Thread: 4.5 month patch release is NOT a problem

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

• Field Operations contain Skirmishes/NMs, that take about as long as FATEs.
• Field Operations contain CEs, that take about as long as a dungeon boss.
• 8-man encounters take about 10 minutes per pull. You can choose to do more pulls, but it's designed this way so you can stop every 10 minutes if you need to go, thus fitting the "pick-and-mix" concept.
• HoH is split into sets of 10 floors, each of which take roughly 10-20 minutes. Can take longer at higher floors if solo, but yeah.
• Relics are... grinding dungeons, FATEs, Skirmishes, things that last less than 20mins on average. You can stop any time. Thus pick-and-mix.
• Island Sanctuary was reduced to a 5-10 minute weekly or daily upkeep. And it didn't take much work to rank up initially either.

I'm not disputing that they have grinds like relics and Island Sanctuary ranks. In fact, that is what I have been saying the whole time. We have mount grinds to motivate us to repeat content. But the content itself can be done in increments of 5-20 minutes.

It is just a lot of people take the "5-20 minutes" thing and use it to say the developers are lazy, when it's intentional to allow people to manage their time with a pick-and-mix and take breaks.

See whilst this may be true, with all of these there is a grander goal at play, e.g., in doing Skirms/NMs, you build up Lost Actions, items for relics, and there is a level of actual character progression involved, since this usually involves weapon, gear or collecting Mettle to eventually make yourself stronger, it's the same with doing deep dungeons, you build up Aetherpool, you can get a weapon which may be stronger, and you climb floors, with the goal of eventually reaching the highest, and due to the randomization involved with floor generation, and how certain classes interact with the content, it means there is still more of a reason to go for higher floors.

This is what Square Enix failed to understand with V&C dungeons, it's what they partially fail to understand with any content they release. Players like and want character progression. Grinding more a minion, a mount or an orchestrion role just doesn't have the same level of incentive as character progression. A mount, minion orchestrion role is like a nice little side checklist, and another issue you have with many of these is you have your things you can grind 10-25 FATEs on, e.g., for a minion for that zone with the gemstones, but then the next stage up from this is 50,000 gemstones, which is the equivalent to around 3200 FATEs, give or take on napkin math. There's no goal between that, which is what makes the distinction between doing something like Skirmishes/NMs and FATEs (even if you can argue they are technically the same thing), they just don't have the same goal posts with them. People still want that progression to actually matter in some shape or form.

I am fine with content involving miniature 10-20 minute activities, but there still has to be a goal at play to mean that you repeat that content, otherwise it's just a hollow and soul-less experience, which is what most of the content is. Again, going back to your example a lot of them are... You do it once, then it is done, like literally done, either for the patch (e.g., story quest), or for the day (e.g., roulette/beast tribe), or for the week (e.g., Custom Delivs)

My actual play-time outside of joining friends, and helping friends is perhaps a couple hours on the weekdays, and maybe a bit more on weekends, outside of that I am doing other things, whether this is personal IRL goals, studying, other games, or learning new skills, and even on that I am really struggling to find a valid excuse which isn't just dopamine play with seeing my gemstone voucher count increment every 6-7 FATEs, until I have done a good 3000-odd for a mount that will probably never get used outside of a checklist.

Originally Posted by Kaurhz

See whilst this may be true, with all of these there is a grander goal at play, e.g., in doing Skirms/NMs, you build up Lost Actions, items for relics, and there is a level of actual character progression involved

Extremes, FATE farming and beast tribes have a mount and other rewards as a grander goal to farm/progress for. Dungeons' grander goal is leveling, tomestone capping, minions, orchestrions, TT cards, relics and glamour. All of them have a grander goal, which is ignored or dismissed by many posters.

it's what they partially fail to understand with any content they release. Players like and want character progression. Grinding more a minion, a mount or an orchestrion role just doesn't have the same level of incentive as character progression. A mount, minion orchestrion role is like a nice little side checklist

For me personally, I can just view mounts as character progression.

Yoshi-P has actually said he understands that people want power progression. I have my doubts if that will happen in a much more significant way than relics ever. Part of that is going to be so people can return to the game after a long break, buy crafted gear and hop into Savage immediately.