Patch 2.16 (Feb. 22nd) and Patch 2.2 SummaryFollow

I read most of the Harry Potter books while looking for parties to level my first job...

Making parties wasn't much better. People were so hungry for experience points, and parties were so hard to come by, that you really needed to fill up your party within minutes or people would start getting poached by other groups.

I'm so glad we never have to go back to that.

He's delivered on every promise he's made so far... He's smart and doesn't add time frames until the time is close unless it's something he's really excited about. That's why people have so much faith in him, he's proven it's not unfounded.

Also not in the patch notes (a ninja nerf...buff...?) but certain mechanics of Turn 5 were adjusted. Namely:

Snakes have lower HP now
Conflag has lower HP now
If a tank jumps into the conflag, he loses aggro temporarily until he comes back out (aka: going in for death sentence when both healers are in isn't necessarily going to work unless your OT picks it up!)

There's a difference between powerful and useful, I'm pretty sure the BiS for most jobs is still Relic +1, no? Additionally, I'd be pretty pissed off if Relic was always the best weapon. Should it be the most powerful overall? I think so, assuming we can keep upgrading them. Should it be the best in all situations? Hell no, I don't want everyone running around with the same weapons. There should definitely be situations were a similar item is better in them than the best overall weapon.

before extreme primal weapons i heard that brd allagan weapon > relic +1 sooo if thats corect then there is stuff better than relic as for everyone not running around inthe same thing ummm you mean like all il70s wearin darklight?

You really should elaborate... sounds like there's a great discussion here just waiting to come out.

I'm not aware of anything big, actually.

If you're going to make that claim, though, then you're the one who needs to provide the proof!

I still feel SE should have wiped everything and not stuck to keeping a lot of things around that ruin the progress and fun of something that is essentially a "new" game.

I myself abandoned my old character and started anew somewhere else when ARR launched, but there's many thousands of players on Legacy Worlds who did not. And in their perspective, what has been released for them in the past 7 months that they did not have before?

The ability to level? Nope, they had everything 50 before and havent gone further.
New fights? Barely, they had, moogle king, hard and extreme primals (and its drops) before too, something we've only just reobtained.
New dungeons? Except for Crystal Tower, nope. All the dungeons we have now, we had in the past. Only then they were open world and now they're instanced.
New gear? Nope, had moogle weapons before, relics and everything we now have.
New area's? Well, sorta. They redid the entire world and cut it into tiny miniscule little zones. However honestly i liked the 1.0 world so much more.

Looking at it from the view of anyone who retained their 1.0 character and/or played through it all before ARR, there's barely anything new that isnt just a "distraction" than actual gaming content. Crystal Tower for instance has absolutely no use for anyone who had relic/myth/allegan gear already other than playing through it once for the story. And the storyline, although interesting, if you were capped out on levels already could be completed (and was) on launch day. I distinctly remember seeing the Magitek Mounts running around barely a week in.

I like the game, and i really want it to succeed, but so far 90% of all the "content" that we've had is just stuff they re-introduced in more or less the same form after taking it away from us :/

This is a major point that needs to be centered upon.

One of the primary reasons these dungeons are instances is accessibility. The other is usability. An open World Dungeon can't have a hardmode encompassing the full dungeon (though you could create harder paths within it.) I rather like the fact that the current Hardmodes progress the story of the location in some manner.

That's not to say that I feel all dungeons should be this way, and I am in staunch support for them to add more explorable locations down the line, but I know they come with their own limitations. It is my hope that they expand upon the beastmen strongholds and make them open world to delve into, as the beastmen tribes come with their own lore and diversity that would be explored, and keep with the open world theme of their current content.

Yeah, I think this is how most 1.0 players feel. Personally, there's really nothing for me to do besides level more jobs that I don't like. But keep in mind that your solution of wiping 1.0 accounts isn't a solution anymore... fresh ARR players have the same problem of having nothing to do and nothing to save money for, feeling like your time online/subscription is a waste, etc.

However, I don't agree that the 1.0 world was better. ARR's is much better besides maybe 2 or 3 background songs which didn't needed to be swapped but were anyway. It's somewhat upsetting that the world is chopped into jarring zones where you jump from grass to snow after a loading screen - thanks to Square Enix's insistence on making this 2014 game available for 2005 hardware.

Overall, I think people got their expectations too high.

Edited, Feb 21st 2014 5:01pm by LucasNox

A brilliant move aside from it making no sense from a game design point of view.

Other parties can join your instance? Then how does a dev balance the content accordingly? Do you need the other party to beat the dungeon (tuned towards multiple parties tackling the content) or does the other party make the dungeon ****-easy (tuned towards a single party). The former making it useless to even try without other parties, the latter making the content a joke in difficulty. To answer that design issue do you create a cheap workaround by making the instance "harder" with more parties in it? Mechanics are still tuned for one party but the mobs have 2x hp and hit harder for example. Either way it's a poor band-aid in comparison to tuning the instance for either one party or multiple parties properly.

I bet PSO2 solves the issue by letting the content become insanely easy (while the drop rates are from a Korean first gen MMO since you obviously can't create a difficulty barrier to the content).

What you're saying makes PSO2 sound like the epitome of poor game design from the early 2000's.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2014 7:38pm by Hyanmen