're not *wasting* it. Ergo, you're not being subject to a timesink.

Some hardcore gamers are ok with timesinks because they have a ton of time in their hands, and wasting some waiting isn't that bad. Even worse, some advocate it to exclude other people from accessing the same content as they do.

Casuals have more limited time, and this means that they want to spend their limited gaming time *actively* having fun. No matter how hard or challenging that content may be. Dead times are not fun, ergo good game design excludes them.

It's really that simple.



Sitting around for 3 hours staring at a screen is still an enormous amount of *wasted* time. Even ONE hour of sitting and staring at a screen is nothing else than an hour of my life that I'll never get back. That's simply bad design.



Realism and logic would dictate not to expect elite-level content in a game that still *radically* lacks content that can be enjoyed by everyone. Really challenging content will come when the easy/average content will be in place.
Even more so, realism and logic would dictate that hard/elaborate content can't come before the combat system is final and in place. The more tactical an encounter is, the less generic, the more specific it becomes in regard of fighting mechanics. If you changed combat around AFTER difficul/complex content was added, they would have to redesign the content *again* after the new battle system is implemented.
The development team is hardly in a position to waste development time doing things twice.

hmmmm i may be mistaken, but who asked for endgame content? doe anyone here actually think we are anywhere near looking for endgame content? the truth is we still have the initial level cap. this cap will be raised multiple times before this games completion. there is no end game content to add. this gear and these mobs will be considered midrange by the time the game is finalized.

using your own logic nothing should be added at all because they do not want to do things twice. yes, this even means lowbie content. they are changing the battle format so why add anything new to fight until this is completed?

read and understand nobody has asked for endgame content because this game is nowhere near the endgame by any stretch of the imagination. the point is if they feel secure enough that the battle system is not going to change drastically enough to allow them to add 20 lower level nm's then a few of those should have been added to give the higher level characters something also.

you can't use the argument they didn't add tough monsters because the system is changing, but was ok to add low level mobs. if they are changing it enough to stop high level mobs then it should have stopped the adding of any new mobs.