"Elite Marks" or "Hoping for Change"

[Jakeson]

creating parties, etc.

I don't mind this so much. I've created parties off the invite requests and gotten full credit and partial credit. No harm there. What I mind is when I'm in a hunt party for a couple hours actively hunting and I finally get the call for a pop. The second I get the call I teleport and start running, but by the time I'm there it's at 50% or lower and I end up getting partial or no credit. That's very frustrating, but it's the nature of the beast. There are lots and lots of people all vying for the mark, so less and less people are calling it out so they have a better chance of getting credit. Then they pull early so they have a better chance of getting credit.

I hesitate to blame the players. The rewards are extreme, and so it's a very competitive system that SE has created. This is a flawed system that SE has created, and it would be great if they could come up with some solution to make it less advantageous to certain types of players.

Or just increase the daily reward to something above a joke and I don't have to mess with the zerg anymore :-/.

[silentwindfr]

i think the trouble is not the Elite mark (outside the ridiculous amount of reward we get from one mark), but the other side, the bounty we get dailies and weekly...
they need to rethink this part, add more friendly content. i have often said they need to use the leves system for this part, for allows people to have a limit and at the same time decide of when use this limit.
i'm against the simple daily stuff, you are forced to play every day... when you can't play one day, this day is lost. the leves systeme is brillant, it allows people to play when they want. if they can't play for one week, it's ok, they can catch up by doing them leves the next week.

i still hope they will use this for the dailies and weekly... it will make the hunt more interesting and people will surely spread between the leves and the elite mark (if the adjust the reward naturally)

[Kenji_Shiratsuki]

The problem isn't that it's too good, it's that it doesn't have any competition. Instead of nerfing x, threaten it by making z a comparable, or at least viable, option.

The Brawl Minus approach. Instead of balancing things out, just take whatever isn't awesome enough and PUMP IT until it's as broken and over-the-top as everything else! I agree! Give another way of getting Allied Seals OR the same amount of oil/sands so people can catch up without clinging to this one approach.

[Nicobo]

...The solution? Limit rewards from an individual mob to 1/week...

IMO the solution defeats below message from the producer, current design definitely is working as intended. ^^;

//quote
There are no weekly restrictions on how many seals you can acquire, so those of you feeling especially heroic are more than welcome to venture out and defeat as many marks as you can find.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...807-07-2014%29
//end quote

[Nestama]

Just make it so their HP, Power and Defence gets a boost depending on the amount of people engaged with it. B ranks will become beasts, A ranks will become nightmares and S ranks will become -insert impossible NM here-

At least then B and A ranks will actually be fun to fight in a massive horde. Making them weaker than FATE mobs is... well, it's kinda really incredibly stupid, especially when Sands can be a reward.

[Krr]

As a programmer, I have to chime in on this.
Just because one game has a system or design out doesn't mean that everyone who touches a C++ book is an instant pro with it. Deciphering code can be time consuming and confusing. Oftentimes it's better to just decompile it or build on top of it. Even then, you have a platform built underneath your game with a plethora of other features that can break with one simple change.
Not only do you have to deal with how to integrate this new concept into your original design, now you have to work through general bug testing, refactors, regression testing, then a lot of other different types of testing (unit testing, user testing, performance, etc) to even show it off to your front-end: The players.

Other software developer here. Don't forget that in our industry competitive businesses aren't really under any obligation to share any code or designs they've made, and often, there are NDAs preventing this for years! Never mind that copying code without permission is basically illegal, and generally, using someone else's code solution is viewed as lazy and unethical. So even if one game has X feature, it can be months or years before a team of designers can figure out how to implement it without copying.

Plus, to top it all off, game programmers in particular tend to have bad habits about making code that doesn't involve a hacky, closed system, in part due to being an industry that desires really smart people with often nonexistent formal training, and due especially to the fact that pushy, incompetent publishers who want money now and not later tend to force deadlines to be extremely tight.