Are you happy with the current raiding structure in this game?

[Mariel_Crystallie]

For me, my main gripe is that I cannot help my other LS friends after I have cleared weekly coil.

same with this... I only want help my friends to have exp on coil... then i create this thread : http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ctice-Mode-%29

really hoping got practice mode one @__@ ....

[Fendred]

Maybe change the current like:

- No lockout
- first win you can see 2 items, after the first win you have a RNG to get another piece (or chance to be able to "unlock" and you could need/greed). So you could help and "may" have a chance to be able to loot. This reset after 1 week.

So, that way, content will be open for all, the loot will be restricted by a RNG after the first win for that player, and he can help others to complete and still have a chance to be able to have a loot.

All win.

Removing lockouts would make things worse. They'd need to change development from a vertical progression ladder to a series of alternatives. As stated above, we're dealing with an end game built around the false premise that vertical progression keeps the community growing, when the opposite is the case. If they removed lockouts, the mentality of "quick, we need to gear up before the next patch comes out" will have people leaving the game like an artillery shell shooting out of a cannon. It would turn the railroad into a rail gun because the threat of new tiers of equipment out-dating their current gear results in a race.

[cryptic_angel]

I could rant for paragraphs on end why raiding in this game is some of the worst end game content ever released in a game. I will start off by saying selling coil t6-t9 is a lousy excuse to defend lockouts. SCoB sales have been going since June. My static, this week, was talking about selling T9 next week for 30 mil. The only way removing the lockouts will impact sales is in the price and frequency of selling SCoB.
I will just list all the problems raiding has in this game.

Four raid bosses per tier (roughly six to seven months)
The amount of raid bosses averages to eight raid bosses per year. This is a small amount of raiding content for any game.

Two chest per Raid boss with gigantic loot tables
People will go an entire raid tier without getting a vanity set, BiS, or their HA weapon. This would not be a big deal if ilvl110 gear had more intrinisic value, but since ilvl110 gear has been put on a welfare styled reward system, rewards from SCoB have been diminished.

Lockouts
Lockouts serve no real purpose in the face of hunt rewards. If we are supposed to be in "catch up" mode and everyone is supposed to have full ivl110, why gate raid gear behind lockouts? Seems kind of pointless to allow people to grind hunts til their eyes bleed, but raiders only get eight chests to open a week. Those eight chest are also subject to repeat loot and have to be split with eight other players. Again, lockouts serve no greater purpose when players can just hunt spam to ilvl110 gear.

Raids have very little value in this game past the first clear.
Once you beat T9 and see the cut scenes, what is the point of coil after that? There really is none. The gear ilvl from coil is not enticing at all. You can just spam hunts and get the same ilvl gear. BiS is not a reward because it is so RNG dependent. Only one person in our static has a BiS set and we have been clearing coil for a few months now. You can go an entire raid tier without seeing some gear ever drop since loot tables are gigantic. BiS is only a reward if you are lucky enough to get the drops you want. The same is true for the "HA vanity look." People argue that HA gear has a distinct look that you can wear as a reward. While there is truth to that, you still need to get the right drops to glamour your armor into a HA set. I still have not seen a caster body drop in T8 for the three plus months that my static has had t8 on farm. The HA gear skin is only a reward depending on your luck. Contrast these facts to any other raiding MMO and there lack luster treasures of ff14 tarnish even further.

Look at wow: they add differentiated ilvls based on difficulty, mounts, titles, way more bosses per raid tier, exclusive hard mode bosses, gems, recipes, and BoEs all just from raiding.

To summarize the above paragraph, the only meaningful coil rewards for the last two months have been BiS, HA weapons, and Vanity gear; however, all those rewards are heavily RNG dependent and equate to very poor rewards if you compare ff14 raiding with any other game.

Sharp difficulty curve
Raids should have very easy intro bosses paired with insane final bosses. I think Rafflesia should be much more easier and accessible to the general game population. The first BCoB should have been nerfed into the ground, including t5. There is a reason pugs worked out much better in the BCoB raid, the first two bosses were much easier. You hardly see any pugs for SCoB. This is an issue! People should be able to pug the first few bosses of a raid tier without much difficulty. These sharp difficulty curves end up as a deterrence for people to break into raiding.

Fights are poorly designed
Turn 7...... Turn7 is the perfect example of bad encounter design. There are other examples out there though. Ifrit ex is great example as well as Levi EX and Turn 8. You can see fights break down when your group has high performing DPS. Phases get skipped, mechanics become wonky, and artificial enrages are triggered when a raid group has very high dps. In ifrit EX, you can wipe if you damaged ifrit too much before the 3rd nail phase. In turn 8, you either hold dps for like 30 seconds or deal with allgan field much earlier in the fight. In Levi EX, phases would get skipped or happen simultaneously if your dps is too high. Then there is turn 7, where you have to stop dps every phase change to make sure you get a cursed voice to re-petrify the renauds. High performance should not be punished by poor encounter design.

This game is not for raiders. This game is for a more casual gamer. I think most raiders, myself included, would find other games and their raids much more fun and rewarding. If it was not for my friends and FC, I would have unsubdued awhile back once it was blatantly obvious that SE will always cater to the lowest common denominator.

[Colt47]

Sharp difficulty curve
Raids should have very easy intro bosses paired with insane final bosses. I think Rafflesia should be much more easier and accessible to the general game population. The first BCoB should have been nerfed into the ground, including t5. There is a reason pugs worked out much better in the BCoB raid, the first two bosses were much easier. You hardly see any pugs for SCoB. This is an issue! People should be able to pug the first few bosses of a raid tier without much difficulty. These sharp difficulty curves end up as a deterrence for people to break into raiding.

+1 on this. They are making coil way too difficult on the early bosses to encourage people to actually do the fights. Heck, it doesn't help either that coil isn't superfluous challenge fluff, but actually baked directly into the lore, making it an essential part of the games storyline. The same storyline a lot of us want to see through to the end.

[Fendred]

Instead of moving onto SCoB, I've been helping new players through Twintania. There are two sides to the same coin when it comes to "fights are poorly designed" as Cryptic has put it. A well designed fight tests the skills of the players and does not hide the challenges they must face with obscure mechanics. Arguing that Twintania's mechanics are anything but obscure is laughable when you see how many new people die consistently to the same things everyone else did back in 2.0 and 2.1.

Glowing symbols do not tell the player what is about to happen, so they stand there in a state of confusion and get killed. Even if they figure it out, you've chosen mechanics that go against common sense. Some of the best new players I know do something very intelligent: They figure out that the symbol is a fireball (truly an impressive feet I've only seen maybe one new person do on his first try ever) and they run away from the group. Why? Because we're taught to care about whether our companions get hit with stuff. That was smart. Making the fireball disperse its damage evenly among party members like some kind of alien energy bomb was not.

And why in the flying... is a move called "twister" a land mine? And why is a dark energy ball called "hatch" when it has nothing to do with hatching eggs? The least you could do is name the abilities in an intelligent manner. That's like if I started labeling all the variables in my computer program "x, y, z, and bacon" and expect to be handed an A by my programming instructor. Any professor will skin you alive for doing that.

I could go on to describe all the problems with that fight, but apparently everything except dive bombs is messed up in some way. If I have to explain to a highly intelligent player what every little thing does in the fight and how to deal with it, the encounter design is pretty sub par.

[Lyrinn]

There is a reason pugs worked out much better in the BCoB raid, the first two bosses were much easier. You hardly see any pugs for SCoB.

I would also add that the number of options for T7+ hinder pugging. While I like having options and being able to do fights in more than one "legitimate" way, if a golden standard isn't settled on, it makes pugging from group to group a rather annoying experience. Ex. T6 is simple because you have only two options, either burn or super slug. Neither are overly complicated so I see plenty of pugs for T6. T7, I've seen some groups do single renauds, some do stacked renauds, and still others do variations where instead of kiting the renauds they freeze in place and everyone else adjusts. I've seen all sorts of crazy positionings for healers and ranged DPS. T8 towers vary from group to group, particularly from the sixth set on, and this also depends on overall DPS. Even T9 has slight variations among groups for meteor placements and fire/ice/thunder positioning. There are people who may have done it one way but not another and agreeing on a plan and waiting for some of those people to adjust can take time.

Anyways, my own gripe with the raiding system is, as frequently mentioned, the lockouts. Why are raiders limited to just 7 other people out of thousands? It makes it so that if you don't have a static, good luck ever getting anything done.

[HeroSamson]

If they are looking for long term.

I would change a few things for instance the way you get armor. (one) job get all is letting people skip everything on other jobs, Ninja and rogue people are worried everyone is gonna play these jobs in fact they will have already secured row tokens and unidentified tombs for their weapon time sand, oils and myth and soldiery for armor. the one shoe fit all crap needs to stop, people want armor change job and earn it not just one job get all crap though SE wants to please all and the ones who like this idea will cry about if it changed nobody's happy.

Fates the Level syncing option, it should automatically sync you without the yes or no option soon as I run into the circle (hassle free) that's what I want without clicking the dang bar.

dungeons will soon be obsolete decided to duty up and see how long it would take to get into cape westwind just to see what people were saying and I sat there for 3 hours straight and got into the dungeon and they were like thanks for helping been waiting forever 5 hours they were waiting. The farther we get with patches and expansions it will get worse basing the game around dungeons is a terrible idea in the long run the reason is soon as a new subscriber comes into the game, other new subscribers are already leveled up ditching new players and current players already have their crap so who cares about going backwards cause none of the stuff is worth it since people already have that gear.


The more people who skip through want unlocked and SE listening to people to give them a easy path will end this game quick. FFXI lasted long because they blocked off certain things from people and you required different jobs and different things to get these.

of course after you flagged the quest or mission you could finish it with high level but you still needed your other job.


Also future dungeons will be okay, though past dungeons will be seen as "IF you wasn't here from the start too bad you have to wait"

Oh and making npc's having all the craft gear to buy, whatever happen to farming it or killing a monster to get the item you need to craft it.

[Dhex]

Spent 9hrs in various pick-ups watching primarily DPS fail on Turn 6 this week.

The content isn't difficult from a complexity standpoint but if you have a single person fumble a mechanic the raid is over in most cases.

Content is not enjoyable when you can't do it with friends.
The lockout prevents this - and the unforgiving nature of the content even makes becoming friends harder; frustration is not good for that.

Personally I've come to the conclusion that Coil content is purely a frustrating endevor and worse; a waste of time.

I would like to raid and complete content but it seems to require a static. That's pretty harsh and it locks a lot of people out of Coil raiding by default.

Rewards are rough when you pickup as well - I've cleared T6 & 7. It took 3 weeks of pickups before anything I could make a need roll on even dropped. It took another 5 weeks before I won a roll. I still only have the one piece.

[Starkbeaumont]

If they keep it like it is even after the expansion, that every even patch brings us a main raid (like coil), while the odd patches give us the large casual raid (like CT), they should get rid of the 1 drop per week lockout in the casual raid.
That gear is inferior to the real raid gear/upgradeable gear from the beginning and doesn't really serve any purpose to your main class. But it would help to gear up your sub-classes. In a game one char can be any class you shouldn't be forced into gearing 1 class only, like you are mostly atm.
Just make the casual raid a bit tougher (not necessarily the mechanics, just a higher gear check) and maybe give us only a greed option and it should be balanced.

[Meier]

nope! that is why I am not playing much at all anymore. If things don't change by expansion I will just unsub and move along.