"Human or not" a letter to Yoshi-P & SEFollow

My frequent distinction in what these games "are" is that they're combat systems. Doesn't matter if you're fighting a trash mob alone or a bunch of people trying to down a boss in a raid. The idea is to use your skills to take the target's HP to zero and then reap the rewards of that kill.

The beauty of all this, however, is that there are myriad ways to influence our combat potential that may wind up actually being more fun than the combat itself for some, as well as what to do with rewards. I think we can at least admit XIV tried to be more ambitious about its crafting game with the class devotions, but in the end, it still succumbed to the raider mentality of gear ceilings. Nonetheless, crafting is still a process requiring material acquisition. You could trade, be it manually or via AH. You could gather, be it via nodes or mob kills. There's not exactly a right way to be a crafter, only what winds up more efficient as people discover the best sources for materials, rarity, and eventual demand of end products.

When partaking of those various aspects, feature creep can easily take root. Already making gear? Why not furniture for housing systems? Or parts for airships? Digging around or killing mobs and find treasure maps? Such things may not seem immediately relevant to the core combat system, but what they do provide is variety and distraction to the point where they could be built into stronger co-objectives if they were given more perceived importance with the shackles of ceilings removed.

So, while I certainly have high aspirations for providing greater individuality to players within these games, all of this is really before you get into the nitty gritty of actual combat mechanics, skill balancing, who gets access to what, how you learn things, and so on. If one doesn't have interest in all of those things, that's absolutely fine. The people who enjoy farming can do it for the crafters who don't like to, creating that supply and demand backbone that becomes the synergy of a world that tries to live and breathe.

To run with my own analogy, MMOs are basically at the phase of life as portrayed in Westworld. The Hosts are simply coded to never win regardless of how stupid a guest behaves. When you carry that premise to the futility of the MMO open world these days, then you just see a bunch of areas that never really change, that players have no real need to defend locations/people/resources, where foes aren't intelligently aggressive, and so on. Not every single location needs to be a war zone, mind you, but the correct attempts to provide variety and randomization would further synergize with that living nature I noted above.

Put bluntly, we need a world that lets us write and tell the stories. Call it a fusion of sandbox and theme park, whatever, but this hard-line rigidity needs to stop. Otherwise, we're going to hit a point where if you just up and removed the world, crafting, and all that in place of dungeon/raid lobbies, you'd seriously have people who wouldn't know the difference. And we're supposed to just bend over, smile, and accept that fate? Nah. If there's one other constant I apply to these games, it's not that they're just primarily combat engines, but also that they can and should evolve. We don't aspire for hand-outs. We don't aspire for carries. We simply aspire for things to do that actually make sense for the worlds we're already in. Basebowl this is not.

Eh, it really is just some nobles shocked that the peasants dare rebel.

Anyway, my XI play style eventually a hit a point where I just kind of decided to max everything I could. That meant leveling the jobs to 99, capping their skills, collecting all spells, putting decent gear sets together, and so on. While I'll posit me picking Alchemy back in the day was a mistake, I still capped it and the subs, too. Past LS dirty laundry I've aired here from time to time aside, I did the harder stuff as I was able. And really, ability was more about who else was on, since it's not like my job spread was a detriment.

Of course, things have changed since then even in XI. People want high JP characters, which makes my past cross-classing efforts somewhat moot since there's simply no way I could get everything up in a timely manner, nevermind going insane at the grind (without CP bonuses). I did what I could soloing sparks and such to upgrade gear, but again, one hits a wall where doing the Reisenjima NMs simply needs the bodies, and since the loot's exclusive, it won't be openly traded. Maaaaaaybe one could find a mercenary group on Asura, but you can bet the prices would be stupid precisely because people see more advantage in fleecing their peers than simply helping them at random. Or, you know, ***** about having nothing to do. Strange how socialization has a terminus, that.

But yet, leaving LFR out is skewing your numbers, and badly for the reasons I already said:

The people who "just wanna see the sights", like the cutscenes, lore, dialogue, etc are only going to do LFR once and then stop. These are, of course, not actual "raiders" who do Normal, Heroic, or Mythic. They don't care about gear progression.

If you look at this....

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/3984-Armory-Stats-Siege-of-Orgrimmar-Progression-Blue-Tweets-DLC-439

You'll find that only 40% of the playerbase ever defeated the FIRST BOSS of Normal SoO at the time (May '14).

Oh wait, that's FLEX Immersius. NORMAL Immersius boasts a whopping 26%.

26% of all active subs at the time of that writing had cleared Normal Immersius. 26%.

And look at Normal Garrosh on that chart. A whopping 13% of the sample playerbase defeated N-Garrosh. 13. Percent.

Edited, Dec 9th 2016 11:00pm by Lyrailis

This is irrelevant to the discussion, to be honest.

The discussion was "What's the REAL percentage of players who are interested in raids but can't do raids because of being unable to get in"?

And you threw up a 13% or something rather number, and I said that this number is false, because it is assuming that everybody with a max-level character wants to do non-LFR raiding which simply is not true.

*shrugs*



Relevance? I never said anybody farmed LFR.



Proving Grounds were not very well-made, to be quite honest. They threw unrealistic situations on you, sometimes said situations were not even very well handled by your specific class (I remember roflstomping DPS PG with my Paladin, but another of my characters... Shaman IIRC? could not do it whatsoever with roughly same item level), and they had rather high item-level requirements to even successfully complete it.

I remember trying the tank one, and back in the day I was a rather half decent tank, and I was able to do the bronze PG, but when I tried the Silver, I found my character was taking way too much damage. I was holding hate on the mobs just fine, but the NPC healer they give you just doesn't heal worth jack. Any normal healer healing like that would have been kicked after a couple pulls.

After doing some reading, apparently they expected you to be wearing full heroic dungeon gear to do PG, which is kinda stupid because a lot of groups at the time expected you to have Silver PG, IIRC. So it's like "uh, what's the point in this?"

PG wasn't a skill check, it was a gear check. Which kinda defeats the purpose of PG in the first place.



I know there's an achievement, depends on whether or not anybody compiled that. *shrugs* But I don't get the relevancy of this, either?

Edited, Dec 10th 2016 1:23pm by Lyrailis

I'm beginning to suspect you have a hard time ever seeing something from someone else's perspective.

I've explained to you before that building, leading, and managing groups of people is a talent. You have it. Congrats. But please try to understand that not everyone has that talent.

Scenarios were boring and got bad feedback, that's why they were scrapped

PotD sucks too but SE thinks it's good content I guess

What are you talking about? Scenarios are in almost every kind of content in the game now. The intro to Legion, the main story, your class-specific storyline, your legendary weapon, leveling quests and world quests... yeah, everything. Even some of the quests you complete now for crafting are done through scenarios.

The only thing that's changed is the ability to queue for them, but it was replaced by the ability to trigger them yourself. You auto-join an instance when you enter an area or you trigger it by interacting with an item or NPC.

There is only so difficult that you can make content expected to be completed in any reasonable amount of time with a group of random people. We play RPGs. We already know that stigma of bad RNG. The only way to avoid taking a bite out of a bad apple is to hand select it. It doesn't require talent. Just willpower, patience and the ability to communicate and play well with others.


You can make a group for content whenever you want, assuming you have the requirements done. If you don't have time to raid then you simply don't raid. Period.

As for drops, personal loot is standard in a PUG so what you get is what you get. If someone gets something they don't need that is an upgrade for you, they can trade it if they want to. Loot is not an excuse anymore.

The nature of multiplayer games is that they're designed for groups. It's not necessarily doing it wrong as much as it is going about it the wrong way. Play how you want, but realize that the fundamental philosophy of 'multiplayer' doesn't fit your preferred style of play. If you are not prone to making groups or making friends who can make groups, you're at a severe disadvantage. Your choice.



Edited, Dec 12th 2016 6:47am by FilthMcNasty

I do not get it? If you want solo play then why not play RPG, these are MMO'S and are meant to be played with someone else.


If you had issues getting something done in FFXI it is on you, I never had a issue. I has several LS and lots of friends in the game. If you are the kind of person that helps other out and is reasonably geared you should have had no issues. Also cannot expect people to drop what their doing, it did take some planning.

FFXIV feels hollow because you really do not need anyone else and the game hands you everything. FFXIV was supposed to be for the person who had less time but it does not feel that way.

There is no imagination in combat in FFXIV. You feel like a robot going through the motions when doing dungeons or raids doing the same thing over and over.

To earlier comments The environment in FFXIV everything is tied to a string and their is no danger except maybe the occasional hunt mob.


The one thing FFXIV does right is the missions and story. FFXI non could be done without Wiki.



Edited, Dec 12th 2016 12:38pm by Nashred

Rotations are just stupid. Everyone uses the same rotations most of the time and you just look them up or watch a video. Rotations destroy skill because they require none. You should have to react to what is going on and what you do should change the coarse of a battle. Nothing builds up resistance so you can not do the same thing over and over, There is no elemental weakness, nothing that makes anyone use a brain.

What about Black Mage?

I did that to 40 and it was Fire, Blizzard, Thunder.... oh, wait, okay, the Element Swap that I don't remember the name of.

4 buttons. lol. And Thunder was that "use every so often when you have extra time" type deal from what I could tell. But then, BLM is powerful enough that in solo you can just Blizzard everything to death (and STILL kill things faster than a Paladin!) and in some cases, it is better to do that because of self-healing with Physick so you will never run out of MP.

It sounds like they fixed that after 50 and that's great, I'll have to see what it's like then.



^^
This.

I like to CHOOSE when I want to group up, and when I want to march to my own tune. But there's no choice in a lot of these games, you get to max level and it's "Group or do nothing meaningful for progression" except maybe crafting, but then again, in many of these games, Crafting is an afterthought at Max Level, as nothing crafted is actually any good. EVERYTHING that's good is dropped by Raid Bosses. If it ain't dropped by a Raid Boss, it's crafted from a Raid Boss Drop.

You can become the most expert (insert craft here) but be wholly unable to make armor or weapons that are anywhere near as good as some random (insert raid boss here) had in its (insert container/pockets/hoard/whatever here)? Seriously?

Always thought that kinda funny... where I can become an expert blacksmith, attain the highest level of blacksmithing possible, but the best sword I can make pales in comparison to some old sword laying around on some dragon's coin pile.

Dunno if XIV is like that, but I suspect it is, because almost every other MMO is like that.

There was a game that had an awesome system, that I've never seen in any other game: 99% of ALL equipment in the game was craftable, BUT, said equipment was rather useless beyond Tier 2 (out of 10) without being augmented. You augmented said equipment with magical orbs that are crafted, and with a Technique. Each Technique required 2-4 monster drops. Let's say you wanted to make an awesome sword with, say, Accuracy and +Damage to Dragons for those times you decide to hunt dragonkin mobs. Let's say the Accuracy IV Augment requires, I don't know, 2 Frenzied Bee Stingers, 4 Bright Orbs, and 2 Tiger Claws. The Dragon Killer IV Technique might require 2, I don't know, Lich Fingerbones, 4 Bright Orbs and 2 Dragon Claws.

Now let's say the above mentioned mob drops are only found in the latest raid, BUT, the Tier III equivalents of those can be gotten solo (with some work, perhaps difficult mobs with 'meh' drop rates).

The Raiders would have the sword with the IV techniques on them, and the non-raiders would have to make-do with the Tier IIIs. There should be a noticeable difference between the two, but yet not a HUGE difference between the two that it won't feel rewarding enough.

Just an example of an awesome system that allows us to have crafted endgame armor, so that crafting is still important even at endgame.

They were still around during WoD FYI. Also, arguably THE best piece of gear you can get in Legion is obtained through a series of fairly easy scenarios that are done mostly solo.

It's pretty clear that you either don't understand progression or are not interested in it.. why play? I mean, I guess you don't play Legion but your personal experience doesn't line up with the point you're trying to make here...


Why are you finally leveling to cap in the middle of a raid tier? Blizz gives you a few months to catch up to current cap before an expansion launchs and you have several weeks after it launches to level up before raids open. You're attaching some sort of barrier to entry that simply doesn't exist. What's ironic is that you could probably wait another month, join Legion and honestly not be any worse off than any other casual MMO player.

I don't understand why you keep hoisting this imagined barrier to entry that is keeping you from enjoying the game. You need to get out of your own way.


Calli I also have times where I 'don't want to put up with other people RIGHT NOW'. During those times, I choose to play other games or not at all. Those are your realistic choices.

If there wasn't a dry spell of JRPGs this past console generation or so, I might be more keen on the "play another game" argument, but I'll still continue to assert that no MMO dev has yet to really strive to find that middle ground for the moments where you're not in the mood for others or hate enabling jerkface behavior because you have no choice in the matter. However, I'm also mindful that a singular solution will not fix all ills.

Nonetheless, I have felt MMOs are somewhat bait and switch with leveling and its progression shifting dramatically once you hit max level. Sure, they may spritz dungeons here and there, but if they're optional, you can bet a lot of people skip them to avoid the headaches of grouping. And sometimes taking the time is less efficient for leveling, anyway. Farming a full set for a particular lowbie tier is also often usually useless, since you'd just level past it before getting it all unless you're really, really, really lucky on drops/competition. Some might assert this just means leveling should take longer, perhaps even forcing people into said dungeons when the quests dry up, but that's not really a fix and is certainly flipping the bird to those that already dislike dungeon spamming. So, even now, we're back to alternatives needing to be accessible and viable.

Of course, we're also flirting with why players need to be given the tools to generate content for themselves. Those who want really hard stuff could actually make it. Those who want to explore the storytelling prowess of others can do so. Those who wind up preferring to make content could stick to it, acquiring their own reputation and following. All of this can work alongside devs releasing their official stuff, and expanding custom assets for use as they go. In a way, you wind up with a far more visual form of D&D, where the game already handles the rules. And no, this isn't about making rabbits drop Ridills. No actual reward should be gained from these other than the experience. However, if does emphasize the importance of making gear more accessible so people who don't raid could still take up more challenging variants.

I Am Setsuna is pretty good, might give that a look.