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[ebil]

Yeah, the new players my FC has been getting tend to vanish when they reach endgame even when they enjoyed the levelling experience and I can't blame them. There's little point doing it if you don't have a group progressing through Savage and Alex PUG community being next to dead means it's probably too late to try and catch up now, at least on my server.

It doesn't help that the content they release is designed to have such an absurdly short lifespan. I hoped they'd learn from 2.x but it somehow got worse. I don't see 3.2 making things that much better, hopefully they have really solid plans and design for 4.0 and beyond.

 

[Sylas]

Yeah I can't wait for new Golden Saucer mini games either.

Honestly, even if Alexander II is the best raiding tier they've done yet, I am not sure you recover all the lost people/groups if that's what you are expecting. Like Unknown Soldier said, most the time when long term raiders quit they don't suddenly come back next patch to raid. At best you see them pop in for a new expansion, but amidst normal patch cycles isn't really common I don't think.

Personally I am prepared to be disappointed. The only aspect I am interesting in 3.2-wise right now are the tank/vitality/materia changes, but I can't really see them doing a big overhaul so I expect a sloppy patchwork of ideas. Overmelding every piece of loot alone sounds scary in how many billion different ways they can mess that up. Alexander itself is just bleh, the place doesn't do it for me thematically right now. Maybe the goblins will fuck up in the 5th floor and get killed by Alexander, who starts to break down/become corrupted and we can see some actual fun stuff happening like whatever is going on in Jigglybutt's broken down area. Just no more stiff boring robots please.

Aw christ. I forgot about melding raid gear. Guess I'm super not interested in that anymore. I think materia is 100% wasted in it's current implementation. No, I don't particularly care about adding 30 determination to my piece of gear. That's a boring stat. Give me something that does something other than make my numbers go up.

Like, I'd care a shitload more if I could meld a cooldown reduction onto a piece of gear or anything more interesting than the boring-ass stats we have now.

It doesn't help that the content they release is designed to have such an absurdly short lifespan. I hoped they'd learn from 2.x but it somehow got worse. I don't see 3.2 making things that much better, hopefully they have really solid plans and design for 4.0 and beyond.

This is what continues to baffle me. If they have such a small development team, why do they keep designing content that has a shelf-life of maybe 3-4 months, at best? Where's the logic in making content that there's almost no incentive to go back and do--and what incentive does exist (and will likely exist from Anima weapons) is kinda rote.

I want to continue loving this game because the leveling experience is always pretty good and the story stuff has been pretty great in the past, but their content is incredibly lacking for HW so far and it bums me out.

 

[ebil]

At this point I'm starting to wonder whether it's a matter of team size when the content is this shallow. I don't think they necessarily need more content designers to make it deeper, but they certainly need better ones.

 

[iammeiam]

Honestly, even if Alexander II is the best raiding tier they've done yet, I am not sure you recover all the lost people/groups if that's what you are expecting.

Nope; I'd just want them to slow the player bleed and provide whoever's still around at that point a reason to keep logging in. 3.1 was always at least partially doomed to fail because it was mostly set before the extent of the 3.0 problems were really obvious, so 3.2 is their first real chance to course-correct.

It's not even really about fixing the raid for me; the whole game right now feels really thin. Verminion stands out because it would have been a pretty understandable 2.5 addition--something to add variety to a game with a healthy backlog of battle content--but instead it's random fluff that is just DOA because people aren't bothering to log in anymore. We need more to do that feels like it matters, more side quests with some actual weight behind them. Completely divorcing content from the 3.1 story was a mind- bogglingly big mistake.

Fixing the raid would be awesome, but they need to fix the rest of the game too.

 

[IvorB]

Eh, the new player experience for the game is still really solid, and the HW changes to gearing and quest EXP to 50 made it better for new players. Where the expansion has been doing a massive faceplant is long-term player retention. 3.1 even failed to deliver on a story that tied in with the rest of the content. Thordan was like the only good thing in there and given that he was designed to be overcome relatively easily by frustrated raiders, he doesn't really have much of a shelf life.

There's a lot of pressure on 3.2 at this point; I just hope the dev team is focusing on what needs addressing.

The levelling experience is a lot of fun but, yeah, I wouldn't be doing it in the first place if I had stuff to keep me occupied on my main job.

 

[Frumix]

Yeah I can't wait for new Golden Saucer mini games either.

Honestly, even if Alexander II is the best raiding tier they've done yet, I am not sure you recover all the lost people/groups if that's what you are expecting. Like Unknown Soldier said, most the time when long term raiders quit they don't suddenly come back next patch to raid. At best you see them pop in for a new expansion, but amidst normal patch cycles isn't really common I don't think.

Personally I am prepared to be disappointed. The only aspect I am interesting in 3.2-wise right now are the tank/vitality/materia changes, but I can't really see them doing a big overhaul so I expect a sloppy patchwork of ideas. Overmelding every piece of loot alone sounds scary in how many billion different ways they can mess that up. Alexander itself is just bleh, the place doesn't do it for me thematically right now. Maybe the goblins will fuck up in the 5th floor and get killed by Alexander, who starts to break down/become corrupted and we can see some actual fun stuff happening like whatever is going on in Jigglybutt's broken down area. Just no more stiff boring robots please.

You will not be able to overmeld blue gear. Only 100% slots are gonna be available.

 

[xxczx]

You will not be able to overmeld blue gear. Only 100% slots are gonna be available.

Very surprising due to them wanting to shove SquareEnixRNG™ in everything at the moment.

 

[Sorian]

Very surprising due to them wanting to shove SquareEnixRNG™ in everything at the moment.

"At the moment" seems like an odd way to phrase the fact that they have strayed pretty far from RNG lately.

 

[Frumix]

Very surprising due to them wanting to shove SquareEnixRNG™ in everything at the moment.

Melding five pieces of Grade V materia onto 11 items with 10% chances is such an investment that raiding would be kill once and for all just by that.

 

[Sorian]

Melding five pieces of Grade V materia onto 11 items with 10% chances is such an investment that raiding would be kill once and for all just by that.

It wouldn't be five piece of grade V anyway but past that, not even much of an investment, just diadem time.

 

[BadRNG]

You will not be able to overmeld blue gear. Only 100% slots are gonna be available.

When did they add that bit? Last I heard only main stats like VIT/STR cannot be overmelded in the new system, secondary stats still can be. I haven't really been keeping up with the news since the pre-3.1 stuff so maybe I missed something.

 

[Frumix]

When did they add that bit? Last I heard only main stats like VIT/STR cannot be overmelded in the new system, secondary stats still can be. I haven't really been keeping up with the news since the pre-3.1 stuff so maybe I missed something.

Same PLL they announced this? I don't think they made any distinction between main/secondary, they just said green slots only.

 

[iammeiam]

Source stuff.

Despite the fact that weapons and armor have already reached the maximum main stats, it will no longer be possible to advance materia meld armor and accessories made by crafters with STR, DEX, VIT, INT, MND, and PIE materia. However, this doesn’t mean that advanced materia melding will no longer be possible. It will still be possible to meld materia into the slots that are available on equipment. Moving forward, our plan is to make it so advanced materia melding is used to boost sub-stats.

Additionally, to coincide with this, we’ll be increasing the stats on the higher-tier equipment that can be made by crafters, which will be implemented in Patch 3.2. Up until now this equipment has been balanced based on the fact that it would become extremely powerful when materia is placed on it through advanced materia melding. However, due to the fact that advanced materia melding of main stat materia will no longer be possible in Patch 3.2, we’ll be increasing the stats of this equipment, and they will be useable for challenging raids early.

Furthermore, due to the fact that advance materia melding high-tier accessories made by crafters make them extremely powerful, we’ve been staggering their implementation with the raid implementation by a patch, but with the aforementioned changes, we will be implementing all of the high-tier equipment in a single patch.

I’m sure there are many of you concerned about what will happen to the prices of materia, but from Patch 3.2 onwards, we will be adding materia slots to raid rewards and equipment that can be purchased with Allagan tomestones. While it won’t be possible to advance materia meld them, you will be able to increase the stats with the materia that you like.

 

[scy]

finally a use for all that elemental materia

 

[BadRNG]

Same PLL they announced this? I don't think they made any distinction between main/secondary, they just said green slots only.

I don't remember what was said in PLL, found the interview I first remember hearing about the system though:

Materia can be attached to future Allagan Tomestone equipment

How are you changing the advanced melding rules for crafter-fabricated accessories?

Yoshida: There will be no new accessories added in patch 3.1. The reason for this is that the specifications for forbidden materia melding will be changed in patch 3.2.

What kind of change?

Yoshida: You will not be able to attach STR / VIT / DEX / INT / MND / PIE materia in forbidden slots. It will be possible to attach other materia as in the past, but main parameters will not be attachable in those slots.

What happens in the case of the first slot?

Yoshida: For equipment with one open slot, you'll be able to attach the first materia as a main parameter as before, but you won't be able to attach any additional materia with main parameters. We won't be changing things which have been melded with main parameter forbidden materia in the past, but it will no longer be possible with new accessories starting in patch 3.2.

So the accessory situation will change considerably.

Yoshida: Instead, we'll be changing the performance of equipment added in patches 3.2 and later to be higher than before. Additionally, in patch 3.2, we're also planning to add materia slots to armor which you exchange for Allagan Tomestones. In the future, many things will be able to be equipped with materia and we're also playing around with new formulas for forbidden melding.

edit- angary pls, guess the interview just didn't have all the info

 

[Frumix]

So then rip Crit/Det market huh
Good thing bards can get away with sks

 

[Ken]

I hear they are revamping chocobo racing. Don't worry, they know what the people want.

Square learning from Bungie. Clearly those Western developers are onto something!

 

[Jayhawk]

I hope there is a use for the 10 Savage Aim Vs rotting on my retainer.

 

[Guess Who]

Square-Enix sent like a billion emails about this so you probably already know, but just a reminder: if you have an iPhone and use the one-time password app, either don't update to iOS 9.2 or remove OTP from your account first.

 

[Sorian]

Square-Enix sent like a billion emails about this so you probably already know, but just a reminder: if you have an iPhone and use the one-time password app, either don't update to iOS 9.2 or remove OTP from your account first.

Also have your emergency OTP removal code written down somewhere and not worry about these weird things because eventually SE will screw up and not warn everyone.

 

[Cmagus]

This is what continues to baffle me. If they have such a small development team, why do they keep designing content that has a shelf-life of maybe 3-4 months, at best? Where's the logic in making content that there's almost no incentive to go back and do--and what incentive does exist (and will likely exist from Anima weapons) is kinda rote.

I want to continue loving this game because the leveling experience is always pretty good and the story stuff has been pretty great in the past, but their content is incredibly lacking for HW so far and it bums me out.

This is a problem, if you aren't doing the new content within the first two weeks you almost get left out if you don't have a group and by time they open it up no one is doing it anymore.

I agree about the burnout but for me it's not really the grind it's more that it's getting more and more difficult to actually get content done because no one wants to do it or you see the PF of "Show proof" garbage. I honestly gave up for now on the game I've tried making a static and there isn't enough people, it's hard to get anyone to do much it just feels like so many just don't give a damn about the game anymore because there is certainly a lack of enthusiasm from so many nowadays.

I'm gonna keep an eye on the game going forward but for now I don't have any intention of paying for this game anymore there really is no point and the fact that the community in general is just so rotten it's just not worth it to play this game anymore.

 

[TurtleSnatcher]

A friend of mine could not receive the email from a Yahoo address. Using Gmail made it arrive instantly, Outlook/Hotmail should be fine too.

I use Gmail :[

 

[Wilsongt]

Has 14 become GAF's new game to hate play?

 

[irfaanator]

Has 14 become GAF's new game to hate play?

when has it not been

 

[rubius01]

when has it not been

2.0-2.2

 

[irfaanator]

2.0-2.2

what about the 1.0 haters who didnt like 2.0.

 

[Wilsongt]

what about the 1.0 haters who didnt like 2.0.

They still exist. All I see when I read this topic is bitching. I must not be hardcore enough to care about the game's shortcomings.

 

[Kagari]

Has 14 become GAF's new game to hate play?

Nah. Game is still good, just not the current raid tier.

 

[rubius01]

what about the 1.0 haters who didnt like 2.0.

Miyamotocomplaningaboutbitchingzeldafans.Jpg

 

[Jayhawk]

They still exist. All I see when I read this topic is bitching. I must not be hardcore enough to care about the game's shortcomings.

Didn't you get the memo? This OT is only for complaining.

 

[Veldin]

Has 14 become GAF's new game to hate play?

I dunno, maybe. I got off the ride back in August.

The act of playing the game can be fun. It's the structure of the endgame that is very tiresome and hard to stick with.

 

[tiggerkiddo]

Game is still fun but I'm not sure if I should keep trying to find a static or just prepare for 3.2 instead.

 

[Valor]

Has 14 become GAF's new game to hate play?

How is this news?

 

[HylianScribe]

Game is still fun but I'm not sure if I should keep trying to find a static or just prepare for 3.2 instead.

Don't bother looking for a static at this point, IMO. Wait to see if they nerf A3S/A4S, then you'll probably see a slight resurgence and then maybe look for a group if you still want to do those two turns.

Otherwise, wait until February to start looking for a 3.2 group. As you get close to the next patch, more people will be returning, especially for next raid tier, and there are going to be a ton of people looking for groups.

Me personally, going to wait for relic and get that done for 3 healing classes (or maybe just WHM/SCH), and then chill unless they nerf A4S before 3.2. If they make significant adjustments to A4S I might try to jump into a group to do it...but I am mostly planning on playing through some recent games I've yet to finish until 3.2 drops.

 

[Ken]

Has 14 become GAF's new game to hate play?

Eh, I still enjoy playing it. I also don't think this raid tier is as bad as people make it out to be but I also enjoy quality items like Resident Evil 6, Destiny and Taco Bell so what do I know.

 

[studyguy]

It's shit. Absolute garbage. Recompose. Ded gaem.

Spoiler

And I'm going to keep playing it.

I never stopped playing 1.0, this is nothing.

 

[iammeiam]

It is possible to find enjoyment in a thing and still acknowledge that it is flawed. HW launch and the extended post-launch period has had an overall negative impact on the game for a decent chunk of the population, and as raid groups continue to implode and people drift away from the game, the hows and whys and potential avenues for recovery are potential discussion topics.

Raiding is the only thing that's keeping me logging in which is pretty much the opposite of where I thought I'd be before HW launch, and that despite thinking A4S is a pretty garbage finish to the otherwise satisfying tier.

Although I retract my previous statements about the leg models not changing on break. They totally do. Up top, where you will never see them during the course of normal play because this fight was brilliantly designed.

 

[Pollux]

Just reapplied to the FC in game

 

[Sandfox]

This game needs more incentives for raiding outside of Gilgamesh and not changing worlds.

 

[tiggerkiddo]

There are raiding scenes outside of Gilgamesh.

 

[Sandfox]

There are raiding scenes outside of Gilgamesh.

There are but a lot of people interested in raiding are transferring to Gilgamesh like its the gold rush and numbers posted a while back support that. The other scenes are shrinking and its only getting harder put together a group of 8 people depending on your server.

 

[Demoskinos]

Eh, I still enjoy playing it. I also don't think this raid tier is as bad as people make it out to be but I also enjoy quality items like Resident Evil 6, Destiny and Taco Bell so what do I know.

I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say each one of those things gets more hate than they deserve. The biggest goddamn problem with RE6 was they should have made everyone play in chronological order so they weren't constantly re-playing old levels. And Taco Bell well...okay Taco Bell is awful but god damn if its not tasty.

 

[Vilix]

There are but a lot of people interested in raiding are transferring to Gilgamesh like its the gold rush and numbers posted a while back support that. The other scenes are shrinking and its only getting harder put together a group of 8 people depending on your server.

Why is Gilgamesh the top server I wonder?

 

[Sifl]

Why is Gilgamesh the top server I wonder?

I'm not really a hardcore raider so I might not be the best person to answer this, but a lot of my friends that transferred wanted "easy clears". I had 2 transfer a few days ago because they said they could get easy a3s clears using the pf on Sargatanas and didn't want to put up with learning how to do the fight with people from my server. Gilgamesh is probably just the popular destination for people with this mindset.

 

[Omni]

Wiped five times at the final boss in World of Darkness. I didn't even know such a thing was possible at this point. Rest wasn't too bad... but wooo. Got the Puff of Darkness!

Game is still dead of course but at least now I have my minion.

 

[Squishy3]

It'd be impossible to track but I'd love to see stats on people who transfer to Gilgamesh for raiding purposes that stop playing not long after.

 

[khaaan]

Oh damn, I hope I'm still in the FC. I went inactive, started playing for a month, and then went inactive again

I'll play tomorrow though! The crafting grind calls.

Edit: Woo! Still in.

 

[Tomat]

I'm not really a hardcore raider so I might not be the best person to answer this, but a lot of my friends that transferred wanted "easy clears". I had 2 transfer a few days ago because they said they could get easy a3s clears using the pf on Sargatanas and didn't want to put up with learning how to do the fight with people from my server. Gilgamesh is probably just the popular destination for people with this mindset.

Which is eventually going to lead to (if it hasn't already) the Gilgamesh being full of people who are looking for easy carries and stuff.

 

[Sandfox]

Which is eventually going to lead to (if it hasn't already) the Gilgamesh being full of people who are looking for easy carries and stuff.

From what I've read that's already started to happen lol.

 

[Teknoman]

I'll never see the enjoyment of an easy carry.

Honestly I never saw the enjoyment of getting power leveled either...but I guess thats a bit different.