Tanaka Rage!

[ronin sparthos]

Im of the opinion that while we shouldn't be going back to kings type bullshit that going to the opposite extreme is equally foolish.

Abyssea pre-Heroes was as close to balanced as the game got to being balanced for different types of players. You had casuals able to hit up seals for amazing gear, hardcores had a long term project in Empyreans, EXP was good enough to be worth the time investment and overall there was an artform to being in Abyssea and reaping the rewards.

Then came Heroes of Abyssea and gratuitous overkill on all fronts. Dominion Ops turned EXP parties that were already bordering on too easy into AFK and cap jobs/merit fests, cheap brews made bulldozing content mindless (press one button and win), infinite RR made every battle winnable through zombie (cept T3 VNMs) and with little future content lined up - here we are. SE drove the game into the ground the minute they went overkill on Abyssean simplicity. In an attempt to desperately keep people playing they went from a good start to something they had no way of topping.

The main competitive advantage SE had was in telling stories and as of the last patch the Voidwatch storyline is summed up as:

"Shit is coming through vortexes, do something."

The cutscenes are just completely embarrassing. It's the stuff you try to shield your eyes from because it's complete shit on every conceivable level.

[arus2001]

I don't miss the days of lifeless college kids lording over my potential achievements because I chose to go to bed instead of camp a 1am or later HNM. Terribad drop rates were bad enough, adding player politics to the mix just doesn't lead to a healthy playerbase no matter how much some may've thrived off the drama. And since a lot of those "endgame events" had prohibitive re-entry timers, it was far too easy to exhaust possible content (if you weren't sick of doing it...) unless you wanted to merit endlessly at overcrowded camps.

XI being so sidegrade heavy for so long was ass. I don't care if people feel their effort wound up wasted when something new and better shows up. If you got it and used it, it was useful to you. That's it. MMOs aren't meant to be the same forever. It's certainly something Tanaka needs to get into his noodle when it comes to his grindfest policies where only the lifeless and RMT thrive. For all the years I dumped into the game, I really don't want to see it hobble along and eventually die. Despite Abyssea's (initial) faults, it was an evolution. Bitch about Brews, Apoc, or whatever, fine, but anyone who thinks +2 gear and the like should've been locked behind rare spawn HNMs or the next AV can stuff it.

Just makes me sad seeing so much game potential wasted over the years through bad leadership and eventually poor funding.

[mallister]

@Gredival : your response to me is exactly WHY people are pissed at tanaka. instead of fixing the king/botting/bottleneck problems, they were quite happy to say 'lol working as intended' for years. hell i'm no anti-botting purist, i did my time with a couple of HNM's after i just didn't give a shit anymore and honestly, learning how the other half lived was fun for the first year or so. then it was just homo. watching teribad players get top end gear they had no idea how to use (a particular spanish bravura/ebody warrior that used no gearswaps and i outparsed by more than 50% on my subduer GS drk in dyna sandy at lvl 80 comes to mind) while waiting in line for the random number generator to shit an ebody at an off-hour camp when there weren't 30 people ahead of me in the line present got kind of old. fast. i moved through three endgame HNM shells before finally getting tired of dealing with the asshats and moving in to do things with a smaller group of people and not wanting to stab myself in the eye daily.

the changes to make kings poppable were presented years ago by the community, and while they didn't address botting directly they would have had the desired effect: make the content accessible to people. the fights have been retardedly easy for years, winning them was never the problem, always, claiming was the problem.

nothing new here, this is all /deadhorse and been done to death. dunno really how people can honestly support the exclusivity argument with a straight face, but i am notoriously easy to troll.

[Gredival]

So your hysterics that abyssea ruined the game stems from what? Because a large majority of low~mid tier players can get the best gear now? News flash, a ton of low~midtier players had the best gear before. The amount of complete retards running around with ridills, and dalmaticas, and whatnot was already immense before.

Immense? Hardly the levels of proliferation comparative to AF3+2 or Twilight bodies today.

Again I'm not going to argue that good gear didn't find its way into the hands of the undeserving. But I will definitely argue that it wasn't as bad before brew/cruor/atma

It is the same thing now, except it is more accessible.

But this is a comparative argument. If accessibility is bad, more accessibility is worse.

Basing an arguement that the game is being ruined because of abyssea is quite ridiculous when the game was already in decline because of the old system anyway.

That depends. I will concede that Abyssea is popular and better for business. My argument is that as a game, the game is significantly worse. It was declining in popularity and players before, but it was still a great game. Now there is a more active player base but the game is worse.

I rely on the proposition popularity does not equate merit as a work of art. Case in point, I guarantee you Twilight is a more read and more popular book in America than Ulysses. Are we going to say Twilight is a better book than Ulysses or that Meyer is a superior author to Joyce? Or how about the Recherche? I'm sure less people have read the complete Illiyad.

Gear exclusivity doesn't mean anything; truly terrible players still don't have the best of the best. They are still running around in full pink, or a smattering of +1s. What abyssea did was open up the best gear to the ambitious who maybe didn't have the time to camp fafnir, or did not care for the bureaucracies that linkshells perpetuated. This is coming from someone who had ridill, and dalmatica, and everything ground had to offer outside of dring. The only saving grace before abyssea was the 6-man content TOAU offered. That is the one thing I wish they would do moving forward: gear content towards ~a single party.

There are still a ton of truly terrible people with AF3+2 who wouldn't have had Ridill, Adaberk, etc.

The simple fact is they made the potentially soul crushing task of regearing your jobs for the coming level caps easy. Which I personally appreciated, because I had toyed with quitting when I first heard of the cap for much the same reason you seem to dislike abyssea: all my shinnies weren't going to be the best anymore. .

Or we could have just not gone with a new level cap, or we could have used tools already in the game (ToM and augments) to further gear progression rather than getting rid of old gear.

But that's not really the problem. I could deal with gear getting replaced. But the absolute pandering with the brews, the absolute ease and accessibility of the new armor, and the lack of competition to get new armor, and Empyreans being a fraction of the work but on par with Relics.

[dasva]

I believe players accomplishments should be limited by their ability. It's called meritocracy. If you can't do something, then you shouldn't get the reward. Everyone should get to play how they want, but that doesn't mean they are entitled to rewards from content they cannot or will not do nor should the game be changed to remove such content because the majority cannot/will not do it.

Your subscription fee entitles you to play, not to be fed any and all items you want on a silver platter. Or be given a gameshark potion.

Except this has nothing to do with ability to play the game. This only rewards people with the ability to put in tons of hours for miniscule rewards and convince others to do the same for no reward.

[Gredival]

Except this has nothing to do with ability to play the game. This only rewards people with the ability to put in tons of hours for miniscule rewards and convince others to do the same for no reward.

the changes to make kings poppable were presented years ago by the community, and while they didn't address botting directly they would have had the desired effect: make the content accessible to people. the fights have been retardedly easy for years, winning them was never the problem, always, claiming was the problem.

It excludes everyone too retarded to beat Fafnir at 75. Which is an (unsurprisingly) vast majority of the population. I've been in three servers and in each server I saw groups who would almost rage Fafnir even with 12+ people, groups who would wipe with 18+

I've seen a group rage Aspid cause they couldn't MB on time.

[dasva]

Not really. It just excluded the people that either were too retarded AND couldn't bring a small army. Though not bringing a small army lowered your odds of even getting claim (ok not really not having several botters once that became prolific)

[mallister]

It excludes everyone too retarded to beat Fafnir at 75. Which is an (unsurprisingly) vast majority of the population. I've been in three servers and in each server I saw groups who would almost rage Fafnir even with 12+ people, groups who would wipe with 18+

I've seen a group rage Aspid cause they couldn't MB on time.

these people would exclude themselves because they couldn't beat the content...sometimes you can't fix stupid and truly if a group of people can't grasp the concept of 'stand on the feet. no, dick, the FRONT feet' then i can't help them and sure, they can sit back with the rest of the full perle wars in jtown and cry. for the rest of the people that just didn't do the fights because they don't really care for the taste of cock in their mouths, the field would have been nicely leveled.

[Gredival]

If you don't want to go out and compete for gear, why do you have a right to have that gear? Gear comes from a content type you don't like? Either suck it up and do it, or don't do it.

There's two scenarios here.

A. If you HAVE to have the best gear to have fun. If so, you implicitly agree that this is all a rat race for items. Which means item rarity and value is important, which means Kings are important for the artificial control on drop rates and because it brings out the implicit competition for items into an explicit competition of teams against each other.

B. Having the best gear doesn't matter. Which means pre-Abyssea XI was still better than post-Abyssea XI. There was a giant variety of pre-Abyssea content. On top of storylines and quests there was Einherjar, Salvage, Sky, Sea, Assault, Nyzul Isle, ANNM, SCNM, KSNM, ZNM, VNM, Kings, Limbus, Wyrms, ToaU Kings, Dynamis. The catch? A substantial amount of the *best* drops were centered in competitive content. But if you don't care about having the best gear and it's about the experience playing, then just go find some other non-competitive content to do.

[Mojo]

This is not about "not being allowed to play." Anyone at any time was free to go camp whatever mob they wanted against whoever they wanted.

HNM camping wasn't playing, it was sitting around waiting for the random chance to maybe play the game that day. Good luck trying to spin that any other way without making yourself out to be a complete haijin.

[dasva]

I chose option

C. Give people with lifes and jobs that lack huge followings a chance to actually play content in the game and get drops. Can still make it difficult just possible.

Exclude people by actual mob difficulty not because of rediculous competetion stupid pop times/windows or needing large numbers. Ie stop penalizing people for not living on the game

[Churchill]

I miss kings and world spawns only because of the drama it caused as well as being able to fuck tons of people over in the other shells. I miss no other aspect, especially the amount of time it took to really control/camp all of them.

I also don't kid myself that for a minute it made any of us "better" players, we just had both of the better bots.

[Gredival]

HNM camping wasn't playing, it was sitting around waiting for the random chance to maybe play the game that day. Good luck trying to spin that any other way without making yourself out to be a complete haijin.

Competition was part of that particular content. Moreover there was alternative content to do if you didn't want to do that content. The only reason it would matter is if you were determined to have that particular gear. If you're tying your enjoyment to the gear, that means gear is the terminal objective. So then why shouldn't gear be rare and hard to acquire.

I chose option

C. Give people with lifes and jobs that lack huge followings a chance to actually play content in the game and get drops. Can still make it difficult just possible.

Exclude people by actual mob difficulty not because of rediculous competetion stupid pop times/windows or needing large numbers. Ie stop penalizing people for not living on the game

But there was TONS of alternative content if you didn't want to do Kings. You don't like King content then don't do it. It's only a problem if you want Kings gear. But if you've reduced your playing experience to getting optimal gear, well imo at that point you bite the bullet and do the content. The top is supposed to be exclusive. And imo, it SHOULD be competitive.

And even if you wanted Kings gear, we eventually got Einherjar.

[Mojo]

Or maybe you simply wanted to fight the dragon with some friends? Either way, it wasn't a competition. Competitions involve skill of some kind. Getting claim isn't so much a skill as a lottery. So again it's just the game deciding who gets to play that day.

[NynJa]

Gredival was probably one of the people whos corroded artery burst when SE announced they added kings drops to einherjar.

OMFG MY ADABERK ISNT FUCING RARE NO MORE BECAUSE IT DROPS IN EIN AND ITS NOT MY MONOPOLIZED NID WHAT THE FK U FUKIN FAGS SE FUCK YOU WHY U CHANGE THAT ITS MY EBD ITS MINE IM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN WEAR IT...etc etc


Kings were always dumb, I actually know people who said that because I didnt spend 9 hours a day in BD/aery/VoS, and I did events like Limbus/Salvage/Assaults/dynamis instead, I was an inferior player. Of course, they also later realized that said events actually dropped good gear, and when I opted to skip a couple because I maxed out and was just wasting time (LS system basically made it more efficient for me to get coins by soloing), bitched at me for not supporting the LS events, yet they were no where to be found the first two years of actually doing the event.

[Gredival]

Or maybe you simply wanted to fight the dragon with some friends? Either way, it wasn't a competition. Competitions involve skill of some kind. Getting claim isn't so much a skill as a lottery. So again it's just the game deciding who gets to play that day.

And there was the exact same dragon to fight in Limbus and Nyzul Isle. What was special about getting the chance to fight Fafnir besides that it was Fafnir and had Fafnir's lootpool?

Once again I'll repeat "Conceded this is not a skill test so much as a effort test. But isn't effort part of the equation too? One justification constantly used to defend Abyssea is that it makes it such that if someone puts in the work they will get the rewards. World spawns incorporated that by rewarding people who show up in force everyday with the majority of claims, but leaving open that possibility for anyone putting in the camping work to get the claim. We don't just give AF+1 seals to people who don't want to kill the mob or do the quests, why should Ridills and Adaberks have been given out to parts of the population that weren't willing to work go camp and kill Fafnir?" Moreover there was a much higher element of skill in world spawns that Abyssea. You wiped, others are waiting to take your stuff. Especially with no zombie atmas, cruor crutches, and what not

Gredival was probably one of the people whos corroded artery burst when SE announced they added kings drops to einherjar.

OMFG MY ADABERK ISNT FUCING RARE NO MORE BECAUSE IT DROPS IN EIN AND ITS NOT MY MONOPOLIZED NID WHAT THE FK U FUKIN FAGS SE FUCK YOU WHY U CHANGE THAT ITS MY EBD ITS MINE IM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN WEAR IT...etc etc


Kings were always dumb, I actually know people who said that because I didnt spend 9 hours a day in BD/aery/VoS, and I did events like Limbus/Salvage/Assaults instead, I was an inferior player.

I already said I disliked it. But guess what? At that time, I was still in my first server and in a shell that was trying and failing to do Kings.

And I still didn't like it. I disliked the devaluation of the gear, even when at that point I needed it.

[dasva]

But there was TONS of alternative content if you didn't want to do Kings. You don't like King content then don't do it. It's only a problem if you want Kings gear. But if you've reduced your playing experience to getting optimal gear, well imo at that point you bite the bullet and do the content. The top is supposed to be exclusive. And imo, it SHOULD be competitive.

And even if you wanted Kings gear, we eventually got Einherjar.

And who are you to tell me I can't play large portions of the game or get the gear I want because I have a rl job?

[ronin sparthos]

@Gredival

Point is, there are better ways to reward dedication rather than the pure shit that was world pops/kings/5-6windows. Any defense of those archaic systems immediately leads me to the conclusion that your LS had a bot, benefited greatly from a bot, sold gil for USD or you deluded yourself into believing that everyone had a "fair" chance.

We've already covered point systems in this thread which SE refuses to consider. Such a system rewards dedication, makes certain gear exclusive and allows for a clear path towards the item of your desire.

Everything you seem to want minus the lifesucking AFKs, sophomoric drama and crooked linkshell leadership that reigned during the age of Kings.

[Gredival]

And who are you to tell me I can't play large portions of the game because I have a rl job?

If you have tied the quality of your gaming experience to acquiring items, that is the price you pay. Because like with anything else, the world doesn't care about who has the best excuse for not doing something, they care about doing it

And who are you to tell me I can't have a Ridill because I'm too fucking stupid to stand on the feet? Who are you to tell me that I can't have this education because I don't have time to attend the classes because I have a job?

Etc. etc.

[Gredival]

@Gredival

Point is, there are better ways to reward dedication rather than the pure shit that was world pops/kings/5-6windows. Any defense of those archaic systems immediately leads me to the conclusion that your LS had a bot, benefited greatly from a bot, sold gil for USD or you deluded yourself into believing that everyone had a "fair" chance.

1. I actually server hopped twice because I refused to participate in a shell that used NASA, but I wanted to be in a shell that was active in Kings.

2. See all arguments above regarding policing bots vs. getting rid of the system because of bots.

3. Did members of my shell bot? Yes. I won't deny that. However I refused to ever bot myself, and I would take a massive ferocious hershey squirt shit down Maury's throat if given the opportunity. My refusal to bot actually made Thetruepandagod and other botters pretty fucking mad at me because I was one of the few people who was ALWAYS on for Fafnir no matter what time and he felt I was a waste of a potential claim since I didn't bot.

4. Despite that, I claimed plenty of my share of Kings legitimately. The funny thing is botters would always say I was useless because I didn't bot. Botting is a red herring.

We've already covered point systems in this thread which SE refuses to consider. Such a system rewards dedication, makes certain gear exclusive and allows for a clear path towards the item of your desire. Everything you seem to want minus the lifesucking AFKs, sophomoric drama and crooked linkshell leadership that reigned during the age of Kings.

I believe in a zero-sum competitive between Linkshells for claim of mobs such that item acquisition is limited by the success and failures of rivals.

I am open to *alternative claiming systems*, alternative drop systems, as well as strict anti-botting measures to ensure that there is a fair competition. But I believe that there should be competition concurrent with the opportunity for monopolization.