Why vertical progression is poorly implemented

[Dzian]

Considering the "get currency, get loot every week" model has been pretty well established since 2005 or so (I can't remember when WoW first added it) I can't see them making major changes in this regard. The model's proven fairly successful at maintaining player subscriptions (even if it kind of results in a "revolving door" model).

But it seems no matter where you look recently you see more and more comments along the lines of this

The new dungeons that come out are already outdated when they do, and the tome collecting quickly feels like a chore rather than something fun to do (not a lot of fun to cheer having gotten 30 more of some intangible thing when you need hundreds per week and then months of doing it).

And they’re generally not wrong either, new dungeons even the “experts” are dead on arrival pretty much, there’s pretty much no reason to even enter them except maybe for your daily bonus. And it’s a lot more wide spread than dungeons, the raids / trials seem to be following suit.

I recall people saying they were tired of the tomestone grind a few iterations ago now. It's been brought up many times that repeating the same tomestone process over and over again was getting old and boring. It's been requested many times to please introduce something new, do away with the tomestones, find a new, more interesting system. SE's response? Well, a new tomestone is reportedly being introduced in 3.2.

Which comes back to my earlier suggestion. Tomestones should be a back up option nothing more. If they release new experts in 3.2 then they should drop better and more relevant gear, the new 3.2 tomestones should be a back up. So if people have ran those new pieces of content a hundred times and still not seen that last item they need drop there’s at least the knowledge they will get it eventually no matter how evil rng is. Again this is what people wanted from “tokens” even before beta.

Vertical progression....ok but i wish we weren't so much limited everywhere by week etc

Again an issue as it
A: disuedes players from participating in content. And
B: creates situations like many people encounterted in WoD, where players abandon the duty if there chosen item doesn’t drop from the first boss, no point in even doing the rest of the run… it’s a pretty bad design.

[Zumi]

This part isn't necessarily 100% true. The only time I have seen the demand for "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was towards the end of the life cycle for Voidwatch and when people where shouting for farming groups in Seekers zones. This demand did not come in any other era of the game when I played (I stopped playing within the first few months of Seekers).

The "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was a way to filter out the hundreds of Damage Dealers out there. The "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was not applied to Support Jobs or Healers. It was hard enough to find a Bard or Corsair let alone one with a Relic, Mythic, or Empyrean. Only those career Bards had a relic horn and/or the empyrean harp. Half of the bards and healers in FFXI during end of the Voidwatch era were dual boxed by some Damage Dealer player since they couldn't find a bard or healer within their play time.

It got worse when Delve came out because people started requiring bards to have the empy harp that did 3-4 songs, to get through the zone fast to do all 5 nms and the boss. There was like maybe 4-5 bards per server that had the harp some people did get it for their mules. So they were always getting tells because if they had no empy bard they didn't even want to go cause it meant not being able to do the zone due to having less buffs.

[Preypacer]

You talked about the support they had at 2.0. That is called a honeymoon period. It is right after launch when everything is new and shiny. It happens with almost every new game I've played. Viewpoints naturally change as a game matures and people start to question aspects of the game that don't necessarily meet their personal expectations. That has also happened in every game Ive played.

Okay, Belhi... Look.

If you're genuinely interested in having a sane, civil conversation with me, then I'm going to have to ask you to please stop putting words in my mouth, or ignoring what I very clearly and deliberately have explained to you.

If you can't, or are unwilling to do that, then please block me, and never respond to another of my posts again, because I'd have no interest in interacting with you further.

I very clearly described a time-frame in my post of 1-2 years (even longer if we want to include everything up to 3.1, and even on into 3.2, based on what we know), with the launch of 2.0 being the very beginning point, but not the sole focus of my observation (hence why I said 1-2 years and not just "the first few months after launch"). 1 year is no longer a "honeymoon period", much less 2+ years. Regardless, nothing I said has anything to do with a "honeymoon period". It has to do with how the level of "fanaticism" and the general vibe around this game has degraded over the course of 1-2 years, due to the way SE has been repeating and regurgitating the same handful of systems over and over, from patch to patch, and even into its first expansion.

More variety can be good. I certainly agree FF14 could benefit from more. However I would make two points.

First is that not everything people remember from FF11 will integrate well into FF14 systems. Its not the same engine and its not the same game. Alternately a lot of those ideas would likely take a lot of time and effort to implement anyway so if this is the case and they can do it you are very unlikely to see anything till 4.0 at the earliest. Anything more is probably being unrealistic on the amount of work such implementations would take.

This is why I said "adapt them to FFXIV", and clearly didn't say "implement them wholesale, as-is, into FFXIV".

Again, you're ignoring what I am saying, and responding to what I'm not.

When I play a class I want it to work. I don't want to have to look up correct build or screw around trying to find ones that work. I want to pick something and play content with it and know that I haven't made any bad choices. I hate build experimenting. I hate trying to have to figure out what works well. I don't like playing dud, if novel, builds.

Okay, so you prefer to have things ready-made. Fine.

This happens in a lot of MMOs I've played with Horizontal progression.

It happens a lot in MMOs with vertical progression as well.

And if I need to look up websites to see what is works then in my view the game is flawed.

I completely disagree with this, as experimenting and finding a build that is tailored to how I enjoy playing is far more enjoyable than simply following someone else's build, or having it spelled out for me... but again, to each their own.

When you're looking up websites to "see what works", what you're finding is "what's worked for other people". And what works for other people may not necessarily work for you. Further whatever the current "build du-jour" is now could very well change again in a month down the road, at which point people either decide "well I enjoy this build, so I'll keep going with this". Or, they decide "well shoot, now that's considered the best build, I guess now I have to change over to that". That's players imposing artificial restrictions on themselves.

Every time a new viable build is discovered, it's a clear demonstration that the game allows for a variety of setups that work well across various content. It's the players who then say "No, there's no room for multiple options, no matter how valid they'd previously proven to be. There can be only one, it must be the best, and everyone must use it". A build that's worked well for many months doesn't suddenly become crap because someone found another one that works a little better. Not to mention that, over time, many builds prove to be situational at best, and not "one size fits all".

This is actually in the same vein of what I was getting at in the post you quote-mined that paragraph from. I was mocking the idea of people feeling like they had to keep changing up their entire playstyle to fit some fluid group-think "standard" of "how you're supposed to play", rather than just sticking with a build they actually enjoyed playing, and got the job done.

That's not min/maxing. There is a difference in playing a class how it is designed to be played and screwing around with builds trying to get something that works. Horizontal progression almost always ends up with builds that are bad or wrong. If they can exist in a game I have issue with it. That for me is poor design.

The thing is, "bad or wrong" can be highly subjective. Someone can have a build that is 100% functional for that person and their playstyle. I'll find it to be "bad" for me, though, because it's not built around how I enjoy playing. And the reverse could be true as well.

Again, though, understanding you prefer those details to be pre-determined, I could see how having choices might be construed as a bad thing.

I specifically refer to the fact that most players have little to know understanding of what is possible with game design or what potential issues can hamper it. That's not necessarily an issue with imagination. It can be an issue with engine limitations or available resources.

Do you know what is possible with game design, or what they can or can't accomplish within engine limitations or available resources? Are you qualified to provide a well-supported case for things that "can't be done", rather than simply "aren't being done"?

If you can't, and aren't privy to such info, then I don't see the point in making that argument in the first place. You haven't the knowledge to prove it's so, and I haven't the knowledge to say otherwise. So why even bring it up?

On the other hand, I *can* (from memory, and with enough Googling) point to examples of where Yoshida has clearly stated in the past that things players are asking for are possible, but he doesn't want to do them that way, because he envisions the game being played a very specific way. He's given such explanations for things going back to even before ARR's Alpha.

You're grasping at unknowns. I'm referring to things that have actually been said.

Sure and their views are very valid. However rarely do people think their issues and views are in the minority and frankly the way you worded your original comments that I quoted seem to suggest you believed you were in the majority. Truth is though there is no way anyone can really do more than say what they personally feel. Speaking on behalf of community sentiment without any solid quantitive proof that your view is a match for it is flawed.

No. You're doing it again.

I wrote exactly what I meant, and I meant exactly what I wrote. At no point did I say "most people". The only place my "wording" seems to suggest otherwise is in your head, because you can't seem to not put words in my mouth.

Knock it off.

Stop putting words in my mouth.I'm not talking for him. Im am pretty much repeating the gist of what he said in an interview only a few weeks back. In fact, the 'I would add an new Job over an alternative way of playing the same Job' is almost a direct quote. As he said, they require about the same amount of resources to implement and balance.

I wasn't putting words in your mouth. You made some unsubstantiated remarks about things you couldn't know, and I was pointing out that fact. If you were referencing something he'd actually said, that detail would have been helpful at the time you originally said it.

That said, it's cute how when you convey something Yoshi's said, it's relevant. Yet, when I convey something Yoshi, and many others in the FFXIV community, have said... none of that matters.

How very convenient for you.

I quoted the most relevant part for my response. Are you saying that the rest of the post had context that changed the essence of what you said? If I quoted the whole thing my response would pretty much be the same.

No, you quote-mined the part that was easiest to take out of context, and most convenient to your narrative.

Yes, if you were reading the *entire* post your quote was taken from, and doing so in good-faith, the context of it would have changed the "essence" of what I said. That's how context works, when you're not deliberately ignoring or twisting it around for your own ends.

And if you're being honest in saying that even reading it in its full context wouldn't change your answer, then you have just proven - in your own words - exactly what I questioned at the beginning of this response... that you are not interested in having a sane, civil discussion.

So, I will ask you, again, to block me and never respond to any of my posts in the future. I have no tolerance for dishonest people.

[Gunspec]

"I want a completely different game" is what I'm basically hearing echoing around. Well, you've got $15 a month, right? Do you need me to drive you to the store to pick out a new game?

While there are ways in which an ongoing game like FFXIV can change and develop over the years, turning progression into a flat line with no upgrades yet endless side-grades isn't going to magically change anything. It isn't going to make content like Crystal Tower relevant for over 2 years, it isn't going to make dungeons drastically more appealing (why would a dungeon ever have gear as strong as raid? Easy rewards will always be inferior, and best for lightly gearing secondary classes), and it isn't going to improve the community unless you mean by making all content pointless to run more than once, and forcing people to find their own groups for nearly all of this unengaging content.

Removing tomes wouldn't improve the game, it would only reduce my "things to do" each week and would utterly destroy the purpose of running dungeons. Making tome gear a "back up" to dungeon gear would essentially mean that a person like me would be fully geared after a dozen dungeon runs or less. The dungeons would become irrelevant in a week, and seeing as I don't raid, it would mean that I could stop playing for 6 months and still be up to date for the next patch.

Horizontal progression is essentially the method 90% of games use when they aren't adding much new content anymore. Endless sidegrades with minimal upgrades, designed to cater to those who endlessly tweak their characters, all an attempt to keep a game alive which the developers no longer are planning significant content for. FFXI is the only exception that comes to mind for me, and if the number of "former FFXI players" I've met in the last decade is any indication, while it was a wonderful world experience, it wasn't the best system for retaining player interest.

[Xtrasweettea]

It got worse when Delve came out because people started requiring bards to have the empy harp that did 3-4 songs, to get through the zone fast to do all 5 nms and the boss. There was like maybe 4-5 bards per server that had the harp some people did get it for their mules. So they were always getting tells because if they had no empy bard they didn't even want to go cause it meant not being able to do the zone due to having less buffs.

On Laskshmi, the "BRD Empy Harp only" limitation lasted for a few days to my knowledge when people were attempting to run Delve beyond farming. We had a shortage of BRDs on the server compared to demand. I knew of two Empy Harp owners. PUG runs were still done, though.

The LS I was in came over the lack of Harp by Bard Swapping (which should been done anyway, regardless of Harp or not) when we did Delve. We also did COR swapping on top of that.

[CyrilLucifer]

and if the number of "former FFXI players" I've met in the last decade is any indication, while it was a wonderful world experience, it wasn't the best system for retaining player interest.

That's a horrible, horrible, absolutely abysmal reasoning.

FFXI is more than 12 years old. Do you honestly expect people to play the same game, with the same amount of love and passion, every day for 12 years?

Of course they are former players. I have absolutely absurd amounts of time devoted to XI and even I get bored of it, no matter how much I love my friends there and how long we've been together (I've had friends from XI for more than 10 years that I still talk to).

In fact, you've basically proven the opposite point: XI is still P2P and still retains a decent number of subscribers after so long. If anything, that shows that whatever it is doing, it's doing it right. I don't see modern XIV lasting even half as long as XI in its current state. That being said, a pure jump to horizontal is unrealistic, hence why I propose at least starting with something as simple as "more options" and "more variable stats." You know, like every other MMO in existence.

[Andrea]

That's a horrible, horrible, absolutely abysmal reasoning.

I agree fully with what you said, Honestly speaking if this games lifespan is anywhere near 11s I'd count that as a success but as you said I honestly can't see that happening.

No matter if people want to admit it or not 11 was highly successful and the fact that its still going speaks for itself.

[Gunspec]

That's a horrible, horrible, absolutely abysmal reasoning.

FFXI is more than 12 years old. Do you honestly expect people to play the same game, with the same amount of love and passion, every day for 12 years?

I said "of "former FFXI players" I've met in the last decade" as in I met people ten years ago who had already stopped playing. Throughout the last 10 years, I've probably met two or three dozen "former" players who all started and stopped at different points in the game's life cycle, while in that same decade I never met an active subscriber. Maybe its just the circles of people I meet, but something is clearly a bit strange there.

No matter if people want to admit it or not 11 was highly successful and the fact that its still going speaks for itself.

Runescape is still going after 15 years. It has to do entirely with the strange little communities that develop around a game, and I honestly can't say that any single factor in an online game is responsible for creating or destroying such a community.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

About the only game I've played that's managed to make horizontal progression somewhat fun is Monster Hunter, and that's because all the enhancements are upgrades to your own play style rather than changing an integral part of what you're using. Materia based horizontal progression once again, however, leads into the problem of illusion of choice, as there will still be one clear winner when it comes to DPS, to the point that they might as well get rid of the option and make it a baked in part of the job. More interesting stats would be great, but having something that changes the very core of a class just sounds like a whole lot of bad decisions waiting to happen.

[Andrea]

Runescape is still going after 15 years. It has to do entirely with the strange little communities that develop around a game, and I honestly can't say that any single factor in an online game is responsible for creating or destroying such a community.

Runescape in its own way was also successful. Obviously to a smaller scale than 11.