FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

If you consider both the NA and JP demographics, raiding is likely far more popular than you're giving it credit. We saw greater burnout this year due to how challenging Gordias turned out to be. Midas has been better received overall, as have all extreme primals in Heavensward. Granted, the primal fights have never been all that criticised. Nevertheless, they have tried new content; Lord of Verminion, Diadem and etc. No one does them. Now I'm not saying either is necessarily good, but forum goers don't tend to make up even a quarter of the general audience. The state of raid isn't bad in FFXIV, but there is a noticeable gap between skill levels, which makes the lack of a larger midcore segment all the more apparent. That said, JP players do not have near the difficulty NA do. So I doubt you'll see changes to the formula now.

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The two examples that you used are a bit curious. Only one of them was really a well tried attempt.

Lord of Verminion is really not an answer for horizontal progression. At best, it's a side game in a main game. At worse, it's nearly pointless and a waste of time. That was not what the regular playerbase was asking for at all and I think this was stemmed from an April Fools joke that a certain minor vocal group said "That would be so cool!" and took it for gospel.

Diadem's major problem was that it became a complete grindfest against mobs the whole time after you were done the quests. They completely butchered the entire zone by doing it as a glorified FATE, which people were more than vocal about FATEs being pure shyte. That's again a case of them not listening to the playerbase asking for meaningful content. Grinding my face against dinosaurs for 70 minutes is absolutely stupid.

They had something with the Diadem. They completely mucked it up. It was supposed to be about exploration; heck, it has all the makings to be interesting like that!

It turned out to be ridiculous. Pointless. And incredibly gimmicky because the gear dropped could have been BiS depending on how the rolls were made on the item. It was such a mess that I still shake my head thinking about that place.

And I would be very curious to see the stats pointing out the percentile of raiding in both JPN and NA. I will still wager, that if you put both playerbases together, that it's STILL around 5%.

Midas Savage is pretty much what the devs promised in terms of difficulty: between Second and Final Coil.

They admittedly kind of stumbled with A6s as it was a tad too hard (and requires such teamwork that it's going to remain unfriendly to PUGs on western data centers), but post nerf it's pretty much a Coil fight that is packed with mechanics. I's unfortunate that it had to be the second fight of the tier and it managed to bring server progression to a grinding halt.

On the other hand, A5s is one of the easier first fights of the tier we've ever had, and A7s has all the complexity of a Coil fight. A8s is legit hard, but it also builds up on stuff you've learned through the raid. I also remember everyone's complaints about T5 and T9 being very hard (on top of the next tier being gated behind them) back in the day so I think it's comparable.

Which leaves me to wonder why people aren't raiding as much or the raids appear to be harder for most players. There are a number of reasons (non-exclusive story and gear for the most part etc.) but the harsh reality is that everyone got a little worse at the game with lv60. Rotations are more demanding. There are more buttons to press. Everyone has Greased Lightning, cast times, or both. Go back to level 50 content and remember how easy the game was back then. It was much easier to focus on the actual fights and mechanics instead of stumbling through your own rotation.

I believe Yoshida mentioned this in an interview a few months ago and I have to agree with him. I fully expect the devs to bring Savage down to Final Coil levels of difficulty as Savage level content unfortunately doesn't really have much of a future with FF14's player base. While I would personally like it, I don't think we're realistically ever getting 3 levels of difficulty. I just made peace with the fact that Savage as we know it is probably doomed.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

If you consider both the NA and JP demographics, raiding is likely far more popular than you're giving it credit. We saw greater burnout this year due to how challenging Gordias turned out to be. Midas has been better received overall, as have all extreme primals in Heavensward. Granted, the primal fights have never been all that criticised. Nevertheless, they have tried new content; Lord of Verminion, Diadem and etc. No one does them. Now I'm not saying either is necessarily good, but forum goers don't tend to make up even a quarter of the general audience. The state of raid isn't bad in FFXIV, but there is a noticeable gap between skill levels, which makes the lack of a larger midcore segment all the more apparent. That said, JP players do not have near the difficulty NA do. So I doubt you'll see changes to the formula now.

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I didn't realize HW primals are more well received than ARR. Personally, I found almost the complete opposite - where my least favourite fights are Ravana and Sephirot EX and my favourites are MogEX and LeviEX.

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Originally Posted by Kerrigen

Midas Savage is pretty much what the devs promised in terms of difficulty: between Second and Final Coil.

They admittedly kind of stumbled with A6s as it was a tad too hard (and requires such teamwork that it's going to remain unfriendly to PUGs on western data centers), but post nerf it's pretty much a Coil fight that is packed with mechanics. I's unfortunate that it had to be the second fight of the tier and it managed to bring server progression to a grinding halt.

On the other hand, A5s is one of the easier first fights of the tier we've ever had, and A7s has all the complexity of a Coil fight. A8s is legit hard, but it also builds up on stuff you've learned through the raid. I also remember everyone's complaints about T5 and T9 being very hard (on top of the next tier being gated behind them) back in the day so I think it's comparable.

Which leaves me to wonder why people aren't raiding as much or the raids appear to be harder for most players. There are a number of reasons (non-exclusive story and gear for the most part etc.) but the harsh reality is that everyone got a little worse at the game with lv60. Rotations are more demanding. There are more buttons to press. Everyone has Greased Lightning, cast times, or both. Go back to level 50 content and remember how easy the game was back then. It was much easier to focus on the actual fights and mechanics instead of stumbling through your own rotation.

I believe Yoshida mentioned this in an interview a few months ago and I have to agree with him. I fully expect the devs to bring Savage down to Final Coil levels of difficulty as Savage level content unfortunately doesn't really have much of a future with FF14's player base. While I would personally like it, I don't think we're realistically ever getting 3 levels of difficulty. I just made peace with the fact that Savage as we know it is probably doomed.

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Personally, I don't think difficulty is the problem. Granted, I've only got to A6S Swindler with my static (we are wiping lots, but only raid 5 hours / week). The issue I've had with HW raiding is that it is just less fun. The fights are challenging, but not fun. The two aren't necessarily the same. I want challenging AND fun content for raids. A5S was a decent example of something that is quite fun. As you said though, it was fairly easy. The last time I had a fun fight that was also challenging would be T11. Conversely, I am pretty sure A6S is the least fun I've ever had in a raid and it is draining my enjoyment of the game trying to progress on it every week.

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Originally Posted by Kerrigen

Which leaves me to wonder why people aren't raiding as much or the raids appear to be harder for most players.

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From what I've read/heard/been told by many, many players as I speak to quite a lot of people,it is because there is 0 incentive to do so. Most people I talk to also do not mind healer/tank DPS here and there but they do not agree how they have to go all out and it ends up feeling like (one of them told me) "I am a DPS who can kind of heal I guess" and yes these are from people who are very, very skilled players (my bf being one of them as well) and not "Bad" players. Most people are not doing the raid because they find the fights boring, no good rewards, no horizontal progression AT ALL...so there is just no point for them.

They just do not care how the fights are designed and the rewards.

When they heard it was getting nerfed as incentive to get players to do...people were ready to quit and/or did because the devs just are not getting it at all. It is as KrenianKandos says, the devs just don't understand and misinterpret things..and of course I am not speaking for everyone, no no no...just the people I know and things I've seen/heard first hand...

Oh and the other thing is, whenever asked.."What is the point of getting the gear from it?" no one really has a response. I mean accomplishment is cool and all..I get that but there is nothing else to challenge or do...I guess you could do your trials easier with the gear? There just isnt anything else to do...

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

Personally, I don't think difficulty is the problem. Granted, I've only got to A6S Swindler with my static (we are wiping lots, but only raid 5 hours / week). The issue I've had with HW raiding is that it is just less fun. The fights are challenging, but not fun. The two aren't necessarily the same. I want challenging AND fun content for raids. A5S was a decent example of something that is quite fun. As you said though, it was fairly easy. The last time I had a fun fight that was also challenging would be T11. Conversely, I am pretty sure A6S is the least fun I've ever had in a raid and it is draining my enjoyment of the game trying to progress on it every week.

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I don't know, fun is a personal metric? I think A5s is extremely fun (but very easy, I would have loved a bit more resistance) and I also find A6s to be extremely fun (a bit less so post-nerf as they considerably de-fanged Brawler and healing through this mess was epic and felt rewarding). Different strokes, etc. I know a lot of people loved T6 and T8 back in the day and I hated these fights, while I loved T7 pre-nerf and everyone seemed to dislike it. I'm no stranger to having unpopular opinions.

I think all 4 of the Midas fights manage to be fun (low point for me would be A7 but it's not a very low point), although I get that a lot of people don't like the theme and tone compared to Coil, and this is absolutely valid criticism. Gordias in comparison was terrible, with the only somewhat fun fight being A3s, and A4s being an all-time low.

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Originally Posted by Iromi

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The incentive for me is the challenge as I frankly don't care about the gear unless it helps me reach a VIT or DPS threshold. I find it genuinely sad that a lot of players aren't looking forward to the challenge as a form of reward. As you put it yourself, there is no real point in getting the gear, but this stems from an another issue: nothing in the game apart from Savage content is even remotely challenging. Okay, currently Sephirot Ex and potentially Final Steps Ex might be slightly challenging but if you raid Savage content there's no point repeating these. I haven't set foot in Sephirot Extreme once in the last 3 months. One of the largest problems this game has is that content is developped with absolutely no longevity in mind.

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Originally Posted by Kerrigen

I don't know, fun is a personal metric? I think A5s is extremely fun (but very easy, I would have loved a bit more resistance) and I also find A6s to be extremely fun (a bit less so post-nerf as they considerably de-fanged Brawler and healing through this mess was epic and felt rewarding). Different strokes, etc. I know a lot of people loved T6 and T8 back in the day and I hated these fights, while I loved T7 pre-nerf and everyone seemed to dislike it. I'm no stranger to having unpopular opinions.

I think all 4 of the Midas fights manage to be fun (low point for me would be A7 but it's not a very low point), although I get that a lot of people don't like the theme and tone compared to Coil, and this is absolutely valid criticism. Gordias in comparison was terrible, with the only somewhat fun fight being A3s, and A4s being an all-time low.

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Definitely you are absolutely right, but I gather from most people I have spoken with that A6S is not very fun - and that Coil fights in general were a lot more fun. I haven't been to A7S or A8S yet, but I did find the normal versions of both of those very fun, so I have high hopes for those. A6S as a wall just kinda sucks.

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Originally Posted by Kerrigen

snip :)

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Yeah, I agree :( There is absolutely no longevity in stuff they make. If they fix that they will def see positive results!

For most folks too it seems to be all about the reward. If the reward is good enough a lot of times nothing can stop some of these people from doing content. But for some reason the devs seems petrified to give some serious nice rewards with interesting stats.

Midas Savage (specifically A6S) has caused 1 member of our static to leave and we've been together well over a year now. More than half of our members (myself included) no longer enjoy the fight and sapped any enjoyment we've had for raiding this patch. Sure, they nerfed the fight but there are still mechanics in place that will insta-wipe the group if not done perfectly. it's been such a huge wall and at this point we're just waiting for 3.3 to get here. Midas Savage is not very midcore friendly. At all.

Midas has been tons of fun so far , lots of new "mechanics" :) , isnt perfect because is 4 encounters and thats it....i would prefer 8 bosses with 3 phases thant 4 with 6 phases

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Originally Posted by Kerrigen

As you put it yourself, there is no real point in getting the gear, but this stems from an another issue: nothing in the game apart from Savage content is even remotely challenging.

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More precisely: Nothing in this game is more challenging than the hardest offered content.

If you can beat the hardest content there is with the gear you have, you no longer need gear for anything - anything easier than the hardest content would be less demanding after all. As such, if you reward the best gear for the hardest content, that gear automatically serves no real purpose, as there's nothing harder you might need it for.

Kinda like loot from post-game super bosses, really.