Random Complaint Thread. No white knighting allowed.

[Arximiro]

Ran into awesome placement of them today doing adamantine wills in the mines. Would be an awesome leve except that the coblyns spawn right on top of two mites, and you have to run 2 mins across the zone every other pop.

I want to punch the asshole that made those monster's placement so hard in his tiny Japanese sack. I was doing that leve on LNC last night for some marks and had to change to PGL to clear the room, then back to LNC. (A horrible horrible process that requires a ton of blinking and bullshit) Then when I started fighting the coblyns a fucking Jumping Dickass spawns and starts attacking me. I was so pissed.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Exact reason I just play thaum now. Whole damn place you get agro from them popping all the time so now I just pop punishing barbs and let them kill themselves or spam spells with stygian spikes up since I never run out of mp. Sad thing is I spent 1=2 hours today just looking for mites to kill for the sinew and the only two I came across(aside from diremites and one other mite) were in the mines after searching all of west thanalan(right where that leve takes you).

[Lucavi]

Actually that post was more of a joke one referencing a ZAM thread where they have come to that conclusion. Granted their definition of "casual" is a player being able to do "something" in 15-30 minutes whereas my personal outlook is time investment vs real progress.

If someone were to ask me I would say this game is not casual in the slightest.

I was going to say. I know you were trolling from the get go. Saying this game is casual is equivalent to saying that Bush Jr. was an atheist leftist.

[Lucavi]

I don't really understand what a casual mmo is. If you're playing a mmo odds are you're spending a lot of time on it. So casual means.. easy to get around, easy to get gear, easy to solo, just easier? I'm kinda lost. Never played WOW but I hear that's casual? And I've about had it with this yellow mob/no sp crap. I can't even begin to count the sp I've lost during behest, leves, or just grinding in general where I've got aggro from aoe, behest members killing yellow mobs, etc. The bug has been there for like 1.5 months, fix it already!

"Hardcores" (or people that think they're hardcore because they like to complain when others aren't doing what they're doing) claim that if you can obtain something that you seek within a reasonable amount of time and/or effort (whichever one comes first), then the content was too casual, and should have been more difficult. This "difficulty" could either be through actual difficulty level through boss strength or mission difficulty, or could simply mean more tedious, like a longer, slower grind through whatever you're doing, or even simply a lower drop rate.

These fools ascribe by the notion that if its harder to get, its somehow better because of it, like it makes their little hearts go pitter patter even more. If an item has the same stats, but drops at a 3% droprate on a 3 week respawn instead of a 37% droprate at a weekly respawn or (God Forbid) a daily respawn, the former is much, much better because it (here we go!) instills a greater sense of pride~!

It really all comes down to pride and hubris, with a little (and very little) logic thrown into the mix:

1)Pride: I have it and you don't, and you probably won't get it because I had to spend 5 months farming a mission/quest/boss with no reward to get it. Therefore, its awesome.
2)Hubris: Even if you get it, as long as you don't get it faster than I got it, you're alright. If you did, however, then you're a fucking casual, especially if the content was nerfed to allow you to get it faster.
3)Logic: If this counts as one of the only forms of hardcore end-game content, once I have it, what else there for me to do? I'd get bored without a goal to throw myself into, so keep the droprate low and keep the grind long so that I always have something good to chase.

That's about it in a nutshell, but I'm sure others can add in. Basically, though XI purists have always called WoW casual because you can get a reward for your efforts within a reasonable amount of time, while XI purists were botting and cheating for months in the Aery or Sky to just to get their precious Osode or McGriddle. WoWtards were enjoying their challenging, yet rewarding instances and gearing up slowly but surely, while XI purists were forming elitist dynamis shells and grinding for half a year or more to complete single sets of AF2.

Edit: My apologies on the double.

[Achitophel]

While WoWtards were preparing their "How I Spent My Summer" reports. Seriously, WoW is like a beat em up with experience points.

[jPuff]

Re: Lucavi

They're always faggy little students with no jobs anyway, so their arguments are invalid. They just want the game to be fucking impossible for anyone with an actual life because they know they will always have more playtime no matter what. The second they are not the only ones who can get it, it's too casual. That's the standard.

[Lucavi]

I think its more of a sense that they need something to define their time spent playing the game. They'd rather have a legacy of exploitation of others and mindless grinding of a shitty system because it gives them a greater sense of "community" and "teamwork" with the people they have to spend months grinding with. This doesn't account for the LS leader that finally gets the drop and disbands the shell, or the guy that steals the bank and rolls off to another server.

That's part of the problem with lumping your entire legacy of a game into long-winded, tedious tasks. That "enjoyment" can go up in a quick puff of smoke if something goes wrong. Whereas a game like WoW, since you can get small bits of enjoyment in so many places (PVP for fun or rewards, questing for fun or rewards, titles and achivements, small scale or large scale PVE events, dynamic events, Raids for multiple sizes, all with rewards that come at a decent clip instead of once every 3 months), you look back and remember multiple events, instead of your game highlights being "remember that time we MPKed those other guys, or that time that shell got mad that we out-botted them for 3 weeks straight.... we still didn't get anything but fire crystals, but man, they were so mad!!

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Yea I get what you're saying. The only issue with casual is there needs to be a lot to do, which is certainly not a bad thing and I think is a good thing. Screw camping kings everyday for 3 hours only to loose a claim 5/7 days a week. Forget doing dynamis twice a week spending 3~ hours in there. I'd like instances that are 1-1.5 hours MAX then let me run off and do ANOTHER instance if I so choose or do some kinda hamlet defense for 30 mins. I like behests in a sense you can go and do once an hour with no strings attached. I just don't like how it's the only thing to do right now.

[Lucavi]

Campaign was the most "casual friendly" content I'd ever seen from SE, and go figure that I loved it. It was as deep as you wanted it to be, once they got around to designing quests for it and whatnot. I seriously miss campaign. That simple inclusion would be enough for me to at least play every now and then, because I don't have to rely on anyone else (or their lack of community and teamwork), I can find my own ways to engage myself in the content (thus saving SE the trouble of having to do so), and I can be rewarded for my actions in a tangible manner that I won't feel is too slight for my efforts.

[Achitophel]

The only issue with casual is there needs to be a lot to do, which is certainly not a bad thing and I think is a good thing. Screw camping kings everyday for 3 hours only to loose a claim 5/7 days a week. Forget doing dynamis twice a week spending 3~ hours in there. I'd like instances that are 1-1.5 hours MAX then let me run off and do ANOTHER instance if I so choose or do some kinda hamlet defense for 30 mins.

So like Assault and Limbus and Salvage and Campaign and whatnot. It was annoying that FFXI had king camping and Dynamis among the first things. It's not annoying that they were included at all, though.

[Alderaan]

Campaign was the most "casual friendly" content I'd ever seen from SE, and go figure that I loved it. It was as deep as you wanted it to be, once they got around to designing quests for it and whatnot. I seriously miss campaign.

You'll fucking love Rift then. Campaigns that have no static spot and roam the entire zone taking over quest hubs and villages.

I'm still fucking amazed thinking back that SE had the blueprint for what's now considered Dynamic Content in Rift and GW2, and didn't include it in XIV.

[Kaylia]

You'll fucking love Rift then. Campaigns that have no static spot and roam the entire zone taking over quest hubs and villages.

I lost every interest in Rift after reading about Archage. Not in the mood for another game like that, even if it looks well done.
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/100302-ArcheAge

This is the way to make a sandbox game.

[jPuff]

Yea I get what you're saying. The only issue with casual is there needs to be a lot to do, which is certainly not a bad thing and I think is a good thing. Screw camping kings everyday for 3 hours only to loose a claim 5/7 days a week. Forget doing dynamis twice a week spending 3~ hours in there. I'd like instances that are 1-1.5 hours MAX then let me run off and do ANOTHER instance if I so choose or do some kinda hamlet defense for 30 mins. I like behests in a sense you can go and do once an hour with no strings attached. I just don't like how it's the only thing to do right now.

Yeah, I definitely don't want more 3+ hour shit, instanced or otherwise. I don't want to have to devote an entire night or weekend to doing one thing. I'd much rather have some sort of ichor/token system that lets me work towards buying specific gear (NOT earn points to pop mobs that will "maybe" drop what I want-- I mean fucking sell me the gear I want directly) by doing a variety of PvE stuff whenever I want.

[jPuff]

So like Assault and Limbus and Salvage and Campaign and whatnot. It was annoying that FFXI had king camping and Dynamis among the first things. It's not annoying that they were included at all, though.

Yes it is. It's annoying if shit like kings is included and it's going to net you gear you can't get otherwise. Let's please get past directly rewarding cunts that just do nothing but play the game 23 hours a day and complain that everyone else is ruining it for them. There's no stopping people from grinding all night and getting lots of levels faster and that's fine, but FUCK having content that specifically requires you to do that. Fuck that stupid 2004 shit.

[Kaylia]

Yeah, I definitely don't want more 3+ hour shit, instanced or otherwise. I don't want to have to devote an entire night or weekend to doing one thing. I'd much rather have some sort of ichor/token system that lets me work towards buying specific gear (NOT earn points to pop mobs that will "maybe" drop what I want-- I mean fucking sell me the gear I want directly) by doing a variety of PvE stuff whenever I want.

Nothing wrong with endgame events that last three hours, as long its not three hours of mindless grinding on the same things for 5 years. If it's challenging and rewarding, it wont be too bad.

What they need to do however is allow the progress to be saved/continued if the event is too long.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Wow Archage looks really good. I hope they can pull it off. And yea I would LOVE to see a campaign type system return to XIV right now. Limbus and assault were good, but the one thing I didn't like about salvage is you needed to grind assault in order to do it, making assault more of a chore to get done rather than doing it to get gear(which I still needed but couldn't get because I wanted to do salvage with my group). Right now the most fun I have is 9+ man behests. The SP is good and party play is a nice change of pace, it just sucks there's nothing else in game atm to party up for aside from leves(and behest seems to be better since they'll give you 40 mobs to kill). Since I can't afford to teleport back and forth to camp every behest, I end up grinding mobs for 80sp each(boring) or trying to find an item to craft that stacks to 99 and whose mats I can stack as well(making armor or items that don't stack with no npc nearby sucks).

A couple other disappointments in game: Dinged 26 thm last night and got drain, 30 mp for half the dmg of a tier 1 nuke was lol. At 24 the tier 2 nukes sucked too. At 22 the initiation ability seems meh(thought about transfering punishing barbs to a tank but not sure if it will work). Syphon mp/sac2 are great, absorb spells seem meh... Overall leveling in this game I feel like you get a few good skills between 1-10, then again 10-20(almost always something good at 20), then pretty much nothing until 30+. The rest of the skills seem totally worthless. Might not be true for all classes but it seems so for thm/lnc/conj (paralyze looks good, and skewer 2 is ok but trammel is better).

Leves and mobs in general: Was hoping leves would get better the higher rank you got. Instead I see its the same 'kill these 6-8 mobs and you're done', or even better there's 'defend this spot for 10 minutes' against literally 6 mobs that come in pairs in 2 minute intervals. This tied to always killing stupid crap like slugs or rats. Really? Slugs and rats? This is as bad as XI's rabbits. Ladybugs make me want to shoot myself. Why are there 200 ladybugs in nanwa mines underground? Is there a ladybug queen or something? I thought ladybugs like it outside? Why should I kill ladybugs? I can understand the need to have something easy for early on and a mob or two as 'filler' types to set an environment(doe/rats in coerthas), but please stop reskinning these mobs and having us kill them later on. It's so damn boring. Which brings up reskinned mobs.

It just seems lazy that the ONLY thing done is the color on majority of the mobs. The tuco tucos are a good example of 'reskinned' moles that have 'spikes' to at least show some sort of effort on SE's part to make a 'different' mob. Rank 10: oh hey a puk; Rank 18: oh hey a sea puk(same skin, different name); Rank 24: oh hey a puk with a red head. Did a leve that made me kill a sea 'hare' and some type of 'slug'. They're the same thing with different skins. Maybe it's just me expecting too much, and I can understand killing something with a different skin once or twice the entire game, but not seeing 5 different types(read: skin) of the same mob over a 10-15 level interval. Don't get me wrong either because there are some well done mobs in game. Mites are sweet, and so are diremites. Not sure if they're 'different' mobs, or if mitelings 'turn into' diremites, but they look pretty similar aside from the huge ass tail. Cobylns, piestes, wolves, skeletons, hypogryphs(sp?); the list goes on and I didn't even include any beastmen/ogre/etc. Anyway, with so many complaints about the game I think I need to stop playing as much(lucky I move in a week or two so I won't be) or I really won't have the motivation to come back. Lots of potential but the more and more I play it seems it'll take a year before the game is actually worth playing.

[Sephiroth]

Ideally with a long event you'd have people joining and leaving throughout as they come online/need to go, but that's a pain if it isn't designed with that in mind. With events like dynamis they had a cap on participants even if they weren't all in the zone or still online. Dynamis also sucked for the 1-2 hour wait before you'd enter, waiting for enough healers to get online etc. If you could go straight in and do the content and have people easily join later the event would last 3 hours rather than the 5 it did when I played.

I'd like to see more events that take the focus away from being in an elite linkshell too. Things you can just turn up for and do with a group of randoms whenever. Behests are a small step towards that. I'd love to see behests that last an hour, have hundreds of mobs with a big boss at the end and a 60 player cap. If done right you could get all your SP that way and eliminate the standard grind of killing 10000 coblyns/raptors. Why should SPing have to be so boring/repetitive in MMOs?

[Sephiroth]

Why are there 200 ladybugs in nanwa mines underground?

Because in some parts they share spawns with coblyns and if you're the rank you SP on coblyns you're too low to kill the bugs. That's another problem with the game. Putting higher rank mobs on the same spawn as lower rank mobs. Copperbell Mines has the same issue. Diremites popping is fine, they should just be a few ranks lower so people can kill them at the rank they go to SP on doblyns.

[Cjskater]

Those defense leves could be really fun if they put some actual challenge into them. There's a few that can be fun; one at Treespeak (with gnats and eyes), one at Nine Ivies (with fireflies, gnats, and roselings), and one at Bald Knoll (with eyes and spiders I think). They are fun because they are in the middle of aggro, though. The first defense mission I did was at Bald Knoll, with a rank 25-30 party, the whole time we was fighting off aggro while killing "horde." It was non-stop battling and quite exciting. Then we went to treespeak and did the one with puks, the whole time expecting a morbol to spawn just because the shit was so laughably easy.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

hings you can just turn up for and do with a group of randoms whenever. Behests are a small step towards that. I'd love to see behests that last an hour, have hundreds of mobs with a big boss at the end and a 60 player cap. If done right you could get all your SP that way and eliminate the standard grind of killing 10000 coblyns/raptors. Why should SPing have to be so boring/repetitive in MMOs?

This would be great. I thought about it before "Why not have an event that kinda runs full time that you can join and leave as you please and get behest-like sp?". The only reason I came up with was "It would eliminate the grind and make behest obsolete". Would love to have some kinda defense or campaign thing you could do all the time to just basically get around grind parties for good.