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My little rant on MMO's.


Mevvrynne

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After playing one MMORPG for the past week and a half with little to no sleep, I just feel like making this post out of SPITE.

 

I want to explain the Do's and Don'ts for MMO's.

 

DO's:

 

  • Provide entertaining content to keep players immersed and amused.
  • Make the necessary grinds not too repetitive and preferably NOT soul-rending.
  • Give the hardcore players some real reward for completing difficult content, without practically giving it away to casual players later.
  • Make it difficult if not impossible for RMT (real-money-trading) to occur or give little reason to have it happen.
  • Provide an adequate if not incredible match-making system for multiplayer content that doesn't require a pre-formed group.
  • Make communication between players easy, efficient, and simple.

DON'Ts:

 

  • Make the players go through hours and hours of the same content in order to advance one step in anything (this involves grinding through dungeons/similar content for either drops or to grind up that "Currency X" that is required for every damn thing imaginable, from your kitchen sink to a god damn planet cracker from the dead space franchise)
  • Create unbelievably massive magnets for RMT.
  • Cater to one group of players consistently while utterly saying "Screw you" to the other group.  (Casual and Hardcore players)
  • Lock out players to end-game raids entirely when they clear it once that week.
  • Allow players to easily manipulate the in-game trading (auction houses and other similar things).
  • Limit communication among players.

If you can think of anything that should be added please say so.  Anyway.....

 

The people on the forums (who at least care what I have to say), know that I play a lot of Final Fantasy XIV:  A Realm Reborn.  To give some examples of the Do's and Don'ts with this game in particular are as followed:

 

DO's:

  • The PVP content added recently is actually pretty damn fun, 3-way faction battle of groups consisting of at most 3 alliances which can hold up to 8 players each (up to 72 players on the map allowed).  The "factions" being the Grand Company each player is allied with (which you can change whenever you want but once you change you are forced to wait 30 days before changing again).
  • The match-making system for quite a lot of content in ffxiv is incredibly superb.  It actually prioritizes certain roles as tanks, healers, melee, casters and bards all have different Limit Breaks (large group attacks that are used off a shared energy meter that is built as the group is in combat).  The match-making system (Duty Finder in the game), actually tries to prioritize 1 melee damage and 1 ranged/caster damage (including the usual tank and healer) into the group if possible, if not possible it will put you into the group with what it has available to it.
  • End-game content is actually enjoyable to learn and eventually clear, I have cleared everything in this game and there wasn't a single fight I didn't particularly despise (except maybe the moogle encounter....I hate those things).

DON'Ts:

  • Made the single best weapon in the game require hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours etc etc you get it, of grinding things....outside of end-game content.
    • The first part alone, was a 20 hour one-sitting grind of RNG doing zone encounters/events called FATEs 
  • Created several ways to attract players to using RMT, via the "relic weapon" buildup through materia, and personal housing.  On a legacy server like my own, there is literally billions of gil floating around because of all the 1.0 players with their large sums from the beginning or the cracked materia which can be turned into whatever materia of that tier that they want.  An average player has roughly 2 million to 5 million gil with lows as far as 500,000 and highs as far as 60+ million on one character.
  • After clearing the boss of the current end-game raid you are permanently locked out of the raid until the following week, rather than just locking you out of loot so you can go in as much as you want.
  • Limits player communication to the basic world channels (/say, /shout, /guild, /party, /raid) and 8 player created channels that can hold up to 125 characters each.  These channels can contain the same people but have different purposes, and considering how large a legacy server like my own is, it makes it rather infuriating trying to get any information or talk to people.
  • Practically gave away the items that only hardcore and competent players were getting to casual players through other content, outside of the end-game content. 

I now want to explain my main cause of creating this unholy post.  Final Fantasy XIV's Relic Weapon

 

The relic starts off as a quest reward from defeating the second tier primal (Garuda, Ifrit, Titan) boss fights and providing a lump sum of "Currency X".  After doing so you are rewarded with the basic relic, an item level 80 weapon, now after providing a lump sum of a different currency, "Currency Y" it gets upgraded to Zenith status, item level 90 and gets a neat little glow in addition to it's upgraded stats.

 

Now, the next step is where the game starts saying "screw you."  The next step being ATMA.  You need 12 atma to upgrade your weapon to the next tier (aptly named "Relic Weapon Name Here" Atma).  The only way to get the atma is to do zone encounters/events named FATEs while your Zenith weapon is equipped.  Now depending on how low level the FATE is, will determine if you have to use the game's Level Sync system, which brings your current stats and gear down to an appropriate number for that level, as well as locking several abilities that you wouldn't have at that level as well.  Now when you actually finish the FATE you are then struck with the realization that the game hates you and you find out that atma has a roughly 2.35% drop rate off of each FATE.  You must gain all 12 atma from different zones (quite a bit are MASSIVE by the way, with fates quite far apart as well).  During the Atma stage you find out just what it feels like when RNGeesus takes your own fist and shoves it up your arse, and you damn well know you can do nothing to stop him.

 

After you gain all 12 atma you then get your Atma Weapon.....hey....the only thing different about it is that it looks different and it's now item level 100...what's the big idea?  Well, the stats don't get upgraded until you start the long process of the next step, that being:  ANIMUS.

 

Animus requires you to grind up a grand total of 13500 "Currency Y" to buy 9 books which each contain certain tasks.  The tasks being:

  • Kill 10 specific type of enemies 10 times with your Atma weapon equipped.  (100 enemies)
  • Complete 3 specific dungeons with your Atma weapon equipped
  • Complete 3 specific FATEs with your Atma weapon equipped
  • Complete 3 specific repeatable quests (levequests) with your Atma weapon equipped.

Now the first thing, the 100 enemies....you're not the only one out there doing this crap.  Of the 3-5 enemies of that kind that you need, more often than not someone will have already killed 1 or 2 of them and you need to wait the 60 seconds to 2 minute respawn time just to get that last one that you need.  Secondly the dungeons, quite a few of them are low-level dungeons that use the level sync system, which makes it very annoying for tanks/white mages/certain dps, as a lot of their core abilities are now locked (also, if you forget to equip your Atma weapon for the last boss and kill it, you have to do the dungeon all over again).  Now the third part, that being the FATEs;  these FATEs are actually very different, as in they are specific FATEs that have roughly 3 to 12 hour repop timers, so if you're not camping one and receiving information on the other 2, you're going to be waiting a couple of days if not a couple of hours just to get one step of a step of a step done.  The levequests though are easy enough, just go to the questgiver and get it done (THANK RNGEESUS).  Completing one book gives a plus amount to a stat of your choosing that's already on the weapon, usually like +2 strength, +1 skill speed/spell speed or +2 crit you get the idea, maximum screw you for minimal reward.

 

Roughly, the animus stage is one of the worst because getting all of that "Currency Y" takes quite a bit of time through dungeons or using the Elite Mark Hunting which still takes quite a long time.

 

Once you get all 9 books you now have your item level 100 (STILL) Animus weapon and you are now presented with the easiest but most expensive step, NOVUS.

 

Novus now requires you upgrade your weapon via Materia, something similar to gems in World of Warcraft.  Each type of materia has it's own stat as well as up to 4 tiers, each tier giving more of said stat.  The only way to actually generate materia in FFXIV is to equip specific types of equipment, and complete combat, craft, or gather materials (for the sake of the relic though it's only through combat), and once it has reached "Spiritbond level 100%," you can "break" it to convert it into materia, and it has a chance of being literally anything of that type of gear (ie crafting gear gives crafting materia, combat gear gives combat materia, and gathering etc etc).  However, only high item level equipment gives the last tier that you need to complete the novus efficiently, that being tier 4 materia, but even then it still only a chance to get tier 4 off of that gear.

 

But there is another way to get this materia, through the market board (auction house).  This is why it is the most expensive step, depending on the server, the materia can cost you a stick and a handful of mud, or all of your limbs plus your favorite fetish from your memory.  You need in total 75 materia plus 75 Alexandrite which are obtained via FATEs, or doing treasure maps that cost 800 of "Currency Y" or 200 "Currency S" through Elite Mark Hunting.  But there is a catch with this step, the materia melding to the weapon can fail, thus losing the materia but not losing the alexandrite.

 

Once you finish the 75 materia melds to the weapon, you now have your bright and shiny item level 110 novus that has all of the stats you were able to put onto it (and remove any you didn't like as well).

 

The next step and easily the worst, is the NEXUS.

 

Nexus requires you to gain 2000 "light" via completing encounters or doing treasure maps.  There is a minimum 16 hours of work to put into this, flat out minimum 16 hours.  However, that 16 hours would be of doing one 30 second encounter over and over and over again for 1 light per completion, unfortunately that 16 hours does not account for load times which can cause the minimum to easily go to 20+ hours.  The best way to farm this light was to track the bonus windows that get reset every hour for all encounters (this was being tracked for every hour on a live reddit feed), and you PRAYED to glorious RNGeesus that one fight got a bonus as it was 1 minute and 30 seconds for 4 light, which is MUCH more efficient than the previous one that I talked about.

 

Once you get the 2000 light, you have your best-in-slot item level 115 nexus weapon.  Congratulations.

 

Nexus is literally the worst grind I have ever done in an MMO and I still have to do it again for my 2nd weapon.

 

In total on the relic starting from the Atma farm, it took me 10 days, 3 hours, 46 minutes and 9 seconds to get my Nexus weapon (Yes I actually tracked this nonsense).

 

Here's the thing also, on the novus step I actually ran out of money to get all the stats I wanted because I'm on a legacy server.  I broke 22 Tier 4 determination materia on the 70% meld, each materia costing 450,000 gil to 620,000 gil, I now have an odd amount of determination, critical hit and accuracy on my warrior axe now.

 

Thankfully you are able to fix your weapon whenever you want.

 

I'm going to bed now, good night.

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