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

[Colt47]

I don't like anything in Second Coil.

From what I've seen in videos illustrating the fights neither do I. Way too many mechanics without easing in the group running is just a horrible idea, and that stuff was on par with FireFighter and Yogg One-light in complexity.

[Xatsh]

Wrong. Older MMOs such as EQ had lockouts just the same. Back then, raid content respawned on a 4 to 7 day timer. Which is basically the same thing as a lock out timer - except way worse, when you have to compete against 100s of other players to actually claim the boss and then to actually win the loot. Like I said, it's always been this way.

The difference is how many raid did they have in EQ.

XI did the same thing with 72hr lockouts on almost everything not Openworld. But there was multiple activities to do. EQ was the same way it was never just 1 endgame raid.

Lockouts have always existed and they should, but you cannot have lockouts and 1 relevant raid. That is the problem.

IN older mmos I too could raid as much as I wanted. Just not in the same thing. IN XIV I have coil... which is a stretch to call a raid to begin with, nothing else, just coil.

[AnaviAnael]

I agree with some of the sentiments about Coil. I like the fights, but I hate that you can't help friends once you've gotten your weekly clear. My former FC suffered greatly because of this. It ended up being an "our group, their group, and we don't intermingle" FC. (Those without a group either floundered around doing PUGs and/or eventually quit.)

[raelgun]

Im pretty happy with the lockout system, not a fan of being begged to carry people in, if Im raiding, I dont expect to 'help' others that are struggling, its up to them in their power to do so, and the lockout encourages people to get better outside coil as well when they enter, and it also stops players that are struggling and arent very good begging other good players to take them through the content, yes that matters, its a lot of energy and its not fair on those that are good at raiding.

[SirSaber]

I'm not against the lockout system but it would be cool if we had a second raid linear to Bahamut.
And no not CT, that stuff is a theme park.

Anyways I saw MMOs with less End Game and Raid content than FF14ARR, let's see how the devs will act in the future.
Also, I have to admit that the environment of Bahamut Raid is really neat! Guess they've worked alot on astheticts too but I don't mind.

[skaterger]

What they should be doing is going full out horizontal progression until they reach the next expansion. Single player RPGs do this, and there isn't any good argument against this approach other than developers can't take the short sighted route of using a math equation to replace depth with unending upgrade oriented gear grind.

Now lets not get carried away. If you've played gw2 where its essentially entirely horizontal progression, you would know how absurd of a grind/time sink it is to do content for ascended/legendary gear which mostly are just for aesthetics and provide minimal combat benefits. The system has to be designed that way because that is the only way to keep players interested and playing. Instead of skill based checks which offer better gear from new content, it becomes a huge time/gold investment to work for that small upgrade. Why would I want to do content to get any gear when this piece of gear I got from 2 tiers ago is still useful? That is the reason I stopped playing gw2 cause at the end of the game there is just no reason to play anymore if you wanna progress.

Also gw2 has essentially no raids, they have open world bosses so the way the game is fundamentally designed is already different from ffxiv. They focus more on the living story and content is released much slower than here, which is also synonymous with horizontal progression. They need people to keep playing in the form of a grind so that they have time to released new content. This is fine since gw2 is b2p. FFXIV, being a p2p game, releases content at a much quicker rate so vertical progression makes sense here.

This is not to say that I don't want horizontal progression. I think adding materia slots to gear and having a few side upgrades from open world content is fine. What I don't want is to go back to the ffxi style where gear from 2-3 years ago is still the bis.

[Sessurea]

I think the mistake se made was by making savage coil, instead of practice coil. How many players find t9 so easy, that they can say "hey lets farm the harder one for lolz". I have a really hard time getting a static together for scob ( I'm late to the party after taking a few months break ) and it sems everyone who rally wants it done already has it done, and those that do have it done just really cba to sit through further wipes to help others learn(<-- understandable of course )

So at 1st scob was gated by the absolte requirement of a static, before ever even considering skill levels. But trying to find absolute coil novices to learn with is actually kind of difficult now, and I really begin to wonder if T10 will be gated by T9 ( obvious conclusion:yes )....so then it leads me to wondering will I have to get a static to go through t6-9 even though the rewards will be vanity only by then? ( by now some have said )

[Colt47]

I think the mistake se made was by making savage coil, instead of practice coil. How many players find t9 so easy, that they can say "hey lets farm the harder one for lolz". I have a really hard time getting a static together for scob ( I'm late to the party after taking a few months break ) and it sems everyone who rally wants it done already has it done, and those that do have it done just really cba to sit through further wipes to help others learn(<-- understandable of course )

I agree. It's pretty hard to find people committed to trying to accomplish T6, and PF is littered with T5 groups.

[Fendred]

Skaet, I'm fine with them raising the ilvl and character level as long as they tone it down. Right now they're going too fast in the vertical progression category. WoW's collapse was partly due to breaking the leveling experience by going too far with character level. It was a waste of a really good idea because people were out-leveling the zones before they even finished the quest chains in them. Additionally, constantly boosting item level causes the difficulty of content to decrease rather considerably with time. People get used to the easier difficulty so the game ends up becoming one step closer to a hack and slash style game.

What I want them to do is divide up the progression between the vertical and horizontal equally. Increase the max item level maybe once between expansions and once during the beginning of expansions, but then focus on making things more sideways at other times. It would give them time to add a lot more fun options to the game, prevent the rat race effect, and still reap the benefits of increased item level when they absolutely need to boost things. It would also give them time to figure out ways of keeping the old end game content desirable.

[skaterger]

It's only a rat race if you want it to be. Players somehow think they need to get full bis or clear coil before the next patch comes in even though they can't/not willing to put in the time. That is why there are so many cases of people buying runs or begging to be carried. You don't see people complaining about heroic raids and their lockout in wow do you? The players there have somewhat of an unwritten understanding that the best gear in game is not for everyone, which yoshi has mentioned before.

The problem is not with the system, but with the mentality of some players.