Trends in content types and faux difficulty

[Maxthunder]

What is all this talk about effort and skill? What a joke. When you have the majority of the playerbase exploiting primals, exploiting safe zones with all blm parties, class stacking for easy wins due to poor boss mechanics, you have no business talking about rewarding effort and skill. On the contrary, the playerbase avoids effort and skill like the plague. Theyd rather faceroll blm parties than die for hours strategizing. Theyd rather abuse poor mechanics than try to beat a fight as intended. What a joke.

The only thing im reading is "give me loot". Its what it always boils down to. You cannot pretend there is a great amount of skill and effort involved. Therr is if you take up the challenge but a majority dont. Frankly that kind of cheesy and abusive gameplay shouldn't be rewarded with easy loot. Jus sayin.

Ok maybe there is some skill but from what I have experienced its not about skill. Its zerg every damn thing as fast as you can. That is where the problem is. Some may not like this but I will say it. FFXI when you did dynamis players had to do there jobs, but in FFXIV its just zerg anything and everything. The issue we have in FFXIV is that we are a party of 8, we can group boat load of mobs and just zerg them down. We have barely any crowd control, let alone debuffs. Now thm/blm, cnj/whm have a few debuffs but yet they are not very effective as if it was a normal debuff like dia, bio etc. The flare debuff is a 2 edge sword just like all the debuffs we have now. I cant speak for everyone but I would love something like dynamis or on the lines of it, where drops WOULD drop and yes you need to go in after a lock out period to farm again.

FFXIV is all about luck nothing else. Yes there should be some luck in every game but there also needs to be content that players can do over without have to spam it 600 times just to get a drop. I have done all the fights and it is exactly the same damn thing!!! SPAM!!!! For what some gear that has a really shitty drop rate. I have suggested that content be point based. This content players would earn points based on different conditions. Now once said players have enough points they can go to the npc and use said point to buy what they want. This type of content would satisfy 2 things. #1 Players are seeing progress, and #2 We dont have to deal with luck based drops for every piece of content that is released. This also provides long term playability for all players hardcore as well as casuals.

Now finally SE and some players can sit here and make EXCUSSES all they want as to why this or that cant be done, but at the end of the day it's still an EXCUSS!! If in fact SE had not launched FFXIV when they did they would not be in the position they are in now. In the end it is their fault and theit fault alone and they need to take responsibility for their error. Now again players and SE can sit here and say well SE is taking responsibility (maybe to some extent they are) but in the end when new content is released it's still the same crap as before. Meaning more spamming and more lucked based content with what a 0.01% at a drop (maybe a little higher I dont know exactly).

Bottom line SE screwed up big time, because of just wanting to make money, and it's now on their shoulders to get this right because they wont have a 3rd chance if 2.0 flops. Now hopefully the content in 2.0 will offer a challenge as well as not being so luck based, but only time will tell.

[Duelle]

What is all this talk about effort and skill? What a joke. When you have the majority of the playerbase exploiting primals, exploiting safe zones with all blm parties, class stacking for easy wins due to poor boss mechanics, you have no business talking about rewarding effort and skill. On the contrary, the playerbase avoids effort and skill like the plague. Theyd rather faceroll blm parties than die for hours strategizing. Theyd rather abuse poor mechanics than try to beat a fight as intended. What a joke.

A mentality that carried over from FFXI.

Anyway, this is where we can get a little philosophical, though at the same time it may be a hint of what is to come. Simply put, choices and things like the job system are counter-productive in settings such as these. Because the moment an alternative exists that makes things easier to bear, it WILL be the preferred course of action. The fact that FFXI players are conditioned to go with the preferred strategies/set ups and almost never stray from those "standards" does little to help. That's why you have guys like me who have played other MMOs with more openness in group compositions and strategies going "huh?". And why we end up arguing for more inclusive content instead of niche gameplay.

In all honesty, I don't know what can be changed to encourage people to start strategizing and using more varied group comps. As long as stacking classes has no real negatives to it, that's what some will lean to. As I mentioned in another thread, it's one thing when having 9 paladins in a 25-man raid is a freak ocurrence and generates lulz. It's another when you're purposely stacking classes to clear content.

[Mikita]

In all honesty, I don't know what can be changed to encourage people to start strategizing and using more varied group comps. As long as stacking classes has no real negatives to it, that's what some will lean to. As I mentioned in another thread, it's one thing when having 9 paladins in a 25-man raid is a freak ocurrence and generates lulz. It's another when you're purposely stacking classes to clear content.

What if they only awarded the 5th chest if there are no duplicate jobs/classes?
(and disallowed job/class changing while in the instance)

At most you could have 1 job and its nearest class, i.e. 1 Black Mage and 1 Thaumaturge since we will probably need 8 people and there are only 7 jobs and 7 classes... but any duplication negates the possibility of getting the 5th chest.

Or maybe give a bonus for having no duplicates? ... like a slightly higher drop rate?

[Darkillumina]

A mentality that carried over from FFXI.

Anyway, this is where we can get a little philosophical, though at the same time it may be a hint of what is to come. Simply put, choices and things like the job system are counter-productive in settings such as these. Because the moment an alternative exists that makes things easier to bear, it WILL be the preferred course of action. The fact that FFXI players are conditioned to go with the preferred strategies/set ups and almost never stray from those "standards" does little to help. That's why you have guys like me who have played other MMOs with more openness in group compositions and strategies going "huh?". And why we end up arguing for more inclusive content instead of niche gameplay.

In all honesty, I don't know what can be changed to encourage people to start strategizing and using more varied group comps. As long as stacking classes has no real negatives to it, that's what some will lean to. As I mentioned in another thread, it's one thing when having 9 paladins in a 25-man raid is a freak ocurrence and generates lulz. It's another when you're purposely stacking classes to clear content.

I agree with this. I played WoW for a bit in 06/07 which many considered the golden age of the game and at the time I did like how inclusive it was to all classes. Of course back then I preferred the flexibility of FFXI's job system but in retrospect WoW did a fabulous job of making the game inclusive to those who played various classes. I was never turned down for various raids or dungeons even though I played a ret PLD which back then was apparently among the weakest.

I'm sure forcing you to play as one job had a lot to do with this, but it was fantastic being able to contribute to a party no matter what you brought. It was a great feeling having a varied set-up and having everyone say, "ok let's do this no problem!"

Compare that to FFXIV where there will always be somebody who speaks up or says outright, "we need more blm for this, we need more ranged/warriors for this, lol drg and DD War GTFO it's too dangerous to melee."

This may seem off-topic but when combined with the luck based system, short dungeons and speed run bullshit, it adds very little incentive to the player base to try and do things differently as content fatigue sets in. Eventually it becomes, "lets get this over with as fast as possible so load up on blms for CC so we can speed run this as fast as possible."

Finally there was a much more active community in WoW back when I played in 06/07 and though I preferred FFXI to WoW back then it was a fantastic feeling being able to group up with a bunch of randoms with a weird set up and still accomplish a dungeon through hardwork and perseverance. It was not easy back then but Blizzard did a fantastic job of making each class viable for various raids. In addition while drop rates were rare they were nowhere near as absurd as this games and there was a variety of content available to give people options instead of having to grind out the same thing over and over again.

[Black_Rose]

spamming Cutter's Cry for over a month already without a single body drop, and hardly any other darklight drops at all (if we're lucky we're getting like maybe 5 drops in a whole week of work).
i mean we do CC daily, 3-4 runs minimum, on weekends up to 10-20 each day.
i'm sick of all this speedrun spamming, but at the same time, if i don't do it, what other content is there for me to do? everything feels the same, this is exactly why i deny to do garuda & hamlet, as it is just another ifrit with different attacks that are just stronger to give you the feeling of having more "challenging" content, which is actually not the case.

if you ask me, the only skill in this game that is required, is evading strong mob attacks on this hell laggy servers.

just get rid of this spamming ideas, and make content more lengthy without the need to do speedruns.
what hurts casuals isn't content that requires you an hour or 2 to put in, but what hurts everybody is content that can be abused repeatedly with almost none to no rewarding sense.

i'm not asking for some sort of FFXI content that made you put hours into it and wait 72hrs after to be able to do again, just some more lengthy content that actually rewards you.

i'm just hoping for some serious changes regarding this with 2.0, as i have no hopes for the current version to ever get it's shit together.all we get are fillers to keep us paying till 2.0.

[AtryxEtair]

I see both sides of the argument here. But overall I agree with the OP. Spamming anything over and over and over reduces the value of it no matter what it is, whether physical, mental, or perceived. A craft, a dungeon, a mob, a run...reducing the availability of something is an irrefutable way to increase anything in worth. That cannot be argued.

I do see the dilemma SE is faced with in terms of content due to in-game population, server structure, and lack of content to begin with. All this while remaking the majority of the game at the same time. I don't expect ground breaking content at this point in the game. I'm not sure anyone does. The issue has arisen players are realizing this may become a habit or sign of things to come.

No one can know. But a little reassurance could go a long way.

[Genz]

They may put a tag system.
I think we need to be able to repeat something because it requires less organisation : don't have to run from place to place, don't have to verify that everyone in your group can indeed fight ifrit and mog and garuda, don't have to keep your unique "right to do cutter's cry" for your linkshell run tonight preventing you to answer this interesting shout, etc.

Repeating a content for 2-3h seems fine to me. I guess it's a play time for a lot of people, between 8h p.m. and midnight
(2-3 times a same donjon, 7-8 times a primal fight)

[Ruisu]

They may put a tag system.
I think we need to be able to repeat something because it requires less organisation : don't have to run from place to place, don't have to verify that everyone in your group can indeed fight ifrit and mog and garuda, don't have to keep your unique "right to do cutter's cry" for your linkshell run tonight preventing you to answer this interesting shout, etc.

Repeating a content for 2-3h seems fine to me. I guess it's a play time for a lot of people, between 8h p.m. and midnight
(2-3 times a same donjon, 7-8 times a primal fight)

2-3 hour waits for a 10 minute fight? No thanks.

[Genz]

2-3 hour waits for a 10 minute fight? No thanks.

No, I've suggested to keep the right to repeat a content quickly, but to add a limit to the maximum number of times we can repeat the same content in a row, with a tags system (like guildleves)
The number of maximum tags for each content would be calculated based on a time frame of 2-3h, which would allow to repeat a donjon 2-3 times, and a primal fight 7-8 times in a row. I suggest 2-3h because I think it's near the average time we play each day and near the average time a party lasts.
I think it's important to be able to repeat a content because it allows to actually concentrate on the said content, and not on details. But if what we have know is a reason for the developpers to use low drop rate, then I'm all for a limitation on repeating content in exchange of higher drop rate, but not a heavy and strict limitation.

Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[Ryans]

It looks like I'm in the small category of people who like RNG for drops. Whenever I know I am going to get an item, I have very little motivation to actually go out and do it. Its a lot like how I am with dating; If I know I can get the girl, there is no sense of accomplishment and thus no desire to pursue. I like having to work for things instead of being guaranteed to receive them if I spend an hour doing a dungeon.