"Rapture" to replace FFXI as premiere SE MMO... =(

[Correction]

Gear they put out is always better, it may not break the game but its always better.

No, it isn't. Stop being wrong.

[Lordender]

FFXI as a game was good and unique, the idiots running the game made the game not fun. The dev's are piss poor at adapting to an evolving game world. SE was so hesitant to change things in FFXI which probably will make people not even give rapture a try.

These are the same idiots that will run rapture. Maybe these idiots learned a thing or two about running an MMO since the debacle of FFXI. FFXI was without a doubt the worst ran MMO I ever seen. Future MMO companies should use FFXI as an example of what NOT to do, it was that pitiful.

Rapture will probably be a "good game" but after FFXI who has any confidence in SE to run the game well?

[Correction]

FFXI as a game was good and unique, the idiots running the game made the game not fun. The dev's are piss poor at adapting to an evolving game world. SE was so hesitant to change things in FFXI which probably will make people not even give rapture a try.

These are the same idiots that will run rapture. Maybe these idiots learned a thing or two about running an MMO since the debacle of FFXI. FFXI was without a doubt the worst ran MMO I ever seen. Future MMO companies should use FFXI as an example of what NOT to do, it was that pitiful.

Rapture will probably be a "good game" but after FFXI who has any confidence in SE to run the game well?

I wouldn't go so far as to call FFXI the 'worst' MMO I've ever played. It's actually better than some new stuff like AoC or any of the endless Korean Grindfests. But I do share the sentiment that there's no sign that the developers are learning from their mistakes with FFXI. Again the problem is communication. They won't even admit their most obvious mistakes, like camping kings or broken, unkillable bosses. So either you stick with their current content, which faces obsolescence once they start to commit a majority of their resources to their new online IP, or move to the new IP and find many of the same problems that drive them crazy with the current game.

Consumers will have to weigh that against the increasing demand on their gaming hours from competing firms that actually listen to and respond to their playerbase in a public fashion. That doesn't necessarily mean WoW. Rapture's dev timetable puts it in direct competition with Bioware.

Think of it as upgrading your version of windows. Is the new version really going to be better? Anyone who's seen Windows evolve from 3.11 to Vista will say 'sure, but MAN did 98, ME and Vista suck...ohshitwait.'

[Thiefami]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...68/Rapture.jpg

You know, is it just me or does that sorta look like a very good reskin of Marduk's Jubbah?

Is it me or does everything look like a reskinned marduk's jubbah ?; ;

[Khajit]

the pants are skadi's chausses and the boot look like the top of skadi's feet too.

[Spira]

FFXI vs WOW isn't really relevant to the whole topic.. but if we're talking about the issue of a games longevity, then the way drops and gear progression is done does play a huge role in it.

drop rate: FFXI is notoriously bad in this department.. its really a mixed bag. some things do have well adjusted effort to reward ratios but most do not. This is where FFXI is bad, honestly.. the harshness of its drop rates.
Of course, many of these low drop rates are done to balance the game and make certain things more exclusive, but they tend to be so harsh that it stops being casual altogether, which is a pity and makes the repetitiveness tedious.
examples of good effort:reward systems in FFXI would be Limbus, Assault (AP items)
examples of bad effort:reward system in FFXI are plentiful, but I'd say Salvage tops the list. Also, Einherjar, and many BCNMs.

Gear progression in FFXI is actually one of the best parts of the game. In my opinion, the way gear is designed in FFXI aids its longevity and helps to afford the balance that FFXI has for its jobs.

Firstly, gear always getting much better than before is not good progression. This leads to old gear becoming obsolete, which is also not good, cos obsolete gear leads to obsolete events and you end up getting a game where people aren't playing everything but just moving from this new thing to the next new thing simply because theres no reason to do the old stuff anymore, they might as well delete it from the game (or they'll need to add new stuff to old areas to warrant people to do it). We still tend to get this for certain things in FFXI, but old content for the most part is quite as attractive as it used to be. This is not a bad thing.

Secondly, new gear doesn't replace old gear. Or does it? Just because it doesn't immediately replace old gear doesn't make it less than the old stuff. Instead of seeing everything as mutually exclusive, it gives players alternatives for gear, and for hardcore players other options in how they want to gear their character (or collect). New gear is almost never everything better than the previous one. They are often balanced with having a stat that is better than old gear, but certain other stats that are weaker, and so on. And then theres the 'less significant' details of the gear, like how it looks and stuff.

FFXI tries very hard not to do their gear to death by making up new ways for gear to be presented to players. This is why the old gear tends to seem most attractive at first glance. Zilart abjuration gear serves up pure stat power, but also with clear-cut attribute penalties. CoP gear tries to spice things up with enchantments, as well as focusing on newer stats such as haste and magic accuracy. Don't forget gear that affects weapon skills only. ToA gear adds more to the mix with set bonuses, latents as well as level dependant/scaleable gear. WotG so far takes this even further with scaleable set bonuses, and more new stats, like magic critical hit rate and more stuff like huge mob-family specific bonuses.

So to put it in a nutshell, FFXI developers introducing gear try to introduce gear laterally instead of pushing for single track superiority. This is also interesting because when new gearing styles pop up, suddenly something that might not have been good gear in the past is now a great piece in the setup. It makes for greater customization and experimentation.. something that most players don't like to do cos they blindly follow better players.

Another point to make about this is that this motivates players to get gear as well. For the less patient, if this wasn't the case, they'd just go 'oh this gear will be obsolete by a few patches anyway.. ill just pass on this and wait for the better stuff to come out'.. Same could be said about relics. They have to be made really good so that people will want to spend the time to work at it and feel it was worth the wait.

Having people who would figure gear gets obsolete anyway inadvertently leads to 'oh.. i've got nothing to do in the game at all.. since i don't really need anything, everything is ephemeral'.. and bored players aren't good to have in an MMORPG. They tend to quit.
I guess im rambling... but the gear progression system in FFXI is actually better than most people give it credit for.. its really a pro to FFXI, not a con.. in terms of looking at an mmorpg's balance. Good balance makes for a good mmorpg, and thats one of the crucial things that keeps an MMO going..

[Correction]

Firstly, gear always getting much better than before is not good progression. This leads to old gear becoming obsolete, which is also not good, cos obsolete gear leads to obsolete events and you end up getting a game where people aren't playing everything but just moving from this new thing to the next new thing simply because theres no reason to do the old stuff anymore

The other side of this is that new content will not even necessarily drop decent gear, let alone replacements for existing gear. Remember Jormundgand? Hydra? People still kill Vrtra?

Static loot and no gear progression is no guard against obsolete, unused content.

[xopher]

The other side of this is that new content will not even necessarily drop decent gear, let alone replacements for existing gear. Remember Jormundgand? Hydra? People still kill Vrtra?

Static loot and no gear progression is no guard against obsolete, unused content.

Did Vrtra last week.

[Hyan]

Sha'ir manteel is still an excellent BRD body, at least that's what I thought o.0

[Cairthenn]

I hope no new gear is released between now and the time of Rapture release.

Regardless of shit storms, people still play and they still feel accomplished when they receive whatever "not worth it" piece of gear they've been hoping for.

[Sho]

I hope no new gear is released between now and the time of Rapture release.

Regardless of shit storms, people still play and they still feel accomplished when they receive whatever "not worth it" piece of gear they've been hoping for.

There we go.

[Correction]

Sha'ir manteel is still an excellent BRD body, at least that's what I thought o.0

Point being Vrtra was mostly obsolesced by Bahamut v2.

Larger point being that static loot does not preserve old content.

[Sho]

Point being Vrtra was mostly obsolesced by Bahamut v2.

Larger point being that static loot does not preserve old content.

It's really sad knowing this. SE have all the power to at least revamp a few NMs to make them campable again-- they simply won't do so unless they make the next epic craftable gear or do something Salvage-esque using old materials.

[Khajit]

Sha'ir manteel is still an excellent BRD body, at least that's what I thought o.0

Has more to do with the time/effort vs reward ratio im guessing.
You grab a bunch of lsmate to kill some random HNM for a body piece that no one is going to notice a difference in except for "whee boobies" comments.
A show of hands here. Who actually thinks that 2% casting speed on a brd is the most important and amazing thing ever?( yigit golmek is 10% so it's really just 2% extra nowadays) People don't care how fast the brd sings nearly as much as if they have a brd to sing in the first place.
Compare that to say a ridill or ebody. if you see one of those it's actually an improvement vs the "standard" gear people run around in.

[Hyan]

Eh, it's decent piece of gear. Unlike hydra's or jormy's drops ._.;

[Spira]

The other side of this is that new content will not even necessarily drop decent gear, let alone replacements for existing gear. Remember Jormundgand? Hydra? People still kill Vrtra?

Static loot and no gear progression is no guard against obsolete, unused content.

The stats on gear that drop/can be made from Jormy and Vrtra aren't exactly bad. Calling them decent is really subjecting the stats to opinion, but they all have their unique traits and bonuses.
for eg, with jormy, provided a new setup could call for this to be used well (or if you already like to gearswap alot), the Jump TP bonuses on barone are still exclusive to those piece of gear for those slots.

Hydra Mail set offers a new range of equipment that reduce damage taken and also boost acc and eva at the same time. Not the most useful for TP burns and HNM but it offers the choice to try new setups and playstyles. Not all gear is designed to pander to current popular playstyles.

Vrtra - someone already mentioned Shair. You can get the stuff off Bahamut v2 as well, but that doesn't mean you still can't get it off here. Increases accessibility to the item isn't a bad thing for players, is it?

Also, gear isn't everything. Yes, its a sure incentive to get people to do stuff, but sometimes the challenge and the fun of the game is enough to get people to do it as well. Some people just want the title, or the bragging rights. Different people are motivated by different drive factors and may wish to take on these parts of the game for those same purposes. (For eg, bst/smn ls, low manning challenge, etc).

Because of the way gear progresses evenly and laterally in FFXI, the argument that the drops become obsolete doesn't stand because they aren't technically obsolete at all. They are only as obsolete as people choose to let them be - its merely a trend of the times. If 2 years down the road the game changes in such a way that haste is no longer popular, are we going to see something like people saying Homam gear / Omega is obsolete as well? and whats with all the rubbish haste gear rite? What if suddenly VIT became a golden way to gear certain jobs? Many things are possible considering the fact that FFXI is constantly evolving as a game and we as a playerbase find new ways to do things and pick up on new trends.
Especially with FFXI, its better not to look at gear on a 2 dimensional plane of good <--> bad because really, there is no such thing. That is just limiting ourselves and ignoring the fact that most of the gear do come with more depth than just good better best. It also means closing ourselves off to possibilities that other things could be better, even if they're less obvious.. Unless you're just one of those people who don't like change, theres no reason not to consider this

[Correction]

Also, gear isn't everything. Yes, its a sure incentive to get people to do stuff, but sometimes the challenge and the fun of the game is enough to get people to do it as well. Some people just want the title, or the bragging rights. Different people are motivated by different drive factors and may wish to take on these parts of the game for those same purposes. (For eg, bst/smn ls, low manning challenge, etc).

You're not allowed to change the subject from gear progression to some nebulous 'motivation for play' and keep the original assertion of 'obsoleted gear yields obsoleted content' intact. The fact that bleeding-edge FFXI content can yield gear nobody wants, regardless of bragging rights, is a counter-example.

Because of the way gear progresses evenly and laterally in FFXI, the argument that the drops become obsolete doesn't stand because they aren't technically obsolete at all.

If this were true there would be no such thing as HQ gear in the game. This reeks of making excuses for terrible gear.

Especially with FFXI, its better not to look at gear on a 2 dimensional plane of good <--> bad because really, there is no such thing.

And this is just straight up false.

[Demetrius*]

Firstly, gear always getting much better than before is not good progression. This leads to old gear becoming obsolete, which is also not good, cos obsolete gear leads to obsolete events and you end up getting a game where people aren't playing everything but just moving from this new thing to the next new thing simply because theres no reason to do the old stuff anymore, they might as well delete it from the game (or they'll need to add new stuff to old areas to warrant people to do it). We still tend to get this for certain things in FFXI, but old content for the most part is quite as attractive as it used to be. This is not a bad thing.

WoW has only made gear obsolete twice, once for each expansion. Then again you can't really blame them for this as they raised the level cap 10 levels each time. FFXI actually did this once themselves when they raised their level cap to 75 way back when, if you can really count that.

No gear or raids under a current expansion actually becomes obsolete to the player base, its simply improved upon in tiers. Say you need to obtain a gear set from dynamis cities before you can progress to dynamis glacier/xarc, and you need a gear set from glacier/xarc before you can beat the bosses in dynamis qufim/valk, and you need a gear set from those 2 before you can beat the bosses in dynamis tav. That's pretty much exactly how WoW content is created. With each new raid, the bosses get much harder and you need gear from the last raid dungeon in order to be able to beat the new bosses.
So while the hardcore players are working on the bleeding edge content, the casual players are still making use of the previous raids to gear up.

Gear is a stepping stone in WoW from my perspective. It's not the be all and end all reward that it is in ffxi. While you may work for 5 months to obtain a piece of gear in ffxi to beat mobs you could already beat before without that gear, in 5 months of WoW you'll have obtained a new gear set to fight new and more challenging content.

How magnificent would it be if FFXI released a bunch of new events and bosses that were difficult and challenging to the end game community without being some retarded puzzle to figure out? Think back to the 3 wyrms at CoP release or Baha2. WoW does this on a constant basis, and having the opportunity to engage in these fights is the real reward that the gear offers.

[Spira]

You're not allowed to change the subject from gear progression to some nebulous 'motivation for play' and keep the original assertion of 'obsoleted gear yields obsoleted content' intact. The fact that bleeding-edge FFXI content can yield gear nobody wants, regardless of bragging rights, is a counter-example.

You're not allowed to change the subject from Rapture with relation to FFXI. Or i guess not.
My point is that obsolete in FFXI is not truly obsolete because it implies that the thing is not wanted, replaced, no longer useful. With FFXI, gear progression doesn't move in 1 direction (damage rating) only, therefore gear doesn't become obsolete, it simply becomes unpopular but is viewed as 'obsolete' in that given point in time.

If this were true there would be no such thing as HQ gear in the game. This reeks of making excuses for terrible gear.

Lateral progression of gear doesn't imply that you cannot compare gear on the same stat or for the same purpose, it simply means that you cannot fairly do that for all the gear around and say that you're giving it a fair assessment for all intents and purposes possible. If you're referring to HQ as in HQ crafts, not all HQ gear is necessarily better than the NQ version anyway, nor do they really give substantial differences most of the time to warrant them being placed on a higher 'tier' than the NQ counterparts other than e-peen.

Terrible is also quite subjective. I think Dusk gear is terrible cos i hate to walk slower than I already do, even if its just for TPing. But it gives nice haste, so you think its great. Oh and this third guy thinks haste is crappy anyway since I've got so little of it on me. Gee. I don't know if the piece of eq is good or bad anymore. I'll just stick to my original opinion.

And this is just straight up false.

which is better? Cletine or Thalassocrat?

[Lordender]

I honestly believe most people only play FFXI these days because of the friends they made more than enjoying what the game currently has to offer. Once the dev's stop trying to make the game exiciting it becomes more about those around you rather than playing a fun game.

SE dev's could have done so much more to fix critical game flaws of their game but instead they danced around the issues.

If rapture is to be successful they need to fix the fail way they ran FFXI.

1. Seperate servers for NA and JP, the intergration experiment was a failure.

2. Communicate with the playerbase by opening up official forums to keep customers up to date and to accept meaningful feedback on important issues.

3. Better customer service and better trained GM's that have more power to deal with issues in game before escalating the problem to call centers that give you the run around.

4. Test servers that are opened to the public when things need to be tested so it doesn't cause mass chaos when the patches go to live servers.