Trends in content types and faux difficulty

[Lux_Rayna]

"Some other way, or whatever." It is not helpful to the game developers for us to tell them HOW to fix things in the game, only THAT it needs fixing. So I'm not telling them what solution to use, they are the game developers, we are the consumers. It is our job to enjoy the game; their's to ensure we do.

Well they can only ensure enjoyment to a degree, since people have different needs when it comes to enjoyment. For instance, there are those that love spamming content, and there are those that absolutely hate it. SE is taking steps to appeal to both crowds of pplz so I think everything will be fine. Right now the anti-spammers are more vocal because they spammed something when no one forced them to spam it. Just because content is spammable doesn't mean it has to be spammed. At some point players need to take personal responsibility for their enjoyment of the game. Too many players lack self-control and common sense in such gross amounts that they blame the developers for their current frustrations/burn out/etc. The game does a rather good job of giving you plenty of options and avenues in regards to gear, due to all of the side-grades, so there's no living reason to spam anything when you don't want to....outside of personal ones. And let me tell, devs can't fix personal problems. The reason for burnout has nothing to do with devs, it has everything to do with players. Devs can't fix that.

[TerahValeth]

The game does a rather good job of giving you plenty of options and avenues in regards to gear, due to all of the side-grades, so there's no living reason to spam anything when you don't want to....

Plenty of options that ALL focus on luck (so no variety there). The burnout doesn't necessarily come from hitting Vale hours a day, it's when you vary your activities and realize they are all the same. It's the same luck>skill everywhere I look. There are really no options for those that don't want spamable content. I'm glad you are happy w/ the way the game is, but where are the "options" for the rest of us?

Also, idk why you chimed in, but my reply was to clarify that I wasn't telling SE HOW to fix things, it had nothing to do w/ the subject of your response.

[Lux_Rayna]

Plenty of options that ALL focus on luck (so no variety there). The burnout doesn't necessarily come from hitting Vale hours a day, it's when you vary your activities and realize they are all the same. It's the same luck>skill everywhere I look. There are really no options for those that don't want spamable content. I'm glad you are happy w/ the way the game is, but where are the "options" for the rest of us?

Also, idk why you chimed in, but my reply was to clarify that I wasn't telling SE HOW to fix things, it had nothing to do w/ the subject of your response.

I chimed in because I felt like chiming in, I find it fun. You guys were having a discussion, it looked like fun, so here I am. And there are options actually, I can think of 2 that have absolutely nothing to do with luck at all: GC gear and Garuda weapons. Oh yeah there's also the new class gear-sets as well. Course the latter is only really awesome if you double meld it all, so there is a wee luck involved. Even if you just single meld it though, its still a viable piece of gear. Not the best, but still viable. That aside though, GC gear and Garuda weapons are some of the best out there with sanctions/set bonuses. Are there lots of options? No. But I'm sure you understand these sorts of things take time. They are slowly adding in gear/content variety, so the best remedy is a bit of patience.

Btw if you want my honest opinion, the whole thing is blown WAY out of proportion. Skill > all in this game at the end of the day, barring any significant discrepancies in gear. For now all you can do is work with whatever you can get that doesn't cause you pain and suffering, all the while waiting for better options.

[Hippo]

just read a post made by the OP some time age

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

This stuff needs to stay very rare, otherwise there's no accomplishment in obtaining it and everyone will have full darklight sets within a month. This keeps these dungeons relevant longer, so people will still be running these in later patches so they can get darklight gear.

I don't want stuff handed to me, I want to have to work for it.

[Velhart]

just read a post made by the OP some time age

I don't think he was fully aware of how god awful the drop rate in the dungeons are when he posted that.

The fact the gear is rare is a good thing, you shouldn't just see anyone wearing it. The complaint here is the conditions we go through, the months this content has been out and people sweat blood in these dungeons just to get nothing, luckily one piece. I know I have done this 400+ times and all I have to show for it is only a pair of gauntlets.

Yes, something should be rare, but not to the point that you do the dungeon 400+ times and get little to nothing for it. Its simply cruel and unfair. And I don't mean someone out lotted any of my gear either, I have never seen the Light DPS feet or body drop ever in those 400+ runs.

This is a completely unfair system that rewards to the lucky and I really hope it doesn't come to 2.0, because it will inevitably burn to the ground if people go under these conditions constantly. Yoshida said he wants gear outdated by a few month span. Well, how are we influenced to get gear in this game if we can't even get it because of their terrible RNG system? I want the best gear obtained through my experience and skill at the game, not by a lottery.

I may go into QQ mode, but at least the old developers rewarded you for your time. There was a pretty decent chance a chest in FNM rewarded you with an item to trade in for a nice piece of gear. The new team apparently are getting inspiration from Korean MMO's and saying to themselves "Ohh, players love grinding the same thing over and over at a consistent basis with almost no chance of reward!". While Tanaka had a lot of bad ideas and led a poorly programmed game, he did at least base rewards on effort.

New development team, you need to go back to the drawing board on your rewarding system.

EDIT: Here is how I would have done it:

This is all you had to do to make a good dungeon.

-Make it once a day.

-No timer

-Make conditions to get through the dungeon harder.

-No speed runs.

-Make it so bosses are friendly to all classes, not make ridiculous AoE conditions and then other jobs are left to the side. If speed runs and that didn't exist, I don't think stacking would be used as commonly. Make it so the well geared and experienced players are able to take them down, not Joe Blow wearing a bathing suit.

-Abolish the 5 chest system, have everything drop from Chimera/Mizer himself. Make it so 1 piece of Darklight is guaranteed. Can have it so there is a 10% chance that a body piece drops in place of a non-body Darklight piece.


If you do it this way, the game feels less repetitive and if the difficulty is high and fair enough, you won't just see anyone with Darklight on. Yet, we deal with what we have now, but just letting you know, it is a complete failure and all it has done is rile up your community. You told us you believe the drop rate is fair. Well my 2 months worth of dungeon crawling for almost nothing says otherwise.

[Tango]

Lockouts do provide increased difficulty, learning to take down a ground king in FFXI was very tricky for the smaller shells simply because you had little opportunity to practice. Being able to spam garuda 35+ times in less then 12 hours and get the world first kill is very impressive. I wonder how long it would take to kill Garuda if we had a 24hour lockout with a guaranteed single drop that is loot tradable per kill. If you want to really make the game more casual friendly on the highest lvl's its not helping to allow players to spam an instance 100+ times in a single day, a moderate lockout helps allow the players with less time a much higher proportionate chance at the drops they want.

Garuda / ifrit / AV / CC etc all are easy because of no lockouts and the ability to spam and memorize+optimize every single minute detail of each instance. Their was a need to spam new content when it was new in 1.18~ 1.21 because their was not enough to do. Now their is plenty to keep us all busy we need lockouts and higher drop rates.

[Kiara]

Garuda / ifrit / AV / CC etc all are easy because of no lockouts and the ability to spam and memorize+optimize every single minute detail of each instance. Their was a need to spam new content when it was new in 1.18~ 1.21 because their was not enough to do. Now their is plenty to keep us all busy we need lockouts and higher drop rates.

Good point Tango.

I think this is the first patch (1.21) where Yoshida-san and the team effectively "dragged out" content that couldn't be "finished" before the next patch hit (1.22):

* The majority of the player population do not have full sets of Darklight Gear (and still don't in 1.22), all thanks to the abysmal Random Number Generator / Low Drop Rate situation.

Dzemael was finished by most before the next patch hit. Then even Ifrit had many grinding (mindlessly) but getting most of the weapons (or the ones they care about) (although sadly, there are still many players who don't have the one weapon they really want yet). Moogle was the same way.

But now with Aurum Vale & Cutter's Cry, and Hamlet Defense's RNG, and Garuda (for the Non-Burn Players), as you said, many players now have lots of stuff to do.

But IMHO, it came with a price: The Random Number Generator method is just too punitive and not fun when it's about spamming the same content hundreds of times, over and over.

It's burning people out and I really hope they change this soon.

There are many ways to improve the system instead of using this outdated method.

Sadly, I think they want to keep it this low, so that this Time Sink will drag on and keep players STILL busy until 1.23 hits. But I think it may backfire.

[LuciBlack]

It seems we have two differant situations at hand.

Situation1: Low drop rate but spamable dungeon.
Situation2: High drop rate but cooldown.

Most of us know Situation 2 was the system in FFXI. A great game that was successful for many many years.

When looking at situation 1 you can see right away that the ability to pick up the game and grab a party for Endgame at anytime you want is more focused for Casual players. Which is what SE wanted with FFXIV.

When looking at Situation 2 you see that it would have to be more of a planned scheduled event that has to take presence over RL if you want to atend the event. Not for the Casual players.

It looks like Situation 1 is what FFXIV is going to be...

The only thing you can hope for is that SE decides to add Both situations in the game to cater for all kinds of players.

[TerahValeth]

It seems we have two differant situations at hand.

Situation1: Low drop rate but spamable dungeon.
Situation2: High drop rate but cooldown. <--- (should be more like moderate drop rate)

Most of us know Situation 2 was the system in FFXI. A great game that was successful for many many years.

When looking at situation 1 you can see right away that the ability to pick up the game and grab a party for Endgame at anytime you want is more focused for Casual players. Which is what SE wanted with FFXIV.

When looking at Situation 2 you see that it would have to be more of a planned scheduled event that has to take presence over RL if you want to atend the event. Not for the Casual players.

It's not that cut and dry, there are other factors to consider.

Situation 1:
Some casual players may get lucky and get a piece or 2 in short order. The large majority of players however will need hundreds of runs under their belt to obtain one. For hardcore players this causes them to get exhausted from over playing the dungeon, and for casual players it will cause loss of interest when it becomes apparent how many months it will likely take them to run the dungeon the hundreds of times it will likely take for them to get a drop. If the hardcore players are frustrated w/ having to run through these hundreds of times, how must the casual player who gets in 1/4 or less of the playtime feel?

Situation 2:
Cooldowns will encourage people to spread out what they do while in game which will help keep the content fresh. it won't hurt the casual players who only get on a few times a week because they really won't have to worry about the cooldowns, or those that can only play for a couple hours a day because when they do, they will always have something they can go do. Creating PUGs won't be any harder than it is now, you will lose the few hardcore players that aren't burnt out yet, and a few casuals that are on cool down for whatever you are shouting for, but you gain the casual players who would normally not respond in situation #1 because they already ran that dungeon a a few times this week, and they feel like doing something else now. Since the casual player can/will only be on for a limited amount of time each week, the increased chances at a drop will encourage them to join more parties while they are on, and they may find people that have the same schedule and build informal-statics. People in hardcore shells will be more likely to stick together too, but since they won't be as burnt out on the game, they'll be more likely to join PUGs for things their ls/group doesn't run on a regular schedule.

Situation 2 is better for both player-types, it helps create community, and it extends content without draining the fun from the game.

[Cerivaneli]

SE has more than two options imo.

1. They can leave the droprates as low, and add a "points system" which rewards you for every win. Currencies, company points, etc which could then be traded for items. Like the system they implemented for Garuda, which gives you in advance the possibility to know how much time and effort you will have to invest, and rewards you depending to it.

2. They can make lock-outs and increase the droprates. I'm not sure about lock-outs at this state of the game, since even if i do feel SE has done well in adding content the past two patches, it may not really be enough yet to really have 2-3 days lock-out on dungeons or so.

3. SE can chose to make the content build on eachother, slowing down progression and increasing droprates, meaning : you need to farm an item you get in X to deblock Y, where you can farm an item to get to Z. This honestly is my favorite option, since it actually gives a reason to redo certain already obsolete content, and slows down the progression without blocking ppl out of it for days.

4. They can leave it as it is and add a 10 points achievement for getting 100M out of coffers in dungeons.

The argument about FFXIV being more casual player oriented isn't really something I can confirm. Like already stated before, this system rewards luck, nothing else. And it's not because you're a casual player, that you are automatically lucky. As from my experience in our LS, the players who have IRL responsibilities need to organise their time and make choices on what they chose to do IG, and most of them don't see a reason to spam content X times and hope to be lucky.

Either way, like most ppl posted already, I really hope they chose to change this spam/low droprate system. It's not fun, not for the 24/7 players who can already do the speedruns with their eyes closed, nor for the casual players who just like all, need to trust their luck and not their efforts and skill to get loot.