[Discussion] The mechanics behind lockouts

[Xystic]

This thread will be only for discussion. Meaning opinions will be considered least informational, speculations off of known facts and facts themselves will be considered much more informational. Therefore, please leave your opinions about how you feel on lockouts, off this post. We will only discuss the structural significance of lockoutshere. This way community members can better understand why MMOs do such things.

Lockouts:

Lockouts were seen fairly early in the MMO world but not at the beginning of the MMO industry. Today there are still MMOs that do no use lockout systems and some that use both lockout and none lockout. FF14 ARR uses non-lockout systems in lower-end/pre-endgame dungeons.

Pros [Non-Lockouts]:

-You can easily obtain the gear you need quickly to progress your story forward/endgame.

-You can do it at your set time and pace without having to worry of specific time limits and constraints. For example, having to come back weekly versus play this week, be free next 2 weeks and come back 4 weeks later, which can be nice.

Non-lockout systems were fairly popular due to the fact they allowed easy access to the dungeons/content. Alot of the complaints in these threads about lockouts are pretty much about this easiness in accessibility being denied.

In smaller MMOs, such systems seem to work fairly well. This is due to the fact that everyone knew everyone in the MMO world. Getting shunned for being a terrible player or a bad person meant a poor game experience, so smaller MMOs, non-lockout systems couldn't be abused too badly.

In larger MMOs, we have seen that they do not appear to be that way. The true giants in MMOs face terrible problems with non-lockout systems.

Cons [non-lockout]

-People can leave whenever they please because there is nothing to deter them from leaving. A 15 min lockout versus a 1 week lockout is insignificant. Also if you piss off these 7 people today, you can easily find another 7 people tomorrow and so forth for countless days because of the sheer size of the MMO.

-Its been common thru out MMOs that with non-lockout systems, players have no incentive to stay after bosses they want, are downed. People will simply just drop group and reque once again.

-People can be rude. Although we can report them for rudeness and harassment, non-lockout systems promotes players like these to do as they please. We already see duty finder complaints filling up the dungeons threads. Bad, disrespectful players, makes MMO gaming experiences terrible.

-It promotes instability in FCs. 1 player may be lucky and obtain all his/her loot in 10 hours. If the player plays the game with good morals, he or she may return the help by staying till everyone is geared. The smaller the group, the higher the probability of this occuring. The larger the group the lower the chance of it occuring. However, we know that people raid with different intentions. Some for gear, some for cosmetics and some for progression. Once their goals are obtained, whether or not they stay is actually truly up to them. We know players like these exist because this is why the lockout systems were developed.

When we draw it all out, the lockout systems help to deter such things from happening. These things are important because they are what makes MMOs what they are. People coming together to push progression content. MMOs are all about interactions with the world and working together.

Without lockout systems there is nothing to keep bad players from destroying groups, more or less, actually promote such behaviour because logically it is the fastest way to achieve 1 of the 3 goals mentioned earlier. However, it promotes terrible terrible gameplay experience. To solve these issues in the last decade, lockout systems were developed and they were successful.

We pay a small price of inaccessibility but at the same time, it increases your chances that people will stay in FC's or parties longer even if their goals are different. We have a tool to deter/smack bad players. We remove lockouts for accessibility but we face terrible consequences. Many of which have destroyed MMOs. Its not simply a milking mechanism, its a requirement to keep large MMOs and MMOs communities together. Cause if we don't have the community, we may as well all play Single Player RPGs, where the world interacts with us because we aren't able to interact with the unstable MMO worlds.

It can be simplified with, you get better quality of your experiences versus you get a high quantity of lower experiences.

Once again though, some people prefer the high quantity versus the high quality.

I could go even further in depth but this is just the general stuff. I'd also like to play the game today lol.

Please if you have any questions, please ask. Designing an MMO is simply more then putting 10,000 ideas together thinking they are compatible and problem free.

[flavored]

Wait, are you saying that all your experience to date with non-locked out content has been destroyed by the bad players?

[ChriskoOnAnotherLevel]

SE is using lockouts purely to artificially extend the life of their game.

With the armory system being the base of this game, the currently lockout design is nothing more than torture on the player base.

You even have people creating new characters, leveling them to 50, clearing the story, and fully regearing all to bypass the myth cap and lockouts. By dedicating a character to a singular class you assure that your weekly coil lockout and myths can be spent just on that class and are no longer limited by the current system for multi class use.

That is how bored people with even a slight abundance of time are.

IT IS MY PERSONAL believe that the current coil lock needs to be doubled(aka 2 coil lockouts on 2 differing jobs/roles), and that myth caps need to be slightly lower and per individual jobs and must be earned while on that job.

And to tilt the discussion of coil in an even worse direction, with the randomization on drops instead of a token system for coil, you can clear for WEEKs and WEEKs and never get drops vs people who have cleared 1-4 for 3 weeks and received every drop for that class.

I personally have cleared coil 1-4 for 6-7 weeks and have only received 4 drops on my main class and have no one to roll against.....

I also feel TC is rather unintelligent and sees no other option but STRONG harsh lockouts or infinite no lockouts. The issue is never as simple as left or right there is always something in between.

[Zezlar]

Every single con you listed for a non lockout system is something i've seen with this lockout system in place.

[Xystic]

IT IS MY PERSONAL believe that the current coil lock needs to be doubled(aka 2 coil lockouts on 2 differing jobs/roles), and that myth caps need to be slightly lower and per individual jobs and must be earned while on that job.

I personally have cleared coil 1-4 for 6-7 weeks and have only received 4 drops on my main class and have no one to roll against.....

Technically you can't bypass the myth cap unless gear currently is not soul-bound/account locked.

Also if you allow seperate locks for your alts, you would need to lock gear just to that class as well, class specific pickup only. This is to prevent what you just claimed from happening. Picking up gear on your alt to gear your main. Your personal belief needs to be thoroughly looked at. Their are a lot of issues that arise with what you want. Also if you make loot class specific, alt gear is no longer able to be dished out. We run in to a conflict in the game design.

Your beliefs have too many logical counter arguments against it. This is why I want this thread to be discussed logically. Not arguing against the logics behind a mechanic with your personal beliefs.

If you want something, argue against the lockout with a new style of mechanic that can solve these issues and issues that arise with your mechanics.

[Xystic]

Every single con you listed for a non lockout system is something i've seen with this lockout system in place.

Imagine if we removed it.

Its like saying we have crime with police around. Atleast crime is kept down to a degree.

Imagine if we had no police at all.

[Zezlar]

Imagine if we removed it.

I think the only assumption we can make is that there needs to be a form of lockouts, but not in such an extreme form we have now. There's currently no drive to log in for some outside of those once a week instances. Honestly, also there isn't a need for more than 8 people in a FC.

[Starlord]

I think the only assumption we can make is that there needs to be a form of lockouts, but not in such an extreme form we have now. There's currently no drive to log in for some outside of those once a week instances. Honestly, also there isn't a need for more than 8 people in a FC.

That's if those 8 people are a static. It's hard to form a static, They all need to be on at the same time for X amount of hours they agreed on, Some of the 8 may have to do something that day leaving the other 5-6 people left with doing stuff on their own. etc etc.

A lot needs to happen for a static to work.

[Xystic]

I think the only assumption we can make is that there needs to be a form of lockouts, but not in such an extreme form we have now. There's currently no drive to log in for some outside of those once a week instances. Honestly, also there isn't a need for more than 8 people in a FC.

Reducing the the lockout time frame will increase the requirement of people having to play on days they aren't available. Because if we put lockouts in intervals under 7 days, that means the reset timer will technically be different every week, meaning some people can not make that time for you and your fc setting you back.

What you mean is that there isn't a need for more then 8 people in raid. You don't need a FC to raid. FC have more purposes then to just raid.

So far, I have enjoyed answering all your questions and concerns. Please do not feel like I am belittling you or anyone else. If your arguments are sound and logical I am more then willing to agree with you or anyone else.

[KaiserFire]

I don't think the complaints about lockouts are due to players "not having anything to do". If this were the case, then other non-endgame content would satisfy these players, which it doesn't. In fact CT is a loot lockout, not a character lockout, but the complaints still persist. This tells me that the majority of lockout complaints are not about a lack of content (which there is), but instead about the rate of obtaining endgame gear specifically (coil gear currently). It would be nice if any lockout arguments would just focus on that.