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

[zlotjko]

With people playing multiple roles "doing your job" is often the more challenging thing to pick up than the fight mechanics. This is especially true in Final Fantasy XIV where people have multiple end game jobs that they may play. There doesn't seem to be many "relearning" ramps for return players.

I mean, would you say it's harder to learn not to do an action during Turn 6 Raffelasia Death Bouquet, breaking vines, and going to the front of the boss when you are about to be devoured or to master the dragoon/monk damage rotation to the point of consistently doing maximum dps?

Well you need both.

What some people do not understand, is that you need to know your class / optimal rotation. When people know their classes and their limitation its not that hard just to concentrate on the mechanics.

Imagine a musician, who has a melody in his mind, but just doesn't have the trained technique to let that melody out on an instrument. The frustration of not being able to do what you imagined. But after he learns and trains on an instrument he can play (almost) whatever pops in his mind.

What some people think, is that they are able to play in a band in some grand concert, without learning the instrument or songs. It just doesn't go that way.

And like in a song, there are battles, where you like some parts, or don't like. But you need to satisfy a certain requirements in all parts if you want to play in a band. If you don't want to practice, get better, you get replaced by someone who wants.

That is the truth behind all this.

Players that do not want to practice got the option to get the 110 gear.
In 2.4 Titan Ex will not be required anymore for other primals.
Echo buff that makes things laughable on the top of the higher ilvl gear.
Now with all that, you want to redesign the fights, by eliminating the only danger that bypasses the already overpowered gear. Its already like a cheat, now you want a god mode.
Put some effort in it and claim your deserved loot.
If people used half of the time they use on the forums, to actually learn and train their classes, research videos and guides, this thread would not be 93 pages long.
The only thing that i think is really valuable here, is the discussion of balancing the rope-jumping, rng mechanics, and different checks (dps, awareness, heal). But still some fights will have more of one, some other more of other, which is what makes them different.

Sorry for the rant, but i hope some people at least understand that fights have different components and you need to meet the minimum requirement of everyone of them.
By lowering the minimum requirement, you don't solve the problem. Just more people would ask for more lowering and so on till people can just faceroll the content.

Which is already the case when you can 4 man titan hm.

[Colt47]

snipping for space

By removing dps checks the difficulty isn't decreasing. In fact, in the old days more dps was still a good idea because the problem was one of attrition: the longer a fight goes on, the more likely someone is going to mess up and wipe the group. Essentially, the enrage timer was the endurance of the party itself rather than something artificially stuck into the fight. Also, the lack of enrage made it so that if a fight was taking longer then expected you ended up getting more practice in instead of having it insta wipe and forcing everyone to start over. That is one aspect I absolutely abhor in the new age system that has been in place since World of Warcraft introduced it.

[zlotjko]

by removing the dps check you remove the measurement of a dps role. U can make a party of tanks and healers, and maybe a bard to play the mana song. Yea i know this is the other extreme, but by removing role requirements, you remove the need for a role.
Ever wondered why parties for Titan hm go with just one tank? There is no need for the other, thus remove it.
Remove the dps check on titan heart, everyone goes as a tank to survive the WotL. In the end with echo and OP gear, the effect is the same.
Instead of people learning what they are supposed to do.

Don't get me wrong, as someone who tried to do Titan HM with ilvl 75-ish, i know from where it came. But until i got to coil (1) with an experienced group, i didn't know what i was doing wrong. People helped me out and i started training my rotation, research for a better one, then again, then went with the experienced group again. I didn't even had the relic+1 then. Within 2 weeks my dps went 50% more when i started to learn my role. Its a necessity so people see that they are not doing something right and should do better. After that i was contributing much more to the dps check and all went much easier then when i wasn't doing what i was supposed to do.

Another example is T9. When we started learning the fight we were dropping 6th meteor with 5 dps. After some "few" tries we got it to 5. Same with the green golem, same with the add and the boss. After training, we know which cd where to use, how much till recast, how to reduce our movement to maximize the dps, reduce the incoming dmg and that resulted in 90% of our tries to lead us to the last phase without anyone dying. Using cds, pots, food, everything we had so we do our jobs better.The fight made us to become better players, because it was needed for it. If there was no such requirement, we would not become better players. It was also a hit on our ego that we were not good enough, and that we needed to become better. And we did, and our egos are even bigger now .

But that also means that if we managed to beat T9 (almost 3 months after it was released), it means that with the same gear, other content is beatable too. It just depends on how much effort you want to put in it. Especially since we are not hc people. Raiding 2-3 times per week for 2-3h does not classify as anything near of hc. So stop making excuses, become awesome and be proud of yourself.

[Rysir]

by removing the dps check you remove the measurement of a dps role. U can make a party of tanks and healers, and maybe a bard to play the mana song. Yea i know this is the other extreme, but by removing role requirements, you remove the need for a role.
Ever wondered why parties for Titan hm go with just one tank? There is no need for the other, thus remove it.
Remove the dps check on titan heart, everyone goes as a tank to survive the WotL. In the end with echo and OP gear, the effect is the same.
Instead of people learning what they are supposed to do.

Actually, you can do Titan hard mode with 7 tanks and 1 healer. That DPS check is really doing things!

[Edli]

Actually, you can do Titan hard mode with 7 tanks and 1 healer. That DPS check is really doing things!

Is that how you tried to counter his point? With some example that happened 0.01% of the times?

Heart phase used to be a DPS check back then for almost everyone.

[Yukiko]

by removing the dps check you remove the measurement of a dps role. U can make a party of tanks and healers, and maybe a bard to play the mana song. Yea i know this is the other extreme, but by removing role requirements, you remove the need for a role.

Thats not true!
Classic: This is the origin of MANA or STAMINA bars... For longer Fights then Potions were added.
If a Tank is "tanking" - no Damage on Enemy
If a healer is "healing" - no Damage on Enemy
So, how a Damage Dealer becomes useless?

Seriously, just removing DPS checks will not solve the problem, but it is the first step into the right direction, people like to have classic roles and not some "all can all"...
It is possible to have "all can all" as proven in some other games, but then there were other restrictions as Elemtel weel or other things...

Edit: The Problem we have is that the tank dont have enough "time" to tank because aggro handling he needs to do damage and the healer can not focus only on healing because lengh of buffs there is a useless "in need" rotation (not damaging but also not healing)

[zlotjko]

Thats not true!

Classic: This is the origin of MANA or STAMINA bars... For longer Fights then Potions were added.
If a Tank is "tanking" - no Damage on Enemy
If a healer is "healing" - no Damage on Enemy
So, how a Damage Dealer becomes useless?

Tanks do damage, just less then DPS. Healer can also do damage if there is no need for hard healing (like low hp dps).
Usual dps of a tank is around 125-250 depending of the gear (usual aggro rotations for war/ pld shield oath). That is equal of a bad dps or more then a dead dps.
That means that with enough time, the tanks and healers could kill the boss without the dps.
Another example is that for savage coil (and normal coil v2 in the start with ilvl 90 gear) people used tank accessories to have higher HP (and less dps which is their job, but they compensated the difference, at least well enough).
Or equipping melee DPS accessories on tanks and switching off/to defiance/sword oath. Because all that unnecessary HP is a waste of stats.

Another example (personal experience) i have a ilvl 109 War. I equip him with my 110 ilvl accessories from the mnk. I also ask the pt to wait 5-6 sec after i pull (for the storm's eye rotation, at least half of it done). Without defiance, and storm's eye up, i use berserk and continue my standard aggro rotation (without defiance). Its a little harder to heal, but an excellent 109 ilvl blm can't take aggro off of me. If things get rough, i just pop on defiance for better heals or aggro if needed till i stabilize the situation, then turn it off again. Same thing what people do with Cleric Stance.

[Yukiko]

@zlotjko:

Your argumentation was:

removing the dps check, which is removing role requirements, results in remove the need for a role.

I know you are talking from current FFXIV, and so far it is true, but...
I was NOT talking from FFXIV, i was talking about your argument and that is where you are wrong!
I was adding history of gaming and classic RP style, well we can discuss if "Supporter" is one of the main roles too but lets stick on the 3 from SE definition...
So you change one aspect but dont think of any way to lessen the negative effects of changing it... Why dont you change 2 spects or 3 then?
If you talk about FFXIV then dont change anything or you have to consider "other" changes too!

[zlotjko]

From what i understood, the topic here is "the current state of end game content" for Final Fantasy XIV. Maybe i missed where you were talking about other games, but my arguments, thoughts and examples are all linked to FF XIV. The topic also isn't linked to the support role that doesn't exists as a role in FF XIV (support skills are distributed to all classes).

The part about the aspect i really didn't understand. By lowering the HP of a tank i make him more vulnerable, that is the negative side of using other classes gear. I make him hit harder in hope that my party can finish stuff in less time. He still is a tank, which by my opinion has enough HP to do his role, am just swaping the non efficient HP to STR. My primary role/job didn't change as am still the one who tanks the boss, has tank skills. This is all linked to the balance of the game that in the current state allows that.

Please understand that i didn't fully understand what you meant (was guessing) so it is possible that i said something that really has nothing to do with your post.
If it is like that, please rephrase your post, so we can continue our debate in a way where there are no guesses and misunderstandings, and i will gladly edit this post into an empty one or delete it.
If i do say something that is difficult to understand, please be kind enough to let me know, i will gladly rephrase it.