Mythology Cap Is Unnecessary

[Ryuko]

What I'm wondering is if the gear will even be worth all the hard work by the time anyone even comes CLOSE to finishing one full set. Since it takes several months just to finish the body pieces (not counting jewelry), what can we expect in the future? Sure, Coil gear is comparable to AFv2 and Relic+1 (Item Level 90), but is that all we'll have for the rest of the year? Apparently, Crystal Tower gear will be a lower iLevel than Coil, so that's out as a possible replacement.

Something 'realistic' I could see happening is...
1) Weekly Myth cap will be removed or increased in a few months. I also suspect we'll have more options to get myth by this point besides the tedious AK grind.
2) Another 'tier' of AFv2 will come out, perhaps AFv2+1 featuring ANOTHER reskin of the AF we know and love... you'll need to 'trade in' your old AFv2 pieces or the equivalent myth in addition to a 'new' tier of tomestones to get it. (Sort of like how you need to trade in your relic and an item bought with myth tomes for a relic+1)

[Chrysania]

Final Treadmill Fantasy: Evergearquest Edition

Of course, I'd love to be able say that that isn't every mmo nowadays, though this formula's been boiled to death, and they don't even try to boil a different rat every time some company gets a wild hair up their bum that they too must have a superboring grindy-gear-treadmill raid game.

I mean, here we are with ARR. Gee. Another game in which you farm the same 1-3 largescale group events for tokens to get slightly better gear so you can do the next bit of 'content' (lawl) repeatedly.

Bigupdates will trivialize your thousands of hours of dedication and put you back at the bottom of the hill, with slightly different treadmills to grind so that you can, eventually, get tossed back at the bottom again with the next expansion-grade update.

Funnily, WoW has been forced by desire to succeed into making their game increasingly less like that. If vanilla wow had never changed much, I'm willing to bet it wouldn't exist in modern relevance at all. For as much as some love to bash WoW, its never catastrophically died and had to go F2P or shut down to literally reinvent itself because it failed so hard. The things it does right should be examined very carefully by its competitors, but I don't think they know how.


SE, you're as bad as bioware here in a lot of ways. You make great games; beautiful and amazing games that captivate us for decades; then forget entirely every single thing that made any of your games amazing when you try to make mmo's in favor of employing that attrition-by-skinner-box approach.

Was Final Fantasy 1 a skinner box? It was a very simple game. Why was it awesome? Why would I rather play FF1 on a NES emulator by orders of yalms and malms than I wanted to play XIV 1.0, or any of this same-as-every-other-crappy-mmo 'endgame' rubbish?

Short answer: no. I bought FF1 on NES with money I'd saved up from mowing lawns and fell in love with being able to make my own party and pick their classes. Do you have ANY IDEA how many YEARS of enjoyment I got out of FF1? Do you have any idea how happy I was to buy it again on PS1 in the Origin chronicle release? I bought it on the PS store JUST SO I COULD HAVE IT IN ONE MORE PLACE.

FF1. 8 bit Nintendo game that I've bought repeatedly AND have for a NES emulator. Are those even legal? I surely don't know; sell a version I can play on my PC and I'll happily buy that too.

FF3/6? Oh man. That was the first game that tearjerked me. I still play that game too, only nowadays on my 3DS.

FF7? It was a good game, and I saw it on Steam for twelve bucks and I yoinked it without a thought or a qualm. The original PC version was clunky and the music was worse than the PS1 version, but I bought that back in the day too. Steam tells me I've spent 67 hours playing Final Fantasy 7 since I bought it.

That's 67 hours I was happy to spend.

Now, FF8, 9 and 10, 10's new HD release, 10-2 and 12? I loved all of those for various reasons. Well, 10-2 I didn't love; I liked it, but I didn't love it.

8, 9 and 12? I've bought 8 on PS3, and I'd buy the others again on a new platform just to have them on something current that I've actually got hooked up to a monitor or my tv. 10's remaster? You bet I'm there, and I'll be playing the joyful hell out of it.

And then there's FFXI. What the crap is that? You made a really godawful boring game, broke a neat story into pieces and scattered those pieces throughout a really lousy game. The game itself was atrocious and for as much as some few loved it, many more reviled and abhorred it. And you learned way too late that, frankly, MOST people don't like Stupid-Hard Everquest Grinds.

FFXIV. Ya know, I was in the closed beta for that. It was horrid, many of us told you it was horrid, nobody cared. Not long after, the world went "This is horrid" and punched you in the bank account so hard that you remade it into ARR here. I give you kudos for that, SE; that takes brass. That takes integrity. Your game didn't just flop; it faceplanted and skidded. But you didn't ditch those that'd invested in it; you didn't betray your Final Fantasy fanbase.

You bit the bullet, ate the fiscal losses and remade it. And it is indeed better.

But its still MMO bad.

These games which we call MMO's are often no fun at all to play. In fact, they try to redefine what you will understand as being 'fun' and try to teach you that fun equals completion. You are encouraged to run marathons whether you want to our not in order to each what you do want. Even gear appearance reflects this. You look like an idiot peasant until you run lots of, if not all of the, treadmills.

And if you want to look anything resembling cool, girlfriend, the merchant's smile just got ten miles wide. You're going to pay in blood, time, sweat and tears. It will not be worth it. But even if you know that in your head, if you're 'heavily invested', you're probably going to do it anyway, even if you think its stupid and insane. Why? Because you've been trained to hope for fun that never really comes. Chase the carrot, little donkey. That's a good donkey.

What they want you to believe is this: you're not having fun until you're done. But you can't really be done. You're paying for an ongoing experience, in fact; you're not supposed to be done if they're still taking your money.

It's pathetic. They say mmo development is difficult, but i don't think it is. I think they work a lot harder trying to make sure you, the player, can't have much fun at once than on anything and everything else combined.

And i do not think that they are developing content because they want to make a great game that you will want to play endlessly because its so damn fun. That takes inspiration. That takes creativity. That's HARD. Working tirelessly to make sure no quest enters the game that does not mean a time-to-completion standard formulated by maketing economists that couldn't care less if you, the player, have fun or die horribly long as your payments clear is, however, rather easy. Formulaic, even.

Want to be 'hardcore'? Run all these treadmills. 200, maybe 300 times each. Oh, and while you're at it, here're these achievements that'd take you 5-10 years to actually acquire (No, seriously, there are achievements here in XIV ARR like that. Look it up. Its hilarious).

I wish the devs were hardcore. I wish they'd actually care enough to target a market and make their MMO be something that caters to that market rather than trying to be everything to everyone and leaving everyone with a somewhat queasy "I just ate too much airline food" feeling. You know that feeling, somewhere on the other side of malaise but not quite outright sick? That feeling.

The hardcore raiders don't want a robus leveling and story-packed, cutscene-saturated game. Its torture for them to go through umpty-wahoo levels to get to the only part of the game they actually enjoy, and it will always come back to haunt them. They may accept it as 'part of the crap you have to go through to raid', but maybe a raid game should just be raidy and focus on appealing to those that love to raid.

Maybe an MMORPG should exist that REALLY IS all about story, exploration and taking you on an ongoing saga of a journey. Secret World did an amazing job of this with its community mysteries (ARG's), though it too succumbs at the end to gear treadmilling in an utter betrayal of everything that made it fun to play to that point.

Protip: If 95% of your game is about story, immersion in the world you've created and explorations/activities therein, do not be surprised when a lot of people go "WTF is this crap?" if the last 5% is essentially some other game entirely; a far crappier and utterly boring grindfest of a game.

Its not rocket science. It is, in fact, macrosociological science, but you're just dealing with hundreds of thousands unto millions of people; why would you hire experts on the behaviours of people? Nay, hire more economists so the numbers look good. Nevermind that youre game is bollocks and most of your players don't even know why they're playing except for that they keep wishing it were the game they imagined it would be/keep hoping it might yet be the game they hoped it would be.

The tragedy to me is that its all negative motive. You're not grinding dungeons because its fun; it sucks. But you want the carrot on the stick; when you get the carrot at long last, be it ten or ten thousand hours later, you will feel some measure of relief, like a great weight has been lifted, followed by brief euphoria.

Its the same psychological experience undergone when prolonged pain or stress has abated.

Elective self torture in pursuit of very short lived relief, is what that is.

That's what you're doing; that is what you at paying good money and irreplaceable time for.

Don't you think they could maybe ditch that dark age model and make their game genuinely fun to play? I mean, here we have Square Enix. Most of the Final Fantasy games are epic and fun. Most of the Dragon Quest games are badass and superfun. Most of the odd little sideline games they've made have at least been interesting. This is the company that gave the world Chrono Trigger.

And this is the best they can do with an MMO? This...piteous, misshapen wretch of a mutant mating of Everquest and WoW with a chocobo glued to its forehead is it? This is it?

There IS, however, a great game under the bullpucky. I think it wants to get out, though I don't expect it'll ever wriggle through the bars of Korean grind. I suspect it will get buried under more garbage and ARR will, in a year's time, be on very few peoples' lists of things to ever care about again.

I don't wish for that. I wish I had a good final fantasy game to play. FF13 and 13-2 are running a bit stale, and 15's not coming soon to theaters, retail stores or Amazon delivery schedules near me.

Here's what I and every other Final Fantasy fan are stuck with.

These fights aren't hard; finding people to do them with reliably is. Nothing in this game us hard except tolerating its bullpucky, buy that's true for most mmos these days, no?

And that's not fun; that is not positive motive to play. That is negative motive pursuit of relief from the feeling of dread or loathing or neurotic need to finish a thing.

I'm a psychic too; some idiot that either can't our won't type real sentences will soon comment on this, saying, to the effect of 'lol y u play mmo then go back 2 wow lol'.

I play mmos because I couldnt play final fantasy of any kind, morrowind, oblivion, skyrim, any of the mass effects or knights of the old republic with anyone else.

Still can't. Those games were all about taking you on an engaging adventure and telling you a story; making you part of the story.

Now? Final fantasy is an everquest/wow hybrid with chocobos, kotor is a wow clone in space and even the elder scrolls is joining the mmo legion.

Pretty much means that elder scrolls, as seems to be the case with final fantasy, is done. Its an mmo alright; yet another thing that'd been largely amazing and pretty consistently wonderful for decades turned into a gold-plated turd of a trololol skinner box.


TL; DR : So yeah, the myth cap is silly. What isn't in this, or any, mmo?

[Toxictaru]

You're complaining about an MMO being a time sink? Really? If you want offline Final Fantasy, play offline Final Fantasy. FFXIV is an MMO, that isn't going to change any time soon. It also isn't very likely going to drop any of its MMO trappings either, because they're kind of what makes people come back (even if they don't like grinding out phil/myth tomes, Justice/Valor points, etc). Complaining about lack of content this early is silly. People draw a lot of comparisons to WoW lately, so how about this one: WoW launched with minimal instances, and the only "end-game" content that was available was Scholo, Strat, and UBRS/LBRS (not a raid). Actual raids were Molten Core and Onyxia. FFXIV isn't exactly that far off, content wise. We have 3 hard-mode bosses, two "end-game" dungeons (WP and AK), and Coil. We're expecting a patch very soon, and that is bringing us even more.

Did you guys really expect this game to launch with enough content to match WoW's 4 expansion cycles?

[Ragingfungus]

Its on par with coil gear. You shouldn't be able to get it within a week or even 1 month since it requires zero progress. That said I wouldn't mind a 400-500 cap.

[MrHobbit]

Having no cap on myth would compleatly destroy whatever marker of i lvl70 crafted gear we have left so that's a no in my opinion

[Jinko]

I think the cap is definately needed to stop people maxing out end game in a week, however they should probably lighten up on the cost of items, 1 item a week would seem much more reasonable IMO.

It would still take 10 weeks or so to get a full set.

[KendoTone]

Lol

The people who would run AK over and over and over again to attain all the mythology gear are the people who are already at turn 5 of Coil..... so yea.. the cap is stupid cause the people who woudl abuse it are already getting better gear. The people who can't run Coil for whatever reasons but do have the time to run some AKs here and there are fucked because they got 2 wait 2 weeks just a for a piece of jewerly..

Yer all lemmings. Honestly. Think about it. The people who are hardcore enough to go through that grind doing the hardest things in the game most likely on first week release.... the cap is for all you bluebys and carebares that they know they can sucker.

Suckasss

[Stryker]

Snip

I'm struggling to understand the last statement you made. Do you mean Suckas or suck ass? Also how is everyone a lemming? From reading the thread half are opposed and half are ok with it.

Me on the other hand, personally don't care. I guess the one thing that is nice about the cap is that since I'm slowly progressing to where I can do AK, it means that there will be a steady stream of people running the instance even as the game gets a bit older. Albeit until a new source of farming myth tomes is released.

I'm sure eventually when the game gets older they'll start rewarding myth tomes from fates so people can grind to lvl 100 and get enough myth to get all their af+1 and relic +1's to continue the game. Looking forward to those baddies in af+1 in a year from now. It'll be the same problem we have today just with higher end gear.

[KendoTone]

what i mean is the cap isn't beneficial to anyone, hardcore or casual. Hardcores will be in Bahamut gear(as there are already many people almost fully geared out from coil already) and casuals will have to wait 2 weeks to get 1 drop because of the myth limit cap. Longer for Chest/Legs.

[Stryker]

Ahh, yeah it sucks. It's a terrible use of free time. It's a time sink and that's what it's supposed to be but its waaay to long right now. But then again the game is new. It's trying to find that balance between time sink and reward. I think they went a little overboard with the time sink part.