Losing passion for MMO'sFollow

Agreed. To this end, housing is a step in the right direction.

I think the time-sink goals in this game could be for non-essential things that still allow people to feel set apart from others. I have a feeling that building airships (which stems from housing) will ultimately be among these goals. Access to vanity weapon and armor skins could be, too. So could treasure maps, if you need to grind through multiple maps just to get one shot at the more advanced maps.

None of these things would block people from progressing their characters through the main story and development arc of the game, but they'd still give us plenty of goals to shoot for.

And again, I really doubt that because like I said in my previous post about this, leveling took a very long time. Having an item that might take some time to get but that will increase your performance in leveling was worth it. Leaping Boots were great for very many levels, meaning a long time and that that made the trouble worth it. Not to mention a lot of people had fun with it and saw it as a small side goal so they could do better when fighting CoP etc. In a game like that for many people it isn't a rush towards endgame in the sense we see in newer games. It doesn't work in the same way because the dash is too long basically.

Agree with the rest though.

Edited, Jan 30th 2014 11:57am by Belcrono

They cannot be "ahead" because there are lockouts in place preventing that. They are simply doing what everyone else is doing and then being bored the rest of the time.

The game doesn't ask much of a time investment, but it does ask for some. Those who are able to meet the game's demands are not solely people with lots of time on their hands, as the quota is set quite low.

Fortunately vanity system is coming so nobody has to wear the same gear. Everyone has to work for the gear as much as there is challenge in the encounters and as much as meeting the lockout quotas. That doesn't equal "no work", and for many that is more than enough of an investment to keep playing.

If the only way to make people wear different gear is to make gearing up require much more time investment, yeah, I'd rather have it set this way for sure.

Edited, Jan 30th 2014 8:17pm by Hyanmen

I am not saying particularly the healing cape from Spiny was worth it after people starting leveling in other areas than Valk, but I could still sell that item for a nice chunk of change quite a while down the line, so there is another reason. I mean, not every item was worth it of course, I agree, but some still were and honestly we are still talking about a time after the first expansion I believe, Korrolloka was Zilart if I am not mistaken. Before that it wasn't even possible.

Also the soloing to 15 yeah it was possible, but that doesn't make the rest of the game the same way and it wasn't. The reason people rush to endgame nowadays is because the games are all made that way. Games have gone from long leveling times where the journey to the endgame is a big part of the experience so you don't have to rush and mostly it is hard to because it takes too much time, and you have things to do in the meantime. To games where more or less everything is endgame. It is different styles and I agree with you ARR should stay as what it is absolutely. I was just saying I don't think people who would play a game like XI, would play it very differently from how we used to play it because the game dictates our playstyles a lot, even if we are "smarter" players now.

But like I said I was not trying to say ARR should work like XI, your solution sounds better for ARR.

Edited, Jan 30th 2014 12:45pm by Belcrono

Housing could eventually offer a completely different path of progression. Only the basic shell of housing has been implemented so far.

No idea what is coming later, though.

Early on in FFXI's life, many NM's were worth wasting the time on. The gear they dropped was good until 75 and sometimes into 75. Emperor's Hairpin, Leaping Boots, O Kote's, Fuma's, etc. Some thiefs, mnk, nin's wore those until endgame. Not to mention, some of those items were top notch for several jobs across the board. Were there upgrades to some of these items at 75, of course, but many were unobtainable for a very long time for most of the players.

Pretty sure they were talking generally and it applies. Most MMOs these days have most of their content on the back end of the game. That's why people find value it it. More content.

Considering how fast leveling is though, I am not sure mid level content is really needed. I mean Yoshi decided to make ARR a game where endgame is the meat of it and while it doesn't hurt to have some mid level content in a game like that, focus should be at endgame (with content like housing and stuff of course). For games where leveling takes time it makes sense to have content at "all" levels, but I think it is fine to have mostly endgame focus in a game like what ARR seems to be aiming to be.

Who knows, Belcrono... maybe once the level cap is raised, the upper-level monsters of new areas will be more formidable than the "trash mobs" we have now, or maybe there will be new events, or new ways of leveling? There's still plenty of time and opportunity for Yoshi-P to refine the flow of the game.

In the grand scheme of things, FFXIV is still very, very young. Just think about how much of the enjoyable content from XI wasn't even introduced until the RoZ expansion.

They make leveling easy to facilitate people getting to cap quickly. With the way the class system is in XIV, it shouldn't be like that. There are many other games that restrict you to a single class, but have enough content that you could level the same class 4 of 5 times and have a unique experience every time. XIV allows you to level every class if you want, but the content dries up before you're finished with the second class. I wasn't interested in the mechanics of other jobs, but if there was other content to be had through questing and shedding more light on the lore, I'd probably still have a subscription.

Just this week we got over the Garuda EX hump and turned it into a farming run rather than something that we were lacking the gear to complete. Those 90 rings are pretty pimp and certainly worth farming for each of my 50 jobs. Having a great time here with our established group.

T4 is scheduled for later tonight. Half our LS group got the win on Tuesday for the first time! The rest of us are stoked to use our newly upgraded gear to get the win tonight, seeing as we have practiced our butts off in the run on previous weeks.

It's go time!

Personally I'm as excited as ever to finish off the current Coil content and farm all the available gear upgrades before Patch 2.2. Titan EX is next!

Yeah I suppose that is true, I just sort of mean that as long as leveling is as fast as it is it does not make much sense in adding mid level content because the whole games systems and concepts are centered around endgame. In XI, things that used to be endgame content at 50 could stay relevant because leveling was so slow it made sense to try and get a specific item that was beast for that level (and sometimes several jobs). I can't see the current endgame content being made midlevel content with any real purpose and use except if you really like the look of the items and will hunt for it to have as vanity gear. XI was deliberately slow which forced them to make the journey something that kept people. ARR is fast and focus on endgame because that is where most people will be, in relative terms, rather fast.

ARR really is young, but in general if you look at what Yoshi has said about how he wants the game to work, there won't be much world content that is difficult, leveling will be fast etc. Basically, the concepts they are working with are just very different compared to what I myself value. You are right though we can never know what the future will bring, Yoshi might make a complete 180 and go against what he said during development pre-launch and if that is what you guys want I am all for it, if not I hope he stays his course.

As for what Filthy said I don't really consider different ways of leveling to be content. I mean I know it is, but it was not what I meant when I said midlevel content is not needed in games where the levels fly past. I agree that allowing for many different experiences when leveling different classes is always a great idea, especially in a game like this where you "should" level several classes on one character, even if you don't like those classes. Hopefully, like Thayos said you will get something like that in the future so you can come back, I have no doubt the game will just get better and better no matter what direction it takes.

Edited, Jan 31st 2014 10:12am by Belcrono

I agree that perhaps more can be done for community building, but I think what is there is pretty decent. It's just a matter of finding an active FC and forming linkshells with inter-FC friends and taking the time to join events with them. There's no better way to get help than being helpful to others yourself. I know I had to change FFXI linkshells a few times over the years as people came and went. It always sad when one died out, but also fun when you found a new home for yourself.

Having the ability to group up with strangers across servers is more good than bad, in my opinion. It seemed infuriating to have to beg for help by shouting for hours and hoping you could scrape up a decent team in FFXI for an obscure quest you couldn't do alone.