FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Schedule (12/26/2012)

[Falisa]

For any other game, I would say I hate the idea of open beta carrying over to retail. But what with a lot of people already sitting with several level 50 jobs, I have no issue with it at all for 2.0.

Also I really hope that the community, if not the game itself, holds onto the party system that I love about FF mmos. I actually really enjoyed the 6 man parties in FFXI and partying up near the end of FFXI 1.0 if that makes me crazy.

[millionsknives]

All I can say is that the majority of this game better be able to be mostly soloable.

This attitude and direction is what's killing MMOs.

Shits and giggles stuff should be soloable, but 'normal' content should require at least a two person party, or there's no point it being an MMO. It'd end up like SWTOR where there's just no point in it being an MMO, which damages the game. If you don't want to interact with others, MMOs aren't for you.

[miokomioko]

This attitude and direction is what's killing MMOs.

I would argue that the demand for group-only MMOs is what's dying.

[arus2001]

While I'm not a fan of forced grouping for everything, I'm also not a fan of soloists basically being handicapped because they don't. Grouping has its logistics hassles, with that generally being time requirements. It's all good giving people who like group content things to do, but another when the soloist hits an artificial wall that basically says they don't deserve to improve their characters and are forever doomed to mediocrity in comparison. This is and has been one of Rift's issues. I can't speak for WoW. Aion was just plain fucking grindy even without dungeon lockouts for some.

Enter the "You just want hand outs!" crowd with a dash of raider superiority complexes.

[Agito]

The party system in FFXIV = Instanced dungeons via the content finder system. The entire success of the game is going to be very reliant on the difficulty of all instanced content, if they go the WoW route of making everything very easy then this game is as good as dead.

[Spider-Dan]

Pretty sure he was being sarcastic, since Open Beta these days are treated as head starts.

No, I was not. Let me state this more clearly:

I can think of no game ever created that is LESS likely to use their Beta period as a free trial (instead of using it to actually fix problems) than ARR. If Yoshida were to allow progress to carry over from the beta, instead of trying to find and fix problems, players would instead be focusing on grinding as much as possible before retail release.

This would be a bad thing.

[Lucavi]

The party system in FFXIV = Instanced dungeons via the content finder system. The entire success of the game is going to be very reliant on the difficulty of all instanced content, if they go the WoW route of making everything very easy then this game is as good as dead.

So a hard games leads to billions of subs and an easy game leads to a dead game?

Wait, WoW is easy? Or is getting to cap easy, and then the real difficulty starts? Because if you think that the entirety of WoW is easy, hahahaha.

Provide me examples of these so-called "hard" games that are thriving in both critical and financial success, because your comment seems to assert that games live and die based on difficulty, which couldn't be farther than the truth.

Difficulty is completely irrelevant in terms of making money for a game, or in terms of keeping a stocked playerbase.

Now if you're trying to define "alive" and "dead" in terms of some artistic jingoism about needing some sort of "soul" or other manufactured opinion about what constitutes "success", then we'll be here all day going back and forth, which is kinda pointless.

[Agito]

I could go in depth and lay out exactly how the entirety of a mmorpg should be in difficulty but doing so would be meaningless. I was very specific though with my above post so I won't deviate away from it as you have and further shine upon it. What I meant was that the entirety of the (minus the starting introduction crap) "instanced content" needs have a really high difficulty to it or it's going to be extremely bland, boring, unexciting, vulgar, not worth my time and blasphemy which will ruin the entire game and it'll simply be dead. And yes, everything in WoW is extremely easy including the stuff that is supposed to be hard. I don't really care about "the number of retarded kids making big sub numbers", what i care about is a pure quality gaming experience just like all the other intelligent people out there.

[Elcura]

No, I was not. Let me state this more clearly:

I can think of no game ever created that is LESS likely to use their Beta period as a free trial (instead of using it to actually fix problems) than ARR. If Yoshida were to allow progress to carry over from the beta, instead of trying to find and fix problems, players would instead be focusing on grinding as much as possible before retail release.

This would be a bad thing.

Considering that the content will likely be tested at that point by people with all 50 characters, letting other people get through some levels allows another set of players to test that portion of the game as well.

All grinds would be beneficial to testing, whether it's rank 50s grinding dungeons for loot or new players grinding levels for a head start. And it's not impossible to think the dev team can't implement or fix stuff during this phase.

[SilverBreeze]

I would love to see extremely difficult content, but unfortunately not everyone can play at that level and people get frustrated and it will be "Bland, boring, unexciting..." etc to someone who is not capable of doing it.

It's why some games these days have the same dungeons but at different difficulty settings, because not everyone can do the really hard stuff. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see it. I was a hardcore raider, one of those .11% of the population in WoW that finished Algalon back in the day, but I know it's not for everyone, and if you want a satisfied audience, you have to cater to more than one type of person.

Success doesn't have to do with difficulty as much as having your game appealing and available to a wide audience.

[Spider-Dan]

Considering that the content will likely be tested at that point by people with all 50 characters, letting other people get through some levels allows another set of players to test that portion of the game as well.

What does this have to do with wiping beta progress?

All grinds would be beneficial to testing, whether it's rank 50s grinding dungeons for loot or new players grinding levels for a head start.

Having players try to identify (and grind) the content that is most lucrative for retail release doesn't really converge with a broad test of the game.

And it's not impossible to think the dev team can't implement or fix stuff during this phase.

It's about setting expectations.

If Yoshida tells people that they can expect to keep their beta progress, and the beta actually turns out to be useful and expose a big exploit that needs fixing, Yoshida is now put in the position of allowing those gains to persist into retail, or wiping progress and facing the tidal wave of tears.

Best to avoid all that noise and tell people from jump that you will not be allowed to carry beta progress forward.

[Grey Jorildyn]

If there's a bug like he'll just ask us all the report ourselves for it, including the amount of whatever we got through the exploit. Seems sound, amirite?

Too many what-ifs in there. Don't get paranoid just yet.

[Elcura]

And how do players find out what is most lucrative? They fucking play the game and figure it out. Shit is going to get tested no matter what the perceived focus is.

It doesn't matter if they keep character progress, and since you think people's focus will change if they keep progress, I'm telling you it doesn't matter because they'll still be testing the game before retail. And if a major bug or exploit is found, progress might or will be wiped, but that also won't matter because that's the point of a beta.

Why do you think he had a disclaimer saying that progress might be wiped? Because it might be wiped. But it might not be, at that point in testing whatever happens isn't a huge deal for the release of the game. If nothing's wrong, they can release and keep progress. If something is wrong, they can wipe and fix it. Come retail, it'll be fine.

[Spider-Dan]

If you tell people that progress might be kept, but then you ending up wiping it (even for a good reason), you create complainers, which is what ARR desperately needs to avoid.

Saying "beta progress will not be carried to retail" is non-controversial and would create less whining than the promise of potential carryover followed by a data wipe.

[Pooky]

The OF would complain regardless, about anything. If they can make controversy out of the grass, anything is possible.

[Elcura]

If that was your argument from the beginning then yeah, I agree. It's safer to say progress will not be carried over, but then you risk having less players for that phase so more things potentially fall through the cracks. You might find whiners who complain that Yoshi broke his disclaimer promise (which we all knew, know and fucking KNOW is a possibility), but letting a bunch of retards complain that data was wiped to make the game better seems like an acceptable loss to me.

[Arximiro]

The allowance of progress to be carried over will for sure make me want to play more and test more content out. I'm sure a lot of other players would feel the same way.

[superzombie23]

I would love to see extremely difficult content, but unfortunately not everyone can play at that level and people get frustrated and it will be "Bland, boring, unexciting..." etc to someone who is not capable of doing it.

...

Success doesn't have to do with difficulty as much as having your game appealing and available to a wide audience.

They can make it fun, but they got to weed out all the people with who can't play properly. They should implement CoP-esque storyline missions as a prereq to endgame, and make them very difficult. That way, it's fun till you have to get over that wall. Then, it is unlikely people get paired up with tards who cannot do their job.

That was the problem with WoW; There was no wall to block people from the max level or end game. On the other hand, FFXI had plenty starting at level 10, so horrible players became experienced with their jobs by end game. I'd rather they do the same with FF14 starting at level 10, but I have a feeling that is unlikely. So we will have these n00bs that solo'd most of their time outside dungeons, then they make dungeon runs fail miserably. That is why I hope they just make one difficulty, hopefully early on in the game. If people get bored from failing or the difficulty (even though it is fun), they should just quit the game.

[Rocl]

I don't see why you need a block to weed out the bads. It always sucks finding bads in your PUG, but things like CoP certainly didn't prevent them (nor did ZM, which held a lot more content at release etc). Not to mention CoP opens a whole can of worms with artificial difficulty through level cap and gear restrictions in addition to whatever actual strategy and mechanics went into the fights.

The "block/wall" should be you. I mean, getting a bad in your group sucks, and it may ruin the entire run but it creates more people in the long run. There's people who soloed to cap, those who partied to cap, etc and all of them at max level--there's a bigger pool of people, more who suck and more who are good and more who are okay but can learn to be better. By shutting a door, you do just that: shut people out. That isn't what I want from a game! I want people to play with.

I'm also kinda curious what blocks you're talking about it in FFXI at level 10. Subjob quest? The jump in exp needed to next level and the inefficiency of solo play? \'~'/ What benefit did that have? People who got bored of putting their flag up and looking for a party for hours quitting the game?

The bads will keep failing dungeon runs and eventually stop doing them and quit the game. Or they'll do something else entirely in the game that isn't "endgame" which reminds me of my dad and WoW lols

[Lucavi]

Oh Falisa, you can be my Sassy Tyrant anytime.

@Rocl: I kinda agree, especially as there's more than one type of bad out there. Some people are bad only because they don't know better; mentoring those types of people can lead to some amazing friendships. Nobody starts off a pro at something, and if someone is the bad kind of bad - refusing to learn or take sage advice - then they should be able to be vote-booted and such.

Yeah, you're gonna have those ninja groups that run 4/5 slots or whatever and boot some innocent person at the end of a run to grab the loot, but those types of people will be easily called out and ostracized, especially in a game that doesn't allow you to easily change your name or change servers.