This patch dropped the ball hard

[Colt47]

Rafaelhades that is exactly what I've been saying earlier in the thread about the way the rewards are being distributed. The majority of the newest currency are locked into either expert roulette, made up of two dungeons, and Alexander. Those two are the easiest sources of this editions myth tomes, and already people were burned out on expert roulette from farming law. Now we don't even have high level roulette to help break things up.

People should be getting small amounts of true end game gear currency from just about everything they do. That way there is enough variety to keep people playing, maybe even earn some while leveling other jobs.

[Kaedan]

People should be getting small amounts of true end game gear currency from just about everything they do. That way there is enough variety to keep people playing, maybe even earn some while leveling other jobs.

We do. We get Eso from every roulette except MSQ. And besides, to cap out Eso you only have to run 1 expert roulette a day for 6 days. That's a total playtime of 3 hours.

This isn't even going to be my first hiatus from the game. I did the same thing back during the launch of 2.0, and didn't come back until Syrcus Tower was released. When history repeats itself... Well, they would do well to learn from it, wouldn't they?

Learn from what? You certainly have a high opinion of yourself if you think they care (or should care) about you taking a break.

News Flash: You are not representative of all players. Your opinion is not the majority opinion or what everyone else thinks and feels.

[Colt47]

We do. We get Eso from every roulette except MSQ. And besides, to cap out Eso you only have to run 1 expert roulette a day for 6 days. That's a total playtime of 3 hours.

That's the problem: We have to run roulette. There was never a reason to lock ESO to roulette and dungeons exclusively with a 450 cap per week in place. They could just as easily handled it like Law and give it out through hunting (even if it was just 5 per A rank), or even expand both law and eso, giving it for completing X-number of minigames at gold saucer, complete some special gathering or crafting daily, or maybe even reward some for treasure hunting. The problem is they want us to run the same static dungeons over and over, and the Expert Roulette just makes it incredibly easy to see why this doesn't work. Someone would have to be a workaholic to want to keep doing that roulette repeatedly every day after already having done it at least 20x before.

********************** More thoughts *************************

Their strategy of 100% static content is fine if the game is intended to be played through and then dropped. But MMOs are supposed to be persistant worlds people want to log onto and do stuff in every day. It's hard to do that if the content is the same old hat content over and over again, and the only solution they have in the short term is to pay people with ingame currency to get them to do the content (with the right job... which is usually tank).

So long story short, people can play the same content over and over again with heavy gating on currency or go play someone elses game that has completely fresh content and doesn't gate the player. For most people, the answer is usually the latter. Not to mention there is the slippery slope of depending on a compulsion to keep people playing, as that is what the reward system for static content + the heavy gating creates and promotes. Blizzard / Activision pushed that strategy in full force with their title and it's become an epidemic in MMOs, leading to a lot of problems socially and sometimes even endangering physical health.

[SakuraMidori]

They could just as easily handled it like Law and give it out through hunting

Did i just hear someone say an idea be to use hunts to get more gear? helllllllll no

[Rafaelhades]

Rafaelhades that is exactly what I've been saying earlier in the thread about the way the rewards are being distributed. The majority of the newest currency are locked into either expert roulette, made up of two dungeons, and Alexander. Those two are the easiest sources of this editions myth tomes, and already people were burned out on expert roulette from farming law. Now we don't even have high level roulette to help break things up.

People should be getting small amounts of true end game gear currency from just about everything they do. That way there is enough variety to keep people playing, maybe even earn some while leveling other jobs.

But we already do. I've capped Esoterics on Wednesday doing anything but roulette and dungeon spam. Got Alex gear for the week through PF runs and DF, did Ravana EX with static for weapons and tokens and did 0 dungeons for my mains. Geared both BRD and MCH and used roulettes to level WAR to 56. There is enough variety in the current content to not burn out grinding tomes from Neverreap/Fractal, unless you absolutely need to cap on Tuesday.

Granted, I spammed Alex 20 times due to 4 run pts and Ravana because he's sgot a stranglehold on my bow but better and faster than Neverreap ad nauseum.

[BreathlessTao]

If you want something changed, you have to give evidence that it would be an improvement and that the majority would like it.

Uh...huh....right. Yeah, in theory. In theory that's how it is and that's how it works. In practice however... in short: don't tell me all those failures would have happened if that was the way it works. All the new - whatever type of content in any game, or any sequel of any game, or even movies or whatever - that so many things in history failed because the market research teams did all their work and did it 100% perfectly and reliably. Proof only goes so far, and especially when it's not proof but only a projection of expectations for the future, it has as much chance to fail as to do succeed. Many of the biggest successes are actually born from taking the biggest risks; sure you can go on walking the same old path every day, but eventually it will get old and obsolete and you'll meet less and less people on that road as time goes by. And when you realise you should've found another path because yours is all abandoned, it's already too late.

As a business, their goal is to please the largest number of people they can, which often means upsetting the minority.

Again, in theory. I've lost count of how many times I felt that SE is aiming to please, say, hardcore raiders/crafters/gatherers, and not giving one chocobo tailfeather about the rest of us. Don't tell me those groups are not absolute minorities; don't tell me I must be alone having felt like that - posts across numerous threads over the months have proven that I'm not. Even if the people posting on here are only a small fraction of the actual playerbase. So yeah, once again, theoretically that's how it works. But practice is different and in practice that "rule" has to be overlooked and overwritten far too often, because the several minorities will end up making up quite a nice chunk of the whole, while the "majority" is just "doing ok anyway".

We do. We get Eso from every roulette except MSQ.

We get Esoterics from Expert (35), Leveling (5, and it's completely stupid, being forced to choose between leveling and Esoterics), Trials (10), and Frontline (20, but good luck with that, at least on some worlds the queues are pretty much infinite because nobody's doing PvP).
No Esoterics from High - again, stupid, because those are literally not good for anything else than tomes (and zodiac drops maybe but then you don't do that via roulette), I really don't understand why the lv50 "hard" ones and their equivalents were not upgraded to give at least some spare change exp at least from the bosses; no Esoterics from MSQ - I'd say it's also stupid, because 120 Poetics will not ever encourage anyone at 60 to go and help out with CM/Praetorium; no Esoterics from Guildhest Roulette either - that's maybe the only one that actually makes sense (though maybe this one could drop some Poetics or maybe Law when done with a lv60, else there's no motivation to help out here either).

But we already do. I've capped Esoterics on Wednesday doing anything but roulette and dungeon spam. Got Alex gear for the week through PF runs and DF, did Ravana EX with static for weapons and tokens and did 0 dungeons for my mains. Geared both BRD and MCH and used roulettes to level WAR to 56. There is enough variety in the current content to not burn out grinding tomes from Neverreap/Fractal, unless you absolutely need to cap on Tuesday.

Granted, I spammed Alex 20 times due to 4 run pts and Ravana because he's sgot a stranglehold on my bow but better and faster than Neverreap ad nauseum.

Good for you! Like, honestly, I do mean that. /cheer
But let's look at the other side. I've leveled my BLM from 58+ to 60. I did Experts, and at least once went through all the other roulettes as well (except for Frontline because that's impossible). I did hunts, I did a few FATEs. I farmed Alexander for drops, got it from 3 and 4, still missing from 1 and 2. Did GC Provisioning like twice with both MNR and BTN. So I don't think I can be blamed with doing content in a way that'd get me to burn out. I can't farm Ravana because I still couldn't even find a group that could've managed to kill Bismarck. That's where I am right now, and I still "only" have 390 Esoterics. And yes I know it's basically one roulette to cap now, just countering all that. It's Saturday (for me here) and I'm still not capped - pretty sure about as many people are in my shoes as in yours.

[Rafaelhades]

That just proves that doing any content will put you well on your way to capping Esoterics without spamming 60 dungeons. It`s Saturday and you`re 390/450 while doing other things not related to grinding the same 2 dungeons over and over. Unless you really need to cap right away, you can progress at a steady clip and have the option to bulk farm if life requires you to not log on. My little foray into story time was just meant to show that I never felt obligated to hop into a dungeon just for tomes.

As an aside, 5 Esoterics for levelling roulette is not worth it in my mind. The exp boost on a lower level job is a better use for that. Expert roulette every day + Alexander NM for your weekly should be all you need.

[Jetstream_Fox]

Though I've spent more then a week away from the game since the patch, I still feel very strongly that the game needs a overhaul on it's current gear acquisition model and we're overall, being corralled into a constant, unchanging method. While some of you are ok with constantly following the same method, I still believe that if the game featured more ways to obtaining gear, it would be a more fruitful experience. I think the game could utilize the treasure hunting aspect to include gear, redevelop the crafting and allow it to be on par with tome gear or maybe include a randomly generated dungeon that could drop gear and include pieces from tomes. However I feel treasure hunting and the random dungeon gear drop would have to be low, but not make it low enough to disregard them as a viable options for players to explore.

[Yukiko]

Why are we always talking from the view of a player who cleared the storyline?
If you have to catch up there is not much where you can gain those stones, you first have to reach endgame BEFORE you can start farming them...
For someone who is not so far storywise it is hell of a burden to rush things just to start grinding afterwards!

The Lockout in roulette is just because programming sucks! The system does not allow to choose from the cleared dungeons, its static programming and only allows the set dungeons, so if you dont have the set dungeons and the system is choosing a dungeon you did not clear it will most likely crash...

[Lewtz]

+1 dropped hard for crafting gathering... However pve content is strong on its own imo