The 7.3 Pt 1 Live Letter couldn't have been any worse.
The fact they're addressing Forked Tower immediately at the front of their docket says a lot, along with Cosmic Exploration: They've lost touch with their playerbase.
This problem should've been solved in a hotfix when they should've asked the question about how people are going to queue into things, along with the history of this type of content. If anything, I imagine they expected everyone to jump onto the Pavillion as soon as FT came up, but part of the issue nowadays is that there is a divide between casuals and raiders - Occult Crescent doesn't fix this like Bozja and Eureka did. Why? Because their systems are bad.
First of all, someone messed up horribly on the spreadsheet and made Sanguinite items possible to get out of Bronze/Silver Chests(and Gold Chests at that) which is very sketchy if you want Forked Tower to actually be live and something for people to go for.
Secondly, Silver and Gold are so disassociated from each other that the gameplay loop is broken on top of there being no break between FATEs and CEs. Bozja did this best by making Duel CEs pop through farming Mechanical Enemies, which lead to Crystal Farming. This in turn allowed you to get EXP and also a crack at the Duel.
For Occult Crescent, they really should've followed Eureka's formula while also adding in things here and there to make both FATEs and CEs worth it while farming mobs.
Gold AND Silver should've been relegated to CEs while Silver can be farmed from FATEs, with fixed currency rates to respect people's time while grinding down the Phantom Jobs. Mob grinding gets small amounts of Gold, sure, but if CEs gave a large amount of Gold and Silver you'd have people still doing them not just for Phantom EXP so the zone is alive for the most part. It being the most silent zone in the game is a testament to how badly they screwed their currency system.
That's just pointing out two bad systems that have screwed over both raiders AND casuals.
The response we got in the Live Letter was better, but at some point people aren't going to take Yoshida's apologies anymore and move on. The Development Team needs to take a nice, long look at what they've been doing since the end of 6.0 and bother to get everyone involved on how they're going to fix this big problem so they're not in the constant Damage Control that is Dawntrail.
If anything, aside from my rant about OC, my expectations are the following:
- MSQ needs to have something for players to invest in - and not just Wuk and Sphene. We need a continuation that will hold players into 7.4/5 as well after Dawntrail's story is finished. Where do we go from here? What the actual frick is Azem's Relic and how do we as the WoL use it? There's too many questions that I know are being set-up for this new story, but that relic is at the heart of this conflict because the bad guys need it for Interdimensional Fusion(i.e. destroying everything). Either do something with it down the road that's meaningful or at the very least give us a damn explanation about the thing because we are left in the dark with questions about it that are left unanswered(possibly for story ambiguity, but also to not give away the plot if they have plans).
- Trial Content needs to be challenging, similar to how the previous one was. We need to shake things up mechanically with something new while making sure we're not dealing with the whole 'room is too bright' problem because that was a main complaint in regards to the arena from last trial. Whoever is in charge of arena design needs to get a handle on what colors are bad for the game showing AoEs or otherwise allow players to change AoE colors so we can actually see them on orange flooring with a red background and such(exempting unique AoEs) as we've complained a lot about since P3S.
- Cosmic Exploration and Occult Crescent going forward need to fix their systems. I know Yoshida saw Cosmic Exploration is getting Gathering Jobs' GP restored after completion, but for the love of god they need to do something about progression. People felt like there was a lot of FOMO involved with the construction of the place, and the FATE that showed up for it was horrendous. Please give us something more engaging where we're actually using our Crafting and Gathering skills than simply just recharging batteries when it comes to construction - your Red Alerts have already been some of the better Crafting and Gathering content in Cosmic Exploration so far and I want to see people work together on that more, such as having a materials system so every job feels like it's contributing the same outside of just Crafters masscrafting for leaderboards.
- I've already ranted about Occult Crescent above, but I'm going to say it again in case it's scrolled past: Silver and Gold need to have a gameplay loop associated with them that isn't counterproductive to each other. As I said, making CEs give both Gold and Silver is a good thing that will keep people engaged while making CEs and FATEs pop up less often and handling it Eureka-style. Bozja did it right by making certain CEs spawn after doing certain FATEs, so they need to take that aspect and bring it in here so we can still remain engaged without both of these currencies being so decoupled from one another(especially when it comes to the Arcanaut gear progression which is a very, very long grind for just +1).
- Deep Dungeon needs to be interesting enough for Casuals to want to go back in and do it again and again, not just because of leveling purposes, but actually mechanically instead of making it the same with a different coat of paint. Do something different and make it fun, Development Team. This is supposed to be a sort of roguelike mode, so if you can add modifiers as you clear floorsets it'll do wonders for replayability.
- Relics for Occult Crescent better not require Forked Tower under any circumstance. While I understand pushing people for it, you'll just make them quit altogether now that people heavily rely upon Discord for Forked Tower Clears and Progress. I highly recommend that it involves content that needs help, i.e. Shadowbringers/Endwalker Trials, along with giving people incentive for other content. There's a lot to pull from, but they better not drag us along with another 1500 tomes after a one-time step. We are not going down that road again after Endwalker did us bad.
Continue reading...
The fact they're addressing Forked Tower immediately at the front of their docket says a lot, along with Cosmic Exploration: They've lost touch with their playerbase.
This problem should've been solved in a hotfix when they should've asked the question about how people are going to queue into things, along with the history of this type of content. If anything, I imagine they expected everyone to jump onto the Pavillion as soon as FT came up, but part of the issue nowadays is that there is a divide between casuals and raiders - Occult Crescent doesn't fix this like Bozja and Eureka did. Why? Because their systems are bad.
First of all, someone messed up horribly on the spreadsheet and made Sanguinite items possible to get out of Bronze/Silver Chests(and Gold Chests at that) which is very sketchy if you want Forked Tower to actually be live and something for people to go for.
Secondly, Silver and Gold are so disassociated from each other that the gameplay loop is broken on top of there being no break between FATEs and CEs. Bozja did this best by making Duel CEs pop through farming Mechanical Enemies, which lead to Crystal Farming. This in turn allowed you to get EXP and also a crack at the Duel.
For Occult Crescent, they really should've followed Eureka's formula while also adding in things here and there to make both FATEs and CEs worth it while farming mobs.
Gold AND Silver should've been relegated to CEs while Silver can be farmed from FATEs, with fixed currency rates to respect people's time while grinding down the Phantom Jobs. Mob grinding gets small amounts of Gold, sure, but if CEs gave a large amount of Gold and Silver you'd have people still doing them not just for Phantom EXP so the zone is alive for the most part. It being the most silent zone in the game is a testament to how badly they screwed their currency system.
That's just pointing out two bad systems that have screwed over both raiders AND casuals.
The response we got in the Live Letter was better, but at some point people aren't going to take Yoshida's apologies anymore and move on. The Development Team needs to take a nice, long look at what they've been doing since the end of 6.0 and bother to get everyone involved on how they're going to fix this big problem so they're not in the constant Damage Control that is Dawntrail.
If anything, aside from my rant about OC, my expectations are the following:
- MSQ needs to have something for players to invest in - and not just Wuk and Sphene. We need a continuation that will hold players into 7.4/5 as well after Dawntrail's story is finished. Where do we go from here? What the actual frick is Azem's Relic and how do we as the WoL use it? There's too many questions that I know are being set-up for this new story, but that relic is at the heart of this conflict because the bad guys need it for Interdimensional Fusion(i.e. destroying everything). Either do something with it down the road that's meaningful or at the very least give us a damn explanation about the thing because we are left in the dark with questions about it that are left unanswered(possibly for story ambiguity, but also to not give away the plot if they have plans).
- Trial Content needs to be challenging, similar to how the previous one was. We need to shake things up mechanically with something new while making sure we're not dealing with the whole 'room is too bright' problem because that was a main complaint in regards to the arena from last trial. Whoever is in charge of arena design needs to get a handle on what colors are bad for the game showing AoEs or otherwise allow players to change AoE colors so we can actually see them on orange flooring with a red background and such(exempting unique AoEs) as we've complained a lot about since P3S.
- Cosmic Exploration and Occult Crescent going forward need to fix their systems. I know Yoshida saw Cosmic Exploration is getting Gathering Jobs' GP restored after completion, but for the love of god they need to do something about progression. People felt like there was a lot of FOMO involved with the construction of the place, and the FATE that showed up for it was horrendous. Please give us something more engaging where we're actually using our Crafting and Gathering skills than simply just recharging batteries when it comes to construction - your Red Alerts have already been some of the better Crafting and Gathering content in Cosmic Exploration so far and I want to see people work together on that more, such as having a materials system so every job feels like it's contributing the same outside of just Crafters masscrafting for leaderboards.
- I've already ranted about Occult Crescent above, but I'm going to say it again in case it's scrolled past: Silver and Gold need to have a gameplay loop associated with them that isn't counterproductive to each other. As I said, making CEs give both Gold and Silver is a good thing that will keep people engaged while making CEs and FATEs pop up less often and handling it Eureka-style. Bozja did it right by making certain CEs spawn after doing certain FATEs, so they need to take that aspect and bring it in here so we can still remain engaged without both of these currencies being so decoupled from one another(especially when it comes to the Arcanaut gear progression which is a very, very long grind for just +1).
- Deep Dungeon needs to be interesting enough for Casuals to want to go back in and do it again and again, not just because of leveling purposes, but actually mechanically instead of making it the same with a different coat of paint. Do something different and make it fun, Development Team. This is supposed to be a sort of roguelike mode, so if you can add modifiers as you clear floorsets it'll do wonders for replayability.
- Relics for Occult Crescent better not require Forked Tower under any circumstance. While I understand pushing people for it, you'll just make them quit altogether now that people heavily rely upon Discord for Forked Tower Clears and Progress. I highly recommend that it involves content that needs help, i.e. Shadowbringers/Endwalker Trials, along with giving people incentive for other content. There's a lot to pull from, but they better not drag us along with another 1500 tomes after a one-time step. We are not going down that road again after Endwalker did us bad.
Continue reading...