I've seen a lot of sentiment here for it being okay for FFXIV to be more solo friendly, as long as there area incentives for people to group. Unfortunately, it seems to me that a solo/group balance that satisfies both sides will be a lot harder to achieve than people realize.
That is total Bull and you know it! Fact is, you just want to make FF14 as just another carbon copy of FF11 with its rigid game mechanics with its rigid "holy trinity" group mechanics that ended up alienating a lot of players.
The rest is just passionate solo ranting.
In regards to the highlighted part. -> That is the idea, alienate those who would not want to take part in a community environment. If a person wants to play an RPG all the power to them, however an MMORPG is supposed to require group and community effort on multiple levels to create the semblance of a real world. Not just raids my friend.
So if you cannot learn to take part and interact with others in order to further yourelf in the game then you will not further yourself in the game. This means grouping with people, having people assist you with quests and assisting them(so your rep is good), buying and selling from an auction and sometimes from bazaars, and even sometimes changing your job to fita need so you can get the level you want faster, or sucking it up if that choice is not something you can go for. In FF11 now there are often healers waiting for a party and DD is hard to find so now all those people who wanted to be DD can get invites much faster.
If a game panders to the solo crowd then its community will suffer. If SE thinks it can attract enough of the solo crowd then it may do this and care little about the community built because they will be bringing in money. However, good luck to them, the market is saturated and will only continue to be saturated with WOW-chasers.
Its funny you keep bringing up a 9 year old game and saying- "Look its hard and grouping was forced thats why its numbers suck".
Its numbers do not suck in general and its nine years old. So many people wont play it because it is old or they havent heard of it.
If FF14 was just a new FF11 with updated graphics quests jobs etc... they would do great and have longevity in their playerbase (something FF11 has consistently had).
I've seen a lot of sentiment here for it being okay for FFXIV to be more solo friendly, as long as there area incentives for people to group. Unfortunately, it seems to me that a solo/group balance that satisfies both sides will be a lot harder to achieve than people realize.
That is total Bull and you know it! Fact is, you just want to make FF14 as just another carbon copy of FF11 with its rigid game mechanics with its rigid "holy trinity" group mechanics that ended up alienating a lot of players.
The rest is just passionate solo ranting.
In regards to the highlighted part. -> That is the idea, alienate those who would not want to take part in a community environment. If a person wants to play an RPG all the power to them, however an MMORPG is supposed to require group and community effort on multiple levels to create the semblance of a real world. Not just raids my friend.
So if you cannot learn to take part and interact with others in order to further yourelf in the game then you will not further yourself in the game. This means grouping with people, having people assist you with quests and assisting them(so your rep is good), buying and selling from an auction and sometimes from bazaars, and even sometimes changing your job to fita need so you can get the level you want faster, or sucking it up if that choice is not something you can go for. In FF11 now there are often healers waiting for a party and DD is hard to find so now all those people who wanted to be DD can get invites much faster.
If a game panders to the solo crowd then its community will suffer. If SE thinks it can attract enough of the solo crowd then it may do this and care little about the community built because they will be bringing in money. However, good luck to them, the market is saturated and will only continue to be saturated with WOW-chasers.
Its funny you keep bringing up a 9 year old game and saying- "Look its hard and grouping was forced thats why its numbers suck".
Its numbers do not suck in general and its nine years old. So many people wont play it because it is old or they havent heard of it.
If FF14 was just a new FF11 with updated graphics quests jobs etc... they would do great and have longevity in their playerbase (something FF11 has consistently had).
Congrats, you've completely missed his point (on multiple levels). First, the Holy Trinity mechanics is NOT a necessity for grouping. He wasn't saying grouping is bad at all, he was saying making grouping DIFFICULT is bad. Making it take an hour to find people for a group is just plain bad design. Get rid of the Tank-Healer-DPS system, and you can still have specializations with classes, but you can avoid a lot of the headaches of the HT. Tanks and Healers tend not to be played by enough people, for instance. Or, as you say, it might be DPS who are sorely needed, but this still completely sucks since the HT system imposes a strict system and repeatedly punches you in the face when you can't support it. No HT and you can avoid having those specialties that are necessary to play but that aren't played enough. This makes forming a group easier and makes the game play better. It doesn't eliminate tactical depth anymore than real life combat has no tactical depth (in fact, with magic you have more tactical depth than real life allows, quite possibly).
Beyond that the best way to meet people in my experience, has always been to do so while questing/adventuring. That's even how I met most of my good friends in FFXI. I either met them adventuring when I was during the transition between soloing and grouping or I met them through those people I met early on. This is how it has generally been for other games as well. Maintaining this experience at later levels will help keep people making new friends and being social.
The idea they should keep things the same as FFXI is laughable. Lack of innovation kills in this industry. Old time players of FFXI still play because they stick to the product, but if you make a new MMO with archaic game mechanics and keep real problems that could be fixed, then it is not going to do nearly as well as you seem to think (in particular gaining new players will be difficult).
If you bothered to look at what they are doing in FFXIV, you'd see they are making grouping even better than before. Now it will be easier to meet people. Now it will be easier to form a group. Quests you pick up with the Guildleve system are customizable, yet even with that the system is flexible enough that grouping while questing is supported -- I imagine this means the enemies will scale with your group (probably means enemies will spawn based on your group size, though that's just a guess). That means if you don't have any friends online, then you pick up some Guildleve quests and go out and do them. On the way you'll meet some friends in all likelihood (just lend a fellow a hand and usually that results in grouping and a friendship) and I hypothesize that game will dynamically scale up to your new group size keeping things challenging (and you don't have to sweat and fret over what class the guy is nearly as much as FFXI made you).
Oh, and the "solo crowd" is largely a myth. There are rare people prefer to solo rather than group, but we're social animals and enjoy doing things with others (generally speaking). The problem for some games (like WoW) is they punish people who group up by essentially making a ton of solo-only content. It doesn't look like FFXIV is going to do this (they want people to use the Guildleve system and that is explicitly friendly with solo or for a group).
Comments
That is total Bull and you know it! Fact is, you just want to make FF14 as just another carbon copy of FF11 with its rigid game mechanics with its rigid "holy trinity" group mechanics that ended up alienating a lot of players.
The rest is just passionate solo ranting.
In regards to the highlighted part. -> That is the idea, alienate those who would not want to take part in a community environment. If a person wants to play an RPG all the power to them, however an MMORPG is supposed to require group and community effort on multiple levels to create the semblance of a real world. Not just raids my friend.
So if you cannot learn to take part and interact with others in order to further yourelf in the game then you will not further yourself in the game. This means grouping with people, having people assist you with quests and assisting them(so your rep is good), buying and selling from an auction and sometimes from bazaars, and even sometimes changing your job to fita need so you can get the level you want faster, or sucking it up if that choice is not something you can go for. In FF11 now there are often healers waiting for a party and DD is hard to find so now all those people who wanted to be DD can get invites much faster.
If a game panders to the solo crowd then its community will suffer. If SE thinks it can attract enough of the solo crowd then it may do this and care little about the community built because they will be bringing in money. However, good luck to them, the market is saturated and will only continue to be saturated with WOW-chasers.
Its funny you keep bringing up a 9 year old game and saying- "Look its hard and grouping was forced thats why its numbers suck".
Its numbers do not suck in general and its nine years old. So many people wont play it because it is old or they havent heard of it.
If FF14 was just a new FF11 with updated graphics quests jobs etc... they would do great and have longevity in their playerbase (something FF11 has consistently had).
WOOT
www.eorzeapedia.com
(Great FF14 source)
That is total Bull and you know it! Fact is, you just want to make FF14 as just another carbon copy of FF11 with its rigid game mechanics with its rigid "holy trinity" group mechanics that ended up alienating a lot of players.
The rest is just passionate solo ranting.
In regards to the highlighted part. -> That is the idea, alienate those who would not want to take part in a community environment. If a person wants to play an RPG all the power to them, however an MMORPG is supposed to require group and community effort on multiple levels to create the semblance of a real world. Not just raids my friend.
So if you cannot learn to take part and interact with others in order to further yourelf in the game then you will not further yourself in the game. This means grouping with people, having people assist you with quests and assisting them(so your rep is good), buying and selling from an auction and sometimes from bazaars, and even sometimes changing your job to fita need so you can get the level you want faster, or sucking it up if that choice is not something you can go for. In FF11 now there are often healers waiting for a party and DD is hard to find so now all those people who wanted to be DD can get invites much faster.
If a game panders to the solo crowd then its community will suffer. If SE thinks it can attract enough of the solo crowd then it may do this and care little about the community built because they will be bringing in money. However, good luck to them, the market is saturated and will only continue to be saturated with WOW-chasers.
Its funny you keep bringing up a 9 year old game and saying- "Look its hard and grouping was forced thats why its numbers suck".
Its numbers do not suck in general and its nine years old. So many people wont play it because it is old or they havent heard of it.
If FF14 was just a new FF11 with updated graphics quests jobs etc... they would do great and have longevity in their playerbase (something FF11 has consistently had).
Congrats, you've completely missed his point (on multiple levels). First, the Holy Trinity mechanics is NOT a necessity for grouping. He wasn't saying grouping is bad at all, he was saying making grouping DIFFICULT is bad. Making it take an hour to find people for a group is just plain bad design. Get rid of the Tank-Healer-DPS system, and you can still have specializations with classes, but you can avoid a lot of the headaches of the HT. Tanks and Healers tend not to be played by enough people, for instance. Or, as you say, it might be DPS who are sorely needed, but this still completely sucks since the HT system imposes a strict system and repeatedly punches you in the face when you can't support it. No HT and you can avoid having those specialties that are necessary to play but that aren't played enough. This makes forming a group easier and makes the game play better. It doesn't eliminate tactical depth anymore than real life combat has no tactical depth (in fact, with magic you have more tactical depth than real life allows, quite possibly).
Beyond that the best way to meet people in my experience, has always been to do so while questing/adventuring. That's even how I met most of my good friends in FFXI. I either met them adventuring when I was during the transition between soloing and grouping or I met them through those people I met early on. This is how it has generally been for other games as well. Maintaining this experience at later levels will help keep people making new friends and being social.
The idea they should keep things the same as FFXI is laughable. Lack of innovation kills in this industry. Old time players of FFXI still play because they stick to the product, but if you make a new MMO with archaic game mechanics and keep real problems that could be fixed, then it is not going to do nearly as well as you seem to think (in particular gaining new players will be difficult).
If you bothered to look at what they are doing in FFXIV, you'd see they are making grouping even better than before. Now it will be easier to meet people. Now it will be easier to form a group. Quests you pick up with the Guildleve system are customizable, yet even with that the system is flexible enough that grouping while questing is supported -- I imagine this means the enemies will scale with your group (probably means enemies will spawn based on your group size, though that's just a guess). That means if you don't have any friends online, then you pick up some Guildleve quests and go out and do them. On the way you'll meet some friends in all likelihood (just lend a fellow a hand and usually that results in grouping and a friendship) and I hypothesize that game will dynamically scale up to your new group size keeping things challenging (and you don't have to sweat and fret over what class the guy is nearly as much as FFXI made you).
Oh, and the "solo crowd" is largely a myth. There are rare people prefer to solo rather than group, but we're social animals and enjoy doing things with others (generally speaking). The problem for some games (like WoW) is they punish people who group up by essentially making a ton of solo-only content. It doesn't look like FFXIV is going to do this (they want people to use the Guildleve system and that is explicitly friendly with solo or for a group).