Staggering Alexander Unlocks After Launch

[Zfz]

Which makes the decision even more bad and ironic. Decision designed for those who won't care about it hurting anyone who does.

Not so. The problem is with the placement of the blame. There are seriously a large portion of the population feeling this progression stress. There is no doubt about that. But it is wrong to call these people casuals. They are actually "pseudo-hardcores" because they are looking at the game as a hardcore player yet only willing to or only able to invest into the game an amount of time that is more similar to the casuals.

They are designing it for people who care about it. But people on the forum are placing that blame on people who don't care about it.

[SarcasmMisser]

casuals win again

This thread and subsequent interest in this was literally created by the guild master of BG, what are you smoking son?

[ColorOfSakura]

casuals win again

Almost every MMO does this. Hell, even WoW does this. It's nothing to do with casuals and everything to do with making sure content is balanced and correct before letting people go balls to the wall on the raids.

[RaizeGraymalkin]

casuals win again

Oh the people that keep the game afloat? Yeah damn them to hell.

[Katana190]

As a raider who has had FCoB on farm for a couple of months now, I very much like this idea of staggering the raid for 2 weeks. This will give me and my group a good amount of time to get our mains to 60 (Shouldn't take long at all...) and also level the new jobs and really experiment and maximise their potential, I for one will be making the change from Warrior to Dark Knight and really tapping into Dark Knight, theory crafting how it plays, rotations, mp management, damage mitigation, etc. This will also give newer players time to catch up, say a player from WoW (Don't hate for using WoW as an example) who converted over to FFXIV and use to raid Hardcore on WoW and plans to do so on FFXIV as well. This will give them a decent amount of time to just see how the game plays and the how the jobs work.

[Alistaire]

Yeah obviously people wouldn't be raiding on day 1. But within the first week is not that hardcore of an idea to get your raid job to 60 and give it a shot. If you don't want to that's fine but they shouldn't be preventing those that do based on those that won't care.

[Judge_Xero]

I couldn't imagine the pressure to be World First.
At least that would alleviate the variable of "who can level fastest\skip all the things" for people who are into that sort of thing

[Ooshima]

Why are people so negative about this decision? I don't think it is bad at all.

I've been through 2 cycles of raid patches (SCoB and FCoB, not BCoB as I am not legacy player) where I have to juggle between patch day crafting and raiding. It is really shit busy for people like me, having to raid reasonably on week 1 and at the same time, churn out the new gears for myself, for sale, and FC groups who are gunning for Server/World rankings.

In Heavensward, not only you have to level your mainjob to 60, a lot of groups and players would probably want to see if the 3 new jobs will and new abilities/skills will present a change in group meta/dynamics or not, figuring out and optimizing rotations, while the top crafters also need to level several key crafting jobs to 60. There is just shit-ton of things going on at the launch of Heavensward. Without staggering, you will probably need an entire FC effort where the main team will focus on leveling their raiding jobs and focus in optimization and you will also need a handful of players who are going to sacrifice by gunning for their DoH/DoL classes and focus on churning out the materials and gears for raiding, assuming there are new recipes (which most likely will).

Of course you can say it is their choice, but again I think Yoshida is right about this decision. You can still choose to play 16hrs a day during the 2 weeks stagger and get all jobs to 60 or you can choose with less play time but only the core jobs to 60. I gives a lot more flexibility for players to decide what they should/want to do and less pressure on things.

[TinyMonster]

I'm also glad about this decision since I'm going to be switching to astrologian when it comes out so it will give me time to learn my new class.

[PArcher]

I am happy with this, as are the others in my static that were in TS when we were chatting about it.

Staggering the content like this allows the raiders who want to go through the story and take it all in to do so. It allows those of use who want to change jobs a chance to try them out and start to figure out what we need to do to raid with it. It lets us level and gear up and change our rotations properly, not in a rushed fashion with many potential errors.

If you want to rush through everything Day 1 and be ready to raid Day 1, you can do that. No one's stopping you. But there are many raiders who are also heavily interested in the story, in the environments, who want to take proper time and make sure they are ready to raid with all the changes. This is evening out the playing field between them.

If all you want to do is raid, stay away for another two weeks. Go ahead. Come back the day Alexander is released, try to level to 60 and get the gear you need then. And watch those who took the time to prepare properly push harder and faster than you can.