MrHappy interview with Yoshi-p (Raid boss tiers, set bonuses)

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

God, please no. There's already so much RNG in this game, please don't add more of it. I'm not even against this because of FFLogs (of course, I don't even use that, nor really care to). I just don't want even more RNG. I get tired of all the RNG, tbh. :/ And I'm sure there are others that feel the same as well.

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i didnt mean extremely, set bonuses adding extra stats would work the same, i was talking about additional amount of substats

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

i didnt mean extremely, set bonuses adding extra stats would work the same, i was talking about additional amount of substats

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Thanks for the clarification. I interpreted it as "gamble on if you get good stats or crappy ones" like the majority of Diadem gear. (Funny story, someone in one of my parties actually got the i280 weapon for monk, and the only stat on it was +80 Determination.)

I'm curious as to how the devs will implement this, but if they are going to make it something like the GC gear, where you need most pieces to get decent bonuses, they would need to make the bonuses more appealing than what a true BiS for a job would give a player. So, I guess we'll just have to see.

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Originally Posted by Fuma

The same could be said for any gear dropping in general... That's flawed logic.

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Much less, if the gear is only dropped in Savage +, then there's really nothing to be jealous of. If the best gear in the game only drops after clearing the hardest content, then the only time the gear will be 'useful' for content you haven't already beaten is when the next tier initially drops. If Savage + want to breeze through normal savage to get BACK to doing Savage + the next tier, that's not really a problem.

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Originally Posted by CosmicKirby

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I'd much prefer if they make the set gear come from Savage and have various non-stat gear and other rewards come from "Savage +". Including: Glamour gear/weapons, music, furniture, mounts, minions, hairstyles, emotes.

That way when you're done with Savage, all that gear will have a use then you can get things from Savage + that won't be replaced next patch.

If they want to have the set bonuses only come from Savage gear, disable the set bonus outside Savage content. Then they can maintain the balance between raider and non-raider and we don't start seeing an increase in the gear gap.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

If they want to have the set bonuses only come from Savage gear, disable the set bonus outside Savage content. Then they can maintain the balance between raider and non-raider and we don't start seeing an increase in the gear gap.

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wellll the thing about secondary stats, currently, is that they may seem to be at an advantage, but it wouldnt ever be that big, now if their bonuses were increased Weapon Damage, sure then maybe id agree.

homestly I wouldnt cry over an additional weapon damage, i do feel like they earn the better gear for doing the hardest content. And i wouldnt feel so okay with this, if i didnt expect the tome treadmill to happen again, which it will. its not like that gear will be relevant in 6 months

So Mr.Happy has mentioned "Set Bonuses" in his video a few times and in SWTOR this was if you got a certain number of a armor set like 1/6, 2/6, 4/6 pieces worn you'd get bonuses like a faster cooldown on a certain ability or this skill does more of this, is that what Hes talking about? like getting 3/6 pieces of a gear set reduced "Hallowed Ground" cooldown limit by X amount of seconds. Is that what it is or is it just about adding more stats when wearing a armor set? :confused:

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Thanks for the clarification. I interpreted it as "gamble on if you get good stats or crappy ones" like the majority of Diadem gear. (Funny story, someone in one of my parties actually got the i280 weapon for monk, and the only stat on it was +80 Determination.)

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Want to know what's worse? Because of the enormous weapon damage, even with just 80 determination. Those monk fists is on par with the Alex ones and barely lag behind the relic.

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Originally Posted by DarkSlayerGrimm

So Mr.Happy has mentioned "Set Bonuses" in his video a few times and in SWTOR this was if you got a certain number of a armor set like 1/6, 2/6, 4/6 pieces worn you'd get bonuses like a faster cooldown on a certain ability or this skill does more of this, is that what Hes talking about? like getting 3/6 pieces of a gear set reduced "Hallowed Ground" cooldown limit by X amount of seconds. Is that what it is or is it just about adding more stats when wearing a armor set? :confused:

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http://pureawesome.net/wow/121026_holytierset.jpg

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I feel kind of on the fence about set bonuses. While it would be something interesting to add, if they only added to the Savage tier of gear, well, then what's the point, since only a small portion of the player base would even get any benefits from it/get access to it? And it wouldn't get much use unless they actually made the full Savage gear set for jobs BiS. Most BiS pull from multiple sources, and most gear sets require you to have several pieces to get decent bonuses. I'm curious as to how they're going to implement this, but I can't really say if I like the idea or not yet.

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The point of it would be to create a new carrot to try and get more players to participate in content than how many currently participate in it.

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Originally Posted by aesteval

The point of it would be to create a new carrot to try and get more players to participate in content than how many currently participate in it.

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They already had the ultimate carrot in Coil (brand new content with no easy option, exclusive gear and story) and people still didn't want to do it. It's time they accept that raiding simply isn't popular on this game.

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Originally Posted by Ririta

They already had the ultimate carrot in Coil (brand new content with no easy option, exclusive gear and story) and people still didn't want to do it. It's time they accept that raiding simply isn't popular on this game.

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Except it is, when you look at the larger picture. If you just split crafting and looked at the number of people who actually participate, it's numbers wouldn't be higher than Savage clears. In fact, the number of people generally caught up on story isn't even half the playerbase if we go by the Lucky Bancho census. FFXIV is a game made up of many pieces that appeal to different types of players. You can't just look at one piece of content and say "more people collect glamour! So that's clearly all they should focus on." WoW has similarly low percentages yet they still hype up their raids each expansion.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

You can't just look at one piece of content and say "more people collect glamour! So that's clearly all the should focus on." WoW has similarly low percentages yet they still hype up their raids each expansion.

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That's not what I'm doing at all. I'm saying that raiding is niche and bribing people into doing them won't actually increase the numbers.

And if you're gonna use WoW as example, the lack of things to do outside of raiding was a common complaint from Cataclysm and forward.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Hopefully, they will be better, but I more or less agree. If set bonuses are added in Stormblood, I see it being more of a trial attempt. If it does lead to further exclusion, doesn't really change the landscape or causes friction between non-raiders and raiders, I could see them quickly abandoning it. On the other hand, it may be a nice way of allowing raiders to keep their previous tiered gear and still prog the next raid. That does hurt the crafted market though. Ahh, so many things to balance. I don't envy them lol.

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You just have to look at how the player base treats WHM and PLD to get a general idea of what could happen. I'm open to trying this but I don't have high hopes.

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Originally Posted by Ririta

That's not what I'm doing at all. I'm saying that raiding is niche and bribing people into doing them won't actually increase the numbers.

And if you're gonna use WoW as example, the lack of things to do outside of raiding was a common complaint from Cataclysm and forward.

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Bribing players with the Garo gear and mounts sure appears to have increased the popularity of another less than well appreciated game mode.

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Originally Posted by aesteval

Bribing players with the Garo gear and mounts sure appears to have increased the popularity of another less than well appreciated game mode.

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PvP is much more accessible than raiding.

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Originally Posted by Ririta

PvP is much more accessible than raiding.

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Hopefully they can make PvP even better with the updates, I really liked leveling my characters up via pvp rather than spamming dungeons. Would be nice if they can make that a thing ~

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Originally Posted by aesteval

Bribing players with the Garo gear and mounts sure appears to have increased the popularity of another less than well appreciated game mode.

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"Popularity"... I dunno. It has increased the traffic, sure, but a lot of people are just botting their way through, are standing around or otherwise are a liability to their team. It hasn't made people care about the content or getting better at it one bit and the queues have already increased again, because every reward only works until it has been attained.

On the flipside... simply making Creator easier than previous tiers has given it a huge increase in popularity. Similar applies to story mode - Just by making it easier, you made it hugely more popular and could even reduce the value of the rewards! So that would be the more obvious way to go here.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Want to know what's worse? Because of the enormous weapon damage, even with just 80 determination. Those monk fists is on par with the Alex ones and barely lag behind the relic.

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yeah thats sort of my point, with the weapon damage weighing alot more than extra secondaries, i guess it could be close, but. Well personally id be ok with raid gear getting this treatment, and making it special and detatched from the tome stuff. I couldnt care if its 10 i levels higher or more, I just dont see why tome upgrades only come from the raid as "incentive" but apparently "necessary" for raid progression to begin with. Sooo...if they did make raid gear an exception in this manner, id be ok and hope theyd keep the tome upgrades out

I think this tier tank is the only job which you want to actually use alexandrian gear. The fact that you don't even want to use raid gear is pretty sad and stupid. If we got some bonuses there might actually be a reason to use it for once. Those acc/ss chest and pants for drg,brd,nin sure are awesome! not!

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Originally Posted by enthauptet

I think this tier tank is the only job which you want to actually use alexandrian gear. The fact that you don't even want to use raid gear is pretty sad and stupid. If we got some bonuses there might actually be a reason to use it for once. Those acc/ss chest and pants for drg,brd,nin sure are awesome! not!

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yeah ive even said there could be a system to adjust the stats of raid gear, similarly to how the relics work by using a manifesto page or something, so that the raid gear would be bis, but nahhh we like the unglamoured look of mish-mashed shire gear and alexandrian gear on raiders, looks epic to us

I could seem them needing to add set bonuses to raid gear if they are planning to allow relic gear to grow to "perfect" stats.

I could see them doing this to let Full Relic Set (single class) = Full Savage Raid Set (Role based) > Mixed Raid/Relic/Tomestone set > Augmented Tomestone set.

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Originally Posted by Ririta

They already had the ultimate carrot in Coil (brand new content with no easy option, exclusive gear and story) and people still didn't want to do it. It's time they accept that raiding simply isn't popular on this game.

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Not really. You can still aquire same i level gear as raiders. What they need to do is disallow same I level gear as savage modes if they want to balance the game a bit better. If you do not raid then you have no real purpose in having I level on par with raiders.

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Originally Posted by Ashua

Not really. You can still aquire same i level gear as raiders. What they need to do is disallow same I level gear as savage modes if they want to balance the game a bit better. If you do not raid then you have no real purpose in having I level on par with raiders.

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I'm sorry but your mentality is exceedingly wrong. Letting Raiders have better gear then non-raiders over long periods would not make raiding more popular and if anything it would likely hurt the game more than help. Raiding doesn't even need the ilevel of gear it gives out. Early access to higher level gear is just one of the baits (i.e. rewards) for players to do harder content multiple times.

While it seriously hurts the E-peen of most raiders, the 24-man and Tomestone "charity" gear actually allows casual, midcore and hardcore players to all participate meaningfully in the same content.

Coil's biggest problem was tied to barrier of entry. Because T5 and T9 prevented access to the next stage of the raid series. New players with interest in raiding found it hard to catch up as the players who knew the content were all passed it and had little interest in going back to help others clear it. The Normal mode completion unlocks Savage system of Alex along with "charity" gear makes Savage Raiding far more accessible.

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Originally Posted by Ashua

Not really. You can still aquire same i level gear as raiders. What they need to do is disallow same I level gear as savage modes if they want to balance the game a bit better. If you do not raid then you have no real purpose in having I level on par with raiders.

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They should've done that ages ago and ilvl sync them outside of raids so casual content is still balanced.

Not sure where you garner that thought that my mentality is wrong. It may seem unfair to you (which it probably is) but it is still the real carrot on the stick and t5 entry was not as bad as you are making it out to be. Tradeskill gear+melding was actually used over raid gear in that era and each tier should allow a catch up mechanic to last raid tier strength gear to be used as an entry point but current tier of raid gear should always remain a higher item level if they want the true carrot on the stick. If SE wants to remove hardcore raiding and actually invent a new trend for mmo's I am all for that but as long as the current paradigm exsists they had will get more people to raid allowing only the highest i level gear in era to be aquired from the savage raids.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

I'm sorry but your mentality is exceedingly wrong. Letting Raiders have better gear then non-raiders over long periods would not make raiding more popular and if anything it would likely hurt the game more than help. Raiding doesn't even need the ilevel of gear it gives out.

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Well non-raiders do not need the best ilvl just to run some faceroll dungeons or 24man raids.
They should just not have the possibility to upgrade their lore items. Like non-raiders would care about 10 ilvl, that would give a little more rewards for raiders cause actually there is no point in raiding...

Even if non-raiders have the same ilvl they ain't abble to skipp soar :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Ashua

Not really. You can still aquire same i level gear as raiders. What they need to do is disallow same I level gear as savage modes if they want to balance the game a bit better. If you do not raid then you have no real purpose in having I level on par with raiders.

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Imo they don't need to make raiding gear regularly more powerful (they can, but don't need to) - if the only way they can make raiding exciting is by handing out toys that exceedingly make all other content irrelevant then maybe it wasn't that fun in the first place. Again not saying they can't, harder content having a higher reward isn't an alien concept lol.

Personally feel they should examine not how to make gear stronger but just more things to show off, like in WoW you get those glyphs that change something about your character - so here dark knights can get a glyph that makes their red flickering grit into a cool billowing shadow effect, legendary items (named items with flavor text and fun effects, like that one WoW item I referenced before - after standing still for 5 seconds you could maintain a spell cast even if moving up to 3 seconds or w.e).

This game is vertical and making it vertical faster seems unnecessary especially when everyone already realizes that their work is going to get wiped the next content wave, so I really am thinking/taking to heart that "glamour is the end game". This concept works well for all players too, since obviously the majority don't raid but still collect and run around experiencing the world through the items they come across.

If they do begin to overpower raid gear they will NEED to nerf it for PvP or greatly suffer their pvp balance though, like if they add set bonuses that are effects that are actually worth something its going to be raiders having a significant advantage. As the majority do not raid it will mean a select group get to consistently roll everyone else, and this will slowly kill people's interest in the content. You also have things like introducing EX content that is meant for ilvl 300 but people fought SE for raid gear being always BiS so its like 325, then when people want to do the content raiders always get preferential treatment due to their gear making the content easier (so then either SE designs the content to raiders, reducing the already reduced amount of people doing EX or players will automatically adjust).

Again, harder to do, more reward, this thought process isn't weird to me. I don't think people asking for it are being illogical, I just think that SE should try to add aesthetic benefits over statistical ones whenever possible.

WoW has made a change to its Legendary item drop system so that the more times you fail to get one the higher the chance gets. Perhaps SE can make Legendary items interesting in glamour, lore, and maybe an effect (that doesn't work in PvP maybe), and if you get the raiding achievement during the lifespan of that raid tier being active you get a guaranteed Legendary of your choice from that raid. THEN, once the raid content is dead you can't get the achievement anymore but you could still farm the content for the item(s) you want. I still believe in rolling mountains design style so the system would just increase your chance on failure but you'd probably have to farm it more than at least a few times (during it's irrelevant period, and you'd have to out gear it so you could do that).

I would add that WoW has a pretty fast moving gear treadmill so you can farm stuff previous (usually) after gearing to the current tier, but that there is an achievements for doing the raiding content I believe during the raiding cycle. I'm not crazy for exclusive stuff but I'm also not a raider anymore, so of course I want to get everything if I want to get it lol. Someone's response to that: "Life isn't about getting everything you want" Me: "yeah I know, but this is a game and I don't feel guilty asking for a fantasy world to be that way - although I understand people who like more punishing concepts in games, I personally am sad teleporting is so OP and there are no boats, trains, and airship rides at like 30 second to 2 minute journeys.. not the insanity of FFXI with 20 minute+ ones though, dont want that".

I don't understand which usefulness these set bonuses may have. When you made the full set of latest raid, what is the use of it? You already have the raid on farm. Farm it more?

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

I don't understand which usefulness these set bonuses may have. When you made the full set of latest raid, what is the use of it? You already have the raid on farm. Farm it more?

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Omega Savegely Savage Mode!

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Originally Posted by Watachy

Well non-raiders do not need the best ilvl just to run some faceroll dungeons or 24man raids.
They should just not have the possibility to upgrade their lore items. Like non-raiders would care about 10 ilvl, that would give a little more rewards for raiders cause actually there is no point in raiding...

Even if non-raiders have the same ilvl they ain't abble to skipp soar :rolleyes:

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Here's something I want you to think about. If you need some sort of special reward to get you to raid...........do you actually like raiding?

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

Here's something I want you to think about. If you need some sort of special reward to get you to raid...........do you actually like raiding?

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Yes you do. Then there is no point to even raiding. You would do it once then that would be it even if you wanted to say you did it just to do it and would thus be a waste of development time for a mmo themepark.

What makes the carrot on the stick vertical strength scaling is based on having to grind it out til near completion right around when the next carrot comes out. SE imo would do better with a skill based mmo with maybe slight skill degradation to keep a slight grind on the game going like UO use to have in its heyday.

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Originally Posted by Ririta

They already had the ultimate carrot in Coil (brand new content with no easy option, exclusive gear and story) and people still didn't want to do it. It's time they accept that raiding simply isn't popular on this game.

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raidings never been popular in any vertically progressive game. the rewards are to short term to justify the difficulty for the average gamer. if you look at horizontal games the endgames were massively popular.. almost 80% of the player base were doing COP in ffxi for example something like 2/3 of the player base did nyzul isle raid.. everquest was similar the raiding population was much higher. than any vertical game.

anywaysssss regarding set bonuses. while it sounds interesting I think the fact it's going to be limited to raiding gear suggests the set bonuses wouldn't be that powerful.. saying this because Yoshi has also said he doesn't want raiding gear to be more powerfull than tome stone gear as that would give raiders a big advantage across all content..

so if the set bonues are powerful enough it will create a big gap between the player base that Yoshi is trying to close.. and if the gap is that big it will alienate players. look at zurvan ex for example where there was a trend for almost all party finder groups to require ilevels impossible to reach for players not doing savage..

on the other hand though if the set bonuses aint that great then it's really not going to provide an added incentive for players to go after the sets as they won't be any better than the tomestone / current raiding equivelant. unless they make raiding gear worse before factoring in set bonuses but that seems kinda backwards

also if it follows 4.0 those raid gears with there set bonuses will follow the same fate as current teir gear has done.. 3.2 landed and raiders replaced there Gordian stuff with basic crafted gear of higher ilevel... same thin happened with creator in 3.4. raiders replaced there 240 midan gears with 250 crafted stuff before even attempting savage... makes the raid gear even more useless..

so yeah it'll be curious to see what they do with set bonuses. but it's not something i'm particularly interested in when gear is still gonna be junk in a couple of months soon as the next patch hits.

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Originally Posted by Watachy

Well non-raiders do not need the best ilvl just to run some faceroll dungeons or 24man raids.:

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Raiders don't "need" the best gear either because you have to actually complete the raid without that gear in order to get that gear. and having completed it without that gear it clearly proves they don't "need" it

and as I said above the raid tier gear isn't even used to enter the next tier. because soon as the patch lands theres better crafted gear available to everyone

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Originally Posted by Dzian

raidings never been popular in any vertically progressive game. the rewards are to short term to justify the difficulty for the average gamer. if you look at horizontal games the endgames were massively popular.. almost 80% of the player base were doing COP in ffxi for example something like 2/3 of the player base did nyzul isle raid.. everquest was similar the raiding population was much higher. than any vertical game.

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Where did you get those numbers? In my experience in FFXI, the vast majority of people hadn't even gotten past the Promyvions, let alone "were doing COP" in any capacity. Unless you count repeatedly banging your head against the first set of content in the expansion as "doing it." And 2/3 of people doing Nyzul is ridiculous. You can't just take the numbers from a hardcore linkshell and extrapolate them to the whole population.

But yes, a higher percentage of people in those older games were raiders. But not a higher actual number. The number of people willing to raid hasn't really changed much over time, which is why newer and more popular MMOs don't focus first on raiding. Attracting non-raiders is how you make more money.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

everquest was similar the raiding population was much higher. than any vertical game.

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How long ago did you quit Everquest? Because it has pretty much ALWAYS been a vertical game. Even expansions that did not raise the level cap had gear that was a vertical increase in power over the previous expansions' gear.

Raid Kael to get gear so you can raid Temple of Veeshan, or Skyshrine (depending on what faction you wanted to use, and one set was slightly better than the other). Use that gear, and complete the massively delayed key quest, to get into Vex Thal. Use that gear to raid the Planes of Power, which was an excercise in vertical raiding in and of itself. PoP culminated in the Plane of Time, which gear would take you into the Gates of Discord expansion (which I have heard no one beat before the next expansion raised the level cap from 65 to 70), which was another excercise in verticality in and of itself. Tacvi gear would help you out in beating the six trials to get into the Citadel of Anguish in Omens of War, and on and on and on.

Each expansion's end game gear was upgraded by the next expansion's gear. Group level gear was eclipsed by group gear, and raid level gear was eclipsed by raid gear, and raid gear was not eclipsed stat-wise by group gear for several expansions. Right now, the tier 2 group gear from Empires of Kunark is as good or better than the raid gear from The Darkened Sea (the Arx raid gear), a couple expansions prior to EoK.

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Originally Posted by Ashua

Yes you do. Then there is no point to even raiding.

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Well here's the thing. Raiding is already technically pointless. The gear you get is gonna be replaced by gear you get at end game in Stormblood. The next even number patch's crafted gear outclasses the previous raid tier gear, unless SE changes that. Despite all of that.........people are doing creator.

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Originally Posted by Ashua

You would do it once then that would be it even if you wanted to say you did it just to do it and would thus be a waste of development time for a mmo themepark.

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What you mentioned was an issue that the hardcore minority face when they rush through content so fast. The midcore and casual raiders don't really face that issue. SE put the loot lockout in there so they couldn't just farm it in one week and unsub until the next tier.

I don't know I might actually give raiding a shot if gear changes happens, but ATM gear is boring as hell don't even care anymore when they reveal the new gear sets. Hopeful also they look into materia as well but this game is extremely vertical to even consider it really.

The game can barely even be said to have vertical progression because you throw away all your raid gear every time a new crafted set comes out. It's a ladder, but the bottom 3 steps get cut off every time new ones are added. I don''t want to raid for mounts and minions.
FFXIV has the worst sense of character progression I've ever seen in an MMORPG.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

Where did you get those numbers? In my experience in FFXI, the vast majority of people hadn't even gotten past the Promyvions, let alone "were doing COP" in any capacity..

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Vanadiel Census There's one source. that shows 40% of players reached the last verse (end of COP) with roughly another 40% of players scattered at various points along the way. (this was 2009 while cop was still relevant i.e 75 cap)

was one regarding limbus salvage and other endgame stuffs but seem to have misplaced that but I don't think my numbers are far off.. Se was a lot more open about numbers and things back then..

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Originally Posted by Talraen

But yes, a higher percentage of people in those older games were raiders. But not a higher actual number. The number of people willing to raid hasn't really changed much over time, which is why newer and more popular MMOs don't focus first on raiding. Attracting non-raiders is how you make more money.

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see now this is interesting. if you put any merit on things like the lodestone census that someone on here does every so often.. the active player base of this game is actually lower than it was in ffxi. those census's typically suggest the active player base to be around 250-350k over the last few that I read through. by comparison XI maintained a playerbase of about 500k pretty steadily until abbyssea was released.

suggest then that the playerbases aren't actually that different yet the end game poulations are massively different. and has been shown several times on these forums in various threads many people would raid if they felt the rewards were worthwhile..

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Originally Posted by Dzian

everquest was similar the raiding population was much higher. than any vertical game.

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....what in the world? EverQuest is the grand-daddy of vertical progression games. The raiding population was high because you hit a hard content ceiling if you didn't raid. The new content was designed around the gear the raiders could acquire and was often way too hard for a non-raider to even attempt. Raiding permeated every facet of that game.