Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

[Tirocupidus]

simply watching others succeed/fail at a mechanic and being powerless to do anything about it

This. Tanking Titan HM is the ultimate example. I stood there countless times doing a job a monkey could do, watching the rest of the party die off one by one. There was satisfaction in defeating him, but the process wasn't fun. Raiding is the last thing in the game that appeals to me, and now people in my FC are leaving because even that isn't fun anymore. It's just frustration.

The latest frustration for us is Rafflesia, but more specifically Thorny Vines. One vine connecting two people is usually simple enough for people to handle, but occasionally people run the same direction, I suspect because latency issues cause each person to think they're in front of the other, so they keep running, expecting the other to reverse course. With the worse vine configurations, one bad break can lead to a wipe, even if the rest of the run was flawless.One of the worst parts is that it's often difficult to determine who actually did something wrong, so how can we fix the problem? We attempt this fight twice per week, at most, and we've been doing it for months.

With frustrating raids and boring everything else, I'm about ready to quit. I would have quit after 2.2 if I didn't like my FC so much.

[NovaUltimatum]

Source to those "many"?

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...s_a_blog_post/

Not everyone does, but you don't have to go far to see many people agreeing with him.

This is pretty much a summation of why I'm having little to zero fun in this game recently.

I agree with everything this person said, and is exactly why I have not renewed my subscription this month

I agree with it all except the time gate thingy

I totally agree... The mechanics often feel forced and arbitrary. While they are fun in some fights, they are generally abused as a system.

That was a wonderful post, thank you for translating it. I agree with most of what OP mentions.

This blog post sums up, with far more logic and detail, why I stopped playing FFXIV.

[Kerrigen]

Heh, a good post on these forums. Thanks for taking the time to translate it.

I mostly agree with this guy's point of view and I think the points he raises are a good portion of what doesn't work with this game at the moment, and for the forseeable future (at least until the first expansion drops I guess).

I hear a lot of people saying how this is wrong and the current encounters (of which many are amazing) are the way to go and it's this way or the highway. Although I played it back in the day, I'm not a FF11 apologist (heck I hate the nostalgia goggles a portion of the player base has over this game) but if there's something this game did well, it was the absolute variety in content and encounters you could low-man or tackle in a multitude of ways, making it quite friendly to build a healthy community. I don't believe it was intended as this game was unbalanced as hell and the devs more often than not had no idea of what they were doing, but it somehow worked and I got to play with everyone I knew from my LS, regardless of skill or time commitment to the game. This game could certainly benefit of such a variety without throwing away the current "hard", mechanic-driven content which has its place too.

FF14 right now is "Statics: The Game". There's no denying that. Either you have, and can maintain (which is becoming more and more of a headache with people's interest waning with all the frustration) a static, or you're royally screwed and have nothing of interest to do, except maybe carrying less skilled or more casual players through older content. Forget playing with everyone in your LS/FC on anything that matters (you can still party for meaningless tome dungeons or the occasional meaningless Peisteskin map you could duo anyway, yay I guess).
The combination of lockouts, gating, learning (aka time) requirements we have right now makes for a content structure and hierarchy in which less and less players are willing to partake. I also believe it's one of the causes of that really nasty, impatient and unforgiving mentality a lot of people have in this game and it cascades down to all content.

As for the "mechanics-driven content", I don't think he's wrong either. I'd qualify my playstyle as fairly hardcore (and my time commitment pretty low) and I don't have a lot of problems learning and executing mechanics but I can't disagree with this part:

The current "mechanics-driven battle system" is considerd bland by the hardcore gamers (the biggest problem here, I think), frustrating by the mainstream gamers, and actually prevents the casual crowd from playing altogether.

At the moment, almost every single endgame fight in this game feels like a glorified Heigan Dance, which gets stale fast, especially when less skilled/commited players have a hard time learning and the content isn't easy enough that you can just shrug it off and fully carry multiple people.
These past days and because there isn't much to do, I've started to take more casual people from my LS through Ex Primals and T5 to get them back in the race (and before they quit the game out of spite and because they have nothing meaningful to look forward to, being roadblocked by a couple of fights).
From the cries of rage I was hearing through mumble during Titan Ex, I can tell you the mechanics in this fight (among others but especially this one) are extremely frustrating and painful to "mainstream" players, as easy as they feel to me. We had 3 first-timers and we had to carry one of them, who died maybe 8 times during the winning attempt. He's by no means a bad player, he's even decent, he just has a lot of trouble dealing with the kind of mechanics stacked plumes or landslide are (and an unhealthy dose of lag, too).

I don't have a solution but this game isn't in a good place to last long if the content structure stays the same throughout the first expansion. Hardcores are getting tired of playing the game of statics revolving doors. Mainstream players are in a place where they have to deal with a really unfriendly community that can't really achieve anything meaningful using Party Finder, so why bother. Casual players can't even attempt content. Free Companies are useless, glorified statics.
Variety is important, and over-reliance on a single or a handful of unforgiving mechanics for "difficulty" in every fight as a main game design pattern won't get FF14 far.

[Tiggy]

The latest frustration for us is Rafflesia, but more specifically Thorny Vines. One vine connecting two people is usually simple enough for people to handle, but occasionally people run the same direction, I suspect because latency issues cause each person to think they're in front of the other, so they keep running, expecting the other to reverse course.

BOTH players must run away from each other. If they are expecting the other person to correct for them then you will run into this problem. It shouldn't be "so they keep running, expecting the other to reverse course." Fix that problem and you'll be fine. If you are tethered to another player move away from them. If you are tethered to two players move away from both. This needs to be done in the most direct path possible. The only time where this doesn't work is if one player is already against the wall. In those cases it is 100% on the other player to cover the rest of the distance.

For your example it isn't the game making you powerless. It's your players aren't doing the right thing so they are getting everyone killed.

[Bizniztyme]

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...s_a_blog_post/

Not everyone does, but you don't have to go far to see many people agreeing with him.

I'm sure there's many that disagree as well. Just saying.

[NovaUltimatum]

I'm sure there's many that disagree as well. Just saying.

Yeah of course, many agree and many disagree. My original point was that someone said it was just one man's opinion and that is why SE should ignore them.

[AkiraTsurugi]

The major problem with this is his assumption about Coil in the first place. Primals, I mean Extreme Primals especially, are made for just a more challenging aspect. While I agree, of his "idea" of more freedom, I have to disagree overall. Honestly, Coil is a just a raid content, it is made to be difficult, and that you can only tackle it with 8 players. That is the WHOLE base around it, it wasn't made to just be difficult, it's made so it requires synergy with your party members to progress. It's not made so you can just hop on and beat it. Sure, we could use different type of content, but we have that! There will be Chocobo Raising, CT, etc. Sure things like Treasure Maps, and Daily Hunts probly could use some flavor to their idea, but there is a lot other content for the other type of players. Believe it or not, however, most people I know only care about the loot.

[AkiraTsurugi]

This is coming from people I raid the Second Coil with, it quite honestly saddens me this is the case, they just want the loot. To me is more about progress and how much better I can adapt to situations.

While some ideas are very welcoming, it's not a very thought-out post, from the Dev perspective. I do however, agree with the time spent practicing is kinda dumb, I always felt as there was some mechanic that we could me missing in fights. We have to learn a fight each time, but you know? I enjoy that now, it's basically knowledge trading between players to finally down the beast.

[Tirocupidus]

BOTH players must run away from each other. . .

I'm well aware of how the mechanic works, you didn't understand what I said. Both players are running, but each sees themselves at a different point than the other sees them due to latency. This leads to one person thinking they're running the correct direction, with the other person following them. However, the other person sees that they are the one running the correct direction. Other players may see them running very close to each other. Each person thinks the other should change direction, and they're both right according to what they see. Usually this gets fixed soon enough by one of them changing, but sometimes they both change the same way or neither change, thinking the other will. Multiple vines compounds the problem. Most often we're fine, but like I said, a single bad break can bring the end.

[ZReport]

I'm sure there's many that disagree as well. Just saying.

He's just making a point that many people do agree with the blogger's viewpoints. One can assure themselves that the vocal majority agrees with his sentiments as well.