The health problem of hiding numbers while catering to high-end raiders

Final Fantasy XIV is currently fighting with a contradiction of its own design. Extremely fine tuned high-end content requiring perfect execution of rotations and min-maxing of stats exist while those same numbers are hidden from the players. The issue is that the highest end raiders are effectively e-sports players. These are the kind of people who will do things that take a tole on their health to complete content within a single lockout, if not aiming to be world first.

Due to the nature of enrages and damage tuning, the threat of an improperly balanced encounter always exists and goes up with the more jobs introduced to the game. Without some objective measurements to know when something is realistically achievable, these players can (and in fact have, in the case of FFXI's absolute virtue) hurt themselves chasing an impossible goal.

The issue is it must be possible for parties external to SE to check the metrics of a fight for the sake of safety of that particular player segment regardless of how excellent the devs are at balancing the fight. A good first step would be to fill in basic details on the player UI, like what is a player's critical hit chance vs a target of his level under the critical hit tooltip. It's absolutely acceptable to want to display necessary numbers under their own terms, but to not do so at all makes forces the player segment they are catering to use external tools which the dev team does not approve of.

Had the very tools they condemn not exist, many parties trying to complete the 6.2 raid tier prior to the hotfix to tank damage could have found themselves chasing an impossible goal, hurting themselves in much the same way as the players that tried to take down Absolute Virtue in FFXI.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Had the very tools they condemn not exist, many parties trying to complete the 6.2 raid tier prior to the hotfix to tank damage could have found themselves chasing an impossible goal, hurting themselves in much the same way as the players that tried to take down Absolute Virtue in FFXI.

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Okay, no. I'm far from the biggest fan of XIV's current development decisions, but this is not a fair comparison at all. I fought that thing, and I can assure you it wasn't just a simple matter of wiping repeatedly to an "overtuned" encounter. Absolute Virtue was a matter of having to stay awake for days on end just to have any shot at killing it only to probably wipe at the last second anyway (or give up after it full healed using some BS you couldn't prevent). FFXI's devs kept nerfing different ways people found to kill the bloody thing before they finally had to cave in and make it not completely insane.

FFXIV's devs by comparison may overtune things from time to time (intentionally so in the case of Alexander's first tier), but that is as far as it goes. None of their fights are at a level where you will harm yourself by attempting to complete them, overtuned or not.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Okay, no. I'm far from the biggest fan of XIV's current development decisions, but this is not a fair comparison at all. I fought that thing, and I can assure you it wasn't just a simple matter of wiping repeatedly to an "overtuned" encounter. Absolute Virtue was a matter of having to stay awake for days on end just to have any shot at killing it only to probably wipe at the last second anyway (or give up after it full healed using some BS you couldn't prevent). FFXI's devs kept nerfing different ways people found to kill the bloody thing before they finally had to cave in and make it not completely insane.

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https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fi.../39/AVBene.jpg

Didn't the devs also release a video on how to kill it, only for it to not only be too vague, their method would get patched out anyway too?

That is correct. They put out a useless video and patched the method it showed out anyway. Players to this day are convinced they used their developer BS to make it killable for recording purposes anyway, and I really wouldn't be surprised if this was the case.

Something else to keep in mind is the development team of FFXI repeatedly vetoed clears they deemed weren't the "intended way of clearing." Contrast that to FFXIV where every single Ultimate has been cleared in ways the devs never expected yet they were still congratulatory. I have a lot of criticism towards how they've handled balancing this expansion and their stance on parsing but comparing their balancing mistakes to the disastrous implementation of Absolute Virtue is pushing it.

On the thread subject itself. Tight enrages are only a factor for the week 1/2 raiders. The dev team doesn't anticipate the average raider will clear the whole tier where playing at that high a level is ever required. Which is likely how they rationalize not needing to reveal numbers. If I had to guess their perspective, it's to simply say, "It may be challenging now but once you have more gear, you'll be able to achieve it!"

Honestly, I think in some ways it's also harmful to hide the stats. Without these tools it'd be very easy to turn situations where the party wipes into a "he said, she said" moment, with almost anyone being able to blame anyone else for just about any reason.

Whilst I do not have the hands on experience.
And as others said, your points have to many blatant variables as to how they'd be way to different scenarios for them to ever be one to one. Ever.
[so much that many are thinking you are overexaggerating, without saying it]

We get the main point you're asking for is a QoL that would improve the game for many, without having to resort with Bannable Equipment.

Can Only Hope it reaches them in some form. But as many will tell me, and others. it's a long shot to nothing. <though I'll always hold it.>

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Originally Posted by Fendred

The issue is it must be possible for parties external to SE to check the metrics of a fight for the sake of safety of that particular player segment regardless of how excellent the devs are at balancing the fight. A good first step would be to fill in basic details on the player UI, like what is a player's critical hit chance vs a target of his level under the critical hit tooltip.

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Things like this are hidden because if they were visible, players would see they don't change anything. It doesn't matter how much crit you have your crit rate is nearly always the same because every time new gear comes out they tweak the value for stats. It's why a level 90 BLM has the same cast time on Flare with several thousand spell speed as a level 50 BLM with just a few hundred spell speed.

All those extra stats do nothing even crit. All the thousands of points you can pile into it but your crit rate is still always much the same, even if you go unsync a level 70 raid with level 90 gear and stats you'll still have the same crit rates you had doing it at 70 in 70 gear.

It's also why you can go do Midare on a level 90 boss and find it does exactly the same damage as it does against a level 1 bug. Because the 90 boss has the exact same defence and resistances as a level 1 bug, just a massively inflated amount of HP.

They don't make the information visible because the stats are effectively worthless. For example: If you log in during patch 6.2 and see you have 4567 crit, and a tooltip popped up telling you that’s a 38.90% crit chance. Then. on patch 6.4 with the same gear and 4567 crit, that same tooltip would be like only 37.65% crit chance. WTF???

Then when you’ve busted your behind off to get the shiny new raid gear and now have an impressive 5678 crit but the tooltip goes right back to saying 38.90%!!! WTF?!? You’ve gained NOTHING!!

Reasons why players are bored of the gear treadmill #42
The ONLY stat that matters is I-Level (BORING)

The game has always been fighting a contradiction of itself though... on multiple fronts..

its a Final Fantasy that's trying to be World of Warcraft,
it's an MMO that's trying to be a single-player rpg.
It's trying to build on all the things Final Fantasy fans love, while at the same time destroying them all to keep it dumb and simple..

It's a mess

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Had the very tools they condemn not exist, many parties trying to complete the 6.2 raid tier prior to the hotfix to tank damage could have found themselves chasing an impossible goal, hurting themselves in much the same way as the players that tried to take down Absolute Virtue in FFXI.

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That is not ever remotely comparable. And I was playing XI during that time.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

That is not ever remotely comparable. And I was playing XI during that time.

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Every FFXI player when Absolute Virtue gets brought up.
https://media.tenor.com/GjqLIt28NkQA...-flashback.gif

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Originally Posted by Fendred

the threat of an improperly balanced encounter always exists and goes up with the more jobs introduced to the game.

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They are pretty good at this though. From a pure potency and tooltip standpoint, you can add up the effect of all abilities and find they are almost the same between jobs in the same role. This is still the case. The issue is how that potency is spread out and doesn't fall within damage windows and damage windows weren't taken into account until EW homogenized them.

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Without some objective measurements to know when something is realistically achievable, these players can (and in fact have, in the case of FFXI's absolute virtue) hurt themselves chasing an impossible goal.

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It's supposed to be achievable. If it's not, then it's a bug and should be addressed by SE like it was recently.

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It's absolutely acceptable to want to display necessary numbers under their own terms, but to not do so at all makes forces the player segment they are catering to use external tools which the dev team does not approve of.

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Not necessarily. People have worked out stats and done the necessary maths using calculators and websites before logging into the game for years.

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Had the very tools they condemn not exist, many parties trying to complete the 6.2 raid tier prior to the hotfix to tank damage could have found themselves chasing an impossible goal, hurting themselves in much the same way as the players that tried to take down Absolute Virtue in FFXI.

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Having a stock of water and food, regular meals and resting after 16 hours max should be part of the plan. If the static as a whole is not ordering this of their members, then it's probably not the right static. Not eating and sleeping would impact your performance and then impact you the next day, making the raid performance worse, so there is a good reason for racers to be doing this and as far as I have observed, they do this.

Anyone trying to keep going without drinking, eating or sleeping was probably never going to win the race anyway because it would bite their performance toward the end.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Final Fantasy XIV is currently fighting with a contradiction of its own design. Extremely fine tuned high-end content requiring perfect execution of rotations and min-maxing of stats exist while those same numbers are hidden from the players. The issue is that the highest end raiders are effectively e-sports players. These are the kind of people who will do things that take a tole on their health to complete content within a single lockout, if not aiming to be world first.

Due to the nature of enrages and damage tuning, the threat of an improperly balanced encounter always exists and goes up with the more jobs introduced to the game. Without some objective measurements to know when something is realistically achievable, these players can (and in fact have, in the case of FFXI's absolute virtue) hurt themselves chasing an impossible goal.

The issue is it must be possible for parties external to SE to check the metrics of a fight for the sake of safety of that particular player segment regardless of how excellent the devs are at balancing the fight. A good first step would be to fill in basic details on the player UI, like what is a player's critical hit chance vs a target of his level under the critical hit tooltip. It's absolutely acceptable to want to display necessary numbers under their own terms, but to not do so at all makes forces the player segment they are catering to use external tools which the dev team does not approve of.

Had the very tools they condemn not exist, many parties trying to complete the 6.2 raid tier prior to the hotfix to tank damage could have found themselves chasing an impossible goal, hurting themselves in much the same way as the players that tried to take down Absolute Virtue in FFXI.

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I remember when playing games was a fun thing to do instead of showing off your e-resume.

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Originally Posted by Lunalepsy

I remember when playing games was a fun thing to do instead of showing off your e-resume.

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Have you ever considered that some find showing off their e-resume fun?

Nah, preposterous...

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Final Fantasy XIV is currently fighting with a contradiction of its own design. Extremely fine tuned high-end content requiring perfect execution of rotations and min-maxing of stats

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Your entire argument is based on a lie.

No encounter in any mmorpg ever requires perfect execution otherwise only a handful people and scripts on the planet would be able to clear said encounter, this is basic game design.

You always have a room for error, even ultimates have some small room for minor errors, imagine the room for error in savage, not only that, add the gear you get over the weeks which further increase that room for error and we have reached a place where we are quite far from "perfect execution of rotations and min-maxing of stats"

The only time it is even possible for an encounter to require literally perfect play would be if there was a balancing error or maybe, just maybe you arent meant to clear week 1 and you need farm some gear to beat said encounter after a few weeks which can be intended in its design, that is a developer decision.

Even world first players often make minor mistakes yet they still clear quite quickly, certain raiders need to stop deluding themselves that clearing a raid means they achieved perfect performance.... Like, the levels of fragile ego are scary

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Have you ever considered that some find showing off their e-resume fun?

Nah, preposterous...

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Sad way to have fun but oh well. Its not like there's a huge pot of gold waiting for you at the end of that rainbow.

But I really shouldnt be judging what people find fun anyway.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Having a stock of water and food, regular meals and resting after 16 hours max should be part of the plan. If the static as a whole is not ordering this of their members, then it's probably not the right static. Not eating and sleeping would impact your performance and then impact you the next day, making the raid performance worse, so there is a good reason for racers to be doing this and as far as I have observed, they do this.

Anyone trying to keep going without drinking, eating or sleeping was probably never going to win the race anyway because it would bite their performance toward the end.

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People overlook this a lot. If you're going beyond one lockout on a fight and not taking a decent break, you're gonna get sloppy. It doesn't just happen in gaming. I see people push themselves way too often and sometimes I get to hear them and I can tell when they start to get tired. People clown themselves too often thinking they can go one more round.

Speaking from ignorance on savage level, but my impression was that endgame fine tuning was really only an issue for week 1 clears. Aren’t fights progressively easier as time goes by and raiders get better gear from weekly stuff?

…so doesn’t that make this whole thing moot? If a fight is so hard it can’t be cleared week 1…doesn’t it just get cleared week 2? Or 3?

Moreover, comparing the difficulty of 14s fights to other MMOs is rather disingenuous- 14 largely boils down to memorization and pre-planning and worst case, just waiting to get better gear that is guaranteed to come along. Most MMOs once you hit the ceiling, that’s it.


I think a big thing players need to remember: this game is intended for casual play. Originally they only added savage/ex/etc because they were surprised people wanted more to do once they finished 2.0. YoshiP had said he expected people would play, have fun, then go play other games during content drought..but people wanted more krunk… so they added relics with massive grinds and hard fights like binding coil. They want to cater to everyone, but hard-content players are not the target audience.


Remember they even made a tv drama entirely around a son carrying his dad through binding coil. That’s the target.

Binding Coil was released when the game first dropped on patch 2.0. It was all the other stuff like extremes and the big relic grinds after that.

That being said, the only place that does demand perfection, is for the most part, ultimates. There can be a few mistakes that are possible in the eariler ones due to power creep and potency changes, but take Dragonsong for example. You can't really screw up at all. Screwing up strength is a wipe, messing up the second half of sanctity a wipe, a mistake during dive from grace/enumerations, a wipe, a mistake on death, a wipe, dying to hrae, a wipe.

that ribbon OP wearing looks like fish fins

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Have you ever considered that some find showing off their e-resume fun?

Nah, preposterous...

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Weird choice of game for showing off your l33t gamer ski11z, especially in a world where a) professional e-sports exist and b) better/tighter competitive platforms exist.

Being really really good at 14 is fine, nothing wrong with that… but it’s comparable to being good at like… dance dance revolution or skeeball.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Sad way to have fun but oh well. Its not like there's a huge pot of gold waiting for you at the end of that rainbow.

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Not Really. It's a combination of many factors including the basic difference between a Hobbie and a Passtime, basic perceptions of self-esteem and other psychological traits, drive and motivation etc.

The difference between a Hobby and a Passtime for example can be boiled down to effort. A hobby is typically something you are passionate about and want to do well. want to improve yourself. It might be playing video games on harder modes, Going to track days with your car, Carpentry or DIY, or It might even be cake decorating. or playing on a local 5-a-side sports team. It's something you strive to do well and get better at and grow yourself.

A Passtime is pretty much exactly as the name suggests. it's just something you do to pass the time. without as much effort or passion. You might just blast away some hours on a video game on easy or watch Netflix, Have a kick about with your mates in the park. Neither is right or wrong. both are very valid ways to do things.

Then there are the psychological factors, and how people perceive their self-worth and self-esteem. Video games often get labelled as escapism for example, and this tends to come from a more negative psychological impact of people who are unhappy with life, they can't succeed in life so they escape to video games where they play on easy and can accomplish things. it's also where a lot of the fomo bs comes from because if there's something they can't accomplish they feel inferior or do not measure up..

It also means that people who play on harder difficulties often get labelled as try-hards or elitists and it's often claimed these people need video games to give them their self-worth by doing or having something other players can't or don’t have.

But this is often wrong, As the people who play games on harder difficulties tend not to do so to escape their lives. they do so to supplement their lives to continue to challenge themselves and grow.. In much the same way the guys who entered a local 5-a-side tournament wanted to do something more than just have a kick about in the park.

I myself don't really raid anymore here. I find it pointless and just no fun with all the dumbing down and simplifications they've done over the years. but often when it comes to other games I play I generally do ramp them up to hard mode. That doesn't make me a hardcore elitist or anything though. It took me over 9 months to finish Sekiro for example as I might have only played it for a few hours one evening a week. It’s a long way from being elite or hardcore. it's actually super casual but to some people just the fact I beat Sekiro means I’m a hardcore gamer.

Here I do use ACT sometimes and while my logs and stuff have been hidden since the earliest days of Heavensward. Its not uncommon to see myself in the 60th-70th percentiles. Which is funny because it's right there where the casual lazy players call you a try-hard. but also right where the more competitive raiders be like "git gud scrub" either way I dont care too much. as I've said time and time again i don't care for the treadmill grind or bis bs so if my i597 samurai can rock out 69th percentile in Storms Crown Ex. with a 595 or whatever ilevel the Endsinger blade is. I'm more than happy with that. If gear was better and more interesting and if the treadmill wasn't so tedious I'd probably make more effort to have better gear.

But when everything is just throw-away junk on an endless treadmill... Mehhhh fk it. That's not fun to me. but to many people it is.. so yay for them..

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Originally Posted by Dzian

its a Finala Fantasy thats trying to be world of warcraft,

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To be fair, becoming more like World of Warcraft was a major factor FFXIV 2.0's successful rising from the ashes of 1.0.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Extremely fine tuned high-end content requiring perfect execution of rotations and min-maxing of stats exist while those same numbers are hidden from the players.

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We don’t need SE to show us the numbers when add-ons do it for us. Yoshida is very well-aware that third-party tools are crucial to FFXIV’s success as a raiding MMO, but for legal liability purposes he can’t explicitly endorse them. The suits at the top likely mandated a ban on those tools. Yoshida himself was a big WoW player and likely had all the works including DBM and raider.io. So Yoshida “looks the other way” while giving us a wink and a nudge. I wouldn’t be surprised if he used them himself during testing. So for all intents and purposes, the need for damage numbers has been filled, and it’s never going to be taken away from us. FFXIV has filled the shoes that WoW left behind.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Speaking from ignorance on savage level, but my impression was that endgame fine tuning was really only an issue for week 1 clears. Aren’t fights progressively easier as time goes by and raiders get better gear from weekly stuff?

…so doesn’t that make this whole thing moot? If a fight is so hard it can’t be cleared week 1…doesn’t it just get cleared week 2? Or 3?

Moreover, comparing the difficulty of 14s fights to other MMOs is rather disingenuous- 14 largely boils down to memorization and pre-planning and worst case, just waiting to get better gear that is guaranteed to come along. Most MMOs once you hit the ceiling, that’s it.


I think a big thing players need to remember: this game is intended for casual play. Originally they only added savage/ex/etc because they were surprised people wanted more to do once they finished 2.0. YoshiP had said he expected people would play, have fun, then go play other games during content drought..but people wanted more krunk… so they added relics with massive grinds and hard fights like binding coil. They want to cater to everyone, but hard-content players are not the target audience.


Remember they even made a tv drama entirely around a son carrying his dad through binding coil. That’s the target.

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This exactly.

Let's not forget people actually cleared on week 1. Some people are actually just that good. Everything we need to clear is already in the game. The content gets tuned for use with gear provided. Figure out your best stat build and get to learning. You have ample time to get things right. Things do get better as people get better gear and learn the fights more.

You don't need another meter to tell you how well you all did. There are already enough ways to tell. You either hit enrage or you didn't. If you did, maybe stop getting KO'd so much.

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

I wouldn’t be surprised if he used them himself during testing.

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If they use those tools, then what's the point in continuing to use them once testing is complete?

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Have you ever considered that some find showing off their e-resume fun?

Nah, preposterous...

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It's fine for those who find meaning in it and want to compare themselves against others who likewise find meaning in it.

It's not fine when they try to drag others who want nothing to do with e-resumes down into it so they can get an even bigger ego boost.

I'm not against parsers at all. They were a great tool for self-improvment back when I was still seriously raiding. What I'm against are the people who use them the wrong way, such as to shove their e-resumes in the faces of people who aren't interested. As someone else pointed out, FFXIV being a casual game makes it a bit of a strange choice for those who want to show off. Most of us just don't care.

Don't ban the parser. Ban the players who misuse them.

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Originally Posted by Pablomaldito

To be fair, becoming more like World of Warcraft was a major factor FFXIV 2.0's successful rising from the ashes of 1.0.

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I would say also to be fair, though, the WoW that FFXIV 2.0 modeled itself after is very different from the WoW of today that caters to the M+ and high-end raider crew. It's actually the shift in focus that caused WoW numbers to plummet.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

I would say also to be fair, though, the WoW that FFXIV 2.0 modeled itself after is very different from the WoW of today that caters to the M+ and high-end raider crew. It's actually the shift in focus that caused WoW numbers to plummet.

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This.

Today's wow is literally a game that caters solely to raidloggers and the entire design is based "but if we give good rewards to casual/solo content our raidloggers will complain" so casual/solo content is both underdeveloped and unrewarding, and let's not even talk about the abomination that is today's story, I heard their new xpac's "casual" content is "flying" xD

FF14 is thankfully a far different game to WoW and that is why it has beaten WoW, it caters to everyone and doesnt treat raiders like somekind of special class of player, it has a decent story, it has fun and rewarding casual/solo content and now they are even starting to explore pvp as well more seriously.

If FF14 was anything like today's WoW people wouldnt have massively moved to FF14 during shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

This.

Today's wow is literally a game that caters solely to raidloggers and the entire design is based "but if we give good rewards to casual/solo content our raidloggers will complain" so casual/solo content is both underdeveloped and unrewarding, and let's not even talk about the abomination that is today's story, I heard their new xpac's "casual" content is "flying" xD

FF14 is thankfully a far different game to WoW and that is why it has beaten WoW, it caters to everyone and doesnt treat raiders like somekind of special class of player, it has a decent story, it has fun and rewarding casual/solo content and now they are even starting to explore pvp as well more seriously.

If FF14 was anything like today's WoW people wouldnt have massively moved to FF14 during shadowbringers.

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To be fair, the recent resurgent of new players in FFXIV wasnt due to Shadowbringers at all. It was just simply because it was at the right place at the right time with what the Blizzard sexual harrasment scandals atm and people finally being fed up with recent lackluster expansions alongside streamers giving attention to other MMOs, so FFXIV was a simple target.

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

I wouldn’t be surprised if he used them himself during testing.

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As someone who has seen the backend of several MMO servers (including FFXI) and also seen how that works in full, let me tell you they do not need any plugins we could come up with to get extremely comprehensive data on what goes on in any particular fight/instance/etc.

The amount of data at their fingertips available in a matter of keystrokes is staggering. Remember that they have the duty record function available to use? That's a "baby's first keystroke recorder" compared to what they have. Not user friendly to use mind you..which is why we don't get it.

I have to say clear 6.2 savage in week 1 is absolutely NOT chasing an impossible goal, but ofc the job balance is really bad, but not everyone has to clear it in week 1 right? savage raids will become eaiser when you get high ilv gears after many weeks.

Agree with some comments that in FFXIV you are hard to check many stuffs(job damage/boss damage type/attributes), SE should fix them(even i believe people just use the 3rd party tools lol).

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Originally Posted by Ralphe2449

This.

Today's wow is literally a game that caters solely to raidloggers and the entire design is based "but if we give good rewards to casual/solo content our raidloggers will complain" so casual/solo content is both underdeveloped and unrewarding, and let's not even talk about the abomination that is today's story, I heard their new xpac's "casual" content is "flying" xD

FF14 is thankfully a far different game to WoW and that is why it has beaten WoW, it caters to everyone and doesnt treat raiders like somekind of special class of player, it has a decent story, it has fun and rewarding casual/solo content and now they are even starting to explore pvp as well more seriously.

If FF14 was anything like today's WoW people wouldnt have massively moved to FF14 during shadowbringers.

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Surprisingly for you, todays WoW is almost not at all different from FFxiv fundamentally in endgame.

FFxiv's "hard" raids give the best loot in the game (630 that you cant get anywhere else) and wow's "hard" raids give best loot in the game (mythic raiding).
same for cosmetic rewards.
the same way wow caters to "raiders"s ffxiv does the same, can bring 100 more examples of it.

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Originally Posted by Bukachu

Surprisingly for you, todays WoW is almost not at all different from FFxiv fundamentally in endgame.

FFxiv's "hard" raids give the best loot in the game (630 that you cant get anywhere else) and wow's "hard" raids give best loot in the game (mythic raiding).
same for cosmetic rewards.
the same way wow caters to "raiders"s ffxiv does the same, can bring 100 more examples of it.

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Yet WoW relies on RNG for end game gearing. FFXIV gives players deterministic options with viable crafted and tomestone gear that can be used if RNG is against you.

WoW has invested into borrowed power systems that impact every aspect of the game. FFXIV borrowed power systems impact only the specific content they're designed for.

WoW has gone the route of scoring player dungeon performance and making it a public display to give players even more incentive to ostracize others. FFXIV has stood firm against such a practice.

Wow thinks that repetitive world quests grinds should be more than enough content for players not interested in raiding/M+. FFXIV gives players multiple content options.

Old content in WoW becomes irrelevant the moment a new expansion drops. Old content in FFXIV remains relevant thanks to roulettes and level sync.

If all you do is tunnel vision where to get BiS end game gear, they may seem about the same. If you expand your vision beyond that, they're really not that much alike.

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Originally Posted by Bukachu

Surprisingly for you, todays WoW is almost not at all different from FFxiv fundamentally in endgame.

FFxiv's "hard" raids give the best loot in the game (630 that you cant get anywhere else) and wow's "hard" raids give best loot in the game (mythic raiding).
same for cosmetic rewards.
the same way wow caters to "raiders"s ffxiv does the same, can bring 100 more examples of it.

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You are missing some very enormous differences.

WoW casual/solo content gives gear that is 40-50 ilvls below max ilvl aka gives WORTHLESS rewards and even with a ridiculous grind the gear at best is 40-30ilvls below max.
Casual/solo content is completely unrewarding because muh raidloggers would complain.

FF14 on the other hand has rewarding casual/solo content that is only a few ilvls behind maximum and with alliance raids each patch that ilvl difference is even smaller.

FF14 has an actual crafting system

WoW writing is so terrible it cant even be said it has a story

WoW has such terrible gearing that the most efficient way to gear is to pay blizzard for tokens to buy boosts, good luck getting into higher keys just for the sake of gearing up if you change mains mid patch.

FF14 has casual content, alliance raids, relic farming, bozja like zones, normal raids, beast tribes, deep dungeons, retainer farming and so much more that is relevant to this day because the game does not solely exists for raidloggers, unlike WoW whose entire focus is raidloggers to the point they have no casual content in the next xpac xD

Dont be surprised if a 2nd wave of WoW refugees comes a couple of months after their new xpac launches and people realize the game has nothing to offer to the average player other than "flying" xD

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Speaking from ignorance on savage level, but my impression was that endgame fine tuning was really only an issue for week 1 clears. Aren’t fights progressively easier as time goes by and raiders get better gear from weekly stuff?

…so doesn’t that make this whole thing moot? If a fight is so hard it can’t be cleared week 1…doesn’t it just get cleared week 2? Or 3?

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That's how it should work, but the player culture spoils it to a sufficient degree to make things annoying.

If you hold out for better gear before you plunge into Savage (or even EX's, especially the odd patch ones that are tuned at the same ilvl as 3rd-4th Savage fights) you make your task a priori easier, but that tends to be counterbalanced by the fact that you've now missed "the community wave" - especially if you must PF, as many are inclined or forced to by their work schedule.

Now you have the problem that the people who have a decent grip on mechanics are almost always hiding behind Duty Complete, with the result that you're forced to learn and get your first clear with a remaining player pool that increasingly has two left feet (and it often only takes one or two such players per party to make the whole thing a waste of time).

The upshot is that you get this situation where Yoshi intended you to be able to gear up first, but where the playerbase basically forces you to either rush it right away or wait for next tier or even for unsync (which can easily make one feel like a wimp who missed out, if one feels one could've cleared it during tier) :(

Hiding? What numbers are hidden? It's all there in the Battle log...

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Yet WoW relies on RNG for end game gearing. FFXIV gives players deterministic options with viable crafted and tomestone gear that can be used if RNG is against you.

WoW has invested into borrowed power systems that impact every aspect of the game. FFXIV borrowed power systems impact only the specific content they're designed for.

WoW has gone the route of scoring player dungeon performance and making it a public display to give players even more incentive to ostracize others. FFXIV has stood firm against such a practice.

Wow thinks that repetitive world quests grinds should be more than enough content for players not interested in raiding/M+. FFXIV gives players multiple content options.

Old content in WoW becomes irrelevant the moment a new expansion drops. Old content in FFXIV remains relevant thanks to roulettes and level sync.

If all you do is tunnel vision where to get BiS end game gear, they may seem about the same. If you expand your vision beyond that, they're really not that much alike.

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False, most of end-game gearing is done same way as in ffxiv. there's certain level of rng, if you do it with randoms it will take you months to get your bis, if you do it with set group it will be faster, 8 people in WoW would be in Best in slots faster in wow than in FFxiv tbh lol.

I agree about borrowed power however that's going away from next expansion.

No one scores your dungeon performance, it simply shows what content you've done/finished, ffxiv has exact same thing, but right in the PF. its called "duty completed" where you cant even try to join a group if group leader only wants to play with people who've done the same content, seems to be like exact same thing where people avoid you if you havent done certain content.

What content options do you have in ffxiv in current expansion if you dont raid? because I can think of a few in both games, name yours and ill give you close to equivalents for them.

I was talking about endgame, old content isnt part of it afaik, but regardless, there're plenty of old content you can do in both games. I hate doing old content in both games, but if you're into that, ffxiv has roulettes and sync and wow has old dungeons in M+, mage tower, timewalking, etc.

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Originally Posted by Amarande

That's how it should work, but the player culture spoils it to a sufficient degree to make things annoying.

If you hold out for better gear before you plunge into Savage (or even EX's, especially the odd patch ones that are tuned at the same ilvl as 3rd-4th Savage fights) you make your task a priori easier, but that tends to be counterbalanced by the fact that you've now missed "the community wave" - especially if you must PF, as many are inclined or forced to by their work schedule.

Now you have the problem that the people who have a decent grip on mechanics are almost always hiding behind Duty Complete, with the result that you're forced to learn and get your first clear with a remaining player pool that increasingly has two left feet (and it often only takes one or two such players per party to make the whole thing a waste of time).

The upshot is that you get this situation where Yoshi intended you to be able to gear up first, but where the playerbase basically forces you to either rush it right away or wait for next tier or even for unsync (which can easily make one feel like a wimp who missed out, if one feels one could've cleared it during tier) :(

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Good insight- thank you. I basically don't touch any of it until I can basically solo/faceroll it with my circle of friends, but I get that there is some personal pride in it for people who wanna show off the newest gear/beat the newest challenge. That said, I'm certainly not saying "your/their fun certainly is wrong", and appreciate that there are different things for different interests.