8 man endgame content should go back to the 2.x method (no baby mode) Hear me out...

Here's the thing. I have been asking some people I used to play with during the coil days and the big difference between modern raiding and 2.x... And besides the baby mode versions of the encounters, a big part of the motivation to do savage was taken away. In 2.x there was two motivations to improve and do coil.
1. Gear/looking cool.
2. The lore.

The lore was locked behind improving as a player and dare I say it, being social(I know, being social in an MMO is kind of crazy these days). Motivation to improve as a player should not be taken away in 3.x and onward. This is what motivated me to improve. I wanted to see the next part of the bahamut story along with my FC. That motivation is lost in subsequent expansions. I personally don't care about looking cool, but the lore is all done in a few hours with each 8-man raid series release, which is sad. Gear cannot be the primary motivation because gear is outdated incredibly fast in this game, so there really is no point in trying to get full sets or anything from a practical standpoint. I miss the days of wiping on 2nd coil and learning the encounters and being rewarded with the next piece of lore. There was such a payoff at the end and progressing through the 3 coils was much more memorable than any subsequent expac. That kind of motivation is gone, and I wish we would go back to having it in some way. Subsequently, relic style weapon improvement should also be gated at LEAST behind savage primal fights as well. A devotion of time should not be the only requirement.

TLDR: I miss skill locked lore content, and I realize my opinion doesn't matter really and I just enjoy the nostalgia of 2.x

I hear you, however that's just not what the game is like now. I made a request to make coils mandatory for MSQ and was met with similarly negative responses.

I am of the personal belief that if we corralled people into tough content, it would be ROUGH for a while. I mean, really rough. People can't wrap their heads about meteors in CT.. However, I think it would improve overall player skill by saying "This is the content. This is what we expect from you, and we expect you to do it."

Locking glamour behind content is a great way to encourage engagement.

I honestly kind of appreciated the "door" mini-bosses like the ADS and Faust that were designed to make sure your party was even capable of outputting enough damage to beat the enrage on the actual boss of the raid in advance, as well as having a mini-dungeon of sorts to explore.

I don't think lore and story should ever be locked behind a significant skill gate, though.

Umm, no.

Honestly, static groups/guilds with schedules and obligations are the absolute worst thing about MMO's. It's like having a job, only you don't get paid and your boss is some poorly supervised 14 year old kid who spends all of his time online. Save that garbage for Savage, and leave Savage FAR detached from the games general content.

I wouldn't mind significant solo challenges being attached to story content, though.

Yeah, no. Locking lore with a very high skill ceiling is just plain stupid, specially when savage is there for people who crave challenging content.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

I made a request to make coils mandatory for MSQ and was met with similarly negative responses.

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If they nerfed coil to bring it to the current raid level? Sure!

But if you think people should have to DF into some shit like T9 to progress on the MSQ, you're out of your mind.

I played back in the Coil days. My friends and I didn't get past t5 until well after Second Coil came out. We didn't get past t9 until HW came out and we could unsync it. It was really frustrating and demotivating.

I'm glad that HW added story mode raids. Lore should be for everyone imo.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

I hear you, however that's just not what the game is like now. I made a request to make coils mandatory for MSQ and was met with similarly negative responses.

I am of the personal belief that if we corralled people into tough content, it would be ROUGH for a while. I mean, really rough. People can't wrap their heads about meteors in CT.. However, I think it would improve overall player skill by saying "This is the content. This is what we expect from you, and we expect you to do it."

Locking glamour behind content is a great way to encourage engagement.

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It is far more likely to have the precise opposite effect; instead driving those players away from the game entirely. You're essentially telling people who may have zero interest in hard endgame content they're now forced to partake in it should they want to see the story unfold. Put another way, how likely do you think people would appreciate FFX's conclusion being locked behind completing all the mini-game side missions? Many will simply quit the game, or never bother playing with it to begin with.

That isn't to say they shouldn't increase the overall difficulty as I think most content in this game is far too passive. However, there's a difference between asking people to put in more effort and expecting them to learn Savage.

think id rather mix of the two
use the design philosophy of Coils but also have savage and normal mode

:DYou want the 8-man endgame content to supply juicy lore?
Isn't that what Eden did???

Through those raids you learned:
- what the world swallowed by light is like
- why it is the way it is
- that ascians can be corrupted by aether (Eden itself)
- it explains what happened to The Burn and discusses how what they learn here might inform a "solution" to that.
- It gives us another glimpse into the story of The Shadow Lord
- and in the end we see what the future of The First might look like.

I think Eden Litany(?) also briefly touched on the elves that turned into Wetland Wargs in Lakeland, but I'm falling asleep and can't think straight lol.

But yeah, like... Eden was jam packed with lore yo.
And it was, like, lore that directly ties back into the main story, main characters personal history (like Ardbert's), and deepens your understanding of the world.
Is this no good?

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

It is far more likely to have the precise opposite effect; instead driving those players away from the game entirely. You're essentially telling people who may have zero interest in hard endgame content they're now forced to partake in it should they want to see the story unfold.

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This is exactly what would happen. Classic example is Guild Wars 2, both the base game and with it's 1st expansion Heart of Thorns.

- Base game was very casual and able to be done solo, apart from the last story mission. LOTS of ppl complained about this, and the vast majority of players did NOT complete it till ANet relented and made it able to be done solo rather than forced group-dungeon.

Regarding the 1st expansion: leading up to it an extremely vocal minority demanded that ANet make the game way harder, less able to be done solo and way more group focused. ANet listened to them and Heart of Thorns was exactly that... much harder, more group focused, locked many core functions, features and such behind group-only fights. Result?

- Lots of complaints of how hard the game was for 1-3 weeks
- After 2-4 weeks there were lots of complaints about how empty the game was, how in both expansion & base game ppl were struggling to make groups, find ppl to do group events, etc.
- ANet suffered a 67% loss in the 6 months after the launch of the expansion, the biggest loss they have ever suffered in a 6-month period.

Lesson? Locking lore & story behind 'difficulty' does not 'encourage' players to 'get good' as the vocal minority would have you believe. Instead as soon as the game gets too difficult and they find lore, story, progression through MSQ, etc gets blocked by something they can't easily get past or get carried past... they will quit the game and go play something else. They will not keep hitting their heads against a brick wall trying and trying and trying again.

You'd have better luck calling for the Savages/Ultimates to be looked at if they are too 'easy'. If ppl are beating them too easily.. maybe they need to be tuned better, have the ilvl synching adjusted, etc. Or asking for more savage content in total (ie trials/raids without a savage version). This would get more support from more ppl, vs trying to lock lore/story behind hard content that will lock the majority of the game's players from experiencing it.

As a low-skilled player: As long as it is non-MSQ content, you won't see me complain nor touch the content. I'm all for making optional, but interesting stories beind put behind trials like Eden or raids and adjust the difficulty to whaever seems fitting. I just won't touch it, but that's my decision and I'm mature enough to "live" with the decision (instead of crying for nerfs). Sure, I'll miss the references in MSQ to that stuff if it happens, but I can accepte that.

I struggle already enough with remembering every MSQ-required dungeon/trial mechanics as I easily grow tired of running the same stuff multiple times, intentionally (in roulettes, I get what I get). I know, I know, an alien concept for some.

I disagree. Players who desire to improve will do so on their own merit. You also repeat what we got with coils, with those wanting to experience the story having to do those fights in undersized parties much later, and the lack of threat level takes away the whole power dynamic of the opposition you face in there.

The savage fights also have phases and mechanics, and even music that are exclusive to them. There is a ton of incentive to run savage. The lore helps give incentive to run the "baby modes" as this content is totally optional, and a lot of casual players run them only once so they can see the story, and then they are done.

As others have said, locking important lore bits behind Savage-grade content will not encourage casuals to "git gud;" it will just lead to them deciding the content isn't worth the headache and deciding to eat the loss so to speak. That's my experience with it, at least.

The people who do EX and Savage content are there for the challenge first and foremost, not the story. They are not driven by getting lore, they are driven by getting loot - or barring that the sense of accomplishment they get in overcoming difficult content. Even if there's no incentive, the people who want to do this stuff will do it anyway - why not make an Easy Mode so players who don't want to beat their heads against the wall for 2+ days memorizing dozens of fights can enjoy the story that goes with them?

(Personally I generally avoid Savage / EX content because I don't like being held to a schedule or metagaming too hard. I've made exceptions only for Memoria Misera EX and Castrum Marinum EX, purely for aesthetic purposes.)

All that said, Shinryu (Normal, as he was on launch) proves that casuals can and will rise to the challenge of tougher bosses than is standard. I mean, other than the enrages Emerald EX isn't that much more advanced than his normal version...

Meh....it would just allow "content creators" to make more money simply by uploading cutscenes...
I feel like getting a new savage-exclusive boss/phase in each tier is a decent reward for those who want the challenge.

How to drive your playerbase to youtube in one easy step!

This proposal will only lead to more players showing disinterest in the story, that, or you'll have a much higher influx of players wanting to do the content without actually being remotely, even aptly prepared to do said content, which in the end just torments all players. Be it the players that want the story without having to go through savage; or the players that already do Savage and to a very decent level, suddenly seeing an influx of ill-equipped players join their PFs on a routine basis. Serves nobody and punishes everyone.

Besides, the story is an integral part of near enough the entire franchise, so locking story components behind savage content is a bad idea in itself.

The majority of players won't do savage for the lore, they won't do it for gear, they won't do it for the mount and they won't do it for the BLU achievements. They just won't do it.

So why is there even a need to give them more motivation? They don't like savage. It should be clear to everyone at this point.

Games should be enjoyable. When you put core content behind enough bs and hurdles players would rather take their sub and leave than put up with it. This has been shown time and time again in different games.

I think what everyone seems to be missing out on context here from the OP, is that he wants things to be overall more challenging. This Game in its current stage feels nore like a retirement home when compared to other MMO's on the matter of difficulty, and if i am being honest here, depending on how the next Expansion turns out, i might even consider ditching this game for a free2play game like Tera Online or so, which at least, puts more effort into the combat system (and expects some basic competence).

I would prefer to enjoy FFXIV longer, but the current endgame when you got all Jobs maxed out, is dull to say the least.

Thing is, except for choice turns of coil, most of original coil is easier with less mechanics than current normal mode raids.

Standouts for difficulty in the 13 turns of Coil would be Turn 5, Turn 7, Turn 9, Turn 3 (:^)), and Turn 11. Now, I'm not saying the others were anything to sneeze at, but they were mostly raw gear and DPS checks, where the only way mechanics would get troublesome was if you took too long to kill adds or what have you, with a little group assignment stuff peppered in.

In fact, I think that individual mechanics assignments is something that I kinda miss from these. It'd be cool if they added a separate difficulty rated as, "Technical" or whatever. Have more fights like Turn 8, where the tank gets charmed. There's a tether that has to be taken out of the party. Mines requiring people to detonate, and towers to micro manage. Yeehaw

Control Freakism is strong in this thread.

Yea OP, sure, of course. But only with PF. You want to suffer, you'll suffer with everyone else, far from the comfort and security of your static.

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Originally Posted by Erinellza

I agree. The average/casual player will not bother with hard content. 3 months ago I really wanted the dyeable lvl 80 Dancer gloves. I unlocked Memoria Miseria Extreme, watched 2 different guides, made my own sticky notes to help with the mechanics, then started a learning party on PF. After 2 hours, it finally filled up. But we didn't even get past the 1st phase. 2 days later I tried it again, same result. It doesn't help that most people don't even speak English well on my EU datacenter. I wasted 5 hours of my life and didn't get the gloves. I gave up because I got tired of trying my best and still failing. I will not quit XIV but not even glamour can motivate me to waste more hours on this thing. Maybe I'll try it unsynced in 2025, lol.

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I think PF is your problem more than fight itself which is an entirely different hurdle to get over
but i can understand since i use to be on Chaos aswell

remember they tried to up difficulty. Shinryuu story mode on launch, very difficult, the instant cries for nerf were bad. Castrum Fluminis normal on launch? the lamentations. The Burn on launch? so much more so. the majority of the playerbase cannot handle such things well.

Casual Players will always find something to complain about, especially if they have to put actual effort into things and stuff. Constantly pandering to them never is a good long-term solution to any game that is worth its salt.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Casual Players will always find something to complain about, especially if they have to put actual effort into things and stuff. Constantly pandering to them never is a good long-term solution to any game that is worth its salt.

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Considering that they have to pander to the casual playerbase since they also pay money for the game and probably will pay more money long term because of that casual nature a game dev would be smarter to pander to them whether the midcore-hardcore likes it. It is a game thats supposed to make money after all

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Casual Players will always find something to complain about, especially if they have to put actual effort into things and stuff. Constantly pandering to them never is a good long-term solution to any game that is worth its salt.

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There are WAY more casual players than hardcore, and they pay the same money but they're not on the servers 10 hours a day eating up bandwidth. I think Hardcore players get the wrong idea about how much SE wants them around; SE prefers casual players and will always cater to them, as will every other successful MMO.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Casual Players will always find something to complain about, especially if they have to put actual effort into things and stuff. Constantly pandering to them never is a good long-term solution to any game that is worth its salt.

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The overwhelm majority of gamers as a whole are typically casual. Which is why companies cater more towards that demographic. There's a reason harder difficulties are added an an option and games like Dark Souls are singled out for being uniquely and unrelentingly challenging. That being said, you aren't wrong. The trick is finding an equal balance. If everything is too easy, you'll not only drive away people who want a challenge but inevitably find those same casual players complaining how bored they are since they completed everything so quickly. I'd go so far as to argue FFXIV struggles in this regard, hence why you often hear complaints from all crowds of having nothing to do. Or rather, nothing they enjoy doing.

Content like Shrinyu and Tsukiyomi are decent but still a little too easy, in my opinion. Although, I more find fault with the lackluster healer and tank gameplay—which isn't unique to any one fight. Speaking of that, where they fail completely on the difficulty curve is how they continuously water down Savage when that content is significantly designed to be hard.

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Originally Posted by DinahDemiurge

Here's the thing. I have been asking some people I used to play with during the coil days and the big difference between modern raiding and 2.x... And besides the baby mode versions of the encounters, a big part of the motivation to do savage was taken away. In 2.x there was two motivations to improve and do coil.
1. Gear/looking cool.
2. The lore.

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I'd love to have more story locked into harder content than normal (a REAL brutal lvl ?). Something not as hard as extreme but still less boring than normal. It doesnt have to be extremely hard lol. And it shouldnt take story away from other ppl, just add something more that is optional.
The coil didnt take away story from anyone, you could just avoid it, i never did it and i'm fine lol (i wasnt here in ARR aniway).
It's sad that ppl just reject this idea, without proposing any other options, just because they want it all. I'm sure some player who can't handle savage and want a easier entry intro harder content might like a brutal difficulty. Something that require some coordination but nothing crazy. As long as it is optional and it won't take away story from normal content it's okay imo.

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Originally Posted by Erinellza

But we didn't even get past the 1st phase. 2 days later I tried it again, same result. It doesn't help that most people don't even speak English well on my EU datacenter.

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Yeah pf require a lot of patience, i think trying a static might help or finding players you trust but that require time too. It gets worse when you wait a lot of time because a lot of ppl on chaos just don't even want to try *e9s LR trap party flashbacks*. This makes me want to change data center but idk how it is on light.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

Casual Players will always find something to complain about, especially if they have to put actual effort into things and stuff. Constantly pandering to them never is a good long-term solution to any game that is worth its salt.

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Tbh because of unsynch, getting a mount or a glam in savage/extreme just looses it's flavor when the next expantion is there. There's just no point in trying to play in the real difficulty anymore. I'd like to see a difference between synched/unsynched loot. You want it easy ? you get the budget mount/glam. You want to have the real difficulty ? You get the best mount/glam.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

Locking glamour behind content is a great way to encourage engagement.

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If that were true then Coil gear would have incentivized more people to do it and we would've never had normal modes added in the first place. Glamour only increases participation if the content can be completed casually. There's very few people that would engage in content above their skill level just for glamour.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

If that were true then Coil gear would have incentivized more people to do it and we would've never had normal modes added in the first place. Glamour only increases participation if the content can be completed casually. There's very few people that would engage in content above their skill level just for glamour.

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It isn't even about individual skill level a lot of the time, a group is only as good as its average skill level, and you only factor into 1/8 of that.

Extreme content harder than something like Ruby/Emerald weapon is a pain to clear, and that's pretty much because of the RNG nature of PF groups

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

There are WAY more casual players than hardcore, and they pay the same money but they're not on the servers 10 hours a day eating up bandwidth. I think Hardcore players get the wrong idea about how much SE wants them around; SE prefers casual players and will always cater to them, as will every other successful MMO.

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"Successful" being a very important bit here.

WildStar was built by a dev team with a philosophy that "people want an MMO that's hardcore again, with raid content that requires a ton of cooperation and coordination to get through, and main story locked behind skill checks." And as much as I love the WildStar devs as people, I also think they were proven very wrong. Because while it was really neat content... a huge amount of the playerbase got to like level 25 or whatever, hit a skill wall, got frustrated with the inability to progress, and left; sure, some were motivated to 'git gud', but many others were motivated to 'git back to whatever other MMO they used to be playing'.

The game lost so many players—and so much money—that they first went free-to-play with RMT, and then just entirely were shut down. Because no matter how vocal the "hardcore" players are, they're far less numerous than the casual ones... and far less able to financially support an ongoing game wholly on their own.

Now, that "cater specifically to the hardcore playerbase" philosophy wasn't the only factor in WildStar's decline and demise, but from what I observed it was certainly a big one.

And as much as I've come to love savage and such since getting into it in this game, and look at that sort of content as a yardstick to measure my own improvement against... I also have many friends who are not into it, and who would be heartbroken to see lore locked behind it. And if it was required as part of the main scenario—like the skill check in WildStar turned out to be—they'd probably go play something else instead.

This game could definitely stand to tweak the balance in a lot of places, but if you tweak things too far you will chase away the playerbase.

I think a lot of these players who want the game harder have no problem at all seeing the playerbase slashed.

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Originally Posted by Wrestlefire769

I think a lot of these players who want the game harder have no problem at all seeing the playerbase slashed.

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And there's no reason anyone should listen to the players who want the game to do worse.

I honestly kind of wish they would at least add more interesting aspects to jobs other than new shiny nuke damage buttons.

With ranged support being nonexistent, tank aggro management being nonexistent, healers only having 1 button and dps aggro management tools like diversion being gone it feels like the only thing there ever is to do is just mindlessly burn the boss down and maybe mitigate damage, but even mitigating isn't very meaningful.

Call me weird but I preferred when fights were more uncertain and less scripted dpsfests, and you could do something at least a bit meaningful like ripping boss aggro from the tank because you're killing your rotation, or using refresh so that freshly rezzed healer can get back on their feet and back to keeping the party alive a little quicker.

Heck being able to choose between more healing or more dps with Eos/Selene was interesting in a way since you could use Selene in fights where you felt more confident in your healing

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

"Successful" being a very important bit here.

WildStar was built by a dev team with a philosophy that "people want an MMO that's hardcore again, with raid content that requires a ton of cooperation and coordination to get through, and main story locked behind skill checks." And as much as I love the WildStar devs as people, I also think they were proven very wrong. Because while it was really neat content... a huge amount of the playerbase got to like level 25 or whatever, hit a skill wall, got frustrated with the inability to progress, and left; sure, some were motivated to 'git gud', but many others were motivated to 'git back to whatever other MMO they used to be playing'.

The game lost so many players—and so much money—that they first went free-to-play with RMT, and then just entirely were shut down. Because no matter how vocal the "hardcore" players are, they're far less numerous than the casual ones... and far less able to financially support an ongoing game wholly on their own.

Now, that "cater specifically to the hardcore playerbase" philosophy wasn't the only factor in WildStar's decline and demise, but from what I observed it was certainly a big one.

And as much as I've come to love savage and such since getting into it in this game, and look at that sort of content as a yardstick to measure my own improvement against... I also have many friends who are not into it, and who would be heartbroken to see lore locked behind it. And if it was required as part of the main scenario—like the skill check in WildStar turned out to be—they'd probably go play something else instead.

This game could definitely stand to tweak the balance in a lot of places, but if you tweak things too far you will chase away the playerbase.

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I don't even necessarily think it's skill checks that turn players away. Souls games, for example, have carved out a sizable fanbase almost purely on the idea that challenging gameplay is fun and rewarding.

Where MMO's lose people is when they require too much coordination amongst strangers. I enjoy challenging content; I DON'T enjoy having to coordinate my real life and my game time around the schedules of 7 other people in order to even attempt said challenging content. It's a moronic expectation that will always leave content like Savage as an extreme niche and undesirable to the vast majority of players. Requiring that kind of thing even for story content would be a death sentence for this game.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

I enjoy challenging content; I DON'T enjoy having to coordinate my real life and my game time around the schedules of 7 other people in order to even attempt said challenging content. It's a moronic expectation that will always leave content like Savage as an extreme niche and undesirable to the vast majority of players. Requiring that kind of thing even for story content would be a death sentence for this game.

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This is an interesting point, and one that echoes my own experience. I really enjoy challenging content in games and will happily (well, mostly happily) spend hours on a particularly tough fight in a Soulslike game. The duo fights in Nioh were some of the best moments in that game and I think I spent upwards of 3 dedicated hours on at least one of them. But that's just me, and that's just for me. When thrown into a group, even an organized group, it's no longer about me and my experience. I have to hope that the others in the group don't mess things up for me when I'm playing perfectly. And, of course, I hate feeling like I'm the one messing things up for everyone else when I'm having a crap day and keep causing wipes. I'd love to see more actual challenging solo focused content in FF14 like a sort of Masked Carnivale for individual roles or classes.

In short, not wanting more hardcore challenging group content is not the same as not wanting more challenging content.

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Originally Posted by Wrestlefire769

I think a lot of these players who want the game harder have no problem at all seeing the playerbase slashed.

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That's not true, even harcore players don't wan't the game to become too hard because they know all players don't have the time for that.
The biggest problem in this game imo is endgame content becoming braindead as time goes on. Some stormblood raids became easier and my best memories come always from difficulties i had to overcome (and i was a casual at the time now i'm midcore). It's more fun than just destroy what shows up and take the loot. I don't have any good memories doing e1 to e12 other than the 1srt time.
Even casuals can enjoy some good difficulty. A lot of them didnt have any problem when stormblood raid were harder etc

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

It isn't even about individual skill level a lot of the time, a group is only as good as its average skill level, and you only factor into 1/8 of that.

Extreme content harder than something like Ruby/Emerald weapon is a pain to clear, and that's pretty much because of the RNG nature of PF groups

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Yeah, why I don't bother doing savage even though I can dye the glamour. Not worth it. At least not while it's relevant. A lot of people even wait for the next expansion before doing extreme mount farms.

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Originally Posted by Juzjuzz

That's not true, even harcore players don't wan't the game to become too hard because they know all players don't have the time for that.
The biggest problem in this game imo is endgame content becoming braindead as time goes on. Some stormblood raids became easier and my best memories come always from difficulties i had to overcome (and i was a casual at the time now i'm midcore). It's more fun than just destroy what shows up and take the loot. I don't have any good memories doing e1 to e12 other than the 1srt time.
Even casuals can enjoy some good difficulty. A lot of them didnt have any problem when stormblood raid were harder etc

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I am casual and Shiva gave me more trouble then any boss in Omega ever did. Difficulty is all personal opinion whats hard to one person is a snooze fest to another. I remeber people 2 weeks after Nidhoggs release complaining they still could not get past it and I beat it day one with the first group I joined.

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Originally Posted by Juzjuzz

That's not true, even harcore players don't wan't the game to become too hard because they know all players don't have the time for that.

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Alexander Raid A3S/A4S A6S-(Pre nerf), A8S. A3S was a brutal fight and A4S was beyond dumb for how it worked. A6S before nerf was kinda brutal, A8S was a fight that almost rival an Ultimate, or just about. I play hardcore atm and I really don't want the fight to have really trash mechanics. Ultimate is an exception because it's fair.