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I’m not sure I understand the point of your rebuttal. I should clarify a few things because I believe there’s a misunderstanding. I’m not personally dissatisfied with the scope of the game because I use all of it – crafting and main/side questing. I've barely touched endgame. I’m nowhere near the point where the amount of content becomes an issue, and given the coming updates, I doubt I ever will be. Despite that, it is only fair to admit that for months now, we've seen a lot of users complain about the lack of endgame scope in the game. I assume it is because some players prefer to focus exclusively on progressing towards endgame. I’m sure SE was aware of this as well when assessing how fast you can get to endgame and how much endgame there was at the launch of the game. It only made sense to utilize time gating to manage retention until more endgame content would be added.

The reason why I’m risking the assumption that gating may be reduced in the future is because I've read that SE is already planning to reduce the difficulty (which is a type a gating in a sense) of current endgame content when newer endgame content comes in. Given this, I think that expecting them to eventually reduce gating too is not exactly a huge leap of faith. I’m not stating it as a fact though.

EDIT: It became apparent later on that I should have defined "reduce" a little better. I've done so below :)

Edited, Feb 20th 2014 12:01pm by Trellmichel

Edited, Feb 20th 2014 8:01pm by Trellmichel

Oh, I meant "you" as a "someone".

The current endgame will become old endgame and the new endgame will take its place. Given that the current endgame will be the old endgame in 2.2, it makes sense to remove the gating mechanics. The new endgame will serve as the gating content until the cycle repeats itself.

There are no signs of the new endgame having less gating than before, or that there would be more content volume-wise. The old endgame will not ease the situation.

I don't think I can take the assumption that gating will be reduced over time to be a sufficient response, because I don't think I've ever seen an MMO do it?

Gating usually just takes on new forms when the backlash against the current model grows large enough.

WoW always used a lockout feature - could only be an active member of one raid a week, capping the maximum boss kills to once-each.

At times they've had wings with gating requirements (can't access wing B until you clear wing A). At the worst periods (when the drama was most fun to watch), wing B also had an additional unlock date, so you couldn't access it before that date even if you had cleared wing A.

Other times they used gear gating. I remember when a boss in Ulduar (second expansion, second major content patch) had an enrage timer and health pool that made it literally impossible for players to progress past him until they nerfed him. And by literally impossible I mean "using the absolute BiS gear with perfect rotations and assuming the minimum of tanks and healers, you cannot reach sufficient DPS."

Now they rank the content. You go through the content on multiple difficulties, so you have to grind your way through at least two difficulties (I think it's 3?) to cap the content.

And they've used other gating mechanisms, like having to unlock the Silthis gates as a server before you could access the raid. Plus, at that time, the raids were linear progression - you had to go through the earlier content to reach the later content, regardless of when you were starting out (THAT, at least, they got rid of in Wrath).

I dunno. I just don't think I've ever seen an MMO get rid of gating. At the end of the day, they need the content to last a certain amount of time for a certain population of players along the bell curve. Gating is really the only way to do that, short of VASTLY over-producing content.

I wouldn't have argued against the idea that FTP games commonly use similar tactics to keep players playing. In a FTP game, if players don't stick around, then they aren't spending money in the cash shop, so it's not the least bit surprising to see similar concepts across both models. My comments were mainly in response to the idea that games following the PTP model gives you an unrestricted game, even though restrictions can still be seen all over the place in games under the PTP model and can sometimes be even harsher than what you see under the FTP model. Heck, I didn't mention housing in ARR, but let's take a look at that. One of the most hyped features in this game's last major patch was designed in such a way that it would purposely take players three months of saving up to even have access, which had been stated by Yoshi P. Coincidentally (or not so much), content patches are meant to be on a three month cycle, so they'd have a host of new goals for players to spend their next three months doing when the time comes.

While FTP games may attempt to keep players playing by stretching content and use cash shop items as a selling point, a PTP game's attempts to keep players playing is the selling point, because if you want to complete your in game goals and it's either very difficult or flat out impossible to do so without spending several weeks/months getting there, then they've already got your money. I know I can't have everything in a FTP game without spending either lots of money or lots of time farming (if that's even an option), but I also know I can't have everything in a PTP game without staying subscribed indefinitely and having my progress held back by things like either RNG, lockouts, or grind to make absolutely sure that I always have something to do, even if I have to wait an entire week before I get to continue my progress.

I'm not saying that FTP and PTP are the same, by the way. They are just different sides of the same coin. I'm only pointing out the similarities between them that some people seem to lump with one model and not the other. Primarily that both models are highly subject to methods of ensuring that more money is spent in order to complete in game goals, and that these methods are extremely apparent throughout a game's design if you choose to focus on them.

Edit: Got rid of this last part because I finished the thread and realized three people beat me to it.

Edited, Feb 20th 2014 3:50pm by Susanoh

You make a good point, but it really goes to the larger issue that the people who produce MMOs are running a business. Even the most gamer friendly enterprise needs to pay for its maintenance costs, developers, GMs, marketers, etc. etc. And lest we forget, the typical development time of a non-MMO masterpiece video game can be measured in years while the time players take to blow through that painstakingly made content is measured in hours. An MMO simply can't produce enough original content for months of continuous gameplay without throwing on the brakes somewhere.

The classic way, of course, is through grinding. The FFXIV 1.0 gear grind required fighting the same bosses in the exact same fight literally hundreds of times to get the treasures you wanted out of them because the drop rate was just that bad. You could go fight them as much as you wanted with no caps or limits, but you were tortured with dull repetition (winning the same fight every 20 minutes, and rolling the thousand-sided die) that served no purpose but to drag things out because there was nothing else to do. But good luck if you only had a short time to get anything done. You'd likely never see any endgame treasure at all.

So time gates are an alternative to the grind, one that's more casual friendly by far. Caps are the obvious speed bump designed to drag things out, but at least the attempts you are able to make are far more fruitful and productive with better drop rates. Not only that, but people who don't have a lot of time to play will find it easier to get help because no one can simply burn through everything in a week and cancel their sub till the next patch.

One alternative would be to let you fight all instances as much as you wanted and collect as much myth and CT drops as you wanted by drastically lowering the amount of myth you can collect, making the drop rates for gear dismally low. But that would completely alienate the casual player majority who are supporting the game financially right now, because they can't get anything in endgame accomplished with what time they have. Or, if they don't increase the grind, then they have to contend with people quitting because there's nothing left to accomplish, because the development time for content far exceeds the amount of time it takes to complete it.



How MMOs make their money is a choice of lesser evils for the player. Thus has it always been, thus it will always be.

Great points all around. This forum impresses me all the time. Kudos guys.

Edited, Feb 20th 2014 7:59pm by Trellmichel

Hey dudes i wanna clarify something.

Gw2 has cash shop but it's all for costumes. You can't buy gears there unless you transfer your real money into it game gold which most of ppl don't do.
Gw2 is all about costume aka skin. There is no tier gears or imbalance stats blablabla. their focus is skill based not Gears based like other games

Is there some kind of implicit claim here that horizontal progression systems don't come with their own complications and issues that require band-aids and cause damage?

It should be obvious that in the real world nothing comes without its own unique flaws as perfection is a mere utopia, and what is "better" comes down to preferences more often than not. All of us can argue that there is a system that is perfect to us as an individual, but when we remove that subjective point of view and start arguing objectively the arguments fall apart.

Edited, Feb 21st 2014 3:56pm by Hyanmen

Which is why I won't entertain or field augments that make use of preference as a priority above others. The unsatisfied minority will always speak louder than the satisfied majority.

As far as the matter of calling Duty Roulette no new content. I disagree. Boss Rush Modes in video games essentially add little as far as additional coding, but arrange existing portions in such a way that adds new flavor to old content.

Roulette does add additional monetary incentive to aiding others through older content, but does so in a way that makes it seem like gambling. Sometimes, you strike it lucky, and get Ifrit. Other times you might get really unlucky and do Braflox.

Anyways, the talk about horizontal progression is a bit early. FFXI did not truely entertain horizontal progression until the level cap of 75 and we're at 50. If we were pushing horizontal progression now, I'd be very concerned.

What I see being created here in FFXIV is the groundwork for a branching progression through the levels, each topping off at different levels of performance.

The Raiding Path will yeild best results first and will encourage players to partake in battle content as it goes up.

The Currency Path will be a secondary reward for raiding to insure loot drops and bad luck doe not eliminate progression, but also rewards players who play on the more casual end by giving them gradual access.

Then the Crafted Path which primarily serves as Entry-Level raiding gear but services for most content up to the higher current raids.


I would like to see them expand these methods so that there are multiple Best In Slot possibilities that encompass a range of activities, however, I do not expect horizontal progression until much, much later on in the life cycle. When FFXI really got into sidegrade expansions it was done on the presumption that 75 would be the highest level cap, and disenfranchised a lot of players when they did inevitably raise it.

I am fairly certain Yoshida wishes to avoid that by not touching on it until the 99 level cap, for better or worse that may seem to some.

Honestly, if there are enough extra-curricular activities within the game to entertain and distract from the Raid Progression, I'm fine with that. Currently I do not believe there is enough, nor do I believe there will ever be enough for players who wish to focus on progression content alone - that is the primary argument for horizontal progression so early.

I happen to enjoy what progress my Free Company is taking. We have not even made Coil our primary objective yet, due to progressively gearing our team upwards rather than skipping sections. (We're currently getting Garuda Extreme down on farm before moving forward while working on CT/Myth gear.) We have no intention of pushing through it all quickly, and that's seemed to work really well with alleviating the burnout potential of the content.

But we also have other activities to keep us occupied as well, so take that with a grain of salt. I find the most enjoyment in MMORPGs in groups that placed some focus on user-generated content. Those who seem unsatisfied with the game, with rare exception, also do not seem partake in such things. However, that is another tangent all together.

Note that they introduced iLvl to FFXI as well with SoA, since the cap is permanently 99. But the inflation is much lower. The highest you can get at the moment is ilvl 119. I think.

But a lot of things are checked at lower numbers in XI. You don't see tanks running around with 8000+ HP in that game.

I'm a little confused by it, too, to be honest.

It could just be that iLevel in FFXIV will always be more important/meaningful than actual player levels. To have i90 gear with level 50 players may seem odd, but ARR will have been out nearly seven months before seeing an iLevel increase. Not sure if iLevels are going up to 95, 100 or what... but if we get an iLevel increase of 5 or 10 every four to eight months -- with actual player levels brought up at expansions -- then I don't see that as crazy inflation.

Eventually, dungeons like AK, WP and Pharos Sirius will probably just become leveling dungeons and fodder for the roulette.

It's definitely a change from old-school XI (I just couldn't get into the new expansion).

I think there would be room for horizontal growth, though, even with the current system we have. For example, i70 weapons that had bonus effects against primals, which could be farmed by people who need a little extra help through Titan HM... things like that.

I said in another thread, but I think the fact there's no gear swapping allowed during battles really limits the degree of gear progression that can take place. In FFXI, there was literally a BiS list for every single WS and ability you had, giving players all kinds of incentive to spend crazy hours grinding all kinds of content.

And Hyrist, hope things clear up for you soon.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2014 7:52am by Thayos

Yeah, those are good points. That would kind of suck.



I do disagree with that statement, though. Especially in FCs like mine where people repeatedly do content to help each other out, having gear that's made for specific types of content would actually be very awesome... and adding in quests or other content to get that gear would also be very cool... a kind of side quest as you climb the ladder, but completely optional.

Instead of doing this with gear, though, what about CoP-style items that could make certain boss fights easier? I'm thinking CoP-style consumable items that could nullify AoE damage for short periods of time, or weaken a boss monster's defense, etc... These items could be obtainable through questing, farming dungeons, FATES, crafting (or a combination of any)... could be a shot for the economy, too, because people would certainly use them for fights like Titan HM.

I'd rather see items like that introduced to the game than nerf content (or have an echo buff).

That's not horizontal progression, either... but would still give people more to do as they progress vertically.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2014 2:31pm by Thayos