Can we just have the Wrath of the Lich King Raiding Scheme?

[Fendred]

I completely agree with both Skaet and V. However, there is another way to look at the modding situation in World of Warcraft. The way boss fights were structured were such a burden to the community that many programmers took hours of their lives to carefully create addons just to announce said abilities, and then continue to update those for years. Not only that, but finding a group of people that didn't use one of these mods by the time Wrath of the Lich King was out was like trying to find a four leaf clover. It would have been a "oh my god, they do exist" situation if you found one. More importantly, they didn't tone down the fights to the level of what is Crystal Tower. They really only dealt with one particular aspect of fights (mostly), which was announcing abilities that could wipe the party- something people are trying to do manually without them anyway. All they did was remove the chance of human error on announcing or accidentally missing a cast bar. Otherwise fights remained entirely intact.

[skaterger]

I completely agree with both Skaet and V. However, there is another way to look at the modding situation in World of Warcraft. The way boss fights were structured were such a burden to the community that many programmers took hours of their lives to carefully create addons just to announce said abilities, and then continue to update those for years. Not only that, but finding a group of people that didn't use one of these mods by the time Wrath of the Lich King was out was like trying to find a four leaf clover. It would have been a "oh my god, they do exist" situation if you found one.

I think nobody here denies that the mods are extremely useful and we are thankful to people that spent their time creating and updating it, and when you are trying to push progression it is a godsend. Most of us who used it then didn't think twice about it, it was just something that you accepted you had to install, but looking back at it now in hindsight I kind of wished it was never implemented.

As for your initial suggestion, I think it could potentially work except for 1 big issue:

Wow had a very clear loot reward system. There were 10/25 man raids, with 25 man raids giving higher ilvl loot than 10 man, and the hard mode iterations of each giving a higher ilvl than the corresponding normal mode. The developers made it clear from the start and the playerbase was mostly okay with it. In ff14, yoshi has made it clear that casuals will always be able to get the same ilvl of gear (weapon aside) in a catch-up patch, see hunts. With your suggestion of a lower ilvl for normal raids, I'm not sure how they are going to balance the gear, not to mention to placate the cries from non raiders about not having the same ilvl of gear as raiders.

[Exstal]

In FFXIV, Yoshida has made it clear that casuals will always be able to get the same ilvl of gear (weapon aside) in a catch-up patch, see hunts. With your suggestion of a lower ilvl for normal raids, I'm not sure how they are going to balance the gear, not to mention to placate the cries from non raiders about not having the same ilvl of gear as raiders.

I believe that something has to give. Casuals have no need to have the same gear as raiders because...well they aren't raiders. I like the prospect of Fendred's idea and it could be implemented easily while simultaneously correcting the item level inflation.

Since we like having item level maximums in factors of 5 we can just do it that way. For example, Allagan Healer Grimoire (i95) is 71 magic damage. High Allagan Healer Grimiore (i115) is 77 magic damage . Crush this number down to i105 and all the current i100 will stay i100 but retain their magic damage numbers. Now for armour, current i100 can go down to i95 and i110 to i100. Every 10 item levels we have now should only be 5 but retain the same gain so i90 Argute Morterboard has 18 MND and 18 VIT, whereas i110 Daystar has 24 MND and 25 VIT. So i90 would remain the same, i95 Daystar would be 21/22, and i100 24/25.

This would all be in preparation for The Third Coil of Bahamut. So you'd have normal mode, and savage. Normal would drop i105 which is ~6 main stat/~7 VIT increase over High Allagan/Soldiery and Savage would drop i110 which would be ~14 main stat/~15VIT over High Allagan Soldiery. Obviously, Savage would be ridiculous in difficulty so that one doesn't simply get a massive stat increase. Also stated previously, have an extra boss at the end of Savage that would give something that normal mode has no way of obtaining without doing Savage.

I'd like to reiterate that casuals shouldn't complain about getting things that raiders have since they don't have the time, effort, skill, or all combined, to do the content that raiders do while putting forth the aforementioned categories in said content. If they (casuals) get their story mode and gear that wasn't completely worthless and allows them to do the next entry level iteration of raid, that should be good enough for them. Meanwhile raiders get the best of the best to show off (which is how it should be).

[skaterger]

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If you do it that way, that means to obtain new gear past i100, every player would need to do normal coil at least, which would not be fair by forcing everyone to raid. I think they need to keep the tomestone/CT/ST route which awards i105 gear, normal raid @ 110 and savage raid @ 115. Then the subsequent normal raid would be tuned for players at i105 to cater for new raiders/normal coil raiders while making it easier for i115 raiders, which would be fine since their ultimate goal is savage mode.

However this does give rise to gear inflation and honestly, I would like to see a mix of horizontal progression and vertical progression. I think a possible alternative to having a higher ilvl for savage coil would be to give gear that drops from savage 1-2 materia slots, and making the materias much more interesting than the bland ones we have currently.

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No offence, but I find your example pretty hilarious. While I think there are absolutely casual raiders, I think graphical or aesthetically beauty would be one of lowest of priorities for them. I mean look at turn 5, many people are fine with turning off the spell animations of their party members so they can see the divebomb marker more clearly. Same with turn 8 and homing missiles. I think raiding should be taken more seriously, if you are going in there for the lulz and making fights easier so you can enjoy the "scenery", I think you are missing the whole spirit of raiding. There is the sightseeing log for that.

Also, how does putting a focus bar impact your ability to enjoy the graphics of the game? On the contrary, I would argue that having all these addons, flashing signs and irritating alarm sounds would greatly decrease my ability to enjoy the fight the way its meant to be experienced. One of the most important aspects of raid awareness is good UI, by having a minimalist approach to reduce clutter, and what better way than to not install addons which tend to fill up half your screen?

[Fendred]

No offence, but I find your example pretty hilarious. While I think there are absolutely casual raiders, I think graphical or aesthetically beauty would be one of lowest of priorities for them. I mean look at turn 5, many people are fine with turning off the spell animations of their party members so they can see the divebomb marker more clearly. Same with turn 8 and homing missiles. I think raiding should be taken more seriously, if you are going in there for the lulz and making fights easier so you can enjoy the "scenery", I think you are missing the whole spirit of raiding. There is the sightseeing log for that.

It's a priority that no one thinks about, but is always there. Why don't they play with the spell effects always turned off then? Because they'd never get to see any of them if they did that.

[Exstal]

If you do it that way, that means to obtain new gear past i100, every player would need to do normal coil at least, which would not be fair by forcing everyone to raid. I think they need to keep the tomestone/CT/ST route which awards i105 gear, normal raid @ 110 and savage raid @ 115. Then the subsequent normal raid would be tuned for players at i105 to cater for new raiders/normal coil raiders while making it easier for i115 raiders, which would be fine since their ultimate goal is savage mode.

Oh, I didn't think of that. Maybe just keep the next tome gear as i100 but have higher stats. Since I believe item level is only used to indicate ability to enter a particular instance, I believe they could make that number whatever they wanted it and would work it. The issue is they are increasing item level too fast and they will run into the same problem WoW had, so they should slow the item level increase now while they can rather than have to do it retroactively.

However this does give rise to gear inflation and honestly, I would like to see a mix of horizontal progression and vertical progression. I think a possible alternative to having a higher ilvl for savage coil would be to give gear that drops from savage 1-2 materia slots, and making the materias much more interesting than the bland ones we have currently.

I think this could work if it's always guaranteed 2-slot materia rather than possible 1, 3, or none. Then you don't increase item level at all but savage gear will be superior to non-savage. Good idea, I like it!

[Zarzak]

I would argue that having all these addons, flashing signs and irritating alarm sounds would greatly decrease my ability to enjoy the fight the way its meant to be experienced.

That is one thing I HATED HATED HATED about Rift. Which they apparently got from WoW. The "You must have this addon that does everything but moves your character for you to raid!"

I do not need an addon that screams at me in 10 different languages to "RUN IN CIRCLES!!!!!!" when I have a debuff that does damage if I'm not moving. I can handle that myself.

[Fendred]

I completely agree, Skaterger. I don't think that this game should necessarily have addon support, but I feel that it helped people focus more on the screen as a window into the world than as a GUI. If I hide my UI with the scroll lock button and walk around East Thanalan during a Sun Set (or any other zone), it feels incredibly different in a very pleasant way, because I'm finally getting fully immersed in the beautiful aesthetic of the game. Boss fights in WoW were often very colorful in both setting and the abilities boss's used.

Watching a giant slowly wind up its swing with an orange sunset, casting the monster's menacing shadow on some old ruins as players scurry to avoid the incoming attack is something difficult to appreciate when a player's attention is focused only on the UI. I think everyone would agree what I just described is far more appealing than the typical cast bar. Using generic casting animations and forcing players to look for its cast bar is a design issue because it introduces something boring and unimaginative to a game with an otherwise spectacular aesthetic. It's annoying because it turns all the beautiful movement, color schemes, character/monster models, and sound effects into distractions working against the interest of players even though they are meant to be interesting to players.