Future proofing and community funneling

[Shurrikhan]

Jeeq is the biggest Squeenix apologist. Just check his post history.

Tbf, he sees it as offering counterpoints to offset forum feedback he sees as being gravitated (so, more than is just one's own natural opinion / is merely logical) towards negativity. I suspect this is simply one moment of discourse he shouldn't have bothered trying to counter at all, instead jumping straight to probing for more constructive details.

And admittedly, I probably should have done the same; sadly, absolutist straw-manning greatly increases the chance of its responses, too, being at least more polarized or even bordering on fallacy, in turn.

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Food for thought: some 99.9% of my posts are critical of the game and yet I'll still be called an apologist for noting in what ways suggestions are self-satisfiedly addressing symptoms rather than the problems beneath them or even for mathing out how a given suggestion would work to show that it'd be no better than what we have (without in any way saying what we have is good).

[Jeeqbit]

Jeeq is the biggest Squeenix apologist. Just check his post history.

I've critized things plenty. But from our last interaction it was clear you don't read my posts properly anyway.

It's important to be critical of criticism as well. I achieved my goal in this thread of moving the focus from it being "empty" and a "ghost town" (which is impossible to avoid when we have 62 zones, 7 field op areas, 4 other large scale areas, and housing areas, duplicated across worlds) to content proofing itself in spite of it being a ghost town.

I don't disagree with content proofing, either, it's just that if you look at it objectively, SE has done this for the most part with things like The Echo, nerfs, buffs, or scaling. Maybe it could be better, but as I've said I can go back solo most old things, including field operations.

[frostmagemari]

I've critized things plenty. But from our last interaction it was clear you don't read my posts properly anyway.

It's important to be critical of criticism as well. I achieved my goal in this thread of moving the focus from it being "empty" and a "ghost town" (which is impossible to avoid when we have 62 zones, 7 field op areas, 4 other large scale areas, and housing areas, duplicated across worlds) to content proofing itself in spite of it being a ghost town.

I don't disagree with content proofing, either, it's just that if you look at it objectively, SE has done this for the most part with things like The Echo, nerfs, buffs, or scaling. Maybe it could be better, but as I've said I can go back solo most old things, including field operations.

"Achieved your goal"?
By that you mean that i haven't changed my stance at all and that i simply expanded on what my position was to try and combat your bad faith interpretations so you don't poison the well?
Then sure, i guess.

[Shistar]

All of this stuff should just exist in the regular open-world. That way those zones would serve a purpose beyond the MSQ, much more efficient use of dev resources.

I'm really into this idea. I'd like to see it happen once so we can test it out.
Being able to funnel those resources used in OC, CE, etc. straight into making the overworld itself a place to do many things in, make it feel lived in and detailed would be amazing imo. I think you'd bump into a lot more players that way too, since many of us are scattered in different corners of the world, each doing our thing in a secluded instance.

[Drimn]

It doesn't help that we weren't "seeded" like Crystal was with pre-populated worlds, so Dynamis was left to fend for its self day 1 without any established players or community, and sure enough, being made to grow from nothing ended up with the data center being good for nothing, not that there was any niche left we could have grown into. Raiding, PVP, and RP were already claimed, what was even left for us to become? We were pretty much set up for failure and being here feels like its been a punishment. Hell, our first four worlds weren't even half-full yet when they dumped another four on us, which only really served to scatter people around even more, and did nothing to improve queue times anyway because why in the hell would anyone start on Dynamis at that point when Aether still had worlds open at the time?

Locking us down again wouldn't help either, as people would just transfer out or re-roll (just like they did last time), and even region-wide DF/PF feels like it would be pointless for us because most people would still want to be on a "preferred" hub for raiding/PVP/RP instead of on a dead-ass data center. I mean, the OCE data center can be visited by anyone, but nobody in NA/EU/JP really wants to go there it seems. At best, Dynamis queues would start popping more, but the social element would still be non-existent as nobody talks in duty/party finder anyway (and for good reason), so I might as well still be playing with mute NPCs anyway.

Dynamis's "role" is being the DC you server transfer to in order to easily get a house. That's it. Just make sure you've earned your gil on your original DC first, since Dynamis's economy is absolutely dead. Everything else, you're better off on one of the other DCs. It could have worked it it came out before DC travel, but at this point? I'd like to see SE address what their plans are to try to fix it.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Combine all the post-expansion "islands" into one zone, to allow us to swap between what content we're actively doing if we decide to help out with the events from the other content (ie. Have crafting/gathering/combat stuff happen on the south horn of Occult crescent instead of splitting off into the moon and the island)

Maybe that’s convenient for some, but it limits the storytelling potential… if they made a future “all-in-one” zone like that in the future, with some kind of good enough story reason why all that stuff was being combined together, that’s one thing. And I’d be open to something like that, but I guarantee you if they ever do it, people will see it as a reduction in the amount of content. “They smooshed it all together, we can’t even get separate zones anymore!” lol

But for already existing content, they’re very different things and that’s why they’re separate. We’ve literally got space exploration and the exploration of a specific mysterious island in a Bermuda Triangle kind of story, why wouldn’t those be two different zones? Also remember old Diadem? lol There’s a reason they redid it.

I think my only real criticism is their use of the term “lifestyle content” to describe Cosmic. No, it’s crafter/gatherer content. I’m sure something gets lost in the translation, but Island Sanctuary felt more like “lifestyle content” to me: casual content where you can use any class and progress at your own pace, a little light decorating, etc. I could go off on a whole essay of how IS could’ve been better (ie: letting friends help you gather on your island, the ability to have one of each animal and trade them with friends, etc.), but even though it was heavy on gathering, and crafting to a lesser extent (mostly workshop spreadsheet), it didn’t require an actual crafter or gatherer class to be maxed and/or well-geared with an arsenal of macros.

Overall I think it’s a good thing to have more content options, with multiple stories being told. One of the nice things about this game is that pretty much all old content can be done whenever you reach it. It may not be as crowded as it was on release, but everything seems to attract their niche crowds of people who love it and will keep doing it. You might miss out on Cosmic upgrade fates if you’re not there at the beginning, but you can still go in and work towards your achievements and/or rewards, and you still get a story out of it. With some further improvements (trust me I’ve got plenty of complaints!), I’m sure even OC will eventually have the longevity of Eureka and Bozja, which are still popular to this day despite their age.

[frostmagemari]

Maybe that’s convenient for some, but it limits the storytelling potential… if they made a future “all-in-one” zone like that in the future, with some kind of good enough story reason why all that stuff was being combined together, that’s one thing. And I’d be open to something like that, but I guarantee you if they ever do it, people will see it as a reduction in the amount of content. “They smooshed it all together, we can’t even get separate zones anymore!” lol

But for already existing content, they’re very different things and that’s why they’re separate. We’ve literally got space exploration and the exploration of a specific mysterious island in a Bermuda Triangle kind of story, why wouldn’t those be two different zones? Also remember old Diadem? lol There’s a reason they redid it.

Obviously, i am only talking about future stuff. I realize they can't retroactively change that stuff. As for people complaining, they do already... they just complain that they run out of things to do in the zone after the first week.
That being said, i would much rather have had the current content go as such...
- The Crafting gathering content leads us to the occult crescent island. We build up the town and do our own scouting of the island. They could have done much of the same minigames with re flavoured skins to be something we'd have on the ground.
- The combat content kicks in because us knocking stuff about on the island starts to wake stuff up and suddenly there's monsters on the island.
- The next crafting/gathering content is about us fortifying the main base on the island and then build up little outposts that maintain an aetheryte for us to teleport around the island easier as minigames or start fixing bridges/cave-ins (blah blah blah).
- If there is more battle content, open parts of the crescent that weren't accessible before, so it's the same island but it's story expands out without shunting people into a totally new zone and cutting everyone off from each other; similar as to how Bozja was.
You could have one strong story going through it all. You would need both types of jobs to get the FULL story on a single character, but that's more of a plus than a minus when it comes to story content.

Overall I think it’s a good thing to have more content options, with multiple stories being told. One of the nice things about this game is that pretty much all old content can be done whenever you reach it. It may not be as crowded as it was on release, but everything seems to attract their niche crowds of people who love it and will keep doing it. You might miss out on Cosmic upgrade fates if you’re not there at the beginning, but you can still go in and work towards your achievements and/or rewards, and you still get a story out of it. With some further improvements (trust me I’ve got plenty of complaints!), I’m sure even OC will eventually have the longevity of Eureka and Bozja, which are still popular to this day despite their age.

I'd rather have fewer and tighter knit stories than twenty stories that all go no where because there's not enough time invested in them to do anything with it.
And the "niche crowds" is the problem. There aren't really "niche crowds", there's empty spaces where people don't take part in the activity because when they go to the zone, there's no one there and they can't do a single thing there without taking 5x as long because you're trying to do it solo. You might get some traction with some discord groups, but if the devs actually did a good job on future-proofing their content and giving a zone multiple purposes for those content styles to converge, the game might actually feel like an MMO again.