Are static groups simply the now accepted reality for endgame progression?

[charlemagne]

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this as I've yet to start the coil. It seems to me though that you're limited in your group choice for a week at a time.
I think it's unfortunate and I'd rather players could join a group up to the highest level they have personally reached but I'm not convinced that it's a huge problem.
The static group you put together in your FC need not be the same static group every week if progress is reset. I think it's perhaps more of an issue now than it will be when we have more content to keep us busy, but it does seem a mystifying decision to impede progress in such an artificial way.

[Yoko_Kurama]

I think a lot of people reading your post don't exactly get what you mean, based on many responses it seems they are assuming you want end game content to be easy enough for random duty finder to work. What you are talking about is old school mmo end game playing where you build an elite guild of like 100 players, which forms about 12 good parties and you easily can interchange core guildies with newer guildies in end game dungeons so that at the same time (roughly) everyone in your guild is completing the content together even when split into smaller parties. Heck games of the past you could just have your whole guild run into the dungeon at the same time and once inside the dungeon then form your parties out of the guildies that are there. With the way todays end game is you are saying that this style is not viable correct? In that way yeah we are probably living in the past and i feel you brother

*edit*
In other words a true end game guild in the past would have been when you had over 100 people who were all geared and experienced at the same time rather than todays end game guilds which can have 100 people but only 8-10 people who actually know what they are doing.

[Murugan]

I think a lot of people reading your post don't exactly get what you mean, based on many responses it seems they are assuming you want end game content to be easy enough for random duty finder to work. What you are talking about is old school mmo end game playing where you build an elite guild of like 100 players, which forms about 12 good parties and you easily can interchange core guildies with newer guildies in end game dungeons so that at the same time (roughly) everyone in your guild is completing the content together even when split into smaller parties. Heck games of the past you could just have your whole guild run into the dungeon at the same time and once inside the dungeon then form your parties out of the guildies that are there. With the way todays end game is you are saying that this style is not viable correct? In that way yeah we are probably living in the past and i feel you brother


*edit*
In other words a true end game guild in the past would have been when you had over 100 people who were all geared and experienced at the same time rather than todays end game guilds which can have 100 people but only 8-10 people who actually know what they are doing.

Basically yes, except 100 players is very large in MMORPG's where there is not even 40 man raids let alone 75+ like in the early days.

The point is not every endgame community likes the "Elite clique" and their groupies approach to endgame. Some have many members of equal skill, or even if not equal skill people we actually like and want to play with not just use for our own gear progression.

The way CoB is setup, you are just heavily restricted who in your guild/FC you can play with every week while doing the most challenging endgame content currently available (the focus of most endgame guilds). Despite what some are saying (maybe because they come only from WoW) this was not the norm. It snuck up on me. Lockouts on single group content? Absurd. How do they expect this not to hurt communities.

We will live and adapt just like we did in 1.0, but they are missing the mark on what a lot of us enjoy about MMORPG's. That is our communities, and SE is depriving us of the opportunity to enjoy the content we like "endgame" with the people we want to play with. They should find a better approach to their problem of not having people progress too fast.

There are lots of ideas, SE has even had many of them, they just need to get away from WoW and their ever shrinking group sizes with inexplicably ever increasing lockouts and restrictions and find something that doesn't have the side effect of punishing communities.

[Ralemont]

I always ran endgame with the same ~12-18 people in FFXI, after the initial years of HNM stupidity. Of course, you could do super large linkshells if you wished but there was little point to it, especially during the pinnacle Abyssea years. Nothing in Dynamis besides Lord required more than 18 competent people, either.

So I guess I'm not sure what old-school MMOs we are talking about, but running the same content with the same people is how I've rolled for the last 10 years.

[Ahlen]

They have been for like 9 years, where have you been?

[Bluejay]

I haven't made it to end game content yet, so please feel free to ignore my opinion, but...

I am ok with content that requires statics as long as that is not the only thing to do at the end game. I don't think every piece of content has to be open to every game play style. As long as they add stuff for FC's and soloists at the end game as well, let the statics have Coil.

I realize that since the game just released, there might be a limit to the amount of end game content available. So I will reserve judgement until a few expansion packs come out and we can see if they are attentive to the other MMO game play styles.

[KimimiAvesta]

I haven't made it to end game content yet, so please feel free to ignore my opinion, but...

I am ok with content that requires statics as long as that is not the only thing to do at the end game. I don't think every piece of content has to be open to every game play style. As long as they add stuff for FC's and soloists at the end game as well, let the statics have Coil.

I realize that since the game just released, there might be a limit to the amount of end game content available. So I will reserve judgement until a few expansion packs come out and we can see if they are attentive to the other MMO game play styles.

I agree - if Coil's the end game content for people who want statics then that's fine, no issues with that. But if static's is all there's going to be then we've got a problem on our hands!

What's odd to me is that 95% of the game is about solo or DF play... it's like they say "You know all that stuff we taught you to expect? Those things we encouraged you to do? FORGET THEM ALL!" XD Err... basically, Coil sounds like a complete change in attitude towards the fundamentals of the game compared to how you play the story, FATEs, DF groups, etc. This is rather worrying for someone like myself, because the pre-Coil content by and large suits the free time I have available very well, but "no static=no progress" doesn't at all :S

I really hope each expansion "resets" what's required of players, in the sense that people can jump into pretty much any story they wish and progress post-credits onto hard/extreme/static-style content, rather than adding end game onto the end game onto the Relic onto... etc, etc.

[Ariyn]

The entire reason this is even a discussion is because Crystal Tower didn't make it into launch. If it had none of this would be an issue.

Yea I want to be able to rotate FC members in and out and I do. Coil is no different then ANY other raid in any game. They have lockouts just like every other game. Yet in every other game people are rotate around to get into the fights see the content and get chances on gear. I don't really see your points. You want what, no lockouts? So you can run it over and over and farm you and everyone elses gear? If they did that people would be Best in Slot geared in a week.

[CatholicFan]

I miss the endgame style of XI. Big LS's where people took turns, and you ran content as often as you could farm the pop-items. Frankly, though, the only way this was a viable system was because the drop rates were abysmally low. It took a couple months of farming Sky to get even close to a proper gear-set, even with showing up to all the raids.

The only other MMO I've played is SWTOR, and it sucked having to maintain a static for the 8-mans, and near impossible for the 16's. Maybe we just had bad luck, or maybe it was the SWTOR community, but I don't think there was a single week that we started on time because someone was always late, missing, or there weren't sufficiently geared PUGs available. It also divided the guild between the "good" players and the "other" group. It was occasionally... awkward :/.

[Akk]

This is the collective experience of a static party: |--------|
And this is for an inclusive and organized FC: |-----------------------------------------------------------------|

If you had access to both of those methods, which would you rather work on progressing in end-game content with? Content like this that penalizes people for not doing it as part of a static party seems to only be good for people who can't find/make an inclusive and organized FC, while spurning those who put in the effort to maintain one.

If the only purpose of the over-bearing lock-outs is to limit an individual's equipment progression, then why not just limit that person's loot rights?


I just think that lock-outs for single-party content, especially regressive lock-outs if you skip turns, is silly.