Gear Damage Poll 10/04/2011

[Anonymoose]

At least it's better than that incredibly stupid exp penalty concept. If you think this game needs an exp penalty you need a bullet to the head.

This is very true. Though, to be honest, my brain can't really tell the difference in practice anymore.

In XI, I'd die a few times in events and it required me to begrudgingly head to campaign for a few hours - meanwhile in XIV, I die a few times in events and spend a few hours begrudingly farming 50k worth of whatever just so my fundage retains balance.

Same time sink, but with a resource sink as well.

Either way, I'm out fighting (or in XIV's case, possibly also gathering/crafting) to gain back something I feel like I already put in the effort to obtain. The difference is that in FFXIV, it's a cycle: Breaking gear to earn money to repair broken gear by breaking gear to earn gil to... etc. That feels way too much like real life. (Fix the car to get to work to get the money to fix the car to get to work, etc.)

At least when it was solid EXP loss, the only resource required to gain it back was my time. It didn't want my gear, and I could do it with a completely empty bank and the equipment I'd earned. EXP loss was a terrible time-sink mechanic, but this actually makes me feel, on a mental input-output level, worse.

I feel like XIV took a cue from an action game, (in which things that are just flat-out given to you break and have to be maintained and upgraded) but still wants to be a sandbox (in which you earn everything you have exchange hours of grinding repetitive tasks for imaginary currency.) Why am I required to do both? And why pay to do that and call it fun? On a base level, it just feels wrong. Little things like that are overtaking the things I enjoy (in time requirements especially; I spent 4 hours on obligations just to spend an hour having fun).

Again, I feel like, for the sake of the game-masters convenience (not having to do more complex coding, start systems over, fix an economy broken by their bad choices) I'm being denied what I've rightfully earned.

I like playing the game very much, and the world in which it takes place is amazing... but when it goes legitimate and they start asking for money - there's this little part of me that only looks at how I react to the gaming experience and asks - "Are you nuts?"

I guess I'm in the minority on this one.

[Atoli]

I'm going for more of a "If you had an issue with it in the past, has the work of the dev-team to adjust it made you feel differently about it, or do you still reject it?"

Oh, in that case I shouldn't have voted.
Because I always liked it, but I also like how it got easier lately (I wouldn't want them to remove it though!).
I voted for..uhm.."I don't mind it now that it's been simplified." while actually meaning: "I like it better now that it's been simplified, but I always liked it."

[Anonymoose]

I agree that the system is... functional(ish). I still think 40,000~50,000 gil per full-repair feels totally wrong, but if you play the game a lot, don't miss your leves, and sell your vendortrash - you kinda break even. I won't deny that.

The system itself doesn't feel broken to me, it just feels out of place - like it's in the wrong game and makes me have less fun playing it.

In my opinion, playing Final Fantasy and running into Gear Damage is like playing a racing game and having a game mechanic where a tire pops and you have to get out and play the Bioshock hacking puzzle to get another one. Even if it worked perfectly well, what the hell is it even DOING there?

IMHO, the system just doesn't feel like Sandbox MMO, it feels like action MMO. I understand that we should be incorporating all the great aspects we can. I'm all for genre-blurring. But am I alone in saying that gear damage in FFXIV feels like mixing... say, whiskey and cotton candy? Sure, they're both great ALONE, but together ... who f**ked a clown in here?

(Acknowledgements: Dave Attell)