The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

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Originally Posted by Alahra

On the flip side, midcore players won't "step up" to content that's too challenging (which is what we've seen with Savage) the same way that hardcore ones will "step down" to content that's less challenging than they would like (as long as, again, it's still challenging enough)..

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I think you'd be surprised to find how many "mid core" and even "casual" players would actually step up to more difficult and challenging content IF they felt the rewards were truly worthwhile. this is why I say motivation is more of a problem than difficulty.

Again COP was an example of this. there were many complaints of it being too difficult but at the same time it was content that many people persevered with and eventually overcame. because the rewards for making progress were epic.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I think you'd be surprised to find how many "mid core" and even "casual" players would actually step up to more difficult and challenging content IF they felt the rewards were truly worthwhile. this is why I say motivation is more of a problem than difficulty.

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I wouldn't disagree with that—I started Coil even though I'm historically a non-raider for glamour (well, at the time it was just vanity—glamour didn't exist yet, but I wanted the healer shoes from T2) of all things. Motivation is great, but the game's structure really doesn't allow for them to make the raids any more rewarding than they already are—they already offer the highest level gear in the game and they're going to continue to do so, I'm sure.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

For people who didn't do coil even when it was DF accessible, it's a different problem altogether; Why were they not doing coil despite it being accessible on DF with echo (which essentially trivializes the fight)? .

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Echo and nerfs certainly made most turns DF friendly.
My sticking points were with t5 and t9 which remained giant brick walls for quite some time as echo did nothing to help with things like divebombs and the mechanic was never adjusted to my knowledge.

A few of my friends were unwilling to try coil at all until we could undersize it in Heavensward since they were afraid of screwing up with people they didn't know.
I myself know how terrible it feels to be the cause of a group's failure but my desire to see the story made me willing to try every now and then.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

You should focus more on making an actual argument instead of trying to point out how I phrased it.

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What is there to argue? I assumed you were using the normal definition of common sense, which made it sound like you were trying to claim what you were saying was a fact. You've clarified that you weren't, and that you were actually just asserting an opinion. I'm not going to tell you your opinion is wrong, even if I have a different one.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

I doubt this made much of a difference. If all of my SMN stats were made to INT equivalents using stat weights - I had with my 200 eso weapon 3404 INT. With my Relic, I am at 3445. Thordan EX would have been about half way in between. That 40 INT gain to my relic is roughly a 1% increase in INT, and has indeed given me about a 1% increase in DPS - from 1333 to 1343 on my dummy parse. The issue is that all stats, including weapon damage and main stat, are becoming less important with each gear step (diminishing returns and all).

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Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was thinking less in terms of the actual contribution from the weapons themselves (though that's obviously a factor) and more that Thordan Ex requires more coordination than A1S or A2S, but less than A3S, so it could have functioned as a stepping stone in terms of actual fight difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Again COP was an example of this. there were many complaints of it being too difficult but at the same time it was content that many people persevered with and eventually overcame. because the rewards for making progress were epic.

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CoP was in kind of a weird place anyway. A lot of the difficulty was due to the content being level capped, and people lacking appropriate gear because of inventory or resource limitations.

The lack of balance between FFXI's jobs could also be very significant. My static had problems on very different fights than most groups, due to our composition lacking jobs with high burst damage. We cleared the first airship battle, with Omega and Ultima, in a single attempt, but were stuck on Tenzen for quite some time. We eventually beat it by having me tank it as thief, using Perfect Dodge to make his weapon skills miss and delay Cosmic Elucidation, giving us enough time to make it through.

Even looking at the Promyvion fights, many players got through them by taking summoners and rangers as the only damage sources, because their high damage two hour abilities let you get through the much more deadly low HP component of the fight much faster. For some people, perseverance was simply leveling up a job that made it easier.

There's not really anything similar available in FFXIV, because no composition change is going to make your group significantly stronger.

I'm also not sure that any of the fights in CoP required the same level of coordination that most of the raid encounters in FFXIV do.

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Originally Posted by Ibi

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was thinking less in terms of the actual contribution from the weapons themselves (though that's obviously a factor) and more that Thordan Ex requires more coordination than A1S or A2S, but less than A3S, so it could have functioned as a stepping stone in terms of actual fight difficulty.

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Ahhh that makes sense. In fact, that is the line of thinking our static is using. We're hoping to down A2S soon (nearly there, but one member's motherboard went and it's slowed us a little), and then we're on to Thordan EX before tackling A3S.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I think you'd be surprised to find how many "mid core" and even "casual" players would actually step up to more difficult and challenging content IF they felt the rewards were truly worthwhile. this is why I say motivation is more of a problem than difficulty.

Again COP was an example of this. there were many complaints of it being too difficult but at the same time it was content that many people persevered with and eventually overcame. because the rewards for making progress were epic.

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I definitely agree with this. Our FC is more on the mid-core side, and it took us right up to Heavensward to do it, but we eventually cleared every turn in Coil because it felt like a real accomplishment. Everyone wanted to do it for different reasons - some for the story, some to farm Dreadwyrm gear out of FCoB, and some simply for the achievements/title/minion and prestige.

But that same feeling just isn't there for Alexander. Something is definitely missing.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I think you'd be surprised to find how many "mid core" and even "casual" players would actually step up to more difficult and challenging content IF they felt the rewards were truly worthwhile. this is why I say motivation is more of a problem than difficulty.

Again COP was an example of this. there were many complaints of it being too difficult but at the same time it was content that many people persevered with and eventually overcame. because the rewards for making progress were epic.

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It would still very likely be a small percentage of the playerbase. If we look at WoW which probably has one of the most comprehensive systems for raiding, even with unique gearsets with special animations, titles, mounts and highest stat gear, only a small percentage of the playerbase actually got anywhere with mythic difficulty while it was relevant. That trend tends to be the same across all games with multi tier raiding or content with a higher difficulty level.

People are not enjoying this mindless grind where you are a sheep grinding for stuff thats going to be useless around the corner and then you repeat the process.
There is always room for change regardless.
People want content to be rewarding not useless. Another annoying thing are the weekly lockouts/cap.
If new currency is going to get introduced in 3.2 wich is also just around the corner why would you still continue to limit the player? Especially when a game is giving you an option that 1 char can get all jobs maxed out and can play all jobs. No matter how hard you would try with the weekly lockouts you can never gear up your gear for all jobs in full esoterics before a new currency is introduced.
You can prolly make it to tops 4-5 jobs. To me thats just dumb its paying for a product thats limiting you from experiencing what you want when you want how much you want.
Also with the weekly cap whatever gears i acheived for these 4-5 jobs is useless again because new currency is introduced and new gears are released? Who actually enjoy this?
If you are going to have a gameplay like this then remove all caps let people grind up how much they want as fast as they want. Only the "hardcore" would gear up everything anyways and the casuals and people who don't have enough time can feel they can catch up during their days off if they want to spend time playing and catching up let them.
I seriously don't understand why the mentality of this game is punishing you and limiting for wanting to enjoy it alot? It seems like a majority who have been replying here wants content thats rewarding and that gears don't become useless after 3 months just because every other MMORPG has that pattern out and people here find it as a comfortzone to demand the same thing just because they happen to love the FF franchise. The first relic chapter is pretty much ruined. Players feel used and let down by SE and Yoshi P who didn't seem to understand what they actually wanted out of this. The mistake seems to repeat itself yet again this time its even worse than before too. I truly hope EVERYONES opinion gets heard in this thread and the dev team can go through it to find some sort of balance.

This isnt a FFXI vs FFXIV vs WoW thread either but why create stuff thats already in WoW here? If I wanted WoW Elements I would play WoW? BUT Since SE has went that path its time to use elements from what made FFXI so good (minus abyssea). Diadem is a poor Abyssea attempt we all can agree on that.

Let us get a real challenge. Bosses that we can only do on the world map. Not the god forsaken duty finder wich takes us to some annoying closed cluster envoirment but the acual worldmap.
Make sure that gatherers crafters and regular jobs co work and getting items from dungeons fishing miner botanist and then some crafters make these unique untradable items where only the person who create the item can use it to spawn a big boss on the world map. How hard is it to add something like this? It would make stuff more personal to play with people from your own LS FC or people of your server and create a personal vibe than playing with people in a DF that you will never meet again. These items don't need to be FFXI hard to obtain but they can be on a medium level that makes everyone work together. This is an idéa that came up now while writing this. I'm sure Yoshi and his team (hopefully) have been thinking about something similiar to this themselves?
Something actually that was nice about Abyssea was proccing a mob to drop certain items it required teamwork and focus instead of this dynasty warriors button mash we are playing with atm why not start slowly adding something similiar?

Anyways these are just thoughts I'm sharing these because I want to contribute to the game and I want it to evolve and not go down the drain.

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Originally Posted by FizzleofHyperion

People are not enjoying this mindless grind where you are a sheep grinding for stuff thats going to be useless around the corner and then you repeat the process.
There is always room for change regardless.
People want content to be rewarding not useless. Another annoying thing are the weekly lockouts/cap.
If new currency is going to get introduced in 3.2 wich is also just around the corner why would you still continue to limit the player? Especially when a game is giving you an option that 1 char can get all jobs maxed out and can play all jobs. No matter how hard you would try with the weekly lockouts you can never gear up your gear for all jobs in full esoterics before a new currency is introduced.
You can prolly make it to tops 4-5 jobs. To me thats just dumb its paying for a product thats limiting you from experiencing what you want when you want how much you want.
Also with the weekly cap whatever gears i acheived for these 4-5 jobs is useless again because new currency is introduced and new gears are released? Who actually enjoy this?
If you are going to have a gameplay like this then remove all caps let people grind up how much they want as fast as they want. Only the "hardcore" would gear up everything anyways and the casuals and people who don't have enough time can feel they can catch up during their days off if they want to spend time playing and catching up let them.
I seriously don't understand why the mentality of this game is punishing you and limiting for wanting to enjoy it alot? It seems like a majority who have been replying here wants content thats rewarding and that gears don't become useless after 3 months just because every other MMORPG has that pattern out and people here find it as a comfortzone to demand the same thing just because they happen to love the FF franchise. The first relic chapter is pretty much ruined. Players feel used and let down by SE and Yoshi P who didn't seem to understand what they actually wanted out of this. The mistake seems to repeat itself yet again this time its even worse than before too. I truly hope EVERYONES opinion gets heard in this thread and the dev team can go through it to find some sort of balance.

This isnt a FFXI vs FFXIV vs WoW thread either but why create stuff thats already in WoW here? If I wanted WoW Elements I would play WoW? BUT Since SE has went that path its time to use elements from what made FFXI so good (minus abyssea). Diadem is a poor Abyssea attempt we all can agree on that.

Let us get a real challenge. Bosses that we can only do on the world map. Not the god forsaken duty finder wich takes us to some annoying closed cluster envoirment but the acual worldmap.
Make sure that gatherers crafters and regular jobs co work and getting items from dungeons fishing miner botanist and then some crafters make these unique untradable items where only the person who create the item can use it to spawn a big boss on the world map. How hard is it to add something like this? It would make stuff more personal to play with people from your own LS FC or people of your server and create a personal vibe than playing with people in a DF that you will never meet again. These items don't need to be FFXI hard to obtain but they can be on a medium level that makes everyone work together. This is an idéa that came up now while writing this. I'm sure Yoshi and his team (hopefully) have been thinking about something similiar to this themselves?
Something actually that was nice about Abyssea was proccing a mob to drop certain items it required teamwork and focus instead of this dynasty warriors button mash we are playing with atm why not start slowly adding something similiar?

Anyways these are just thoughts I'm sharing these because I want to contribute to the game and I want it to evolve and not go down the drain.

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It is because you can only see things from your own point of view (a casual player) that you can't see the big picture. There's an obvious reason one type of tome has been capped throughout the patches. If we allow anyone to gear up in full gear on a single class when they are launched then have a problem that affects players doing progression. It should also be obvious that the game is not intended for you to play one type of content to gear up. As of right now, you can already have all jobs in 210 (although you seem to just want jobs in 200) but not full esoteric gear. If the gear it self and not the level of the gear (i.e. the look of the gear) is all that matters to you, then just wait a couple weeks and eso will be uncapped when they release the new tome. If it's the level of that gear that actually care about and you were just using eso as a guise, then as I said, we can already have all jobs in 210. If you combine gear from eso, alex, and diadem (actually, due to it's nature just diadem by itself) then all jobs could have been 210 by about December. What you seem to want is to be able to do just one content and gear up all your jobs in max level (actually this already exists!).

As for open world, I don't think you realize they type of player you are playing with. As was shown with hunts, fates, and diadem if players can overcome difficulty with numbers (and effectively destroy the content) then they will. SE noted this in the beta version with fates and as a result only dropped things like vanity from them. They thought they could try overworld bosses in 2.3 with hunts but unfortunately under estimated the degree in which the player base will cheat the system to make it efficient. They then thought that they can resolve the problem in 3.1 by releasing a similar type of content with overworld bosses but instanced so you can only have up to 72 players, but they same situation occurred with players rather destroy the content if it means they can circumvent the difficulty and improve efficiency. This has made SE in a tight spot and they literally have to only make rewards from places that restrict the number of players participating (instanced content). This type of content requires large amounts of teamwork, practice, and skill in general (it doesn't seem like you are familiar with it). So short answer: they did try, but the content was complete destroyed by players. When the make content, they are Japanese developers (and furthermore Japanese players) and can only predict what Japanese players will do. When things fall outside of this prediction, we start having problems. But first and foremost, you need to play the game from all perspectives before you start making bad suggestions to the developers. You also might want to play the game a little longer than a patch to get a feel for what direction content is going in. Had you played a year earlier most of the content in your post would not be there.

I'm actually not seeing this from my perspective only.
I'm a 1.0 player myself and a FF11 player before FFXIV.
I'm used to a game rewarding me and not giving me handouts. From your reply you seem to be underestimating casuals.
I consider myself a casual I play as much as I can when I can but I don't feel I should be limited to my gaming.
Getting esoterics for example is the "solo method" for a casual to gear up multiple jobs. Even if someone went i210 it wont affect much since there isnt really much to do in this game due to how everything is a bit too casual/easy mode.
You have mostly Thord Ex and Alex Savage that are the only two actual hard things in the game and all the "elite" got stripped of their hard work to actual acheive something and now its getting nerfed so everyone else can catch up.
I havent done alex savage or Thord ex I don't think I ever will just giving you a headups on that but I would like to point out I'm not a cry baby like many of these raiders from non legacy servers.
I know its there for me as an option if I want to learn it with others and understand the mechanics together with 7 others its a choice but unlike the rest of the crybabies the mechanics are scripted you learn the steps you will beat it. People wouldn't be able to do this with 7 people selling the 8th for a carry if it wasnt possible. So where do you draw the line on the difficulty?
The game content isnt destroyed by players at all. Its more on SE side on wich part of this community should get most of the attention and clearly if even your version of the casuals are also complaining over how they feel used on the zeta relics and this one and in overral content that usually shows that whatever I've been saying here has not been my perspective and my opinion only.
About your hunts if hunts are really that ruined as you say it can also be easily fixed by giving an S rank atleast a 1 minute or 2 minute invulnerable buff from spawn time so people can get there. Hunts are meant for all the idea I presented was more of a group activity prefered an LS/FC/own world content to make the game more personal outside of duty finder.
Since its all about fun and its almost reaching a stage where everyone deserves everything as the other person since they pay for a subscription there are ways and methods to please all.
I know I'm not seeing this from my perspective cause everyone will still play this game at their own pace regardless of whats presented on the table but again they just want the game to be rewarding and not get the feeling of "It doesnt matter if I do this right now its still going to get nerfed around the corner" This is the mentality presented at the moment you know this very well I know this too. What joy does that give?
I do understand that you can't do this for all content but some things can still feel rewarding and untouched but EVERYTHING and I do mean EVERYTHING gets nerfed in the game so no gear or content has any form of actual "value" of completing it atm.
People don't want to be limited and they also don't want to feel that their time invested in this game becomes useless with every attempt they try to acheive something.
That has nothing to do with a casual route its not fun for either side.
For a casual thats trying his/her best to catch up by gearing up due to little playtime will barely have a chance to even catch up before new currency and new gears are presented and its back to the hamsterwheel so for a casual perspective it will give them a feeling that they can never catch up for a "hardcore/elite player" or whatever you want to call it who will do their best to gear up all their jobs will feel that their time invested was wasted because everything they just geared up became useless and they got to barely enjoy their jobs.
This isnt really selfish and I'm not seeing this from one perspective read the the thread from start people are pretty much on the same page.
It just seems that many players are scared for a change to slightly horizontal or anything that would require to actually put effort in. I'm just sad that the new generation of MMORPG player are this lazy and want everything served on a silver plate.

Presenting content where you and your friends have to do dungeon x to obtain 3-4 items and your gatheres need to get item x from certain places and then the crafters need to make the pop item then you have to go with an alliance pop the boss where it becomes a duty so no one outside of party cant steal the mob or hate etc so if you fail all the items are down the drain too and you can only blame yourself and your team no one else. THIS HAS NOT BEEN PRESENTED YET and it could be an option and something to try out.
It gives old dungeons replay value even newer dungeons to come making items obtained here a bit harder than others even tokens etc. This could work IF Yoshi P and his team decides to actually make this rewarding and doesnt give you a feeling as a player that ok this will get nerfed too and is only a temporary content.

Items must be obtained from primals/diadem/old coil/dungeons/gathering/crafting/desynthesis in order to get the boss spawn items. You mean to truly tell me casuals cant handle this at level 60? To me that seems content that you can do together with friends FC/LS people wich makes the world maps more fun enjoyable unique. Right now the feeling of this game makes me feel like I'm just a shell on the worldmap waiting for my que to pop for me to able to do something. Also add that certain mobs can only be damaged with the relic weapon equipped? Making items have even more meaning.

This my friend is not even an elite opinion its more of someone who wants content thats rewarding fun enjoyable and something you can do with friends outside of DF by also giving ALL content a value aswell making the game rewarding.