My Stance on End-game Raiding/Gear Correlation not Causation.

I feel that SE like most other MMOs have forgotten what raiding is or least what i feel raiding is.
Here is what raiding is to everyone right now:

Raiding is "content done to gain the better/best gear".
i feel that this is completely wrong, the fundamentals of raiding was never about the gear. It about attempting to traverse difficult content which is not easily accessible to majority of the player-base as it requires an investment of time and energy sacrificing hours and hours and testing the knowledge and skill of the player for completion.

Gear that comes out of these raids is simply a result for the journey itself. And the reason that the gear for these raids were better than any of the gear that is available was simply to reward the player to have an easier time to clear the content again.

FFXIV has completely thrown this concept away that other than the 24 man content. The raids in FFXIV cannot be called "raids" at all. Having Deltascape's bosses split into instances that can be defeated separately is a poor design choice. It allows a majority of the community to be able to commit to raiding which is why people feel that they miss out on content when average to better players in the community are able to do this content and they do not.

There no lack of content in the game, content is just poorly designed.
Make raids have commitment, turn them into larger dungeons with bosses and monsters before every boss and perhaps for savage have one more boss after the final boss as an exclusive from normal

The problem with raids designed like that is that they become inaccessible to a majority of the player base. This is a massive problem with raids in other MMOs to the point where in some games, there's no reason to even justify developing content for such a small portion of the player base. The way FF14 does raids is divide them into smaller sections and this ultimately allows more players to participate because they don't have to devote themselves to a massive hour long boss battle every time they want to raid.

The everyone comment. You can't make assumptions like that, raiding has different meanings for different people, i know plenty of people who are only in it for mounts, and gear etc., they don't care for story nothing just rewards. So it various across different players.

But I understand where you are coming from, SE decisions are from majority of players which according to them are casual and don't want the gordias like content, but want the gear. So they tune down the content for those players I would happen to guess.

I did Deltascape today and I was very pleasantly surprised.

Four boss fights, each fight was somewhat long-ish but not overdone. Each boss drops what, 6 materials, which gives you a pretty good chance at walking away with at least something useful to you (I like the token system! it kicks butt, way better than most other systems I've seen).

The boss battles were enjoyable enough, a nice mix of challenge, mechanics, etc. It isn't hardcore by any means, but yet that's all the better -- more players can get a chance to do some form of endgame, and it is casual enough that your average player like me can do it without having to devote themselves to spreadsheets, number crunching and dumping millions of gil into overmelds, food, what-not just to have a chance at a boss that requires 50+ wipes with a pre-made group before you MIGHT get a chance to kill it.

It's nice that they add some content for the lesser casual "scrub" player like me. Savage will come out soon enough and the hardcores can enjoy that content instead. I'm just glad there's something for me to _do_ post-MSQ, even if it's just 4 bosses per week. It also allows me to gear other jobs up too which is a huge plus.

As for the instances being "too short"... I rather liked the length. That's one thing I enjoy about Trials and now Deltascape -- just gimme the boss without a bunch of meaningless trash, and I'd be happy. Trials are among my favorite content. Trash pulls are almost never challenging and are only there to waste your time. The only good thing about a dungeon are the treasure coffers that yield equipment and the nice scenery. Fighting the trash mobs is kinda boring, IMO. They take up more than 50% of the time spent in a dungeon, and they yield no reward other than XP and a paltry amount of gil (and a lot of times they don't even do THAT).

I think SE is going for a three tiered difficulty system instead of a 2 tier difficulty system, which i think is a BRILLIANT IDEA. Lower the difficulty of savage but still make it much harder than normal mode, and even make normal mode slightly easier just not too easy...a perfect balance. Only the Savage Extreme or w/e they call the third difficulty will be the Gordias level the small niche of players crave. It addresses one of the problems of their not being enough midcore content in the game, allowing more players to ease into raiding and not see it as a insurmountable wall, slowly ramping up.

Also there is a lack of content in the game because most people don't want to do older content outside of undersizing them which greatly devalues the content and most of the fights mechanics ,nuances and strategies are lost as a result watering the fight down considerably. So for actual end game raiding content there is probably only one primal, 4 mini raids. and one 24 man raid thats time consuming...but not that challenging after people learn it. Wish there was more, or rather i wish there was different types of content than the same exact standard format of content over and over again. Which while doing new raids are fun and entertaining, feels too sameish in design. The same complaint can be made against most 4 man dungeons that are the same monotony of gate pulls and aoeing them down with little to no diversity in strategy for those trash pulls with only bosses being somewhat new.....SOMETIMES.

As for the gear being the major incentive, i agree MMO's used to have their game worlds as their larger meta, and you would spend 8 months to a year just simply getting to level cap and even 6 months after that you enter your first raid. It used to be about the journey, now it's all about anti-social conveniences where people can get away with acting like total-asshats....But i digress...mmo's are not built like they are used to anymore, and honestly don't have enough time in my week to sit there for 20-40 hours a week getting 3 levels or 1 or 2 pieces of gear. I wish though that someone would make a MMO with more modern conveniences without ripping the open worlds soul out by creating needless quest hubs(less is more) and had a more active living breathing world that you could immerse yourself in and constantly feel like you need to revisit older parts of the world because dungeons are more open world and more expansive and higher leveled the deeper you go. They don't make them like they used to.

So yeah i can agree that while grinding for gear can be an effective incentive i think the game is more flawed than you think in the fact that it's wasted open world that they could've made fuller use of to create something truly special instead of a bunch of instanced fights that should be the minority of end game, not the only thing. Gear incentives are not the problem, the overall design priority of the game is. Why do you think people begged for a thing like hunts...but then are overall disappointing in how lackluster most of them are...and how grindy and boring they are? I rather a forced spawned open world savage raid that is exclusive to that party(8 man and 24 mans) to fight than a cluster fuck of monotonous grind and drama of lolearlypulls.

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

The problem with raids designed like that is that they become inaccessible to a majority of the player base. This is a massive problem with raids in other MMOs to the point where in some games, there's no reason to even justify developing content for such a small portion of the player base. The way FF14 does raids is divide them into smaller sections and this ultimately allows more players to participate because they don't have to devote themselves to a massive hour long boss battle every time they want to raid.

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Then that is not a raid, thats a trial, we have those too, whats the difference then?

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Originally Posted by CartherineZero

Then that is not a raid, thats a trial, we have those too, whats the difference then?

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This exactly. Deltascape is a trial. Crystal tower and Void Arc were raids.

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Originally Posted by CartherineZero

Then that is not a raid, thats a trial, we have those too, whats the difference then?

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There's not much of a difference in FF14 and that's the point. The raids we have right now are less of a raid than the extreme trials and savage raids due to how little coordination is actually required. Raids come in all shapes and sizes and you don't have to have a 24 man dungeon to consider it a raid.

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

There's not much of a difference in FF14 and that's the point. The raids we have right now are less of a raid than the extreme trials and savage raids due to how little coordination is actually required. Raids come in all shapes and sizes and you don't have to have a 24 man dungeon to consider it a raid.

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What kills me is that games like WoW know how to do larger group raids that are pretty hard, and i kinda feel insulted in a way when they say no one would beat things like 24 man savage or something. It's like a slap in the face. I would like to see more challenging content at a 24 man level where you can premake your parties and gather together people through PF. In the end other games can seem to do it, but for some reason ffxiv can't. They are right about what they say about deltascape, it's basically just more single boss fights like primals. They are tech. not true raids. I understand not everyone has the time to spend multiple hours to do certain events, but doesn't mean its not a good idea to add. Convenience when it comes to content can only be taken so far, there needs to be decisions made for certain types of content that better the content we have, not water it down for every person.

Maybe a higher tier for savage extreme or w/e they call the difficult beyond just simply savage that they talked about adding, and maybe make a true end game raid thats 24 man but much harder with pre-made parties, i believe the land of eureka is a step in this direction but even then i think it will just simply be more boss fights than actual raids...which is both good and bad. At least it will add to the end game landscape and possibly add things other than more instances into the game. The highest tier wouldn't be for everyone, but it would still be healthy with cross server alliances and self made alliances. To actually control what type of people you actually get to play with, that will allow players to succeed at more challenging alliances content and allow more difficult actual raids. Not everything in the game has to be a source of convenience. That's what is holding the more traditional raids back.

If people are genuinely worried about it taking too long, then maybe they can make a more permanent progression based on clears, that you could go to checkpoints when re-queing by beating each boss so many times, so you can start off on the part you want, which would make it more broken up like delta, but the trash mobs pull before each boss and everything that comes before it will still be a part of the raid and takes a while, and will be very challenging and have more mechanics. A true raid, so you can just skip ahead after you get so many clears with temp. tokens, or more perm. clears and you can farm each segement. After you get good enough you can run everything without stopping but it would make it feel more like a true raid without taking the progression out of it and make it exhausting. So thats the other side of it, however omega delta will always be harder per fight and doesn't really have a raid feel to it, just a bunch of boss fights. No actual dungeon.

current MMO playerbase are people in mid 20s and 30s who have jobs. they dont have time to do old-school raid that take weeks anymore.

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Originally Posted by Deliciou5

What kills me is that games like WoW know how to do larger group raids that are pretty hard, and i kinda feel insulted in a way when they say no one would beat things like 24 man savage or something.

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Well, the playerbase here is smaller and, simply put, not that skilled.

How many times have you seen a boss in the child's play 24-mans we have now wipe your raid repeatedly? How many times have you seen Alliance A all die to Ozma at the same time?

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

Well, the playerbase here is smaller and, simply put, not that skilled.

How many times have you seen a boss in the child's play 24-mans we have now wipe your raid repeatedly? How many times have you seen Alliance A all die to Ozma at the same time?

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When it first came out it was pretty challenging, after a while i didn't wipe that much at all. Also you gotta understand that if you are allowed to pre-make your alliances before going in(maybe with certain rules) that you are going to have a higher chance of getting the skilled party that you want. You are just generalizing about the player base not being that skilled. Skilled people would go for things like savage, its not always unskilled players going for it unless they have a mindset of improving.

I also imagine something as 24 man savage as being something that is more difficult than 8 man savage but not so unforgiving as to severly punish every death. I always imagined it to be punishing if you only had a ton of deaths.