Comments from the Devs

[arus2001]

There's perhaps an untapped PR angle there. XI was terrible about "events" on the reality end to draw people in. Even simple stuff like, "Sign up now and play 3 months for $30!" instead of $45 could do it for some folks. Could have pets/costumes associated with some aspect of the new content, or even seasonal depending on upcoming holidays. I'd started a post last night talk on how devs seem content with only like 15% of their players completing their most recent content (a la Tera), but got distracted and just nixed it as I got back to my PC here today. Long and short of that point was a befuddlement on why they don't shoot for higher numbers, as people feeling they're along for the ride and not being left behind is its own trap--especially once tiering and antiquation kicks in.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Many other games also don't look at content as requiring 1 person or a half or full party. They use more numbers than that. For example content recommended for 2 or 3 players. Class balance comes into play, sure, since sometimes those duo quests can be solo'd some way by class X or Y. The idea is to think outside the easy boxes they want to develop content for and improve upon their game to make content exhaustive, variable in difficulty, available, and easy to engage in (yes those last two are different).

Edit: oh and thank you for clarifying the Aion solo dungeon. It seems like there was great potential squandered by lack of resources or whatever on their part. XIV could make some pretty damn epic solo quests for shit like limit breaks, AF gear, etc that add new grinds to the solo adventure. Sometimes people just wanna do something for themselves, even in a multiplayer game. Personal accomplishments go beyond achievements and they make people feel good. I think enough of the XI/V crowd places enough emphasis on that it is worth including somewhere for variety if nothing else.

[Churchill]

People were tiered out of story missions though. 1.0 story wasn't hard by any MMO's standards but a lot of people could not beat United We Stand or The White Raven.

[Grey Jorildyn]

People were tiered out of story missions though. 1.0 story wasn't hard by any MMO's standards but a lot of people could not beat United We Stand or The White Raven.

Baddies gonna be bad man.

[Hyan]

I hope making it easier to participate would help (dungeon finder), especially after the initial rush post-patch.

I also don't think having people do lower level instances beforehand will hurt their skills. In 1.0 there was little to prepare you on the way, I think...

[arus2001]

Ultimately, my biggest concern with story content and 6+ party requirements can be traced back to the CoP days. If you're not in a static, you'll basically need to hope you can the right people with the right jobs at the right times on the right mission. There's just too many variables there that, while a quest/dungeon helper can help fill in, is only as useful as people both using it and using it when you need to. So, this is also where I say incentive to be a helper without the given objective should offer some kind of perk. I wouldn't quite want to call it a mentoring currency or something, since I feel like people before whatever requirement should be able to help assuming they meet other level/stat requirements.

[jwang]

People were tiered out of story missions though. 1.0 story wasn't hard by any MMO's standards but a lot of people could not beat United We Stand or The White Raven.

What do you mean tiered out? I beat those two in nothing but AF, crafted, or GC gear. There shouldn't be any excuses!

[Vuitton]

What do you mean tiered out? I beat those two in nothing but AF, crafted, or GC gear. There shouldn't be any excuses!

Indeed, but for a few things:

United We Stand was a DPS check. If you could kill the adds faster than they kept spawning you'd have enough time to quickly take down the lasers and switch to the satellite.

White Raven was just pulling off the strategy correctly, but the tank needed to have decent gear to not be an MP sponge. Usually the weak spot for strategy failure was BLMs getting resists on the meteor and it landing or just outright missing a meteor.

I did these both in standard AF / Melded / GC gear as well. In fact that's all there really was save the dungeon gear and primal weapons, which were just superfluous.

[Achitophel]

I think this is part of my current reluctance to try and advocate open world grinding as well.

Once it becomes a viable option for people, it is most likely that they will try and stick to it, since it part of the game they used to (and maybe still) so feverishly love. Even if dungeons were more attractive to do, I don't doubt the certain stubbornness of that crowd to simply ignore them for the sake of doing what they've always been doing because that's what they grew up on or are more comfortable with.

It just seems like one of those things that people need to let go and move onto something different and progressive from the old.

I don't get why someone would want to proselytize to those people, though. If they want to do it, let them do it. Is this a video game that you want to succeed so you have a lot of people to play with, thus income coming in, thus a steady stream of new content? Or is it an evangelical exercise to bring nonbelievers unto salvation as you see it?

We all have our own preferences, and if open world grinding is gonna hurt more fun stuff, than no, fuck that. If it's not? I don't mind if some people like it, I'm not on a jihad to make sure others' opinions match my own.

[Enygma55]

There is integrity of design, and to grant them open world party grind is to cave into demands. Yoshi-P wants people to gain xp thru consuming content. He doesn't want to design xp camps for every level range.

If people are complaining that solo xp is a bit slow, I can understand, can probably bump solo xp a bit more.

But if people are complaining about a full 8 man party grinding on open world, might as well enter a dungeon, call that your xp camp, and gain 5x the amount of xp in the same time frame (and gain loot to boot). You don't have to clear the instance, just kill mobs, exit and re-enter.

Dungeons are 1hr time limit but most don't take more than 30 mins to complete and you can freely leave whenever you want.

Its like oldschool RPG games. If the natural progression of the game gives you just enough xp to continue without having to stop and grind out levels, then its a success. No one wants to run circles in the forest for 2hrs killing mobs just to be able to beat the next boss.

[Grey Jorildyn]

The reason the ratio between mob exp and TNL exp is there is to basically make sure people DON'T just grind mobs aimlessly. Leave it the way it is!

[Achitophel]

So are you guys agreeing with the idea of "as long as it doesn't fuck with anything else, let them have that method available to them"? Or are you going with the ideological "even if it doesn't affect anything for me, I don't want it for them to have it as a possibility because fuck them?"

I can't imagine that I'm opinionated or self-righteous enough to go with the latter but...

[Grey Jorildyn]

The latter but not for that reason whatsoever. The community needs to come along for the ride in this modern car. It doesn't need roll-up windows and a tape deck to go with the leather seats and the ipod dock (imo).

[Achitophel]

No, that's the reason, dude. You don't need to go have a sermon on the mount and win them over. If people want to come, they can come. That's extremely self-righteous. Check it out: I think virtually every dyed-in-the-wool liberal or conservative is a fucking myopic idiot, but even I don't sit around preaching to them although it does actually effect my real life. Doing it about a video game because you want to lead some random folks out of the desert is just silly.

If it doesn't effect your gameplay- and in this hypothetical it doesn't- just let them be.

[Kurokikaze]

Man... I keep reading these dev comments and Beta Phase three is looking a lot like that magical patch that was gonna fix everything around initial launch.

We'll have this ready for Phase 3...
Look forward to Phase 3...

Uh oh..

[miokomioko]

The only difference Phase 2 is going to have is pretty much just Grand Companies + Gamepads... :/

[Takiwaki]

No, that's the reason, dude. You don't need to go have a sermon on the mount and win them over. If people want to come, they can come. That's extremely self-righteous. Check it out: I think virtually every dyed-in-the-wool liberal or conservative is a fucking myopic idiot, but even I don't sit around preaching to them although it does actually effect my real life. Doing it about a video game because you want to lead some random folks out of the desert is just silly.

If it doesn't effect your gameplay- and in this hypothetical it doesn't- just let them be.

Its their fucking game, if they want to make it a certain way that's fine, it has nothing to do with being self righteous, its like you coming into my house which I have a rule of not wearing shoes and you telling me its wrong cus you want to wear shoes. Thing if SE doesn't want grinding then accept it and lets move on. Just cus its not going to affect other people playing doesn't mean they should put it in. Silly argument

[Achitophel]

Its their fucking game, if they want to make it a certain way that's fine, it has nothing to do with being self righteous, its like you coming into my house which I have a rule of not wearing shoes and you telling me its wrong cus you want to wear shoes.

Uhhh...no one said they couldn't? Are you sure you read the posts correctly or...?

[miokomioko]

I was going to say it's more of a dress code. But yeah.

To be honest, though, I shouldn't feel like I'm completely wasting my time when I stop to kill something I've aggro'd. Right now I do.

[Vuitton]

The only difference Phase 2 is going to have is pretty much just Grand Companies + Gamepads... :/

I think phase 2 is only for testing the the gamepad, so I wouldn't expect it to be very long. Maybe 2 weeks?