Outland Wrote:Honestly, I don't think you have more to say on this than anyone else. We've all gone through the same or similar experiences on MS. What do you do when another of your friends quits in five months? You mourn, then move on. Most of the friends I had that quit, quit because of life, not the game. Some left in a fit of rage, some left in sincere fashion, others without a word of notice. None left because of the changes to the game. That would be flip. The ones who didn't quit because of life, quit because the game got boring for them. Those people just moved on to other games. (WoW being the popular choice.)
No, we have not all gone through the same or similar experiences in MS. Those who believe that need to get their head out of the well that's now filled with fresh water and go drink the water in the seas. And I'm sure you've honestly talked to every one of them to know exactly why they quit. </sarcasm>
Your final statement in this quote is exactly the point I'm making in this thread, which I think you missed big time and even contradicted yourself on in your own post.
Dusk Wrote:Those aren't online games. Online games require a lot more time and commitment, because you're actually joining a social environment and interacting with other people. Often it is impossible to get things done or slower to do things on your own. To get very far in the game requires constant presence, and many hours a week. People have real lives to attend to.
Console games you can put them down and pick them up whenever. No one notices if you put down FFVII for a long time and start playing it again. You can fit that into your schedule whenever you feel like it and when you do decide to play you know it'll be fun. When there's no ceiling to what you can do in an MMO there's often a sense of needing to play to achieve something, even if it doesn't feel fun.
That is not true. I have a few 14x players in my guild who only logs on about once a week at whenever leisure time they have. There are also other countless folks who only had buddies before guilds were released. That was an era of MS in which you can achieve your own things on your own pace and still get reasonably far. There was no 4-hour 2x cards. And even without them, I know enough who have leveled to 14x or 15x just on leisure time, but they're the grinders and they have the patience, even slow as it may be.
It's not about how much of a time window you have to put into the game each time you play. With time and patience, any person can theoretically get to level 200. But there is a limitation on the average human tolerance, and that is something that the design of this game has failed to incoporate itself into.
Jormungandr Wrote:[COLOR="Teal"]If balanced means that at lvl 16x I solo pap in the same time as a lvl 120 mm.
We lvl fast, but we're weak 1v1.
And leeching is just a choice. I don't take leechers usually, unless they're friends or paying an extraordinary amount, but that's cause some classes inflate int/matk scrolls due to hp washing and I need money to improve my gear.[/COLOR]
Balanced in the sense that every class is good at something particular, and is not limited by design flaws and restrictions...which this game fails at.
A small example:
Arch Mages train fast, but don't get into much bosses.
NLs train considerably slower, but they do get into bosses.
But is the EXP from the bossing opportunities really on par with the EXP of a a mage who can train anytime? Bosses are constantly limited by 2 times a day factor (not to mention most large-scale bosses give horrible EXP) and the social/organization factor. Is it really a true sense of balance that is achieved when the game is designed like this?
Then you got your true underdog class who train slow without an AM and don't even get into much bosses like Paladins, Shadowers, and Corsairs - who also lack decent party skills. Why is the overall enjoyment factor of this game so low and restricted for certain classes, if not all?
Sure we have our friends and guildmates to hang out with and talk to, but how much do we have in terms of the actual game? And from what I've spoken to people who have quit (for reasons other than RL), this last question is fundamental to why they quit and chose to move onto other games like WOW and RO.