Why vertical progression is poorly implemented

[Lilith_Merquise]

It's this type of thinking that has dulled MMOs.

Yep, you shouldn't need a pat on the butt for every little thing you do in the game. Because then the value of the action and the reward become meaningless. I'm not saying you should spend a year on content and get nothing for it, but a little RNG to make people want to group together and do things rather then burning through content in a day and then having nothing to do is a real shame. Sure leave the "Tome Treadmill" items in the game for players that feel every minute of their game time should generate them 10k gil.

But why not give items for the more mid-core hardcore that are RNG, harder to get, but better stats/ilvl... I don't understand why those that want to put no time into this gam with out reward, should have access to the players that want to be able to put more time into this game but have no content to do so.

[Ibi]

I'm not saying you should spend a year on content and get nothing for it, but a little RNG to make people want to group together and do things rather then burning through content in a day and then having nothing to do is a real shame.

What the maximum amount of time that someone should be able to spend on a particular piece of content and get nothing for it?

A week? Two weeks? A month? Six months?

The problem with relying on RNG as your only method of reward is that no matter how long you think the acceptable time frame is, the very nature of RNG ensures that you're always going to end up with someone exceeding that threshold.

No one's suggesting that every time someone enters a piece of content they should walk away with one of the available rewards. The intent is that if someone persists with that piece of content for long enough (with long enough admittedly going to be a judgement that varies from person to person), you're guaranteed to at least have something to show for your efforts.

Saying that "Atma Grinds" were bad for the game couldn't be further from the truth IMO, it put people in an unpopulated places, and honestly made people discover things that thy wouldn't otherwise know about the zones because nobody did them.

Relevant to the discussion of RNG (and I know it's not necessarily relevant to the point Lilith was making, but it's a good example), what's the benefit to the game as a whole to have those people whose luck is incredibly good coming in, getting all their drops in three FATEs, and moving on?

If the only answer is "To balance out the people who still don't have them after three hundred FATEs", that suggests that it's not a particularly good design.