FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

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Originally Posted by Zojha

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Gearing up from a raid does have a purpose though - preparing for the next raid.

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Originally Posted by dejavutwo

Gearing up from a raid does have a purpose though - preparing for the next raid.

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Unless they do something like they did this patch by outclassing all of last two patches best gear immediately with fairly easy to get and meldable crafted higher item level gear.

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Originally Posted by Toguro

Raid(Savage):
Allow this raid to be THE challenge that hardcores want. Keep that A3S funeral difficulty. Savage is Savage and the best can beat it. Lock behind Raid(Normal). Raiders would by now, have the gear necessary to fight and take on this challenge. But what good would it be if the rewards weren't good? A raid of this difficulty should noooot have expendable rewards... I think a good idea of a reward would be non-gear rewards. How about exclusive cool-looking glamour rewards. Make them lv1 so you can wear at anytime. Can drop glamour(including weapons), minions, mounts, music, furniture, haircuts...? etc, titles from achievements. Anything that can last forever. It better be good too. And please, pleeease make them a guaranteed drop. Example: Beat A8S, chest piece drops. But not one, no, 2 drop. As well as other things. No one in their right mind would want to blow the brains up trying to beat Savage for rewards with a 3% drop rate that's stupid. Make it 100%. Either make 2 of each drop or allow a few things to drop every time. No weekly lockout. That's dumb.

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For reference

Savage reward ideas

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Originally Posted by KrenianKandos

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%.

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And yet one could argue 5% of people liked Lord of Verminion. I know plenty who did. Your stance is to remove content that only a small portion of the population likes, but you could cherry pick most aspects of FFXIV in separated doses and those percentages wouldn't be high. How many people enjoy crafting, especially hardcore crafting? Probably within the 5-15% range-- equivalent to raiders. Should we remove it too because that clearly isn't catering to the majority interest?

Most MMOs are devised of small subgroups of players whose interests fall under certain areas. They won't like everything-- possibly not even half the overall content. But what they do like keeps them playing. If you start trying to only focus on one or two groups, you'll inevitably chase away far more players in the long run. Consider the implications no more raids would have. That impacts crafter since why bother buying expensive gear you'll never need? Dungeons may feel more repetitive because it's all we have from a gameplay perspective now. You can't simply look at raiding and say, "well, only x% actually do this. So we can cut it out with no harm done." I suspect you'd be very surprised how even fights like the extreme primals impact the game.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

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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I can't speak for everyone of course, but of the people I know both personally and among the Twitch channels I hang out in, Ravana, Thordan and Sephirot EX are all very popular.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

And yet one could argue 5% of people liked Lord of Verminion. I know plenty who did. Your stance is to remove content that only a small portion of the population likes, but you could cherry pick most aspects of FFXIV in separated doses and those percentages wouldn't be high. How many people enjoy crafting, especially hardcore crafting? Probably within the 5-15% range-- equivalent to raiders. Should we remove it too because that clearly isn't catering to the majority interest?

Most MMOs are devised of small subgroups of players whose interests fall under certain areas. They won't like everything-- possibly not even half the overall content. But what they do like keeps them playing. If you start trying to only focus on one or two groups, you'll inevitably chase away far more players in the long run. Consider the implications no more raids would have. That impacts crafter since why bother buying expensive gear you'll never need? Dungeons may feel more repetitive because it's all we have from a gameplay perspective now. You can't simply look at raiding and say, "well, only x% actually do this. So we can cut it out with no harm done." I suspect you'd be very surprised how even fights like the extreme primals impact the game..

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Pardon me, but I have never once said for them to remove raiding. At all. I understand there is a request for raiding and I'm fine with that. What I stated is that I wish they would realize that raiding is not the end all, be all of endgame. That's all. And the fact that there is a small percentage of raiders proves that the main core of the players does not think raiding is worth it, fun, or a useful place to sink their time in.

5% for LoV is very very generous. I would say less than that. Far less. I have absolutely NO idea where LoV came out of, really. Like I said previously, I think it was some sort of April Fools joke that people actually said "Yeah, that looks cool." Every time I go on Sargatanas and in the LoV area, it's pretty empty. As in, barely anyone in there playing. I'd be surprised if I've seen 5 people in that area any given night.

Your post is set in the manner that I stated to remove raiding. I never said that. I fully understand that the raiding scene is still prominent. But it is dying. It's not as popular as it was in the past, and that's because of a number of reasons. All I ask is for more endgame and not always raids. Be interesting with your endgame. Not just the standard "Raids raids and more raids!"

Palace of the Dead is a good step, if they don't Diadem it. We'll see if that will sate me. I'm cautiously optimistic.

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Originally Posted by KrenianKandos

Pardon me, but I have never once said for them to remove raiding. At all. I understand there is a request for raiding and I'm fine with that. What I stated is that I wish they would realize that raiding is not the end all, be all of endgame. That's all. And the fact that there is a small percentage of raiders proves that the main core of the players does not think raiding is worth it, fun, or a useful place to sink their time in.

5% for LoV is very very generous. I would say less than that. Far less. I have absolutely NO idea where LoV came out of, really. Like I said previously, I think it was some sort of April Fools joke that people actually said "Yeah, that looks cool." Every time I go on Sargatanas and in the LoV area, it's pretty empty. As in, barely anyone in there playing. I'd be surprised if I've seen 5 people in that area any given night.

Your post is set in the manner that I stated to remove raiding. I never said that. I fully understand that the raiding scene is still prominent. But it is dying. It's not as popular as it was in the past, and that's because of a number of reasons. All I ask is for more endgame and not always raids. Be interesting with your endgame. Not just the standard "Raids raids and more raids!"

Palace of the Dead is a good step, if they don't Diadem it. We'll see if that will sate me. I'm cautiously optimistic.

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You did say "branch away," which does imply patch cycles shouldn't necessarily include raiding. Or at least such was my interpretation. Seems I was mistaken. :)

Nevertheless, my point remains. Saying raiding makes up a small amount is a bit disingenuous. All content does if you divvy it up into small doses. Crafting, gathering, dungeons, roleplay, raiding, socializing, exploration, achievements... all of these on their own probably don't garner high percentages anymore than raids. Sure, there is cross over but that sill wouldn't amount to much. So in a sense, you could lump them together just as easily and say "90% don't care about crafting."

I very much disagree. Gordias caused a slow spell that hasn't quite recovered because of how tuned it was. And if we're being honest, I doubt Savage is all that difficult to make as it's essentially tweaks to normal mode, which is popular. That being said, I do think FFXIV should try other content. We need a midcore that isn't necessarily just primal fights. So here's hoping Palace of the Dead, Aquapolis and Deep Dungeon (3.5) lay out the ground work.

I'm sure this is an old argument, but I feel it's relevance still stands strong. Why can't we have real raids where we actually raid a place? Could you have imagined if we had used dungeons to prepare ourselves gear wise for say raiding Castrum Meridium. That to me was closer to an actual raid especially if you have ever done it at minimum ilvl. Have multiple paths involved with different loot down different paths making it so your group orientation determined which paths you take. Knowing if you had a DRG and a SMN, there was a section where you had to go to get gear for them(making nap exploration more important in the beginning). Though it wouldn't be a 100% drop of course. Heavily guarded by intelligent trash or a mini boss. With a timer that actually made it about the choices you made until your gear was better at which point you could even consider approaching the final boss.

Or imagine Alexander condensed into one raid opening up the environment for exploration instead of a linear path leading to each sections boss. Raids now are literally just trials with trash.

Or as another example imagine diadem being an island hopping raid, eventually culminating in going into those caves to get to the final boss.

there is no trash in savage , outside the 1 turn ...but thats a dps check

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

there is no trash in savage , outside the 1 turn ...but thats a dps check

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I was speaking about raids as a whole, not just savage. I don't believe I used the word savage at all.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

You did say "branch away," which does imply patch cycles shouldn't necessarily include raiding. Or at least such was my interpretation. Seems I was mistaken. :)
Nevertheless, my point remains. Saying raiding makes up a small amount is a bit disingenuous. All content does if you divvy it up into small doses. Crafting, gathering, dungeons, roleplay, raiding, socializing, exploration, achievements... all of these on their own probably don't garner high percentages anymore than raids. Sure, there is cross over but that sill wouldn't amount to much. So in a sense, you could lump them together just as easily and say "90% don't care about crafting."

I very much disagree. Gordias caused a slow spell that hasn't quite recovered because of how tuned it was. And if we're being honest, I doubt Savage is all that difficult to make as it's essentially tweaks to normal mode, which is popular. That being said, I do think FFXIV should try other content. We need a midcore that isn't necessarily just primal fights. So here's hoping Palace of the Dead, Aquapolis and Deep Dungeon (3.5) lay out the ground work.

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No worries; perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my previous posts in regards to my stance. I believe that raids do have a place in an MMO; they have been a staple for years now. But I think it's time they start looking at other forms of endgame because the raiding style of endgame is becoming tedious for myself and many others I've spoken to. While I understand the whole idea of having raids every cycle, I disagree. Make a raid for those who want it, but each cycle should differ with the content added. While it would make raiders more annoyed with the fact they only have the same content, perhaps the gear would stay more viable and be less of a tiresome experience as it stays relevant longer? I think FFXIV has raiding going through its demise due to how good they're with pushing content out every 3-4 months. It shows the vertical progression problem for a company that can actually chug out content like they do.

The problem is that the only endgame progression in the game, at this time, is raiding. Period. There's nothing else unless you want to play another class and complete all the classes. The only progression other than raiding is the relic/anima quests and I'm forever grateful for that. But I'd like more. And Palace of the Dead seems to be a good step. Diadem could have been a good step but was completely and badly handled. I think a lot of us who don't raid want another alternative in the game instead of their general focus of chugging 8/24 man raids.

My argument is that raiding isn't working well because of two things:

1) They chug so much content out that vertical progression weaknesses is showing up their ugly heads and people feel like they honestly don't need to bash their heads in content to them, feels harder, for such little upgrades/rewards they could get later on.

2) The content itself isn't fun. At all. Gordias and Midas aren't fun story wise for a lot of us and some of us get pulled by the story. That's why we're content with storymode and that's it.

There's just a lot of weird little things that FF does right but kinda breaks the mold of raiding. That's why I'm thinking it's time for them to look at other stuff. I will always agree that there is place for raiding in an MMORPG. But I feel like it's high time they explore other avenues and I'm hoping PofD is a good start.

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Originally Posted by KrenianKandos

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.

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I don't know if only 5% of the community engaging in Savage raiding is seen as a problem with raiding by those people because that's pretty much the expected level of engagement with organized raiding (both in previous tiers in FFXIV, and in other MMOs, like WoW).

It's a problem with FFXIV's end game (and, again, also WoW's end game in Warlords of Draenor, which is a factor in their nose-diving subscription numbers over the course of the expansion) that organized raiding is the only meaningful end game, but that's not necessarily a problem with raiding itself.

If that makes sense.

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Originally Posted by KrenianKandos

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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I think the number of raiders who'd complain about having more variety (possibly even at the expense of raids, if it was suitably rewarding/engaging content) is an extremely niche group. I know I was excited for Diadem (prior to its sub-par implementation), and I'm very eager to see what Palace of the Dead has to offer.

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Originally Posted by Kerrigen

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.

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Probably the biggest hiderance to PUGs in top tier raiding is the number of mechanics that require between one and eight members of the raid to execute them where a single failure by any person results in a raid wipe (either instantly or simply because it becomes near-impossible to recover).

A lot of those mechanics aren't all that challenging to execute correctly (e.g. High/Low Arithmeticks and Height), but the fact that they require perfect execution every time is always going to be a significant road block to PUGs because there's no long-term accountability to the rest of the group.

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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. 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.

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It might be just a semantic difference, but I think it's less that people got worse and more that the minimum bar for performance for most classes was raised significantly.

Say I'm capable of juggling batons and one day someone asks me to do it while riding a unicycle. Or to juggle chainsaws instead. If I struggle with one of those, I didn't get worse at juggling, I just had to juggle under more difficult circumstances.

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Originally Posted by Kaizencorr

I was speaking about raids as a whole, not just savage. I don't believe I used the word savage at all.

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i dont consider raiding Alex normal nor Void ark :P

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

i dont consider raiding Alex normal nor Void ark :P

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The game does though.

I don't know if only 5% of the community raid, but if it were removed, I'd be fairly certain those people would just leave the game entirely. It is the only challenging content that exists at the moment.

I don't know anyone in their right mind that classes Void Ark as raid, I think it is fairly safe to assume that when most people talk about raid they are referring to Midas Savage

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I don't know anyone in their right mind that classes Void Ark as raid, I think it is fairly safe to assume that when most people talk about raid they are referring to Midas Savage

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It is a raid, but not a "raid." Most people associate raiding with progression endgame content, and Void Ark feels more like a catch-up system than an actual form of progression endgame.

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Originally Posted by randysquirrel

I don't know if only 5% of the community raid, but if it were removed, I'd be fairly certain those people would just leave the game entirely. It is the only challenging content that exists at the moment.

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It depends on what they used those resources for. If they could create an alternate form of challenging content, it's possible they could keep some portion of the raiders, while also providing content for people who would enjoy challenging content but may not enjoy the raiding format.

Not to mention that if raiding is the only thing you're playing FFXIV for, you're probably playing the wrong game in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

i dont consider raiding Alex normal nor Void ark :P

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So anything that more than 5% of the population can do isn't a raid.

Sounds legit. *sideeye*

I think truthfully id just rather have seperated servers, an easy server and a hard server. Both with the same progression paths, except one is hard and the other with +500% xp and just hands out free 240s for logging in. Then people can choose what they want when they build their character. Instead of constantly nerfing everything to try and keep the casuals happy. I would be a lot more motivated to play longer hours and do hard content if i was on a server where the only way to gear up is to do hard stuff.

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

I think truthfully id just rather have seperated servers, an easy server and a hard server. Both with the same progression paths, except one is hard and the other just hands out free 240s for logging in. Then people can choose what they want when they build their character. Instead of constantly nerfing everything to try and keep the casuals happy. I would be a lot more motivated to play and do hard content if i was on a server where the only way to gear up is to do hard stuff.

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And when you die, you have to start a new character - no reviving!

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

And when you die, you have to start a new character - no reviving!

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Don't forget the global free for all PvP.

Similar to what people have said here, I have posted this ages ago:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...misconceptions

Alex savage has been some of the worst designed raiding I have ever seen in any game.

What rewards are there for savage raiding? In all honesty, the only rewards are a small vanity item (mount, pet, soon to be a title) and dyable alex gear.

Raiders get no epic story that builds up with every fight you down.
Raiders get no BiS advantage for the next raid tier.
If your group is good enough, you can get 240 before the 3.3 patch. You only have to look through this thread to see many raid teams will not see a midan gob dip or twine before 3.3.

Honestly, it just feeeeels so good to be right! Alex savage raiding has dumpster-ed the raiding community.

No one wanted to do SCoB savage for vanity rewards. What a surprise that a similar reward system did not pan out for raiding in 3.x

You know why LFR works in WoW? Because raiders get showered in amazing rewards that FFXIV has yet to touch.

The ilvl difference in wow raiding gear is superior.
The aesthetics for mythic gear are much more distinct than the lfg gear.
Each wow raid tier comes with multiple mounts, titles, achievements (esp for accomplishing harder feats mid fight), epic BoEs, rare crafting materials).
Wow raids usually incorporate the legendary weapon into the raiding scheme (including LFR so more casual players can complete the quest).

No one wants to raid in this game because sinking 40+ hours into a fight like a4s or a8s to get glamour rewards just aint worth it. You can show up 6 months later, mop up the entire raid tier with 100000% echo and get all the rewards for a fraction of the work.

And don't even get me started on the dev team themselves not being able to beat a4s in it's entirety before releasing it. How does a Dev team think that's a good call? SE, can you use some of that cash shop money to hire decent play testers to vet your fights properly? Looking at how a6s was mismanaged, something tells me the dev team learned very little from gordias.

I predicted the current state of raiding and I can tell you this much: raiding will be dead in this game after the first patch of the next expansion. Raiding needs better rewards (weapons effects, making BiS useful for the next tier, a much higher ilvl in contrast to non-raiding gear), normal mode should come out a few weeks after savage (just like LFR in wow), and ffs can we get enviroments that actually feel like raids again? T1/T3 FELT more like a raid environment than any turn in coil or any floor in alex. This square/circle arena FOR EVERY SINGLE ENCOUNTER gets to be old fast.

I said this countless times in my previous thread, you only need to look at LOTRO to see what happens to a game when the raiding community gets snubbed/dies. So, unless you want this game to becomes the next LOTRO, I suggest that raiding incentives and design be overhauled for the last installment of alex.

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Originally Posted by zosia

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Itemization, special stats, special effects, special weaponskills that you could unlock by raiding, and higher ilvl would definitely give more incentive for raiding. Also, they should completely remove the normal mode, get a better design for the gear on savage, and a better and more immersive story.

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Originally Posted by zosia

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You know as well as I do that kind of exclusivity (and the mentality that comes with it, from the tone of your post) makes MMOs less attractive than they can be (FFXI proved that about as clearly as any).

All this silly talk about segregating servers for "hardcore" players (quotes due to players talking loud and saying nothing) and/or asking for item level differences that would eclipse non-raiders to the point of irreparable game imbalance needs to stop. SE really would shoot themselves in the foot catering to such a small group of players who, in all truth, want to let everyone else know that they're special snowflakes and the rest of us are not.

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Originally Posted by Melch

Itemization, special stats, special effects, special weaponskills that you could unlock by raiding, and higher ilvl would definitely give more incentive for raiding. Also, they should completely remove the normal mode, get a better design for the gear on savage, and a better and more immersive story.

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I'd love special effects/stats like tier pieces in WoW

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Originally Posted by Hayward

You know as well as I do that kind of exclusivity (and the mentality that comes with it, from the tone of your post) makes MMOs less attractive than they can be (FFXI proved that about as clearly as any).

All this silly talk about segregating servers for "hardcore" players (quotes due to players talking loud and saying nothing) and/or asking for item level differences that would eclipse non-raiders to the point of irreparable game imbalance needs to stop. SE really would shoot themselves in the foot catering to such a small group of players who, in all truth, want to let everyone else know that they're special snowflakes and the rest of us are not.

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I think this is the crux of the problem. Is the SE devs can't implement good rewards for doing difficult content, because the people that can't do/ don't like difficult content will feel left out. So the only way I see anything working is to have servers with different difficulty settings, similar to an offline game. Instead of nerfing the game for everyone they can just nerf it for the people that wan't easy/story mode. Blizzard has even tossed around the idea of having "pristine" servers for WoW after losing 1/2 thier subs and having to shut down Nostalrius. Then the people that don't want to hit max level in 2 days and want more difficult 4 man content ect, can have that. And the casual players can also get what they want. I'm definately not a hardcore raider. But with all the nerfs they did in 3.0, I feel like this game has gotten significantly easier since 2.0. I really don't want to see this trend continue. I am just not interested in that.

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Originally Posted by Kaizencorr

I'm sure this is an old argument, but I feel it's relevance still stands strong. Why can't we have real raids where we actually raid a place? Could you have imagined if we had used dungeons to prepare ourselves gear wise for say raiding Castrum Meridium. That to me was closer to an actual raid especially if you have ever done it at minimum ilvl.

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Because Alex NM exists for the casuals. I've been called many names because I firmly believe the story is something to be earnt, not given away freely in a faceroll forgettable dungeon. If people want to experience the story without doing the hardwork, youtube it or watch a stream of a cleared group. No incentive means no work.

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Originally Posted by KrenianKandos

No worries; perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my previous posts in regards to my stance. I believe that raids do have a place in an MMO; they have been a staple for years now. But I think it's time they start looking at other forms of endgame because the raiding style of endgame is becoming tedious for myself and many others I've spoken to. While I understand the whole idea of having raids every cycle, I disagree. Make a raid for those who want it, but each cycle should differ with the content added. While it would make raiders more annoyed with the fact they only have the same content, perhaps the gear would stay more viable and be less of a tiresome experience as it stays relevant longer? I think FFXIV has raiding going through its demise due to how good they're with pushing content out every 3-4 months. It shows the vertical progression problem for a company that can actually chug out content like they do.

The problem is that the only endgame progression in the game, at this time, is raiding. Period. There's nothing else unless you want to play another class and complete all the classes. The only progression other than raiding is the relic/anima quests and I'm forever grateful for that. But I'd like more. And Palace of the Dead seems to be a good step. Diadem could have been a good step but was completely and badly handled. I think a lot of us who don't raid want another alternative in the game instead of their general focus of chugging 8/24 man raids.

My argument is that raiding isn't working well because of two things:

1) They chug so much content out that vertical progression weaknesses is showing up their ugly heads and people feel like they honestly don't need to bash their heads in content to them, feels harder, for such little upgrades/rewards they could get later on.

2) The content itself isn't fun. At all. Gordias and Midas aren't fun story wise for a lot of us and some of us get pulled by the story. That's why we're content with storymode and that's it.

There's just a lot of weird little things that FF does right but kinda breaks the mold of raiding. That's why I'm thinking it's time for them to look at other stuff. I will always agree that there is place for raiding in an MMORPG. But I feel like it's high time they explore other avenues and I'm hoping PofD is a good start.

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I do feel some form of hybrid horizontal progression could benefit the game. Perhaps gear that boosts abilities by 3-5% or slightly speeds up cooldowns just to offer a little change in flavour. Although that wouldn't help mitigate the feeling of running the same content over and over again. A personal gripe is how short the story has been. 3.1 lasted maybe 90 minutes or so?

In a strange way, I actually like the idea of LoV in theory. If they streamlined it into an almost Pokemon style mini-game where you could "level" your minions it might have worked. Diadem fell into a similar problem with them not really knowing what to do with it. There is still some potential, but it needs a full overhaul. Way I would like to see it handled is a more meaningful sense of exploration. Hell, toss in some fanservice like us getting to see bits of other Final Fantasy worlds. And make it so enemies scale based on the amount of people actually fighting them.

They seem to be exploring other avenues. We'll have to wait and see whether this attempt turns out better than LoV and Diadem. It really needs to for them to keep the whole variety MMO theme going.

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Originally Posted by zosia

snip

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Wow...one of the best posts I've seen in a long time. Nailed it totally..and yeah, it is already dying and will continue to die if they do not wake up and do something. But you know SE...they only do things when the subs drop severely (look at 1.0) lol

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Originally Posted by Hayward

SE really would shoot themselves in the foot catering to such a small group of players who, in all truth, want to let everyone else know that they're special snowflakes and the rest of us are not.

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Thats what they have already done.
We had Coil, then they made some interviews and asked players about "changes" and we got alexander.
The Problem was that they listened to the wrong group of players which resulted in very long living raid groups to disband.
They have seen the damage output of server first groups and recalculated enrage timers and mechanics.
I will not go that far and say coil was easier, but lets compare it with dancing:
It feels as if alexander needs a lot more steps with a much higher frequency than what we had to dance in coil...

Dunno what changed , maybe is the new mentality or the new generations , but i remember playing Eq and watching a High lvl Magician in awe because he had an awesome staff and a cool pet , same goes for FFXI/eq2/ect , i remember watching High lvl players with that awesome armors , and thinking i will strive for that! , it helped newbies , or fresh high lvls, now ppl watch geared players as scum that only want to show off and be "special snowflakes"....if u have something rare or something cool is normal wanting to show it off , we do it on RL too....what i have doesnt make what u have less important , and there is nothing in this game that u cant get if u work for it ....

if u dont give meaninfull rewards for the HARDEST content ingame ....then u are doing no favor to your playerbase.

Raiding have issues , and one of them is casuals not even WANTING to attemp raiding , why should do they? , there is no carrot on the stick ,only the same gear as normal but dyable? meh , all that time wasted , all that gil invested (food potions , raiding time , wiping , repairs) ....and for what?

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

i remember watching High lvl players with that awesome armors , and thinking i will strive for that!

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I dont usually care who has what but oh boy when i first saw Warglaives in TBC, i was like "whoooaaa! what are those! D:" then googled and found out that those drops from lastboss from last raid instance so my "fate" was sealed on that moment, fast forward 1.5 years and there i was standing next to Illidans corpse and i must say feeling was something i propably never will feel again eventho Warglaives never dropped for me after countless kills.

I feel sorry for yonger players because feelings like those are next to impossible to get nowdays, it was insanely epic journey that i will never forget specially when i did it with awesome peoples.

Would much prefer if they went for more bosses over making a midcore difficulty. With more bosses the developers would keep the total completion time for the raid the same but to fit more bosses in that time they would reduce the difficulty of each boss thus making it more accessible and having no need for a midcore difficulty. This would benefit more players as they would experience a greater variety/creativity in the raid overall.

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

Dunno what changed , maybe is the new mentality or the new generations , but i remember playing Eq and watching a High lvl Magician in awe because he had an awesome staff and a cool pet , same goes for FFXI/eq2/ect , i remember watching High lvl players with that awesome armors , and thinking i will strive for that!

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For the generation that played XI, EQ - we were younger and fresh to the mmo scene. For the most recent generation, they don't know what they're missing because the scene has changed. Taking years to obtain a rare set of armor became two to three months before its do it again city. Its hard to be fond of items that change often so the connection between labor and gear is lost. Now its about the raid in itself that is supposed to keep people going, but look where we are. I could say the novelty kept me subscribed for more years than XIV's had patch cycles but it won't give you 5 million subscribers, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

I do feel some form of hybrid horizontal progression could benefit the game. Perhaps gear that boosts abilities by 3-5% or slightly speeds up cooldowns just to offer a little change in flavour. Although that wouldn't help mitigate the feeling of running the same content over and over again. A personal gripe is how short the story has been. 3.1 lasted maybe 90 minutes or so?

In a strange way, I actually like the idea of LoV in theory. If they streamlined it into an almost Pokemon style mini-game where you could "level" your minions it might have worked. Diadem fell into a similar problem with them not really knowing what to do with it. There is still some potential, but it needs a full overhaul. Way I would like to see it handled is a more meaningful sense of exploration. Hell, toss in some fanservice like us getting to see bits of other Final Fantasy worlds. And make it so enemies scale based on the amount of people actually fighting them.

They seem to be exploring other avenues. We'll have to wait and see whether this attempt turns out better than LoV and Diadem. It really needs to for them to keep the whole variety MMO theme going.

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Instead of content in the form of dungeons and raids, I would love to see Merit points or quests in order to heighten your skills to do something similar to your idea of horizontal progression.

So follow me on this:

Next expansion, you get quests that allow you to do epic adventures. These adventures allow you to learn something in a new form of experience bar, and when you hit the experience bar max, your skill 'heightens' to a new ability or a new addition to the skill. You could get one of three choices that allows you to change your playstyle a bit.

So as I play a Dark Knight, let's go with Souleater, one of the key attacks. This could then branch off to three things:

Souleater 1) Damage multiplier goes up to x%, a flat dps increase for people who want the easy way.

Souleater 2) Health restoration skill is active even outside of Grit, giving a constant heal to the class no matter what they're doing.

Souleater 3) Adds a debuff effect to the Souleater attack of a main stat.


Something in that regards. Furthermore, that would allow horizontal progression as your skills don't go up in power due to your gear, but with other methods of endgame progression to maximize your character.

See? Something as simple as allowing skill growth would greatly change endgame components and allow flexibility in your classes to do multiple things. You'd make different classes do different things no matter what. Of course, this would come back to people who min/max and make it so that you pretty much are stuck wanting to maximize their potential, but it still allows people to benefit and choose three unique skills to tailor their needs and wants.


A skill progression endgame is a lot more interesting, to me, than a gear progression. You build the bar up, then do some epic quest to 'unlock' the skill. Then you can add onto this some more.

This serves two purposes too: 1) removes the need to add extra abilities every expansion because of skill bloat; in my opinion, we are already there. 2) Allows another form of progression instead of gear/raid.

This would come with a catch though: people who raid will feel like they have to do this progression to maximize their potential. Which is a fair argument for those who 'just' want to raid. But either way, raiders and hardcore raiders at that will maximize their potential so i don't see it as much of an issue.



This is just one simple example where we are going 'away' from vertical progression such as raids and ilvls and gear and offering a different, horizontal dimension to the game. And it isn't something that is really seen in the current MMO genre. I doubt some people would like this as it sounds too much like 'Light' grinding but you can't just do quests all the time either and stick it with raiding like we did with the Zenith weapon. Some people don't want to raid.

So, this allows everyone to do their own thing and still feel like their character has room to grow, without the absolute need of raiding. Some people can do the gear, others can expand on their skills and make their characters even more potent in certain areas.



For LoV, I would have preferred a simple, straight up Pokemon like fight with skills. I like the idea they tried to do things differently but I didn't really care for a strategy based game where you send minions to destroy buildings as a goal. The allure of Pokemon was to be able to level said creatures and get new skills. While that would have taken a lot more work on the devs' part, it would have been pretty neat. I don't hate it but I don't really care for LoV.



I hope that if they decide to reintroduce Diadem, that they take the first part of the mission objective and expand on it: Make it a 60 or 90 minute of objectives and goals to explore and delve into the caves and the surroundings. Let us explore the area, like it should have been, and give us goals and achievements. The faster we complete the goals, the more rewards at the end. This would allow a speed run to happen and challenges in order to get better rewards that way. That way, people who don't want to spend 90 minutes doing their stuff can leave.

So you tier it:

Your minimum requirements to get tomes/min items is this this and this.

And then you have bonus objectives that add to tome amounts + items and increase the chance of getting a rare item the more time you're there. This would push people to explore and be in the area because they simply just can't afk and not explore for 90 minutes; they have objectives that add to the rank system.

So make it LIKE a rank system:

C - Mininum
B - 1 bonus done
A - 2
AA - 3
AAA - 4
S - 5+

I dunno, I'm just shooting off ideas here. Some might be hated, others loved, but still. The essence is to show that there is SO MUCH MORE they can do instead of what they've delivered us, and this is just me brainstorming!

I think people raid for the wrong reasons. It's less about gear that will be replaced soon or how fast you complete content and more about that fun you have when your running it with a cool group of people. Wiping, making jokes, wiping, improving, WIPING. and that awesome feeling of accomplishment and comradery when you clear difficult content together. Yeah man. That's what it's all about.

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Originally Posted by Zenji

I think people raid for the wrong reasons. It's less about gear that will be replaced soon or how fast you complete content and more about that fun you have when your running it with a cool group of people. Wiping, making jokes, wiping, improving, WIPING. and that awesome feeling of accomplishment and comradery when you clear difficult content together. Yeah man. That's what it's all about.

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Problem is, people like this are too rare. The vast majority of the game is complete face roll, the only time you have to perform at the peak is Savage content.

Intangible rewards like heightened rotation skills, raid awareness, improved communication protocols are not as valued, thus the raid community becomes tiny and cannot sustain itself.

The problem with this entire game's structure in general is that they do not remotely attempt to balance Casual, Midcore, and Hardcore playstyles. All three need to be in a healthy state for an MMO to be successful in the long run. Right now the one taking the beating is the midcore audience, which is actually a decent amount of players. Currently the content midcore have is one primal, and Savage raiding. It is debatable rather if Midas(Savage) is considered hardcore content, but currently midcore groups are hitting walls and quitting similar to the first tier of raids.

It is sad that SE believes that a story mode for casual players was much more important than making balanced content for midcore/hardcore players in the -one- piece of content in the game that is actually challenging. You can bring the pitchforks at me if you want, but story mode should of had no priority over making a Coils level difficulty raid tier and a Savage mode one. Similar to how 2nd Coil worked. Actually, 2nd Coil did it almost completely right. All they needed to do was put actual better gear in and more people would of been influenced to take it on.

I am not necessarily saying that a Story mode shouldn't exist, despite not liking the concept of it. However, this is content built in the mind for midcore/hardcore players and they should of been catered to first before casuals were. Sorry casuals, but you own 95% of the game, I think you would live if you have to wait for an echo buff to beat the content for the story. You dealt with it before, you can now. There has to be a balance in end game content, and right now it is broken.

Feels pointless saying all of this however. SE is intent on keeping this imbalanced structure going and making sure each piece of content in this game has a hold-my-hand mode to the players who cannot feel compelled to hit anything more than one button. They need to better manage their resources.

Of course I will get the incoming, "Casuals have the right to get all the story the game has." I will argue that you shouldn't get everything handed to you on a silver platter, even if it is story content. Coil's story to many was a major reward in completing the content. Even myself, I cared more about what happens next and farming gear as a secondary thing. You can either do two things. One, wait till the content is accessible enough with gear/echo to take it on. Two, you can watch it on YouTube, assuming it doesn't "ruin your immersion."

Again, I am not saying casual content should not exist, and it is understandable it is the majority of content. However, when you do add the challenging content in, you really need to make it count and not cater to the casual side UNLESS you can manage resources for three modes.

Since everything I said above won't happen because SE does not know how to balance anything right, can you at least add achievements in Savage for doing content in a certain specific way like WoW does? Something for people closer to max ilvl. Something that makes them change strategies around to earn the achievements. Can reward things like mounts, minions, titles, etc. Something to show bragging rights. Oh wait never mind, can't reward those things or you will make the casuals angry. Well scrap that idea, because if the casuals are not happy about it, it is a no go.

tl;dr - The balance of casual, midcore, and hardcore content in this game is horrible.

On a semi-related note, I've been thinking about this more and more recently.

I think the Midas model was a great one time thing, but if this continues it's going to be absolutely terrible and put raiding in an even worse spot than it was in Gordias.

Mainly, I'm talking about how gordias savage gear was made useless the INSTANT the patch dropped. What was even the point for getting it then? In coil, you would use that gear to move on to the next. This makes raiding feel even more pointless and will make even less people do it.

It's just...weird. Why can't we go back to the Coil model? Surely they can see that people were happier then. All putting in an easy mode did was hurt the raid scene, and even though I made millions off of it, having crafted gear be better than the previous tier the instant the next section comes out just isn't healthy. Maybe delay the crafted gear a month or two, and make it so there's only one mid-core difficulty again. (This would give them more time to put content in other places as well, maybe give us 3 dungeons in EX roulette again?)

In regards to the gear...I don't really care if it performs better than the faceroll tome gear after the catch-up period is over, but by god it sure better LOOK better than the same gear that people can get for semi-afking a dungeon a day for 20 minutes 6 days out of the week.

Second Coil was the best example of this, IMO. All the gear was so superbly designed and different from other gear...you really stood out wearing it. Right now all my raiding friends are wearing glamour of actual cool stuff over their Midas Savage gear, which is just sad.