Heated Endgame Discussion

[Intense]

And progression? We're talking about a game thats had little to no progression. My progression is when I get a new job to 75 and start working the next, gearing it up properly. How many people can you really say have the best possible equipment for their jobs bar-none? I can only name about 2 on my server. Personally I haven't really seen a need for progression. I still have a lot more I'd like to accomplish in this game as it is. Hell, even if CoP and ToAU weren't released, I'd still have a lot to accomplish. And this is coming from someone with about 690days of playtime in the game.

Lets also establish that were talking about a game whose majority end-game playerbase has been begging for progression by means of gear that is obtained by alternative means or new gear that outshines it.

I first pointed out that SE should not listen to the playerbase after reading your post because you stated youre happy with the way things were. If this is so, then they have you as a customer and have no reason to give anything but subpar uodates. I mean, why would they? They have your money no matter what they do.

[Xavier]

TimeSink DOES NOT equal difficulty! This is a huge point I think a lot of people miss out on.

Exactly.

[Kyreth]

I don't understand why people would rather fight the same mobs, for the same gear, instead of new mobs, for marginally better gear. You compensate by simply raising the mobs level to the point where people without the gear from the previous tier of HNMs can't effectively damage it.

Oh, wait. I've seen that. It's called EverQuest!

And the result was people cockblocking each other even worse than they are here.

Yes, there's a solution to -that-, which is instancing everything. At that point, the barrier becomes, once again, other players. Increasingly large amounts of content in expansions is directed towards "progressive" play, a process that increasingly segregates the player population. Do it enough times and you get folks ready to jump ship. Such barriers have to be raised slowly and with large chunks of content between them- or you end up with an ever decreasing number of end-game players daunted by the walls thrown up between them and the newest content. Because people LIKE doing the newest stuff.

How many folks do you think would be in Al Zahbi if the pre-requisite was completing CoP, and that the endgame monsters in ToAU were only vulnerable to gear drops from Sea?

That would be how I got into FFXI and out of EQ, BTW. WoW is suffering it's first dose of "progression" thanks to BC- the feeling that older content is trivial content and should be skipped as quickly as possible to do "new" stuff. That's not something I've felt in FFXI, and I freaking don't ever want to. Marginal advances in gear- yes. Rendering entire expansions worth of content moot unless you "progress" through everything else- no.

[Lordwafik]

http://www.jetwavecatering.com.au/im...bottleneck.jpg

[Intense]

That would be how I got into FFXI and out of EQ, BTW. WoW is suffering it's first dose of "progression" thanks to BC- the feeling that older content is trivial content and should be skipped as quickly as possible to do "new" stuff. That's not something I've felt in FFXI, and I freaking don't ever want to. Marginal advances in gear- yes. Rendering entire expansions worth of content moot unless you "progress" through everything else- no.

Creating key items that are required for access to zones/content that extends from a previous expansion to the newer one could solve that problem. I actually thought of that solution without much thought and Im not even a developer.

Im not sure why you want to force people to camp kings though, unless Im confused by what you mean by content skipping.

[Xavier]

I don't understand why people would rather fight the same mobs, for the same gear, instead of new mobs, for marginally better gear.

Oh, wait. I've seen that. It's called EverQuest!

And the result was people cockblocking each other even worse than they are here.

Holy shit you're right, there aren't 300 people in Aery cock-blocking each other with bots daily. How could I have thought progression was a better alternative to a bot-inducing society.

Marginal advances in gear- yes. Rendering entire expansions worth of content moot unless you "progress" through everything else- no.

No shit. Did you just ignore where I said "marginally better gear"? I'm not talking about making previous content obsolete, I'm talking about making new content worth it.

Adaman Hauberk is a really easy example to work with. 15 atk, 15 acc, 10 str, 10 dex. Why shouldn't the body piece off of Jorm be something like 20 atk, 20 acc, 12 str, 12 dex. Its better, but not WTF better.

I think you missed my point kinda. I'll never understand why people feel they "deserve" exactly the same content as another player. This wouldn't have even been a problem if Square had started addressing the problem years ago. Its a huge issue now because the number of 75 players has never been larger, while the content hasn't changed.

Systems like Limbus, Sky, 3 Kings are really well done, but they can't never progress. I don't care if you have absolutely identical versions of them that are 5 levels higher with +1 or 2 to the stats of gear, -anything- for the current playerbase to move onto while the older playerbase

The biggest reason I see people quit is because the game has no progression. They sit in Aery for 2 years, finally get their drop, and have no reason to keep playing the game.

[mikazuki]

SE don't want to implement level caps in every zone, don't ask me why. without doing that or changing another part of the game mechanic, it's very difficult to introduce a better progression curve, this is because you take the mob level and the player level, and subtract. in other words, when mob levels get too high - it becomes very hard to hit/damage them, SE don't want to make their current content too easy for 'progressed' players, so raising stats doesn't really help them, also they don't have much further they can go with regard to atk/def ratios unless they change the caps on them.

the game isn't well-designed for scalability, and SE haven't figured out how to make it scalable yet (meritting "effective level" that activates in certain areas would do this for example, without increasing actual level cap). whatever they do it will be inelegant because of their formulas and the inherent limitations of their calculations server side.

[divisortheory]

Way to ignore what I said about progression again.

The difficulty of obtaining gear in WoW is far lower than in FFXI, and yet the WoW playerbase is 8 million and rising. Clearly that supports your argument that Square would lose players if it made obtaining gear more realistic.

Except for the part where you failed to read practically the next line in my post. Who do you think is making more money, Blizzard with 8 million players, or Square-Enix with 500k or less? Who do you think has more resources to devote to new content? WoW is successful despite the ease of obtaining gear because they are constantly releasing lots of new content. Clearly that's what you want, and I'm not saying that wouldnt' be a great thing for FFXI. What I'm saying is that it's not possible to do it in the manner you suggest for FFXI, because the situation is not the same.

Progression is utterly foreign to you, I get it.

And "realistic" is utterly foreign to you. I get it too.

My problem is that I know things -could- go from fucked up to great in a single patch, not that I expect them to.

Ahh, the "I know how to fix the game overnight even though I don't know anything about software development processes and project management, the amount of profit the game is making, the amount of developers and designers on the team, or pretty much anything else." A classic argument.

Your problem is that you don't know what you're talking about.

See above.

I would venture to say that Assaults are instanced encounters, and that yes, there has been a patch since Assaults came out.

Cool, so what you want is instances that take 15-30 minutes and drop the most amazing gear in the game. Definitely sounds balanced, I'm sure they'll get right on that.

You absolutely can fix fundamental flaws overnight

If you ever start a software company, make sure to remind me not to submit my resume, lol. You would be exactl the type of manager that would cause a company to get destroyed.

How could I have thought progression was a better alternative to a bot-inducing society.

Feel free to post about any discoveries you make. Or better yet, just hang tight while other people make them and you can go mow through it and progress.

[Intense]

Except for the part where you failed to read practically the next line in my post. Who do you think is making more money, Blizzard with 8 million players, or Square-Enix with 500k or less? Who do you think has more resources to devote to new content? WoW is successful despite the ease of obtaining gear because they are constantly releasing lots of new content. Clearly that's what you want, and I'm not saying that wouldnt' be a great thing for FFXI. What I'm saying is that it's not possible to do it in the manner you suggest for FFXI, because the situation is not the same.

Correct me if I am wrong, but SE isnt some hole in the wall company. They are responsible for argueably the most successful RPG franchise, ever. Why dont you think they have ample resources?

[divisortheory]

Except for the part where you failed to read practically the next line in my post. Who do you think is making more money, Blizzard with 8 million players, or Square-Enix with 500k or less? Who do you think has more resources to devote to new content? WoW is successful despite the ease of obtaining gear because they are constantly releasing lots of new content. Clearly that's what you want, and I'm not saying that wouldnt' be a great thing for FFXI. What I'm saying is that it's not possible to do it in the manner you suggest for FFXI, because the situation is not the same.

Correct me if I am wrong, but SE isnt some hole in the wall company. They are responsible for argueably the most successful RPG franchise, ever. Why dont you think they have ample resources?

Ample resources for this game. Say FFXI makes 1 million dollars per year revenue. Now say their current rate of developing new content and updates costs them a total of $900,000 per year. They might as well just abandon the entire game if they're going to devote much more resources to it. The money they make from other games, other products, and other ventures is completely irrelevant. For the purposes of development on FFXI, they make only 1 product and you can ignore everything else.

It's called profit margin. And since they're at the point where pretty much nothing they can do is going to attract new customers, there is literally almost no way to increase their profit margin. So they're stuck with either the same or lower profit margin for the lifespan of FFXI. As such, devoting MORE resources than they are currently to development and expansion of the game will decrease their profit margin. It might keep current customers happy a little bit longer, but it isn't going to attract any new customers, therefore it's wasted money.

[Epical]

http://www.jetwavecatering.com.au/im...bottleneck.jpg

Hey look! It's a bottleneck! I wonder what Wafik means by that...

[Xavier]

Who do you think is making more money, Blizzard with 8 million players, or Square-Enix with 500k or less? Who do you think has more resources to devote to new content? WoW is successful despite the ease of obtaining gear because they are constantly releasing lots of new content. Clearly that's what you want, and I'm not saying that wouldnt' be a great thing for FFXI. What I'm saying is that it's not possible to do it in the manner you suggest for FFXI, because the situation is not the same.

They both started at a subscriber base of 0.

And "realistic" is utterly foreign to you. I get it too.

God help us when 3 years is a realistic timeframe for change.

Ahh, the classic "I know how to fix the game overnight even though I don't know anything about software development processes and project management, the amount of profit the game is making, the amount of developers and designers on the team, or pretty much anything else." A classic argument.

Everything you listed is irrelevent to the fundamental game. You don't need to know how to do something to see how its broken.

I would venture to say that Assaults are instanced encounters, and that yes, there has been a patch since Assaults came out.

Cool, so what you want is instances that take 15-30 minutes and drop the most amazing gear in the game. Definitely sounds balanced, I'm sure they'll get right on that.

Do you ever not put words into someones mouth? Seriously? Can you ever make a point without distorting something? Nobody goes into an Assault and leaves with the gear within 15 minutes. It takes farming to get the gear, and is largely a substitute to existing gear.

I don't recall saying I want instanced fights where you get your Adaman Hauberk in 15 minutes. Taking a few weeks w/ a group of friends to farm points for gear, however, is pretty nice. And, its basically the same as Dynamis, Limbus, etc. Requires teamwork and a time commitment, while removing the horrible problem of botting.

Again, argue whats actually being said or don't argue at all. Its silly.

You absolutely can fix fundamental flaws overnight

If you ever start a software company, make sure to remind me not to submit my resume, lol. You would be exactl the type of manager that would cause a company to get destroyed.

Don't worry I wouldn't hire you. Your philosophy of "given enough time things will fix themselves" leads to nothing but trouble. Fundamental problems, in this case, would be the game design. I'm not suggesting they can have a programmer walk into the officer tonight and fix the game. I'm saying the game design can be retooled with an outline within an hour, and go from there.

Feel free to post about any discoveries you make. Or better yet, just hang tight while other people make them and you can go mow through it and progress.

I have no idea what the point of this is. Because I don't discuss strategy with the entire playerbase, I let other people do the work for me? Wheres that camera of yours again, I still can't find it in my room.

[Intense]

I realize what its called, but your numbers are speculation. They are not fact. The fact is that the amount of money a subscriber spends every few months on FFXI is the equavilant to buying a brand new SE game. Theyre pulling in a decent amount from FFXI.

And honestly, no one here gets paid to develop for FFXI, yet many ideas here are superior to the ones that the people getting paid to think up are thinking up. Throwing money at FFXI wont help it, imo.

[ringthree]

http://www.jetwavecatering.com.au/im...bottleneck.jpg

Cute. ^.^/

There are bottlenecks in the game but many are in place for a reason. I don't care about bottlenecks, I care about when RMT clog bottlenecks.

Bottlenecks are not inherently bad. Its not like people don't spawn JoL. Its supposed to be hard.

A bottleneck is bad when its impossible to gain the item that is needed to progress, like Ullikummi.

So, yes, SE does have some problems, but not everything is a bottleneck, and not every bottleneck is bad. We shouldn't be spawning JoL once a week.

As a side note: Xavier your posts have two issues in general. First, your long quoting posts are very annoying to read, cut it down a bit, you don't have to respond to every sentence.

Second, for some reason you think that SE should be both psychic and prescient. WoW is not a better game because they have figured out the grand formula for MMO's. WoW is better because it learned from the lessons of older MMO's. And the next generation of games will be even better than WoW. WoW was at the right place at the right time, with alot going for it, but in truth all the games from EQ forward are basically the same concept just upgrades on what all the developers have learned about MMO's.

If FFXI was released today it would be completely better than WoW, and would probably destroy the market for MMO's. That is the nature of progress. There is nothing that Blizzard did inherently right or wrong beside learning from other developers. WoW is literally a dirivative of everything before it, and thats not a bad thing.

[divisortheory]

Everything you listed is irrelevent to the fundamental game. You don't need to know how to do something to see how its broken.

You do need to know how to do something to be able to fix it.

I'm saying the game design can be retooled with an outline within an hour, and go from there.

At which point they can throw that design in the trash if their profit margin dictates that it is not in their best interest to implement it.

[Xavier]

It's called profit margin. And since they're at the point where pretty much nothing they can do is going to attract new customers, there is literally almost no way to increase their profit margin. So they're stuck with either the same or lower profit margin for the lifespan of FFXI. As such, devoting MORE resources than they are currently to development and expansion of the game will decrease their profit margin. It might keep current customers happy a little bit longer, but it isn't going to attract any new customers, therefore it's wasted money.

I was completely wrong about you. You aren't an optimist, you're a defeatist, cool.

[divisortheory]

I realize what its called, but your numbers are speculation. They are not fact. The fact is that the amount of money a subscriber spends every few months on FFXI is the equavilant to buying a brand new SE game. Theyre pulling in a decent amount from FFXI.

You don't need specific numbers to realize that what I'm saying is almost definitely the case.

1) There is almost nothing SE can do, even with infinite resources, to significantly increase the player population.
2) Without a significant increase in the player population, it is not possible to increase their profit margin.
3) Without an increase in their profit margin, they will not be willing to invest significant amounts of resources into game enhancements.

Which one do you disagree with?

I was completely wrong about you. You aren't an optimist, you're a defeatist, cool.

Actually, I'm someone who's worked for enough software companies to understand what "the bottom line" is. Their best interest is making the customers happy only insofar as making the customers happy increases their profit margin. That's not being a defeatist, that's understanding basic principles of how businesses operate.

[Intense]

Number 1. Generally speaking now, are you saying that when a company sees their profits declining, that they should just coast to a stop like a car thats run out of gas?

Havent you heard the term "damage control" before? Walmart is doing it, Why does SE not do it?

[ringthree]

I realize what its called, but your numbers are speculation. They are not fact. The fact is that the amount of money a subscriber spends every few months on FFXI is the equavilant to buying a brand new SE game. Theyre pulling in a decent amount from FFXI.

You don't need specific numbers to realize that what I'm saying is almost definitely the case.

1) There is almost nothing SE can do, even with infinite resources, to significantly increase the player population.
2) Without a significant increase in the player population, it is not possible to increase their profit margin.
3) Without an increase in their profit margin, they will not be willing to invest significant amounts of resources into game enhancements.

Which one do you disagree with?

I was completely wrong about you. You aren't an optimist, you're a defeatist, cool.

Actually, I'm someone who's worked for enough software companies to understand what "the bottom line" is. Their best interest is making the customers happy only insofar as making the customers happy increases their profit margin. That's not being a defeatist, that's understanding basic principles of how businesses operate.

I would disagree, sustainable income is actually a profit over time because of decreased cost through streamlining and efficiency. If what you were saying was correct, we would get fewer and fewer updates with less and less content. That is not the case.

(Also, as initial investment costs are paid, the profit margin increases without and increase in income.)

[Xavier]

I realize what its called, but your numbers are speculation. They are not fact. The fact is that the amount of money a subscriber spends every few months on FFXI is the equavilant to buying a brand new SE game. Theyre pulling in a decent amount from FFXI.

You don't need specific numbers to realize that what I'm saying is almost definitely the case.

1) There is almost nothing SE can do, even with infinite resources, to significantly increase the player population.
2) Without a significant increase in the player population, it is not possible to increase their profit margin.
3) Without an increase in their profit margin, they will not be willing to invest significant amounts of resources into game enhancements.

Which one do you disagree with?

With infinite resources they could flood the market with advertising and convince everyone the game was perfect.

2 and 3 are impossible because they prevent each other from happening. Thats not a logical argument. You can't have A because of B and you can't have B because of A. Circular logic.

And if they had infinite resources, profit margin wouldn't even be an issue. There is some kind of irony in here that I'm actually the one with the most hope for the game. It sounds like you've given up on it.