Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

[Ooshima]

what we are saying is that even that content should be doable EVENTUALLY by players that are simply unable to dodge every mechanic.

I think eventually it will be. Yoshida had said before that he wants players to be able to move on to the newer contents, but probably he wants it at a controlled pace?

I feel that a certain degree of balance will be good. While I do welcome more players to pass coil1 and enter coil2, but I do hope that they reach coil2 with some basic lessons learnt. Look around the forums, enough of threads complaining about bad players. I can't imagine Yoshida blindly pushes through say 90% of the player base into coil2... Probably every hour you will see a new thread complaining about bad players in coil2

I get the sense that things will get nerfed down in a gradual pace. Looking back at some of the oldest content since 2.0 - AK for example. With higher level gears more accessible and high level players entering via roulette, it is some form of a soft nerf to what was one of the toughest dungeons back in 2.0. A further nerf by removing the bees from Demon Wall made the fight a full pushover.

Things like echo, combined with high voltage nerf really made T2 another pushover fight. Most things are quite nerfed down as it is, there might be further nerfs in the future if data still shows that a significant amount of players are stuck there. I don't think the development team would want to see players stuck there forever either, but probably like I've said earlier, they didn't want them to go past them easily to the point that they learnt nothing, and suddenly got a shock when they reached coil2 which is the real deal. The same kind of shock when new players reaching Brayflox NM and Stone Vigil and then, Garuda NM - which is a great spike in difficulty. Not only players may feel disheartened and also possibly subjected to verbal abuses by other players who got there before the nerf.

All in all I think there is a rationale behind the amount of nerf applied. I'm not Yoshida thou so that's as much as I could conjecture here. But it's a fact that there is a lot of things that have been nerfed down with Twintania and Titan EX as the final placeholder.

I find it a good thing that the devs hasn't overly nerfed them yet - because these fights does teach players a couple of things. Landslide still serves as a reminder that coil 2 will have things you need to note. Like for example - Cursed Voice - both landside and cursed voice have a significant amount of time before it is actually triggered, and if you don't handle it it's easily gone case for you. Divebombs is some sort of a repeated mechanic in T9 and it also reminds you about stacking, which again stacking is part of Titan EX's strategy and also for T6's Acid Rain. Some of these things really taught me well and prepared me for future contents - I'm somewhat glad that they aren't nerfed down too fast.

It is not that I am an elitist and doesn't want people to pass thru content so I feel like a special snowflake, but from a more objective point of view, what good does it do, really? Maybe players feel satisfied when clearing content, which is undoubtedly true, but again if they are clearing it mindlessly without learning things and ended up facing current contents with a steeper than intended difficulty spike, what would happen? I guess some of them would come to forums to lament about the crazy difficulty of coil2 although it shouldn't be that bad if they did learn something or coil2 players coming to forums to lament about the influx of bad players etc. Both are not a good thing to me.

[Kuwagami]

Look around the forums, enough of threads complaining about bad players. I can't imagine Yoshida blindly pushes through say 90% of the player base into coil2... Probably every hour you will see a new thread complaining about bad players in coil2

I would like to correct this part real quick :
There aren't a lot of bad players. In fact, there are tons of average-to-good players.

But there are tons of people who don't have the time/will/success in learning do-or-die mechanics.

no time => well, speaks for itself.
no will => their problem I guess ?
no success => this is the bothering point. They can't learn mainly because of 2 things : it's do-or-wipe, and noone wants to let them take the time to learn.

"Don't waste my time"
"you're just so noob get out of my party"
"your dps is crappy l2p"
"OMG why you can't dodge such an easy thing ?"
and so on. These are only examples, and anyone PUGing something to learn it 2 weeks after the content is live has experienced it at least once.

Heck, for 2.2, it was TWO FREAKING DAYS after the patch going live that people were "know levi ex ins and outs or GTFO. Weapon proof, 1 fail = kick". One week after, the same applied to T6. Cmon people....

Hell, a T1 learning party got flamed because they couldn't handle the split (2 new tanks) the first time they tried, and 3 people raged out after a single wipe. We replaced them, wiped at the ADS, 4 new people left. How are they supposed to learn that way ?

Do a test, form a levi Ex learning party, and intentionally die at fear add or right when the rails go off. People will quit, the party will disband, noone will have learned anything.

In moggle mog, people rage out if you take the delta attack once. They rage out if noone cancels the pom flare/holy (although they didn't do anything about that). I could continue for a long time....


Honestly, I can only see 2 fixes about that problem :

1) Fix the community. An attempt about as useful as trying to erode the Everest with a knife.

2) design more forgiving fights. There is no need for a fight to be "A mechanic every 3 seconds and every one of them is insta death". A few fights like that are fine. Just don't do that for all

I think our exchanges have come to some sort of agreement I agree with whatever you've just said. I think Yoshida does have a good intention in mind but probably the ideas and execution needs further refinement, definitely. I can understand players getting impatient and sometimes I get impatient at certain things too, but sometimes I look back again and see that ARR is just under one year, I can cut them some slack, maybe. Not trying to be SE's White Knight (I won't bother because some things really sucks about them which my #1 complain is server inconsistency and lag and 90k) but I think Yoshida was given a daunting task to overturn the fortune of FF14 1.0 to what it is right now, in quite a short period of time, while gathering feedback and implement as much QoL improvements and changes as he could afford to, in his own judgement. As I said earlier, I would give them more time in view of this, but of course after a year or two it's still the same old methods then I think it's something really worth complaining to the max

I would like to thank you for this post. It sums up a lot of things I've been thinking about recently. Give them time, judge them on what they do or don't do after a significant period.

Extension (3.0 right ?) will be the decisive step for ARR probably

[Ooshima]

I would like to correct this part real quick :
There aren't a lot of bad players. In fact, there are tons of average-to-good players.

Well, there's a lot of ways to see it. On surface value of what you have said, it's also true. But from the more "elite" players who cleared them easily, if you are not above average you are probably labeled as bad. See the difference?

And like you said, those things like "CLEARED ONLY", "NO NOOBS" PF recruitment that appeared few days after a new patch can be discouraging. I see from both sides of view thou as I have been on both sides before. Once I've cleared a content and my intention is to smoothly then of course I would probably have a "noobs please get out and don't waste our time" attitude. I think it's a bit of human nature.

In Patch 2.2 I concentrated my first week on 3 star crafting and thus by the time I wanted to clear Levi EX, I am way behind everyone. Yes PF are all filled up with "PROS ONLY" parties and hardly any learning parties but eventually I cleared it with a semi learning party.

I haven't been subjected to much raging during learning parties - probably I'm in a JP server where people are probably more mindful with their words and only complain behind their friends, FC and LS about really underperfoming players. I think the situation is worse at NA servers, I was from NA server before so I'm guessing so. But that's really player issues I have to say. Tough to change a human.. I think Yoshida rather bang his head on how to improve the game than player attitude and behavior. Well, toxic people are everywhere..

I would like to thank you for this post. It sums up a lot of things I've been thinking about recently. Give them time, judge them on what they do or don't do after a significant period.

Extension (3.0 right ?) will be the decisive step for ARR probably

NP. Sometimes I rage over a lot of things but it's good to take a step back and think about a bigger picture. I think a good testing point will be either the 1 year mark or coil 3 (suspected to be the last coil before expansion), which I think by then it is really a lot of time for the development to have a good grasp of where they should, and want to head to.