Keeping the game basic for new players?

[JimmyDean]

I was reading through the last live letter notes and came across this.

Q: Do you plan on adding buffer or debuffer roles?

A: At the moment we plan on continuing with the three current roles: tank, DPS, and healer. If we added more roles to these three, it would become more complicated to decide which job fits into which role, and I believe new players will be joining the game in 3.0 so we don't want to make it difficult for them to understand. For the time being we would like to keep the number of roles as it is as we move forward.

Really?? Keep in mind the question asked is irrelevant. The answer is where the problem lies "In Bold". Is the dev team assuming that new players are incapable of figuring anything out? This is not the mindset that i am looking forward to in the evolution of this game. That's fine if he wants to keep these 3 roles but his reasoning for doing so is not a good one.

[ElHeggunte]

I dunno, even current players seem to have a hard time grasping our simplistic combat system without anything else more complicated being thrown into the mix. You give your average modern day gamer too much credit.

[Mugiawara]

It's because it's a "baby's first time" game, that's why. They got this game as simplified as you can get...
Semi off-topic but I remember in Beta forums, a lot of us asked for Cura - Curaga - Curaja x Fire - Fira- Firaga spells
instead of Cure I, II and III and they responded because they didn't want it to be to complicated to understand.
It's a little insulting to be honest and the games already watered down to even a caveman can play this game...
so that's a sad reasoning.

[KizunaBlade]

Yeeaaah that reason seems a bit....wonky. If his reasoning for not adding a new role is to not confuse NEW PLAYERS...then why not remove everything ever? Even tho I have played many MMO's I was confused when I started this game....every new player will be confused by SOMETHING when starting a new game. Even more so if this happens to be their first game, in which case the existing three roles will already confuse them anyway. I dont see the logic in this.....the "i don't wanna confuse new players" thing never stopped any other MMO from pumping out as much new content/roles/races as they could.

So I agree with you, the reasoning for not adding a new role makes little to no sense, I would like a more legit reason XD.

[Armell]

I'm sure they also said that they'll be keeping the same sort of stats on the gear, without having any sort of 'gear set attributes' because it would be too complicated. They must think we're all thick as shit...

[JimmyDean]

Yeah. It's not just about the roles. That method of thinking goes into whatever new content they think about introducing. Straight from the horses mouth.

[Magis]

It's strange how focused they are on "new players" when they have a huge chunk of current players that are paying them right now. You'd think they'd want to keep them hooked and focus the game around them, especially in the next expansion.

[HeroSamson]

I like this game very much but the thing I dislike about it.

The combat forces you to play by their rules, no matter what each battle is the same just dodge attacks tank heal and fight you cannot back out of the fight and devise a plan or kite and revive targets keeping the monster alive till people's weaken wears off for another round.

You die retry - die retry like a revolving door that just takes you to the same spot over and over.
Even Paladin can't raise during combat.

I remember FFXI BCNM fights where whole party would wipe me as Paladin pops invincible raises whm. whm raises everyone else me kiting and if we won or lose at least we did it our way not the games way.

Here its if you croak its back to the drawing board.

Forgot to put my reason which is- let's say the healer is doing great but the paladin cant keep the hate which causes everyone to die but everyone else was keeping up or lets say DPS screws up now not enough damage to kill mob or healer cant heal good enough forcing the other healer to take all the weight. its punishing others if tank dies no recovery because even if hes revived weaken status or if 1 healer dies its not enough to keep them all up cost to much to revive other healer causing others to die.

then rewind and some people stop trying get bored of same fight begin to get sloppy.

Then you have the problem on your hands where a Whole Team says to themselves after trying the fight over 50-60 times do I wanna try this again for a item im burned out on this run and which no reason to go back and help others or do it again.

Causing less help. Other than this its a great game and fun I cant wait for the golden saucer.

[silentwindfr]

i think that sooner or later, they must stop to think at the new player like this, indeed they need help for grow and learn. but dev are not the only one that must do it, it's too the community role to help the new one around.

they need too to free themself from WoW shadow and make them game stand by itself... but well it's another debate... a lot of thing must be changed in them way for increase the game value. the question it's do they will do it?

[DenariusJay]

It's strange how focused they are on "new players" when they have a huge chunk of current players that are paying them right now. You'd think they'd want to keep them hooked and focus the game around them, especially in the next expansion.

Unfortunately, with the way the MMO market is nowadays, you can't rely on your current players for revenue - too many gamers bounce around nowadays, I read an article a few years back about the life-span of an average subscription, it hovers around 2-3 months, then the player leaves and the return rate is very low. So if you cater to your current crop by the time you get them what they want, most will have already moved onto something else, specially nowadays with all the F2P mmo's that saturate the market. Gotta keep the door revolving and the only way to do that is to focus on new players.