Version Update Complete! (12/07/2009)

[Neverslip]

Re: Version Update Complete! (12/07/2009)

NPC only charges 100 gil per unit fewell. There's no reason for someone looking to replenish fewell to pay more than 1.2k for a crystal stack.

2 reasons:

1... some are just born suckers.

2...to fill my pockets instead of throwing gil to the NPC's who only use it on beer and hookers.^^

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Version Update Complete! (12/07/2009)

Which one? Because the 10:10 and 1:29 posts in combination are pretty funny, but I don't think it was intended.

There's no "guild structure" that will stop people from being assholes. (Evidence: every other MMORPG that has guild structure, in which people use the structure to be even BIGGER assholes.) And there *definitely* isn't one that will stop them from being idiots, developing a job (or the equivalent) imbalance, asking people with scarce jobs to come as those jobs all the time because they don't have enough of them, pigeonholing jobs that are capable of more range, declaring flavors of the month (especially in DPS roles), sticking to years-old strategies that have no room for/can't effectively use later expansion jobs, or any number of other dumb or annoying player behaviors.

Some *events* can be structured to limit player assholishness. For example, Assault, where everyone in the party gets the same number of assault points, guaranteed (except for the small leader bonus). There are no drops to whine about who got what and whether your job should get priority for it. You get your points, you buy what you want, end of story.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if all endgame events worked that way, rather than having direct drops of gear (or gear proxies like Omega/Ultima parts) that someone has to decide how to "fairly" allocate. Einherjar mostly does, and most shells that I'm aware of divide Limbus coins as evenly as possible. (In both cases you can still be assholes over boss drops, though.)

But as long as there is content with actual drops that one person can only get if other people don't get it, people will have to figure out how to divide it up, and some of them will be jerks or self-serving whiners or even dishonest about it. There's no structure you can impose on guilds that would change that.

Human nature can't be patched by the developers.

Way to miss the bulk of my point.

First off, I pointed out that with no objective, no linkshell can hope to survive. So a linkshell first and formost needs a purpose higher than "just social" for it to have any hope of a long-term lifespan.

Secondly, I've pointed out that the Odin and Bahamut server lockdowns have been murder on social linkshell growth. You need regular doses of new blood and things need to be happening for even a modestly populated social LS to survive in the long-term.

Third, you just proved that there IS a way to limit dickory in online games - let the system manage points. After that, all you have to do is find a committed group.

Another way about it would be to share certain tiers of loot while keeping others rare. P2P RPGs have a way of doing this. In PSO BB or Phantasy Star Zero, we first clear an objective, then a chest will appear. Everyone gets to access all the loot from the chest, but naturally people being of different classes its going to vary in usefulness. But at least a mage can sell that gun they can't use or trade it for a spell a friend got in another outing.

High-tier rares might need to maintain their current treatment, but there already exist rewards that are more than satisfactory and attainable within Assault in FFXI - that's kinda why prices for Abjuration synths dropped during ToA, Assault rewards offered competitive alternatives.

All SE needs to do is keep on with making systems that are similar to Assault. Something like Limbus is fine as is because you can, like Assault, go with exclusive setups if you wish. If sea gear isn't on the agenda, no need for the headache of toiling away for someone else's set, just go farm coins.

I don't think it can be argued, though I'm sure someone will deny it, that stuff like Dynamis and HNMs need some serious restructuring. There is simply no sense to the spawntimes of HNMs and we already have pop NMs, make an epic quest that people can spam once every five days like ENMs. Those key items are consumed for the whole group. Make it like ENMs.

The rarity doesn't have to change, but it solves the issue of throwing more than 18 warm bodies at anything and gives linkshells more opportunities to fight the mob. People will be forced to fight efficiently and make smaller, more focused groups for events, which ensures people get their needs met more quickly and don't have to resort to being dickheads.

It might be too much work to change, but at least contemporary endgame design has shown SE has learned some important lessons. They have learned we're not all good little angels and that some guidelines and limits are needed.

Cribbing some notes from other games wouldn't hurt, though. Monster Hunter is clearly one they're drawing from, there seems to be an emphasis on crafting and upgrading rather that just getting whole new weapons or armor all the time. Degradation also adds an edge that wasn't there in FFXI and lack of degradation is undeniably one of the biggest flaws FFXI has ever had.

Feel free to deny it, but the day I heard Ninja and Ranger were charity acts in FFXI, I knew something was amiss in its design.

[Karinya]

Re: Version Update Complete! (12/07/2009)

You're proving my point: it's not the guild/linkshell system, it's the design of the content. "Guild systems" are a red herring. They solve nothing.

As for locking the most overcrowded servers, I don't have any characters on them, but ISTM that the first shells that break will release players who need a new shell. Or shells could merge instead of breaking. Neither of those is easy, but SE can't let all the players crowd into two servers -- the servers won't support it. If those weren't still far above the average server population SE would have unlocked them by now.

Also, AFAIK the lock is one-way -- any player, or any shell, is free to transfer *off* those servers and into somewhere with less congestion and more new players, if they really wanted to.

There is simply no sense to the spawntimes of HNMs and we already have pop NMs, make an epic quest that people can spam once every five days like ENMs.

Or ZNMs, a solidly designed system that I would probably do more of if it weren't for the photography requirement.

I think it really shows something that Limbus, Assault, Nyzul, and ZNMs for example came out later in the game's history -- the devs are learning from their experiences with earlier content. It just puzzles me why they don't then go fix the old content, even though thanks to their no-level-cap-raising policy, years-old content is still relevant to players (although somewhat susceptible to power creep). They changed Ulli and raised the drop rates of sea progression items and aside from that, all the old endgame content still works pretty much the way it did 5+ years ago. They know how to do better because they *have* done better. So what gives?

[Armando]

Re: Version Update Complete! (12/07/2009)

They have learned we're not all good little angels and that some guidelines and limits are needed.

That's more like asinine content design bringing out the worst in people than people being asshats by default though.

Having everyone compete with each other in a zero-sum game over an excruciatingly rare shiny only once a day, and having the competition be resolved by who can claim the mob first, should've thrown up some red flags in the design phase. It's when There Can Be Only One that greed starts to set in universally.

The real innovation behind new endgame content isn't so much that the system keeps track of points, but the fact that you don't have to shut out other guilds to get your own rewards. The points are a means to an end of cumulative work/content instead doing the exact same event every week. As you said, SE has still left players to delegate for themselves who will get drops in Nyzul, Limbus, and Einherjar, for example; the only way to completely avoid the possibility of some asshat leader distributing loot improperly is to have the system distribute ALL loot itself, but that introduces more problems than it solves.