Ultimate Coils should Never be rebalanced

Ultimate Coils represents a very interesting thing within the community.

On the one hand, you have a lot of the really good raiders that are going after the prize of the weapons (which look quite amazing). On the other hand, you have players (like me) that have not fully cleared Omega Savage, and probably don't are probably not in a raiding static that see the shiny and want it - yet (for one reason or another) don't have the time (or the drive) to form up and work with a static to get into Ultimate Coils.

Really though, this needs to be the prize that is extremely hard to do, and will continue to eat people alive for years to come. These cosmetics not only need to stay rare, but they need to be representative of an achievement for at least this expansion, if not the next and possibly the one after that.

Ultimate Coils needs to be the hardest thing in the game, and it needs to be there for the raiding community so they have something to work towards. And it should NEVER change.

I agree there should be no nerf, period.

The devs however should take the gear rewards out of these kinds of runs, and replace with a mount reward. The gear, by the time this run is cleared in 'reasonable' numbers, will be simply relegated glamour gear, all but useless so otherwise. (Maybe not all but useless, but likely better nominal gear will be around by then for the majority player base.)

At least a mount is a proper mmo standard elite trophy reward, that doesn't take up space in my retainer banks, that can be used to rub in other players noses in all such. In the end, isn't that the real point of it all, besides titles and a unique experience that adds years to one's life? :)

Yeah. Kinda funny how devs must surely know how much of their gear will quickly be reduced to glamour, yet still can't fix inventory/glamour woes.

If they let you massively overgear and undersize it later on then maybe they should start putting in limited time rewards, like clear an ultimate fight within the first 6 months / 2 major patches of its availability, you get some commemorative earrings to show that you did it, or a trophy furnishing, which will never be available again. I think raiders would appreciate a little something like that because the weapons and title will lose some value 2 years later when people can do it unsync in lv500 gear and following a video guide, although insta wipe mechanics will still be there but phase skipping could eventually be a thing with no item level sync.

Agreed, tonnes of people complained about lack of content this patch, and a primary reason for that is that content becomes irrelevant very quickly. This should stay relevant for a long time. No nerfs, and no rewards unless you run it synced.

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The devs however should take the gear rewards out of these kinds of runs, and replace with a mount reward. The gear, by the time this run is cleared in 'reasonable' numbers, will be simply relegated glamour gear, all but useless so otherwise. (Maybe not all but useless, but likely better nominal gear will be around by then for the majority player base.)

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Why not both Weapon whilst it's current and mount from getting the achievement :) or Why not create an Ultimate Relic weapon base weapon from first Ultimate and each upgrade from completing the next one in the chain :P

If you don't have the time now, you won't later when it will be impossible to find people who care about it.

I would like them to one day allow undersized entry so that I can actually see it, but never unsynced or echo. It should stay brutally hard and it doesn't bother me at all if that means I'll never complete it; let those who expend the effort have their special content.

I would also like them to add some similarly brutal 4-man content one day so that my tiny group can have something to work on.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

If you don't have the time now, you won't later when it will be impossible to find people who care about it.

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Depends, people still farm ARR ponies. If the content is designed to last then it will. The big problem is the Dev team are poor at incentives IMG longevity in content

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

Depends, people still farm ARR ponies.

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I'm at a loss of words here. Sure, yes, they do, that is fact. Likewise, people still do the Lord of Verminion challenges to get the Clockwork Twintania. Does that make these challenges "lasting content"? Because they have rewards new players have yet to attain? Because then all content is "lasting". But for any given player, any given pony farmer or LoV challenger, the content only lasts a rather limited amount of time - right up until they got the rewards.

Now, increasing the longevity of a piece of content for a given player is extremely tricky, because if you try to create "longevity" via rewards - and MMOs always do - then the longevity equals the gating of the reward. And the tighter you make the gate, the less people will fit through. You can gate things behind time, skill, effort/grind, disposable income... whatever, the harsher the gating, the less players will bother, the less people will qualify and there's a clear tradeoff between longevity and accessibility, between the amount of players doing the content and the time it lasts the players doing it. And your job as designer becomes to find the sweet spot between them.

What SE then commonly does is to nerf content over time - they start with a tight gate and widen it over time to let more people through. In essence, that's the skimming strategy you can find in price politics. As the skilled people get their rewards and move on, you open it up to the next skill segment so it doesn't die out and then, once those got their rewards and moved on, to the next and the next until it's pony farm and anyone can get it "for cheap" to maximize it's longevity for the playerbase as a whole as it passes all skill segments. Which is precisely what people are yelling against here.

And a side note on the content volume: The game already has more content than anyone can reasonably consume and people are eager to point out all content there is in this game whenever someone complains that there's a lack of content. The key to understand the plaint is to realize that when they say there isn't enough content, they mean there isn't enough content they like to engage in. Which, for the vast majority of players, Ultimate is gonna fall into. It's dead on arrival content for most and the longevity of it for those players is zero.


Personally, I expect Ultimate to fade into obscurity before the end of the expansion and then never get touched again until it gets nerfed in one way or the other. It's only relevant to a small subset of players while it's fresh already and as those start to get their rewards and clears, the pool of players for it will dwindle and the remainders able and willing are gonna have an increasingly tough time finding people.

I'm a casual player because of university, I'll probly dont see that boss until 4.2 but honestly, Im quite please that savage got those extra bosses.
Any player being not done with Omega shouldn't complain about not even being able to see this boss. What do you complain at? You still haven't even cleared the actual content.

I hope the 4.31 boss will be ifrit Garuda and leviathan with a fire wind earth super shiny weapon.
OH and Susan Crafttsble 335 weapon with cool water and lightning effect

I think people are looking at the difficulty of Ultimate Coil for the wrong reasons. The Ultimate Coil is difficult given that people haven't been able to clear it for a week, but I feel that it is difficult for the wrong reasons. It isn't wrong to compare it to something like Dark Souls, but when you do, you immediately see the problem. And that problem is, the entire fight is a series of nothing but one hit kills. If this is the only way you know how to make content hard, then something is wrong. Every single failed mechanic results in pretty much instant death and people would rather wipe than attempt to recover and clear. It was okay once in a while like with Ultima Weapon, but the fact that this has become the norm is severely disappointing. This makes me feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with the design of bosses if this is the only way you know how to make a game difficult and has been a serious problem in much of the Extreme and Savage content.

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

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Kinda agree with this - Particularly with my perspective with Susano Extreme.

-Neph

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

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We could always go back to FF11's days and make an Absolute Virtue clone... and let it not be beaten for years. My point is, it might suck, but what else can you do to make it difficult? Besides, they already said the fight was unfair. You've been warned.. they aren't forcing anyone to mess with ultimate.

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

We could always go back to FF11's days and make an Absolute Virtue clone... and let it not be beaten for years. My point is, it might suck, but what else can you do to make it difficult? Besides, they already said the fight was unfair. You've been warned.. they aren't forcing anyone to mess with ultimate.

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Absolute Virtue is the way that FF14 seems to be going with Ultimate Coil. It's pretty much a one hit kill battle that's probably 20+ minutes long.

Soft enrages are the way to go. FF14 has done it before though they kind of ruin it with a lot of mechanics having instant kill anyways. Basically, the goal is to ramp up the boss's damage over time, whether it be from failed player mechanics or a enemy's attack pattern. Things like randomizing boss attacks can make it far more difficult because it isn't just about memorizing a dance. They have done it before and it has provided a challenge for many.

So with the clear of Ultimate Coils, I'm hoping SE goes "it's totally doable guys" and doesn't change a thing in this fight from now until whenever the servers finally go offline some decades in the future.

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

They have done it before and it has provided a challenge for many.

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Ultimate Coil isn't intended to be a "challenge for many", it's designed to be a challenge for the most hardcore part of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

I think people are looking at the difficulty of Ultimate Coil for the wrong reasons. The Ultimate Coil is difficult given that people haven't been able to clear it for a week, but I feel that it is difficult for the wrong reasons. It isn't wrong to compare it to something like Dark Souls, but when you do, you immediately see the problem. And that problem is, the entire fight is a series of nothing but one hit kills. If this is the only way you know how to make content hard, then something is wrong. Every single failed mechanic results in pretty much instant death and people would rather wipe than attempt to recover and clear. It was okay once in a while like with Ultima Weapon, but the fact that this has become the norm is severely disappointing. This makes me feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with the design of bosses if this is the only way you know how to make a game difficult and has been a serious problem in much of the Extreme and Savage content.

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If you think there aren't many one-hit-kill mechanics in Dark Souls ('s more difficult Encounters), then you leveled your VIT to high, you coward. :P

The major difference in difficulty regarding DS is that DS difficulty is depending on playstyle, level and gear, also you can cheese a lot.

For a proper comparision you should look at lvl. 1 blind runs of Dark Souls (because it is intrinsic of Ultimate to not be able to get "stronger", too). Which is an endless series of one-hit-mechanics.