I finally downed Tequatl last night, thanks to TTL for it. Tequatl the Sunless (level 56) is one of the hardest content in Guild Wars 2 now, this dragon requires coordination from numerous people to be defeated, it's not hard, only need some rythm, even if you screw up you can always be the cleanup crew, you're even get rewarded even when he's not defeated based on how much HP you chipped from him. The one thing I liked about Tequatl (and Guild wars 2) is it's accessibility, even when Tequatl isn't defeated the area itself will still be accessible, you can also skipped Tequatl entirety when you're still leveling on Guild Wars 2, and skipped all the dungeons although some of their stories are pretty interesting and can give you some insight about how the main story unfolds.
Now let's talk about Garuda, Garuda is a four-man mid level trial instance on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, she's apparently a real b*tch and like to wipe you in a matter of seconds, she's also have a habit of spouting crazy murderous lines, one of the harshest I ever saw on FFXIV. The thing is: you are required to defeat her if you want to continue your questline, and she's not easy, my first try with max leveled people with relic weapons takes abut five tries, my second attempt however (when helping a friend and a PUG) takes 20 or so, since so many can go wrong with her, there are even phases where if you don't stand in a right place you'll be defeated instantly. Her max level endgame incarnation is even more deadly and requires more coordination from group members. Access
Guild Wars 2 doesn't have tiered content, no endgame, run vanity-based events, have dynamic combat, and freedom from your usual trinity roles. While FFXIV is gear-based, trinity-based combat and have more social interconnecting roles, it won't be right to compare those two, but I want to talk about accessibility, at least my point on accessibility:
I spent two years on Lineage 2, my first 'serious' MMORPG, where grind is daily and daily online means kill 9,809,876,454,789,432 mob just to level up, there's no significant quest, no means to obtain stronger weapons and armors, everyday you will calculate is this a lose-money day or gain day since you must make a living there by selling and buying stuff from players, you can participate on a raid which requires you to have weapon and armors... dropped on those raids. Come unprepared and pretend you're not there since you'll be stare on an empty HP bar in a matter of minutes, you will work your way slowly to the top and when you make a single mistake and/or RNG hates you you'll lose money, weapons, armors, even guild, and must start from the scratch, character deletion due to failed crafting are a common, it's one thing to level up, the other thing is how you're gonna survive and be better at endgame content after you've leveled up.Six years has passed and Lineage 2 is becoming more and more accessible to players, they've gone f2p, improving quality of life of classes (healer have their offensive skillset on the same page as their healing skills, before that they can only heal and/or attack at a different mode), provides more means to gain money, even sells some powerful weapon on NPC in exchange of daily tokens or golds, low level character granted immunity from player killers, also: They're just announced their new expansion that brings dynamic combats to the game
Then I came to WoW, even in vanilla days I never found it to be so grindy as Lineage 2, on WOLTK days it become easier, on Cataclysm quality of life of character is improved that when I started a new character I ended up zoomed out so fast on level that I stopped my exp just to get into all Burning Crusade content, although Cataclysm heroic dungeons is not a faceroll and I'm content with not seeing Fireland Bliz gave me LFR and I can pummel Deathwing in the face :P. I have my brief fling with RIFT and CoH before Guild Wars 2, on RIFT dungeons are fun, on CoH the accesiibilty was so great I can go anywhere I want, do anything i want no matter it kills me or not. After I feel at home on Guild wars 2, I tried a couple of alternatives like Tera and The Secret World, they have their own strength and weakness, but nothing turns me off, I just decided that i'll stay on GW2
Easy
If you get where I'm heading, you'll see that all the MMO is becoming easier, in terms of soloing the content, quality of life on classes, special perks, and even ease the restriction on some endgame content, I won't have any saying on endgame content whether they should be hard or not, but putting a big roadblock prerequisite on a leveling content can be considered... unnecessary (at least for western players), and can be a real turn off for some people, GW2 have more accessibility for players, doesn't have monthly sub, and the rate of their content is more rapid, WoW has access for every kind of players with their ripping every other good feature off other MMOs, Lineage 2 still have one of the best massive PVP content out there, The Secret World has unique kriss-crossing their online world with real world, they're also DLC based and with their own gearing requirements
Final Fantasy XIV as I said before: have enticing world and story and a fresh return of the 'old-school' RPG, also great soundtracks but unfortunately their endgame battle content is the weakest link of all, Eliot Lefebvre from Massively wrote it better than me, so I'm just gonna quote him
"Final Fantasy XIV's endgame is sometimes like a club. Once you're in, you're golden, but getting in can be really rough.
AK, for instance, is not all that hard. You can do it in full AF with white accessories. But you'll really want to have some party members who are better geared than you are to help make up the difference. Your upgrades from AK will be substantial, but getting them the first time is rough, especially when you're learning the fights. WP is the same way to a lesser degree, as is the Ifrit fight.
While all of these fights are designed to be done at that level of gear, most people don't actually want that challenge; they want a farm. You're not doing Ifrit because you want the thrill of fighting a Primal; you're doing him because you've got full Demagogue and want your staff to match. Consequently, you get a lot more ragequitting than is strictly necessary, and the net result is that it's easy for newer players to feel as if they're not up to snuff. The other problem, really, is weapons. Getting a Level 55 weapon isn't hard; Grand Companies and WP fill that gap. But getting anything better requires slay-and-pray on either Ifrit or Garuda or spending a whole lot of money on an HQ Level 70 weapon. Considering a given Primal has only a 11% chance of dropping the weapon you want, and that's assuming no classes are doubled up... there's an uncomfortable weapon gap between Level 55 and Relics. Hopefully 2.1's dungeons address that.
Also you might get bored of doing the same few things over and over, but I'll take 40 minutes of AK over a slow slog through a raid any day of the week."
While all of these fights are designed to be done at that level of gear, most people don't actually want that challenge; they want a farm. You're not doing Ifrit because you want the thrill of fighting a Primal; you're doing him because you've got full Demagogue and want your staff to match. Consequently, you get a lot more ragequitting than is strictly necessary, and the net result is that it's easy for newer players to feel as if they're not up to snuff. The other problem, really, is weapons. Getting a Level 55 weapon isn't hard; Grand Companies and WP fill that gap. But getting anything better requires slay-and-pray on either Ifrit or Garuda or spending a whole lot of money on an HQ Level 70 weapon. Considering a given Primal has only a 11% chance of dropping the weapon you want, and that's assuming no classes are doubled up... there's an uncomfortable weapon gap between Level 55 and Relics. Hopefully 2.1's dungeons address that.
Also you might get bored of doing the same few things over and over, but I'll take 40 minutes of AK over a slow slog through a raid any day of the week."
source: Massively
My free month ended several days ago, since I got sick and got some exhaustion after that I will be resubbed when patch 2.1 hits (sometimes around December) it's also a part of an experiment of mine about the pacing of the gearing process and observation of the player markets
And, my post about FFXIV aesthetics... it'll probably have to wait, but this pic can say some of it :D
My free month ended several days ago, since I got sick and got some exhaustion after that I will be resubbed when patch 2.1 hits (sometimes around December) it's also a part of an experiment of mine about the pacing of the gearing process and observation of the player markets
And, my post about FFXIV aesthetics... it'll probably have to wait, but this pic can say some of it :D
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