Thread: Patch 2.2, Accessibility, Difficulty Levels, and Throwing Away Content

Originally Posted by Kazamoto

How can one be so wrong, and still remember how to breathe.. seriously... find a scientist and have them study you.

Well, I can see how horizontal gear progression can be a "a convoluted mess" for the average modern mmorpg player. I mean, look at FFXIV, it may not have equip at all for what's the difference between gears set!

Probably all those stats and different abilities made their brain melt.

Originally Posted by Lodiodrive

I agree with you Kazamoto, it was a huge success if you look at the money made from the game.

Definitely, FFXI generated a steady income for years for SE. Of course it launched originally on PS2 in an era where online-gaming wasn't so popular, so any comparison with mdoern mmorpg that make 1M+ at launch (but fade away pretty quickly, ironically) is pretty silly.

Originally Posted by Meimei

This is how modern MMOs work. Old content becomes obsolete (waaait, FFXI did that too...remember garrison, etc? hurr) Deal with it.

Actually, SE never outright replaced Garrison. It certainly didn't remain popular throughout the game's life, but the Mannequin pieces that dropped from it were still in high demand years after it came out, and some of the equipment dropped from it like Garrison Tunica and Garrison Hose were actually some of the best stuff you could wear on some jobs for that level.

Of course, trying to bring up a small scale event like Garrison was a terrible attempt to make a point to begin with, considering that pre-Abyssea people were still doing Sky, Sea, Dynamis, Limbus, Salvage, HNMs, ZNMs, ISNMs, Nyzule Isle, Einherjar, Assault, Campaign, orb fights, and various other small events released over those seven years. If a game that builds upon its content rather than obsoletes everything except the last few months isn't your thing, that's fine, but you're not going to convince anyone that FFXI is in the same category as modern day WoW ripoffs because of a silly example like that.

Originally Posted by Taruranto

Definitely, FFXI generated a steady income for years for SE. Of course it launched originally on PS2 in an era where online-gaming wasn't so popular, so any comparison with mdoern mmorpg that make 1M+ at launch (but fade away pretty quickly, ironically) is pretty silly.

We aren't comparing dollar amounts but over all success, the game was successful that's it, the point is invalid for a number of different reasons but you can measure success against success easily. How are you guys going to make a financial viability argument while ignoring the elephant in the room? Also yes the game was successful ten years ago but you realize it's a pretty big leap to just do the same thing again, right? We might one day get our throwback MMO but not as long as you guys are on every forum making it look like it's not even worth the trouble.

Also I played UO and EQ, it doesn't make me smarter than anyone. You guys should stop equating your gaming experience with intelligence, while certainly things do get dumbed down, you can't claim some Mensa level intellect because you managed a few more stats. I'm not any smarter for watching the Original Robocop vs. the Remake.

Why don't you all move on to more important issues like what word combined with "baby" are you going to refer to anyone you don't like after this patch goes live? May I suggest Echo Baby?

Originally Posted by Susanoh

If a game that builds upon its content rather than obsoletes everything except the last few months isn't your thing, that's fine

Well doesn't more of that have to do with lack of instancing and presence of competition? People would go back to do what they could since many things weren't as available? I'm not familiar with the game but so bear with me a little. Were there fights like Heroic Lich King at all? I know there weren't in EQ, I think you guys mistake the trading of one difficulty for another as some kind of evil plot to ruin your favorite genre. We've traded camping and grinding for GCD locked DPS rotations and more complex boss encounters. I don't know that it's a completely fair and even trade, but acting as if none of this content can be called "difficult" because it doesn't have a 9 week spawn timer is just silly.

I mean I really wouldn't mind seeing a game in the style of EQ or FFXI however I think it would fair poorly in the market and I feel that if it didn't non-instanced EQ playstyle can't stand up to millions and millions of players. There'd have to be either an insane amount of content with huge landmasses OR they'd just have to give up and instance things which is the REAL reason content obsolesce happens, since each raid is going to be around a similar difficulty, naturally people won't run the one that drops worse gear. If you make each raid harder than the last you end up capping off expansions with content like Naxx40 and Sunwell which people simply ignore.

Maybe it's just a disconnect from companies wanting more and more customers, that we've went past the ideal population per server to have THAT kind of MMO. We need some middle ground between 128 player FPS and MMO which now refers to millions of players rather than hundreds of thousands. Er even not that every MMO is at the millions of players mark, it's obvious the move to instanced content is designed to accommodate more people and let more people do more at once, instancing wasn't not put in old games for some high minded principle but because it wasn't something they could do technologically at the time.

Originally Posted by Meimei

"Horizontal progression" was a convoluted mess and wouldn't survive in today's MMO. Having to save multiple gear sets for one job at a time isn't my idea of fun. I don't get why anyone would want that back...

The success of the ultimate horizontal gear progression game: Monster Hunter series would beg to differ.

Vertical progression (aka 'Power Creep') leads to boring gear stats, worthless rewards, and a perpetual endgame treadmill. -- all of which FFXIV currently suffers from. (This direction could actually be changed in one patch if Yoshi P gave the order...)

When enough people realize that no matter how much work they put into something, it'll be obsolete in 3 months -- they'll either become casual players, or they'll to look for another game with more lasting rewards. **cough, Dark Souls II, cough**