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[Column] Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Why Rush to Endgame?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
What makes not rushing through content more fun than being a world-first slayer of evils? Victor discusses the slow burn in this week’s Eorzea Reborn.
Read more of Victor Barreiro Jr.'s Eorzea Reborn: Why Rush to Endgame?
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My wife and I are only 52 and we got that within 48 hours of drop of HW. Since than I have had less play time mainly because I am painting the inside of the house (Whole House too), taking the kids out a lot now that its summer and when I do play its mainly to jump on to help my one friend do group content for 2.1 - 2.55 content. This is going to change VERY fast here as the first floor is almost done paint wise and the summer for us will be coming to an end in 3 weeks with our step daughter going back to school mid August. Plus my friends are almost to HW content.
So we are going to be leveling again and getting ready for end game content come September. Then we will focus on raiding and what we need to do to raid 2 days a week.
This approach to FFXIV is keeping me from doing what I done with WOW over and over and over again. Get all the content down in 2 weeks and then start the raid cycle inside 4 weeks. I would burn out causing me to jump from game to game. Since I like FFXIV so much and do not want to hop I am taking the game in a measured pace waiting for friends who just started FFXIV a few months ago or just came back to FFXIV when HW Dropped.
I found that once a hardcore raider likes being a softcore raider now and taking an MMO at a measured pace not looking at the game in terms of a 1 month cycle but in months at a time. Its made me a happier person and I also spend less on MMOs because I am not jumping from game to game, I also am not spending endless amounts of cash in a cash shop in a F2P game.
Well the character level is the most restricting attribute in pretty much every mmo. In addition gaining levels tend to devaluate a lot thing that have been achieved(why trying to get rare armor if 2 levels later the common armor has better stats?).
Quite a lot players just want to go through this period of gameplay as quick as possible to get rid of restrictions and work on more permanent or at least longer livig things.
Because there is no actual game outside of that aspect the developers have created. There is no sense of a natural metagame that arises from the players themselves besides the oneupsmanship and chest beating that they bring.
Developers could handle this problem by carefully thinking about how to create an involving metagame from the outset and designing the rest around that. Incentive to play comes from the big question of "what are we doing here"? WHY am I saving credits? WHY do I want this piece of armor? Answering questions like these to the end will lead to an expanded idea of why a player will be excited to log in every day. And it will lead developers to advance the ideas that underlie the MMO genre beyond the gear chase and level model.
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL
Imo MMO themepark endgame is just there to keep people busy who already consumed the majority of the content. Which is the leveling experience.
As endgame usually consists of farming the same raids/dungeons/dailies/tokens over and over and over again with very minor progress (which is super boring) I am not in a hurry to reach maximum level. I am just enjoying the pre-endgame game
and hopefully before I reach the endgame there will be an expansion.
Sorry, endgame never was meant to be the main part of an MMO. That is the journey itself to the end. Just my oppinion of course.
P.S. For those who think endgame is the main part of an MMO: Then why have pre-endgame at all ? Why not just start at max level. Why bothering with leveling up if you don't enjoy it ? Makes no sense imo.
Been playing this game now for about 3 weeks, enjoying every step of it, espescially the story...
also it showed me that there is more to MMOs then just combat, combat is okay but nothing sensational, the other parts of this game make up for it, its has immersed me like a good MMo should.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Not anymore. Used to be that way a decade and more ago but current MMO's don't realy have that journey anymore.
But it is an issue MMO's created. Back in pen&paper times the level and leveling didn't matter that much. Your adventure was adjusted to your level, equipment wasn't dependant on your level and your progress wasn't nullified by leveling up(that +1 longsword has been as good at lvl 1 as at lvl 5, MMO legendary longsword at lvl 1 is a joke compared to a common lvl 5 sword). MMO's created that issues. Players adjusted to it. Why spend a week to gather great items if one day of leveling will give you better stuff and in addition opens up more areas for adventures(the "you can't go there before you're levl ..." is just another reason to level faster).
Because 1) there needs to be some form of introduction to the game an leveing is a good way of doing that and 2) because developers are extremley slow at adjusting the concept of creating an mmo(they massively speeded up leveling but still keep the number of levels, the amount of wasted cntent instead of readjusting the resources). That "makes no sense" is something you shouldn't tell the players but thoose that think about creating an MMO.
FF14 is the kind of game where either way you want to slice it, be it taking your time to reach end game or rushing it, no matter how "skilled" you are, everything depends on RNG, which sucks big time. Instead of FF14: ARR it should of been FF14 : RNGReborn, the system is that pathetic, and I've said it often and I'll say it again, it's a damn shame. Quality bar up to 98% 2 times, no HQ, quality bar up to 35%, screw it complete synthesis, ends up being HQ ... LOL, COME ON!!! Raged, uninstalled mid January 2015, moved on, never looked back, pretty happy with myself. 0/10 will never RNG ever again.
And the famous "having to know boss fights" to get in groups is pretty stupid also, the fact you get kicked out for no reason for someone who is better geared than you is stupid. The game has a lot of issues that needed to be addressed since launch, yet they put those on the back burner and release a expansion with even more problems. Bravo SE. You'd think that after FF11 major success, FF14 would have been almost flawless, but the fact that FF11 is somewhat better in almost every way except graphics is a bit depressing. Which leaves the door to EQ:N wide open. It's all of the little things in FF14 when you stack them all up is where you realize that the game has a crap load of issues that needs fixing, but SE's logic is "Hey screw everyone and let's release a Xpac with a load of features and not address anything on the current version"
SE had the MMO genre at their fingertips, but dropped the ball big time. Even I was amazed at launch, and I'm pretty hard to impress, but as months went by and that my skills began to be over shadowed by RNG, I started raging and eventually flipped and quit. And apparently I'm not the only one that flipped, FF14 player base took a dive since the beginning of the year and Heavensward sales weren't that great either, not even sold out once, even pre orders at EBgames weren't that great, where when FF14 launched it was sold out on it's first week end in most regions, including mine where I had to wait in line to grab a copy and was lucky to get one.
The rush is due to the design of the game. You have a large segment of the mmo population whos primary focus is bettering themselves and guild. it is why SO many people say FFXIV has a massive lack of content. Because 95% of FFXIV's content has 0 to do with character progression.
In Oldschool mmos (Pre-WoW launch) the rush was not important because there was numerous BIS or near equivalent pieces in old mmos. Hell even World and Server first ment nothing to the community as a whole because it did not mean anything in the grand scheme of things. And the gear lasted 2-3yrs at the min not a few months. The games were also much slower paced. The games were not about all reward and no work. You could simply play older mmos alot slower in terms of rush and it did not matter one bit.
With FFXIV and other modern themeparks all items and thus content have an extremly short life span. Approx. 6months in XIV. After that your hard earned weapon and armor becomes vanity only. The games are set into Seasons more or less like LoL. After the season is over everyone is put on a equal play field and it starts over.... THIS IS WHY THE RUSH EXIST.
So short lived game + Pure Verticle progression = Rush, the devs are forcing it on people. If you take your time you fall behind other guilds and players.
The question is why do you play a mmo?
For Some bettering themselves and their guild is the game. The vanity side quest, Vanity Crafting/Gathering System, Vanity/side story quest are 100% meaningless and throwaway content / Simply not worth doing. For them spending 100s of hours to get 0 progression is simply not worth it, no matter how well the content is designed. For me I am one of these people.
If you are playing the game to be a completionist who is not worried about being in a top guild or keeping up with the quick content negation.. Then yes rushing would be foolish. Aka more of a casual mmo player.
And to comment on RNG... FFXIV has <10% of the rng of older games.... Seriously people are spoiled with gear hand outs from modern mmos. Hell Remember old mmos it was common to have a mob that spawns once every 5 days and drops an item 2% of the time. And not just commenting on FFXI... it was all older mmos. That is horrible RNG... oh and you had to compete with others for the claim.
Been playing since early access, just hit 57 on my main DoW class yesterday. Been taking my sweet time and enjoying the story... which is quite good so far, and after playing WoD really shows just how lackluster, predictable, and unimaginative Blizzard's writing has become.
I haven't even gotten into Chocobo breeding yet (need a FC or house), Chocobo racing, and have only dabbled a bit into Triple Triad. Also still working on beast tribe dailies and my Zodiac weapon. Oh, and leveling my trusty Chocobo companion.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
Your view on what constitutes "progression" is hilariously narrow. Achieving higher numerical figures is just as meaningless progression as any other activity you mentioned. The only true progression that higher stats gives you is to help you clear contents and unlock more contents. Even that kind of progression has been and is negligible regardless of the MMO after you get to the point where no new content can be tackled. At that point all you're doing is making it faster for you to clear contents you've already cleared. Talk about something hardly worth doing.
It is not SE's responsibility to cater to people that hold such twisted views on what is and isn't "meaningful" to do. Such hopeless people are better off being grumpy on the sidelines, complaining that SE isn't catering to their tastes while being completely oblivious to the fact progression is not something exclusive to attaining a higher item level.
The OP mentions meta game. My issue with FFIV though is that it's meta game is dwarfed in comparison to it's predecessor, FFXI. FFXIV still suffers from the WoW effect of being a loot/raid heavily oriented game as opposed to story based and horizontal gameplay that was/is quite prevalent in FFXI. I could literally spend days on the Allakhazam forums(now ZAM) just reading each section from jobs to quests to zones, each with their own theorycrafting involved and so forth. I can read for maybe a half hour to an hour on the Reddit subforum and FFXIV's main forums for basic info as most of the game isn't hidden or deep in comparison to FFXI.
Still, not a bad review as you pointed out fairly well that this is how and why you enjoy FFXIV for personal reasons and I never felt like you projected on me or everyone else(maybe a bit during your tirade on content locusts, but that's ok it was slight).
It did take the community a long time and lots of effort to plow through the massive amounts of bloat and mundane features that plagued FFXI indeed. When you make a game that makes absolutely no sense from a design perspective you can really create a thriving community as everyone is trying to untangle the mess you've made.
Sorry that you ragequitted, but that's no reason to go off the deep end. You're just desperately looking for any sign that agrees with your current views on the game now. HW is extremely well received on behalf of the media and the playerbase, the launch was extremely well handled, content droughts right before expansions cause dips in the player numbers regardless of the MMO, and all figures show the average number of active players has doubled since the release of HW while showing little signs of decreasing.
Maybe you are right though, and the sell-through rate of physical copies when the majority of the sales of an expansion pack are obviously going to be digital is a sign that the expansion dropped the ball.
Right Now, I am plain out bored of playing my class at Lvl 55. I still have 5 more levels to go and the only thing keeping me is the Story...
That being said, the story is great. However, once I complete it, I won't touch this game ever again most likely.
Also, a reason for rushing to endgame, is that this is a sub-based game. So I inherently feel rushed.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
It's really quite simple. Some people are competitive and online games give them a place where they can work out their competitiveness. Personally I just play the game for enjoyment, but just like in everything in life, people like to compete and be "better" than the next guy.
This article should have been called "Why write articles on pointless questions"
I don't play FFXIV so maybe the game is different, however, I find the whole premise of this article ridiculous!
I'm one of those people you'd refer to as a content locust, but that is a long way from the truth.
I am usually quick to reach endgame because most MMOs are so god damn easy, and leveling is so god damn boring! In most MMOs, leveling is a case of grinding an endless amount of generic quests, listening to the same old cliche storylines and getting bored with the easy combat. I don't feel any sort of progression at all whilst leveling: content is tailored to idiots of the same level, so there is no way to really test yourself. Even if you do find a challenge, an hour or so later you've probably leveled past it and it becomes trivial.
Then theres the gear. If you want to progress gear wise, it usually means crafting, which involves time and effort. However, a few hours later, you outlevel your gear.
I have never played an MMO that got leveling right. The only game I even remotely enjoyed for leveling was SWG, and that was purely because leveling involved getting into a massive raid and going out slaughtering mobs as a group. It was still boring, but at least it was social!
Endgame, on the other hand, usually offers a challenge. Endgame takes time to complete, skill to progress through. You actually get better as a player, rather than just getting better gear or more stats. Endgame offers far more social options, far more gameplay options and a much greater sense of achievement.
The only time I can ever be accused of being a content locust is when a game has been designed with minimal endgame content or with poorly designed endgame systems. When playing those games, I make it to endgame (not rushing, just normal) only to realise the hype was a lie and the designers were idiots, it takes minimal time to complete and so I quit. I can never quite shake the feeling that designers are deliberately making games with short life spans as the solutions just seem so obvious.
This is just one more vote in the "leveling is boring" column. Gear that you get to keep a while is more fun. Raiding is fun. I don't care about the so-called "competition". I'm not going to be the best, I just want to be ok enough that I am valued on a raid team. Endgame is fun (hopefully), leveling is not.
If I want story I'll go read a book.
my top MMOs: UO,DAOC,WoW,GW2
most of my posts are just my opinions they are not facts,it is the same for you too.
I hate it when people spew false crap like this.
Time Period: Jun. 25, 2015 to Jul. 8, 2015
?Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 1777?Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 7417
?Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV
?Accounts receiving disciplinary action for participation in RMT/illegal activity: 35
?Action Details: Temporary ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV
They do this roughly every week and a half to two weeks. They are doing something. They can't help that these people that get banned are using stolen payment information and continue to re-register to the game. Shame on SE for their game being so popular and that there is a demand from customers for purchasing gil.
Anyway to the topic at hand, I blitzed through the main story within a couple of days (I took a week off from work to play the expansion) because the story was what I was looking forward to the most. I don't care that it only took a couple of days, I got what I wanted out of it and it leaves me yearning for more in future updates.
Several people don't experience everything the game has to offer, and that's their prerogative. I fully exploit as much of the game as I find interesting to me. I do battle content, I craft, I gather, I do side things like treasure maps and the like, I play the market. This is why I'm always able to find something to do with the time I decide to set aside to play this game, while others may just want to exhaust the battle content and find themselves with nothing else to do.