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

[cookiecutter]

WoW,for an example,has a heroic mode that existed for the reason of challenges and bis loots. There's nothing new story-wise and people still do it. That should prove you wrong enough.

What I said was my own opinion which is why I prefaced by saying I believe. I know other people can get motivated to complete new content by shiny sets of new gear and mounts. Personally I enjoy the mix of challenge and story elements in end game raiding and the gear is just a plus for me. The whole raid finder thing was actually what turned me off completely to wow since there was no more work involved to unlock the endgame story.

[Duelle]

Multiple sources of gear are great, but people are lazy and will just go for the easiest path to the highest ilvl. Why farm a random dungeon repeatedly if you can just buy the gear? Wasted content.

Depends. Crafted gear should be a viable stepping stone to high level content. I saw it happen in WoW's second expansion to some moderate success, especially after the BoPs seen in burning crusade (basically the good stuff was only for those who leveled the craft and could not be traded or sold). The key thing was that crafted stuff only covered part of your gear set up (Wrath's crafted stuff basically got you covered for head, weapon, offhand if you were a tank, and feet), so you still had to run other stuff either for tokens to trade in for gear or specific drops that brought you to stat caps (I ran Halls of Lightning more times than I can count for the tank trinket, for example).

That's sort of where things have fallen apart when it comes to crafted gear. First because said gear is stupidly difficult to craft between resources and skill level required. The fact people will lean to HQ-onry also has a lot to do with it; WoW's crafting system never had to deal with that issue because you couldn't HQ gear, so you were more worried about getting a Titansteel Destroyer instead of sifting through the AH for a Titansteel Destroyer+1 that would not cost you your firstborn.

[Sadonix]

snips

And here we go again with the thinking style of "it's black or white". Seriously why do insecure comments seem to come out whenever that coil is mentioned in this game ?

Just FYI following that train of thought of yours,the "casuals" could also very well leave after they found out there's a massive roadblock at the endgame and the best bits of game are locked behind it with only pointless crumbs here and there left outside.

Come to think of it,in fact it would be very interesting if the aforementioned "casual vs hardcore" scenario someone mentioned earlier really do take place here.

The whole raid finder thing was actually what turned me off completely to wow since there was no more work involved to unlock the endgame story.

I don't understand...so you're saying you're not fine with WoW raid finder but you're actually okay with FFXIV duty finder,the feature that basically does the same thing ? How does that even work ? Not to mention all those fetch quests ?

[polyhedral]

Binding coil is a small part of the story that has more to do with past events than current ones. You're only missing out a small part of the story by not completing coil and once 3.0 launches that story will be accessible to all. I believe any good endgame content should have some type of compelling story otherwise the bosses just feel like loot pinatas and lack dramatic flair. It would feel kinda anticlimactic to beat the last boss and, chest full of loot drops with nothing else.

Only a small piece of the story???!?

Are we playing the same game here?? IT'S THE ENTIRE STORY FFS!

[cookiecutter]

And here we go again with the thinking style of "it's black or white". Seriously why do insecure comments seem to come out whenever that coil is mentioned in this game ?

Just FYI following that train of thought of yours,the "casuals" could also very well leave after they found out there's a massive roadblock at the endgame and the best bits of game are locked behind it with only pointless crumbs here and there left outside.

Come to think of it,in fact it would be very interesting if the aforementioned "casual vs hardcore" scenario someone mentioned earlier really do take place here.

I have nothing to be insecure about. SE can do whatever they want since its their game. If they want to completely cater to people who don't want to put the time or skills into endgame content that's fine with me. I'll just play something else. Really they have three choices. 1. They can keep the status quo. 2. Completely nerf in game content so it can beaten by all players in a timely fashion. 3. Create two different modes of coil for the "casual" and "hardcore" at launch of patches. The problem with the third option though is that its much more work for them to make two separate forms of encounters. Not only that they'd probably have to incorporate a better gear set to give incentive for hardcore players to actually do it. The reason why savage was a flop was because all that you got from completing it was a title. Choices 1 and 2 are the easiest for them to do so we'll see what happens.

[Tiggy]

Only a small piece of the story???!?

Are we playing the same game here?? IT'S THE ENTIRE STORY FFS!

Coil isn't connected to the main storyline at all. The main storyline revolves around the Ascians and the coil is simply tying up loose ends from 1.0 involving bahamut. It's not even remotely the "entire" story. First coil barely even had any story at all.

[cookiecutter]

Only a small piece of the story???!?

Are we playing the same game here?? IT'S THE ENTIRE STORY FFS!

It is if you like bahamut but, it really doesn't have much do what is currently happening in the game. I can't really say much more without spoiling though.

[Ultimatecalibur]

No. raiders ignored BCoB because raiders don't give a shit about glamour pieces. If the allagan gear did more than take myth gear stats and stir them around a bit them players probably would have been more excited to do it. Adding a 10 level power difference doesn't fix anything but makes it much worse (the entire point of this thread).

As Tiggy mentioned, Hardcore raiders did go after BiS mixed Allagan/Myth builds, but a fair portion of the Midcore felt no need to attempt it even though they could as they were already max ilevel and only missing a ring and felt no need to attempt coil for it. Where as now those same players were willing to attempt SCoB once they cleared T5.

Oils and Carbon are nothing like Abjurations. Abjurations drew from open world bosses, exploration, other players, and crafting. It also involved destroying goods but to a lesser degree. Weathered gear is bought with player bound tokens earned in the same instances were you get the player bound item to upgrade them.

My mistake then. Abjurations are gear gained by trading in 2 crafted tokens made from materials gained from the FXI equivalent of Hunts. I thought the Cursed gear was already usable and not just tokens like the Ancient armor tokens we have now.

[MageBlack]

Aren't you the same person saying grinding for gear would be fun as well. Grinding for gear with different stats isn't any better.

I do not understand what you mean by this...

I was responding to the sphere grid system for levelling (like the one in FFX and Path of Exile) I greatly dislike this style of system, personal opinion. If there were to be a re-vamp of the skill system, I would like it if they crossed the 1.0 skill system with the Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions skill system. This would work much better within the confines of this game.

Now, I may have misunderstood what you were talking about. Were you meaning have a sphere grid style system for your gear and have your gear level up? Sounds interesting and odd at the same time. If you have read somewhere that I said the gear grind is fun or adding extra stats makes it better, I don't think I have ever used that term. I know I have said I was ok with the current system knowing the changes they have in store and realizing this is the base framework that can, and will, be built upon. At least grinding for gear with different stats would give you a reason to grind other gear aside from looks.

[Craiger]

This is the usual problem there is with every MMO...

People want horizontal progression, but if they made that, I'm certain people would complain about there being no reason to gear up or something along those lines...

In a themepark MMO, it usually just comes down to the amount of content the developers put out, and while the amount of content SE brings us is decent, they bring us the wrong content... A major patch every 3 months is okay(like they said it would be), but it has actually been like 4 months between them all, and every other patch makes no sense in the progression of the game. I'm not a hardcore player, and I see a use for Crystal Tower, but with how the weekly cap for tomes work, every player(however casual you are) will be able to have full gear from those tomes, so the gear isn't really that important... It all comes down to items to upgrade your gear, which is nice, but a whole 4 months wait to get something that already exists in the game? (much easier mind)

Instead of releasing crystal tower like raids every other patch, they should use that development to make the game a little more horizontal (not too much though), and offer something new and challenging for the more hardcore players, but still appeal to less hardcore players. And it should only be 3 months between patches... Then it would be fine

EDIT: In fact, if they struggle to make content for both hardcore and casual players (and they don't have resources to make more content), they could just make an extreme version or something of the content they release (not 24 man raids, oh god...), which would make it much easier for them, and they could release relevant gear for hardcore players. Could even make something new that you put on your gear to get a special attribute or something. Also, I don't want 24 man raids ever... Makes everything feel meaningless and chaotic.