I have already written a lot about that subject so forgive me if I don't want to drop an essay.
From Forked Tower to Chaotic, or even Savage progression in PF.
Prog liars one upping each other and pushing people to lie on their prog point further and further to offset the fact that teams are wiping way earlier than advertised.
That whole negative feedback loop feeding itself from people's frustration with team mates that screw up things again and again that they're totally helpless to correct or help with, until party disbands.
Rinse and repeat.
Tracking fflog performance isn't enough anymore. Must track encounter progression through new websites like tomestone to make sure they're not lying on their prog point.
Encounters are fully scripted and linear, so it's easy to follow.
I just think that the encounter design direction that CBU3 has been chasing since forever, leading us into that perpetual DDR where the only way to add difficulty is to introduce body checks and any variant of team wipe mechanics where one person fucks up some raid mechanic wipes the whole team, is bad design and fosters toxicity.
How can we not think of anything else to add challenge and critical thinking in the game? Too afraid players would wrinkle their noses?
Teammates stop being valuable allies and become hurdles to one's own progression.
Obstacles to be dealt with.
Paranoia ensues, because everybody can be the weak link.
Everything is designed to smooth out social interactions to minimize conflict and toxicity in the game.
But it forgets one major point: people teaming up against adversity is what builds community.
Talking about strategies, talking about how to overcome trials and challenge, is what brings people together. It's something that's been seen in older content like eureka (and I didn't like Eureka, but I can give this to Eureka), or CLL.
Trying to sand down every kind of interaction removes the M in MMO.
Adding difficulty mechanics where everything is about individual responsibility with no encroaching at the party level whatsoever, no matter the challenge level (storymode, ex, savage, whatever), breeds toxicity.
I had to vent this out. It's been a major pain point of XIV over the years, has gotten worse and worse as we go, and I still don't understand why the devs are doubling down on this path.
I'd rather have a game where people carry each other and look up to the skilled veteran that carried them with the aim to do so someday, where people help each other genuinely because it benefits the whole group, rather than a game where everyone has turned into that hyper individualistic approach with elitist takes like "people pulling their own weight" and such nonsense.
Continue reading...
From Forked Tower to Chaotic, or even Savage progression in PF.
Prog liars one upping each other and pushing people to lie on their prog point further and further to offset the fact that teams are wiping way earlier than advertised.
That whole negative feedback loop feeding itself from people's frustration with team mates that screw up things again and again that they're totally helpless to correct or help with, until party disbands.
Rinse and repeat.
Tracking fflog performance isn't enough anymore. Must track encounter progression through new websites like tomestone to make sure they're not lying on their prog point.
Encounters are fully scripted and linear, so it's easy to follow.
I just think that the encounter design direction that CBU3 has been chasing since forever, leading us into that perpetual DDR where the only way to add difficulty is to introduce body checks and any variant of team wipe mechanics where one person fucks up some raid mechanic wipes the whole team, is bad design and fosters toxicity.
How can we not think of anything else to add challenge and critical thinking in the game? Too afraid players would wrinkle their noses?
Teammates stop being valuable allies and become hurdles to one's own progression.
Obstacles to be dealt with.
Paranoia ensues, because everybody can be the weak link.
Everything is designed to smooth out social interactions to minimize conflict and toxicity in the game.
But it forgets one major point: people teaming up against adversity is what builds community.
Talking about strategies, talking about how to overcome trials and challenge, is what brings people together. It's something that's been seen in older content like eureka (and I didn't like Eureka, but I can give this to Eureka), or CLL.
Trying to sand down every kind of interaction removes the M in MMO.
Adding difficulty mechanics where everything is about individual responsibility with no encroaching at the party level whatsoever, no matter the challenge level (storymode, ex, savage, whatever), breeds toxicity.
I had to vent this out. It's been a major pain point of XIV over the years, has gotten worse and worse as we go, and I still don't understand why the devs are doubling down on this path.
I'd rather have a game where people carry each other and look up to the skilled veteran that carried them with the aim to do so someday, where people help each other genuinely because it benefits the whole group, rather than a game where everyone has turned into that hyper individualistic approach with elitist takes like "people pulling their own weight" and such nonsense.
Continue reading...