EC explains how the current progression system is flawed

[Stanelis]

Reaching the point of why I'm saying all this now. I am not saying SE has to come up with so much content that they wouldn't have to gate at all, that's impossible.

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.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

In the burning crusade expansion of wow the content was gated by the completion of each tier of content.

In older WoW expansions it also took significantly longer to level and gear up, you weren't getting epic gear in LFR. It's pretty safe to say older MMOs, including WoW, did a much better job of retaining subs then ALL of the modern MMOs. Only 2 of the Modern MMOs have yet to go free 2 play.

I do think you have some valid points though.

[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.

[Omskahn]

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

Which is the crux of the problem. Apparently lots of people dont care though and are quite content, going so far as to say neverreap and a raid that is little more name and a picture in the current game count as end-game.

You're doing your self a disservice by using WoW as an example though, people who play this game lose their minds at the mere mention of it, regardless of the way in which it's used.

[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?

[Omskahn]

snip

But why are you focusing on the idea of WoW talent trees? That was just an example that they used to show how customization of your character can add longevity to a game, as a means to keep players playing due to the added strategic element.

The WoW talent trees are NOT the focus of the video, and their base argument holds up if you used another game with customizable character builds instead. Or if you didn't use the example at all.

And i'm guessing you didn't get this, so I'm reiterating. The are saying that talent trees are better than simply giving you abilities every level - in the context of adding a degree of strategy that allows players to occupy themselves playing around with to extend the life of gameplay. Not that Wow is da best, jrpgs suck

[Stanelis]

You're doing your self a disservice by using WoW as an example though, people who play this game lose their minds at the mere mention of it, regardless of the way in which it's used.

I do play wow and I was amongst the players who cleared sunwell before the nerfs (I also used to play FFXI and FFXIV).

What wasn't right at the beginning of TBC is that the whole expansion has been designed assuming each players would start playing from day one. Meaning it was very hard to catch up to the bandwagon if you were lagging behind. But don't forget that during TBC the player base jumped from a 5 millions active subscribers to 8 millions (I can't imagine this happening in a bad game). I know that it is hard to imagine with how scarce the content has become in new mmorpg, but the sheer amount of content of TBC was overwhelming.

In older WoW expansions it also took significantly longer to level and gear up, you weren't getting epic gear in LFR.

It took like 3 weeks only playing on the evening (Im' pretty sure gearing up one job via Alexander normal takes longer). What was time consuming at the beginning of TBC was unlocking the heroic dungeons (as you had to grind reputation, but if you quested your way to level 70 that wasn't an issue).

Also back in the day the blue gear you were getting from heroic dungeons were better than the epic gear from karazhan (it was patched a couple month later).

[Miscreant]

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

Can ceruleum melt mythril beams?

[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.

[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."