Tired of PF limited content

This game has a serious people problem when it comes to end game, and it's largely that there's not enough people to do it with at the same prog points, or there's not enough incentives to help others to go back and help clear end game content. Considering Aether feels like the only place where anyone clears anything in a decent amount of time this is not exactly helping things.

That and with the game on a bit of a slumping downturn compared to last expansion at the same point in time the weaknesses of content that require 8 dedicated people to learn a specific dance and have the will to go through it all is showing.

What do you feel would make things easier?

At this point the only real thing would be a true cross server party finder that doesn't require people to go across servers, but we're miles from getting anything like that. It's definitely not worth spending 12+ weeks just to clear a single tier of savage just because it is inconsistent to get to aether, though. The only two things that really make sense are the PF change for cross server or adding tools in-game to enable more people to learn the fights properly. Even if it is just a danger zone marking mini-map that shows where not to stand for mechanics the party has encountered would probably help make it easier without destroying the challenge for hardcore prog. But this is like a double edged sword. Make it easier and people who like the current challenge will complain, do nothing and then people who used to freely gather at one point but can't due to server limits get left out.

The cross world PF would be a nice start, and if they add the reward system they used for chaotic cloud of darkness
Because from what it seems you get a bonus for helping new players right? It also appeared to have certain times where it gave more rewards

Restructuring the reward system so that helping others clear after you've cleared isn't actively griefing them

Finding people at the same prog points is not as difficult as you're saying (unless you mean for old content from 2.x-6.x). I've had no trouble on any data center I've played on. But as you said, it may be the case that you'll only find it on Aether/Light/Mana at the moment due to the DC travel issue.

You do have another option as well, which is joining prog for a mechanic a bit before the one you're at. For example, if you're stuck at a mechanic near the start of the fight, the fresh prog party will probably get to it pretty fast. And if they don't get there clean, you can still practice things such as the movement for it in many cases.

As for the "game slowing", it's not showing in the raiding community (unsurprising, since the lacking content argument is aimed at non-raid content). PFs for High-End duties on Aether still often see 150 (currently 199). There are also some parties for the current expansion Extremes like Valigarmanda.

They should drop the need for all 8 people in the party to have not cleared for the week to get full loot though, because they could just make the people that cleared automatically roll Need and then it go into a void if they win the roll.

As for me, except for the Interworld PF. The developers could rework the loot mechanics.
In the first option:
Rework it so that if you have already killed this week. And when you enter a new party, you do not cut the loot for these people. At the same time, you could not roll on the contents of the chest. (This would be similar to what is now, but more appropriate)
In the second option:
Rework it so that if you killed this week, but did not receive loot. Then you could go in again and get 1 item. (Then this would increase the collection and more people would go to the PF)
In the third option:
Leave it the same as in the first option, but add a bonus for a newcomer to the party. Let's say you can get + 1 book.
P.S. Sorry if I wrote it in a way that is not very clear, English is not my native language.

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Originally Posted by Shyxx

Restructuring the reward system so that helping others clear after you've cleared isn't actively griefing them

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THIS! Still lock US that've cleared that week out from sniping the loot, but don't condemn first time clearers from being down one or even both chests. IDK, give us extra capped/uncapped tomes in exchange or a book bonus as incentives, or some sort of bonus for helping, just not a second chance on loot rolling cuz that'd be hella abused.

It would be awesome to enable cross Data Center PF and also to treat the chests like they do in the weekly alliance raids. Even if you cleared the chests number would not be affected, but you cannot roll for one if you already won/ claimed the reward. Like this, they provide an incentive, in case the person did not earn a gear piece, and also help people prog/clear.

there is also the problem of gear to minimum ilvl like I feel gearing is hard for no reason first the daily limits hurt. Second just reaching the minimum ilvl is expensive to like I don't craft and hate crafting it bore the crap out of me. But people sell the gear at like 17m for a full set I don't blame the player for selling that high but it show how much gearing is rough. Like we should be able to see a system that allow older gear with the stats you might want to be upgraded to current tiers.

Like crafting gear you can craft a item to upgrade the old craft gear to current. you can buy a item to upgrade old tomestone to the current one and of you have the normal raids you get a tomes that allow you to upgrade the old one to 740. it would change alots of things for player having multiple choice to

Could just make the game to take and develop actual skill, game knowledge and brain instead of script memorization, that would fix your problem with hard 'prog points'. How theres still people around eating up this garbage Yoshida serves them is beyond me.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Finding people at the same prog points is not as difficult as you're saying (unless you mean for old content from 2.x-6.x). I've had no trouble on any data center I've played on. But as you said, it may be the case that you'll only find it on Aether/Light/Mana at the moment due to the DC travel issue.

You do have another option as well, which is joining prog for a mechanic a bit before the one you're at. For example, if you're stuck at a mechanic near the start of the fight, the fresh prog party will probably get to it pretty fast. And if they don't get there clean, you can still practice things such as the movement for it in many cases.

As for the "game slowing", it's not showing in the raiding community (unsurprising, since the lacking content argument is aimed at non-raid content). PFs for High-End duties on Aether still often see 150 (currently 199). There are also some parties for the current expansion Extremes like Valigarmanda.

They should drop the need for all 8 people in the party to have not cleared for the week to get full loot though, because they could just make the people that cleared automatically roll Need and then it go into a void if they win the roll.

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You're on Aether so it makes sense you would say that. Outside of Aether things are anemic to the point that even doing EX trials can take two weeks or more to clear. That and going to other games that did multiplayer correctly kind of showed how backwards FFXIV's approach can be. Albeit, this might be more a comment on the limitations of an MMO system that is over a decade old.

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

Could just make the game to take and develop actual skill, game knowledge and brain instead of script memorization, that would fix your problem with hard 'prog points'. How theres still people around eating up this garbage Yoshida serves them is beyond me.

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Heck, people need to record fights using discord or third party software just to check what exactly happened. Can you imagine how few people would be doing savage if youtube didn't exist and there were no videos? The clear rates would be so low that we'd be hitting next major content patch and the majority would be stuck on the second or third fight, if they are lucky.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

You're on Aether so it makes sense you would say that. Outside of Aether things are anemic

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Everyone knows that's a problem at the moment and that SE will be slow as a snail to fix it, but ultimately the answer is to just go to Aether or find whatever secondary data center people are using if it won't let you travel there.

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people need to record fights using discord or third party software just to check what exactly happened.

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Well firstly, we have those things so it's alright, and I see no shortage of blind PFs lately, and there's always been lots of statics that do it blind and come up with their own strats (I've talked to plenty of them over the years and still saw blind statics recruiting last time I looked).

You're right though that it would be pretty difficult to work out what's going on in many cases if you couldn't record and slow it down. Not necessarily impossible but it could make it take hundreds more pulls to just get a glance at what's going on, depending on the fight. Slowing it down reveals everything from snapshot resolve order and the possible patterns (since patterns are typically a fixed number of possibilities ie. 2, 4, 6, etc).

However there are cases where you can work things out based on the battle log or linking status effects from the battle log, and reading the descriptions, and seeing the timers on status effects, which can be helped with screenshots as well.

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Can you imagine how few people would be doing savage if youtube didn't exist and there were no videos?

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You're probably right, but if that were the case, the content would probably be designed very differently. The reality is we have had game guides since even the 1990s. Take a look at the old guides on GameFAQs and GameRevolution. The final fantasy games back then had them, giving all the top strats for the bosses.

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Originally Posted by Nero-Voidstails

there is also the problem of gear to minimum ilvl like I feel gearing is hard for no reason

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No it's not. Assuming someone is starting out, there is free artifact gear of 690. The previous dungeon drops 705 gear. Using 690 gear, M1-M4 can be farmed for 710 gear and Jeuno can be farmed for 720 gear.

What have people been doing for 4 months though? They had weekly-cap tomestones and an alliance raid dropping 720 gear weekly, with free 730 augments from the alliance raid. They can now farm those tomestones via roulettes for 720 gear and augment it to 730 via hunt farming for Sacks of Nuts or alliance raids.

Once they reach 715 (which they should be higher than by now), they can do M5-M8 for 740 right side pieces, then cap weekly tomestones for a 750 right side piece.

This would cause them to meet the minimum ilvl of the Extreme and Savage (730). I don't look positively at anyone wearing 730 gear in such raids when 740 gear is free, but if you are really struggling to gear as much as you say, you will probably get away with being 730 because a lot of people won't check.

On a fresh alt character that just beat Dawntrail, I'd be 740 in a day, for no gil at all.

740 without gils? and like I said some people doesn't like crafting but true gonna be a white knight and only see one side :)

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Originally Posted by Nero-Voidstails

740 without gils? and like I said some people doesn't like crafting but true gonna be a white knight and only see one side :)

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They're right though, there's an easy way to get 740 gear:
Normal raids. The cruiserweight normal mode gear is 740. You can also ask any of the crafter friends you know who may only ask for the mats you spend tomes on.
I've been far too lazy to grab the stuff for the cruiserweight normal mode stuff since my main roles this tier have their crafted gear, but it IS free. Time-consuming? Yes, but free.

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Originally Posted by Nero-Voidstails

740 without gils? and like I said some people doesn't like crafting but true gonna be a white knight and only see one side :)

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This has nothing to do with white knighting. You do not need to craft to be 740, and you do not need to be 740 in the first place if you're that casual and lacking gil. I met someone in the new ex that was 730 and we cleared anyways.

Gear does not cost millions, that is only for pentamelds, which are not even required. Just meld the normal 2 slots if that's all you can manage. Materia is free from dungeons, extracting, hunt and FATE farming, etc.

Between 2 weeks of weekly tome gear, 6 pieces of gear from the normal raid (2 weeks of loot), and the new ex weapon, I'd be 740 pretty quick and I'd sell stuff to make the gil to buy the ultra cheap crafted gear that gets as low as 200k gil if you visit different worlds for prices.

Pentamelds are not "required", but most groups are going to tell people to pentameld if they are serious unless it's weeks into the tier and folks have decent gear from other methods. It's been that way for years and the only time it wasn't the case was probably the first two tiers I ran during shadowbringers, long before they allowed DC travel and it was a different culture then.

The issue with basically all the "we put this here for end game so people grind and keep paying a sub" content is that it is strictly worse arcade game style artificial difficulty by making sure that there is no way to know what is coming until it hits the player and making sure that hit causes a restart of the fight. It is strictly worse because it takes 8 people organized to do the content with specific roles, which also takes time to recruit for, and the length of the fights with no rewards for partial completion. It's an all or nothing gamble and it causes a lot of friction between players because of it. Also the skinner box style / sunken time fallacy type of binding that drives the content has a double edged sword kind of effect. If someone drops out over an extended break, they basically are less likely to come back after seeing it for what it is. FFXIV *was* the lesser of the two evils at one point but now kind of is the evil since all the other ones dropped out of the race.

you cant reach 740 (without gil) in one day even if you were fully 730 before... what new chars arent.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

you cant reach 740 (without gil) in one day even if you were fully 730 before... what new chars arent.

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Let's assume they are 730 since you actually can do that in a day, and let's assume it's not long before the weekly reset time:

• 4 right side 740 pieces from M5-M8.
• 1 750 right side from weekly tomestones.
• 2 left side pieces (ie. head and arms) from M5-M8 after weekly reset.
• 1 750 left side piece (ie. feet) from weekly tomestones after reset.
• 1 745 weapon from clearing the latest extreme trial.

You'd have 2 pieces of gear that are not 740 or higher, and 3 that are higher, potentially lifting the overall ilvl to there or near there. And that's in one day.

You can make the gil for missing gear by methods such as selling new crafting materials - which you can buy with your old Heliometry tomestones. I've done it on my casual returner-icon alts in the past and got ready to join savage clear parties in 1 day.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Pentamelds are not "required", but most groups are going to tell people to pentameld if they are serious

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Depends who you hang out with, but in my experience, NA PUGs never even bring the subject up and a lot of statics are friendly/lgbt/chill/casual type of statics so they probably wouldn't press you on it either.

A static might flat out craft it and meld it for you since most players are crafters (if you don't believe me, say you need your gear fixed and half your party will offer to fix it).

weekly reset? really? how convenient.


on a work day? and not everyone did the new ex. so there might be a prog necessary first
and you probably dont even get a weapon for your first kill so you might need a second group xD

I mean, whether someone does it for you or you do it yourself it's about the same thing ultimately. The other thing is that for EX content the problem is a lot worse than for Savage. People organize around savage but the EX fights it is just FFA and it takes forever to even get a prog group going.

The game's gearing system is extremely casual considering you can just do the normal raids or get crafted 740 real quick. It seems you're trying to argue it's not casual enough because of the off chance it might take you longer than a few minutes to gear up under certain circumstances (ie. lack of gil, just beat Dawntrail) which isn't even the case for many players and, as I mentioned, I've done it in 1 day on raid alts with limited gil before.

There are other games where gearing up for raids has taken months of work and wouldn't be possible by a casual player. FFXIV's gearing is nothing like that. Probably the only thing that would satisfy you then is to get the gear the same way you get 690 artifact gear, so you don't even have to expend the strenuous effort of doing the normal raids to gear up for savage.

As for prog parties filling, sometimes it takes a while but that could even be where Aether is problematic, because parties can get buried under 200 other PFs and be hard to find. But all I can say is I have helped lots and lots of ex4 progs clear over the last two weeks. I join, wipe with them, teach them things they are confused about and then we usually clear.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

This game has a serious people problem when it comes to end game, and it's largely that there's not enough people to do it with at the same prog points, or there's not enough incentives to help others to go back and help clear end game content. Considering Aether feels like the only place where anyone clears anything in a decent amount of time this is not exactly helping things.

That and with the game on a bit of a slumping downturn compared to last expansion at the same point in time the weaknesses of content that require 8 dedicated people to learn a specific dance and have the will to go through it all is showing.

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Difficult content:
Much like dangerous worlds in old school MMOs is supposed to necessitate people coming together.

So, social systems are in place to help gather like-minded people. But the game itself cannot create these interactions that's what makes it an MMO.

You mention people being at different prog points, but also that there's less incentive to help others to go back. (Side Note: In my experience, many players far better than me go into PFs all the time for fun)

But as an example, let's take the new EX as an example.



Say you got to Bloom 6/,Enrage but the groups you see posted are on Bloom 4 or EF2.

Well in that case you can go to the group at an earlier prog point to help them since you got more experience with later phases.

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The only issue with PF is that people are good at the game. THEY CAN DO IT. But they get discouraged and quit before achieving their potential.

It sucks having to form your own group because of the responsibility that entails but just remember everyone in that group is there to achieve the same goal. Just by making a group you're helping others gain experience at the very least.
And say for example your group doesn't make it.

That's fine because maybe by the time your group disbands there's a new group posted at your same progress.

Ultimately. You can only control in game and in life is yourself. If you focus on yourself, it doesn't matter what stage a group is at long as you're doing your best, eventually you'll land in the winning group.

All you can do is show up, do your best, and keep showing up.

You can only ever ‘Never’ do something by not trying at all.
We might not clear today, but we’ll all be better by the time we disband.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

This game has a serious people problem...

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Correct, FF14 Endgame is like assemble an IKEA furniture. You get your "assembly instructions" and than you go, if you do not follow the exact order you are doomed.
That is why FF14 endgame for me is not existing. It is boring as assemble a furniture over and over again, its the sweatshop version of raiding! Is this fun? Not for me!

The problems:

• The "assembly instructions" are mostly done in 1-2 days and the fun of exploring the mechanics is gone!
• After the "assembly instructions" are valid and confirmed, everybody expect from you that you know them, it is not possible to say "lets learn it on the fly and have fun with it".
• "But there are learning groups?!" is the most well known lie they want to told you that that system works. No learning groups are mostly gone after 1-2 days. Last ex mode it was not even 24 hours!
• In Japan it is even worse, where the "assembly instructions" also contains the exact spots for the exact classes and the fun is even more gone!

So what you have in the end, a boring raid, where you must learn to de-assemble the boss with a instruction list. Great?! No! I don't like sweatshops! I want random mechanics, i want chaos! Honey B. Lovely was a nice exception in the last raids, even on normal, because you have some random mechanics. It was fun to evade the aoes, because they where random! Sometimes you must heal, sometimes you run with zero debuffs in a heart to rescue somebody, sometimes you waste it. But it was funny chaos! This is raiding, not all the savages and ultimates .

The next big problem is the design of the raids. The raids are mostly disconnected from the normal version to the ex/savage version. The mechanics are mostly not an upgrade, its something different. So you can't even learn in the normal version to went later to the hard version. That leads to one thing "elitism", because the only way where you can learn the mechanics, is while you doing it with people that expect from you to know what you do! Even worse "no no, you don't join without a clear flag on your character". What disconnect the casuals from the pro raiders. And the design of the raids is garbage, its always a room, always many many AoE and that was it, its boring and frustrating, to much Aoe, to less other mechanics.

We need more, better designs and versions for solo and coop people!

https://cdn.betterttv.net/emote/658f...77148d/1x.webphttps://imgur.com/kUaqzQJ.pnghttps://cdn.betterttv.net/emote/5b0d...06900e/1x.webphttps://imgur.com/kUaqzQJ.pnghttps://cdn.betterttv.net/emote/658f...77148d/1x.webp

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The game's gearing system is extremely casual considering you can just do the normal raids or get crafted 740 real quick. It seems you're trying to argue it's not casual enough because of the off chance it might take you longer than a few minutes to gear up under certain circumstances (ie. lack of gil, just beat Dawntrail) which isn't even the case for many players and, as I mentioned, I've done it in 1 day on raid alts with limited gil before.

There are other games where gearing up for raids has taken months of work and wouldn't be possible by a casual player. FFXIV's gearing is nothing like that. Probably the only thing that would satisfy you then is to get the gear the same way you get 690 artifact gear, so you don't even have to expend the strenuous effort of doing the normal raids to gear up for savage.

As for prog parties filling, sometimes it takes a while but that could even be where Aether is problematic, because parties can get buried under 200 other PFs and be hard to find. But all I can say is I have helped lots and lots of ex4 progs clear over the last two weeks. I join, wipe with them, teach them things they are confused about and then we usually clear.

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I don't care about the gear, I care about doing things. The DOING is supposed to be the thing that is fun and the gear is the final bit you get at the end, and someone isn't really doing much if they are sitting in PF waiting for a group to fill for an hour. Again, Aether is not the norm here the norm is what is outside of Aether. I remember being able to hop onto this game and being able to literally get into even EX fights within 20 minutes of logging in back in Endwalker because aether had so many groups. The game is nothing like that now it is a random pile of luck to get a group going in under an hour.

And in-case people haven't noticed yet, grinding for tomestones doing the same thing every day is not a whole lot of fun. It's either hop on a kill train for an hour to max out the weekly tomestones, or do the same roulette every day. In all honesty, doing savage is a bit liberating with a static in comparison.

This feels like a problem with this entire expansion, though. FC is a ghost town and people who would play regularly don't even bother logging on for weekly tomecap. It might just be an expansion worth skipping and praying they do something to flip it around, honestly. In truth it feels like the same people that want to clear EX fights also are into doing savage and ultimates now, which is kind of leaving EX fights in a weird spot. The Unreal also looks kind of forgotten as well.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Again, Aether is not the norm here the norm is what is outside of Aether.

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In that case though, DC travel is the issue so no point blaming it on other things like raid pop when there are 200 High-End PFs, holding up to 1600 people. The travel limits might actually be reducing the people who can actually join as well, so it's worth merging PFs where possible.

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I remember being able to hop onto this game and being able to literally get into even EX fights within 20 minutes of logging in back in Endwalker because aether had so many groups. The game is nothing like that now it is a random pile of luck to get a group going in under an hour.

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Happened in EW sometimes, depends how buried the PF is. Obviously people won't always scroll through 5 pages, and just join the first few listed ones. The ex fight also has lots of slightly different strats so no 2 parties are the same strats, which affects people joining. They might not like the strats.

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FC is a ghost town and people who would play regularly don't even bother logging on

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Can't relate, obviously going to depend on the FC.

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The Unreal also looks kind of forgotten as well.

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I see them still, just got to get round to it while doing the new content so it might not be a priority for some. I've cleared it both weeks in PF so far and seen others talking about doing it in FC and LS.