SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[Sho86]

Using a personal insult because you can't counter the truth, eh? Choice is an illusion, deal with it. It is a fact of life you should accept.

Though, I think we're all choosing the blue pill by being on MMOs

[Xatsh]

horizontal progression is duuuuuuuuuumb. no one wants to spend all that time on gear that is a sidegrade. if you are one of the few people that do then FFXI is right there, go play it. FF14 is far more successful than 11 was they have no reason to go back to the model when the one being used in 14 is a proven success.

If you think horizontal development was a negative in XI you do not know the genre. People did not flock to WoW and XIV because of vertical progression they flocked to them because it was a mmo that you could play without dedicating 30-40hrs a week to it. XI was not as popular as XIV because you needed at least 6 ppl to do anything. (Almost no solo content). The activities took on average 2-4hrs at the min to do on a night. Vs XIV's 30-50min raids. Aka it was not casual friendly at all, XI was a hardcore game to its core requiring massive time commitments to do anything. With vertical progression in XIV now what would happen to the population if you needed to be able to play for the min of 4hrs a night to do 1 dungeon or raid and there was no solo content past level 10? most the population would quit.

People would want to spend the time to get something if it never goes away. Right now think about it we spend 100s of hours in coil, millions to get better gear. And what happens in 6 months.... it is all vendor trash every bit of it. Where is the incentive to get stuff today when it will be garbage gear tomorrow.

As for going back to XI. You realize XI is almost the same as XIV in content now right. Low Man, Item Levels, little to no guild focus, single gear pieces that are BIS for almost everything. SE killed of XI, even if the XI fanboys wanted to go back the game is gone. XI-2 is not XI. just like Star Wars Galaxy was not the same when they redid the whole thing.

[Nicobo]

The thread is still up, you could try actually reading it and making a relevant post! ^^;

If you have read OP carefully and if you know XI well, you would know what I was saying was relevant.

[Duelle]

Sooo.... Spending all that time on gear just for it to get entirely replaced is better?

Better than having an unhealthy attachment to gear while wanting to snuff the concept of progression as much as possible to keep said gear relevant.

[Ryel]

If you have read OP carefully and if you know XI well, you would know what I was saying was relevant.

Nah, the op simply stated that it was great that XI had plenty to do, not that they wanted to play XI.

They then made the point that XIV's gear ladder is a poor design choice, not just compared to XI but to the point that it may very well prevent them re-subbing to the game (something SE desperately needs their players to do to keep this game running), many others have come in and given reasons as to why this is the case.

To simply say "Well XI is there you can go play that!" is completely irrelevant to the very real issues people are bringing up when it concerns the ladder form of vertical gear progression, and contrary to popular belief there are more MMOs out there than just XI that have come up with alternate ways of dealing with the problem.

It's like back in 1.0 when people suggested adding jumping like in WoW to the game and the response was "Well go play WoW if you want jumping", i guess it's a good thing the devs didn't take those comments to heart eh?

Wanting the game to take inspiration from the systems that worked in other games is not the same as wanting to play those other games, but rather wanting the game to adapt these ideas and grow instead of becoming stale and stagnant. But i shouldn't have to make this point, as you would realize this if you had actually read the thread ^^;

[Mykll]

These are often the players you may hear complaining about adding Echo / nerfing content so soon because they enjoyed / just learned the normal difficulty once it was unlocked and added to duty finder, but are now robbed of the experience because content in this game jumps straight from hardcore lockouts to free for all casual duty finder without anything in between.

What they should have done with Second Coil:
1. Put in DF fine. But no other changes. People can gear up Poetics and try running it over geared.
2. After a few months, add a non-stacking 10% echo, still with no changes to the raids.
3. If for some reason people are still having problems, then I dunno. Change ONE mechanic only at a time, over a period of several more months.

Especially with new poetics, them making all the changes this soon at once was a big mistake in my opinion.

horizontal progression is duuuuuuuuuumb. no one wants to spend all that time on gear that is a sidegrade.

And yet a lot of people spend a tremendous amount of time on gear that provide zero statistical benefit whatsoever. Glamours.

[Ryel]

What they should have done with Second Coil:
1. Put in DF fine. But no other changes. People can gear up Poetics and try running it over geared.
2. After a few months, add a non-stacking 10% echo, still with no changes to the raids.
3. If for some reason people are still having problems, then I dunno. Change ONE mechanic only at a time, over a period of several more months.

Honestly i would have preferred if they added 3 separate versions of coil instead.

Normal Raid: First patch release, standard rules apply, drops gear.
Savage (Hard) Raid: Released with the x.5 patch, drops gear, awards titles.
Story (Easy) Raid: Released when the normal level raid hits Duty Finder, adds Echo, mechanics adjustments, no gear, no titles, awards story progression for next raid.

All the players who simply said they wanted to see the story and we shouldn't care about the gear anymore since it's just vanity anyway can get their wish and get story progression through the DF, the midcore players who are still working on normal can do so undisturbed and won't feel robbed by a nerf, and the hardcore players can do the newest released normal raid or come back for titles in savage.

Everybody wins.

[Sho86]

Better than having an unhealthy attachment to gear while wanting to snuff the content of progression as much as possible to keep said gear relevant.

Unhealthy attachment? And wanting to do the same grind over and over again for the same job with slightly bigger numbers is healthy? Right... Also, content progression is NOT "snuffed" in any way. Just because your hitting for bigger numbers does not mean the same scenario could not be done with a couple digits less. Name any current dungeon, raid, coil, whatever that we are doing now - and it could be done with Lv10 gear, if they chose it to be done at that level. The difficulty would still be the same as the scenario would be scaled to it. Titan EX could have been Titan SM and so forth.

[Duelle]

Unhealthy attachment? And wanting to do the same grind over and over again for the same job with slightly bigger numbers is healthy?

That's how progression works. Out with the old, in with the new. When you resist you're showing you a) don't understand the concept of progression and b) are unwilling to move forward because of unhealthy attachments/nostalgia. Which is no different from the nonsense I saw on the FFXI boards when the developers wanted to move content in a certain direction and the people with relics/mythics/empyreans started crying that their time spent and the gear that came from it wasn't cream-of-the-crop uber elite. Which by extension is also no different from the WoW players in Naxx gear who complained that their gear wasn't going to matter once The Burning Crusade hit.

Also, content progression is NOT "snuffed" in any way.

I said this because when your main intent is making old stuff relevant in the same scale as new stuff, you're either making concessions in gear design, content design or character growth. I'm not about to sacrifice any of those just because someone is upset their breastplate from final coil will become obsolete.

For the record, I've done more gear grinds than I can count. The only thing that ever bothered me about disposing of old gear was that I liked the design of some, especially as looks varied depending on the tier/gear level. Lo' and behold, systems like wardrobe, transmogrification and glamours come into existence and pretty much do away with the only problem I ever had with sharding/tossing/selling outdated gear. Gear is tangible, yes, but like everything else there will come a time when it has to be replaced. That's why I'll cling more to my memories raiding or the odd weapon/gear that makes sense for my character's concept (my gnome's favorite weapon in WoW was an axe I got while questing in deepholm, nothing from any raid) over the current top gear.

[ruskie]

What I'd like to see is the gear refresh be streched to 12 months with multiple side-by-side ways to get gear in the next ilvl range. Now what I mean:


1) HARD 4 man dungeons - this should drop gear equiv to tome gear without upgrades and without an upgrade path - but this should be hard - tank, dps, healer checks and mechanics checks and coordination checks(I'd say 2 per patch is what I'd like to see here)

2) 8 man raid(aka coil equiv) - this would still be top tier gear - possibly expanded to 8 tiers instead of 4.

3) 16 man raid - this would be something that would be a stepping stone to the 8 man raid - showing off some of the mechanics in the 8 man while at the same time making it slightly less of a challange - this should drop gear equiv to half upgraded tome gear(i.e. if max is 130 and tome is 120 this would be 125) - this should be between 8 and 24 man in terms of difficulty - a few checks here and there but something that 2 good teams can work through if they communicate - and spliting teams and so on I think is a must here - let's say same lockout as the 8 man - i.e. once cleared no more loot for you - but you can help others - this should possibly be 3-4 tiers to progress through - and I'd throw in mazes, puzzles, riddles, finding items, etc... in here(RNG heavy on what you need to find, where to find, etc... multiple riddles and puzzles that get picked from a larger pool - not just the sastasha nm you read the note and pick that colour but actually something that is lore related or world related to figure out)

I think an interesting idea for 16 man would be exploring the eorzean subterra or other cave systems, maybe some castrum as well, a dragons lair etc...

4) 24 man raid - this would be the current casual raid - this drops gear equiv to tome gear without upgrades and without an upgrade path - same lockout 1 piece of gear per week

5) tome gear + upgrades
6) crafted - this works as it is

But all of these should be alive side-by-side(as much as possible - I could see staggering the 16 man and 24 man by a month or two to keep people interested and not bored - as much as I hate catchup I think with 12 months cycles it would be needed)); and all but the 8 man have a tiny tiny chance of dropping upgrade catalysts/weapon token for the tome gear. The 8 man like now will drop it after a certain tier is reached.

I'd also love less stack on arse and burn fights. I love t7 it requires positioning and coordination as does T9. T8 and T6 are probably the most boring fights out there sit still and burn for the most part(shiva ex is a lot like this as well sadly).

I'm sure others can add more input on such things. Just wanted to be constructive.