Quote Originally Posted by Ferth View Post
Now you are just putting words in people's mouths.

You are still trying to proselytize.
This is absurd, all these people pretending that they know everything about everything. Your not a market expert or an mmo scientist. Please respectfully shut your mouths about how your opinion is thinking of the well-being of the game.[/quote]
I am not trying to win people over to my side. My side has already won. I don't care if people want horizontal or not, we're already getting vertical. I am trying to give reasons as to why horizontal hits a roadblock eventually while vertical does not run into this problem. This is not proselytizing, this is trying to point out some things about two different systems and how one eventually does stagnate. Was XI stagnating in CoP? Not really. Was XI stagnating in ToAU? Towards the end, yes. Was it in WoTG? Most definitely. The storyline can keep changing all it wants. Player progression is key to an MMO. If all people care about is story, then go read a book, watch a movie, or play an offline RPG. Story is important in an MMO, but player progression is just as much so.



I am not trying to force anyone to my point of view, I'm trying to get accurate representation for both sides. I'd be just as happy if this thread or the previous one on the subject had two posts. "Like this if you are in favor of X" and "Like this if you are in favor of Y." Or hell, "Like this if you don't give a rats ass."
And I am doing the exact same thing as you.

I recognize that my perspective is just as skewed as yours is. And I'm not trying to convince people who don't agree with me that they are somehow wrong.
I have stated several times that I respect the opinion of those who want to stagnate at one level cap. Stagnate doesn't have negative connotations. It simply means to stay the same. And that is what a level 75 cap for 6+ years did. It stagnated. That's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. It's the issues stemming from it which became a problem.

I will, however, point out when an argument is weak.

And you know what. You are right about Auction Girl's post. She makes several really valid points. My highest craft in FFXI was 36 goldsmithing so I never experienced the stagnation of crafting. It was completely off my radar.

However since her post before that started out by saying "The FEW who liked this..." I largely ignored her... because as you pointed out; the only guy who dictates what's going on is Yoshida.
It -is- the few who like it. That's what you don't seem to be understanding. If the majority of MMO players don't want level increases, then MMOs would largely be like XI was for years. Level increases are one of the major staples of MMOs. It gives a sense of always getting stronger. Think of it this way:

When a person is a wrestler (real wrestling), they are in weight brackets. If they end up building more muscle (leveling up in an MMO), then they have to wrestle people in that same weight bracket (new bosses in an MMO). They do not get to be heavier than everyone else and still compete in lower brackets. As they get heavier, so do their opponents.

Whether my mage is still doing 20% of the total damage in Cata like he was in BC is irrelevant. My mage is substantially stronger and has grown in character progression.

That is the key issue that I am trying to bring up. Character progression happens. There's no way around it. If it stops, the game loses everyone but the diehards. Character progression still happened in XI, which is why old content slowly became a thing of the past. Back in sky's hay-day, you'd have 4-5+ major linkshells all camping with 18+ people each. It was brutal running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to steal NMs or beat each other to them. This was when it was "hardcore endgame" content. A single party, or a single LS, or even 2 small groups from 2 different linkshells camping old content does not make it relevant, whether it still has one or two drops that are still used or not. When you claim something is relevant, it leads to the assumption that most people are still doing that content. That was not the case with sky. Most -LINKSHELLS- might have had small groups up there, but most players were over it. This isn't me passing off my own view and opinion as a fact, this is a fact. Go read through any FFXI forum from 2007+ and tell me how many people were still talking about sky like they were in the 2004-2006 years.

Things like Dynamis were different, I admit that Dyna was still very relevant through CoP, and I was even doing it during my stay after the Moogle add-on.

I am not taking the standpoint that if you disagree with me gtfo.
I wasn't talking about you.

I just am tired of people coming up and saying "I didn't like this and all my friends didn't like this so it clearly isn't the best way to go."
But that's not my stance. Yes, I have made that comment, but that is not what I'm basing my argument on. I'm basing my argument from multiple people, across multiple servers, and across multiple message boards.

I'm also basing my stance on similar complaints in WoW. "Please Blizzard, give us back our 60 cap on special servers." Repeat for every increase. If those people were really in the majority, there would no longer be increases and there would be Vanilla, BC, and WoTLK servers.

If people in your camp on this matter were in the majority, Yoshi-P would not be implementing increases. I highly doubt he just went into this decision without any data. He's an MMO player, unlike Tanaka. He knows what MMO players like and he is trying to incorporate those things into XIV.

With horizontal progression, eventually you come to a time where everyone has everything they want. When people have all that they want, a large number of those people get tired of running the same content again for another person when it doesn't benefit them. That's selfish of those people, yes, I understand that, but in an MMO, we can't dictate to those people that they have to go and help other people who started later. The best solution to this? Make new content that people always have reason to keep doing, and not just for frivolous reasons or one or two pieces of gear. Give people a full carrot to chase and they'll be much more willing to keep chasing. The point is to never let the carrot be obtainable in an MMO. There's always something new and fresh to chase after. That is what MMOs are about. You and your friends chasing the next big thing.

As Auction Girl said, not everyone likes to level every single class, nor does everyone like to chase after the +1 version of existing gear which is only a minor improvement. Not everyone is hardcore. However, just as in WoW, it's usually the faux-hardcore wannabes that complain about older content becoming easier, because the real hardcore players are STILL ahead of everyone else, downing the new content while these posers are stuck on old content and don't want anyone ahead of them. I've seen it in every single MMO I've played and whether this is actually your motive or not, I don't know, nor does it matter, but this is the motive for a lot of people complaining about it. They get tired of being being the actual hardcore shells, so they think limiting those people is better than actually becoming better and joining them.

The top percentile of people in progression typically don't care about content becoming nerfed or outdated because they've completed it already. Look back on CoP. The first generation of players to get to Sea largely didn't care that it was nerfed. We'll make comments like, "Got to sea before the nerf," but that doesn't mean we care that it was nerfed. Why? Because we already had our time there before the majority of the server so it didn't matter. It's the special snowflakes in MMOs who usually whine about content becoming easier and out-of-date, because they couldn't complete it before it was face-roll and don't get bragging rights.

This happens in every single MMO. Every one of them. You have people in WoW who have just run 5mans for the badges at the end of the run to purchase tier gear from 10 mans. Then they complain how the content is useless and outdated from where the gear actually comes from. Why? Because they didn't earn the gear the hard way, they raced through the easy method and then face-rolled through the actual raid because they out-geared it. The same way people who earned the gear in sky back when it was hard, largely, didn't care that it became out-dated. It was either the people who still needed a piece or two there or the people (generalizing here, not saying this is you) who didn't get to experience it before they were in full AF2, CoP and ToAU gear and could just face-roll it. Obviously, some top tier progression players are going to complain, but they are in the minority, otherwise progression wouldn't happen.