All The Doom Threads Are Strange To Me

[Erzaa]

^what grind is perfect if Bozja is miserable, Bozja is barely even a grind as it is, if I can fit that around being a doctor then maybe the grind isn’t the problem

Opinions are not facts.

The second to last step (one-time-grind) for the relic weapons is a terrible grind. Awful and miserable and takes ages to complete.

Add to that, the fact that exploratory zones are frequently dead at certain times that some players get to play, because it's content that by design dies when you're late to the party. Unless you consider frequently going into a zone and being the only player there, or having to wait a whole week to complete the raid when there's enough people there, good design.

Disingenuous; how? That’s a totally valid opinion to hold, EW’s post patch content has been garbage whether you like field content or not.

Opinions are not facts.

The content post Endwalker is on par with any other content. I've already stated this. Endwalker has a deep dungeon but no exploratory content, while Shadowbringers had exploratory content but no deep dungeon. Add to this, Endwalker brought in Variant Dungeons and Island Sanctuary. Just because the content doesn't interest you, doesn't mean it has less content. It has more content than the previous expansion. Dawntrail will have even more since everything is coming back, but I look forward to seeing what complaints you'll have then. Also, didn't raiders get two Ultimates this expansion?

“I’ve made no demands but also your opinion that EW is bad is wrong” yeah certainly seems like you are a neutral party here,

Disagreeing with your opinion isn't a demand, nor did I claim to be neutral. I simply haven't made any demands for the game to change. I'm stating that your opinion that the changes SE made to this Expansion, making the grind a bit less, is a good change in my opinion. I never went to SE and demanded this change, but I like this change. Perhaps you feel that your opinion should be law, but newsflash, it's not. You're not the centre of the universe.

and yes if you don’t like something you ask for it to be changed, that’s how we get most of the improvements this game actually gets, like you know the change to the roulette, which makes the non CT raids pop much more quickly, not sure why you are arguing that’s a bad thing.

And you have every right to do so. That's what the forums are for. And I support you making as many complaints as you want for anything you want. That doesn't mean I'm going to agree with your complaints, but also I'm not going to tell you that this isn't the game/MMO for you and you should leave.

I'm not arguing the Roulette change is bad, but I also didn't care about CT popping often in the first place. I was indifferent to it. But I'll still argue it's an incomplete change and hurt innocent players. For that, I refer you to the old thread about it, I'm not going to repeat it here. But that was a change made after player demand, who put no thought into how it would impact other players.

And yes you could make that same argument, you basically already are, you don’t get “high road points” for pointing out arguments that you aren’t making while basically making said arguments anyway, call me out directly and say FFXIV isn’t the game for me, it certainly isn’t going to bother me because I’ll stick fast to my opinion if you started less than a year ago and you think that Bozja is too much of a grind then MMO’s aren’t the genre for you

No, I'm not making that argument, I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of supporting someone who is telling someone else to just leave the game because they don't agree with your opinions. And I didn't start the game less than a year ago, where did you get that information? I started the game four years ago. It's also not my first MMO.

[Supersnow845]

I’ll again say that not all content should be evergreened, the community’s desire for everything to be eternally evergreen is why the content is so stale and why nothing changes regardless Bozja was the most successful non roulette content we have ever gotten, hell it’s more successful than some instances that are on roulettes. Are you willing to admit that people liked the way the content and rewards are structured

And as for the rest of your points I’ll step back off them because I don’t want them to devolve into a screaming match since we are both basically arguing the semantics of each others points, regardless that’s not the core of the discussion and I’ll admit I deviated from the core point first but I do think you are taking the “MMO’s aren’t the right genre too much as “leave the game now” when the person is pointing out that MMO’s are designed to be grindy, that’s like their entire design shtick, it’s like going into COD and wondering why it’s an FPS

[Erzaa]

I’ll again say that not all content should be evergreened, the community’s desire for everything to be eternally evergreen is why the content is so stale and why nothing changes regardless Bozja was the most successful non roulette content we have ever gotten, hell it’s more successful than some instances that are on roulettes. Are you willing to admit that people liked the way the content and rewards are structured

Yes I agree that the content was very successful. And I'll also agree that running the fights the first few times was really fun, as were the raids. Whether the content was popular due to the rewards or the actual gameplay, I can't say, we'd need to ask everyone who did it for that. But you can't tell me the relic grind doesn't make the content boring, tedious and stale after awhile.

And as for the rest of your points I’ll step back off them because I don’t want them to devolve into a screaming match since we are both basically arguing the semantics of each others points, regardless that’s not the core of the discussion and I’ll admit I deviated from the core point first but I do think you are taking the “MMO’s aren’t the right genre too much as “leave the game now” when the person is pointing out that MMO’s are designed to be grindy, that’s like their entire design shtick, it’s like going into COD and wondering why it’s an FPS

Fair enough, we'll drop the issue here.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I think there’s a question about ‘quality over quantity’ as well.

One can see a list of ShB’s added content and think how ‘few’ they are when compared to EW. But let’s be real: what dies a week or two after launch? V&C Dungeons. Which content that pulls in more participation rate? Definitely not V&C—Idk about EO, but when compared to the entirety of ShB vs EW contents, Bozja did NOT had any of these ‘dead periods’ within its relevant expansion whereas V&C & EO literally cannot survive without PF & maybe discords within their own current expac life cycle. So what really went wrong there?

[Erzaa]

I think there’s a question about ‘quality over quantity’ as well.

One can see a list of ShB’s added content and think how ‘few’ they are when compared to EW. But let’s be real: what dies a week or two after launch? V&C Dungeons. Which content that pulls in more participation rate? Definitely not V&C—Idk about EO, but when compared to the entirety of ShB vs EW contents, Bozja did NOT had any of these ‘dead periods’ within its relevant expansion whereas V&C & EO literally cannot survive without PF & maybe discords within their own current expac life cycle. So what really went wrong there?

I can't really speak toward the Criterion portion, I don't plan on doing it. I can say that each of the Variant Dungeons were really fun for me, I've done 2/3 so far and had a great time. Each took me a week to get through all paths. As for Eureka Orthos, I don't feel it needs any PF. I've never done any deep dungeon through a PF. I enjoy doing deep dungeons solo and duo, it takes awhile to get +99/+99 but I enjoy it.

Meanwhile, being forced to wait for a weekend so I can do the raids in Bozja, which was the only remaining thing for me in ShB before I could move onto Endwalker was annoying. For the whole week waiting to do the DR raid just to progress the story, or trying to farm mettle from FATEs and CEs alone wasn't fun, because it's designed to be done with big groups when the content is fresh.

[Supersnow845]

Think about it this way 70% of the capped ShB population reached DRN, 50% reached DAL (not required for the relic) 35% cleared DAL 10 times, 65% of the population did something to contribute to IR before or after it formally finished

70% of the capped EW population did sildian, 25% did aloalo island, 15% have done level 30 of EO, sub 5% have done level 100, about 70% of people have reached level 10 in IS

so if we cancel IR with IS you can see that more people both did Bozja and they got more content out of it (let’s ignore skirmishes notes, mounts, boxes and frags) that’s still 45 alliance raid Boses that Bozja gave and more people did it

When Bozja is more content and it was more popular can you really say the two expansions were roughly equivalent

[Erzaa]

Think about it this way 70% of the capped ShB population reached DRN, 50% reached DAL (not required for the relic) 35% cleared DAL 10 times, 65% of the population did something to contribute to IR before or after it formally finished

70% of the capped EW population did sildian, 25% did aloalo island, 15% have done level 30 of EO, sub 5% have done level 100, about 70% of people have reached level 10 in IS

so if we cancel IR with IS you can see that more people both did Bozja and they got more content out of it (let’s ignore skirmishes notes, mounts, boxes and frags) that’s still 45 alliance raid Boses that Bozja gave and more people did it

When Bozja is more content and it was more popular can you really say the two expansions were roughly equivalent

Yes I can argue that, because the Endwalker content (EO, Variant and Hildy) won't be a slog for newer players trying to get through it. It can be solo'ed and duo'ed on the player's schedule. Which Bozja and Eureka cannot be.

Perhaps the solution is for SE to stop locking story content behind exploratory zones, then it can be something to be skipped altogether if players wish it, or do it slowly when you've got nothing else to do.

I've got no problem with expansions having exploratory zones, but when those story points link bank into the msq, or some side content, and you're trying to complete it years after it's relevant, it becomes a huge problem.

And, for that matter, there's still the question why certain players do certain content. Is Bozja successful due to the relics being great, (the RDM Augmented Law's Rapier and the MCH Double Barrel shotgun are brilliant in my opinion, I would've farmed them either way eventually), or because the content is so good, (in my opinion it's really good for awhile and then gets stale, same as any roulette), and how many players would bother with the content if rewards weren't locked behind it in the first place?

[Supersnow845]

But you missed the point, by doing what they did with Bozja (whether it was the relic, the story, the other rewards or the actual content) they pulled in an amount of people that rivals the roulettes without the roulettes and the content lasted longer (whether you liked said content or not) keeping people up in lulls during the entirety of the latter half of ShB

What’s the incentive to change content design to cater to new players who want to see the story when you can rope in the exisiting playerbase and hold them for as long as Bozja holds them for by doing what they did for Bozja in terms of design and rewards, they poured an equivalent amount of time into EO/VC and it could barely hold people for the patch it was released in and aloalo was an outright failure given how many people dropped off after sildhin

[Erzaa]

But you missed the point, by doing what they did with Bozja (whether it was the relic, the story, the other rewards or the actual content) they pulled in an amount of people that rivals the roulettes without the roulettes and the content lasted longer (whether you liked said content or not)

What’s the incentive to change content design to cater to new players when you who want to see the story when you can rope in the exisiting playerbase and hold them for as long as Bozja holds them for by doing what they did for Bozja

Precisely because I can't rope the existing playerbase into it. Some players may come, indeed on weekends it's very active, but by and large, once the existing playerbase get what they wanted out of it, they leave, never to return.

Does it keep the playerbase active when it's fresh? Yes! And I fully understand why people are bothered that it's missing. But does it keep the playerbase active 2-3 years down the line? No! So why is there a story attached to it (and a really interesting one at that, that links back into Endwalker at the start with Garlemald), if it's going to eventually die?

But the players are also quick to denounce the whole expansion, and every other content that they were given, because it's missing one exploratory zone, when it's not the first time we've been given less content. Since ShB, gone are the job quests, now we have role quests, gone was Hildy, gone were deep dungeons, and nothing came to replace them. At least in Endwalker, gone was the exploratory zone, but in its place came back Hildy and deep dungeons and Island Sanctuary and Variant Dungeons are interesting experiments, if nothing else, but I find them an enjoyable passtime.

And full glad I am that they're not just deleting the whole concept for Dawntrail, they're readding everything, including the next exploratory zone, and full glad I am that for once I'll get to experience it while it's fresh.

[Supersnow845]

And I’m gonna be honest like I said I don’t think content should be designed around its potential to be evergreened because that severely limits your design scope in content to functionally what can be soloed or what can be put in a roulette; both of which have inherent limitations in potential difficulty, scope of content and how long said content can be while still being in the same rough field

Some content should be designed around pushing design concepts especially when it’s massively successful during its iteration, not everything can be tailored to people who join the game 5 years later (and I say that as someone who takes long enough breaks that i often miss current content)