The problem with making the best items NOT dungeon-based is that, in a game with no item decay, it can quickly devolve to "Why bother doing dungeons?" That's what happened with Wildstar for a while, there, actually, and IMHO is an unsung unappreciated reason why the game bombed so badly. I saw TONS of forum posts about Wildstar with people complaining they have no reason to do dungeons because the reward wasn't as good as that crafted gear they brought on the cheap (or the chances of a reward better than that were so low and generally not worth the effort and from raids that required tons of set up, etc)
....good luck, Yoshida!
If you are just doing dungeons to get gear so you can do more dungeons....what is the point? If the content is not fun enough to want to do why bother at all?
Non-PvP Content in ANYTHING without a carrot is at best fun enough to do ONCE. Maybe twice. Three times if it's really well-done. Maybe you'll come back in a month or a year to do it again after that, but that's not enough for an MMO. Without the carrot to entice you to repeat it.... well... you get Wildstar. *shrug*
How curious, that quote alone will keep me off trying FFXIV at all.
My opinion is my own. I respect all other opinions and views equally, but keep in mind that my opinion will always be the best for me. That's why it's my opinion.
Personally, the best balance in gear acquisition I can think of comes from the early days of WoW. This was back when blue and purple items were incredibly rare. In order to get the best gear to stay competitve the player had 4 great options:
1. Random loot drops that could be found anywhere in the game. (example, killed a random mob while going from one location to another, purple staff dropped...was incredibly rare and on par with best gear at the time.)
2. Crafting
3. PvP rewards (ranking up with PvP points or currency to earn or win gear sets)
4. Raid Dungeons
You still got recognition for each accomplishment based on the look of the item.
The worst thing you can do in a mmorpg is pigeon hole players into one kind of gameplay to get gear as one of the strengths of the genre is that it can hit multiple modes of play, solo or team play, pvp or just personal adventures in the game. No one should be valued more than the other.
With FF14, I would like to see some of the same. Gear or items that could happen from events, gambling at the golden saucer, earning faction points/rank, npc factions, crafting, and levelmetes. For collectors, each one will be a good time sink to get all the best items they can, thus a better armory system is probably needed.
Comments
Non-PvP Content in ANYTHING without a carrot is at best fun enough to do ONCE. Maybe twice. Three times if it's really well-done. Maybe you'll come back in a month or a year to do it again after that, but that's not enough for an MMO. Without the carrot to entice you to repeat it.... well... you get Wildstar. *shrug*
My opinion is my own. I respect all other opinions and views equally, but keep in mind that my opinion will always be the best for me. That's why it's my opinion.
Personally, the best balance in gear acquisition I can think of comes from the early days of WoW. This was back when blue and purple items were incredibly rare. In order to get the best gear to stay competitve the player had 4 great options:
1. Random loot drops that could be found anywhere in the game. (example, killed a random mob while going from one location to another, purple staff dropped...was incredibly rare and on par with best gear at the time.)
2. Crafting
3. PvP rewards (ranking up with PvP points or currency to earn or win gear sets)
4. Raid Dungeons
You still got recognition for each accomplishment based on the look of the item.
The worst thing you can do in a mmorpg is pigeon hole players into one kind of gameplay to get gear as one of the strengths of the genre is that it can hit multiple modes of play, solo or team play, pvp or just personal adventures in the game. No one should be valued more than the other.
With FF14, I would like to see some of the same. Gear or items that could happen from events, gambling at the golden saucer, earning faction points/rank, npc factions, crafting, and levelmetes. For collectors, each one will be a good time sink to get all the best items they can, thus a better armory system is probably needed.