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Why would it matter if someone criticizes what you perceive to be a "strong point?" Is that criticism invalidated because it doesn't agree with your own opinions?
Because they usually do it in such a whining way.
Criticizing anything is OK. Whining about it, is not. Usually when someone criticizes something like Teleports, they'll talk about it is like the worst thing ever and that those who like the teleports are just lazy scrubs. I've read enough of that garbage that it doesn't amuse me whatsoever.
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Convenience features like teleports are always going to be a point of contention because players have different ideas about what they want out of their play experience. When it comes to teleports, limiting them gives the world a greater sense of scale, while making them too easy and accessible can leave the world feeling fragmented and, well, not really much of a world at all.
A player is not forced to use teleports (hunts aside). If they want a large, open world, they are free to use less teleports. In fact, those who aren't awesome at making large sums of gold will sometimes skimp on teleports as much as possible and still "see the world". The option is there for you to take. (Again, not counting Hunts)
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Take what they did to hunts, for example. SE finally decided to add some overworld content, and what happened? It got zerged by every player participating on the server every time they popped. Why? Because players are always anywhere and everywhere at the same time.
Hint: The Teleports aren't why hunts "sucked" in this respect. That would be SE's design of said hunts. There are plenty of things they could have done to alleviate the problems with Hunts. For one, making them non-aggressive mobs would have helped (so that every idiot there doesn't end up face-pulling the stupid thing before 'time', and for another, some prior warning a hunt was about to pop would have worked wonders. An NPC-run Linkshell could have popped a 5-minute warning that something dangerous was due to spawn in [zone] or some-such, giving people time to get there to search for this dangerous mob.
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Dungeons are another example. They are run in the exact way you would expect them to be run in a typical hub RPG. You can run any dungeon in the game from your inn room. I wouldn't be surprised if most players who've run the same dungeon dozens of times don't even remember where those dungeons are located.
True, but do you seriously want to go running your rear-end (seriously, that is STILL censored!?) off to whatever dungeon you get randomly invited to through the dungeon group system? I have my doubts very many people at all would actually enjoy this, and enjoy the wait times. I mean, picture it. You're 3/4 and you get that 4th person (to replace someone who dropped or got kicked) and the dude you just invited (Let's say it is Stone Vigil) and he goes "I'm in Gridania, BRT!". Let's say there were no teleports. Do you really want to wait 15+ minutes for him to ride through Northern Shroud, into Coerthas, and all the way over to Stone Vigil?
I'd really have to question the sanity of anybody who thinks that is good or interesting gameplay.
Sorry, but yeah. I don't see that being practical or good gameplay whatsoever.
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Then there's also the fact that with players completing content at a breakneck pace, many end up finishing everything they're interested in and are left with nothing left to do other than endlessly repeat whatever the latest content is for loot.
That's more a playerbase problem than a game design one, and it has nothing to do with Teleports. FFXIV does the same thing WoW Does: It relies upon the "newest raid" to keep people entertained for 90% of their stuff, and the other 10% is sprinkled around in the world like side-quests or endgame crafting. But really, if you want the newest crap, you go to the newest raid which you can only do once a week (it is gated BECAUSE everybody is in a mad dash to complete it ASAP).
Maybe if everybody wasn't in a royal hurry to complete all the content as soon as they possibly can, and actually tried taking their time for once... maybe the developers wouldn't have to put so many roadblocks and speed bumps in your way (such as time-gated content).
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Then SE has to later add quest lines to get players grinding all the old content that they blitzed through, because otherwise they would become deserted in no time, and the same players who don't have time for a few minutes of travel here and there somehow find the time to go do low level FATEs for dozens of hours or join the hunt stampede so they can upgrade all their end game armor until SE moves the bar higher in the next patch so they can do the same type of thing all over again.
They did that so that newbies can get the stuff done.
They know that once the core playerbase is at endgame levels, the number of newbies going through the paces is going to be a lot smaller than the core playerbase was when they went through. They know that they'll end up with WoW's problem. Try looking for a Low Level Dungeon group in WoW. Have fun waiting an hour plus as a DPS to get into (insert dungeon here) on anything other than peak primetime hours. Now, thankfully in WoW's case these dungeons are not required and can easily be skipped (which many players do for that reason).
In FFXIV, however, most of these dungeons cannot be skipped. The FATEs are very rewarding (some offering stuff like pets) once you get into the 30s. They want players doing them. They know, however, that some of them are just not practical to solo or at least take such a ridiculously long time to solo AND they have a large group of bored endgame players who already did their weekly raid. Why not get the endgame players to help the newbies out? Win-Win, well, 'cept for the people who complain about having to farm FATEs, that is.
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There's nothing particularly wrong if you enjoy the game's super convenient approach to content, but it's understandably going to leave some wanting more for one reason or another.
Those "wanting more", should be asking for more things that
aren't pure tedium. Traveling from Point A to Point B for excessively long times (5min+) is Tedium.
It isn't interesting gameplay, it is there only to slow you down and make many players bored.
More dungeons, more crafting, etc. That's actual gameplay, the kinda stuff they
should be asking for. Now, maybe if they introduced something like Chocobo Digging, then maybe travel wouldn't be as bad (it'd give you an opportunity to do some digging along the way), but they'd probably have so many crappy limitations on that, and have the % chance of getting anything worthwhile so low that it probably wouldn't be worth doing anyways.
But still, it is an idea...
Edited, Jan 23rd 2015 10:34am by Lyrailis