FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

Palace of the Dead should be in the midcore content, i hope.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

Did you come in to a "state of raiding" thread to talk about how adding raid content is a waste of time?

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Did you miss the word ONLY? Because that was a pretty vital part of his statement, which I do actually agree with. It is sad that there is only one form of content having relevant rewards in the game, especially if it is unpopular. Well, that and the moneysink relic.

Something that I do hope SE will fix somehow. Horizontal progress is important in an MMO in my opinion to keep people online and active. As it is now many people log in one or two days per week, do their lorecap + raid, and then log out for the rest of the week.

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Originally Posted by Lunavi

Did you miss the word ONLY? Because that was a pretty vital part of his statement, which I do actually agree with. It is sad that there is only one form of content having relevant rewards in the game, especially if it is unpopular. Well, that and the moneysink relic.

Something that I do hope SE will fix somehow. Horizontal progress is important in an MMO in my opinion to keep people online and active. As it is now many people log in one or two days per week, do their lorecap + raid, and then log out for the rest of the week.

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He said that the only progression endgame content is raiding is a waste of time. Not, the only raiding content is X. Therefore, all raiding content, as endgame, is a waste.

I agree, some form of horizontal progression would be nice. However, I feel the chances of getting anything more than what we have now is extremely low.

I also agreed with some of his points - it would be nice if there were raids with dynamic difficulty based on number of players (similar to how WoW works), so that you are not restricted to exactly 8 players. I also dislike the jump rope mechanics, as he called them.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

He said that the only progression endgame content is raiding is a waste of time. Not, the only raiding content is X. Therefore, all raiding content, as endgame, is a waste.

I agree, some form of horizontal progression would be nice. However, I feel the chances of getting anything more than what we have now is extremely low.

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Ehh really? Because from what I read he clearly stated that it was a waste that it was the only endgame content, while being so unpopular... Which is a statement I fully agree with. Nowhere did I even read the word "time" in the statement at all. I think you read more into the statement than is really written in it.

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Originally Posted by Lunavi

Ehh really? Because from what I read he clearly stated that it was a waste that it was the only endgame content, while being so unpopular... Which is a statement I fully agree with. Nowhere did I even read the word "time" in the statement at all. I think you read more into the statement than is really written in it.

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Waste of time, as in the devs time. Otherwise, I do not understand what he means by waste?

Otherwise, that is precisely what he said - it is a waste that the only endgame content is raiding - in a thread discussing the state of raiding.

It's SE's vow to consistency. Same pattern for each patch regarding horizontal and vertical progression.

Because it's patches that dictate when content is released...expansions are honestly just a big terrain patch which opens the world and the possibility of new content for FFXIV. From 3.0 to 3.1 which, on SE's time line is a proposed half a year, you get a Alexander release, normal and hard, void ark, and max level 4-mans, all of which stay prevalent till 3.2 where the new Alexander tier is released.

So now in re-evaluation, you have horizontal progression with 4-mans, primals, void ark, and Alexander normal as horizontal progression for each patch whereas vertical progression is prolonged inbetween every other patch.

With this mindset, obviously SE wants everyone to try the vertical progression.

This is like SE's the parents with a huge mansion (savage content) and we are their children, sadly only 1% of the children come to visit the mansion and stay for a while lmao

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Originally Posted by WeekendSoja

So now in re-evaluation, you have horizontal progression with 4-mans, primals, void ark, and Alexander normal as horizontal progression for each patch whereas vertical progression is prolonged inbetween every other patch.

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That is vertical progression. Horizontal progression is when you have many ways to obtain gear of the same general power level - generally with varied secondary stats for creating different builds. Horizontal progression at the moment is choosing between the Relic and lore weapon + choosing what materia to put on your gear. All other gear choices are vertical.

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Did you come in to a "state of raiding" thread to talk about how adding raid content is a waste of time?

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Nowhere in my post did I say raiding was a waste of time. If you're among the small percentage of players who can raid, then good for you. Raiding is gaming, and we're all gamers.

I look at XIV's raid-centric endgame as more of a waste of potential. If SE only has the resources for one type of progression-oriented endgame content, then I think the devs could think of something with more widespread access and appeal.

So yeah, it kind of is a waste of the devs' time, with their goal being to engage players and maintain subscriptions. But raiding itself isn't at all a waste of time for those who can actually do it. More people would do progression content if they could!

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Originally Posted by Thayos

Nowhere in my post did I say raiding was a waste of time. If you're among the small percentage of players who can raid, then good for you. Raiding is gaming, and we're all gamers.

I look at XIV's raid-centric endgame as more of a waste of potential. If SE only has the resources for one type of progression-oriented endgame content, then I think the devs could think of something with more widespread access and appeal.

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I did not say that you said raiding is a waste of time >.>

Oh. Then what's the problem? Or is there even one?

Oh, I see.

Yeah, I did. Adding raid content is kind of a waste of time given the way raiding is set up and the lack of other more accessible progression-oriented endgame content. And that's a big reason why, imo, the state of raiding in this game isn't very strong.

An overall better endgame scene would help keep more players engaged between patches and probably result in a stronger raid community. It would also give raiders more to do after they have raids on farm status. SE shouldn't be treating these raids as the game's sole progression endgame. It's making the whole game weak.

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Originally Posted by Thayos

Oh. Then what's the problem? Or is there even one?

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I think your opinion is justified, but a little odd in this thread. It'd be like me going into a "State of Crafting Thread" and say that having crafting as the main means of non-combat content is a waste. It's an OK opinion, but just a weird place to state it.

I actually agreed with many of your points, I feel they are missing their potential and handicapping themselves unnecessarily.

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Originally Posted by Thayos

An overall better endgame scene would help keep more players engaged between patches and probably result in a stronger raid community. It would also give raiders more to do after they have raids on farm status. SE shouldn't be treating these raids as the game's sole progression endgame. It's making the whole game weak.

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I agree a better overall endgame scene would be best for the game. However, I don't think MORE raid options is the answer. If you see my post a couple of pages back, I do a comparison to WoW. I found the biggest issue in FFXIV is the massive dilution in content for each difficulty level. This leaves 2-4 encounters per difficulty level (24, Trial, Normal, Savage) every 6 months. Conversely, WoW, which has focused all of its raiding into one focal point, was able to set up 4 varied difficulty levels and offered 13 encounters for each level (LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic). FFXIV resources are spread too thin designing different stories and graphics, that there is just very little content for each sub-market. Overall, there is a lot of content, but for each bracket of player, there is very little. This results in either a) burnout on content being farmed too much or b) mechanics are tuned very hard to the point that you wipe for weeks. Neither of these systems result in a very fun raiding scene. I think a better raid scene would be to focus the end-game content in one area (i.e. Alexander, despite my dislike for the story/atmosphere) and then creating more encounters and more difficulty levels. We could easily copy WoW here and have a DF level (maybe slightly fewer mechanics than normal, or no enrages, or perhaps allowing more players), normal (as current normal), extreme (trial level difficulty for each fight), savage (as current savage) and then have that dev time gone towards providing more than 4 encounters per raid patch (or having more frequent raid drops, but I'd prefer the former)

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I'm among the many who are effectively shut out of raiding, so I can't comment on why X raids are fun or not fun for Y reasons. But from obvious participation metrics, the state of raiding in this game is pretty bad, and I'd say it's everyone's problem given the widespread impacts.

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Shut out, as in you cannot find a group or you are just not interested any more? I am personally the leader of a casual-to-midcore static (depending who you ask I guess). I just formed it by making PF's and asking friends to recruit up. Plenty of people want to get in, so if you are interested, I'd start recruiting and just make your own. You can even state it that it's a fairly casual-friendly atmosphere, so people are not too scared to join. I do hear people say they need to perfect their rotation before they start raiding (or whatever), but often they are perfectly fine to start.

I wish we had better participation metrics. Do you have anything concrete?

My definition may be a bit outdated than because horizontal progression for me means with the release of content, the available tier is in line with or "within" said content.

And vertical progression is the tier above said content.

So based of of this old mans definition, horizontal content is "content", that is within accessible levels of gameplay whereas vertical progression is a knock above accessible and provides vast challenges to the player base. All in which encompasses the respective contents rewards.

So, I guess my interpretation is leaning more towards the actual raid content whereas your is leaning towards raid gear rewards. Two separate aspects but all of which kind of fall in line.

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I think your opinion is justified, but a little odd in this thread.

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Explained in an edit above.. will repost here.

Yeah, I did. Adding raid content is kind of a waste of time given the way raiding is set up and the lack of other more accessible progression-oriented endgame content. And that's a big reason why, imo, the state of raiding in this game isn't very strong.

An overall better endgame scene would help keep more players engaged between patches and probably result in a stronger raid community. It would also give raiders more to do after they have raids on farm status. SE shouldn't be treating these raids as the game's sole progression endgame. It's making the whole game weak.

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Shut out, as in you cannot find a group or you are just not interested any more? I am personally the leader of a small casual-to-midcore static (depending who you ask I guess). I just formed it by making PF's and asking friends to recruit up. Plenty of people want to get in, so if you are interested, I'd start recruiting and just make your own. You can even state it that it's a fairly casual-friendly atmosphere, so people are not too scared to join. I do hear people say they need to perfect their rotation before they start raiding (or whatever), but often they are perfectly fine to start.
I'm among the many who are effectively shut out of raiding, so I can't comment on why X raids are fun or not fun for Y reasons. But from obvious participation metrics, the state of raiding in this game is pretty bad, and I'd say it's everyone's problem given the widespread impacts.

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I actually did just start a new weekly content static for folks like me (adult, full-time jobs, second jobs, contract jobs, and families somewhere in there, along with fitness/sleeping/generally being responsible). But we only have the time within our schedules to meet for about one hour per week (and it took us a couple months to find eight people who could do even that). We all agree it would be pointless to do savage-level raiding, so we're committing ourselves to other things, starting with Thordan Ex.

Re: Raid participation rates, I go by figures people have gleaned and posted on reddit. I go by figures the devs have posted in the past. I go by what I actually see and hear from others in games, and from what I read on the forums. And by the fact that so many people clearly come and go between patches, because endgame in XIV simply isn't worth doing. As I said before, it's just such a waste. I don't understand why this dev team clings to this structure of raiding. I think a structure like you described might make things better, but honestly I think there has to be something better. I'd rather have some form of endgame that is more accessible for free companies with larger and more variable groups of people, but if I say more then I'll definitely get off topic.

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Originally Posted by Alisa180

One of the major problems I've seen with raiding is the emphasis on each person having to do things exactly right, and so much as one screw up causes the whole group to wipe. This is what discourages many raiders from integrating players newer to the fight. Adding someone who doesn't know the fight yet is pretty much asking for the whole group to wipe multiple times before they reach the point they were at again.

Its hard for slower learners too. When one person is consistently screwing up, and not picking it up within a few tries, the rest of the party starts to side-eye them. I've seen many cases where a person is trying their hardest, and *will* eventually get it, given enough time, but the rest of the raid just doesn't have the patience. They'd rather find someone who can either pick it up faster, or better, knows the fight already, so they can finally move on.

Its not a case of 8-man parties, because one look of World of Warcraft tells you parties much larger can work. No, I think the problem is a combination of how one person's mistakes can cause the whole group to wipe, and a very justified lack of patience in veteran raiders.

The best things the devs could do, I think, is to tweak the raid design so that one person screwing up accidentally doesn't equal an auto-wipe for the whole group. A raid should be very salvageable if one DPS, or even one healer or tank, dies. Normally death=Yeah we aren't going any farther. It shouldn't be that harsh. Yes, there should be SOME consequences if a person dies, but right now the punishment levied on the group for a minor screw from one is far too harsh, IMO.

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This so much, so much....

I remember back in older games when something bad happens like a player dies, the whole raid slows or stops DPS, gets the people back up and then continues. There were no hard enrages or DPS checks. You had as long as your physically could jump rope or your raid lockout timer lasted. Getting rid of DPS checks and hard enrages would allow for a lot of creativity for the developers. Go in with whatever raid comp works for your group, take as long as you need till the job is done. This would also eliminate the "you must bring XX class to the raid" problem and allow people to play the jobs they want, I'm looking at you MCH vs BRD debate.

I see a lot of observations pointing the finger at the content of the game blaming the content and its unfair difficulty. I want reverse this argument and make the statement, can we as players become more capable?

Is it FFXIV culture to be impatient with slow learners, is it practice to join a instance with no preparation (this covers a multitude of resources, in-game items like potions and food, out-of-game voice chat tool to enhance the groups raid awareness and camaraderie), is it commonplace for people to hide behind their anonymity and put in less effort in hopes that the capability of others can still defeat the trial.

As a final fantasy title, I had assumed that the populace would be of an older generation do to the titles long standing history but hearing all this makes me feel like either a whole new demographic has taken over and all past FF fans have left or we are children guided as adults.

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Originally Posted by WeekendSoja

I see a lot of observations pointing the finger at the content of the game blaming the content and its unfair difficulty. I want reverse this argument and make the statement, can we as players become more capable?

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I am thinking that the players are starting to reach the limits of what they can handle in the terms of class complexity and then the added content complexity. If it was content complexity alone, I wouldn't doubt that players would step up to it but with more and more and more abilities / talents / skills being added, were starting to get overwhelmed. Even the UI developers are starting to worry how many more hot bars / cross bars they can add to account for rising complexities.

I would like to see upgrades rather than new stuff all the time when it comes to what our classes do, that will limit how much we have to handle. If you cant fit it on 2 bars, then we have to ask ourselves, are we overloading players.

In 2.0, when I played BRD on raids, I could handle a large number of jobs due to the relative ease of the class. Amp things up in 3.0 with more skills, abilities and talents (Wanders Minuet... hate hate hate) along with increased pressure from DPS checks, one shot mechanics and overall difficulty increase of raids, and things get really tricky. Alexander Gordias was just plain mean, no way around it, Midas feels a bit better but could still use a bit of refinement. Thordan EX when it came out was way too much on mechanics, it felt like a hand full of raid bosses all at once. Sep EX was the magic fit, not too many mechanics, deaths were forgivable along with mistakes.

I would like to see 3 tiers of raids myself:
Normal - Gear up loot and story
Hard - Better loot, requiring normal mode gear near the end
Savage / Extreme - No loot, titles and mounts / pets only

I place Savage in the no loot category so people don't feel pressured to do it, the titles only worked really well with SBoCS and people still do it for the titles.

That's my take on the raiding so far.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

Getting rid of DPS checks and hard enrages would allow for a lot of creativity for the developers. Go in with whatever raid comp works for your group, take as long as you need till the job is done.

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Thing is though, FFXIV is different from other MMOs in that healers and tanks here can push out comparable DPS, even in the current raid tiers. Getting rid of DPS checks and hard enrages will just make everyone go 5 healers, 1 mana bitch and 2 tanks, because there's no need to have high DPS if parties can just heal through everything. You say creativity by the devs, but without DPS checks and enrages, everything will just become how long your healers can keep you up without running out of MP. The game can't go back on the DPS capabilities of healers and tanks either because of how the combat system is built.

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Originally Posted by WeekendSoja

I see a lot of observations pointing the finger at the content of the game blaming the content and its unfair difficulty. I want reverse this argument and make the statement, can we as players become more capable?

Is it FFXIV culture to be impatient with slow learners, is it practice to join a instance with no preparation (this covers a multitude of resources, in-game items like potions and food, out-of-game voice chat tool to enhance the groups raid awareness and camaraderie), is it commonplace for people to hide behind their anonymity and put in less effort in hopes that the capability of others can still defeat the trial.

As a final fantasy title, I had assumed that the populace would be of an older generation do to the titles long standing history but hearing all this makes me feel like either a whole new demographic has taken over and all past FF fans have left or we are children guided as adults.

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To answer your question of 'is it FFXIV culture to be impatient with slower learners': In my experience, yes.

Being a player newer to the raid scene, my desperation to raid led me to take the advice of the response of several to those who had trouble finding a static: Starting my own. Unfortunately, I found out the impatience works the other way around, too. We had immense difficult finding capable DPS. One NIN said he wasn't willing to join a static that hadn't cleared Hummel yet. A pair of excellent DPS quit after one day, because they had 'gotten farther with a PUG', and quickly lost their patience with the learning speed of the group (it took me WAY too long to figure out how to handle the first set of bombs in AS5... But note I DID eventually get it).

What it boils down to is this: With how encounters currently work, a group effectively progresses at the pace of their slowest learner. That innately pre-disposes progression groups against slow learners, and new players. To many people, it seems to make much more sense to 'cut the dead weight' and find someone who can pick it up quicker or already knows it, so they can get on with it already. It can get frustrating to see the same person screw up over and over again, and we are culturally inclined to view failure, especially repeated failure, as a sign that one is 'bad' in some way, regardless of the amount of effort they're actually putting in. When that failure costs the whole group so heavily...

In effect, progression groups tend to see those who haven't mastered the fight yet as the reason they haven't progressed/cleared yet. And the sad thing is, they aren't entirely wrong. Slower learners and newer players need people who are willing to run the fight with them as many times as it takes to get it. But most people don't have that patience. Most shouldn't have to either, I might add. The way it works right now in IMO is ridiculous, and plays a not-insignificant role in the stagnation of the raid community.

I think because the difficulty: reward scale is off, people turn away from Savage. They see the difficulty and compare it to the reward and think after the 15th wipe "you know what? I'm done, not worth it".

Reward counts for more than just gear. Story counts as a reward as well. I simply think gear is a good enough reward for midcore content not A3S level content. Savage should have other unique rewards besides gear.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

I remember back in older games when something bad happens like a player dies, the whole raid slows or stops DPS, gets the people back up and then continues. There were no hard enrages or DPS checks.

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How old? Enrage was even in vanilla WoW a thing.

The rewards for raiding in this game is the worse I have seen from all the MMOs I have played. The challenge is there but the reward doesn't align with it. Why go through all that effort for 10 ilvls when you can most likely wait 3 months and you get given it in the new 24 man? I'm starting to think SE doesn't even know what to do with raids in this game. The way they do gear in this game doesn't work for raids where gear doesn't really last at all.

They keep saying they want to restore the raid community because they can see it has taken a nose dive since 2.x but people have given ideas but they never do them so they are just digging their own grave at this rate. I mean even during the live letter the Level 5 CEO said savage raids don't feel very great to do because there is no lasting factor. When someone like him can say that to SE it really says a lot and looks bad on their part.

I'm surprised they haven't added weapon effects to the raid weapon to make them stand out from all the other weapons but nope just 5 ilvl... I don't think that will get people to raid just for a tiny boost in item level SE.

I mean for starters why not actually make a section in the forum for Raid content?

Raid because..... it's fun?

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Originally Posted by Toguro

How hard is it? I've heard more than enough horror stories with A6S. But what about A8S?

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A6S problem is about coordination and the ability to keep your focus because you start over from the first boss everytime you wipe. Most of the bad things happen because of lack of communication. Once you get it, this fight is actually super easy.

No one will play a MMO with no raid content. So even if it's for a small percentage of the playerbase, it still worth something. What they should do is introducing more itemization, and then make gear more valuable. They also need to increase the number of midcore content.

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Originally Posted by Luascadan

Raid because..... it's fun?

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It isn't.

It really really isn't.

And the small number of participants that actually 'clear' the content prove it.

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Originally Posted by KrenianKandos

It isn't.

It really really isn't.

And the small number of participants that actually 'clear' the content prove it.

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Beating your head against a duty for weeks on end to clear isn't fun for a lot of people. I know i could care less about doing it. It's why there are so few raiders in my opinion. It's why SE feels the need to create a multi-server raid finder and has acknowledged problems with people transferring servers to find others who want to raid. The raider mentality is strong on this forum however.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Beating your head against a duty for weeks on end to clear isn't fun for a lot of people. I know i could care less about doing it. It's why there are so few raiders in my opinion. It's why SE feels the need to create a multi-server raid finder and has acknowledges problems with people transferring servers to find others who want to raid. The raider mentality is strong on this forum however.

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Most raiders probably get capped as fast as possible, raid on their days, and then never log in till next raiding time giving them lots of time to go on the forums. Others are in game enjoying themselves most likely.

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

Most raiders probably get capped as fast as possible, raid on their days, and then never log in till next raiding time giving them lots of time to go on the forums. Others are in game enjoying themselves most likely.

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I'm all for people doing what they enjoy. I'm not in anyway trying to demean those who enjoy raiding and the more power to them if that is their thing. I have some good friends who enjoy raiding and I'm happy for them. It's just that many people do not share that sentiment and prefer more casual content and doing lots of other things.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Beating your head against a duty for weeks on end to clear isn't fun for a lot of people. I know i could care less about doing it. It's why there are so few raiders in my opinion. It's why SE feels the need to create a multi-server raid finder and has acknowledged problems with people transferring servers to find others who want to raid. The raider mentality is strong on this forum however.

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I've no issues with the raiders. Honestly don't. But it's the ones that don't actually see there's a problem with the raiding scenario that I don't get.

"Cool, you like the raids. You're enjoying yourself. You do realize, however, that it's about 5% of the community only, right? And that 95% of us don't necessarily care about the endgame direction?"

I know it's a bit hypocritical of me coming into a thread about the State of Raiding and say "Yeah, it's pretty broken because Raiding is just boring as hell" but the fact is that maybe the state of Raiding is like that because it's a dying breed. Maybe it's time that we look into another avenue when it comes to endgame stuff.

The way people lash at others because we point out that raiding isn't the end all be all that people want it to be and that we're 'treading on their fun, man!' is astounding. You mean..we can't have an opinion that differs to yours?

It's all so silly on a forum meant to discuss things.

(In no means am I directing this at you considering you're agreeing and furthermore pushing the point that it really isn't fun and S-E is having to push tools in order to entice people to raid.)

While I get the idea behind how they want it to be very much World of Warcraft with an FF IP (Yoshi basically said this at the 2.0 inception), it's time to branch away, IMO. Raiding is ok but there HAS to be something else in the world that either people have not thought up or that is implemented in other games that would be a bit better than raiding? My opinion stands: The playerbase honestly doesn't care anymore about raiding and no matter how much you try to put incentives for people to do it, the fact that you opened the story mode is good enough for 95% of the playerbase.

Look and see what your playerbase is doing, S-E, and figure stuff that way. Not all of us want raids. We want more.

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Originally Posted by KrenianKandos

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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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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

snip

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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.