Heated Endgame Discussion

[Siatdiat]

FFXI will probably be the last good "not-WoW" MMORPG there is, depending on what you consider Vanguard is. Everything since WoW has been like WoW.
Well, there are games like Conan coming out, that seem to be in a genre all by itself.

DnD and Middle-earth are both trying to be mmo light, and Vanguard isnt anything like WoW outside the initial interface. Maybe in the future we will see that separation though. More games like WoW that are based on challenging content. And other games like FFXI that are based on a fantasy setting chat room full of mini games. If there is an adjustment in their next mmo I think it will be more besieged and chocobo raising and 0 hnms. Any hnm like content will be instanced which is good, but doesnt solve much when you consider it will be another slow build up of endgame content over 3 years, none of which your linkshell will ever max out on. Also, everything will be be able to be beaten in lvl 60 artifact armor, so all the rewards will once again not effect much except maybe the speed at which you can beat old content. People throw around SE having to keep the game balanced, but its not even balanced so that is a pretty weak argument.

Also, Its easier to make claims about a game being "just like WoW" if you've either played WoW, or played that game, and I'm talking about beyond lvl 5.

[Siatdiat]

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.

See my prior post. "Progression" eventually would lead to the death of new endgame groups on servers, simply due to the increasing timesinks involved in not kissing the top dog's ass to get a hand up.

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.

Oh? What was:

[quote:3be21]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.

Do this twice, and you've just rendered the inital "endgame" gear obselete, and hence the content that goes with it. Force people to go through it, and you're tossing an increasing timesink into the game, which I believe you and I both loathe.

[quote:3be21]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.

I think they are- the solution is instancing as much endgame content as possible.

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.

Yet we have a 30+ page topic on a single ToAU HNM at this point and folks are popping boners every time someone mentions Salvage armor. The problem is with bottlenecking, not progression. People burn out not on "Oh I got all the shinies", but on "Fuck, I did 2 years of camping in Aery for THIS? I quit, thx 4 relics bye!!1!!"

And I think the core of bottlenecking is the HNM/NM system as it stands today. Fix that, and you fix the biggest collective pain in the ass we have in the game.[/quote:3be21][/quote:3be21]

TBC expansion for WoW is progression beyond old content. If I level a new character I dont have to run the old upper 60s 5 mans, or any of the old raid content. But it didnt leave anyone behind. It leveled the playing field. But its still the same guilds as far as I can tell that progress quickly because of their dedication to it. However, their progress isnt cock blocking anyone, and outside a few haters, most people will cheer for the "big kills" guild of their faction. I know playing EQ makes you an expert on all mmos without playing them though so just ignore this.

[Kyreth]

I mentioned near gear but I don't think I made it specifically required to win, just increadibly helpful and time cutting. Also, I don't think the problem with the EQ cock-block would be as big of an issue because I'd rather most of it be done through instances instead of worldspawns, which have always been a problem in any game.

It only really takes two steps of progression to begin creating a problem with trivialized content, but you did indeed mention that. I quoted it in the post I made prior to this one.

Honestly, I've always wondered why they didn't just make the KS99 Behemoth, Fafnir and Aspid slightly stronger and drop their respective 3 Kings gear. It would've solved a ton of problems a long time ago. 99 Kindred Seals takes a while to farm, so its not as if you'd be fighting the Kings 10 times a day, and as long as the fights were hard enough, the challenge would still be there. The fact that you can't get 99KS in a timely manner would mean that people would still probably camp 3 Kings daily anyway, for another chance at the gear. Game breaking and radical design, I know, but I've always been a dreamer. Its just always been stupid that the hardest part of FFXI isn't the fights but the claim.

Agreed. Although personally, I think the method of "rebattle" should involve sacrificing an item drop from the monster in question, which means you get a new battle (or more, if you allow any unique item to qualify) for each win for the LS pulls off. Victory should allow an easier road to do it again, enough losses should send a LS back to the "bush league" of the initial spawn.

And if you really don't want gear progression, at the very least, you should spread the best gear in the game out over more than 2 and a half mobs. CoP Wyrms, ToAU HNMs are fairly well designed and pretty fun to fight, but far less rewarding then their counterpart Kings. They take longer to spawn, longer to fight, and usually require more people. The rewards are universally worse than 3 Kings. Anyone who defends that type of expansion really confuses me. If progression is really impossible, at the very least the abjuration system should be spreadout to all worldspawn HNMs just as incentive to kill. Would it really break the game if Jorm's Barone Body was an Adaman Hauberk?

I'd like to see new-expansion crafting drops as useful towards updating older-expansion gear, not just ToAU-only synthesis. Goodness knows there's enough crappy items that go straight to vendor at this point.

[Kyreth]

TBC expansion for WoW is progression beyond old content. If I level a new character I dont have to run the old upper 60s 5 mans, or any of the old raid content. But it didnt leave anyone behind. It leveled the playing field. But its still the same guilds as far as I can tell that progress quickly because of their dedication to it. However, their progress isnt cock blocking anyone, and outside a few haters, most people will cheer for the "big kills" guild of their faction. I know playing EQ makes you an expert on all mmos without playing them though so just ignore this.

Exactly my point. Content is not being progressed past- it is being rendered obselete. I've got a partner here at work- he's a 70 Priest on Mediveh, runs Initech- so it's not like I'm sitting in an ivory tower on WoW. Right now, WoW is one tier of progression- Original game -> BC.

What happens when it's Original -> BC -> next expansion? Or the next? Heck, you don't want to do the old endgame content already at all- what makes you think new players who want to play with you will if you don't? That older content will end up wasted server space- a dead zone.

Further, what happens when it take more and more time to bring up a raid-level guild from scratch? Are you going to do it the hard way, or hook up with the proven people...or get left in the cold if you're not what they want because they're full on Hunters and it'll take you six months-year of play to get started on what they'll be finished with and farming?

That's what I like about FFXI. A good player is a good player, but you don't have to spend cycles worth of farming a monster to make him useful in endgame play in any given job. (Though obviously, the gear makes things easier.)

[Matricide]

why is it such a problem that old content gets somewhat 'obsolete' when new content comes out for end game players or even in general? is it too much for us to expect a regular amount of new content? what are we paying for on a monthly basis?

if i wanted the same content over and over i'd play a game with no monthly fee. there are plenty of games out there, if you want us to keep paying your monthly fee you should offer us something new and exciting on a somewhat regular basis.

wow gets an expansion that you folks say renders some old shit obsolete.. okay.. ffxi gets an expansion that adds a shitload of sidegrades that's already outclassed by still 2-3 year old gear. not to mention we get expansions that are 15% finished when released.

[levish]

It took me a very long time to realize SE would either take forever to make the changes that would make FFXI a game rather than a place to socialize while wasting your time, or they simply would not make those changes at all.

If you think to when FFXI is a game, that's what needs to be expanded on and everything else needs to be cut back

I was going to type out a list of what can be improved on but what's the point, it'll be ignored more than likely and there are way too many changes to make to make FFXI a game and not a chatroom with a very slim possibility for pixelated glory.

[Vedder]

Man... when I saw that this thread had some new info starting on page 23, I thought maybe it was some interesting info from Bercus.

Instead, it's just a bunch of people swinging penises around.

Anyway... hopefully when/if Bercus gets some new info he can just post it in a new thread since it looks like this one has been permanently derailed.

[Intense]

And I think the core of bottlenecking is the HNM/NM system as it stands today. Fix that, and you fix the biggest collective pain in the ass we have in the game.

Ok, so lets say they fix the bottlenecking. This will in turn make it a bit quicker for people to get their gear, right? After everyone has their said desired gear, then what?

Use it to merit? But wait... Whats the point of meritting...? You were able to kill the biggest HNMs before the merits, so why are they necessary?

I may be hearing people wrong, but it seems like you want to keep those king abj's as the top of the line equip.

[Matricide]

See, that's the shortsightedness that's a problem really. "Make my items easier to get and I'll be happy." No you won't. We need a reason to stay after we get said gear (not to say making it "easier" read: non-bottable wouldn't be a good thing). The fix is real progression.

[Alleya]

And I think the core of bottlenecking is the HNM/NM system as it stands today. Fix that, and you fix the biggest collective pain in the ass we have in the game.

Ok, so lets say they fix the bottlenecking. This will in turn make it a bit quicker for people to get their gear, right? After everyone has their said desired gear, then what?

Use it to merit? But wait... Whats the point of meritting...? You were able to kill the biggest HNMs before the merits, so why are they necessary?

I may be hearing people wrong, but it seems like you want to keep those king abj's as the top of the line equip.

Then what? Then square releases some new, fun HNMs and other content that are fun and don't limit the fight to 4 effective jobs. They do not add some stupid instances with artificial challenges like level caps and gear restrictions, but make balanced and strategic fights. Some of the equipment from these new mobs might be better than what you already have in some situations. Everyone gets the cool gear, and new stuff comes out to use it on.

*GASP*!!!!!!!!!! PROGRESSION OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG JESUS CHRIST GET IN THE CAR

[Xavier]

"Progression" eventually would lead to the death of new endgame groups on servers, simply due to the increasing timesinks involved in not kissing the top dog's ass to get a hand up.

Are you arguing against a timesink with a timesink as the alternative?

Don't have progression to continually get better gear, just have the same gear near unobtainable for the majority of players?

Your argument is kind of not following anything because if you assume, like divsory, that there is no way to increase the playerbase at this point, then theres no reason to cater to new players. If you have no new players to cater to, the old content should be worthless anyway.

[Demosthenes11]

and possibly they could make HNMs drop more than 1 moderately good item, which can be used only on 2 jobs (only one worthwhile) (read: Khimaira)

[Xavier]

Exactly my point. Content is not being progressed past- it is being rendered obselete.

Its a good thing the real world doesn't work the way you want the game to, because otherwise we'd still be riding around in our horse and buggies because we wouldn't want cars to make them obsolete.

Progress has always come at the expense of the past, and generally is accepted because its a step-forward. People quit this game because there is nothing to do after you've obtained the only set of gear in the game that matters.

You camp Nidhogg to get his drops, just to keep camping Nidhogg to kill him with his drops, because hes the only NM whos drops really matter. There needs to be something more.

[divisortheory]

You camp Nidhogg to get his drops, just to keep camping Nidhogg to kill him with his drops, because hes the only NM whos drops really matter. There needs to be something more.

Salvage, Assault, and Khimaira all drop things better than Nidhogg.

[Demosthenes11]

You camp Nidhogg to get his drops, just to keep camping Nidhogg to kill him with his drops, because hes the only NM whos drops really matter. There needs to be something more.

Salvage, Assault, Tiamat, and Khimaira all drop things better than Nidhogg.

lol? Gaiters? Hauteclaire? storm gear? give me a break

[divisortheory]

I deleted tiamat from my post before your response. are you saying hauteclaire isn't good? wonder why people keep crying about the drop rate then. and no, not storm gear.

edit: i'll add limbus to the list of things that drop better stuff than nidhogg also.

[Intense]

And I think the core of bottlenecking is the HNM/NM system as it stands today. Fix that, and you fix the biggest collective pain in the ass we have in the game.

Ok, so lets say they fix the bottlenecking. This will in turn make it a bit quicker for people to get their gear, right? After everyone has their said desired gear, then what?

Use it to merit? But wait... Whats the point of meritting...? You were able to kill the biggest HNMs before the merits, so why are they necessary?

I may be hearing people wrong, but it seems like you want to keep those king abj's as the top of the line equip.

Then what? Then square releases some new, fun HNMs and other content that are fun and don't limit the fight to 4 effective jobs. They do not add some stupid instances with artificial challenges like level caps and gear restrictions, but make balanced and strategic fights. Some of the equipment from these new mobs might be better than what you already have in some situations. Everyone gets the cool gear, and new stuff comes out to use it on.

Exactly, and this is basically what Ive been trying to advocate in all my posts in this thread. :wink:

[Demosthenes11]

Give me 1 reason Hauteclaire is good for anything that matters. Iirc, pld/nin aren't supposed to get hit.

[divisortheory]

Give me 1 reason Hauteclaire is good for anything that matters. Iirc, pld/nin aren't supposed to get hit.

Lemme go tell all of our PLDs that Defending Ring sucks, brb.

[Demosthenes11]

Give me 1 reason Hauteclaire is good for anything that matters. Iirc, pld/nin aren't supposed to get hit.

Lemme go tell all of our PLDs that Defending Ring sucks, brb.

Look at the slot, not the item