Will you quit if this game becomes raid-centric?

[Pulseczar]

Azury—you're becoming more transparent with every post.

[KitCat]

I'm not playing more than super casually now but I'd probably not play once they started charging. I've got no interest in needing to keep a real life schedule based around this game just so I can get equipment that keeps me relatively in the loop and not gimped. I don't have a problem with making plans occasionally ahead of time to get a goal accomplished, but this 2 or 3 nights a week raid BS that happens in wow makes me want to puke.

Anyhow, I doubt it'll come to that. They just need to have other viable options of obtaining things and having fun.

Bottom line is if turns from being fun into being a job, im out. Had enough of that when I was younger, not as much free time to waste on that now.

Anyway, this is all assumption and speculation anyway. I'm happy with what yoshi and the team have done so far. 1.19 might see me playing more than once or twice a week. I'll have faith for now, and reassess when they decide to start charging whether or not I feel its worth my money.

[Fated]

I would hope that some things will be left in the open world. I think some competition between different groups for drops creates healthy rivalry, FFXI originally took it to the far extreme and created an unlikeable system.

[Defmetal]

The game needs to have a mixture of content but one problem that always comes with open world content of "whoever hits it first claims it" is eventually it leads to 3rd party bot tool claims.

Someone will make a bot that automatically provokes it the second its in memory, before players even realize its spawned.
It was a major problem in FFXI, especially when NASA came out and linkshells had network-claim bots that had staggered times where they all tried to claim, adjusted for latency, like .10 seconds apart. Xatsh and Paradox were huge on this in FFXI and it really allowed them to monopolize the endgame content because legit players, who normally had say a 1/10 chance of claim, turned to a 1/100 chance of claim - plus they still had to fight the mob, and deal with pathetic drop rates.

I do like the open world mobs but that's an issue that's inevitable, and solved with instanced raids and force pops. Force Pops are actually one of the easiest methods to deal with raids, farm a pop item and pop the NM and botting isn't involved.

The system now seems to work where the open world raid mobs drop tradeable loot, and the raids drop exclusive loot (proving you actually accomplished something instead of buying it).

Question to the OP but if you don't want a game that's all raids then wtf do you want people to do at max level? Walk around and /pose everywhere? Continue to grind mobs for merits? Love it or hate it but Abyssea in FFXI gave you near endless content for 3 to 18 people to work on. FFXI also had a great balance with Assaults and Salvage and Nyzul Isle, where you had a progression of instances working towards an ultimate goal. Unfortunately they butchered it by making them all dailys and even making them all based off the same timer... (Nyzul and Assault shared the same timer, and assaults were required to do Salvage).

So... no I won't quit, but I want MORE than raids of course. Some PVP would be nice, more missions, quests, and ways to progress to set yourself apart from others. The storyline missions giving access to exclusive areas, like Sea or Sky, and the end rewards set you apart from average casual players with more than "raid until you have access" (WoW and EQ1 style).

FFXIV, like FFXI, is going to be a game for all players. It will have content for the raiders, for the questers, for the rmt, for the botters, for the event-lovers, and the social players, casual players, etc. You'd be an idiot to cater to one crowd, especially the endgame crowd (because they make up the smallest portion of the population), yet if you ignore them you're game becomes stale and meaningless. It will have a balance, no more threads like this please.

[Estellios]

All I know is when playtime is limited it was damn infuriating trying to get a hold of that one god pop you needed but was a timed spawn. Same thing with Limbus and needing 1 more zone for an omega run then some BLM decides to solo the zone you want to do and keep you waiting for like an hour. Thankfully it seems that the devs got the idea that people would like to be able to log on and get things done instead of hoping they get claim of something.

And HNMs were anything but chill.

[Tezz_Xivectro]

@OP:

Here's what will make me quit. If by "instanced" it is always a group of people teleporting to a dungeon for ALL endgame content, then yes.
It's nice to see other people on the field and it makes it feel like a world.

RIFT is a good example of some of the things they could do to not make it raid-only (WoW-style). They honestly need to have many different variations of endgame content. If it's open world that doesn't mean people have to compete with each other. It was mostly bad in FF11 because of long respawns, low drop rates and only 1 single occurrence of that monster.

[Azurymber]

Question to the OP but if you don't want a game that's all raids then wtf do you want people to do at max level? Walk around and /pose everywhere? Continue to grind mobs for merits? Love it or hate it but Abyssea in FFXI gave you near endless content for 3 to 18 people to work on. FFXI also had a great balance with Assaults and Salvage and Nyzul Isle, where you had a progression of instances working towards an ultimate goal. Unfortunately they butchered it by making them all dailys and even making them all based off the same timer... (Nyzul and Assault shared the same timer, and assaults were required to do Salvage).

I'd want balance. Some raids are great but i'd want to see a trigger-pop gods type things. And roaming dragons would be epic. Maybe to avoid the claim-bot mess in FFXI have 10 spawn spots for the HNMs and have them spawn randomly at one of them (ex. could spawn in grid, could spawn in thanalan, etc. kinda like the WoTg worm) . Theres lots of creative things that they could implement -outside- of raids.

edit: and yeah, i dont want the game to turn into WoW. And thats the direction it sounds like its heading in. Not saying its horrible since WoW is crazy popular, its just kind of not what FFXI was and not what FFXIV was supposed to be, and i personally wouldn't enjoy it and wanted to see if a lot of other players feel the same. Especially with all the hate for abyssea.

[Tsukino]

The storyline missions giving access to exclusive areas, like Sea or Sky, and the end rewards set you apart from average casual players with more than "raid until you have access" (WoW and EQ1 style).

Hopefully now that they're willing to drop crafters and gatherers from story quest viability, we'll be able to get some of this. I really enjoyed non-endgame achievements like being able to enter Tu'Lia or having one of the gunas rings that were still major accomplishments in the eyes of the players.

[Visch]

I'd want balance. Some raids are great but i'd want to see a trigger-pop gods type things. And roaming dragons would be epic. Maybe to avoid the claim-bot mess in FFXI have 10 spawn spots for the HNMs and have them spawn randomly at one of them (ex. could spawn in grid, could spawn in thanalan, etc. kinda like the WoTg worm) . Theres lots of creative things that they could implement -outside- of raids.

edit: and yeah, i dont want the game to turn into WoW. And thats the direction it sounds like its heading in. Not saying its horrible since WoW is crazy popular, its just kind of not what FFXI was and not what FFXIV was supposed to be, and i personally wouldn't enjoy it and wanted to see if a lot of other players feel the same. Especially with all the hate for abyssea.

HNMs??? *gasp*

Who would have the time to spend MORE then 5 minutes waiting to do something????

Or even COMPETING against OTHER PLAYERS for items????? That is just unheard of!! It could create a difference in items from people who don't play at the game at all from people who actually do!! WE CAN'T HAVE THAT IN CHINA SIMULATION.

Everyone is just so casual (bad at the game) for that to ever happen right???

[Jennestia]

Uh, did you forget gods were instanced (pop triggers anyone?) and were for raids?

Seriously man...

You just gave an example of what you are complaining about.

Tu`lia and Lumoria gods were open world content - Assaults, Salvage, Nyzul (to an extent) were Instanced content. I personally would quit as it would just further the reason to not be on the overworld other than to enter an instance, which means besides cities, you won't really see anyone on the outside world beyond what needs to be done (e.g hit 24, start raiding.)

Even the storyline is instanced for the most part...instancing while helpfully generally killed the MMO genre in some ways.