FFXIV Random Complaint Thread: Look forward to it

[Carth]

As a person who is just really not into this game right now, it's not the gear that disappoints me. Frankly I've learned to not care about it in this game. My problem I want resolved is this game is too fucking simple. This game is just so mindless that it's relying on Level 50 players to just become drones and cap your myth every week. T5 is the only worthy challenge in this game and at this point it's only about mimicing the steps that BG group did. There's a serious lack of theorycraft and I relish in that type of stuff.

I'm feeling ranty but I got an annoying cold right now, so I'll just finish it by saying this game will only feel worth it maybe about 2 years down the line when they've added a shitload of stuff.

[Achitophel]

Oh, oh, I'll totally do this. If I keep you posting, you'll get banned again, so I'll totally play my role until that happens!

Okay, lets see.. why would anyone propose that something should be BiS for 6 years... um... uhh... Oh! I know!

BECAUSE FINAL FANTASY XI DID IT AND THOSE PEOPLE REALLY LOVED FINAL FANTASY XI!

Your turn, Arch!

So you just assumed? Well that was bad of you. Don't be a bad. People are saying that they think it's bad that gear (and thus the content from them) is outdated almost immediately. Your response is "Well, you must want that gear to be good for 6 years"?

loooooooooooool

really just try to call someone else out for marginalizing other people's argumemts by putting words in their mouth? Just shut up, you're a fucking joke.

looooooooooooool

[The Blackrose]

Lucavi, would you please stop trolling the mentally challenged?

[Deadgye]

Don't conflate dull as hell itemization with BiS gear somehow being the devil. FFXIV's gear is pretty boring considering there are no stat/set bonuses and the stats we do have have so little variety in number or amount to allow people to try different set ups.

So we agree that shit is dull at the very least. My problem with BiS shenanigans isn't mutually exclusive with that though.

Guess it also bears mentioning that something like that seems like it could get messy to balance. As soon as a hypothetical softcap GT set swings too far out of line with a full set of current gear, even if it has to be str/crit centric, and you're forcing specific some classes to go back to old raids that other classes don't care about anymore for one drop off one boss to remain competitive rather than just giving them options, you've made shit awful again as far as I'm concerned.

My primary annoyance with BiS, and the way that the gear progression in xiv is shaping up to be, is that there's practically no innate reason to do content that doesn't drop BiS gear. You called it "Forcing some classes to go do a dungeon that other classes don't care about". Doesn't that strike you as odd? The problem there isn't that you're forcing someone to do old content, it's that you see it as being forced to do old content. If there's no reason to do content, then what's the point of it even being in the game? It's more beneficial for a game to give a player a reason to do old content, to make them want to do old content. This doesn't need to be done through itemization, but it is the easiest and most effective way.

If you have a properly tuned vertical progression game where you are required to go up one step at a time, that's fine and it works. There still exists some problems in that there's little replayability and that everything gets top heavy much quicker. But you can work around that with things like alts and stuff, as long as the foundation that was laid down is solid and well thought out.

But as you can probably see, ffxiv doesn't quite fit the bill. It's a game where you can gear up one class by playing on your other classes. This damages the many workarounds like alternate characters. Furthermore, and I think this is the most important thing, if you want a game to be successful for a prolonged period of time you want the game to have replayability. For any pay to play game this should be factored into the game from the very core of the design. Take a look at a game like Diablo 2 which people played for years and years, even coming back like a crack addict after not playing for a long time. The game's itemization was so good that it made you want to kill things you've already killed forty billion times. Meanwhile in ffxiv we're getting CT, a dungeon that some people don't even consider worth doing-- and it's not even released yet.

Edit:

Dungeon-specific furniture will be added to encourage people to go back and retry old dungeons. A few of these parts already dropped before player housing was added, but most will be added in 2.1.

And this right here is a glorious way to handle the problem of stagnant old content. This is a perfect example of good itemization keeping old content worth while. You can't even say you feel forced to do it.

Fully expect someone to claim that I want furniture in xiv to remain the best furniture for years because that's how XI did it with stuff like beds.

[Elcura]

i get why people aren't into horizontal progression in a game like this, and agree (despite your earlier hyperbole re: XI gearsets) that XI went tremendously overboard with gear-swapping, but its weird that you think customization via gear choices is terrible.

I don't think it's terrible, I just think there are far better options for customization. You can have customization on gear to make shit more interesting, but going too far is always a risk and then you end up with inventory management games rather than actual games. Mass Effect (1) is an example of horizontal gear progression where you could have several different weapons of the same type, with better weapons given to you occasionally as you progress. Mostly all this does is slow down the game by making you pick up, compare and equip hundreds of different items. The more horizontal gear you have, the longer this process becomes so it's no surprise when this was cut the fuck down. The later games have horizontal gear (pistol vs pistol, shotgun vs shotgun) but not nearly as much, making the process a lot easier to deal with.

In a single player game this isn't so bad, but in an MMO it's pretty terrible especially when you go the lengths XI went with it.

[Taru Tacos]

So you just assumed? Well that was bad of you. Don't be a bad. People are saying that they think it's bad that gear (and thus the content from them) is outdated almost immediately. Your response is "Well, you must want that gear to be good for 6 years"?

loooooooooooool

"Almost immediately" you say? I totally forgot how all those coil pieces are outdated a day after they drop. Oh wait, you must have meant more like two weeks? No? A month? Three months? When are they going to be outdated again?

Are you just assuming everything will be outdated almost immediately while not even qualifying what almost immediately is on top of that? Sounds bad.

You should stick to your looooooooools and only posting inane drive-by comments and ZOMG SO MUCH THIS when someone praises FFXI. That actually manages to come off as less retarded than when you try to make an argument, which is almost impressive in a way.

My primary annoyance with BiS, and the way that the gear progression in xiv is shaping up to be, is that there's practically no innate reason to do content that doesn't drop BiS gear. You called it "Forcing some classes to go do a dungeon that other classes don't care about". Doesn't that strike you as odd? The problem there isn't that you're forcing someone to do old content, it's that you see it as being forced to do old content. If there's no reason to do content, then what's the point of it even being in the game? It's more beneficial for a game to give a player a reason to do old content, to make them want to do old content. This doesn't need to be done through itemization, but it is the easiest and most effective way.

If you have a properly tuned vertical progression game where you are required to go up one step at a time, that's fine and it works. There still exists some problems in that there's little replayability and that everything gets top heavy much quicker. But you can work around that with things like alts and stuff, as long as the foundation that was laid down is solid and well thought out.

But as you can probably see, ffxiv doesn't quite fit the bill. It's a game where you can gear up one class by playing on your other classes. This damages the many workarounds like alternate characters. Furthermore, and I think this is the most important thing, if you want a game to be successful for a prolonged period of time you want the game to have replayability. For any pay to play game this should be factored into the game from the very core of the design. Take a look at a game like Diablo 2 which people played for years and years, even coming back like a crack addict after not playing for a long time. The game's itemization was so good that it made you want to kill things you've already killed forty billion times. Meanwhile in ffxiv we're getting CT, a dungeon that some people don't even consider worth doing-- and it's not even released yet.

No, I actually don't see it as odd at all. I draw a distinction between wanting to do old content and being forced to because I'm viewing it from a perspective that there should be enough current content to be satisfying for many players and make viable gear builds. If you can make comparably effective builds that involve using gear from old content and that incentivizes some players to go back to older content for the gear then I think that's a great thing, though like you said, that's not at all the only way you can get people to go back and do older raids and I'm not even sure it's the best. It's not even getting people to go back to old raids that's my main concern, I just find having multiple gearing paths on the way to BiS interesting. If one particular class has to go back and do old content for a specific item or two to not fall behind everyone else though, then I think that's a problem, especially when it only applies to some classes and not others.

[Fojoop]

Take POE's loot system and make it into an MMO. Take POE's materia skill system - which hilariously enough is the FF7 materia system, and put it into a MMO, take POE's passive tree system, which again, hilariously enough, is FF10's grid sphere, and put it into a MMO. No jobs, no classes, make your own. Make it so leveling is actually part of the game and not just a ride you get on until the cap with no challenge, by making it so you go out, level up a bit, and need to upgrade your gear, or farm money to upgrade your gear every few levels, need to use different food or gear depending on where you will be leveling next and need to constantly keep your gear up to date and getting stats that matter for the next place you're leveling. Example: You're going to be fighting in a zone with mobs that hit very hard and have high evasion, you'll need to invest into accuracy food/gear as DPS and higher HP as a tank to ensure you survive.

Make enemies in the world scary and something you need to be prepared for if you want to take them on alone, make them balanced for 2-3 people at equal level and full parties to be the best way to level, but make soloing doable, nowhere near as good as a party, but doable, and make 2-3 man parties good exp as well, but still not as good as a "full" party. Choices are good.

Mix in fights like Primals at end game, add road blocks while leveling that require you to kill extremely hard extreme or hardmode primal level of "difficulty" in order to progress your character further, like needing to kill them to raise your level cap or to unlock some key skills/abilities that make or break your build. Make these fights instanced, but create numerous and plenty of outdoor world content across all levels, put BOP drops on them and sellable to other players crafting mats and make sure these bosses won't be claim camping or have stupid high competition. Add forced pop bosses in the world that are popped chaining off popped stuff and starts at a 10s repop normal mob until you chain to the strongest mob. Add gigantic primal sized NM's that are extremely difficult to many zones, including lowbie zones.

Add instanced stuff as well, but no linear FF13 dungeons, make them unique and interesting with crazy mechanics and debuffs like GW2 30+ fractals and FFXI Nyzul/Salvage, make them completely randomly generated maps and randomly generated objectives and buffs/debuffs on you so that it's different every time. Make lower level instanced zones cap your level so you can't just steamroll through them as a higher level. Choices are good.

Give us open world raids and dungeons that anyone can enter and do and make it isn't designed in a way that competition completely ruins it and makes it zero fun, this is 2013 I'm sure devs can think of something.

No tiered gear progression, no time-gated, no lock outs, no 0.1% drop rates, but no 100% drop rates either. Make mix/maxing your gear be the most effective way to gear and make the best gear come from all forms of content in the game and keep all the content relevant throughout the entire lifetime of the game, no nerfing older content, no making it irrelevant with ILVL increases or expansions. Some low level gear from low level roaming bosses or low level content might be amazing for your build at the level cap, you won't just be doing content for your current level, you'll be doing all content and want to do all content while leveling because this uber body of uberness might have the exact stats you want at level 50 yet it's a level 25 drop and will last you for a long time. No gear stagnation either, I don't want to be wearing this uber body of uberness for 6 years, or any piece of gear really. There should always be new gear introduced that's slightly better but not too quick and don't make it "this is better in every way possible", make it better in some situations depending on the content you're doing or enemies you're fighting, if you're solo trio or in a full group, or debuffs the dungeon just gave you.

No token systems for loot, no "Everyone gets a trophy".

Imagine how much content FF14 would have if every single dungeon in this game was relevant at all levels of the game and gave you gear or skills you needed depending on your build?

Make towns constantly under attack and the world always changing, make it so towns can be taken over, NPC's captured, and you need to rescue them. Some form of besieged/campaign/GW2 events hybrid.

I don't want to play FFXI or FFXI-2, anything I said FFXI related is because this is a FFXI forum and it's easier to explain things using some systems from the game as an example.

Ta-da, you just created the perfect MMO with lots of replay value and tons of longevity.

[Deadgye]

No, I actually don't see it as odd at all. I draw a distinction between wanting to do old content and being forced to because I'm viewing it from a perspective that there should be enough current content to be satisfying for many players and make viable gear builds. If you can make comparably effective builds that involve using gear from old content and that incentivizes some players to go back to older content for the gear then I think that's a great thing, though like you said, that's not at all the only way you can get people to go back and do older raids and I'm not even sure it's the best. It's not even getting people to go back to old raids that's my main concern, I just find having multiple gearing paths on the way to BiS interesting. If one particular class has to go back and do old content for a specific item or two to not fall behind everyone else though, then I think that's a problem, especially when it only applies to some classes and not others.

I think we're on the same page and pretty much agree overall. The only difference is that I don't see it as "being forced to go back" because if it's a vertical progression, should he have already gotten it? A crappy quick example being hoplite head from AK for example. Darklight is better, but if you get allagan/af90 body then you're going to want to use it again since hoplite head+allagan/af90 body is better than darklight head/body. Until you also get allagan/af90 head that is.

Ta-da, you just created the perfect MMO with lots of replay value and tons of longevity.

If I ever strike it insanely rich, I would love to fund and develop a game like that. Something so fun and immersive that people never get tired of playing it.

[Elcura]

Ta-da, you just created the perfect MMO with lots of replay value and tons of longevity.

And yet, it isn't so. I wonder why that is? The problem with pipedreams is that actually making them come true is easier typed than done.

[Niiro]

"That doesn't sound like WoW, we want something like WoW."

-Gaming industry

[Fojoop]

And yet, it isn't so. I wonder why that is? The problem with pipedreams is that actually making them come true is easier typed than done.

Once making a MMO as an indie becomes feesible in 5-10 years down the line a great MMO will finally emerge.

[Taru Tacos]

I think we're on the same page and pretty much agree overall. The only difference is that I don't see it as "being forced to go back" because if it's a vertical progression, should he have already gotten it? A crappy quick example being hoplite head from AK for example. Darklight is better, but if you get allagan/af90 body then you're going to want to use it again since hoplite head+allagan/af90 body is better than darklight head/body. Until you also get allagan/af90 head that is.

Oh right, I see what you mean. Think what tripped us up is I was still looking at it from a hypothetically what I'd like to see perspective since that's where I started with my example. Was thinking something along the lines of there's enough content and enough drop variety coupled that it's likely you aren't going to have every person in every group see every drop without raiding every week straight through the entire tier. If you look at it from what we've got in FFXIV right now then yeah, "forced to go back" doesn't really make a lot of sense. Guess there would also be people who start endgame much later in the game to worry about but how to handle that is another long discussion with no real answer on its own.

[Elcura]

Once making a MMO as an indie becomes feesible in 5-10 years down the line a great MMO will finally emerge.

Potentially if development becomes easier. 10 years seems optimistic but who can say either way? Point is, a lot of what you said is easy to propose but hard to realise. After all, you aren't the first person with good ideas for vidya.

[Deadgye]

And yet, it isn't so. I wonder why that is? The problem with pipedreams is that actually making them come true is easier typed than done.

The ones who provide the funding always have the developer's balls in a vice. They want to make money off of proven methods, and they put a safety condom on innovation so thick that the playerbase can't even feel it for what it is anymore so they think it sucks.

[Dathus]

Cool, apparently 3k HP isn't enough for a healer on Titan HM? Everywhere else tells me it is. Hell, my SMN did it with just over 3k.

[Elcura]

The ones who provide the funding always have the developer's balls in a vice. They want to make money off of proven methods, and they put a safety condom on innovation so thick that the playerbase can't even feel it for what it is anymore so they think it sucks.

That's part of the problem, sure, and just another reason why pipedreams be pipedreams.

Money knows best I guess.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Cool, apparently 3k HP isn't enough for a healer on Titan HM? Everywhere else tells me it is. Hell, my SMN did it with just over 3k.

It's skating on the edge (I was always told 3.2) but if you don't suck and your DPS aren't awful, you can do it.

I definitely had shit HP when I won for first relic, on DF no less.

[Fojoop]

I did titan hardmode with barely 3k HP on my first kill, just don't get hit by bombs.

[ronin sparthos]

Kinda hilarious when people bash XI for its elitism where this game is clearly on the path to 'meet this gearscore or GTFO' period.

Further, the itemization issues brought up pre-launch seem to be what we'll be seeing going forward. There is no sense of excitement or buildup to obtain a rare piece of loot to try in a gimmicky build because the game is so obsessed with gear being simply a marginal upgrade from previous gear with little reason to give a shit about a piece. Hell, even XI managed early gimmicks with Holy Bolts, Joyeuse, Striders, add effect weapons and shit like Vermy. You have a Refresh cloak? Omg, soooo aweeeesome.

As a Ranger you could shoot bows, crossbows or guns and every Ranger had their reasons for choosing one over the other. Naturally the DPS gods would bring down their commandments on what is 'best' but for many it didn't matter. If I wanted to shoot holies in an EXP party and be suboptimal, you could. And you'd have fun lighting things up with your dumb-ass MND sets. The Ranger next to you could be shooting his wallet with expensive bullets to epeen and that was fine. So long as things didn't drop below an acceptable standard.

You know, things that distinguish you from the pack.

[Corrderio]

Kinda hilarious when people bash XI for its elitism where this game is clearly on the path to 'meet this gearscore or GTFO' period.

I still find it weird people find that surprising. Since A) Most of the XIV population is probably ex-XI players and B) I don't think I've ever seen an MMO without people that act like this. Hell, with how casual GW2 is people only wanted Warriors/Mesmers in full Berserker exotic-tier equipment/upgrades for CoF runs until the loot adjustments.