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What if I told you that gaming was my grey area?

I'd have done the Morpheus meme, but I'm too lazy after nine hours of working and mowing the lawn.



Edited, Mar 16th 2016 6:48pm by Thayos

That is too bad about EQ Next. That is a title that I checked up on from time to time.

As for the genre as a whole, it's definitely in a bit of a lull, but games like XIV show there is still plenty of demand. But this isn't 2004 anymore, and MMORPG players just don't have as much time to treat their games like second jobs. It's not a matter of desire. It's a matter of logistics.

Fun is fun though, which is why I don't worry about xiv. But I definitely worry about the genre. What has more brand recognition than EQ, especially among die-hard gamers?

On a side note.. how would you guys feel about the devs adding a bunch of sandboxy content to the game? For some reason, these days I don't give a **** about raiding. I couldn't even bring myself to finish a ring in WoW. I just don't care. I end up spending all my time looking for "other" things to do and usually have a good time.

Honestly, SE adding climbing or swimming to the game (or both) would have me 10x as excited as I would be about another raid. I want to explore, find treasure, do low man content, OPEN WORLD content. That is what I miss the most about FFXI. I was all about instanced **** when it was new to the scene. I loved it long time. These days, I'm really tired of it though.

"But sitting in chat and putting groups together for stuff sucks."
Not if it's interesting and enough people do it.

I tried playing this game called Black Desert Online. It's crap, but it has some cool stuff that reminds me of old MMOs. I couldn't help but wish that I could have those things in this game. I really want to make Eorzea my home, the way Vanadiel was. I want to meet people and make friends. Go out and do stuff together. Not just max out statz and killz super hard bossman. Put simply, I'm sick of that **** to my core. I'm tired of raids and I'm tired of the ****** community of narcissistic idiots that comes along with it.

It's fine if it exists, just create a separate progression model for those of us who want to do other things. Not sitting in town with a hammer going tink tink all day praying for an HQ. I mean open world stuff that doesn't breed infantile asshattery like hunts did.

I know I'm ranting, but I just hope others can make some sense of what I'm saying and perhaps more eloquently expand on my view.

And where did I state that? Oh right..I didn't. It's really easy to deny that people are more sold on the idea of this game rather than what it offers. You can find it fun and relaxing..which means DESPITE THE FACT there's issues THE GUY IN CHARGE INCLUDING THE PRESIDENT OF SQUARE ENIX constantly tells us, you'll continue to find it fun and relaxing. Nothing wrong with that, just don't be surprised when the people more inclined to not bow down to YoshiP realize this game needs a lot of changes.

I posed the question, never got an answer:

What did Heavensward do for FFXIV? The people who hardcore defend this game are very quick to brush off the problems. The game isn't perfect and it's not horrible, but when you go to Official Forums and some hot topics on Reddit and FB..you really get the idea there's nothing wrong with the game because too many people are busy trying to shoo off anyone who finds it otherwise. As said:



So I can understand it perfectly fine: However despite the President of SE posting information about FFXIV that Yoshida loves to try to hide or flatout deny (look at the developer diary, even stated there they said there's over 5 million ADVENTURERS..not characters..actual people, we all know this is ******** because anyone not finding SE our lord and savior parsed character data and there's sub 700k players that are actually active and even lost a good 300k during the 3.0-3.1 5 month downtime on content.)

Quite honestly and I'm going to agree with the Japanese playerbase here; The people who find nothing wrong with this game or "it's fine as is" are akin to the people who are voting for Trump for president. People are absolutely sold on the idea of the game and sold on the charisma of YoshiP that they're not really caring about the faults. Which is fine, you do you as the cool kids say, but the fact the game hasn't evolved at all in between 2013-2016 (prove me wrong that they changed the formula besides downsizing) and people can still enjoy it or write articles that it's one of the best MMOs? How does that not say people will still decide to enjoy it even if it goes no where?

The president himself has said HW under performed and they need to step it up big time. I'm sorry, but when you have the project lead tell you flatout they won't do something or they can't do something because of shoddy infrastructure or lack of team members...despite most MMOs running off of a handful of people pumping out more...you can't really deny that someone would enjoy the game even when they cut more content if they're finding it an awesome game now. Maybe after this period completely closes they'll hire someone to help make the content or push more team members onto it because it's very clear when ARR was being relaunched, aside the 1.x content, they had plenty of people working on it compared to now..when there's only 1-2 people at best working on content. Content that doesn't even last half of the patch cycle.

Notice how one of the main arguments always tend to fall under 2 things:

"I don't rush (you can't rush in a game designed to lock you out at every step of the way to mask the lack of content)"

and

"Well there's plenty of content, I don't care about doing x content."

You can ignore a portion of the content if you want, that's your decision, however when the developer continues to pump out content regarding that, especially content found in every MMORPG to ever exist, even the oddball ones like Hello Kitty, it's very hard to try to brush off that problems regarding it, unless you truly do believe this game will survive on glamour alone.

Look at how quickly they adjusted The Feast compared to important areas of the game by adding a NEW PATCH to the entire cycle (very rarely does a ".22" patch get added that was done IN RESPONSE to feedback.) That proves they clearly have the capacity and capability to do more...and simply choose not to; Oh and don't even say "this proves they're changing their formula or stance!"..it doesn't prove that sadly, because why 3 years later instead of when the game was actually growing? What about all of the feedback on the homogenization of this game? What about all of the feedback on the fact HW fates were ABYSMAL and it took them until around 3.1 (5 months later) to do something about it? That would have been a quicker fix than what they did today for the Feast.



However, the problem comes when people bring up said issues where SE is more likely to look.

"Don't read this topic SE, it's just another hater."
"They're mad because casuals get gear and content"
"They're mad it's not FFXI because that's the only MMO to ever exist between 2002-2010, I refuse to accept the fact I'm actually the one being bitter about SE having the skill to do better but not."
"YoshiP is my god and savior, how dare you say anything is wrong with the game, gtfo these forums."

The serious issues need to be corrected and if this was named "Elemental Gods Online" or something, the game wouldn't have lasted and we all know this. I mean, go to any FFXIV community and see what happens when people bring up FFXI, the first response tends to be: "this is not FFXI" all the while ignoring the fact when someone used XI for their comparison they're talking about features this game, a modern MMORPG, developed on an engine not designed in 1998, should have.

We get it, it's not FFXI, but that doesn't justify this game lacking features and content concepts that even some of the oldest games have. We got our share of "PS2 limitations" when they didn't want to do something (because they did a lot of those features 2-7 years later while still supporting it) but we've never once got told "no one on our team can create the content." That's honestly the first time I've heard a company who willingly wants to run an MMO, let alone 3, state that.



Yep, what they stated when they cancelled it was as they started to get to a point in development they didn't find it would be fun, because yeah, what is "fun" these days are..well, just look at the fact people get pissed off if you so much as to have to do a little bit of work for a good reward instead of it being handed to you. I don't mean "grind 9.7 million fates" work, I mean having to actually know how to play the game instead of running content like Void Ark that you only need 8 good people to do in content SUPPOSEDLY designed for 24 people.

I love casual gaming...but notice how casual gaming is more of a money grab these days. Which is fine, we all love money..but that's why this game hasn't and won't evolve. Once they start losing that money, that's when you'll see XIV evolve.


Edited, Mar 17th 2016 5:18am by Theonehio

This kind of contradicts. Fundamental changes are required. Every MMO needs them and every MMO has done it especially in the span of 3+ years. But if you don't want changes to the foundation..you're basically stating the game is fine, that is what I mean. The Investors and even president of SE weren't telling them to push XIV harder for no reason, after all which is why I said hopefully after the fiscal year completely ends they'll re-evaluate.



It made the world feel bigger...but also did an excellent job making the majority of HW zones worthless to the overall game. Once you finished the storyline (and sidequests if you did them) unless you love doing fates or RP, you literally have no reason to visit the majority of HW zones, ever again. Some updates force you to backtrack, but for the most part you're, as usual, going to be hanging in a hub city (where SE dumps all the important stuff people care for) or inside of a city/house and just loading up duty finder.

I liked the design of some of the new area..it's depressing you literally have no reason to go there once you're done.



This requires fundamental changes to the game, though. That's what I mean by they have to seriously change the game if it's going to evolve, otherwise, if you enjoy it now and say you will even without fundamental changes, you'll enjoy no matter what they do even if it's to do less (which yoshi has gone on record to state will happen.)

Diadem I won't touch on as I made my stance clear on that, but HW was honestly more of a patch they charged us for than an expansion since even in XI with Zilart/CoP and the like we still had more use for those zones when we were said and done except for the "instanced" areas like Promyvion since a lot of story based zones no one wanted to go back to lol.

Even when I want to go back to the Forelands or Sea of Clouds...I have no reason to be there (and beast tribes are a terrible incentive because they even limit you on that for no reason other than to stretch out content.)

Edited, Mar 17th 2016 7:51am by Theonehio

It sounds more like you are trying to convince yourself this game is good.
A couple months ago you were talking about quitting and were irritated by as much of the game as we are.
I think this game is in trouble long term, very few are actually sticking with this game.
There are allot of players but allot of new players. Eventually the well will run dry, there are only so many new players.
Fact is allot of people still play because there aint much better out there not because it is a good game.
I know I still play and I try and convince myself because I do not want to quit playing video games.
All I know is when I get in a instance it really does not feel like people are having fun.. Half or more are rushing or pissy because they are bored and want to just get the instance over. To me it feels like most people are not happy with the actual content of the game.

Do some people like it sure but I think it is less than you think.. a lot of people do when they first pick it up but I have never seen the turn over in a game like this before.

That doesn't really make sense. It assumes that a person simply MUST have an MMO to play (and pay for). I've had several periods in my life where I wasn't happy with any of the MMOs I was playing and so I stopped playing all of them. I focused on single player games for a while, I went after my Steam backlog (a Sisyphean endeavor if ever there was one), I kept an eye on what was going on in case something caught my interest.

Also there are a metric crapton of MMOs out there now. The odds that someone can't find one that fits their interests are pretty awful.

For people who like MMOs and prefer it as their genre of games to play? Yeah, they MUST have an MMO to play. Just like people who love shooters will shop around for shooter type games to play but usually fall back to x major shooter in the end because very few are even out of "early access". Same with survival games, you have Minecraft and Terraria, then comes games like ARK and so on. So for someone who must have a survival type game to play, they'll end up looking strictly for that kind of game to play, so it does make sense.

Considering MMOs are the current cash cow (TERA is damn near competing with Maplestory in terms of profit in short bursts apparently) it's hard to find an MMO that wasn't just shoved out the door. You can find tons of MMOs, but most are the exactly same, yet at the same time many are still ahead of this game, with far less support but also far behind because they only shoved out an MMO to try to make a quick buck and the game is built on the typical grind template.




Yep.

"Assumptions"...really. So you're saying people who like playing MMORPGs wouldn't find MMOs to play? I'm sure you have your favorite genres of games too. There are no assumptions. I don't play genres of games I have no interest in, so why would I, for example, find and play zombie games if I have zero interest in them? If you play video games, your favorite genre to play is MMORPGs, obviously you WANT TO play them, so there are people out there who do have the "Must play" trait. You'd be lying if you said you have never in your life known someone like that or read/heard about people who live/breathe gaming.

The point he was getting at is, compared to localized games currently, the offerings of MMOs is extremely slim, especially because the companies who handle the localization of some of them ****** up pretty terribly in one way or another. That's why he was saying for example "XIV is currently one of the better ones" when you have so few to choose from. EQN would have been a really good MMO, but the "casual" market really couldn't handle anything beyond what XIV offers, which is depressing but realistic.

It just seems because it's "MMORPG" it's to be considered separate from gaming.



Since when do I not play XI nor enjoy it?



BnS I already played for 2 years. The PvP is far more refined than the PvE so I long stopped playing it when the PvE dropped off dramatically. GW2 was too generic for my liking so I didn't really get into the expansion content outside of guild stuff.

Been saying it for a long time now, but any gamer who focuses on a singular game for too long isn't really doing themselves any favors. And MMOs tend to thrive on this behavior, especially if subscription-based. So, I can't bring myself to feign surprise that others are coming to the conclusion that the genre is hurting because some mix of pride and ignorance has stymied the needed evolution that hasn't happened.


For the first point, it's not that they can't line up, it's that they're intentionally designed not to. I harp on Raiders because too often they don't realize the damage they're doing to their own communities by trying to make everything about themselves. So, it's not that people don't want to group, it's that grouping is often time consuming and highly subjective to who needs what and when. The fact a lot of raiding guilds, to this day, still demand applications from people should serve as testament to setting an unreasonable standard of long-term play where, if you don't mesh, you're boned. And I say boned because you don't want DPS at varied levels because DPS checks make the lesser geared characters a liability, or tanks unable to tank well enough because their mitigation isn't as hot. When you then combine this with lockouts, caps, and other gating mechanisms, it's not hard to see why people don't even WANT to try.

Trans' earlier post is where I see a lot of people I play and talk to falling in line with things, presuming you try to step outside the vocal minority of a given game's OF. MMOs have a lot of potential to be more worldly, but you can't really be funneling people off into instances and effectively discouraging variability in builds and play styles through harsh checks and fixed party sizes. The end result may indeed translate into an "easier" game, but there are also people utterly fed up with the toxicity and politics more difficult content evokes.

Lastly, the desire to make some sort of impact on the world itself through some form of user-generated content is really the last frontier no game has yet to really get a handle on. Neverwinter's system simply wasn't user friendly. Rift's Dimensions are too limiting and in-game resource hungry. I've basically argued to death why XIV's housing system here is ****. Being positive and remembered for it is a Herculean endeavor, but be an *** and stir up drama? Too often these titles almost seem to support that.

Really? I know a ton of people who have participated in "hardcore" raiding, never been kicked and still find the whole process ridiculous. There's a reason why FCs like Bluegartr get so much flak everywhere. They're often led by ********, half the "leaders" from FFXI endgame shells were complete douche canoes. Now, not everyone lets it get to their head that they're "good" at this game, but a ton do. Don't tell me this is just generalized statement that holds no truth. I've participated in enough end game to know there's always that one leader who's a total wad.

The hardcore endgame scene didn't get its reputation from nothing. It's there for a reason. Are there non ridiculous people in end game, absolutely. Finding 7 of them to play with? That's tough. The amount of yelling I've heard over voice chat over the most mundane things is incredible. Unfortunately, it's happened multiple times across multiple shells/FCs.

I take Street Fighter pretty seriously, so I get why some people take raiding seriously. That being said, if a newer player asks for advice, I don't **** on them. I play some sets and politely point out what they can change. The end game community with MMOs is often hurr durr, you have no experience, come back later! Even some of the best players in fighting games have their ego in check and often help if you have questions/run sets with them.

Edited, Mar 19th 2016 3:16pm by Montsegurnephcreep

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Fighting games have their own competitive sphere, sure, but they're also not reliant on the trappings of MMO gear standards. Some even go out of their way to deliberately dumb down the experience like Smash and the whole, "Fox only, no items, Final Destination!" meme. A lot of time, the skill needed for MMOs is overstated (or handled by add-ons, even!) where practice and repetition tends to handle the rest. It's when the endgame sphere wants nothing to do with people who are in that phase where I and others find issue since it's cyclical with tiering.

I've seen it enough in other games, some PUG raid encounter is being advertised and the leader wants people to link the completion achievement. Don't have it? They don't want you unless they're absolutely desperate for a body. If this excluded person tries to set up a newbie run, maybe they'll get some interest from others in the same position, but the timing of it all puts completion more in the hands of those bored and patient enough to backtrack. If the group finally does get set up, success can be iffy for reasons related to gear, personal reaction speed, lag (yes, it's valid no matter how many "pros" want to call it an excuse), or even how long someone may be able to commit to a specific run. If your idea of a functional MMO is one where you must always have 2-3 hours minimum to set aside to play, then we're going to be forever at a disconnect when it comes to giving people things to do and methods to progress.

None of this is me calling XIV godly or that Yoshi is without fault. Historically, I just happen to think him better than Tanaka. Bluntly, I've been one of more the critical voices around here about what XIV should or shouldn't be doing, particularly when it comes to their gating practices, housing, and activities for those without a guild/linkshell continuously at their disposal. The loner player, the couple, that small group of friends, they're still important players in their own ways even if they don't happen to fall into the raiding scene and want more than cosmetics or pet mini-games. The welfare rhetoric is not representative of people who want something meaningful to do. Trying to concoct reasons for why they don't need to be at a certain item tier offers no benefit other than preserving their ego. If the question of, "Why would anyone do X is Y is better?" is answered with anything other than, "For fun, of course!" then we're failing in conveying what we want from devs. Or perhaps what we don't want. And I think we all know the really casual and laid back players aren't the one habitually flooding forums with their feedback, good or not.