Explain me these other contents we miss
Explain me these other contents we miss
Maybe they devs just wanted you to be able to be fully geared out and able to take a break from the game in time for FFXV to release.
But once you've cleared all turns of Creator for two or three consecutives weeks, is there still a challenge ?
Like what ? Let's suppose that skipping crafting and gathering is a valid option because it's a whole new branch of gameplay that some people don't like, once Savage and Sophia EX are done, you have no new things to do until 3.5. And even then, it won't really be challenging for those who have already cleared Savage.
Now that I think of it, PoTD is getting its update in 3.45, so I suppose this will be the main content people do while waiting for 4.0.
The way I see it, the formula should be changed so that each patch will bring higher items, which means...switching 8-man and 24-man raid. At least, this way, you can say that each patch will give you the gear to jump into the content for the next patch. And they could make Savage version of 24-man raids.
You'll end up laughing about it because you're only focused on an specific content, but let's do it anyways;
Chocobo Racing to get a full 4 Stars Chocobo and winning the Chocobo Headgear and the barding, completing all the challenges, and farm for MGP prices.
Do PVP for the achievements/mount, get PVP gear as glamour, or just play for fun.
The Feast, to get into the 100 first ones in your datacenter where every combat is challenging, so you can get the Lone Wolf set, the Mini-Airship mount and who knows, maybe the #1 trophy.
Lord of Vermillion wasn't a success, but yet it's fun and you can do, at least, the challenges in the turorial to get the Twintania minion.
Palace of the Dead. It's still at floor 50 and every reward is just glamour, but it will be challenging content with the 200 floors and the ranking table.
Gearing up all the crafters/gatherers to craft/gather your own stuff.
Triple triad. Did you get all the cards? Or atleast won all the NPCs?
What about Vistas? Did you get your Apkallu?
Housing; FC house, personal FC room, personal house or apartment. You can craft/obtain different furnishing by completing content such as extreme content, then use it in your housing place.
Farming minions and mounts, wich makes you complete different content. This one might be the most boring since usually it involves grind, like the Extreme mounts, but still it felt good back then when Kirin was implemented, and it will probably be worth to farm all the actual Extreme ones.
You have a lot of optional quests with their sidequests. You may like one more than others, but still every single one has a story and meaning in the lore (remember this is a MMORPG).
Raiding is fun, I invest just 2h a day, 5 days a week, wich is just 10 hours a week (while hardcore raiders raids 6h+ per day, maybe?) and I'll complete other content even if I finish the actual raid, because raiding is just an option on this game, not everything.
What did you complete on this game? Did you skip any of the mentioned content?
Yes, you can. Not in the most user friendly way, but you can.
Since Creator is easier than previous tier, we might see more clear from random party on the raid finder. I feel like they're somehow trying to vastly reduce the requirement on static parties to do content, with less emphasis on group mechanics, more forgivable deaths, etc...
Speaking of "tuning", fights were not the only thing that seemed to be overlooked. On day 1, gearing 2 HC statics meant :
1300-ish raziqsap , 150-ish arachne webs, 290-ish Borax, 130 scheelite, 80 dubbin, etc
Total seals needed for 2 statics : 1,379,000 seals. Capped at 50k for all players, that doesn't even half-cut it.
Even, for just one static alone, this is way too much. Did the devs do the maths at all ?
Nakade, former crafter in Solitude, world-competing FC.
All beast tribe max lv - got over 100 minions - about 45 mounts ( birds included) - won some LoV tournament - took part in tt tournament several times - around rank 40 1st the feast season + i have airship mount and red ads from frontline - completed main scenario and all the sidequests - farmed yokai mount - about to finish last relic step - did Pod several times 100 floors.. And other things i can't remember and the point is most of these took few days to be completed
They likely made it that way to encourage group crafting and whatnot. The devs have openly expressed disliking omni-crafters, hence red scrips (an awful system) and later, specialists. Basically, they don't want one or two crafters being able to supply their entire FC. Furthermore, those requirements keep people running roulettes, fates and their challenge logs because you'll constantly need to stock up on seals. While a costly alternative, you can buy all these mats off the MB if you despise seal grinding.
Basically, you are asking it be made easier for only a few crafters to supply sixteen players with full ilvl 250 gear. Uh, why would that ever be a thing?
Having fun? I know that concept is lost to a lot of people these days. There's also getting good enough to sell runs, and personally I like to have the best gear I can get because I'm OCD like that...
Except for the Creator spear. That's a piece of garbage, weapon damage be damned. I'll gamble on the new zeta being 275 when it gets to its final form
Oh and I need that Arrhideus mount cause RISE UP AND SOMETHING SOMETHING PEOPLE
Game becomes shallower and shallower. Dungeons getting smaller easier more linear. Gear becomes obsolete faster and faster and raiding is pretty much dead since 3.0. What was Yoshida's answer in the latest interviews remember? Make a break play another game and comeback. He also said (more liked implied) that the western audience is at fault for the raiding scene because Japanese people clear the content just for the fun of clearing it and not for the rewards. He just said the game will keep getting more casual and if you don't like quit playing or be like the Japs. Clear content for the sake of clearing it and nothing else. If this is the answer of head of FFXIV production then do not expect greatness. Seems like they made the money they wanted and they shifting towards a more casual play style to attract new players. The problem is not only Alex Savage but all the other dungeons as well. The problem is just way more obvious and serious on the raiding dungeons because it supposed to be a more rewarding and challenging content. After 3.0 the game shifted its direction towards a more casual gameplay with more fluff content and less challenging dungeons/raiding. Gear progression is meaningless and a huge mess.
And what would be the difference if you completed the raid in 10 days instead of 2? There wouldn't be any difference.
I'm a completionist too, I'm on the 1st Feast season at 50ish rank, minions, mounts, TT, LoV etc... We have a lot of free time to invest on this game, but I guess everyone enjoys it in a different way. I really enjoy the story and I'm always lurking the Lore forums, so maybe I'm just a fanboy of the game.
Artificial difficulty is really bad, such as gearchecks like the last patch raid. A team should be able to complete the actual content with the actual gear (ilv250 crafted on day 1, in this case) and people that has less time/skill should complete it after farming some ilv260-270 gear.
What would you change on the raid? How would you increase the time to complete a raid without artificial difficulty methods?
That's 86187 GC seals per person, seems fairly tuned for me. I crafted every ilv250 gear at day 1 and didn't spend any gil. It took me hours of gathering and stuff, but it's basically GC and lore items, easy to obtain if you had a geared crafter and gatherer. Ended up crafting 2 sets of healer, half of caster, and random accessories for other set members, but they provided me the materials except the gathering ones wich I had to gather.
If you had to craft gear for 16 persons, that's because you wanted to :S! Content seems correctly tuned for me here! Lore items are easy to obtain if you capped 2000 before patch, and GC seals are easy too. You can craft cheap stuff and convert it to GC seals, or just do the new lv60 dungeons to get lore/gear to convert to GC seals.
There is a misunderstanding here. Solitude, nor like any other hardcore FC, expects crafters to "supply their entire FC" alone. And no, I'm not asking to have an "easy time". I'm very fine with difficulty, but this patch is the only one, through all my entire career as a crafter, that felt really unscaled, in regards to how raiders/crafters can correlate.
We had rough times before (specialists, favor grinds, etc), but the difficulty for them "scaled up" well with the raiders progression. And this, was perfectly ok, regardless of the grind.
3.4, however, didn't scale up well at all. In all previous tiers, teams competing for world-progression could usually handle the first floor with their previous gear, and then start receiving the next few pieces of gear progressively as they were progressing into the tier themselves, in a progressive manner. That kept a fair balance between how fast crafters can craft and raiders can progress, which I think was good. The balance was broken in 3.4, due to the excessive amount of seals materials.
Because this whole method of economic control has proven efficient to make one thing and one thing only, make only a few crafters the suppliers of the market board and in general, making the richer even more and faster than ever richer while making the entry level to crafting much, much, much higher, thus, less competition, higher prices, more resources for a few. And considering switching specialists isn't something impossible, not even hard, hardcore crafters just rotate through the specialists crafting bulks of items to later list them. To not mention most have 1 or 2 alts, with other specialists ready.
You are right, it will never be a thing, is evident economics are another thing about this game that is completely above the level of the dev team, their fixing to the "omni-crafters" was making them "snowflake-crafters", limiting their productivity 3 times, but making everything they make 20 times more valuable. LMAO.
OP makes me very worried about this raid tier. My group only did a couple of hours in A9S so far and it seemed extremely easy for savage content. If the last reason to raid (challenge) is taken away, I'm not sure what I'm going to do in this game.
Reasons to raid:Story,Gear,Challenge
RIP raiding, time to start doing min-ilvl challenges instead I guess.
When BiS gear were locked behind red scripts, I would have agreed. Now, however, you have access to basically everything except the most recent recipes. And even those aren't technically gated as capping red scrips once a week essentially allows you to rotate your specialists how you fancy. I made 2M the other day selling furniture I could have done in baby leveling gear. If you understand the market and don't instantly run to the best crafts, you can make a small fortune. I've probably accumulated 25-30M over my year long play time. The vast majority of that came from selling stuff anyone could make just by leveling their crafters to 50. Hell, I even took months off crafting to boot. You do not need pentameld, BiS gear to earn a profit in this game.
Honestly, I want the devs to make this a viable option. Put achievements or even the primal mounts behind low ilvl thresholds. That way people who want an "easy" version can blow through it while those who want a challenge are also rewarded for their efforts. I feel this is where FFXIV lacks: gifting rewards to everyone because some people only want the easy way out.
Our group was able to clear A11s with an everage gear of 245 but i can tell you we would be able to clear it even in 242/243 , midcore group 250 group can clear it easy ( yes so if u have money the first week a midcore group can clear it too) maybe soft group can clear it in 260. All this to say that in 2 months every1 will clear and there will be an hole of 4 or + months with people who don't know what to do since they even completed the hardest thing
Then what should SE do? Put a gearcheck cap? Like, if you don't do X DPS you won't advance, or if you don't have enough HP to survive, you'll just die. That would require you to obtain more gear and wait weeks in order to "unlock" the gearcheck. That's just artificial difficulty, wich is boring and not challenging at all.
Yesterday I started raiding for almost 2h, we downed Faust at second try (tanks didn't split DMG) and downed the boss at 20% aprox. Yeah, seems easier and mechanics on this boss are easy to remember and understand.
But still, I don't know what would be the best way to make raiding more challenging without gearchecks or luck with drops.
Maybe making different difficulties? Normal, Savage and ExtremeSavageUltra? XP
Yep. I think just two more bosses and normal be scaled a bit higher would make a world of difference. For those who just want story, they can wait a month or two when the relevant gear outpaces most of normal while Savage as a whole doesn't murder statics as early as it did. I feel people would handle the last two bosses in a six tier raid hitting hard because they've already processed through ten fights and psyched themselves up. FFXIV suffers heavily from massive leaps in difficulty.
I would do it where you choose the difficulty at your leisure. Using A8S as an example, he'd a min ilvl of 225 and a max of ilvl 250. Rewards would be scaled according to what you set, which can be scaled in increments of five.
240+ = Just a clear
230-240 = Current reward structure
225-230 = No loot restrictions
From there, you could add rewards and achievements for underleveling him, have mounts/minions/etc drop at specific thresholds or simply increase their odds the harder you make it. Basically, if you wanted say, Titan's pony. You couldn't jump in unsynced and blow through him in two minutes. So those ponies retain their worth for those who got them back when Titan was relevant.
Yeah, no. It doesn't quite work out that way. First and foremost, they have to adjust the mechanics based on how many new additions will be added, then have to account for server space, balance, tests and any changes in aesthetic. To give an example the sheer complexity seemingly simple looking animations can be, Tifa's hair in Advent Children was constantly re-rendered in order to create a proper fluidity. This wound up being one of the most costly bits of animation in the entire film, and the primary reason they eventually stopped showing it as much as they could get away with. If I recall, Tifa's fight with Loz took a massive chunk of the budget all because of her hair. Rounding this back to Savage, one new attack and its associated animations do not come cheap. You need only ask Skyrim or Fallout modders how long it takes for them to develop one. None of this includes the man hour costs either.
Not taking sides since I don't know how development of these entirely work, but SE did say in an interview once is how they make raid content is they first build it where it is impossible to defeat the boss, and then work down the intensity of the mechanics and checks till they are at a level that is considered balanced. So if this is a thing, then ideally it shouldn't cost -that much- to add extra modes. Even SCoB Savage was just simply just bringing things they took out back.
Except that it does, and they've already said as much. Given the choice I will always believe what a tenured MMO developer says before a forum poster.
The only forced phase pushing possible in that entire tier was on A5S and A7S, and it wasn't possible unless you were doing 1-healer AST pulls which weren't happening day 1 or had a lot of i240 which wasn't possible day 1. You're inventing this.
That doesn't mean there isn't still a substantial cost involved. Even if they build Savage first, then scale down, they have to re-design the fight to accommodate a few missing mechanics, thus necessitating different animations and/or coding. The quote you cited doesn't specify money. Saying one of the raid tier is "pennies on the dollar" is ridiculous. Computer animation and CGI is absurdly expensive. Not to mention, you again, have man hours. Regardless, it remains a waste of resources if 1% of players even bother with.
Did they cite specific examples of costs or say it's cheap? If not, then I suspect you're misinterpreting. Regardless, if you'd "rather listen a MMO developer," I suppose you should support these changes. After all, if FFXIV's dev team found Gordias/Midas profitable and/or worthwhile of their resources, they wouldn't have dropped the difficulty on The Creator. A9S-A12S is essentially them saying, the clear rates were far too low and it needs to be better accessible to be worthwhile.
I never said it wasn't expensive. I said it is not as much to make as it would be to add onto it and create new assets to accommodate the harder mode. Developing anything in an MMO costs money and time. The question is, is it to the point that SE cannot add an extra mode. Their last update of this a few months back according to them is yes, it is too much.
You have to remember however is what that 1% brings to this game. The hardcore players are the ones buying the crafted gear, food, and potions, not the casual players so much. They are the ones making raid guides, how to's, and BiS theories that a lot of casual players follow. If SE truly believed they were not important, then raiding would not even be a thing to begin with. They would not of experiment as much as they did, they would just make Alexander on normal mode and that is that. SE does value that 1% in some form, they just have this belief that the raids have to have high clear rates as opposed to simply high activity.
The solution? to go back to COIL standards where there was one raid as a whole.
Scrap "Savage" mode for once and for all.
This is the reason they decided to add Normal Mode to begin with. The significant cost of developing an encounter is mainly in the art assets and animation modeling, and musical composition which in 2.0 was limited to just one difficulty of raids. The participation rates of the content (note: not completion rates) wasn't where they wanted it, and Yoshi mentioned that there was an internal discussion to not develop raids in Heavensward because much of the community didn't even try it out. On top of this, in 2.0 the raid was tied very closely with the story. So they decided to add a Normal Mode since it was content designed for anybody who queued to complete, and allowed them to justify the cost of developing it. Earlier this year he said (quote is on the first page with a source) that 50% of max-level players had completed Normal Mode and that they were very happy with that level of participation.
The main difference between WoW and FFXIV in development terms is that content balancing is developed for Savage and then scaled down (also linked with source on the first page). WoW develops Normal Mode balancing and scales up. There is something you need to understand when quoting development costs. Once the money is spent making an asset, it doesn't cost more to use it again. The idea that there is extra cost for another mode is a misnomer, you aren't paying for the same meal twice. They are justifying the cost of encounters for Normal Mode, which again, is the only reason they didn't decide get rid of raiding entirely in Heavensward.
Considering the whole bigger picture of it, they tuned everything for Savage from the beginning, and most groups can only really meet the checks of what would otherwise be Extreme/Hard to the rest of the 'story' versions, and that's probably only when they've achieved all top-end gear for that cycle. So now they have these tuned to what people can actually meet, and now you're going to have groups who have been conditioned to pushing to the limits who are able to down it far too easily. EDIT (in regards to what was posted above while composing my post): Whereas the 'story' versions also don't hold well as farmable content, and yet have taken the place of content we'd be up to farming otherwise, i.e. Trials with gear from their base versions or even just at least token drops like minions and such. And weapons, perhaps the more egregious form this issue has taken - 7 weeks of the final story raid to get your non-raiding weapon. And it still ties up your tomestones too. Comparing that to 2.x and also 3.0 where you had to spend 3 weeks getting it instead. So they've also taken this as a way of bottlenecking progress, and thus reducing participation further since people don't really want to have to bother with it and getting multiple weapons. So if they can't do that, if they can't also then do the next tiers of raid up because of a difficulty spike with no transition, will players stick around and keep paying for it? So this is probably part of their response to the drop-off.
All the more reason they need to ensure they have a strong core of devs who aren't going to be reallocated to other projects and make sure these are tuned viably, so it's not so ridiculously easy to push phases while also still being something that the playerbase isn't going to shy away or feel shunned from.
Or heck, do a three-tier thing. Don't even put new mechanics from Hard/Extreme to Savage, just increase the values of the boss. I know they keep saying they don't want to do this, but I think it's because they're over-complicating it with the assumption of having to do new mechanics for each tier. EDIT: This is also something WoW already does.
Actually, that isn't true. MrHappy has openly expressed enjoying this raid tier and outright said on his Twitch stream if they hadn't scaled Savage down to allow the raid scene a chance to recover, they wouldn't have one in 4.0. Mizzteq is midcore, and actually a victim of Gordias. She only managed a full clear after Midas dropped due to her static giving up. They are both the most well known and popular guide makers, and neither have any intention of leaving. Furthermore, Elysium and Angered have also said they liked The Creator. Can't get much more hardcore than World First players. And prior to 3.2, crafted gear was utterly worthless to raiders. It remained among the primary complaint of crafters, yet all of them made a profit. xAshe10x and Mithrie do guides on all level crafting. Both have made tons of profit outside the top tier crafts.
I never said the hardcore side isn't important, but you cannot cater to it when the vast majority of your audience has next to no interest in that content. Not when the statistics are so enormously one-sided. They attempted this for over a year, yet Savage clear rates remained abysmal. Hence why they are now attempting to make it midcore-esque. Whether they scaled Savage back too far is up for debate, but no, you aren't going to see guide markers or the market suffer even if they kept it exactly as is.
If this were true, we would already have three difficulties. Yoshi specifically cited costs and a lack of resources (in so many words) for the reason we don't. Bosses are all scripted, thus certain attacks follow a specific animations. I never said you couldn't reuse assets. I said not every asset is re-useable, thus necessitating new animations. If say, Sophia does a certain motion in extreme to provide a hint to her next mechanic, but that whole sequence isn't in normal. Then that animation is exclusively for extreme, and therefore, an extra cost. The order they develop it is irrelevant. They still had to do a separate animation at some point.
The FFXIV development team has shown that they prefer incrementalism, they tend not to make radical shifts in development practices on just any old patch. I think there's a chance for it in 4.0, but my theory is that 3.0 was the Normal Mode "experiment" to see if it was worth continuing. We'll just have to wait and see.
You are arguing something else entirely. The argument was the cost of adding tiers and the importance of hardcore players. I never brought up how they feel about this tier in particular.
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Also, most of us are aware as I said in previous posts/threads that 3.4's difficulty is the result of the team believing that the lv.60 rotation is too complicated and difficulty may be increased again depending on how battle classes are set up in 4.0. In actuality, Creator is probably the best midcore raid they have done this expansion. I do agree with the OP that gear scale and mechanic skipping should come into question and be taken in as feedback for 4.0 expansion. If SE took that feedback into consideration with 4.0 and add a Savage difficulty on top of that. That really is the best compromise the game can make.
One thing we do know is that SE knows player's thoughts on the raiding scene are very split. If he decides to try to make a compromise or simply decide to cater to one side only is something we have to wait till 4.0 to see. They at least acknowledge there is controversy.
Nice taking as an example wow devs team vs FF14, considering that the content there was beaten in mythic in 16h from release if I'm not wrong, I'm honestly curious what OP actually thinks about it
I feel pretty much the same way about it as I do this content. I think that it's not tuned properly whatsoever and the fact that the entire tier was over in 18 hours is pretty sad, that said, I'm not sure WoW has the same problems FFXIV has where you can prematurely push entire phases. If there's someone more familiar with the current WoW tier feel free to correct me.
Meanwhile, this is currently happening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osry...ature=youtu.be