State of the Game: The Problem with the Current Progression System

[Delmontyb]

These are great ideas, but most of them do not address the desires of people who are seeking single-character progression.

I'm one such player. I want long-term goals that offer tangible in-game benefits. And by long-term, I mean years, not months. I want something that helps me feel invested in my character, something that helps me feel like another person at level 70 with the same gear might not be an exact carbon copy of me. There are some elements of this in the game right now; one great example is Desynthesis levels for crafters. Those require significant effort to accrue (naturally anyway; obviously people can spend huge sums of Gil to do it faster). They offer tangible benefits, but nothing game-breaking. Great. Another lesser example is the faster Mount speed items from Hunts; getting all of them (particularly for ARR areas) required a good bit of time spent.

The problem is that there aren't enough elements like this. Virtually all of the grinds are centered around Glamours or rapidly-invalidated gear, which for me at least, does not deliver the same satisfaction as character growth. We need more variety.

This is a worthwhile use of development time. It'll soothe the significant percentage of players who have a lot of time available, but nothing to do with it. Done properly, it will also revitalize leveling queues, which right now suffer from the fact that nobody will queue for them at level 70 unless they're looking to help out a friend or level an secondary job. My boyfriend mains WHM, and he'd happily jump in on the Leveling Roulette as a Healer - a role often in need. But guess what? It's useless to him - utterly useless.

I'd also like to point out that people prioritize different things, and it'd be nice if we could be better at empathizing. I, for instance, could not give two figs about a new race. I wouldn't switch to it, because I like my current character. But I recognize that for many others, a new race is exciting - so SE developing one is, I think, a good idea for the community as a whole. I also despise Hildebrand and everything he stands for, but I know that plenty of others get a kick out of his quest lines, so why not keep it up? It would be nice to receive the same courtesy in return.

Thanks, Kirsten, this is perfectly said and summarized.

[Fiorinol]

I'll post exactly what I stated in the video comments, with some addemups;

Progression feels really boring in this game. The content also feels boring. Maybe I'm just used to playing MOBAs; most of the non-savage content I find boring. I've done my weeklies in Party Finder today, it took me 7 hours to clear o11s in Duty Complete parties so I could get a page and a chance to get gear. This is not fun. It's like having a static (finding one being its own time sink) and playing this game on a schedule is mandatory if I want to play the "serious" content. That's just how bad Party Finder is on my data center.

None of the other content really makes use of the gear. Every other piece of content is either irrelevant, becomes irrelevant quickly, or is, for lack of a better word, uninteresting. Let's look at Normal Raid; you get 380 equipment, which you can get through crafting through a slow acquisition system that often requires you to re-run the same normal raid to get the trading piece you want. Meanwhile, you can get tomes and get the 390 gear of your choice. The 380 raid gear is non-upgradable, why would you even bother with it when you can eventually just get the 390?

The fastest way to get tomes is to run the same 2 dungeons 5 days a week. Every other way is significantly slower. These two dungeons are exactly the same as every other dungeon in the game; 2-3 groups of mobs, convenient obstacle, 2-3 groups of mobs, boss that does 2-3 mechanics, that frankly, does not offer that much of a challenge.

On odd patches, you get to play every 24-man raid in the expansion to get coins so you can upgrade your gear to the savage equivalent. 24-man raids are a snore fest where you just fight a giant dummy that does 2-3 mechanics, conveniently places down 3 adds, because, conveniently, there are 3 alliances, and you need to drag them apart so each alliance can kill one without them buffing each other. In these 24-man raids, it's not uncommon for most of the raid to do extremely poor DPS, making the raid take forever to complete. The 24-man raid also drops catch-up gear that is below the level of the upgraded tome gear, but doesn't come at the weird caveat of needing to get multiple pieces to get one piece of gear.

The only other sort of progression you have is savage. Which puts you in a weird situation, as you're left with little to do on odd patches as your gear is already maxed out.

I think the problems with the progression systems go hand in hand with the content. This game seems neither interested in providing lasting midcore content that isn't savage raiding content, or providing interesting lasting progression systems. As Bourne_Endeavor said, there's just not enough to do. It's also very difficult to keep free companies alive when everyone who doesn't own a house just unsubs for months, because there's nothing keeping their interest. That's not to mention the lack of long-term goals as Kirsten mentioned; almost all of the longer objectives are based around gear that's invalidated within a patch or two (And also honestly isn't used for much other than meeting requirements), or glamour.

The only content that retained my interest for a while was Heaven on High to 100. But we only get that once an expansion, and I'm done with it after a week.

[Nariel]

snip

Well, actualy roulette offer tomestone and as a lv70 bard I quite like receving tomestone when I need them for various reason like gear my main or an alt job, buy easy selling craft component or even trade them for seal to restock my fast burning stock of venture/vanity stone.

As already stated, I don't see the point of meaningless leveling and I fail to see how it is supposed to be appealing to the point of completly changing the face of end-game.

Hildibrand is by far the worst secondary quest-chain but I expect better one actualy, Eureka was a good idea at start but very badly done. A whole new land to explore, a mystery to resolve that what I call secondary quest and I'd rather get a chain quest that push me to explore every old area without getting my hand held by the game for a engaging lore/story discovery with an engaging lv70 experience than another round of leveling for boring perks.

[Delmontyb]

Eureka was a good idea at start but very badly done. A whole new land to explore, a mystery to resolve that what I call secondary quest and I'd rather get a chain quest that push me to explore every old area without getting my hand held by the game for a engaging lore/story discovery with an engaging lv70 experience than another round of leveling for boring perks.

Off topic a bit on this thread, but yes. I feel that Eureka would be fun content (for me personally) if it had 1. A Party Level Sync Feature. and 2. Wasn't instanced content. I get why it's instanced, because it helps insure there are people in the zone, but hopefully this is addressed by them working the game to support this natually for all zones, and could then split this out from it's instance. But that's just me.

Back on topic.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on why you don't think Horizonatal progression wouldn't add anything to this game, but to that we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

[Euphe]

I'm on board with all of the OP's suggestions except making gear upgradable. That's the one idea that I feel would do more harm than good for players. Simply look at WoW's artifact system in the past. If there was a way to do this that wouldn't leave out players who have less play time than I'd be all for it.

I think the merit system is an excellent idea. And while some may insist that getting free stuff is just trash upon trash, I do not see it in the same light. You can sell it or use it in crafting, if it's a crafting ingredient.

Maybe tying the merit idea in with an achievement system would be the way to go. Provided it has decent rewards.

Most ideas, not necessarily the OP's, will inevitably exclude some from being able to enjoy the full extent of the game. Unless those rewards are cosmetics, minions, mounts, music rolls, freeby teleports, or freeby foods. This is where games like Warframe have the right idea imo. Their end game isn't really anything more than a fashion show, yet it makes them a sizable income every month because of it.

It all comes down to providing an enjoyable experience without gating.

[Kirsten_Rev]

Well, actualy roulette offer tomestone and as a lv70 bard I quite like receving tomestone when I need them for various reason like gear my main or an alt job, buy easy selling craft component or even trade them for seal to restock my fast burning stock of venture/vanity stone.

As already stated, I don't see the point of meaningless leveling and I fail to see how it is supposed to be appealing to the point of completly changing the face of end-game.

The Roulette is another great example of where empathy is useful, here. I'm glad that the existing reward, focused on the lower tier of Tomestone, is attractive to you as a level 70. That's a good thing! But it's useful to realize that for others, it's not. My boyfriend really only values the top-tier Tomestone at any given point in time (and even for that, the value sharply declines after he's outfitted his main). I'm personally a mix, depending on what I'm doing; I'll occasionally value the lower tier (or Poetics!), but generally I don't. I'm sure there are plenty of other players falling into both camps.

The point I was trying to make is that the 'meaningless leveling' as you call it is not meaningless to everyone, just as Mendacity tomestones are not meaningless to everyone. Players value things differently. Right now, under XIV's current construction, SE has completely eliminated the value of XP at level 70. More broadly, they've eliminated character progression of any kind in virtually all respects (sans a few exceptions, such as Desynthesis levels). Once you hit cap, all rewards are reduced to collectibles (Glamours / mounts / minions) and gear. There is room for other options. You may not value those, and that's fine - but that doesn't mean it isn't worth spending time on for those of us who do.

[Vitallian]

The Roulette is another great example of where empathy is useful, here. I'm glad that the existing reward, focused on the lower tier of Tomestone, is attractive to you as a level 70. That's a good thing! But it's useful to realize that for others, it's not. My boyfriend really only values the top-tier Tomestone at any given point in time (and even for that, the value sharply declines after he's outfitted his main). I'm personally a mix, depending on what I'm doing; I'll occasionally value the lower tier (or Poetics!), but generally I don't. I'm sure there are plenty of other players falling into both camps.

The point I was trying to make is that the 'meaningless leveling' as you call it is not meaningless to everyone, just as Mendacity tomestones are not meaningless to everyone. Players value things differently. Right now, under XIV's current construction, SE has completely eliminated the value of XP at level 70. More broadly, they've eliminated character progression of any kind in virtually all respects (sans a few exceptions, such as Desynthesis levels). Once you hit cap, all rewards are reduced to collectibles (Glamours / mounts / minions) and gear. There is room for other options. You may not value those, and that's fine - but that doesn't mean it isn't worth spending time on for those of us who do.

YOur BF and myself currently have the same mindset. Once my Tank has all of his gear from either Tomestone or Omega I don't really care about any of them.

The bigger issue with how the game is going though in my opinion is that gear LITERALLY means jack. I can't stand going and throwing away literal 12 weeks worth of gear and time (give or take time) and then doing it all over. ESO while being a SHIT game actually stops that and you keep your gear either forever or unless you change builds or something. Progression can still be a thing I just don't know how to mess with that.

But I do know that playing all the other mmos i've dabbled in 98-2018, that something has to change.