Stop the Grind-to-the-Endgame madness!

[Hyrist]

Not sure I understand this.

How do you put content in the mid-levels of the game, when the mid-levels of the game have been reduced to a casual afternoon?

We've already seemed to have established that your idea of leveling is faster than the perceived norm on several public accounts, but there is a secondary reply to this.

First off, creating enticing content delays leveling, especially if it is story-line relevant. You want to do an instance that has unique drops or Meteria you want, you pause and take the time to do it. The fuller this content is, the more you're interested in doing these side things that may, beleive it or not, be slower than grinding, or even faster than grinding, but because you're following the chains and the story, you're not even noticing or caring how fast you advance.

So long as there is content that you playthrough, the progress speed is pretty much irrlevant. It's the feeling of the journey that counts.

And this isn't even touching on more hardcore solutions like how they worked on Guildwars 2, which is a system that can reduce your level to that which is needed for the round. I don't particularly agree with the system but it is popular, and it works. Leveling speed becomes somewhat irrelevant as you're still hitting the content at the required level.

It's not about "Draging" the levels out it's about having them take a semblance of any time to even finish.

It takes plenty of time to do things normally in this game already, especially if it requires assembling a group. Things that can be soloed are going to take less time because it takes less preparation time. As more group content comes into the game, the slower it will seem to you. Solo content will, by contrast, always seem quicker - even more so the more skilled the player becomes.

That doesn't eliminate the feeling of progress, however. Skills can be quested to resemble the feeling of training. And I don't see why it has to be limited to just job skills. There could be class specific skills that could be learned in the game's future as well.

As it stands the game is a hillarious blurr at how quickly you can get most of the games content done

What content? Leveling? Subjective to which class. Single Player storyline? Seeming ti was designed so that a DoL or DoH could play it, yes, it would seem easy to go through.

Crushing the game into a tiny cube doesn't help the fact it fosters a even more hostile endgame enviroment because people are all idling at max level.

Considering you've no idea as to the breath of content in this game, this statement is speculation at best. Even now with the content we've got, very few people are just 'idling' at max level. They're leveling crafts, trying to organize runs, trying to get quests done, trying to make gil. All the things they were able to bypass on the climb to 50 that now become the bulk of adventuring, and they all do it more or less on the same level.

Content is designed so people don't have fun playing the job they want, they "Have fun" being forced to level every single job so you can be flexable and switch to monk at the end of Aurum Vale....

Jobs are close enough now so that a skilled individual at their job can and will out-preform someone who's just riding the coattails of a popular strat just to make it easy on them.

So you are aware, this game is play-tested with a various party (Read: One of every class with a flex slot for the 8th.)

The more saturated an endgame base is, the more variety gets experimented with because the more players of like-mentalities find each other and work together. Just because it's popular here on the forums does not mean the exceptions to the rule are not plentiful.

And again, this is also barring and assuming all updates will never exist. Have you considered Golden Saucer at all? Or Battle Regimine, or any of the other unknowns in the current working, when making these generalized statements?


I do realize that one can only speak for what he has experienced. I'm aware of that because I know my bad experiences with Endgame shells leave me jaded against the HNM scene.

You may well be jaded yourself having rushed levels as a THM -and I am going to have to say that it is a high possibility that it is coloring your perspective of the game.

Back on the subject of the thread at large. The "Grind to Endgame Madness." has two extremes. Taking too long without sufficient content, and taking too short without sufficient development.

If you fill the level span up with content, especially content that can be revisited at higher difficulties for those who are higher level, or have characters possibly revert to lesser levels to experience it at the initial difficulty, then so long as you have a reward system that can adapt itself to what level you are truely, then you've eliminated the issue without harming either 'camp' of the discussion.

Player who want to play more slowly have the option to grind less, play content more. Those who which to push to endgame have that choice to get quick responses.

There simply is no need to eliminate that choice. We can simply build upon our options and reach a more widely desirable solution.

[Jynx]

You may well be jaded yourself having rushed levels as a THM -and I am going to have to say that it is a high possibility that it is coloring your perspective of the game.

Would it help you if I said it took me less than a week to level monk? Although this is in a solo/duo/party scenario. 1-20 solo 20-30 duo 30+ party *Without a Powerlevel mind you* and 40+ was just a facerolled blurr.

Please don't assume that I'm talking out of my arse I am well aware of the terrible situation the leveling is in this game. It's been brought up on more than several occasions that leveling if dedicated enough has been completed in a single day. You keep talking about people being able to "Go back" to old lower level content and I wonder that if the game stays the way it is why people would even bother.

What is the reward for them? What is the point of it being lower level relevant when the leveling experience is almost litteraly pointless in the scheme of things. You can't just give thousands of "Choices" and call it a day and tell anyone who presents the "Whats the point?" and give them "But you have CHOICES GUYS" choices are useless unless they have any sort of hearty meaning to them.

I'm not asking for the game to be a gut wrenching marathon to get to the endgame but as it stands it's rediculous to even call it leveling in the first place.

[Dragon]

It's funny cause the people that are running sweaty in the heat agonizing in their suits rushing to their destination
will eventually end up being at the same spot with those who are walking relaxed wearing their shorts and straw hat, sipping on ice cold lemonade while enjoying the pretty trees and flowers.

So funny.

Peeps want to do endgame tho and that is also understandable.
Theres nothing to do as a lowbie other than level up ur jobs really... and thats boring!

Yup.

So, according to this, the devs shouldn't focus on low-/mid-level content because it can become obsolete?
What about new players who come in periodically?
What about people that want to level a 2nd and 3rd job?
What about the so glorified end-game content that gets obsolete?
Once you have all weapons/ gear of a certain kind?

Oh, and why not just shut down the servers now. I mean, sooner or later this game will be dead anyway, we just don't know when! lol

That logic, at least for me, is fundamentally flawed.

You're exactly right. We may as well have no leveling/achievement/etc. process at all, nothing that makes a game a decent game. If we're to treat 1-49 as just the pre-game, and 50 as the end-all/be-all, no one will ever bother to stop at midgame making the "endgame or no-game" mentality become a self-fulfilling prophecy (as has been shown in every single modern-day MMO).

[Onisake]

I think it's funny how someone else can post this. but if Rokien did it we'd all punch him in the face because he's a douche.


anyway.

The only low-level content I think is really needed is story. Having a couple different story arcs would be ideal, then you could level a couple different jobs going through the story. or maybe have more class story quests.

A couple of low level, level capped instances would be awesome. I'd love toto-rak if it was capped. but it's not so it's basically a 'lets farm GC seals'

[Dargoth_Draconia]

This will be a short one. I long for a game in which the steps forward are packed with excitement and opportunities for fun. Not a rat-race to the end; the end being the only place where you will be considered someone by your fellow-players. End anti-newbie discrimination, make every level count. Slow down the pace of advancement. Smell the flowers. Struggle with difficult mobs at every level. Enter awesome events at every step.

This is actually more casual-player-friendly than accelerating and stultifying the game, so that almost anybody can get to the "fun-filled end."

End-obsessed game design fosters fascistic behavior in the community. Plus, it rewards the slacker that doesn't want a life, whereas it penalizes the player with the regular life. Making the advancement mechanics super-easy, the way the developers of this game sometimes seem to believe they should, does not improve the chances for anybody: The "Über" get to the end and get bored too early, the casuals never catch up, and are still discriminated.

Fill the world with one thousand Shposheas, only more complex and more attractive; make getting to level 10, 15, 20, 30 real challenges away from the repetitive levequests, and gratify us with oportunities that open up at every stage: Environmental puzzles, mysteriously coded scrolls, incomplete maps, a bit of Myst in Eorzea.

R

Man, I thought this was going to be a good post and I was terribly mistaken. End-obsessed game design as you call it fosters no such bad behavior in the community. The community fosters the behavior themselves and on top of that making advancement mechanics easy does improve the chances for everybody. They are able to advance at a quick enough pace to not fall too far behind and have an easy time catching up in contrary to whatever it is you are saying which makes no sense. The hardcore players do get bored easily currently because a total lack of content and once there is plenty of content with high difficulty and patches that constantly add content every couple months then they will be happy too.

Now I agree with you about making it where the hardcore players only seem to get rewarded for playing 40+ hours a week and that should not be the case, though if they are playing that much then honestly they have earned certain things and should have certain content geared for them. Just so you know I am not a hardcore player, I used to be years ago in FFXI but now I have very limited time to play. I would much rather advance faster or at the rate I want to and not be bound by something silly. What about the people who have everything leveled already? Make them start over? or what!?

I think you thought too much about what you would like to see in the game and didn't even bother to think how it would effect all the other players or players who do not see things in the same way as you do. Also you don't know what all will be in 2.0 or what kind of new content they will bring us if they will have stuff for the mid levels to make things interesting. FFXIV 2.0 Beta is just around the corner, perhaps you guys should save topics like this til after you see what they have in store for us.

[bobbygunz]

What's the point of a "grind to cap" anyway except to waste everyone's time?

Unless they have a purpose to the journey, there's really little point in the exercise if all good content is reserved for endgame players. Making 200 badly designed quests to pad out the levels is no good reason, unless those quests are actually fun and worth doing.

Quest-grind, EXP-grind, it's all just the same thing at the end of the day. Grind!

They might as well just do an EXP grind and spare themselves the effort of making hundreds of quests everyone will skim through anyway.

[Rutelor]

What's the point of a "grind to cap" anyway except to waste everyone's time?

Unless they have a purpose to the journey, there's really little point in the exercise if all good content is reserved for endgame players. Making 200 badly designed quests to pad out the levels is no good reason, unless those quests are actually fun and worth doing.

Quest-grind, EXP-grind, it's all just the same thing at the end of the day. Grind!

They might as well just do an EXP grind and spare themselves the effort of making hundreds of quests everyone will skim through anyway.

I agree with you, Bobbygunz.

R

[VytasBismarck]

Well, we can always hope for nice expansions after 2.0... And everyone who wishes for something amazing to happen before 2.0 - stop fooling yourself

[Carzilla]

Best post in the whole forum +100

[XxOstiaxX]

^^^ You put so much faith in a guy that has showed little to no results, and no i do not dislike yoshida, i just find it mind blowing, how a guy get praised to the heavens for writing silly letters about what will come 2 years from said released letter, i have yet to see an update where he or his team shows they are going beyond what any developer out there in the industry would go to please us or win us back, every update so far, has been what lackluster if compared to any other MMO, and sure you can as always use the "2.0 excuse" or the infamous "Server limit etc etc one"

If 2.0 is just a server switch and a restart of the crappy story of 1.0 i will be disappointed, for i am expecting a huge influx of content across all levels, and i do not mean 1 quest every 10 levels, and the same 5 quest on repeat for the next 2 years until an expansion hits.