Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

The death penalty served its purpose for the time it was instituted for many games. However, that era has passed, [...]

There's still KO penalty in FFXIV, just in a different form.

Hopefully that doesn't mean FFXIV's era has already passed!

I played until ToAU and by then I abandoned my Dark Knight and rolled a Red Mage and remade my character in the process. I thoroughly enjoyed what time I spent in the game, but I ultimately was dissatisfied with what I was forced to perform in order to advance progression and gain access to end game content. It just didn't seem right to me that a "ROLE PLAYING GAME" essentially mandated guidelines in order for you to enjoy content that you already paid for at retail. World of Warcraft spun that paradigm on its head and I never went back. And the industry hasn't for a while now, either.

Well, it's understandable you felt a bit cheated since you really wanted a non-RDM role. Still, it's not clear if it's the game or the people you were with that was the root cause.

I say that because I logged plenty of hours on SAM, BRD, and SCH, even though my first was RDM and PLD was my second job to 75 (and then 80). Of course, it wasn't that I got to go as whatever every event (small LS, after all), and I was RDM and PLD main, but people usually tried to be accommodating if I speak up about wanting a change of pace ahead of time.

Of course, that's also an LS that let me pretend my dual-wield Joyeuse + Justice sword PLD/NIN was a DD.

* * *

If the problem is "People I play with need job XXX more than job YYY but I rather play YYY," I don't think SE or any company can solve it entirely. If you're going to play with people, you'll need to accommodate their needs and preferences--and hope it's not a one-way thing.

[Aeni]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

Of course, that's also an LS that let me pretend my dual-wield Joyeuse + Justice sword PLD/NIN was a DD.

It was primarily the LS that I continued playing FFXI as long as I did. Great people, really, but what happened was that one by one, LS members left FFXI for a few days, then a few weeks and then, "poof", they were permanently gone. After about 8 months, I was the only one logging into that LS. Then I joined another and that cycle repeated itself after 6 months. Again, the only player logging in, night after night. Then my day job got serious and I kept a more traditional work week schedule and kissed my game time good bye. Only in the evenings could I log in (Hades) and play the game. It was rough, since I had to try to hustle (and I mean it) into PTs with JP players. I eventually made some friends, got a near-static PT, but that fell apart after a few weeks.

I eventually got into a Sky LS, attended a few "key" runs (I vaguely remember what it was about and had something to do with attunement, but I'm drawing a blank) but really didn't get anywhere with them. I continued to try to work towards level 70 and then one night, I was getting chewed out by a JP PT leader because I couldn't keep up with their fast pulling (1 blink tank, 4 dps/nin and myself, RDM/WHM) and then they just booted me out of the PT and saw that some BRD/NIN joining them. When I found out that was the direction that PT was going, I finally gave up, and never went back.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

did you get caught up in the salvage bans or what?

No, I never knew about the exploit, or I might have. I was one of the credit card bans. Used a few different cards (all mine), apparently that's fraud. I'm still wary of ever giving SE money since they don't seem to understand that some people use multiple cards. Never saw it as a big deal. Neither does Blizzard, for what it's worth.

[DakAttack]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

The death penalty served its purpose for the time it was instituted for many games. However, that era has passed, and the target demographics is largely (a) older (b) have less time to budget for gaming (c) are lower on the skill level.

There was no era of death penalties, developers simply found a way to minimize them and make them less visible. All this because Blizzard cow-towed to the least common denominator, who just so happened to dislike any and all consequences, and set the bar so low that other publishers were forced to follow.

[Malacite]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

Well, I'll give SE partial credit for finally dropping Click & Buy altogether.

[Aeni]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

There was no era of death penalties, developers simply found a way to minimize them and make them less visible. All this because Blizzard cow-towed to the least common denominator, who just so happened to dislike any and all consequences, and set the bar so low that other publishers were forced to follow.

FYI this is partially correct, but death penalties were already going the way of dinosaurs. FFXI is a relic; you just need to admit it. Even if WoW hadn't come on the scene, many developers from the EQ days who branched off and founded their own companies were already ingesting and tabulating certain elements in MMO design and finally decided that, for their bottom line, it was better to make adjustments to better serve the community rather than the egos of certain individuals.

[DakAttack]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

FYI this is partially correct, but death penalties were already going the way of dinosaurs. FFXI is a relic; you just need to admit it. Even if WoW hadn't come on the scene, many developers from the EQ days who branched off and founded their own companies were already ingesting and tabulating certain elements in MMO design and finally decided that, for their bottom line, it was better to make adjustments to better serve the community rather than the egos of certain individuals.

We agree it's best to serve the community, but I believe we disagree on what, exactly, that means. The players don't know what they want, and if you ask they'll all tell you something different. I don't think giving them everything they ask for serves them well. Of course they're not going to like death penalties, that's exactly why they're there. They provide a consequence for death and add meaning to the decisions that either result in it or avoid it. Creating more meaningful experiences will better serve the community than creating meaningless ones.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

FYI this is partially correct, but death penalties were already going the way of dinosaurs. FFXI is a relic; you just need to admit it. Even if WoW hadn't come on the scene, many developers from the EQ days who branched off and founded their own companies were already ingesting and tabulating certain elements in MMO design and finally decided that, for their bottom line, it was better to make adjustments to better serve the community rather than the egos of certain individuals.

Making decisions based on the bottom line rarely equates to good game design. Good business decisions perhaps, but not good game design.

Also what Dak said. People don't know what the fuck they want.

[DakAttack]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

And I also feel it's important for artists, such as game designers, to maintain their integrity. that's hard to do that when your vision is being crushed, twisted, and dictated back to you by people who want to change it for their own benefit.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

Remember that little fight from FFXI? Apparently the casuals won, because the rest of the industry followed suit, and World of Warcraft became a huge deal.

WoW also ruined a genre by turning it into a "service" almost everyone now shamelessly apes. With WoW losing its vitality now and others still trying to be the WoW killer, the whole genre has lost its way and may soon become irrelevant.

For all its rough edges, there's something to be said for FFXI pre-ToA (entirely breaking RNG for melee appeasement notwithstanding), but at the same time FFXI's problem has been too many jobs filling one role and too few jobs not being available or appealing to offset the overabundance melee players. The only fix they could muster was to dumb down everything about melee.

I'm still catching up on my understanding of FFXIV: ARR, but some of the job evolution choices just make me scratch my head, like Archer evolving to Bard. Please tell me there's going to be a branch that goes to a more proper evolution of a ranged class. Going by the lore it would be Musketeer, but its nowhere to be seen in the job line-up.

[Aeni]

Re: Yoshi-P's Viewpoint: On MMOs and FFXIV

The players don't know what they...

That's a statement fraught with subjective discourse on what is considered a game that people will want to play and a game that they should play. While WoW may not have done the genre in its original incarnation a favor with the direction they went, let us not forget that at one point in time, MMOs in general were convoluted messes that only "nerds" could understand and people "with no life" could access.

If you require several dedicated fansites, several hours of forum reading time and a plethora of advice and number crunching spreadsheets to figure out how to play a character in a game, then the game exhibits horrible design. We've all been there, done that, so any new MMO title that comes along will not feature a mile high cliff to scale over and understand and really get into. But not so for the millions out there who are going to enter into the MMO market for their first time or who were frightened off many years ago by their first experience with the so called "old school hard core original" MMO titles.

We could go into lengthy discussions but I feel that MMO is in a better place than where it was a decade ago. There are lots of new titles coming out, vying for our attention, each trying to outdo each other in novel ways, and even with some spectacular failures, the industry as a whole can take parts that worked well and graft it on to their own development. However, one thing is for certain, gone are the days where anyone here will want to invest the bulk of their life into one game for a decade or longer.