How has it been going?Follow

Every time I asked you to elaborate your response was "something new"

No I just do not answer you because I have said what I am looking for enough times.

"Hard" is subjective. What's hard for one person may be easy for another. For people with bad gear, killing a high level mob is hard. For people with limited play time, anything that takes a long time is hard. For people without friends or a good FC, anything that requires a lot of people is hard, etc. There is no magical balance point that pleases everyone.


What are you talking about? Most modern MMOs are more balanced now then ever. Nothing will ever be perfectly balanced of course, but look at old school FFXI and modern day WoW/FFXIV/whatever and tell me what's more balanced.

You know what I mean! FFXI was considered hard and FFXIV is considered easy, not individual person ability.. Matter of fact if you talk to people who do not play FFXIV allot consider FFXIV to be for people who prefer glamor to actual gameplay/combat. You would not believe some of the stuff people say about FFXIV. To me since I played it a while it is a little offensive plus i have not decided if I will never comeback.

By balance I am not talking job balance and I knew it would lead to this and should have made it clearer. What I mean is a game that is for all types of players: hardcore or non hardcore or those who prefer to solo mostly. That is hard to do in a game.

Edit
I myself prefer something just a little less changeling than FFXI was, I do not have as much time as I did then. FFXIV doesn't really have much of any and usually gets nerfed in no time. FFXI was hard on the newbie where FFXIV it is easy to pick up and catch up. When FFXIV launched I was looking for something a little closer to FFXI than FFXIV is. I wasn't looking for the same game ( I left FFXI for a reason) But something a little closer on challenge.


Also I did not start this thread to be another debate thread. I started it to see what people were up to and keep in touch. See if anything new is happening in the game.

If someone doesn't enjoy a game there is nothing anyone can say to change someones mind.



Edited, Jan 12th 2017 12:46pm by Nashred

Well definitely can tell you don't raid in this game, since XIV has much, much longer waits that breaks up the action. Just saying.



Think a big part of this is, no matter what you say, unless it's in support for XIV, you'll get told off or told you're wrong/MMOs not for you/insert any other "gtfo the genre" response.

So while difficulty is indeed subjective especially when it comes to XIV where people consider dodging AoEs to be insanely difficult, some things aren't because when a designer specifically states they designed x to be easy, if you still find it hard, that means it's not a matter of content and more player skill. For the style of MMO XI was, there was "hard" and "easy content", but there were also multiple ways to tackle harder content, some even down to using very niche setups (unless you were crazy rich or in a crazy good HNMLS, one option was available to so few.)



Oldschool FFXI because joe blow Samurai won't be a powerhouse, nor will joe blow Paladin be an amazing tank. XI wasn't the pinnacle of balance, but you HAVE to work to get "overpowered", especially in the old school design, it's not like XIV where everyone can scrape by doing even less than the bare minimum in 90% of the content. If anything, Modern WoW and XIV for example are the worst examples of balance, because it's "balanced" in a way that nothing matters.

Like, realistically, XIV is designed that there's no goals that matter because the game is "Balanced" in that way. It's nice to have x, but it doesn't matter in the long run, which is why people want the raid setup to be changed, which Yoshida thankfully listened to and 4.x MAY actually be worthwhile in terms of reward structure.



Then comes the: "Who is a hardcore player and who is a casual player" since what seems to define "casual" is subjective based on argument. I'm a casual player as my playtime is extremely limited, but then I get told I'm not a casual player because I do the savage raids and ex primals in this game.

It's like..having the ability to clear content that requires knowing how to play makes you "hardcore." It takes less than an hour to learn an ex primal, especially if you're quick on the uptake. If you're not quick on learning content, it'll take you longer, doesn't make you any less or more casual either way. When talking about XIV specifically, the content gets consumed quickly because..there's not much content there.

Realize there's only 4-8 bosses at best in a year in terms of actual "hardcore content", whereas there's plenty of "casual" content scattered through the year - which even the most casual gamers complain about going through quickly unless there's...surprise, a time gate of some kind. XI's setup had a "content rotation" due to being horizontal, so even if you farmed x content to death, chances are you were already working on a different set of content as well. Unless you do Savage Raids and ex primals in XIV, your content base is actually fairly limited in the grand scheme of things because they obsolete content faster than they bring it out.

You can argue that if you join now you have tons of content...but how much of that content is relevant even to a causal player? So in terms of content consumption, it really falls down to:

Those who do content.
Those who choose not to do content.

None of the content in this game is really that difficult and even when they make 'hard content' it's hard because of the wrong reasons, which most raiders didn't even care for (Gordias) which is why you generally had only world first runners caring for it. Midas fixed that situation and Creator went towards the extreme opposite and being a bit too easy, as in you were able to skip phases at the start of the cycle, which is usually a bad thing for any content design, you're normally supposed to slowly get stronger and start bypassing phases later in the cycle like most vertical progression MMOs.

So I guess it comes down to, who are the causal players? Because as far as any "official" definition, SE's definition of casual are the players who aren't even max level during any phase of XIV (ARR/HW.)



Edited, Jan 12th 2017 8:21am by Theonehio

Ha, the vast majority of FFXIV players don't raid.



Nailed it. I'm solidly midcore. I mostly use my limited playtime to get things done and advance my character, whether by leveling another job or (once per week) doing Primal Extremes with my static.

I'm not hardcore enough to put up with the rigors of savage-level raiding or max out all of my jobs/crafts/etc. And I'm definitely more than casual, as I do try to be the best I can be at whichever job I play.

Edited, Jan 12th 2017 10:15am by Thayos

That's one of the biggest things I noticed when working on my alts to play with friends on Balmung and Sarga. So said "third type of player" wasn't forgotten, it just seems your mileage will vary based on what game and server you play it seems since I've had plenty of success with PUGs with my main on Chocobo, but on Balmung....

So it really is mostly people who do content and people who choose not to do content. The "try but fail" seems to be the rarest group, especially if you use any community forums as a metric because they're too busy complaining easy content is hard and waiting for it to get nerfed into the ground before even touching it or claiming the content type is "obsolete and shouldn't be in the game."

Since in 5 hours in this game specifically that's capped tomes for the week, weekly item in alliance based content (unless you're constantly wiping), complete run through of 4 floors of Alexander (normal) if you get lucky and get your items on first try. So that's quite a bit of content you can go through in a limited amount of time, not even counting Savage since people will forever believe the "MUST HAVE STATIC" train of thought and not counting smaller stuff that doesn't necessarily count as 'content.'



Yep, especially XIV boards because when you really look at other MMOs, they still seemed to have done some basic features so much better..request those features for XIV: "This ain't (MMO)/Go play (MMO)/All hail YoshiP/etc" even though it would only serve to make the game better.

Now that Yoshida finally admitted nothing is holding this game back besides their own desires, it's a matter of if/when they'll choose to evolve this game. The whole 'Rotation' based system is what kills anything interesting in this game because unless the battle system changes from what it is now, everyone so hyped for RDM will end up heavily disappointed, especially if they remember the Hype around MCH.

While MCH is an anomaly, a lot of features and gameplay ended up getting cut simply because it would be "too complex" for players..yet it was set to play on a similar system to PUP from XI..which everyone who's played XI/PUP knows it wasn't exactly that complex..you simply had to know what parts did what and how to maximize it. As of now we only know they'll prune/combine/alter skills players don't use (due to not touching the content where many come into play) and not much else besides possibly dropping Accuracy and Parry stats altogether.

At this point they may as well just combine everything into one overall stat like other MMOs have been doing lately.

Which content is not content? I'm curious.



I don't see this, but then I also don't go out looking for it to reinforce my confirmation bias.



New classes generate hype in MMOs. This has been true since time immemorial. The fact most people don't end up sticking with the new hotness has nothing to do with rotations existing. It has to do with people trying the new thing because it's the new thing, and then deciding later they liked their old thing better. A good recent example of this is WoW's Demon Hunter class that was just introduced. There were approximately 6 hojillion double jumping elves running around when those were introduced, but the number of people that actually stuck with the class is very small. Lots of hype, mediocre retention. The numbers will even out eventually, but that's just how this kind of thing works. It always has and it always will and it has nothing to do with rotations being a thing.




O...k?

Zam forum software... stellar as always.

Edited, Jan 15th 2017 9:02am by Szabo

Its some new antispam feature for the EQ database site thats very buggy, cutting a portion of his post seems to fix whatever triggering it.

I went ahead and broke his post into two.

Main reason I say that is because people want to shrug off Database parsing, even though it gives an accurate number outside of A4/A8/A12s clear numbers due to the special nature of those achievements. So unless SE gives us their numbers, which as proven by the 2016 census they won't, we'll never know the 100% state of the game, only what we can parse ourselves. That's a big part of why as much as people want to brush off unofficial parsing, it counts said "don't participate in forums" players.



Sadly, it's not Hyperbole, as certain people on these forums have even said they won't touch content until it gets nerfed. Also, what's easy for one may not be for others, which is true, but if you can realistically say dodging AoEs (that gives you plenty of time to do so) is hard for some people..well, we can no longer state content is hard and it comes down to player skill. We did indeed talk about it before and I was told I was wrong to "blame the players." There's really no "hard" content in this game, since the only detrimental situations in most accessible content comes down to people just not caring, so it largely comes down to me assuming players would know the basics of the game because outside of Savage Raids, they don't introduce "new" mechanics, usually a variation of a mechanic you've already seen. For example you should not be running away from "GATHER TO SOAK THIS DAMAGE" mechanic you've seen before.

If you can honestly say grasping that concept is "hard for some people" despite how easy of a mechanic is, then you're misunderstanding what I'm talking about. Especially since the only content that utilize that mechanic requires you to clear content before it that has used it before. I'm sure you've seen plenty of people run away with the stack indicator especially in Ravana and Weeping City, especially since there's very few content even during 2.x days, let alone 3.x, that has an indicator that says to "get away from me", it's usually gather or gather with a partner with similar indicator.



Incorrect - Considering the nature of this game, if your playtime is limited to 5 hours or less a day, you can do A LOT in that time frame unless you're just pissing around basically, it's hard to deny that unless, yet again, it comes down to CHOOSING not to do content. PoTD caps out your tomes extremely quickly IF your goal is to get tomes because playing on your level 60 job nets you Scripture tomes at a fairly high rate clearing the floors, which will not take you long at all unless you unfortunately get terrible parties. Clearing 4 floors of Alexander doesn't take that long either, which is why I said IF you get your drops on first try each time. Current alliance content (Weeping City) takes 20-30 minutes at current ilvl, you'll obviously get that run that takes the full time, but as people on these forums love to say "that's an exception."

We already know the "majority" of players aren't even max level.or even stick around beyond 2.x's main storyline, because Yoshida even said that base on their research before deciding on introducing Jump potions which is why the main users of it will most likely be people running alts (character/jobs.)





You don't have to "seek it out", you simply have to look at any community, including this one, and you'll see it fairly often, you simply have to mention another MMO, especially one by the same Developers.



It does, actually, even more so in this game, because they wanted the new jobs to be something different than what they already have been playing. People dropped MCH pretty quickly when it didn't turn out to be what was advertised, and I'm talking about the general playerbase, which even proven by SE's census data for the last year was in the minority.



Since we're not allowed to bring up raiding or "OMG IT'S ONLY 0.0000000000000000001% OF THE PLAYERBASE!", a lot of people dropped MCH early on because it couldn't keep up and it was essentially the same thing as BRD..yet BRD did BRD better. This is the biggest reason for MCH dying off. However post adjustments, it's become the top DPS in game when the moons align for you. For WoW it definitely makes sense, especially considering the setup of that game in comparison to this one. XIV is homogonized, WoW actually has wiggle room even if it'd be ineffcient. For example you can deviate from "set" strategies in WoW all you want, if you do so in XIV, bad things happen because jobs and the game is not designed to do as such.

My point is more, people thinking RDM will be 'unique' or 'different' as per current battle system, will be disappointed because it'll fall into the MCH hype train of how it was supposed to be "unique" and "complex" and "your turret will be customizable/a key part of the job."

Edited, Jan 16th 2017 7:17am by Theonehio

It was a combination of character count and overuse of naughty words like poop and assassin. Situation should be corrected for now.

Totally agree with the gist of this, but there is still difficulty involved -- otherwise, you'd be able to just watch a video and then one-shot the fights, which never happens. Most people need several hours of repetition with the same group in order to win these fights.

It's not real difficulty in the sense that you have to adapt to unpredictable situations, but to say these fights are "easy" or "very easy" is total hyperbole.