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Only one path for end game...
psychosiszz
Member UncommonPosts: 45
Note: (Seeing as I can't post this in the official forums because of the lame restrictions I'll post it here). But I worked out how to post more than 1000 characters gah, sometimes SE do things so backwards....
Grind gear in dungeons... I know this is a stable of the MMO genre, but I’m getting sick of it. I would like there to be multiple paths to improve your character, not just by doing dungeons over and over again 100 times. The grind gear, so I can then grind for more gear is an aspect that needs to go. Not saying that players should get epics handed out to them and there still can be a grind. But the best grinds are the ones that don’t feel like a grind.
1. For instance.... crafting!
The crafting system in this game is excellent. But from what I’ve read on these forums, other forums and well just looking and comparing recipes to loot drops you see how worthless it really is. Which is a shame, I’ve lost all motivation to level AS and mining.
Honestly crafted gear should be on par with dungeon/raid gear. Also I would like to see craftable PVP armour (when pvp is patched in). I would go on that say that PVP gear should only be player made, and that say they need certain pvp points or ranks to equip it.
2. Mini games!!!
So I heard the golden saucer is coming to Eorzea. Mini games have always been a strong aspect of any final fantasy game. They also add alot of replay-ability and distraction game-play if you need a break from dungeons.
These minigames I hope will give players good rewards if they invest time in them, as well as being able to play them together with friends or against other players.
Mini games I would like to see!
2.1 Chobo racing/breeding! No brainer, this needs to be in game.
2.2 Card games! Games like triple triad (FF8). Players can trade cards, or gamble them in games against each other. Could have super rare cards as well which are very hard to get.
2.3 Blitz ball (or something similar). I liked how you can manage your team and go around the world and discover and pick out new players. PVP wise this could be a fun team game to play with or against other players.
2.4 Mog game! (not sure what I want lol but there needs to be a mog mini game, maybe a more advanced version of FF7 where your trying to get the Mog laid).
3. World events
World events make high level players leave there cities. Make fates harder, the more people that are there the stronger the Mobs should become (as there harder give players better rewards). Other things could be full on invasions where towns are taken over. Seems a shame, that all MMO’s go down the route of sit around town and wait for a instance to pop.
4. PVP
What I hope is crafted gear will play a big role in PVP. With pvp ranks used to wear the armour and pvp points to buy additional items such as. Materia, mounts, vanity armour (If they add vanity), fluff things and pvp equipment such as siege weapons (if they go down that route).
5. Fluff
5.1 Vanity: People like there vanity. Some vanity items should be crafted as well, to help out the crafters.
5.2 Housing: Yea this is being added I know. But more fluff can be added. Like trophies of mobs you kill. Add rare spawning mobs around the world which spawn once a week so players can cut their heads off and brag that they got the rare kill (or they cheat and buy it off a hunter).
Add a chobo barn so I can breed my chocobos (interlinked with the minigame!)
My thoughts anyway.
Comments
I've always thought that end-game Raiding should be for MATERIALS and not gear. The reason I believe this is because at the end of the day, you want a working player economy. The way you have a working economy is to have a method by which gear is made by players, sold to other players, and SE skims a bit off the top to reduce possible inflation.
By making gear done that way, it would reinforce crafting. It would make end-game raiding still viable (because you're now hunting down materials). It would also ensure that CRAFTERS have the best weapons/armor. That's so very important. Make the recipes hard to come by but ensure the best stuff is always made by players.
The problem is that you are likely not looking at correct items.
First of all, do not compare to regular crafted, it must be the HQ version you look at. Furthermore, you need to look at the properly 5-melded HQ version of the item; improperely melded are not relevant, lol.
For weapons I agree, relic+1 is superior to 5-melded HQ versions; but for the other equip pieces, it is actually a trade off.
The biggest problem with PvE right now is that developers need to find a way to allow for repetitive endgame.
Grinding for gear so you can grind for gear is getting dull and boring.
PvP oriented games have one good path via territory control. ( EVE, GW2, Planetside, Perfect World) While even though there is grind, there is a purpose to it. So you can help your alliance take over the world. The crucial part is that this provides replay value. You don't hear people in eve saying 'iv done everything' (at least not as much as you have on your typical themepark mmo) because there is always the struggle to expand your alliances territory.
The biggest problem with the current PvE endgame is that there feels like there is no real purpose to it. You are grinding for teir 2 so you can grind for tier 3 so you can grind for tier 4 so you can grind for tier 5. There needs to be additional endgame content that give a purpose to the grind.
The hard part is that for PvE oriented gameplay since the enemy is not human it will be difficult to come up with content that has replay value. Devs will need to look at a lot of single player games that provide replay value and then mimic that.
Maybe in addition to raiding how about clan created cities? You are given a zone that you can build in (huge instance). Where you clan can build where and how you want. How about having items from raids that help you build new and more powerful buildings? The better buildings you have the bigger the attacks will get from NPCs that try to destroy your guild city?
For an additional twist how about having a mega zone where 5-10 large sized clans can build together and when their cities get big enough the NPCs spawn an invasion force?
While my example may not be perfect it at least provides content that supplements raiding and more importantly allows for replay value.
Player housing is another good option for PvE endgame. While these 2 examples may not appeal to everyone, the difference is they allow for more replay value than raiding as you can create your house / city in different patterns and set up stuff different ways. This is vastly different than raiding where you run the raid 2-4 times and anything after that is a dull grind.
2-star weapon recipes are pretty useless and insanely hard to get (need 9 cokes or 2k+ tomes) and even if you HQ them they are still not the best dungeon gear around. however with that said, crafting is not useless because you can make lots of money from below lvl-50 items (this is where 75% of my income comes from). i'm pretty sure when the next update comes out they will probably include the 2-star recipes in a new quest line to make them even more powerful like they did with the relic weapons, as well as give us more powerful recipes.
Most memorable games: AoC(Tryanny PvP), RIFT, GW, GW2, Ragnarok Online, Aion, FFXI, FFXIV, Secret World, League of Legends (Silver II rank)
Crafting can easily be fixed. They already have it so you can take a crafted weapon and upgrade it through crafting. The mechanic is already there. All they'd have to do is make it so dungeon and raid drops can be improved through crafting. Or they can simply add better crafted gear in a patch or something. Although I rather like the idea of improving what's already in the game. I get a sense that Yoshi is really watching the economy in this game and it feels like they want to see it too lean and they plan to tune it to buff it as it develops. Crafting would be a big part of this. I can't imagine they would develop such massive mechanics into the game for nothing. Plus I seem to recall Yoshi talking about crafting being a part of endgame. I'd like to think it was more than just materia.
Minigames to me are a waste. I don't like them unless they are somehow connected to the main game. If they are distinct and separate from the main game, they seem pointless. I hated battle pets in MoP, I hated SPVP in GW2 for this reason. It's disconnected. Otherwise, it's not really end game at all. It offers nothing for progression. It's more like a side game.
World Events exist. World bosses are there. They will be ramped up in time I believe.
PVP is in the works.
Fluff is in the works.
The problem they have to figure out is balance, which isn't exactly an easy thing to do. The hardcore raider will not raid if they can just gear-up through crafting, the raid then would be pointless, in turn those players lose interest.. Same goes for a lot of crafters, if they can not offer the best stuff, to them their job becomes pointless.
I like the idea pointed out above, raid for mats, this gives both jobs/styles a real purpose.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I consider gear grinding to be a staple for MMORPGs and there's no realy way of getting around that.
But, I think it's incredibly boring and uninspired in FFXIV, moreso than in most clone games.
For one, there is very little content to grind. People always do what's most efficient and since there are no lockout timers that means they're going to do the one instance/raid/whatever that gives the most reward and that can be done the fastest. And they'll do it 20x a day if possible.
To me the idea of doing the same instance over and over every day to grind out tokens/marks/myth/whatever makes me want to vomit. It's incredibly bad game design to give so few viable options. You would have to be a moron to think players are going to do ALL of your content equally when the time vs effort vs reward is unbalanced and there's no lockouts.
I don't mind some grind but in most games you have a (sizeable) pool of instances and whatnot to do so that you at least get SOME variety in your mindless repetition.
For two, the content is boring as hell. Instances packed with trash that takes forever to kill, that doesn't drop loot, that is just a major time sink. The boss fights are generally fun but how fun is it to repeat the exact same scripted boss fights over, and over, and over, and over again every damn day? When most people are doing the same instance repeatedly or close to it, that's a lot of reptition.
Why do bosses always have to do the exact same thing on a timer? Why at 50% does the boss do something special? Why not randomly? Why does this kind of static boss design STILL happen?
Would it be so bad for bosses to have a pool of resources and do things randomly instead of so predictably that it elminates all thought? Would it be so bad for instance content to be randomized in general so that you don't know where every mob, patrol, chest, trap etc is because you do the instances dozens of times? It's freakin boring.
Lastly, the loot is boring. When you're lvl 1 you get an item with +1 main stat, +1 vit on it. At 50 you get +15 main stat, +15 vit. And so on. Zzzzzzzzz. No procs, no abilities, no special crap - the loot in FFXIV is incredibly generic and boring. It's so boring they don't even bother having nonboss mobs drop loot ever...what would the point be...it would just flood the already boring loot scene with more boring, repetitive, and generic crap.
I actually think most of the instances in FFXIV are very good. The trash is miserable - way more miserable than usual. But the boss fights and overall dungeon layouts are very nice. Too bad most of the best dungeons occur during leveling and the "gotta get to 50 like my ass is on fire" types barely touch those dungeons, and prefer to get to endgame where they can grind the same dungeon or two into dust.
At first I thought it was cool that FFXIV has so many dungeons to do while leveling - moreso than usual - a beautiful thing. Except the game is designed for you to level faster than ever before such that many get to 50 in days, and when you get there, there's like one or two 4-mans to do, which seems kinda slim for "the real game" If 50 is the real game, shouldn't there be even more dungeons to do then than thru the rest of the speedmode/ez-mode game that the designer himself doesn't give a crap about?
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
(In Red above)
For the vast majority of your argument, I could substitute Vanilla WoW for FF14 Since most of what you criticize was also applies to WoW and other Theme Parks in general.
Don't you have to grind the tomes from dungeons? why not have the tomes collectible from other avenues. Such as the options I gave.
I guess crafting is useful for making some money (Does AS make money? need to know as im leveling it lol).
Yea I would like minigames not to be there seperate thing. Breeding your own chocobo for instance, being able to ride it and train it up in game which then affects how it performs in the chocobo races would be cool.
If the rewards help you out in the main game then all to the good. Regarding the card game, players would paid alot of gil for cards which helps the market.
I mean its so easy to interlink these features into the main game. But in any case I know they are adding mini games so they may as well do it right.
So what you are saying is that this game hasn't moved forward very much from vanilla wow? I'm not sure you meant that as a negative comment to the poster, or a negative comment on the game.
At the moment I'm struggling to see what will prevent this game going the way of all previous wow clones - sure there are some game specifics in ffxiv, but are they enough of a hook to keep people in? Rift has far more going on at end game that this game - but all that variety and good expansions still didn't prevent it going ftp.
So ffxiv - where will your long term subscription retentions come from that other similar games (with more content) failed to maintain?
Thanks for posting that and keep on posting it until these people get it and more importantly for new players who may not even give the game a chance because of this BS.
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
I for one am enjoying the content of the game right now. I did not do the "sprint to 50 through Fates", so I am still enjoying leveling my jobs right now. I haven't touched too much of crafting yet. Probably by the time I am ready to play with gathering and crafting they will have new functions and recipes for it.
For me this game is not about the gear grind.... it is.... about the story and gameplay. If you treat this game like a WoW gearfest then you will be disappointed, which may not be a bad thing because you won't be filling my game with your elitism for long. Even though Yoshida has used WoW like elements this is not intended as one of those MMOs.
If you are playing this game to see the next best gear (like most MMOs) you have missed over 85% of the game! STOP and smell the roses.
My "negative comment" as you called it was questioning why the OP took generalized complaints that applied to the whole genre (from his perspective) and put the face of FF14 on them. But that's the whole thing. They said they were building a traditional theme park modeled MMO. They never set out to break the mold, they said they weren't going to break the mold, they did not attempt to innovate anything, all they wanted was a well done theme park and that's what they made.
You say that Rift has a lot of content, so we can safely assume Rift didn't fail as a sub model due to lack of content. So what made Rift fail? Since Rift had plenty of content and still failed, your comparison to FF14 failing because Rift has more content doesn't make sense.
Yeah the game right now has one endgame option (aside from crafting and gathering I guess)
They will add pvp, but it wont be the focus. Focus of the game is clear. This isn't a game that is going to try to make everyone happy, and luckily the endgame path they chose to focus on is quite good.
So what some would say is a flaw, I consider a strong point. The game is focused on tired gear endgame, it does it very well, and for those who like this type of game, its a good place to be right now.
I will say its great that the whole community is involved in the endgame and not split between pvp and pve ect. There are no balance issue complaints that plague any game that tries to focus on both pvp and pve. There are no pvp nerfs that effect pve balance ect.
Clearly if you hate this type of endgame you might want to look elsewhere...if you like this type of endgame its fantastic.
well its still to be seen as to what rewards and game motives will be behind the GC RvR. It might just be another way to grind seals ect. Now if they add special pvp gear and pvp stats ect...then certainly would be a whole different ball game as far as people who will ignore pve and just stick with pvp
One path to endgame? Stop believing everything you read on forums posted by people who are just as uniformed as you. Do you realize that the top crafted gear is the same item lvl as DarkLight? iLVL 70. Now yes DL has higher str and vit stats,but it has no materia slots which means it cant be improved. While the crafted darksteel body piece has 4 material slots. If you have enough skill, and gil you can force even more materia into it. Which would bring it on par if not above DL.
And there you have it, not one dungeon grinded and you could have a full set of gear ready for Titan HM.
I will respond to the crafting portion.
I recently got to 50 weaver last week. (Yay 50 weaver, I can make all the items)...
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So here I am. /shout "50 weaver looking for work, melds, items, odd jobs!"....no replies. This happens, and happens.
My gear? I am pretty geared out...all the best HQ items possible, full of materia (not the best of the best). I am at about 340 craftsmanship and 320 control.
I cannot find work. No one needs anything. Sure, a few melds here and there, but people just aren't wanting anything.
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Make and sell items? Sure I try. I might make marginal profit. Weavers seem to be the most popular crafting class, so when I try to sell items, there is a MASSIVE undercutting war going on.
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I love crafting, it is fun and challenging (has gotten my blood pumping one time, hoping to get an HQ lvl 50 item with a 85% chance). It just stinks that we aren't needed that much.
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Now to talk about the End-Game "best" armor a weaver can make for adventuring classes. These "2star" items.
Sure they are good, but they are comparable to the other armor you can get at lvl 50.
BUT there is a problem...Currently...1-2star lvl 50 item takes 9 Potash. From what I understand, you get Potash from turning in "Tomes", which you get from doing high end dungeons. (I am only lvl 33 adventurer so not as knowlegable with this.) But from what I was told...the amount of Potash/Tomes required to make the 3 endgame items can make is nearly enough to buy a set of gear from the vendor using just the seals.
So to clarify...9 potash per Weaving item. Potash costs 100-150 tomes? After buying 36 potash (2 items take 9 potash, 1 item takes 18 potash)...you might as well just collect a few more tomes and not buy the weaving gear...but instead the gear from a vendor.
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So that's what people are doing. (or so it seems, I talked to a couple of 50s about this and all the information I provided about potash/tomes is what they told me.)
Yay 50 weaver...who doesn't do anything...for anyone. I had more work leveling up to 50 than I do as a level 50. I can HQ and item up to lvl 40 easily, but yet no one wants it?
Plus...you can pretty much buy all non-HQ items from vendors, the ones weavers make anyways.
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So I am disheartened. All this money...allllll my money...100s of thousands of gil. (probably 500k-1million k) spent on my gear/leveling. Buying/selling, all the time clicking and making...just to have no place in the game, or rather, very very little place in the game.
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Dont get me wrong, I still love the game, I am leveling my adventuring class. I just hope they add more recipes...perhaps quested/dropped recipes (to make me stand out from the other weavers besides my "good gear")...or something...something to make it all worth while!!!
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
I just want to add, if you see this after my lengthy post above, that I am not the most knowledgable of end game gear/content, but after reading about the "Darklight" gear, which I THINK is the gear you buy with "Tomes"....Darklight gear does NOT have materia slots...
Where as the weaver/crafter created end game gear has 2-3 materia slots? (you can put what...4 or 5 materia in a peice of gear?..."over-melding" the materia, that is...which means for a 45% chance of success..you can "overmeld" an item by adding another materia to it....then a 30%? chance for another materia...on down to 15-20% success chance for the final materia?)
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So perhaps crafter made armor "IS" better...since you can put materia in it. BUT....is it worth it?
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
They need 125 Tome of Philosophy each. However, Tome of Philosophy has no weekly cap; it is Tome of Mythology that has it and is the one needed to get AF+1 gear.
As more people hit lv50 and start getting surplus Tome of Philosophy, those mats will get cheaper and cheaper. Once they get cheap enough, be ready to calculate what it costs to get 5-melded i70 HQ crafted items.
You can put 5 materia in total in any crafted gear. You need though knowledge about stat caps so that you don't waste materia.
About worth it: you get for instance armor gear that has more secondary stats (sum of accuracy, crit, etc) than bahamut coil armor gear and Af+1 versions, but lower def and m.def. Keep in mind that Bahamut coil and Af+1 gear are both the best non-crafted gear in the game.
For weapons, it is not worth it, since the primary stats of a weapon is so damn important. (Def and m.def is not nearly as important lol)
Given how Yoichi & Co responded to the concerns about repair costs, I am not worried about the difficulty of creating endgame crafting items (i.e. hq + 5 melded), I am sure they'll adjust difficulty if Yoichi deems that it is too difficult.
Not everyone is into crafting. So if you don't want to grind dungeon you are saying farming GIL is another form of end game? farm gil and buy crafted gear in a game which is know to have issues with gil generation?
Good luck with that.
Thanks
, I'll change the adjective for you.