Pondering Re-Subbing, but....Follow

I kinda miss this game, you know?

I played for a time, and then got sidetracked. Then a friend got me to re-sub, but he was on another server so I played with him until he stopped logging on. Then I went back to my original server, but I saw that I was So. Far. Behind. everybody else.

Everybody else was busy on the "new" stuff (back then it was, um, what was that again? I think the last time I played was not all that long after they introduced the Golden Saucer and who was that again, Ramuh?). It was right before Heavensward.

So here I was, trying to get Lv50 at the time, or maybe I was 50 and was trying to get the "Main Storyline" done up to the part where you kill the Ultima Weapon (I think that's what it was called?) and I sorta just...

Felt completely buried underneath a ton of content because they were advertising a new expansion, I was nowhere near ready for and I was buried under a metric crap-ton of fetch quests involved with the main story. And of course, the "cool" content everybody else was doing, I couldn't even dream of doing because all of that stuff was locked behind the Main Story and who knows how many questlines after that.

Well anyways that brings me to the question...

1). Did they modify the main quest line in any way, or deviate from it, or ANYTHING to help players who've been away for awhile catch up? Or do you still face 100+ hours of solo questing before you can participate in anything that's current/relevant?

2). Do they still do dungeon finders for old content, like let's say if I needed Ultima Weapon, is it still possible to Q up for it and actually get it done? Do players get tired of running years-old dungeons like Sastasha, that Manor, etc?

3). Is the market still nearly impossible for a lowbie character to actually make anything you could call decent money? Before I left... nothing I could make was really worth anything, I'd be lucky I could get 500-1000 gil out of anything I could go farm or make 'cept for crystals and those were boring as all bleeep to get any significant number of them (which is probably why they were expensive).

4). I take it the expansion is absolutely required if you expect to do much of anything fun in the game? lol

I guess that's pretty much it for my questions...

"Despite Player Protest"?

Yeesh.

Unsure why players want everybody who is thinking of coming back to the game to be buried under a mountain of solo questing and old instances that may or may not take forever to get a group for. That only hurts the game when there are no skips to get ahead to the content with everybody else.

Is that a "I did it so you must do it too" type thing? Not real sure I understand the mentality there.

I'm not saying I want to skip and never do the MSQ, but yet I don't want the MSQ to be a beefy gate in my way, requiring me to solo in my boredom for countless hours while trying to catch up.

But anyways, I logged on briefly during some "free item" campaign, where they handed out some gear for coupons, I forget what I-Level that was. 110, 115 something like that.



Uh, NA... Northeastern Data Center I think. Same server Catwho is/was on, with a few other ZAM players. Dunno if they're still around obviously; haven't seen Catwho in any of these threads on the front page. Not even sure I'm still in that FC, lol. They mighta removed me for inactivity or something.



I never got far enough into Lv50 content to ever touch glamour crystals, nor do stuff like Palace of the Dead, I don't think. Furthest I ever got was the other character who was ready to fight the Moogle King I think it was.

The character on this server is about ready to rescue the pink girl leader... Menfilia or something? The girl who was in charge of that little group you join in the MSQ, the group trying to kill off the eidolons.



I figured that much, I suppose I was more asking 'is all the fun stuff Lv50+' and I suppose that was a dumb question, lol. Of course it is. $40 seems kinda steep, though, but I suppose WoW expansions were about the price, so meh. Dunno.

Still on the fence about it. Got other stuff going on, but I kinda started missing the game. Might re-sub for a bit just to dink around in the MSQ up towards Heavensward, at least I don't really need to buy it UNTIL I get up to there in the MSQ, right?

Or does Heavensward add things that are good Before that point (extra jobs, soul stones, etc)?

Edited, Nov 17th 2016 10:56pm by Lyrailis

From what I read in my glancing over on OF - They feel people "wouldn't learn how to play" or "appreciate" the game if they were allowed to skip over the mountain of unnecessary filler quests and outdated quests (in a vertical game at that), so while not everyone is against it, there's been VERY vocal outcry about it from when Yoshi hinted at it to again directly saying they'll add it. On the JP side, it's more in support but still the handful who are against it for the fact it's basically a cheat button essentially.

Since I started ARR with all 50s, meaning I touched not 1 MSQ or side quest that wasn't auto complete from 1.x days (which is very few if at all any technically) and I learned how to play within an hour, I just didn't have all of my exclusive ARR skills that they swapped in for skills that I USED to have. So it's not like it's so hard to learn an easy game..that was literally the whole point to this game's core design for ARR+.

Come 4.0 they mentioned they're going to be changing the weight on type of storyline, so less filler and more actual MSQ.



Ah, was never in Zam's FC, but iirc that Datacenter that server is on is fairly populated so with the new wonderous tails stuff you'd probably have better queues time, may still take 30 min or so, but significantly better than no queues at all lol. I still know some who sat in Ultima's Bane for 5 hours, as tank.



Yeah PoTD is post HW introduced content, but it's required to do I believe. Based on your progress yeah you would have needed a level 50 crafter to start glamour stuff, but on most servers I researched it seems the glamour crystals turn a nice profit that's easy to gather for and make. Without leveled DoL and DoH your options are limited if you can't do palace of the dead, as completing it grants you a item you can turn in for tier V materia which on any server that isn't balmung goes for at least 80-120k+, same with wonderous tails, but you're a ways off from doing that content it sounds like.



Yeah you don't need to buy HW until you clear 2.55 technically, you just won't be able to level beyond 50 until it's registered to your account. A lot of the newer content is indeed 50+ and the dungeon designs and what not are significantly better so in a sense, yeah all the fun stuff is 50+ lol. PoTD doesn't require beyond joining the level 15 MSQ in ARR I believe..but due to its nature you need HW as the progression system requires the items/skills/etc introduced with it.

You'd be able to catch up pretty fast these days, it's just a bit rough until you're into HW stuff because later content introductions negated a lot of early/mid ARR money makers.

Catwho's FC on Lamia is still going (Spin the Ascian). I'm there (Illsaide Dirhage), as is Verdha. I think that's all the people who have been on Zam.

There's a policy of removing people who have been inactive for a year, so you've probably been removed, but we'd be happy to have you back! We're also happy to help people catch up; with Heavensward we can even cheese the annoying aether currents with the two-seat chocobo.

So, if you're interested, look us up again! We'll be there!

This always struck me as a stupid argument. Leveling does very little to teach you how to play a job. Many jobs introduce game changing abilities at very high levels (enochian, dreadwyrm trance, wanderer's minuet, blood of the dragon, etc,) making most of what you learned during the leveling process meaningless.

Curse of games like this being dungeon/raid reliant, really. If there's a dungeon you don't do or only really do it once just for a clear, potentially getting carried, then it's possible a full understanding of said content isn't going to happen unless it's implicitly a "Do or die!" type of thing like Titan was. But even then, there's no guarantee that anything you learned in a past experience is actually applicable to new content. Some try to alleviate this by relying on online guides/videos, perhaps too much so. Others feel better trained by actual experience, but then you get the bunch who doesn't want to actually teach people or run with them until everything clicks.

But yeah, any sort of level boost will inevitably be met with cries from people playing the, "They won't know their role!" card. Then they'll just go on to complain about how PUGing sucks, anyway, as if the change would be more dramatic. Killing some sheep in the wild simply isn't gonna teach you how to kill a boss, and heaven help the player if they pick up a non-optimal rotation out of habit. Same honestly applies to training dummies, which some put to a much higher regard than they deserve. Still, this doesn't mean the open world can't teach, but creating the environment to do so is something the pro-raid scene will be vehemently against for their usual selfish reasons. Alas, MMOs seem to be either this style or all-out PvP.

From what I remember reading, they have no intention of changing that, do they? It's the main reason I stay away from the game for such long periods of time. I do the main content, few of the battles and cancel my sub after a month. As of late, I've had enough time to catch up on everything with the free weekend campaigns (short of the extreme/savage battles).

Not sure how accurate ffxivcensus.com is, but 232,000 active players is disappointing to see. I get Yoshi doesn't mind the re-subbing up to catch up thing, but after awhile, you need to maintain decent numbers month after month. Didn't they also say it would be almost 8 months between the final HW patch and the new expansion? Good for people playing catch up from ARR I suppose, but not great for all the vets.

One has to find a good balance between keeping vets happy with a flood of new content, and burying casuals and newbies under huge mountains of content that they feel like they're in an avalanche or in the rapids in a river and have no way to get through it all.

I understand both points of view -- vets get bored because they cleared everything, and I'm a more casual player as I've said above I look at the current content and I know by the time I get there, it's already obsolete and the queue times might be long and/or I don't wanna be "that guy" that drags 3 other people through outdated content they are probably bored with already.

But at least they aren't quite as bad as Blizzard; Blizzard just don't care, they just dump content on you whether you're ready or not and they're pumping out expansions like nobody's business lol. Warlords lasted what, barely a year? And even then they were going "We're making the team bigger so we can push stuff out faster!" and I'm like "Faster!? How fast do people need updates!?"

I think to be honest, instead of dragging people through old outdated content they are probably bored and tired of, I wonder if we shouldn't take a page from FFXI and allow people to solo vastly out-dated stuff? That's one thing that FFXI does that is so awesome... I actually just re-subbed FFXI, as did a family member. We used to play together with everything and out of the blue almost a week ago, she goes "hey... do our characters in XI still exist?" and I'm like "....huh?"

I was so surprised. Well, we go back into FFXI and hey... 99% of the game can be solo'd or duo'd, and they added so much awesome cool stuff. Right now, we're doing an experiment with 2 new mules, to see if it is possible to solo/duo all the way to 99 with almost no outside help whatsoever. I think it's possible. lol

But back to XIV... I wonder if they shouldn't give players, I don't know, AI-controlled NPCs for some of the older 4-man dungeons, like Sastasha. That way if they royally mess up... well they will die until they learn. Maybe make it so that doing a dungeon with AI is slightly more difficult than if you had a normal group? Either way that would cut down on group finder for some of that content that people are bored with the most, and the high levels wouldn't have to do yet another Sastasha, for the 1000th time. lol.

But obviously you wouldn't want to do this for ALL dungeons because there will be a point in time where players will need to learn how to function with other human players.

EDIT: Wow, really Zam? You don't allow anybody to describe the alternative to nails? I've forgotten how absolutely ridiculous the regex filter is here. Other forums have google ads and their censors aren't anywhere near as ridiculous.

Edited, Nov 21st 2016 12:35pm by Lyrailis

Wut?



Almost 2 years actually (like 21 months). You're right that it was shorter than other expansions were, but by no means are they dumping expansions on people super fast.



Yeah that's probably a good idea. It took the FFXI team a looooooooooooong time to do that though.



Yeah it probably is with trusts.



My concern there would be what it would do to queue times. Leveling roulettes currently fill very quickly. People may roll their eyes when they get toto-rak for the 845th time (I sure do), but they do it.

My preference would be to allow people to skip expansion stories so they aren't gated behind potentially months of questing before they can play the new stuff. Since they went back on their promise not to repeat that mistake with Stormblood I'm just seeing a future where we're 7 expansions in and a new player has 2 years of questing before they can even look at the new stuff. That's not good for game growth.

XIV is in no way designed for AI NPCs beyond the extreme basics. There are too many intricate/movement based mechanics. Gambits worked fine for XII because most of the combat was just countering spells and effects/managing buffs.

Edited, Nov 21st 2016 3:29pm by BrokenFox

So a little update on that FFXI project...

9.5 hours playtime, and our mules are in Jeuno on Lv32 with Chocobo License + Mount Quest done, Subjob Quest also done.

But anyways...

RE:WoW: Even at a year and 10 months, it still seems way too fast, especially when inside of a WoW expansion are "tiers" of content and older tiers within the same expansion quickly go obsolete. Yes, they do catch-up stuff like letting you craft the last tier's gear (I remember them doing this in MoP) but then that becomes a deterrent against playing, like "Why should I slog through these dungeons when I can just craft this gear when the next patch comes out in 4 weeks?" and/or "Why should I do these dungeons now? If I wait 4 weeks, I'll get gear that's 10 item levels higher!"

That, and with Warlords, we know the whole FarmVille routine -- anybody who played Warlords knows what I mean by that.

But anyways...



I have to disagree here.

I can't really tell you any time that I ever logged onto FFXIV and thought "meh, all there is to do is 10 minutes of mundane farmville tasks" and then log back off. That's what Warlords was like for me, and that's why I quit WoW (at least one of many reasons).

FFXIV posed the opposite problem, there was simply a mountain of stuff I "should" do but I was finding it difficult to find the motivation because it didn't feel like I was getting anywhere towards the goal.

As for FFXIV doing it "better", again, I disagree there -- FFXIV has a lot of things that WoW never had, such as a superior crafting system (I rather liked the crafting minigame), and some nice UI elements, such as the aggro list (unless they added an official aggro list in WoW? Last I checked, you needed a mod for that and said list wasn't able to target mobs for you), and those little arrows that zip when something (enemy, you, etc) changes target. These little QoL things are actually rather big, because there was a point where I took a break from WoW while I was playing FFXIV.

Went back to WoW and I felt..... lost without these. WoW gameplay actually felt awkward without these. I'd say that FFXIV's combat system is actually superior. Battles are a bit slower, but I like it that way. WoW tends to have lots of flashy flashy stuff going on and they think you need to be pounding buttons every 0.5 seconds.

It's a bit of a catch-22, isn't it?

If you want to kill bosses, you need gear.
If you want to be more powerful, you need gear.
If you want to "progress", you need to gear.

So, doesn't matter what MMO it is, it ultimately falls down to either getting levelups, and then once max level, getting gear.

Even a story-heavy game like FFXIV, it still comes down to getting gear, because a lot of the story is gated behind dungeons and boss fights which, yes, you need gear for.



As a player who was burned many many times by horrible RNG... I do not lament the lack of "lucky drops" because I rarely ever had "lucky drops". Yes, they theoretically exist, but in practice, the vast majority of the times, you end up cursing bad RNG because you put forth a lot of effort and yet again saw no reward. Why do you think Tomestone/Valor Point systems got started in the first place? Players were tired of spending an hour+ in a dungeon and getting nothing to show for it.

Now the outright removal of ALL RNG-based drops? Not sure I quite agree with that. I think the happy medium would to have all the items available as a drop AND buyable with the currency both at the same time. Start building up your currency... maybe you'll see the item drop. If not, you know you WILL get it eventually through the currency.



I didn't really like the whole "gotta mash buttons every 0.5 seconds" thing personally that WoW had going. I felt it was excessive, and after awhile I felt that I could just write a bot script and nobody would notice the difference. Yes, there were more buttons to push, and you pushed them more often, but then again, it was usually a static rotation with a few random "priorities" thrown in (if proc A is up, it is more important than B, etc).

I guess It's largely because I'm an older player (36.5), that I like slower combat? *shrugs* I don't know. That or I'm just a scrub. I really don't care. There's more than one reason that I didn't really enjoy WoW during Warlords, and that's just one of the many little straws on the haypile. I'm not going to sit here and say that I hated WoW because the combat was too fast, but I am merely pointing out why I liked FFXIV's combat more. I'm not even saying WoW's is bad, again, I just like FFXIV's more.

EDIT: I kinda find it strange that I'm sitting here speaking in FFXIV's defense on an FFXIV forum.

Edited, Nov 22nd 2016 10:49am by Lyrailis

The GCD is 1.5 seconds and while that can be further reduced by haste, it doesn't circumvent the (mostly)universal mechanic of building and spending resources. WoW is actually slower than it's been in the past.

There are a lot of things that Legion is doing right in comparison to Warlords. Many players were reluctant to accept the streamlining and ability pruning, but I think they're understanding now that it's a necessary evil of making the abilities you use more meaningful and supplementing choices in personal preference and style of play.

Meta will always be there. Players have come to rely on websites and addons that do all of the differential calculus for you in determining which talent is best, which piece of gear is an upgrade over another, ect.

I think the Legion team is doing more to push the game toward being more a matter of choice. If you're pushing world first then you're always going to have your 'cookie cutter spec' or a predetermined artifact upgrade path. What's important is that the upper limit of performance is much closer whether you pick the cookie cutter or you instead select gear or talents that are appealing to you based on your personal preference.

Edited, Nov 23rd 2016 3:00pm by FilthMcNasty