Binding Coil of Bahamut Discussion

[Xilrasis]

2.1 is going to make things worse. Its a goddamned shame too, this game had some serious potential but with the lack of endgame content in 2.1 I can't imagine HC players will be interested for much longer.

Honestly, I think the core design of the game is beautiful. Unfortunately, it isn't sustaining. I have the sad feeling that this will be a game I bench after a while and revisit in a year or two. I believe they focused TOO much on making it "Not Failure Fantasy 14" and too little on making it a healthy, long life game.

[Soukyuu]

A "healthy long life game" is impossible to sell to the "give me everything yesterday"-crowd. They used to make leveling slower with plenty of gate content, so they had time to develop and release the next batch before everyone and their hamster cleared the latest released content. The difficulty was also higher, and it was not needed at the first signs of QQing. Short lived games are the norm now, everything else doesn't sell anymore.

[Medieval]

Or developers need to understand a end game cycle of 12 to 16 weeks is too much of a wait. If you want to keep it fresh, allow new end game content every 8 week. Though this is only my opinion, I don't like the slow pace that has become the norm. The fact that we won't see a higher progression dungeon until 2.2 will make quite a few people quit the game.

[Xilrasis]

Or developers need to understand a end game cycle of 12 to 16 weeks is too much of a wait. If you want to keep it fresh, allow new end game content every 8 week. Though this is only my opinion, I don't like the slow pace that has become the norm. The fact that we won't see a higher progression dungeon until 2.2 will make quite a few people quit the game.

This, along with other issues intrinsic to releasing a dungeon with 4 bosses.

To use an example from "That MMO," Blizzard now has the content cycle down to a science. There is a reason they release large dungeons, or multiple smaller dungeons, with relatively linear progression (given some exceptions.) Additionally, they release two modes: Normal and Heroic.

This allows for several things:

1) By releasing two different encounter modes, they technically only have to design an encounter once (On heroic), or one and a half times (Once on normal, then add for heroic) and then adjust down or up by adding or removing abilities, damage, and HP. This allows for less hardcore guilds to feel as if they are accomplishing something on a weekly basis by tackling content with a lower skill floor, while allowing hardcore guilds to cut their teeth against the bleeding edge.

2) By releasing a large number of encounters in a particular tier, you create a minimum time investment. The further you progress through the dungeon, the larger your minimum time investment to repeat this progress becomes. This means that those who raid 12 hours a week may have to devote 4 of those hours re-clearing the difficult content they have just learned, sometimes more, leaving them with less time for progress on the more difficult encounters in the tier. With a small number of bosses (Read: 4), this time investment is essentially nil after week two. There is no continual progression/learning, there is no re-progression on encounters, and there is no difficulty or time involved in repeating previously defeated content. You simply steamroll the dungeon in 20 minutes and you're back to where you were last week. More encounters also helps spread the table and differentiate groups of people for those with a competitive nature, as there are more potential roadblocks in progression to separate the pack.

3) Loot Saturation is another issue. I feel like SE took "one item for each slot for each job" and decided to create a number of encounters that evenly divided this value out. Unfortunately, this means that there is only ONE chest in ONE encounter to fill a slot for that item you want, and if you don't get it then better luck next week. There is also ZERO variety outside of mythology gear. A large number of encounters at least allows for some variance to help assist with RNG, etc, and generally to help keep people further interested by allowing greater opportunities for offspec loot or for min-maxing by picking up the BEST pieces, rather than an ACCEPTABLE piece. I love the concept of being able to play everything on one character, but the likelihood that I am able to create a set of gear to compete on more than maybe one other job with 7 other people in the group is slim to none. Hell, i've been doing Binding Coil as long as just about anyone and just last week received my first piece of Allaghan gear.

All of the factors that make tiered, linear raid content last a reasonable amount of time are missing currently in this game. I have grown tired of the core game Blizzard offers, but lets face it: They do a lot of things right.

Note: This post is opinion, and I am not stating it as fact. I am open to discussion on these points, but this is just how I feel given past and present experiences.

[ReaperDx]

I definitely agree with you on all of your points, the only thing is that the game is new and there has to be a realistic expectation for content. For example, it's taken Blizzard years to develop their content cycle and get to the point where they release some form of content every few months. When WoW launched, it had zero end game; all you could do was level 1-60. Then dungeons were added, then the first raid and heroic modes weren't even added until mid-WotLK expansion.

Also, in early WoW days of 40 man raids I believe only 2-3 pieces of epic gear dropped so on that point at least this game has it right with 2 pieces per boss in an 8 man setting. RNG will always be RNG no matter how you slice it or how pieces are distributed among bosses.

Content every 8 weeks (someone else mentioned it) could work if it's a couple more turns or floors (CT) for each instance, but not enough time for any type of expansive addition. Again back to the Blizz model, after a couple months they release content but it's only daily quests. A new raid is added about 6 months after the previous one, so that's even longer than 12-16 weeks which someone thought was too long. Granted Blizz raids are usually large, but look how long it takes to develop.

My point is at least this game launched with something, most MMO's launch with nothing. In my opinion they should've delayed the game, made the open beta last longer than a weekend and ensured that it launched with CT and more bosses in BCoB....or at least maybe a couple more bosses in BCoB and more variety in the level 50 dungeon department. Basically it's just going to take time (patch 2.2) for the raiding to really get going, are people going to still be around? I hope so, I really enjoy the game and hope that they launch larger raids and develop a healthy content cycle. But it's going to take a little time to get to that point.

[Xilrasis]

I agree. I do believe that as a whole, however, the industry has evolved and anyone who hopes to meet any modern release with high expectations needs to conform to these evolutions, else it turns into any other niche game.

[Swishytail]

A "healthy long life game" is impossible to sell to the "give me everything yesterday"-crowd. They used to make leveling slower with plenty of gate content, so they had time to develop and release the next batch before everyone and their hamster cleared the latest released content. The difficulty was also higher, and it was not needed at the first signs of QQing. Short lived games are the norm now, everything else doesn't sell anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0cATOGXehc

[ReaperDx]

Well it still has time to conform to the evolutions of the gaming industry yes. But games haven't become easier to develop, if anything it's become harder. MMO's take years to develop and then you get into how long can they keep pouring time and money in to the game before they just have to launch it to see how well it does. So again, that circles back into my point that at least it launched with something when pretty much every MMO since WoW launched with nothing (or next to nothing) and failed.

Really though in the end, nothing can be done except to just wait and hope 2.2 isn't too far away and that it really delivers in spades. If it doesn't at that point anyone that's still around will probably quit, myself included.

[Yenn]

Yeah, I think our DRG is actually full i90 as of completing this week's 35 minutes of raid content.

[Instrumentality]

All of the factors that make tiered, linear raid content last a reasonable amount of time are missing currently in this game. I have grown tired of the core game Blizzard offers, but lets face it: They do a lot of things right.

Yes, twelve months of ICC (minus one day) and eleven of Dragon Soul were the pinnacle of raid development and everyone should seek to emulate Blizzard on their content release schedule.

Blizzard may do well with content releases during their expansions, but they fall apart at the end of their expansions.

Sorry, I may just be bitter, but their end-of-expansion raid content has been pretty terrible. I don't know about Pandaria raids, though, I quit in 5.2.