Patch 2.3 Defenders of Eorzea Trailer

[Sho]

That's exactly what the lockout is for, you are 100% correct. To keep players playing while they develop new content. The problem is the way the lockout is implemented, it totally prevents you from helping others, etc... forcing the 8 man statics etc. I dont understand why they didnt' just do a gear type lockout similar to CT. I totally understand you need to keep your players playing, but it's not effective right now, I look at my FC all week long 3 maybe 4 of us log in during the week now outside of coil.

This portion must be emphasized really. Just the "8-man statics", mainly -- the way the current metagame is implemented, it seriously forces people to build statics with like-minded hardcore players and forgo all other manner of gamers, be them causals, friends, random pickups, or otherwise. Then thes 8-man statics usually bash against the content to a certain extent, only to then take a break for a couple of months or break up totally.

For this reason I was sincerely hoping that CT would be on par with Coil in the near future as the game needs more 24+ player content that brings a wider range of players together. It doesn't need to be on some dynamis-tier level of gameplay, but just more members. As it is, having a FC is effectively useless vs having multiple LSes. That is, unless you cherish your House and Daily bonuses.

[Niiro]

edit: wrong tab, meant for another thread

[Lucavi]

And yes, people will be mad whatever you do. They will be mad if you make drop rates higher, or if you make drop rates lower, or if you reduce lockouts, or if you increase them. That doesn't mean you should just do nothing.

Lets not be daft, here: SE isn't doing nothing. People may not like what they're currently doing, but they're always doing something, whether it be introducing new content or modifying existing content.

People are gonna complain regardless, though. Hope SE throws you a bone and then tell those who don't like what you like to can it. That's how every MMO goes.

Edit: Sho, explain what you mean when you say "be on par". Are you talking about the ilvl of Drops? The difficulty in content? Any route you want it equalized, someone's going to have a semi-legitimate complaint to hurl at it.

1) 24-man content with equal ilvl gear but inferior difficulty >> complaints about difficulty inequality.
2) 24-man content with equal difficulty but inferior gear >> complaints about drop inequality.
3) 24-man content with equal difficulty and equal gear >> complaints about gear-acquisition inequality (FCs grouping single members up twice or three times as fast as feasible with coil - yes, people would complain about this and you know it)
4) 24-man content with lower difficulty and lower gear >> complaints about how the content is pointless because the rewards are lower than coil.

I'm a proponent of option 4, but I already know the OF would be aflame with complaints, and many on these forums would bark just as loudly. These aren't the only options, which is why I want you explain what you mean.

Just go into a little detail for me.

[Kaisha]

There has to be some way for SE to keep you coming instead of doing like you said, grinding hard, and then quitting until more stuff comes

If they slowed down their gear treadmill there'd be more incentive to work on what's already there.

As it stands, taking a 3 month break gives you the benefit of catching up super quick due to extra events/gear alternatives, than those that slogged through the weekly lockouts prior.

[Spider-Dan]

If they slowed down their gear treadmill there'd be more incentive to work on what's already there.

And that's the other shoe dropping: it's pretty discouraging to grind coil5 for 3 months to get your Allagan weapon only to have a better weapon drop on day 1 of the next patch.

I know, I know, vertical progression is modern.

[Obsidian]

I will bet my bank account you don't have an i125+ weapon the first day of New Coil. Or even the first month.

[Sho]

Edit: Sho, explain what you mean when you say "be on par". Are you talking about the ilvl of Drops? The difficulty in content? Any route you want it equalized, someone's going to have a semi-legitimate complaint to hurl at it.

1) 24-man content with equal ilvl gear but inferior difficulty >> complaints about difficulty inequality.
2) 24-man content with equal difficulty but inferior gear >> complaints about drop inequality.
3) 24-man content with equal difficulty and equal gear >> complaints about gear-acquisition inequality (FCs grouping single members up twice or three times as fast as feasible with coil - yes, people would complain about this and you know it)
4) 24-man content with lower difficulty and lower gear >> complaints about how the content is pointless because the rewards are lower than coil.

I'm a proponent of option 4, but I already know the OF would be aflame with complaints, and many on these forums would bark just as loudly. These aren't the only options, which is why I want you explain what you mean.

Just go into a little detail for me.

Option 3 (considering the current meta). 24-man content with equal difficulty and equal gear can be fine. In fact, it can just be equal in ilvl, but not BiS, which would obviously be tied to Coil still. Alternatively, i105 gear works as well. I never asked of this because of drops, but for the viability of 24-man content at all. iLvl 100 drops in CT2 is just fine, but we both know it's only a temporary solution before people go back to complaining about Coil again. This 24-man content can have a loot lockout similar to CT/CT2 if SE is so worried about rapid content consumption.

People want to feel that sense of camaraderie -- the idea that they triumph in a fairly difficult, large content with their large band of friends. You don't get that at all in a FC (20+ members) with the current metagame. Granted, this small problem will be alleviated with patch 2.35 somewhat, but the overall problem will continue to loom overhead if Coil (or future Coil-like content) continues to exist. The best scenario in this instance would be:

5) 24-man content that's a copy of 8-man content in terms of difficulty, but with equal or slightly lesser (or higher) rewards. (Like WoW)

Of course if the reward is higher than 8-man, the difficulty should match. In this way, everyone can get the same experience of doing the same content, or at least challenging the content. SE needs to realize that a lot of people like this game, and many people play in their FCs which have well over 8 members. There's no purpose for FCs right now unless they are perfectly made and each member is in their own 8-man static within the FC. I've actually seen many cases of FCs dying out because people cannot do higher tier content with others (because of lockouts). Those members of course go off and start a smaller, 8-man (or so) FC. Then that FC dies out because of burning bridges and losing friends. It's not a common scenario, but I've seen about 6 cases on my server alone.


tl;dr: Make the same version of content for 8-man and 24-man players. Stuff would of course be tweaked to accompany more people.

[Shenrien]

Honestly I feel like raiding content is backwards in this game, I hope in the future whatever they plan to release once alliance's can be premade for a dungeon that they lean to 16-24 man raids rather this 8 man crap :/ it feels pointless to be in a FC other than to have people who like to craft and pvp do that every once in a blue moon.

[Spider-Dan]

I will bet my bank account you don't have an i125+ weapon the first day of New Coil. Or even the first month.

Not sure why you're talking about i125; Wave Bow (not Tidal) is straight up better than Allagan Composite Bow. You think it would take a month minimum?

Coil also drops a lot more than weapons. Do you doubt that the next tier tomestone healing necklace will be better than the T7 HA healing necklace (current BiS) on day 1?

[Obsidian]

Not sure why you're talking about i125; Wave Bow (not Tidal) is straight up better than Allagan Composite Bow. You think it would take a month minimum?

Coil also drops a lot more than weapons. Do you doubt that the next tier tomestone healing necklace will be better than the T7 HA healing necklace (current BiS) on day 1?

Don't doubt it. Thinking that because it was added to the game, the rest of your shit is suddenly and immediately useless is an ass-backwards way to look at it. Are you going to do Ramuh naked? If not, the shit you're using now will still be useful come 2.3. That's the whole point. New gear doesn't magically appear in your inventory when you log in after an update.

[Lucavi]

Now we're just getting into the Horizontal vs. Vertical progression debate, which I have 0 interest in. Its another constant, though, that both sides will complain over.

[Spider-Dan]

Don't doubt it. Thinking that because it was added to the game, the rest of your shit is suddenly and immediately useless is an ass-backwards way to look at it. Are you going to do Ramuh naked? If not, the shit you're using now will still be useful come 2.3. That's the whole point.

...except that you didn't need to run coil dozens of times to get the best gear, just to wind up running Darkhold (Hard) and buying better replacements from an NPC as soon as the new patch drops.

I never said that coil drops were useless; I said that it's discouraging to grind them for months when the next patch is likely to give you significantly better gear at significantly easier cost.

[Sho]

...except that you didn't need to run coil dozens of times to get the best gear, just to wind up running Darkhold (Hard) and buying better replacements from an NPC as soon as the new patch drops.

I never said that coil drops were useless; I said that it's discouraging to grind them for months when the next patch is likely to give you significantly better gear at significantly easier cost.

I guess the question we need to ask ourselves is "How long should gear be useful in an MMO?" Both sides have valid arguments.

It is discouraging, however such is the dynamic. At least whatever you earn in this vertical progression is useful for 2-6 months, depending on how fast you get it -- the "good" hardcore players benefit the most, while the not so good (and the stragglers, casuals) at least can feel justified in earning the gear after putting in work trying to beat the content. In this sense, the people who feel shafted are mostly people who wasted time (or just couldn't get it together in their static fast enough) in that six months on doing coil content.

If this were FFXI-esque (pre-Adoulin), we'd be arguing over gear that lasted far too long, and how they automatically invalidated anything that was about to be released. There was no reason to getting specific pieces of gear, unless it boosted a certain weapon skill, if only slightly. It was a terrible grind for some jobs, unless you truly loved that method of progression. In that sense, jobs that didn't need much gear to stay on point benefited the most, while jobs which required gear sets for every ability, spell, weapon skill and permutation of content got the gigantic shaft.

[Kaslo]

If only I could craft a body piece that I would have to use for 5 years because nothing better comes out. I'm sure that would make me happy.

[Spider-Dan]

It is discouraging, however such is the dynamic. At least whatever you earn in this vertical progression is useful for 2-6 months, depending on how fast you get it -- the "good" hardcore players benefit the most, while the not so good (and the stragglers, casuals) at least can feel justified in earning the gear after putting in work trying to beat the content. In this sense, the people who feel shafted are mostly people who wasted time (or just couldn't get it together in their static fast enough) in that six months on doing coil content.

As I see it, the "problem" (by design, really) is that with the small exception of a few specific accuracy pieces, every piece in the game is clearly better or clearly worse than any other piece in it's slot. There isn't an option to spend time grinding situational gear that you can hold on to, because everything is obsoleted on the next power jump.

In that sense, jobs that didn't need much gear to stay on point benefited the most, while jobs which required gear sets for every ability, spell, weapon skill and permutation of content got the gigantic shaft.

I don't know that I would describe it as "benefited/shafted." Personally, I looked at it as a good thing that if I didn't want to spend hours camping Aery for my best WS piece, I could spend time in Limbus getting my best TP piece instead.

[arus2001]

I guess the question we need to ask ourselves is "How long should gear be useful in an MMO?" Both sides have valid arguments.

Usually it boils down to ego being the only real reason why something shouldn't be done and I'm pretty much in the camp that that is a bad reason. Either way, the more stuff is intentionally kept out of reach, the more people are going to get defensive and clingy about others getting the same, especially if they didn't put in all the blood, sweat, and tears they did (lol?). Which I suppose taps into the age old "Is this a game or a job?" debate, too. You'll never really find a middle ground in all the noise, though, because attempts to call out the status quo just invites bitching about wanting hand-outs, welfare, personal attacks on skill, and general shenanigans not at all related to why people may be unhappy and disinterested with a given game.

Right now, I feel like XIV's endgame content variety pretty much sucks. The PvP bros are getting a likely watered down Rift Codex-style arena, swell, but that won't last long. Then some more dungeons nobody'll really want to do after a try or two unless they're found to be the best tome source. Hunts could've been cool, but hey, lockouts. Open world still generally sucks and crafting is still shit on because "maybeRMTwillruletheworld?" goin' on in Yoshi's head even though that can be worked around. So, even if we move past arguments of ego, we have to get past the "Don't wanna!" on the dev end, which I thought was part of the point of them justifying a sub model and shit. More income = More content, isn't it?

[Toth]

I hate to say this but I do think FFXI just plain does endgame better. Many of the big activities (Salvage, Legion, Voidwatch, and Delve I) remain popular because they all contribute to your growth as a character. Yes, Salvage, Legion, and Voidwatch gear is largely outdated (but not all!), there remains reasons to do all of these zones: alex, HMPs and Nm specific drops for relic armor upgrades, Meteor/Arise, etc. Delve I still offers items to upgrade delve II gear as well as always useful boss drops. I feel you can do any of those above activities and make progress. In FFXIV, its either spam x dungeon for tomes (gets boring really fast) or go for gear in a weekly lockout system. FFXIV really should have incentives for older dungeons besides tomes: mainly random atma drops for clearing hardmode dungeons, oils and sands (very low droprate) for older dungeons, and unidentified tombstones for trial spams.

[Raldo]

You can almost always say that [older MMO] has more relevant content than [younger MMO]. I just hope the day comes that XIV grows into its big-boy pants.

[Toth]

You can almost always say that [older MMO] has more relevant content than [younger MMO]. I just hope the day comes that XIV grows into its big-boy pants.

Oh I agree but XIV and XI are both by SE and when SE tried the XIV model regarding gear (the 119 boss gear in delve obliterating nearly everything else in the game, including the other delve gear) in XI, it was a disaster.

[Alkar]

Oh I agree but XIV and XI are both by SE and when SE tried the XIV model regarding gear (the 119 boss gear in delve obliterating nearly everything else in the game, including the other delve gear) in XI, it was a disaster.

Because FFXI has a small dedicated fanbase that likes the game the way it was originally designed. Change the whole thing and people will complain. Can we please avoid more comparisons anyway? FFXI needed multiple expansions to even build that kind of endgame, FFXIV in not even 1 year old yet. 2014 doesn't mean that suddenly developers can match the amount of content an 11+ years old MMO has.