How would you feel about end-game gear only being useful for 3 months?

[Punainen]

Nobody do sidequests for a reason, few exceptions, but majority doesnt cares. (which is why they have rewards now and few SPs, nobody was doing them)

in XI people only does main story because they offer endgame rewards, Sky Access, Sea Access, CoP Rings, ToAU rings, Einherjar Access, and so on. God knows nobody would even go through CoP because of how annoying it is if it didn't have sea access as a reward.

It's always about a reward, people needs incentives to do stuff. Yes, doesnt have to be gears, it can be access to certain areas, unlocking certain fights, and so on.

Anyone THAT disinterested in the story shouldn't even be playing an RPG. Anyone THAT disinterested needs to be playing some kind of action game. Were this an MMOAction, I would totally understand that viewpoint. But this is an RPG. Where's my STORY!? No one picked up Final Fantasies 1 through 10 for the unlockable gear.

[Chardrizard]

i do them for achievements, some have decent sp and if you don't pay attention it will add up. I got like 20k the other day but it took like 4 hours.

Achievements, SP, Equips. They are all incentives, do people care about the story? i doubt lol.

Anyone THAT disinterested in the story shouldn't even be playing an RPG. Anyone THAT disinterested needs to be playing some kind of action game. Were this an MMOAction, I would totally understand that viewpoint. But this is an RPG. Where's my STORY!? No one picked up Final Fantasies 1 through 10 for the unlockable gear.

People have fun and play with their own way, no need to force your view on 'how to play' to others and it is easily proven by Azury's thread about lores, no one is even contributing on it, it just another foolproof that people skimmed through stories.

[ViolentDjango]

Question is in the topic. Please -STAY- on topic. Post how -YOU- would feel and nothing more

Put another way, just answer the following:
How would you feel about "end-game" gear being replaced every 3 months or so via new raid/s or other end-game activities?

And to mods: if you think this thread is going off topic please just delete the posts of those who did anything but answer the question rather than closing or deleting the thread.

[SIZE="6"]Please do not debate or start flame wars. Only Answer the question. It is intended to provide devs with people's viewpoints on the question WHICH IS THEORETICAL. I'm not sure why people feel the need to turn every thread into a flame war or polarized debate full of personal attacks.[/SIZE]

My Feelings:
I feel that if gear were to become outdated so quickly FFXIV would have to drastically increase the quality of end game content to become competitive. At the moment I strongly feel that FFXIV's raids, while great, can not compare to the raids of other games (due to lacking interactiveness, voice acting, and deeper stories). If end game content became based on the current quick-spawn HNM system and the current style of raids, I feel like people would only come back for a week after each patch, eventually find another game that involves them more and that they feel like they can "invest time" into, and leave FFXIV completely.

I'm fine with it...

It makes logical sense, in my opinion -- here's why:

Regardless of what they do, "over achievers" (not meant in a derogatory fashion) will always be the first to plow through content. They'll get this gear within the first few weeks, or at the very least before 90% of the less serious community gets it. If they only thing they said was that they were going to produce new content on a steady, 3 month cycle -- then these people would be replacing that gear every 3 months regardless.

But there's another side to that -- when new content is released, specifically with new gear that replaces previously released content, the amount of people going through the old content decreases because everyone wants to be working on the latest and greatest. This means that smaller, less elite (again, not meant in a derogatory fashion) groups that rely on pick ups or help from better ones to get things done will have to wait for people to be in down time before they can get support, and the longer they wait, the less likely they are able to finish content.

Anyone who started a new character in FFXI's later years, before the changes were made to the difficulty of CoP content and the level cap was removed can attest to this -- the more reliant you are on other players for getting content done, the more difficult it becomes to achieve this goal as the content ages.

By correlating the decreasing of difficulty for aged content with the steady release of new content, they are effectively making it easier for stragglers to keep up with the paces while simultaneously making a promise that top level content will be difficult enough to where hardcore gamers will get the satisfaction of a hefty challenge in acquiring their gear.

This is pretty much the perfect balancing act between the casual and hardcore players -- I feel it should be applauded. There isn't really a better way to do it without producing duplicates of all gear that come from lower difficulty content -- and that makes it almost silly for many people who want to be in the highest tier gear to bother with the harder content unless they explicitly demand a challenge (which some people do, but elitism prioritizes quality over honor in acquiring the gear in question.)

It works perfectly, in my opinion and I like it.

After the 3 month mark when your gear is outdated, it doesn't matter how difficult it was for you to obtain -- its obsolete and if you're attempting to play in a high level, competitive sense, you're already behind the curve. There's no reason to force people who are fine with being one stage behind (be it because they can't invest large amounts of time or are lacking in active linkshells)to suffer through difficult content for inferior equipment.

[Punainen]

Achievements, SP, Equips. They are all incentives, do people care about the story? i doubt lol.



People have fun and play with their own way, no need to force your view on 'how to play' to others and it is easily proven by Azury's thread about lores, no one is even contributing on it, it just another foolproof that people skimmed through stories.

No, no need to FORCE players to play how you want. Thus YOU would not play the story content...therefore they shouldn't even develop any for those who DO want it? You're the one wanting to force playstyles (storyless); not I.

[naaros]

I definitely care about the story (I loved the stories in FFXI, especially COP), however... The main incentive was definitely getting access to the new areas. But I was one of those people who read all the cutscenes and tuned out chatter during them so I could get the story. I'm doing the same for FFXIV.

[Punainen]

I definitely care about the story (I loved the stories in FFXI, especially COP), however... The main incentive was definitely getting access to the new areas. But I was one of those people who read all the cutscenes and tuned out chatter during them so I could get the story. I'm doing the same for FFXIV.

Yeah, I'm hardly asking for a LACK of unlockable content... But there's NO story in this game once your done your main story quests. The only story we get are boring tidbits that are at the absolute minimum and only exist to try to explain the existence of the content. Why am I doing this raid? 'Cause I'm looking for this dude, supposedly! But I'll never see him and never hear anything else about it ever. 'Cause we're actually just here for GEEEEEEEAR!!!!

[Grim_Lion]

I quit WoW for this reason.

If they do this, I will also quit FFxiv and give up on MMO's

Casual people have ruined the MMO genre, if you ask me.

I like to have at least a year or two between cycles. It also gives the devs time to work on properly scaled content. Not tiny little patches of small content.

[Altera]

Something I was just thinking about, is what if they made new looking gear, but stats wouldnt be any better then the old ones. But once a new expansion comes out, thats when new gear gets higher stats. That would please both the ones who dont like finding their newly equipped gear obsolete shortly after, and allows people who likes to make their character look different more often wouldnt it?

I know this might sound like a dumb idea, but I'm just throwing it in there. Go easy on me^^

[Estellios]

People have fun and play with their own way, no need to force your view on 'how to play' to others and it is easily proven by Azury's thread about lores, no one is even contributing on it, it just another foolproof that people skimmed through stories.

There's those of us that like the story but get a little nudge to actually work on it when there's a reward at the end (aka My group finally working on FFXI's CoP storyline when most of those fights were really unfair BS). There's also those of us that like the story a lot but don't really care to talk about it =P

[Eekiki]

Yeah, well thats sort of my point. If this game is going to be nothing but instanced raids, I'll quit real fast. I'm already getting bored with it. I get all the latest gear so I can...what? Wait 3 months for another raid just to replace the gear I got 3 months ago?

Welcome to MMORPGs. This is what they are. A lot of people like it this way, judging from the revenue they pull in.