Why vertical progression is poorly implemented

[Belhi]

/snip

I wont quote the whole post cause otherwise this post will get kind of long. I did not mean to anger or upset you and I'm not going to block you cause I think it is important for different players viewpoints to be discussed to provide good feedback to the developers. I have merely being trying to be civil and polite and honest with my feelings on what I want out of the game.

I will respond with a few points:

First, I have not been trying to put words into your mouth. I have simply been responding as I have interpreted your posts and to try and clarify my own. Case in point is the Honeymoon period point. When you first posted and what I responded to was this:

I remember when 2.0 first launched, this community was rabid in their support and defense of the game. If you even so much as accidentally typed FFXI as a typo, forgetting the V - nevermind deliberately referencing it in some way - you were ripped to shreds. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was around and remembers this. Now? People openly make comparisons to and draw suggestions from FFXI, and not only are they not ripped to shreds, but more people are beginning to agree with them - if for no other reason than to get some new, fresh ideas into this game.

I interpreted that as you meant that at 2.0, when ARR was launched, the community had rabid support. Not that they had had rabid support for a full year. My point was there is always a gradual shift in opinion in every game I played as it ages and players expectations and desires shift.

Secondly, I think we can agree that there is a distinct difference in our preference in what we want out of a character customisation system. The system you seem to talk about would quite likely kill my interest in the game. That's normal. People have different desires and interests and enjoy different games. I don't like games with complicated build systems and I wouldn't want to see FF14 become that.

That said I'm not entirely opposed to some limited customisation. However if it got much more than the current WoW style skill trees I would very quickly become unhappy with it unless by some miracle they created a system with great balance across all possible builds.

Thirdly, while I don't work in software and game design my circle of friends includes quite a coder, a 3d artist, 2 project managers that work in IT and a guy who specialises in QA. While this hasn't made me an expert, listening to them complain about work over beers has given me some insight into how complicated even simple change requests in software can lead to huge and complicated issues.

Further your taking a general statement I said and making it sound like I used it to counter a specific thing you said. I would add to that that something being physically possible to do doesn't necessarily make it feasible to do. Regardless my original point is still very true and valid.

Fourth, I will reference a couple of points from your original post:

I'm finding that to be a very, very common sentiment among people playing this... and that's not a good thing. I'm in that same boat, as are several of my friends.

Well, there's been many, many posts and discussions - here, and elsewhere, on forums, blogs, vlogs, etc - of people asking and openly "hoping" that SE would do something more interesting for the new Relic weapons. People saying "please don't just throw another long, boring grind at us. Give us interesting storylines, epic, unique fights, a fun quest chain, even if it's really difficult".

People ask for more character customization, Yoshi-P says "nope".

And what happened to them listening to the players, something they vowed to do back when they were trying to get our trust back? I guess that doesn't matter to them anymore, because they seem to not only be listening less and less, but saying "No" more and more, whether directly, or through their actions.

Now you might not have intended to give the impression that you were claiming that the majority of people felt the same as you but the way you wrote your post gave me that impression. That's when I post I usually talk about what I want, not what people want.

Fifth, I'm perfectly happy for Yoshi P to be held to what he said, though with the exception that I'm incline to overlook thing he said if I find the reasoning for those things or for changes to them to make sense. Feel free to give examples. All I did was point out he literally talked about the very issue in the last interview he did a couple of weeks ago. You can even find the translation on reddit if you go looking for it.

Finally, Perhaps I should have linked the whole thing rather than that specific part. I was just trying to avoid bloating the post unnecessarily. I did read the whole post and fundamentally even with the full post my response would be the same. I don't like that in games I play. I'm being honest. It is that kind of game design that was a big factor in me not playing GW2 anymore. It would have been dishonest of me to say different.

Simply put I disagree with things you seem to want. I haven't called you names or been rude to you and I have explained why I feel the way I do. I think that is pretty sane and civil.