The Discrimination Factor of Solo/party to Casual/Hardcore respectively.

[mysterytaru]

And there's the rub: It was marketed to people with little time - Guildleves.

Yes, it's changing and moving away from guildleves now. But does that mean that all the people with less time that purchased the game before these changes should be SOL? I don't think so at all.

It's not an outlandish request that the developers not forget the group that exists within the MMO genre that have full-time jobs, kids, etc., especially when those people bought the game expecting content that can be jumped right into and enjoyed without needing to dedicate your life to it. An easy and streamlined grouping system is just one aspect where the timesink can be removed.

It's moving away from leves as party content. It's still there for people with little time to pop on and do, and that's what Yoshi even said they want them for now. Keep in mind those have further adjustments still to come. As for being a game that anyone can jump into and do anything anytime, SE has been backing away from that stance for some time now because that route was a failure. The director at the time is not the director now for good reason. Majority of players *did not* like where it was going and how it was. We were asked in the player's polls, and we spoke. Loudly and clearly.

[Alym]

It's moving away from leves as party content. It's still there for people with little time to pop on and do, and that's what Yoshi even said they want them for now. Keep in mind those have further adjustments still to come. As for being a game that anyone can jump into and do anything anytime, SE has been backing away from that stance for some time now because that route was a failure. The director at the time is not the director now for good reason. Majority of players *did not* like where it was going and how it was. We were asked in the player's polls, and we spoke. Loudly and clearly.

Loudly and clearly that only people with a ton of time should get to do group content?

[Alym]

people with little time can still do guild leves
they can still do ALOT of things
but guess what, they still had to run places before too
and gather a group if they wanted one

so why would they change that now? its why we have the anima system, this can be chalked up to trying to dumb things down every further for a group that is a major minority

so the people who can play the game for a long period of time each day are the majority? I guess that could be true here considering that only people without anything better to do are playing.

please explain to me how putting a group together quicker and easier dumbs a game down.

[TheVedis]

Loudly and clearly that only people with a ton of time should get to do group content?

not a ton of time
but if you only have 30 minutes, you shouldnt complain that you dont have to run to an instance that takes an hour to do to begin with...

[Alym]

not a ton of time
but if you only have 30 minutes, you shouldnt complain that you dont have to run to an instance that takes an hour to do to begin with...

i have already stated that i, specfically, am not referring to people with only 5-30 minutes.

[TheVedis]

i have already stated that i, specfically, am not referring to people with only 5-30 minutes.

but even then, you do what you have time for
if you dont have time for something, you dont do it

this applies to everything


dont do 3 hour grind parties if you got 2 hours

etc etc

by the same note hardcore/people with alot of time can complain about the 5 minute run too, thats 5 minutes we coulda been SPing, but you know what, instant transportation to any spot in the world with content is bad, why would anyone ever walk? no one would ever see the world at that point

[Malakhim]

Well keep in mind OP that Yoshi and his crew DO want to make sure that the game can reasonably accommodate both styles of play. There's no reason that "mini-dungeons" can't be introduced in the future in which act somewhat like the bite-sized missions of FFVII: Crisis Core(if you've ever played that) where you run through a small(er) dungeon or area, try to get to a boss, then get some kind of reward. Maybe they can introduce a difficulty system to certain dungeons like the one that currently exists for guildleves.

Naturally there's going to be some content that if you don't have the time for, you're just going to have to accept being left out of, but don't count Yoshi out just yet.

[Preypacer]

Okay, I read through it all, so I will just leave my thoughts.
I don't see what would be the problem with a dungeon utility, but in no way should be like the one WoW has.
Sure it works fine for WoW, but it also promotes little effort, and in my opinion, is just a bit lazy.

I think, refining the seeking system we have now would be ideal. You could put a flag of some sort saying you are seeking a party for dungeons, and people could click and invite you. Similar to how it is now, obviously with a bit of improvement. And I'd rather not dive into how randomly grouping you up with people who may or may not have a clue and instantly teleporting them inside is absurdly lazy.

So, follwing the tl;dr trend in the post.
Dungeon Finder: Bad

Improved Dungeon Seeker function: Good

Randomly grouping up people for a dungeon: Bad (Should give people the opportunity to look the person over first, whether it be by talking to them, or reading their search comment.)

Insta-teleport to Dungeon: Stupid In a game where you can teleport all around the map, teleporting you straight to a dungeon is lazy. Walking 5 minutes won't kill you.

I'd also like to say I am not a hardcore player by any means, but I sure as hell don't want everything handed to me because I don't have more time to play. I'd rather have to invest and make more time to be just as good as the hardcore players rather than having the difficulty dumbed down because I can only play an hour or two a day.

I'm all for a system that makes it easier for players to seek and find other players for similar activities (xp parties, dungeons, leves, etc).

However, I'm against it being set up like WoW's dungeon finder system where you're automatically teleported into the dungeon, group up with a bunch of people you won't even necessarily know - or possibly with people you do know and do not get along with (due to previous encounters) etc - and then are teleported back to where you were when it's finished.

That system works great for a game like WoW, because Blizzard abandoned any pretense of Azeroth being a large, persistent fantasy world a long time ago. WoW is, at best, a lobby-style game at this point. Many people barely even leave town, they just stand around, waiting queue for their turn to come up. They teleport into the dungeon, finish and teleport out.. queue up... teleport into the dungeon... finish and teleport out... Queue up... and so on.

End-game raids notwithstanding, WoW is an unabashedly hyper-casual game at this point. It doesn't even *pretend* to be anything but that anymore.

There was another thread discussing something about this some time ago, and I'll post the same thoughts I posted there...

Implement a system something like Staging Points in XI. Have locations at or near the entrance to major dungeons, or perhaps located at some spot equidistant between 2 or more of them. Players have to run out to each of those spots at least once on foot and bind themselves to that location. From that point, they can either teleport to it, using the Anima system... Or, perhaps, a NPC or some contraption would be able to teleport them to the destination of their choice (for a fee), etc.

If the dungeons are more than just a few minutes away from the staging point, have Chocobo handlers there to rent one from, so they can get there more quickly.

This way they can assemble their group (via an enhanced party finder), they can get to the appropriate "Staging Point" in little time and with relative ease, gather together and enter the dungeon.

[Preypacer]

Your missing the point. The whole idea im trying to convey is that. Through this method, casual players will be able to access hardcore content without fuss and minimal time. Yes i agree with you it seems lazy to not walk 5minutes. But maybe you only have 30 minutes, then 5minutes seems like a lot does it not? Basically its supposed to be super easy for the sake of the casual players to access the hardcore content much easier. As well as the autogrouping is for casual players to find groups quickly. Remember of course! You would definitely have the ability to choose whether you would like to be auto-grouped or make your own group. This would allow more hardcore players to create more defined functional parties, and casual players to just run a dungeon and have a bit of fun for a little while then get back to their hectic lives.

That kinda seems like a non-point as I hardly believe someone with only 30 minutes - or even an hour - would have time to engage in anything much North of quick, casual content to begin with... which is what Leves and Behests and, perhaps, some shorter side-quests are for. I'm sure they're going to add more options for casual content down the road.

[Preypacer]

No one said anything about having only 5-30 minutes.

Regardless, shouldn't a company adapt it's product to consumers if they want to sell a long lasting product? How successful would the iPhone be if Apple decided only people with 10 hours a day could navigate through the its features? a very small amount of people are able to dedicate most of their time to a game and i would be willing to bet SE cares more about money than their "hardcore" playerbase.

Edit: Nevermind, what I was going to say has already been pointed out