[dev1026] Changes to Claiming and Engaging Enemies

[Nabiri]

Future content will be heavily instanced

R.I.P. open world content. You were my one of my favourite parts of MMOs.
Dark dingy dungeons are the future apparently. ._.
It's too bad. The world is beautiful, and with map redesigns it should be even better soon. As for instanced NMs and such in the open world.. well... I really loved the competition for claiming. NMs are less exciting without it.
I don't like instances to be the main part of a game. I enjoy being able to meet people passing by, have them join on my adventure or go help them out. I like that interaction with the community. I worry that will mostly be restricted to towns now.
This is just my opinion, not the same for everyone. I really worry about this game holding my attention for the years to come.

The other thing that I'm taking from this translation is that it seems the game will be more focused on the destination, and not the journey itself. This is just my interpretation of course, and is yet another thing I disagree with.

This is also the impression I got. :\ In FFXI leveling WAS content. Some of my best memories of the game were leveling parties, meeting so many people, all the adventures we had and all the laughs. The journey was the best part of XI for me... Well in any game. I don't know if a game that focuses on endgame could hold my attention for more than a year or two.

[Murugan]

The whole "future content will be instanced" comment is in response to people who have concerns that the claiming system will be like XI in that it will cause a lot of competition for spawns. Keeping it in that context it hardly means "the death of open world content" it is just there to assuage fears that all content will be heavily competed.

FFXI did the exact same thing and never abandoned open world content. We have an open world dungeon coming in 1.19, we have open world NM's coming in 1.19, and we have a high level open world "dungeon" coming in 1.2, with more planned later.

You people need to stop overreacting over translated Developer responses to arguments in Japanese which you do not understand and then twisting it out of context with everything the developers have laid out for their actual plans for this game.

[Physic]

The whole "future content will be instanced" comment is in response to people who have concerns that the claiming system will be like XI in that it will cause a lot of competition for spawns. Keeping it in that context it hardly means "the death of open world content" it is just there to assuage fears that all content will be heavily competed.

FFXI did the exact same thing and never abandoned open world content. We have an open world dungeon coming in 1.19, we have open world NM's coming in 1.19, and we have a high level open world "dungeon" coming in 1.2, with more planned later.

You people need to stop overreacting over translated Developer responses to arguments in Japanese which you do not understand and then twisting it out of context with everything the developers have laid out for their actual plans for this game.

Its already been officially translated man.

If its not the message they wanted to send in answer to the same questions we have over here, then they wouldnt do translations.

[Murugan]

Its already been officially translated man.

I'm sorry that you still don't comprehend what he is talking about then. I enjoy reingharts translation but they seem to have forced the official reps to do the same (and unfortunately they don't do a much better job), and the result is that you take this stuff out of context and it is easy to see how people are misled.

He is talking about how such a claiming system will work with multiple forms of currently non-existant content, future plans, and responding to a thread full of people discussing the topic. You have none of that context unfortunately in even the "officially translated" post, so you have people jumping to conclusions that "oh no all or even the vast majority of future content is going to be instanced", which is just absurd because nothing like that was ever said, and instead we have confirmation of loads of open world content on the horizon.

Likewise you have people claiming that Power Leveling ala XI is coming to the game, when that also was never said. Yoshi appears to spend all day talking with developers about their future plans, then early in the morning weighs in on Japanese discussions, and what English players get is a translation of those responses which is really pretty confusing for people here.

[Physic]

As for instanced NMs and such in the open world.. well... I really loved the competition for claiming. NMs are less exciting without it.
I don't like instances to be the main part of a game. I enjoy being able to meet people passing by, have them join on my adventure or go help them out. I like that interaction with the community. I worry that will mostly be restricted to towns now.
This is just my opinion, not the same for everyone. I really worry about this game holding my attention for the years to come.

I disagree with competition for claiming being entertaining at all, but hey they kept that part. You claim the monster first and you get all rewards.

Far as the open world experience, i think its a good thing and it could still be done, i just dont see this system serving any purpose in the form they are talking about doing it. i think an open claim system, along with sharing some of the rewards, even if its just quest credits, could bring people together, and the could have made interesting overworld boss/events requiring large groups of people working together to benefit each other, even if they werent in the same group or linkshell, but instead they look to be half assing it, and changing the mechanic, without making anything that makes use of it, or encourages social behavior.

[Sylvari]

"new players who would like some help, because they want to play with their friends as soon as possible, as well as players who are willing to sacrifice their own time to help out new players get involved in the game quicker."

I totally agree with this view point.

[Meimei]

Want to know the major difference between powerleveling in XI and XIV? Kill speed.

In FFXI you're simply cured by an outside party while fighting mobs that might normally rape your face, because of this, your killspeed can be a tad slow. So exp gained is still moderately regulated. This will not be the case in FFXIV, with level 50 (and someday beyond) characters one-shotting your mobs with absolutely no repercussions or penalties.

Frankly I am shocked, it feels as though all the leveling we've trudged through until this point has been in absolute vain. In my opinion it's far too early for something of this magnitude to be dropped onto a system that's meant to be stable (even if it didn't exactly turn out that way.)

There are so very many, many, many other ways to fix the current claiming system. Yoshi, are you not even willing to explore those avenues? Are you in such a rush you forget common game environment equilibrium? You claim to be doing this in an effort to bring players closer together, but this is assuming the majority of players are in fact going to be doing this out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. You don't take into account the inevitable dual/triple/quadruple/etc boxers and bot abuse that's bound to follow. There will be absolutely no credit nor achievement felt from undertaking the journey to the end levels after this. Imagine if, in FFXI, Abyssea came out in 2005 instead of last year. That's kind of what's going to happen here...

I'm not sure what else to say that hasn't been said dozens of times already, this is not going to end well. I'm so very, very disappointed. My trust in your judgment has wavered, sir. :/

If this PLing works with Disciples of the Land and Hand, as well (Stone Throw/Wrist Flick to tag mobs) then this game shouldn't even be called a game anymore. You can rest assured I'll be pending my resignation should this be the case.

[Dargoth_Draconia]

Want to know the major difference between powerleveling in XI and XIV? Kill speed.

In FFXI you're simply cured by an outside party while fighting mobs that might normally rape your face, because of this, your killspeed can be a tad slow. So exp gained is still moderately regulated. This will not be the case in FFXIV, with level 50 (and someday beyond) characters one-shotting your mobs with absolutely no repercussions or penalties.

Frankly I am shocked, it feels as though all the leveling we've trudged through until this point has been in absolute vain. In my opinion it's far too early for something of this magnitude to be dropped onto a system that's meant to be stable (even if it didn't exactly turn out that way.)

There are so very many, many, many other ways to fix the current claiming system. Yoshi, are you not even willing to explore those avenues? Are you in such a rush you forget common game environment equilibrium? You claim to be doing this in an effort to bring players closer together, but this is assuming the majority of players are in fact going to be doing this out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. You don't take into account the inevitable dual/triple/quadruple/etc boxers and bot abuse that's bound to follow. There will be absolutely no credit nor achievement felt from undertaking the journey to the end levels after this. Imagine if, in FFXI, Abyssea came out in 2005 instead of last year. That's kind of what's going to happen here...

I'm not sure what else to say that hasn't been said dozens of times already, this is not going to end well. I'm so very, very disappointed. My trust in your judgment has wavered, sir. :/

If this PLing works with Disciples of the Land and Hand, as well (Stone Throw/Wrist Flick to tag mobs) then this game shouldn't even be called a game anymore. You can rest assured I'll be pending my resignation should this be the case.

Back in the day it was slow, but as soon as they added level sync and you could keep your party at the best exp/speed ratio then mobs died in a few seconds and exp was capped. I don't really feel like the leveling we done was in vain because who is to say there is going to be anyone who wants to take time to power level you unless its done vice versa and even then most people have most classes at 50 at this point. It is going to be beneficial for not us persay but persuading new players to come and join and any of your friends that will start on the PS3 and you will be able to help them level if you want to catch up so they can do end game content with you. In FFXIV there are many different types of players ones who will only do group based leveling up and then solo players so I am not overly worried that everyone is just going to be power leveling everyone and normal leveling is going to go out the door.

There isn't really a way to fix the current claiming system easily it is easy to break this one down and rebuilt one that the brand new team knows by heart and will be able to fix with ease if something breaks or needs to be tweaked. You have to remember when Yoshi-P took over that not only was he new but so was his whole team. That being said they came into the middle of a system that is flawed and they don't know the ins and outs of the current programming. Current claiming system kind of sucks and is buggy and flawed and they don't know how to work on it as easily as they could with a new system created by themselves.

You said it isn't going to end well, it is instead going to not end at all. It is going to be flawless and work amazingly. Like he said not everyone is going to be happy and he might drive a couple fans away even though I don't see this being a game breaking element by any means. With the few that leave we will gain two or three times more who enjoy it and like something new and fresh.

[Sephrick]

Want to know the major difference between powerleveling in XI and XIV? Kill speed.

In FFXI you're simply cured by an outside party while fighting mobs that might normally rape your face, because of this, your killspeed can be a tad slow. So exp gained is still moderately regulated. This will not be the case in FFXIV, with level 50 (and someday beyond) characters one-shotting your mobs with absolutely no repercussions or penalties.

In most cases, the PL tanked, grabbing hate via large cures. Thus, most PL'd parties were DD heavy boosting kill speed.

Frankly I am shocked, it feels as though all the leveling we've trudged through until this point has been in absolute vain. In my opinion it's far too early for something of this magnitude to be dropped onto a system that's meant to be stable (even if it didn't exactly turn out that way.)

We've all been playing this game for the last year knowing SE's intent was to completely change it from the ground up. To be shocked at SE delivering on those drastic changes is unreasonable.

There are so very many, many, many other ways to fix the current claiming system. Yoshi, are you not even willing to explore those avenues? Are you in such a rush you forget common game environment equilibrium? You claim to be doing this in an effort to bring players closer together, but this is assuming the majority of players are in fact going to be doing this out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. You don't take into account the inevitable dual/triple/quadruple/etc boxers and bot abuse that's bound to follow.

By investigating logs, it is possible to identify for-profit violators and mete out punishment, but it would be very difficult to completely put an end to these actions. Doing so would require implementing very complicated specs, which will place a strain on ordinary users.

Distribute experience points based on the amount of damage done to the monster
Distribute experience points based on hate

The above methods were used by first generation MMOs to reduce power leveling, but these methods have their own problems. Players can aggressively fight each other over experience points, classes that do not do much damage are at a disadvantage, and for-profit violators can create bots that randomly attack monsters and steal EXP. (As I said earlier, we will punish for-profit violators. However, we do not want to ban ordinary players, so it will take us time to properly identify for-profit violators.)

There will be absolutely no credit nor achievement felt from undertaking the journey to the end levels after this. Imagine if, in FFXI, Abyssea came out in 2005 instead of last year. That's kind of what's going to happen here...

Good. If I wanted to play XI, I'd go play XI. Even though Abyssea exists, the old world still is there.

This whole system comes down to player choice. Be PL'd or don't. But don't try to force everyone to play your way.

Myself and most people I know feel no sense of achievement when getting a class to cap, just relief that it's over. Sense of achievement comes from things like -- using XI as an example -- finally equipping that Rajas Ring.

If someone needs more than a month to learn how to be a tank, damage dealer or healer, then their problem can't be fixed by a game.

I'm not sure what else to say that hasn't been said dozens of times already, this is not going to end well. I'm so very, very disappointed. My trust in your judgment has wavered, sir. :/

If this PLing works with Disciples of the Land and Hand, as well (Stone Throw/Wrist Flick to tag mobs) then this game shouldn't even be called a game anymore. You can rest assured I'll be pending my resignation should this be the case.

While I agree DoH and DoL shouldn't get SP from killing mobs, I do hope they have something in store to give them avenues to gain levels that doesn't involve grinding recipes ad nauseum.

[Davorok]

While I agree DoH and DoL shouldn't get SP from killing mobs, I do hope they have something in store to give them avenues to gain levels that doesn't involve grinding recipes ad nauseum.

Hmmm...how about grant R50 DoH the ability to cast "Hasty Hand" on another crafter? Forget having any semblance of an economy for lowbies, just Plvl crafters to cap so they can make end game gear.