Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Hitou]

The issue is number of instances not soloers "clogging up" the zone. It's not like being solo guarantees you'll get in before the 50 parties waiting to get in at once will. It's cute people think that even with 0 soloers there would be enough instances to support half the server trying to spam the crap out of the only content to do in the game at once. They never should have put it in legion or any other instanced zoned because they suck at instancing. Multiple outside pops (more than 3 per zone) and multiple zones would have worked better but there would still likely be congestion.

When you create content that by it's nature demands you spam it, it will always be congested. Making that content in a bottle neck system just makes it worse. The new changes will likely help to some degree but as long as the total instances stays the same there will be tons of waiting for months to come. Mark my words.

[Helldemon]

The issue is number of instances not soloers "clogging up" the zone. It's not like being solo guarantees you'll get in before the 50 parties waiting to get in at once will. It's cute people think that even with 0 soloers there would be enough instances to support half the server trying to spam the crap out of the only content to do in the game at once. They never should have put it in legion or any other instanced zoned because they suck at instancing. Multiple outside pops (more than 3 per zone) and multiple zones would have worked better but there would still likely be congestion.

When you create content that by it's nature demands you spam it, it will always be congested. Making that content in a bottle neck system just makes it worse. The new changes will likely help to some degree but as long as the total instances stays the same there will be tons of waiting for months to come. Mark my words.

I've seen as many as 10-11 instances of the zone before, but it usually seems to have issues around 7-8. At least on siren the most I ever saw was around 80ish people, if they all partied up there wouldn't be much of a wait at all. I think the average was more like 50-60 which would have been no wait at all. Of course I don't think everyone knew about how good the gear was right away so it may be higher for a bit when the next update hits.

[NynJa]

If a group of 6 characters can clear in ~5 min, and if there are 10 instances, that means in every 30 minutes 360 characters get to do Ambuscade. If one soloer takes 15 minutes to clear, and there are 10 instances, in that same 30 min, only 20 chars get to do Ambuscade.

Yes, another problem is the number of instances, but what you're doing is blaming the city for not making the highway big enough when the problem is idiots in their Prius driving well below the speed limit and fucking with the traffic. We've seen how shitty's SE's "instances" can get when they're overloaded. Nothing like packets being lost, eh?

SE should put player limits on their instances. Presuming there are 20 instances: reserve 5 for soloers or more, 3 for duoers or more, 3 for trioers or more, 3 for quads or more, 3 for quints or more, 3 for full parties or more. That way the soloers can fight over their 5 spots, the trioers can fight over 11 spots, and the full parties can pluck any open instance. Problem solved.

[arus2001]

Flag up and seacom? Stand by the fight area and ask for a party? Shout/yell for a party? Create a party and try to recruit? Join a ls full of people who play at off-peak hours? There are plenty of ways to manage it. I know that there aren't a lot of players on XI anymore but shit like XIV's duty finder is the cancer that has killed MMOs and any sense of community the newer ones could have had. Even if it's less convenient, keep that shit away from XI. The old-school way is to work for your gear and achievements by building connections with people and putting effort into clearing content. People could do it back during XI's heyday and they should still be able to do it now.

Instance congestion is one thing, but I honestly don't understand the "solo entitlement" response to it. You signed up to play an MMO but you want to do everything solo? It just doesn't make sense to me. But this mindset seems widespread enough that maybe that's why MMOs are dying off. Gamers too aspergers to break out of their shell and talk to each other anymore, or too lazy to bother making connections with others. XI at least has somewhat of an excuse for making nearly everything soloable, as it's essentially a dead game and the world populations are low. However, when they do roll out "new" high-level battle content that everyone on the server is doing, I don't expect it to be anything but group play. Why would I? It's an MMO.

It's hardly why the MMO genre is suffering. If anything, it's the opposite with the hardcore vocal minority demanding anything of merit requiring groups, and not just once or twice, but for content that's basically built to be run repeatedly just to get anywhere (whether it be token grinds or RNG drops). Such introduces a problem of inconsistency where you can't play when you want to play, and when it comes to subscription-based titles, people just aren't going to put up with that shit. No one wants to pay to be bored.

Cross-server matchmaking isn't the problem you're really having, otherwise. It's the lack of control in reuniting with people you do manage to click with. This is why paid server transfers are bad. It's why communication should be possible to any character across all worlds. It's why every future game should pretty much abandon the "home world" concept and allow others to migrate at whim without needing some kind of matchmaking interface. The benefit is that people "like me" could eventually converge, even if there'll be some growing pains in personality conflicts when one does attempt to join a guild/linkshell/whatever. Just as those all about the hardcore whatever would cluster up into their own little cliques.

You simply can't look at MMOs as everyone out there being your next best friend, though. Or on the flip side, an enemy. Do what you like to do. Make sure it's possible for others to do what they'd like within reason. In this case, I doubt an otherwise VD capable group would drop to D just because someone seeking can't handle VD themselves. They're just gonna run without them. Groups can be selfish, too. Which is further why SE just needs to get their instancing shit together here and not listen to suggestions like limiting zones to party formations of certain sizes or making it the blatantly inferior choice to solo. Not everyone's an anti-social suckface.

[steellord]

It's hardly why the MMO genre is suffering. If anything, it's the opposite with the hardcore vocal minority demanding anything of merit requiring groups, and not just once or twice, but for content that's basically built to be run repeatedly just to get anywhere (whether it be token grinds or RNG drops). Such introduces a problem of inconsistency where you can't play when you want to play, and when it comes to subscription-based titles, people just aren't going to put up with that shit. No one wants to pay to be bored.

Cross-server matchmaking isn't the problem you're really having, otherwise. It's the lack of control in reuniting with people you do manage to click with. This is why paid server transfers are bad. It's why communication should be possible to any character across all worlds. It's why every future game should pretty much abandon the "home world" concept and allow others to migrate at whim without needing some kind of matchmaking interface. The benefit is that people "like me" could eventually converge, even if there'll be some growing pains in personality conflicts when one does attempt to join a guild/linkshell/whatever. Just as those all about the hardcore whatever would cluster up into their own little cliques.

You simply can't look at MMOs as everyone out there being your next best friend, though. Or on the flip side, an enemy. Do what you like to do. Make sure it's possible for others to do what they'd like within reason. In this case, I doubt an otherwise VD capable group would drop to D just because someone seeking can't handle VD themselves. They're just gonna run without them. Groups can be selfish, too. Which is further why SE just needs to get their instancing shit together here and not listen to suggestions like limiting zones to party formations of certain sizes or making it the blatantly inferior choice to solo. Not everyone's an anti-social suckface.

this is very well put and even (before i unsubbed) one of my friends who started playing again i wanted to invite to help out, but being so gimp, i had to drop a difficulty level. That's right, with trusts, more people can make it harder. And that would be fine with me except for 1) waiting forever to enter, i like to maximize points per run and 2) i have a time limit before points reset

then we take your point about not putting up with paid to be bored and ambuscade is *exactly* why i unsubbed. In addition to having cleared the content up to this point, it's obvious to me the next N months i would be spending 50%+ of my time with thumb up my ass spamming the book or waiting the queue. Being in PUGs compounds this because i had ppl join and quit before we could even enter lol. I have better things to do seriously, this is worse than 3 kings days and on par with sitting in mog seeking

if they'd just put ??? throughout a zone like wajoam, there you go problem solved. Shoulda learned this from abyssea, but they're still thinking in terms of cockblock business model or lore or some bullshit no one respects

[arus2001]

I inferred it earlier, but if you really want random partying, you don't facilitate it with instances.

As for dropping ??? points, I said it before in the New Player thread in the main section. Doing that would technically be harder for SE since they'd have to go through all the zones they do add them to every month to swap out the fights. In theory, spreading the people out sounds good, but I'm not really sure how many of these pops we'd actually need to balance out time spent waiting/moving to zone/etc.. My Plan B here was that they just clone the whole Legion/Ambuscade zone and have the solo version in Mhuara while the groups go to Selbina. It wouldn't quite be as much work swapping mobs around in multiple zones, but you'd still get the segregation some seemingly desire here.

But really, they just need to work on their infrastructure. I can maybe understand why not doing this for every sort of BC/Arena fight there's ever been, but if this is to truly be XI's endgame for the rest of days, it behooves them to take those extra steps for true instancing.

[dasva]

It's not even just a trust issue though that certainly compounds things in making random groupings undesirable. I tribox a lot and one of the setups I use is pup based so I don't even bother with trusts and basically anytime I bring along anyone who can ws or do something with ws properties it will make fights last longer even if they are pretty decently geared. And yeah spending time to make a group that will go slower no thanks

Even had some argue with in completely nonsensical terms like once I told them their autos were actually making the fight slower due to skillchain interruption and they said something along the lines of that doesn't matter we have to clear it out of here faster <.<.

[Silenka]

We sure have come a long way from the old MMO style of "you have to party for EVERYTHING". Personally I never minded that, because players who wanted to get shit done adjusted themselves accordingly and actually built communities around doing stuff. Now, of course, that is more difficult because there are fewer people on servers. But it's still possible - there are still active linkshells and people shouting for party recruitment.

@arus2001, what you're saying is that you want instant gratification. You don't want to stand around waiting for a party. You don't want to have to bother with community and building up a framework of friends or allies that lets you do content. You want to be able to grind your gear on your own time and not someone else's. But I see a problem with that - it's the problem that's killing off MMOs.

(Let's use it as the most pertinent example, though it's certainly not the only one) XIV is focused on delivering this instant gratification feeling. It focuses on solo play and Duty Finder that groups you randomly with people for the game's main battle content. And there has been so much bitching - I know you've seen it - about how the game feels sterile and there's no community, no drama, no anything to speak of that keeps people playing. People unsub in droves because there's no reason to stay subbed when you can solo everything in a week. The ease of grouping and getting gear forces the XIV devs to put lockouts and caps on content just to extend the lifespan of new content, but players hate not having the choice to grind their gear out in the first day if they wanted to. Of course, these aren't XIV's only problems, but those of us who used to put up with SE's similarly poorly-implemented ideas in XI stuck around back then because of the community. Your friends, the people you made memories with because you were essentially forced to in order to achieve anything in the game. In XIV there is no reason to stick around because you are first and foremost a solo player who can achieve instant gratification in all but the most challenging content (and that content is just a snake eating its own tail because the only need for the best gear is to do the most challenging content).

It's almost a moot point now as needing instant gratification is the outlook pretty much all gamers have nowadays so the community adjusted itself and MMOs have followed suit. I look at XI as one of the last bastions of old-style play, because there are still a fair number of activities that cannot be done without a group, even though much of it has been changed to be very solo-friendly to appease the "I want it now" people.

Maybe I want the old days back. I think there are a lot of people who would like to relive those days. There are also a lot of people who say it's an MMO version of "Stockholm syndrome". Regardless, all I know is that with the instant gratification model, I'm never going to need to seek out a community of disparate individuals who can all come together to achieve something great in a game, and one is never going to seek me out to join its ranks. It makes me sad to think that XI, which was the pinnacle of community-based play, should fall to being just another casualty of the death of the MMO genre thanks to a shift in the way people play games. We all used to pay to stand around in our Mog Houses and chat with each other, or wait an hour for someone to show up for events. It was normal, and while there was some grumbling about people not being on time, this paradigm of play wasn't thought of as something subscribers "wouldn't stand for".

Along the way, something changed hugely and now all people want is to be able to log on and do their own thing. What I think they don't realize is that MMOs had their heyday not because of the monsters we fought or the gear we got, but because these games were focused on players creating a community and relying on each other to progress. That is what set MMOs apart from any other game. That is what made the endless grinds bearable. You had someone to share it with and turn a boring grind into something silly, amusing, or downright crazy.

To draw a comparison, yes, you can play Dungeons & Dragons all by yourself, but you're not going to have half as much fun, ever be surprised by what happens, or make unforgettable memories unless you're playing with a group of friends.

I don't know how much longer MMOs can hold out as a genre. These games are already not what they used to be at all. "Massively multiplayer" now just means you're wandering amongst a bunch of strangers who are doing the exact same things you are doing in the game, except everyone is doing those same things alone. That's why instant gratification gaming is killing MMOs. It's too late for XI, because it's too old and can't pull in the kind of numbers it needs for a community like that. But unfortunately, other newer MMOs are being built on the same instant gratification principle and having the same problems as XIV. It's depressing.

[steellord]

Flag up and seacom? Stand by the fight area and ask for a party? Shout/yell for a party? Create a party and try to recruit? Join a ls full of people who play at off-peak hours? There are plenty of ways to manage it. I know that there aren't a lot of players on XI anymore but shit like XIV's duty finder is the cancer that has killed MMOs and any sense of community the newer ones could have had. Even if it's less convenient, keep that shit away from XI. The old-school way is to work for your gear and achievements by building connections with people and putting effort into clearing content. People could do it back during XI's heyday and they should still be able to do it now.

Instance congestion is one thing, but I honestly don't understand the "solo entitlement" response to it. You signed up to play an MMO but you want to do everything solo? It just doesn't make sense to me. But this mindset seems widespread enough that maybe that's why MMOs are dying off. Gamers too aspergers to break out of their shell and talk to each other anymore, or too lazy to bother making connections with others. XI at least has somewhat of an excuse for making nearly everything soloable, as it's essentially a dead game and the world populations are low. However, when they do roll out "new" high-level battle content that everyone on the server is doing, I don't expect it to be anything but group play. Why would I? It's an MMO.

Desire to solo has NOTHING to do with the fact the under-geared or less desired jobs aren't invited to begin with and NOTHING to do with the time limit to accumulate hallmarks. If people can't enter or they can't find groups, they quit

In addition the people you're diagnosing with asperger's were routinely playing in groups of 30+ until the population died off so they could not find groups anymore. Now if your entire social circle has quit and you see maybe 1 shout an hour for ambuscade and no one will invite you still? Oh wait, it must be asperger's to blame!

[steellord]

It's not even just a trust issue though that certainly compounds things in making random groupings undesirable. I tribox a lot and one of the setups I use is pup based so I don't even bother with trusts and basically anytime I bring along anyone who can ws or do something with ws properties it will make fights last longer even if they are pretty decently geared. And yeah spending time to make a group that will go slower no thanks

Even had some argue with in completely nonsensical terms like once I told them their autos were actually making the fight slower due to skillchain interruption and they said something along the lines of that doesn't matter we have to clear it out of here faster <.<.

frankly i find even the 300 in groups vs 100 solo leaning towards solo because of the shit i've experienced in PUGs...people go afk at random even inside the fight, WHMs who don't know to cursna and the tank dies, random d/c and etc

if more of my friends were playing none of that would happen so i would gladly join them. It's not about being "antisocial", it's about i have limited time before these points reset (which again i can fully blame SE) and the last thing i want is to wipe after 30 mins trying to enter

[steellord]

Silenka...if i were you, i'd be glad to just have experienced the large group content while you could. There is no point fighting the inevitable and if it makes you feel better, just call them ORPGS

i did enjoy that content as well, but most of all in my static of 6-12. And guess what, 6-12 is still great for content like escha.

When i was in LS events of 30+, a lot of the fun and frustration came at the expense of the lousy players. Basically we tolerated it for claims, gear and lulz. I can't think of any fights except PW where game design made it ideal or necessary to have so many

You can argue there should be more content geared towards 30+ and this is where your argument holds: It took 2+ hours just to gather for that shit, and no one is going to tolerate that now. It's not just "instant gratification," it's there are more entertainment options. Just accept that it's never coming back

[Damane]

Silenka...if i were you, i'd be glad to just have experienced the large group content while you could. There is no point fighting the inevitable and if it makes you feel better, just call them ORPGS

i did enjoy that content as well, but most of all in my static of 6-12. And guess what, 6-12 is still great for content like escha.

When i was in LS events of 30+, a lot of the fun and frustration came at the expense of the lousy players. Basically we tolerated it for claims, gear and lulz. I can't think of any fights except PW where game design made it ideal or necessary to have so many

You can argue there should be more content geared towards 30+ and this is where your argument holds: It took 2+ hours just to gather for that shit, and no one is going to tolerate that now. It's not just "instant gratification," it's there are more entertainment options. Just accept that it's never coming back

noone wants 30+ people content back, i think you get here the wrong idea. 6-18 peeps content is fine once in a while with 3-6 people content inbetween. The point is this is still an MMO, so group playing SHOULD be rewarded and not solo play, but solo play should still be possible.

[arus2001]

Yeah, playing the instant gratification card is just one of the snarky buzz words you see employed when topics like this come up. Games like XIV suffer on the social front largely because the combat system itself doesn't enable communication mid-fight. It's simply too fast paced to pry your hand away from the mouse to type anything of substance. Further so if people are in the speedrun mentality. The rest I went over in my last post about long-term communication and convergence.

Otherwise, I can't really think of any other genre of games where it's considered okay to be forced into waiting to do what you want to do. Would I want to play a version of Tetris where I have to sit through a 15 minute loading screen before I could begin? No. Do I want a Castlevania where a boss pops once every 24 hours and even then will drop crap 95% of the time? Nah. Where some are quick to cite people being impatient, it's more a matter of people wising to the trappings of time sinks and fake difficulties. Solo proponents aren't asking for something for nothing. In fact, it's probably rare they solo exclusively. They just want the solo time they are left with, in part due to no fault of their own, to be productive.

Objectively, if you lock 100 people in a room and tell them to be friends, it's probably not going to happen. That's the kind of ideal MMO bubble I get the vibe some people are wanting, when the reality is you're more likely to get a bunch of little cliques and the occasional conflict between them. Simply locking people in a room, or in this case a server, does not automatically translate to the formation of a community. You want accountability, fine, but even when XI was peak, there were thousands of people on each server we'd never interact with. Are they still part of the community, too? If continued resistance is more about ego, then you're not gonna budge me on that. I view work as work, regardless of whether it's one man's effort or a group's. Placing an arbitrary ceiling "because that's how it is" just isn't cool and reeks more of playground logic than actual care for the community, or more accurately, those outside your own bubble.

[dasva]

noone wants 30+ people content back, i think you get here the wrong idea. 6-18 peeps content is fine once in a while with 3-6 people content inbetween. The point is this is still an MMO, so group playing SHOULD be rewarded and not solo play, but solo play should still be possible.

This is my thought. Nothing wrong with soloing there are many a reasons for a lot of people that make grouping up to accomplish fairly not reliable at best. But at the same time it is an MMO so there should be a real benefit to grouping up. SE has a hard time finding the balance though. They tend to either actively penalize group play, make the difference in benefits not large enough, or though not as much in recent times they make the benefit so huge you can't conceivable balance the time for both soloers and partiers.

Honestly I kind of liked the time bonus. Encourages getting with people who know what they are doing but not making you feel like you need to group with mouth breathers lol. Meanwhile sharply disincentivizing the really slow solo/low mans that are really doing that because well they are rocking sparks gear and can't get into a group doing harder difficulties. And for everyone encourages not wasting time in zone.

[Siatdiat]

To draw a comparison, yes, you can play Dungeons & Dragons all by yourself, but you're not going to have half as much fun, ever be surprised by what happens, or make unforgettable memories unless you're playing with a group of friends.

I don't know how much longer MMOs can hold out as a genre. These games are already not what they used to be at all. "Massively multiplayer" now just means you're wandering amongst a bunch of strangers who are doing the exact same things you are doing in the game, except everyone is doing those same things alone. That's why instant gratification gaming is killing MMOs. It's too late for XI, because it's too old and can't pull in the kind of numbers it needs for a community like that. But unfortunately, other newer MMOs are being built on the same instant gratification principle and having the same problems as XIV. It's depressing.

It is depressing. I play Pathfinder every Friday night for about 4-5 hours, that is the only gaming I do these days. MMOs are a dead genre.

[arus2001]

Ironically, DnD thrives more on the actual act of RPing, which is pretty much absent in MMOs. Or at least to the point it matters to any degree beyond what slot you hold in the trinity. Further, rules are technically more flexible since a GM could pretty much do whatever they want. Server code generally isn't that flexible unless conditional states are emphasized from the start.

What'll really behoove the genre is user generated content being a thing, both for storytelling and offering challenge. Right now, we're pretty much at the mercy of devs who are lucky to put out decent chunks of content every 3-4 months, and that's for the more popular games.

[Byrthnoth]

I don't play DnD, but this is easily my favorite RPing example:

Spoiler: show

[Draylo]

Yeah, playing the instant gratification card is just one of the snarky buzz words you see employed when topics like this come up. Games like XIV suffer on the social front largely because the combat system itself doesn't enable communication mid-fight. It's simply too fast paced to pry your hand away from the mouse to type anything of substance. Further so if people are in the speedrun mentality. The rest I went over in my last post about long-term communication and convergence.

Otherwise, I can't really think of any other genre of games where it's considered okay to be forced into waiting to do what you want to do. Would I want to play a version of Tetris where I have to sit through a 15 minute loading screen before I could begin? No. Do I want a Castlevania where a boss pops once every 24 hours and even then will drop crap 95% of the time? Nah. Where some are quick to cite people being impatient, it's more a matter of people wising to the trappings of time sinks and fake difficulties. Solo proponents aren't asking for something for nothing. In fact, it's probably rare they solo exclusively. They just want the solo time they are left with, in part due to no fault of their own, to be productive.

Objectively, if you lock 100 people in a room and tell them to be friends, it's probably not going to happen. That's the kind of ideal MMO bubble I get the vibe some people are wanting, when the reality is you're more likely to get a bunch of little cliques and the occasional conflict between them. Simply locking people in a room, or in this case a server, does not automatically translate to the formation of a community. You want accountability, fine, but even when XI was peak, there were thousands of people on each server we'd never interact with. Are they still part of the community, too? If continued resistance is more about ego, then you're not gonna budge me on that. I view work as work, regardless of whether it's one man's effort or a group's. Placing an arbitrary ceiling "because that's how it is" just isn't cool and reeks more of playground logic than actual care for the community, or more accurately, those outside your own bubble.

You think you know what you want yet I see you bop from MMO to MMO all the time in your posts... I agree with Silenka point of view, the state of MMOs (and to some extent, games in general) is just sad. I don't buy the whole "times have changed, people have less time" because plenty of 20+ years old played FFXI when it was in its prime.

[arus2001]

Knowing what I want isn't the same thing as such a game actually existing. Part of the problem is people stubbornly clinging to "What an MMO is!" as opposed to embracing "What an MMO could be!" For the past decade, it's pretty much been raid, raid, raid with the odd PvP-centric game here and there. XI-goers may not have adopted the same terminology as those who took up WoW and later games did, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking stuff like BCs aren't just dungeons with the trash mobs cut out.

So, not to seem 100% pessimistic, most games do have something or other I like. Unfortunately, frankensteining all those features together isn't always possible which is why I usually stick to more general desires like getting true instancing here or better cross-server functionality. Overall, the very concept of tiering tends to run counter to the desire of forced multiplayer I see some people espousing, as the more demanding you make requirements, the thinner your pool of peers is going to get while making the entry tiers more difficult to get into the further you start post-implementation. And if you're actually keen on checking completion statistics for various MMO current top-tier endgame content, 10% clear rates or less tends to be the norm. Maybe it's just me, but I find that pathetic. It means the remaining 90% of players aren't getting the full game experience. And why that happens is precisely a result of mandatory repetition with larger groups, ideally statics. If you can't do that reliably, you're fucked. "MMOs aren't for you, then!" some might say? Fuck that noise.

Either way, the inspiration for this current line of chatter is a direct result of SE's incompetence and not because some people solo, and even prefer to. Don't hate on people for playing by the rules they're given here, which includes lower difficulty settings, Trusts being available, and no minimum party size reqs. They're not trying to purposefully take anything away. Arguably, they're actually working harder by not benefiting from group efficiency.

[Damane]

actually group work is harder because you have to manage more persons and their RL, while solo you just go in and do it.
Lets not forget SE isnt takeing anything away, you can still solo ambuscade but you dont get the group marks they introduce as a bonus for party play. So really nothing has changed for you.