A comparison of combat content in Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

No thanks, I really liked the criterion dungeons. They just need to figure out the reward structure for it. Something I don't expect to change much till the next expansion.

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Don't you worry buddy, they'll neglect it or drop it entirely. Always have, always will.

Something new and shiny will come along, for them to copy it into a new XIV queued instance without actually understanding why it worked in other games. Believe it.



Edit: Also, there's no way they're going to make new content that can pull us away from the roulette treadmill for too long. It's a design flaw AND the success of XIV. It is both the core problem, and the reason MSQ survives today.
The treadmill must be fed, so that means we can't have meaningful casual open world or non-roulette content. Roulette must always be more lucrative to feed the Free Trial.

These side-content dungeons are most likely designed to only last 1-2 days so you go right back to the treadmill.

The problem isnt the quality. Its the current replayability of it. If the EW relic steps were somehow tied to variant and eureka orthos then we wouldnt have much of an issue

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

The problem isnt the quality. Its the current replayability of it. If the EW relic steps were somehow tied to variant and eureka orthos then we wouldnt have much of an issue

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It's a bit of both tbh. People say it's just the rewards, but I can guarantee you it'd get pretty old after even a week. Where POTD, Eureka, Bozja are pretty long-term as far as challenges go because they're relatively random.

With Variant, you're basically fighting the same what.. 2-3 bosses? Over and over. Mobs are no different than a normal dun, they definitely still suck.

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Originally Posted by R041

It's a bit of both tbh. People say it's just the rewards, but I can guarantee you it'd get pretty old after even a week. Where POTD, Eureka, Bozja are pretty long-term as far as challenges go because they're relatively random.

With Variant, you're basically fighting the same what.. 2-3 bosses? Over and over. Mobs are no different than a normal dun, they definitely still suck.

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criterion is absolutely more involved than variant for sure,
but the issue with criterion is that it allows bis, meaning that PF parties will expect higher ilevel for it

if you arnt a raider who finishes the raids early, then, due to the shit ass reward structure for an otherwise enjoyable dungeon. youre kinda SOL unless you make your own team

The problem is quality on both content and rewards. Bozja had great rewards- mounts, hairstyles, emotes, orchestron rolls, dyes, gear styles, achievements and titles. Criterion barely has a 3rd of that. Granted we cant judge criterion too harshly because there are still 2 more to be released.

The sad thing is people wanted high end dungeon content, but its almost like the devs want it to fail with these crappy rewards.

You won't solve problems with V&C rewards by just slapping more mounts, hairstyles, emotes, scrolls and whatnot to a vendor. That will just make it die in 2 weeks instead of 1. We need actual progression systems on top of these things. Things like logos and lost actions, that are always valuable since you can sell them. Relics are no brainer, currents steps should already be tied to the first dungeon, with tomes as an alternative. Savage versions should at the very least drop upgrade mats.

I really hope next V&C won't bring just extra glam set, mount, and more materia.

If nothing else, I can appreciate the objective look at the quantity of content in Endwalker vs Shadowbringers, OP.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Deep Dungeon 31+ floors ... you have to form parties to do them.

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Skill issue.

Once and Future King or bust.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

The problem isnt the quality. Its the current replayability of it. If the EW relic steps were somehow tied to variant and eureka orthos then we wouldnt have much of an issue

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>Eureka Orthos
>quality

Is that why Lethargy causes Unholy to one shot you with no wind-up

Rofl

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

To reiterate: Lockouts are a universal part of MMO gameplay. its an industry standard.

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I'd like to point out that one of the most popular features in WoW, Mythic Plus, does not have a gear lockout. You can spam those dungeons as many times as you want in a week if you're looking for a specific trinket or whatnot.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

Liana.

Pay to win?

Really.???

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Yep. Really. Doesn't bother me to have that option in a fully online multiplayer game. We already have RMT and paid services here for clears so not like it doesn't already exist in an unofficial form.

So yeah, personally, I'd welcome it if it meant I could have control over all areas of my progression tbh

Edit: I take it back, we already do have p2w here in an official sense. You can buy a mount that makes you faster than others (which is basically the "BiS" for exploring all new maps), you can buy a level skip to 80 (soon to be 90) and skip the majority of the story. The Menphina Earrings from pre-ordering can be considered p2w as well since they give you an xp boost.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Edit: I take it back, we already do have p2w here in an official sense. You can buy a mount that makes you faster than others (which is basically the "BiS" for exploring all new maps), you can buy a level skip to 80 (soon to be 90) and skip the majority of the story. The Menphina Earrings from pre-ordering can be considered p2w as well since they give you an xp boost.

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Don't forget extra retainers which can bring you back more free crafting materials and the like.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

Liana.

Pay to win?

Really.???

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In what regard will you have p2w in this game in terms of PvE combat?

In order to have any so called "p2w" there is a need for following things:

1. Any official ranking of players regarding certain content (raids, dungeons, trials whatever it will be). This is essential otherwise p2w doesn't have any meaning.

2. Any of that content rankings mentioned in 1st point would need to be affected by anything you will get from the store.

Are there such things in this game? No.

FFXIV doesn't have any competetive content with rankings that is affected by PvE combat gear. So paying for any additional attempt of savage raids or whatever timegated thing it is going to be should not be considered p2w.
Since getting gear in 1 or 2 weeks doesn't affect any other player experience in this game or any rankings, because there are none.

Deep Dungeon ranking - is not affected by PvE combat gear
PvP ranking for CC - is not affected by PvE combat gear

Even buying a job skip to lv 70/80 whatever it will be later on in this game is not going to affect any other player PvE combat experience. The reason is that any PvE combat content in this game is meant to be done solo or via cooperation of certain amount of players in a group. The cooperation is the keyword here.

Let's say there are 3 players A, B, C and one of them, let's say A, buys job/story skip. Does buying these things affected any experience of B and C player? No

There are no official rankings of who finished the story first, raids first, dungeon first, who deals most damage on certain jobs.

Conclusion is simple.
Who cares if some other player was able to clear content in 1 week or 10 months or 7 years or whatever the timespan was for them to do that. Because that player is not affecting someone else progress in PvE content that is based on cooperation rather than competition between players.

If someone cares for some random player progress in noncompetitive PvE content or what they buy to skip some part of it, then there is an issue with the way they think of what p2w is.

P2W - is the practice of buying in-game items that give a player a very big advantage over others.

If there is only solo or cooperation in PvE content that is not competetive then there is no p2w. Since so called p2w player would rather be help for any f2p player in terms of clearing content in that case.

Having cash shop mounts that are faster than regular in-game mounts? P2W imo.

Paying cash for extra retainers to have more inventory and selling power? P2W imo.

Paying cash to skip leveling experience completely? P2W imo.

That said, FFXIV doesn't show any of that extra stuff in-game, so I'm mostly okay with it. Something like Diablo: Immortal on the other hand...

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Personally I'd rather have this than have my progress intentionally slowed down because some random people want to whine. If I have the ability to pump through getting a set of gear in a week, why shouldn't I be able to do that and then just go focus on something else or play something different? Timegates are probably the stupidest thing to ever come to video games which are generally supposed to be "progress at your own pace".

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I can think of 2 reasons it doesn't happen.

The first is to help ensure that players hitting the content late will still find others doing the content.

The second, and possibly more importantly from a developer point of view at least in the short term, is to prevent Raubahn EX from happening every time a patch is released. Can you imagine what a mess the instance servers would be in if everyone could farm as much as they wanted as soon as content was released?

Whether gear is time gated or not, there will always be those players complaining about a lack of things to do before the next patch but that's their problem to solve.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Yep. Really. Doesn't bother me to have that option in a fully online multiplayer game. We already have RMT and paid services here for clears so not like it doesn't already exist in an unofficial form.

So yeah, personally, I'd welcome it if it meant I could have control over all areas of my progression tbh

Edit: I take it back, we already do have p2w here in an official sense. You can buy a mount that makes you faster than others (which is basically the "BiS" for exploring all new maps), you can buy a level skip to 80 (soon to be 90) and skip the majority of the story. The Menphina Earrings from pre-ordering can be considered p2w as well since they give you an xp boost.

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Before anyone starts calling something pay to win, it's usually good to define what the win condition is.

So what is winning in FFXIV?

I don't see an XP boost from a pre-order bonus as pay to win. That simply gets someone to level cap faster. It doesn't confer the rewards that players usually set as win goals.

I don't see a mount with a speed boost as pay to win either. It also does not confer the rewards that players view as win conditions. It also becomes irrelevant once the player unlocks the ability to fly.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

prevent Raubahn EX from happening every time a patch is released [...] farm as much as they wanted as soon as content was released

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Literally what? No one was farming the solo instance. You weren't even there for it to know what happened. It was a DDoS + poor server infrastructure (because they put all the solo instances into one bucket), and just underestimation of the required capacity. Did you think people were farming a story instance lol??

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Originally Posted by GaiusDrakon

Literally what? No one was farming the solo instance. You weren't even there for it to know what happened. It was a DDoS + poor server infrastructure (because they put all the solo instances into one bucket), and just underestimation of the required capacity.

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Everyone was trying to hit it at the same time and it was overwhelming the instance server. That's why they started having two possible areas to go with Shadowbringers onward so we're not all funneled to the same bottleneck point. DDoS and poor server infrastructure didn't help, but neither did all the Early Access players getting to that bottleneck point quickly and all trying to hit it at once. It was also back when we still had gargantuan data centers which made things even worse.

Some of these limitations do help maintain some balance with instances and it's a legitimate concern that not having these limitations might lead to overwhelming the instance server again. There are still instances where it lags sometimes even now.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Everyone was trying to hit it at the same time and it was overwhelming the instance server. That's why they started having two possible areas to go with Shadowbringers onward so we're not all funneled to the same bottleneck point. DDoS and poor server infrastructure didn't help, but neither did all the Early Access players getting to that bottleneck point quickly and all trying to hit it at once. It was also back when we still had gargantuan data centers which made things even worse.

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That is not "farming". Unless you think people "farm" the MSQ. Their argument is that timegating prevents Raubahn EX but no one is doing the MSQ twice in the first week of 4.0. Raubahn EX has nothing to do with timegating.

Also the Grynewahlt instance (or however you spell his name) came after the two branches of the 4.0 MSQ merged together. It didn't start with ShB, it started with HW.

Look, I'm for sensible timegating but using Raubahn EX as a supporting reason is just bizarre

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Originally Posted by GaiusDrakon

That is not "farming". Unless you think people "farm" the MSQ. Their argument is that timegating prevents Raubahn EX but no one is doing the MSQ twice in the first week of 4.0. Raubahn EX has nothing to do with timegating.

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They're not talking about the MSQ. They're talking about things that are timegated now like weekly drops. We can go run an MSQ dungeon as many times as we want for drops, especially with the Trust system. And while some do run 8 or 24 man content over and over, a lot only run it for their weekly drop. Which serves to help keep the instance servers from getting too overwhelmed.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

They're not talking about the MSQ. They're talking about things that are timegated now like weekly drops. We can go run an MSQ dungeon as many times as we want for drops, especially with the Trust system. And while some do run 8 or 24 man content over and over, a lot only run it for their weekly drop. Which serves to help keep the instance servers from getting too overwhelmed.

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Raubahn EX isn't about the MSQ????

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Originally Posted by GaiusDrakon

Raubahn EX isn't about the MSQ????

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Raubahn EX was used as an example of something that overwhelmed the instance servers in an extreme way. The discussion was about that same possible effect happening if weekly lockouts were eased on the content that has them.

I personally think a stronger argument is the content being harder to get through by those who get there later. And the idea that those same content piranhas would then turn around and say there was nothing to do once they farmed up what they wanted by grinding it incessantly. A secondary issue could potentially be strain on the instance server if enough people were hitting it heavily.

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Originally Posted by GaiusDrakon

Literally what? No one was farming the solo instance. You weren't even there for it to know what happened. It was a DDoS + poor server infrastructure (because they put all the solo instances into one bucket), and just underestimation of the required capacity. Did you think people were farming a story instance lol??

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You missed my point. It's not what type of content it is, it's the number of players (whether in groups or solo) trying to open instances at the same time. Raubahn EX did not happen because it was MSQ content. It happened because too many players were trying to open up an instance at the same time and the instance servers did not have the capacity to handle them all.

Would you like me to use Island Sanctuary launch as a different example of what happens when too many players try to open instances at the same time?

For all we know, some of the long queue times players face when queueing for duties isn't due to a lack of players in the needed roles but a lack of room on the instances servers for new groups to enter. There have been times doing leveling or MSQ roulettes where I queue as role in need and end up waiting. I switch to the other role usually in need and continue to wait. And this seems to happen only in peak hours when as expected more players are online. It's something I only experience 3-4 times a year but it does happen.