The long waits for updatesFollow

Good things come to those who wait. :)

I've been patiently building my "base". I have a 45WHM (so i can access DoH/DoL leves lol), 26 THM (for swifties), 50 CRP, and every other DoH/DoL 40-45. No, I'm not beating my head against myth caps, or w/e that's all about. I could really care less right now. But eventually, I'll have everything ready to go. I guess I'm playing the "long" game :)

I'll agree about mining and botany, but very lucrative!

LOL What server are you on? Those two DoLs are literally worthless on my server. I leveled mining to 50 and proceeded to never touch it again on my 50 GSM because the cost of raw HQ mats is somewhere between zip and nadda. The profit margin is so wide that there is literally no reason not to buy stuff, craft it, and dump it right back into the market as a finished good.

Yeah, the myth cap is dumb, and generally counterproductive to the all-in-one class system that's ultimately one of the game's strengths. I'm personally not a fan of lockouts and subscribe to the sentiment that if a given individual wants to spam a certain piece of content, let them. The trick is offering sustainability, but at the same time not relying on RNG just to string people out over longer periods of time. Basically, if something's supposed to be rare, put it behind a hard, yet fair mob or other set of challenges. Arguments of it keeping the gap between hardcores and casuals are pretty much moot, as the latter usually just prefer to hole themselves up anyway. People just hitting 50 now are also about 10 weeks behind on potential myth tomes, and there's zero they can do to play catch up on that without SE adjusting AF2 prices or upping the cap. Other aspects of progression fail I basically outlined in my last post.

Otherwise, I don't believe it's a sect of game hoppers mucking things up or even some kind of misguided sense of entitlement. Actually, I hate how that word has been twisted by the MMO community to ultimately come off as a negative, essentially divorcing the concept of rights and assigning it to simple whining. On the same token, this usually leads to certain types saying things like, "If you don't like it, leave!" Which does little to build community. Sometimes they'll even spice that up with a jab toward other games meant for kids or perhaps seen as a commercial/social failure. I won't claim to be entirely immune to this line of thinking at times, but it manifests for me ultimately when I see people advocating the implementation of exclusionary content like XI's (H)NMs or other first come, first serve content that ultimately isn't casual friendly. Regardless of however much lawyering goes on between "we own our copy of the game" or "leasing rights to the service" that goes on within the game sphere, the feedback of customers, the subscribers, is important. If people claim they want XYZ, you give them XYZ. If you got some who want ABC, but can't because you're working on XYZ and money allows you to hire more people to actually make ABC in tandem, then for @#%^'s sake, hire those people and never make public complaints about manpower. SE ain't some small indy studio here and failure to do this hurt XI hard.



Since this popped up while I was typing...

On Diabolos, there have been times where after synthing my 50th wool thread or so in a sitting where I tell myself, "You know, if people sold converted goods at more reasonable costs, I might just buy them instead of spending an hour making my own." Yeah, yeah, supply and demand, profit, mark up, yadda yadda, but I think such broad gaps signify a problem in the system within both crafting and gathering. The latter has the crystal bottleneck, while the former lacks bulk synthesis (or at least a quick synth option that DIDN'T SUCK). Both essentially translate to people wanting money for their time, and I can't blame them for that. Though I wonder if the economy could be healthier if cheaper final products could lead to goods moving more quickly. I find people being able to buy individuals from a stack should also be something SE needs to look into, as too often you may only need 1 or 2 of something, but just see stacks of 99 up. The rest just lies in giving some of this product surplus a place to go that won't be forgotten in a month. Housing may help here for a little bit, but I'm still skeptical of its long term significance as fluff content.

Edited, Nov 12th 2013 4:03pm by Seriha

This comment would be far less ironic had it not been true that SE outsourced code to China for 1.0 version





Hairspray, you can call ARR new if you like. It doesn't really bother me, but for the purpose of this discussion(content updates) it's necessary to understand why the age of this game is important. You make a perfect example with this...


There are people who fit into this category of people who are bored and hopping back and forth to other games. I think we call them 'legacy'

Because the game has been around for so long, there are many people who walked into ARR on day 1 with much less to do than new players(myself included). I'm not saying that the game is devoid of content by any means. MMOs don't generally launch with much endgame content to begin with, but XIV had the added pressure of having to adjust what was previously there as well as implementing new content for endgame and revamp the early game for new players. Fair enough. You get some leeway for launch, but if you're going to ask for sub fees based on the premise that your MMO will spew content at me that other game developers can't; you're going to want to back up those claims.

Personally, I had a lot of the progress I wanted to make on my character already out of the way. That was my reality on ARR launch and even going back as far as when subscriptions first started. At re-launch I had 1 job I wanted to play that needed more than 30 levels, and that's just me being completionist and getting all the available sub-class abilities. I also leveled two other classes to 20 for the sake of trying questlines for the other cities.

I realize that there are 1.5 million people playing and only a fraction of those are in my situation. I don't think it's unfair to ask people to realize why I can't consider the game as new. You can't just drop an engine with 180k miles on it into a new body and call it new

Edited, Nov 12th 2013 4:46pm by FilthMcNasty

well, new game or old game, it's definitely a unique case, so no wonder it brings with it unique (ish) issues and debates.

You gave away too much with the ring comment. Checked him out on lodestone and he had a long way to go still. He was nowhere near crafting endgame. Otherwise all that gear would be slotted, he would be using those levels to make money on 2 star items, and working the buy sell game to make millions. Housing is going to be a big market for people like him, and you will likely see him return after the 2.1 patch. Probably just got burnt out.

Some folks are given a task. Go A to Z. They think when they get to Z they are done, but what is done? Why did you go to Z? Is there an AA, AB, AC after Z you dont know about? There isn't? Make one up! I gear myself as blm with the goal of making it easier on my team in bc, and with the goal of being able to run any given fresh level 50 dps in my FC through titan with ease. What could be more fun on a MMO than realizing that you have obtained level cap and can now use it to make you more awesome?

People get discouraged when they cant gain experience anymore. They play for the xp tick. I consider my lvl 50 and 70 crafted items to be my levels now, and when I convert them I either get another free awesome materia to make my crafting gear better, or I make a good deal of money. That's one major endgame goal as a 50 Crafter. 1. Make stuff to level gear and sell to make money. 2. Convert that gear to make materia which you sell to make money or use to make your setup better. 3. Use that money or your crafting to make or buy new gear to re-level. That way eventually you will have two sets of gear per job. 1. a leveling set of gear for the daily grind and 2. a uber-crafting set of gear you are working on that will eventually help you craft 2 star items.

I lmao at the "builders of the realm" who are "LFW". There is plenty of work to be done, and unless you have every piece of gear available to every craft job, the luminary tool, and all that gear is 5x slotted with craftsmanship CP and Control mats, then you are not "done".

For an example of someone who did not say "done", look at Wint. Guy has the Rod of the Luminary for Fisher. That's dedication right there.



Me neither, it is a solid game! The way I see it, the game is popular. SE likes it because it has turned their profit margin around. They will continue to embrace it. New people will show up, especially as it releases on new platforms. Yoshi has a 10 year commitment plan. Those that quit now, well I simply see them as eliminated competition.

When I bought PSU in October of 2006 it had just 10 rank C missions. The best you could do for a month was get to level 20 and fight the stupid dragon over and over for a B rank weapon. Content flowed in that game at a trickle, and a full year behind the Japanese version. I had 15 friends from PSO sign up to play that game and they all quit by December. I was the last left. By contrast, this game and its content is far better. Sega let me down. I can not even complain about SE. I am quite enamored with the content, even still.

If there are too many quitters in your FC at Migard Hitome, you do always have a home with us in Ultros.

I'm starting to think people are simply tired of MMOs. What's the last MMO that held your attention for over a year? It doesn't matter what a company does, people will complain and leave. XIV could of released with 5 more dungeons and people would say it's too many! The grinds the same for all of them etc etc.

I just don't know what people want from an MMO anymore. Exp is too slow, ok here's a faster way. NO, exp is too fast, ok we slowed it down. NO how am I supposed to catch up to end game people now. There's not enough dungeons, ok here's more. WTF SE, I just speed run this one, why bother with others? It's like this for every, single, subject. WoW was an anomaly with inflated asian numbers, people need to see MMOs as niche games and realize the days of keepin 1 mil subs are gone (especially if Korea and China aren't involved).

So is XIV boring, or are MMOs boring?

Actually, he said he was less interested in housing because it wouldn't be personal. :( I think he was quite disappointed when he found out it was FC-only. I am not sure why his Lodestone is showing his gear like that...when I looked at it, he had it all melded and such.

So I unlocked weaver, leveled it to 6, and now am killing Titan.

I don't think crafting will ever be my thing. Never did it in 11 or WoW, probably won't now.

I pin it more on a fear of deviation. When I see people grumble about how things are done too fast like leveling or getting gear, it's not uncommon for them to play the nostalgia card with FFXI and say how what they did in a week here would've took them months there. Some are still under the hopeless illusion that time sinks are difficulty and that MMOs are only worth playing if you measure in the time metric of years. This segues a bit back into my last post on the perversion of instant gratification as a concept, and ultimately invites contradictions when compared to other forms of entertainment. Do we watch a movie only so we can enjoy it 3 months later? Not especially. If it's good, yes, you'll still talk about it later on down the line, but the ultimate concept of paying now, being bored, and maybe having fun later seems... destructive to a game's health.

Which is why you can't top-load things into the misnomer that is endgame and the raid scene just to call it a day. This is what so many other MMOs do and have done, hence the lack of deviation on the progression metric. You even suggest that a crafter could make raid quality gear without stepping into a raid and the fur flies. Let someone solo quest for similar and it's welfare, EZ Mode, or whatever other flavor of insult you could pull out pops up. People get bored because they aren't really given much choice in how to grow their characters, as the basics of Kill X, Fetch Y, Go To Z, Defend/Escort Q, and any combination of those aren't new concepts, nor can they be strayed from. DPS is usually king, with survivability only being a concern for tanks, and less so if healing is easy in a given game. Plot understandably only goes so far, as we could read/watch whatever story is produced in a mere fraction of the time it'd take to make.

What can a player do, though? All unsubbing really does is show a lack of confidence with no real feedback to a dev on why you're quitting. You could maybe be like me and verbalize these things from time to time, meet opposition from my player peers, and ultimately feel like nothing comes of it because upsetting the vocal minority risks bad PR. I've also wanted to see a game really embrace user generated content without being some arduous task you'd need to know a programming language for just to pull off (hence an intuitive building engine). The further we can get away from ego and prestige, which is usually the only thing that tries to shoot down an idea, the more potential variety a player can encounter even if the building blocks are the same ol' things.

Then again, perhaps I'm already off on the belief that just because a game is online, you don't have to be doing everything with others.

Just a few notations:

1) Extreme Primals will be nice for something else to do, but it's hardly new content.

2) We're not getting any coil extensions in 2.1; that's been confirmed so you can't count that as something else.

3) Crystal Tower will, again, be nice in terms of something to do. However, from someone that's getting close to having mostly iLVL 90 gear CT won't be much use for me on the main job. It'll be great for my secondary (Bard atm), and hopefully being a DF dungeon can be run multiple times a week, but as of right now it's like giving me HM Ifrit when I've already geared up on HM Titan.

We aren't really 'doubling the scope' but more of creating a gap between Darklight and Coil/AF+1 gear. Sure, the new dungeon, HM version of a storyline fight, and two new HM versions of previous dungeons is great and all but the core group that's either finished with coil or close to finishing won't really have anything to entice them to keep playing until Coil is expanded in terms of power growth. Sure, for me as I intend to level more jobs it'll be great for gearing up those, but not everyone likes all the jobs.

If you're an endgame only kinda of person, and find that you only really like your one job, this patch surprisingly doesn't have anything for you in terms of progression. SE not releasing coil extensions (since it's supposedly 100 turns total) each patch is going to bite them in the *** if each patch takes 3-4 months.

EDIT: The extreme mode primals could, possibly, all drop i90 gear but as this isn't FFXI and we don't gear swap it becomes sidegrades/alternatives. That's an option, but they've gone on record stating that coil would have the highest possible gear so I'm not sure if they will go that route. i80/85 maybe.


Edited, Nov 13th 2013 12:31pm by Viertel

Even if you have one char geared in ilvl90, doubtful you'll have 2-3 jobs with it. So you can run some CT to gear secondary jobs.

I don't think so. I think facts are facts. ARR launched then went several months with no updates, not even class balancing or anything. People get bored because other games update much more quickly than that (even F2P games). And most of the content coming in 2.1 (4 months after launch) was promised for launch. It's really very fair to say that this is all moving at a sluggish pace. It's not the fault of the game genre that it's moving so sluggishly.