4-man variants for endgame content going forward?

First, huge props to Yoshi-P for the decision to finally introduce high-end 4-man content for the game.

Not only is it easier to group up into a static of 4 likeminded individuals instead of 8, it's also way easier to organize with friends IRL. Heck, I might actually be able to try out this content with just my real-life friends (the people I actually want to play with) which would be a hugely positive factor going forward.

Now for my main point: I can't speak for everyone, of course, but if the 4-man endgame content we get now ends up being popular, I'd personally love to see some of the current/incoming 8-man content get 4-man versions as well. Allowing for the completion of EX/Savage content with just 4 players would be an amazing step up in accessibility for the endgame combat portion of the game, and I hope something like that will be possible somewhere down the line.

What does everyone think? Let's hear your thoughts!

I agree that it's easier to find, work with and schedule 3 good player friends than it is 7.

I think if they are challenging enough, it will benefit 8-person raiding because criterion savage statics can merge up in party finder to tackle regular extreme and savage.

I must say I'm not a fan of the idea.

Having content for groups of 4 is great news, and I welcome it for the same reasons as you. But I do appreciate that the endgame content is well categorized; and in my opinion, it's normal to have instances that are only accessible to certain people. Here, those who make the effort to set up and participate in fixed roosters, which requires a certain investment.

And it is out of respect for this investment, which people like you and me are not ready to make (< absolutely not a problem, just an observation) that we should keep these instances reserved for groups of 8.

The other concern I see with the idea is that one of the main difficulties of savages is coordination. Many groups don't get clean not because the individual player doesn't know the mechanics, but because the group doesn't work together. And this "coordination" aspect is strongly lost in groups of 4, since it is a priori easier to function with 3 other players than with 7 others. Minimizing the importance of coordination in high-level instances would be the equivalent of denaturing them in my opinion.

Heck yeah lets go!

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Originally Posted by Merrigan

I must say I'm not a fan of the idea.

*snip*

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I can definitely see your point about working together and communicating as a team. However...

I honestly can't agree with the other point you make. No offense meant by this, but to me it just sounds like you'd want to monopolize certain types of content solely for certain types of people. I can't agree with that sentiment at all, and while I hope to never in my life use the term "ableist" to advance an argument, I do think it would be absolutely fair (and not to forget financially smart) to allow smaller groups to tackle endgame raiding content as well.

All opinions are welcome though. Just responding to yours with my own ;)

I would think the sweet spot for some harder content would be like 12-16 players, it will allow for slightly more variation in team compositions and mechanic design, while not going all the way to the alliance/eureka/bozja level of mess. Sadly the party UI isn't really designed for that.

4 players is great to reduce the bar of getting in, but it will most likely end up having to deal with simpler team mechanics and having most of the responsibility fall onto the single healer. DPS are balanced around the 8 people content anyway so some of the might struggle reaching the DPS checks which basically means those will either be super lenient or so hard that you have to bring spesific Jobs. Tanking will be completely brain dead unless there's insane amount of enemy positioning through the fights because there's no swaps among other stuff for 4man.

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

but it will most likely end up having to deal with simpler team mechanics

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This is really the key point right here. At level raid content is quite literally mechanically designed around the number of bodies on the field. You reduce the number of players, you reduce the complexity. If they were to do something like that they would basically have to create two completely different versions of the same raid, which would obviously lead to less content for everyone across the board.

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Originally Posted by Wind-Krysvein

I can definitely see your point about working together and communicating as a team. However...

I honestly can't agree with the other point you make. No offense meant by this, but to me it just sounds like you'd want to monopolize certain types of content solely for certain types of people. I can't agree with that sentiment at all, and while I hope to never in my life use the term "ableist" to advance an argument, I do think it would be absolutely fair (and not to forget financially smart) to allow smaller groups to tackle endgame raiding content as well.

All opinions are welcome though. Just responding to yours with my own ;)

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I'm glad someone else noticed this.

I can respect the idea and opinion that 4 man content won't be as difficult as 8 man content due to the fact that there's less people to coordinate with(tanks/healers for instance won't have to coordinate with a double at all). The other part of what that person is saying though is literally gatekeeping.

For reference:

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Originally Posted by Merrigan

I must say I'm not a fan of the idea.

Having content for groups of 4 is great news, and I welcome it for the same reasons as you. But I do appreciate that the endgame content is well categorized; and in my opinion, it's normal to have instances that are only accessible to certain people. Here, those who make the effort to set up and participate in fixed roosters, which requires a certain investment.

And it is out of respect for this investment, which people like you and me are not ready to make (< absolutely not a problem, just an observation) that we should keep these instances reserved for groups of 8.

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Tell me how this isn't gatekeeping content behind the idea that it should be reserved for only those who are willing to invest even more time outside of the actual content?

Why can't we just learn the content, jump into a group and do our thing?

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

I'm glad someone else noticed this.

I can respect the idea and opinion that 4 man content won't be as difficult as 8 man content due to the fact that there's less people to coordinate with(tanks/healers for instance won't have to coordinate with a double at all). The other part of what that person is saying though is literally gatekeeping.

For reference:


Tell me how this isn't gatekeeping content behind the idea that it should be reserved for only those who are willing to invest even more time outside of the actual content?

Why can't we just learn the content, jump into a group and do our thing?

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It's not gatekeeping. Complexity of fights inherintly drops the less people there are to do mechanics/meet dps checks.

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Originally Posted by Wind-Krysvein

Now for my main point: I can't speak for everyone, of course, but if the 4-man endgame content we get now ends up being popular, I'd personally love to see some of the current/incoming 8-man content get 4-man versions as well. Allowing for the completion of EX/Savage content with just 4 players would be an amazing step up in accessibility for the endgame combat portion of the game, and I hope something like that will be possible somewhere down the line.

What does everyone think? Let's hear your thoughts!

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I don't see this interacting with the 8-man savage tier. I do see this becoming a replacement for exploration content. Eureka and Bozja were interesting. I found the latter to be an improvement. However, when the population died down, they were forced to make some changes. We saw the content get scaled in such a way that 4, sometimes fewer people could engage it. People have been asking for harder dungeon content for a long time. It only made sense that they try going this route, which not only offers that same engaging content, but also ends up preserving a space like Bozja to see continued use.

I'm excited to see what they've prepared. I hope it's something they continue to do going forward.