EC explains how the current progression system is flawed

[Hix]

The video is not claiming that the old Talent Trees are superior. It wanted a real world example where skipping the progression (giving you everything right at the beginning) would overwhelm you, and WoW's old talent trees was the perfect example.

The WoW old talent trees was used as an example where having some form of progression was better than having none. It made no claims on whether that particular implementation of progression was superior or not.

Hence there's nothing "balantly wrong" by mentioning WoW's old talent trees.

Did we even watch the same video? They talked about how talent trees are amazing progression mechanisms because they make you think about the game outside the game as you try to find that perfect build, unlike the terrible jrpg system of giving you new abilities based on level. Now to me this sounds like an argument that talent tree based progression is superior to at least jrpg progression, and they don't offer any other suggestion of a better progression system, so I think it's safe to conclude that they think WoW talent trees are actually a superior progression system.

In the burning crusade expansion of wow the content was gated by the completion of each tier of content (eg you had to run normal dungeons to unlock the first raids, the first raids and some heroics dungeons do unlock some more raids, those raids to unlock the later raids...) and the initial content of the expansion lasted for month (if not years) without feeling as a grind, a chore or w/e. You never got bored because you always had a boss to work on (and their difficulty weren't artificially inflated like what we have currently in alexander savage, on average you killed like one or two new bosses per week).

The fact is there was so much content at the expansion release (I'm only talking about what was release for the expansion, not about what was already in the game from wow vanilla) that it kept people playing for month, and there wasn't much grind innvolved (playing FFXIV require to grind way more the content than what wow required back in the day, believe it or not).

SE has to gate heavily stuff in FFXIV due to the tiny amount of content at level 60 in the game.

If FFXIV wanted to follow the BC progression model, then Aetherochemical Research Facility would have the difficulty of Alexander Savage 1, and you wouldn't be able to enter it unless you could clear The Vault in less than 15 minutes. I don't know where you get this idea that BC raids didn't have artificial difficulty unlike Alexander Savage. Do you know why they refer to gear in WoW as "Tiers?" Because the way WoW was originally designed, and this was true in BC as well, you had to be at least 1/2 geared in the previous Tier to even hope to complete more than the first boss in the next Tier. That's why it's called "Progression." You progress from one Tier to the next, farming each Tier for the gear needed to complete the next Tier. When people talk about "This gear only exists for raiders" they are talking about the Tier Progression system in WoW (even if they don't realize it), which you would now label as "artificial difficulty." Or do you imagine that you could jump right into Tempest Keep without extensive farming of Karazhan?

[randysquirrel]

mmmmmmmmmmmm corns

[TheUltimate3]

In regards to retaining subs, it's more of an issue that there were far fewer games back then, and then those few games tended to be very different from each other.

Today most games try to be very much like Warcraft, so more often than not, players would just play Warcraft.

[Miscreant]

All this talk about brainwashing...I feel like I'm in an FFXIV conspiracy...

Can ceruleum melt mythril beams?

[Dante_V]

The "brainwashing" talk is nothing more than arrogance from people who can't get over the fact that their opinion is just an opinion and not a decisive factor of anything outside themselves. To make themselves feel better they make excuses to validate their opinion over others by saying that others are "brainwashed" into having fun.... which ironically is an extremely laughable concept in its own right.

"Ohhh please don't oppress me with all the fun, I don't know if I can handle it."

[Dante_V]

Should be pointed out that both "fun" and what someone considers "better" (like talent trees vs straight progression) are 100% subjective and opinion. Personally I like the way the game is going and I absolutely do think it's fun. Could there be more? yes and we are getting more. The expansion just released and beyond that I feel a lot of the complaining is by vocal minorities tbh. Most people are content and playing the game, leveling, progressing. You are ALWAYS going to have people who do nothing but play FF all day long and of course those people will get bored at some point, but it's important to remember that those ppl are also not the majority.

[Ayuhra]

I'd say Warlords of Draenor is infinitely more of a Skinner Box than FFXIV. There is loot-related RNG here but with things like esoterics if you put in time you will, you WILL get your reward. That's not as true in Warlords, or the rewards you get are worse than the RNG-riddled ones. Not to mention everything about WoD is built on operant conditioning as a method of player retention. I don't see that here. I don't feel compelled to log in four hours each day in FFXIV but I do, at times, still WANT to. I think that means something.

The only thing we could take from this video is that end game could use more horizontal progression and that's something I've been seeing people say since I started playing. And I agree, it could use it. More ways for us to customize our own builds (though a cookie cutter one will almost always soar, unless we went full on Elder Scrolls Online) would be nice, as would boss fights having less to do with perfect execution of a mechanical rotation and more to do with group ability to react to unpredictable attack patterns. (I don't want this game to be WoW but WoW's best feature is and always has been its raids). ESO's exploration would be cool, too, for maps where we cannot fly.

[Omskahn]

snip

Would you say that you're satisfied with the current amount of endgame content at this point then? That being Alex NM and savage plus Bismarck (which few ppl do more than once) and Ravana EX. Because I'm not, and I guess I made this thread to call out SE on how very tiny the end-game content actually is in relation to how long they want to string it out.

To single out Alex NM, it's content that you can experience all of in less than 2 hours with a competent group. They've gated it in such a way that if you want to get the most out of it, you're going to have to keep running it over the next ~month and a half. The ratio of time it takes to do content, vs. time SE wants it to be relevant is too big, that's my problem

[Ayuhra]

Would you say that you're satisfied with the current amount of endgame content at this point then? That being Alex NM and savage plus Bismarck (which few ppl do more than once) and Ravana EX. Because I'm not, and I guess I made this thread to call out SE on how very tiny the end-game content actually is in relation to how long they want to string it out.

I just said at the end of my post that the game could have more horizontal progression, world exploration, and dynamic raiding. I am still having fun here, much more so than I was in WoW when I left WoW but that doesn't make me magically blind to its faults. I know the 24 man is coming out soon, that will add to our end game as will the expansion on the story. FFXIV seems to churn out new content regularly enough, in my limited experience (then again that's as someone coming from wow where content cycles are a year and a half not a few months).

The one thing that grinds my gears is I wish there were more ways to get Esoterics, and I wish we could replay story quests through Echo as an alternative to FATEs just to mix class leveling up a bit. Or...if Esos can't come from more places could we at least see the Expert pool expand? Maybe the two new dungeons will be Expert. As it is the Fractal Continuum and Neverreap are burned into my retinas.

edit: Actually, yeah, I guess I am saying I'm "satisfied" with the endgame. It's released in bursts so people don't just burn through it all and then cry boredom a week later. When I find myself getting bored it's nice to know there will be future content patches.. There are things I'd do differently if I were the lead developer but I'm not and I think SE is doing a good job for the most part.

The only thing agitating me is, as I said, the Expert pool being only two dungeons.

[Ayuhra]

If you mean "addictive" in that you play because you WANT to, not because some sly trick of human psychology compels you into it then I agree. Every game is "addictive" in that fashion. Every game wants you to keep playing and wants to engage you. The good ones do this through deep, meaningful design not conditioning.

I'll use WoW again since it's fresh on my mind: I'd log in every day hoping today I'd get useful treasure from my garrison and today I'd get my loot drop and today I'd finish those goggles...then I realized I wasn't having fun. The game compelled me to keep playing but when I thought about it I realized I didn't really WANT to keep playing.

Compare to, say, SE's own title THIEF (A lesser game than its predecessors but stay with me here): I played that game for hours because I wanted to search around every corner, get into every room, hear every conversation. The game wasn't using weird tricks to make me do these things, I did it because I wanted to and I enjoyed every minute.

Compelling and engaging aren't quite the same thing, I think.