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.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Did you like the Amta grind before the nerfs? It was very worth the reward of getting a weapon that was basically glamour, more so if RNG didn't bless you.

[Velhart]

I would just like to point out something about multiple gear sets for a job. With how many don't even attempt to follow a BiS formula in the game currently, do you think they will get multiple sets for multiple occasions, especially when there is so many jobs in the game? RIP inventory space.

It doesn't make sense for this game. It just makes people not want to take on more jobs than one, which kind of defeats the purpose of the armory system. This was even a thing in FFXI. It wasn't simply a ton of grind that made having multiple jobs hard, it was inventory space that held a lot back.

[Lilith_Merquise]

Did you like the Amta grind before the nerfs? It was very worth the reward of getting a weapon that was basically glamour, more so if RNG didn't bless you.

TBH I like the Atma weapon grind, what it does for the community and game as a whole is a great thing. My only gripe is:

1. They should of made it so the weekly Crystal Tower quest reward was 1 of the 4 Relic Items.
2. Diadem Spoils should be tradable for Relic Items (like 50 spoils to 1 Relic Item) being that it is dramatically unpopulated due to relic grinds.
3. If you clear certain branches of the relic or complete a relic weapon it should discount or void requirements for other relic weapons. The relic currently is great for people with 1 class, but is so long that for those with multiple classes are discouraged from making more then 1-2 relics. Just would be nice if I could do multiple for my other 60s.
4. Oh and make it so relic items can drop out of Coils, either on the final bosses of each Binding, Second, Final Coil, out of chests, or make a weekly quest where completing each 1-4 of Binding, Second, Final Coil gives you a Relic Item for each branch (so 3 Items max if you did all 3).


Other then that, I love the system, it gives adequate dedication and work for a decent reward (even though my Gun is hideous and is a swiss army knife with a mug, ca can opener and a pry bar attached to it with disgusting Skill Speed over Crit.... but I'm not bitter at all about that...)

[Ibi]

Do we really want to live in an immediate gratification society where if you run it enough times the game just gives it to you? That seems rather lazy to me.

I think the practice of having to "run it enough times" is pretty much the antithesis of "immediate gratification".

Personally, I think it's completely reasonable that of the amount of effort and time that a person invests into a particular activity should have an influence on the results, beyond simply providing more opportunities to roll the dice and hope the result is in their favor.

I'm not sure it's entirely relevant to this discussion though, since token or currency systems that provide rewards after completing content a requisite number of times can be present in both horizontal and vertical progression systems. Likewise they can be absent from both.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

How exactly did Atma help the game? If people weren't complaining about the grind itself, it turned Fates from a mindless zerg to an even more mindless zerg that newbie players may get pushed out of.

[Starbirth]

You were never required to do the atma grind. You could have just done primals for weapons or gotten your 110 through raids.

[Lilith_Merquise]

How exactly did Atma help the game? If people weren't complaining about the grind itself, it turned Fates from a mindless zerg to an even more mindless zerg that newbie players may get pushed out of.

so you're saying that people actually DOING HW Fates is a bad thing? Because did you see the zones before and after Atma Grinds? On top of that there are fates that are gated behind doing other fates in a chain or just doing fates at all in that zone to spawn them? Also the people that wanted to que up for a dungeon but had to choose that or put your chocobo out to heal yourself because you were the only one out there doing fates and if you couldn't keep yourself alive it was one or the other (DPS ques I'm looking at you).

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.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Don't dodge the question, Starbirth.

And Lilith, noticed how I said Atma and not Animus. I think the only reason people say Amta pre nerf was a good thing was because it helped them out grinding Fates if they weren't doing the Atma grinds themselves and this was before the devs made EXP grinding easier as 3.0 was coming close to launch. Fates could have been something more, more variety in them would have been nice. Heck, the whole reason a lot of people were up in arms over the relics then and now was rehashing old content time and time again. That can only keep people reeled in for so long until they just say screw it and wait till the relic steps get nerfed before doing them again. That in the long term won't help anyone.

[Taei]

Agree, a lot of people that I've known since 1.0 and 2.0 are quitting now. The game is getting boring. There is nothing to do. And patches are severely lacking in content. I may quit myself soon.