Hydaelyn Role-Players

(08-23-2015, 11:25 PM)Kellach Woods Wrote: [ -> ]did someone actually drop a "gamers today suck compared to yesteryear?" argument here?

Not sure, but if we judge feedback by the official forums, gamers today certainly whine about things much more than in previous years. Perhaps due to how saturated in social media the average person on the internet is.

(08-23-2015, 06:50 PM)Virella Douront Wrote: [ -> ]I can understand the decision though of SE, especially because gamers these days are not like they use to be. These days we whine about having to catch up after all, and for the newer playerbase it will be dealbreaker whether they get the game or not. That said I'd imagine they will conjurer up a good enough reason for 4.0 not needing 3.0, doubt Ishgard wouldn't have a part in it though, especially with the MQS ending, and if Ala Mhigo is indeed a part of the next expansion!

I don't think this is fair.  Roleplayers, by nature, tend to be very story-focused, but we are a tiny, tiny minority of overall players.  Many PvE-focused players honestly don't care about the story. They care about their PvE endgame and they get frustrated when there are arbitrary, artificial blocks put into place to prevent them from getting there in the most efficient manner possible.

But if you think that gamers today "whine more" than gamers of yesteryear, I'm going to have to disagree with you.  I've been roleplaying and playing various videogames for well over a decade now, and I promise you that gamers were bitching and moaning up a storm every bit as loud when I started many moons ago.

well i think they might want you to do all of 3.0 before the 4.0 content can be accessed. but I am just guessing about that.

(08-23-2015, 11:53 PM)Geldnar Hothbane Wrote: [ -> ]I think they are going to do what they did before clear the entire 3.0 MSQ before you progress to the new content.

Except during the live stream, they indicated that this will not be the case, and the new content will not be gated behind Heavensward content.

(08-23-2015, 11:39 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: [ -> ]

(08-23-2015, 11:25 PM)Kellach Woods Wrote: [ -> ]did someone actually drop a "gamers today suck compared to yesteryear?" argument here?

Not sure, but if we judge feedback by the official forums, gamers today certainly whine about things much more than in previous years. Perhaps due to how saturated in social media the average person on the internet is.

(08-23-2015, 11:48 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: [ -> ]But if you think that gamers today "whine more" than gamers of yesteryear, I'm going to have to disagree with you.  I've been roleplaying and playing various videogames for well over a decade now, and I promise you that gamers were bitching and moaning up a storm every bit as loud when I started many moons ago.

The only thing I'm taking away from this off topic line of discussion is how people really seem to hate change. But yeah, this is really off topic.

The good ol' days of gaming are not as good as people think. Unless we're talking about time periods filled with war, sickness, and depression, there aren't really any "good ol' days." Time periods are just good and bad in different ways.

I don't see how it would detract from one's fun for others to be able to ignore old content. They get to do their own thing, you get to do your own thing. Maybe that whining was warranted, huh?

The MSQ doesn't necessarily have to be ending. It just means that the new areas will be open to everyone (though there may be some difficulty for those whose levels aren't high enough). People who haven't done the MSQs could probably go into the new areas and do side quests and such, but the MSQs will only pop up for those who have continued to progress the story.

While this sounds like SE is trying to accommodate all players, there is still the issue of new dungeons and trials. Those are often gated behind MSQs so some content will likely be unavailable to those who skip it. Either way, expect lots of complaining. Its a time honored tradition from before video games even existed.

The big thing for me is hoping that any new classes brought in for 4.0 will also be similarly "not blocked." That was a bit of personal point of contention for me (even if a bit of a moot point since I had all three characters to 50 on SOMETHING combat-related), and while I'll likely have all three characters also caught up on everything by the time 4.0 drops... it'd be nice to see less hoops to be jumped through for everyone to try out whatever shiny new jobs are put out there. Especially considering how much work would have to be done if not.

I can only cheer for anything that removes gating, and if 4.0 does this, I'm all for it.

Right now, I have only my main able to get into Heavensward; the two lvl50 alts I have were left off at the end of 2.0, because I didn't want to do the same story content all over again because, quite frankly, (and as some people are likely tired of hearing me say), I find SE's vaunted story to be too often terrible and ridiculous, and frankly, completely deserving of ridicule in some points. I love FFXIV for its gameplay, and flexibility, and for the great Balmung community, but SE's story writers could all be sucked into the void and I'd only offer up a little cheer reminiscent of that lauding the fate of Robin's Minstrels in Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

I'd love to bring a couple of more alts into Ishgard for the RP possibilities, but nope, I gotta drag each one through some of the most annoying parts of the game to have that right.

As far as people complaining, you can say it's time honored, true, but I also believe that it's also possibly a reaction to everything else that FFXIV gets RIGHT, and people wishing that the remaining aspects of the game could be just as satisfying. The fact that this game exists and has an expansion is a testament to the idea that things CAN be fixed, made better, improved, and rebuilt successfully. Maybe I'd just like that applied to the story.

I think gating is fine for some content - raids and difficult dungeons, surely, to ensure that people who get to them have some level of competency in their classes. That is COMPLETELY fair and equitable. But to gate a game's story, and thereby gate an entire new and massive area of the map behind a series of annoyances AFTER completing them once, is a poor design choice, to me, and one that's particularly annoying when the new content is something I have to play extra for, above and beyond the cost of the original game and the subscription.

They could just run a sync on all areas.  So that walking into the first zone of 4.0 syncs you to 52 if you weren't there already, then the next, 54, und so wieder.  That way, if you didn't do Heavensward, you can play whatever unrelated story is theoretically in 4.0 and level 50-60 without ever touching Heavensward, but also those who played it aren't running train over the zone as level 60s.

(08-23-2015, 11:48 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: [ -> ]

(08-23-2015, 06:50 PM)Virella Douront Wrote: [ -> ]I can understand the decision though of SE, especially because gamers these days are not like they use to be. These days we whine about having to catch up after all, and for the newer playerbase it will be dealbreaker whether they get the game or not. That said I'd imagine they will conjurer up a good enough reason for 4.0 not needing 3.0, doubt Ishgard wouldn't have a part in it though, especially with the MQS ending, and if Ala Mhigo is indeed a part of the next expansion!

I don't think this is fair.  Roleplayers, by nature, tend to be very story-focused, but we are a tiny, tiny minority of overall players.  Many PvE-focused players honestly don't care about the story. They care about their PvE endgame and they get frustrated when there are arbitrary, artificial blocks put into place to prevent them from getting there in the most efficient manner possible.

But if you think that gamers today "whine more" than gamers of yesteryear, I'm going to have to disagree with you.  I've been roleplaying and playing various videogames for well over a decade now, and I promise you that gamers were bitching and moaning up a storm every bit as loud when I started many moons ago.

I come from a completely different setting than most MMO players here, PvP one, not roleplay, not PvE one.

If you made a new character, or hell, made a PvE char who you wanted decked out for PvP, holy fucking shit, you only did this as a status symbol. You KNEW you had to run said character trough all content, you KNEW you had dish out lots of shekles to get proper gear, and hell, if you were mad enough, you would get the most fanciest armor and weapons as well, who costed a lot of gold as well. Even having the SHOES of the armor set what considered a damn status symbol.

No one was whining about it, and if they did? Everyone would call you a whining little bitch, and told you to suck it up and don't use PvE characters any more if you couldn't be arsed to deck them out with maxed out gear, skills and unlocked content. Because of you didn't? Holy sheet, you were fucking over your PvP team by lacking maxed out stats, or even worse, skills. You made your PvE characters for the epeen status, and you were simply required to go unlock shit, and you simply sucked it up, and just did it instead.

Mindsets are completely different these days, people just expect it to be thrown at them compared to when gaming wasn't the mainstream shit.That said, PvP background, not PvE, not RP, people are very, very different there. Surely, I am not going to whine if they change the gating, but for now I just know if I make an alt, and I got two hopping around 50, I simply know I will have to go chew through the 3.0 content if I want them to 60 (Well I can dungeon grind low level shit with roulettes but...). It's a thing they are not going to change, so I am not going to complain about it. Same if I picked up another MMO later then the playerbase, I would be excited to catch up, not whine about it. I started FFXIV later than most, and I simply enjoyed catching up. I didn't give a fuck about the story pre-50, I enjoyed the game mechanics, the dungeons and most of all, the community. I saw no reason to pull out my whining card, but simply dealt with being behind most because the game was fun.

BUT

AS I SAID AND PEOPLE ARE OVERLOOKING IT

ITS NOT A BAD THING IT GETS REMOVED DUE TO THIS CHANGE OF MINDSET. PEOPLE HAVE CHANGED OVER THE YEARS, GAMING IS MORE OPEN. THE MORE PLAYERS THE BETTER IN THE END.

Learn to read, stop nitpicking. Trying to say that people are exactly the same as they used to be is nonsense. Its not better, its not worse, it is different mindsets of the average gamer, because things have become so mainstream.

(08-23-2015, 06:50 PM)Virella Douront Wrote: [ -> ]and for the newer playerbase it will be dealbreaker whether they get the game or not.

Based on the very early info, 4.0 will still require 2.0-2.55 and 3.0 Main Scenario completion.

I'm not sure I agree that us not accepting certain difficulty and length considerations are necessarily good for us gamers.  It's something we say we want, but we have a tendency to complain about the effects of it.

I mean, it makes sense.  You want to achieve.  You want to have the time you spend mean something.  However, you also want to HAVE it, not to be working on it.  So we've tried to make things easier to achieve and, conversely, more and more people are achieving it and the experience is becoming somewhat less meaningful.  So we complain that games aren't meaningful anymore, that they're just transitory experiences.  There's just dissonance between what we get from our short-term gains and our long-term expectations.

It's the same with game difficulty.  Everyone says they want a game that's difficult, that takes skill to master, that isn't afraid to kill them when they make a mistake and for those deaths to have consequences.  But when we're given those, we also tend to think the game is too grindy, too hard, new-player-unfriendly, etc.  So we complain about these and the game gets easier.  Then we complain that there's no challenge in games anymore.

Unfortunately, we may not necessarily like what we're getting anymore, but we're getting what we're asking for (and largely what we're paying for, in the case of F2P games essentially being the video game equivalent of the shows on TV to sell us toys as kids).  Which is a shame especially to MMORPGs, since they were supposed to be communities.  They were meant to be the future of gaming.  And now, since they can't really offer us content that can keep us occupied for years and engaged in the story, they're one-and-done.

Most games these days are like TV shows and movies, entertainment content that plays out in front of us that, in this case, tends to require button presses to advance the story.  It's not as satisfying, and we know that, but it's largely what we asked for.

In a way, I'm beyond really being frustrated about it and I'm just watching it all as a somewhat dissociated observer.  We just don't, as a gaming audience at least, have much room to complain that the games we play aren't as engaging.  By and large, we ordered that removed from gaming so we wouldn't be inconvenienced, not realizing that the interesting parts of the game were the parts that weren't built to cradle us.

(08-24-2015, 12:04 PM)Virella Douront Wrote: [ -> ]It's a thing they are not going to change, so I am not going to complain about it. Same if I picked up another MMO later then the playerbase, I would be excited to catch up, not whine about it. I started FFXIV later than most, and I simply enjoyed catching up. I didn't give a fuck about the story pre-50, I enjoyed the game mechanics, the dungeons and most of all, the community. I saw no reason to pull out my whining card, but simply dealt with being behind most because the game was fun.

(08-23-2015, 06:50 PM)Virella Douront Wrote: [ -> ]and for the newer playerbase it will be dealbreaker whether they get the game or not.

(snip applied for brevity)

And what people are talking about in this thread is that the MSQ stops being fun after one playthrough.

We're asking, "If we have to go through a really clunky, gating story, and not even a particularly great one, all over again, then why SHOULDN'T we pick up a new MMO?"

PVP plays a rather small role in this game compared to others, so I think it's fair to say that people who want and enjoy that particular sort of grind are more likely to seek out another game, anyway... which brings us full circle.

Unless SE plans to massively restructure how the game works, I imagine the only things that won't be gated by the MSQ are new jobs, area access, and maybe leveling dungeons.

(08-24-2015, 12:32 PM)Telluride Wrote: [ -> ]And what people are talking about in this thread is that the MSQ stops being fun after one playthrough.

I don't mind the MSQ that much, and I still skip the cutscenes on the second and third times around. It becomes more mechanical at that point - do the quests for the XP, don't read the text, just get it done and out of the way. I probably wouldn't have even bothered with the MSQ if dungeons weren't locked behind it and - most importantly - the quests provided the most XP.

... Not to mention that the sidequests were ALSO gated behind your progression in the MSQ, along with getting flight so you can get around the new areas faster. Without all that, you're stuck with just dungeon runs (which you needed to unlock to be able to run them, of course) and the mindless tedium that is FATE grinding (which requires flight to be able to get to the FATEs in a timely manner).

So, even if 4.0 doesn't "require" it specifically... I have a feeling it'll be "required" in its own way. Unless you plan to FATE-grind on foot from 50-60.