Yoshi P: Please Consider a Better Raiding System in 3.0 - Beyond Statics

[Duelle]

Just take voidwatch from xi. 18 man content, doesn't lock you out for trying with 17 or less, good mechanics in fights, everyone gets their own lootnothing but logs.

No thanks.

In 1.0, the highest end content did not have 100% drop rate for rewards, and as a result, it did not have any Weekly Lockout. With a lower drop rate and no weekly lockout, *and* a 100% Token Drop, players were able to have LS and groups of friends with *more* than 8 people and rotate people in, so that everyone in your particular group had a chance to raid together.

Keep in mind that 1.0's endgame content was basically Cutter's Cry, Dzmael Darkhold and primal fights. Also keep in mind that content was holdover content meant to take a ridiculous amount of time because they had literally nothing else they could add to the game between implementation and the day the servers shut down.

Beating around the bush on this does nothing for all involved. Raid size and content tuning are the reasons why you see so many people wanting to form static groups.

The size issue is obvious. Less people that can see the content together. Not to mention greater need for the less popular roles (tanks and heals) and less space for the more populated roles (DPS) per raid group.

Coil being tuned to being the way it is does have part of the blame on why people feel forced to make static groups. The fact it is limited to 8 people is also an issue, as it does lead to less people experiencing the content if the content is tuned in such a way that a static group is required. Remember that the moment content becomes "difficult", people will start placing barriers to weed out everyone but those who meet their criteria to run the content. This is why I always have an issue with designs that are built around one difficulty without various modes.

Players are *pushed away* from their own FC / LS / Group of Friends because of the inherent design of the Weekly Lockout and Loot System.

You're barking up the wrong tree. Lockouts have nothing to do with why people aren't seeing content and running with their FCs. Raid size is to blame here.

While the current Coil chests drop something of value 100% of the time, the current Loot Pools are so gigantic and the Random Number Generator is so random, that for many, it takes MONTHS to ever get the item they wanted, let alone NEVER seeing something drop (e.g., I never got my Tank Body from T9 (nor the Sword) (never saw them drop in all the runs I did, even after Echo Buff and no lockouts). It’s almost like having a “low drop rate” system anyways.

This is because you have a paltry four/five bosses compared to what you'd see within a content tier elsewhere. Plus plenty of alternatives and gear that can hold you over. Those two things are what FFXIV sorely lacks when it comes to gear drops.

[Kiara]

You're barking up the wrong tree. Lockouts have nothing to do with why people aren't seeing content and running with their FCs. Raid size is to blame here.

Raid size of course would alleviate a lot of the issues, but your claim that "Lockouts have nothing to do with why people aren't seeing content and running with their FC" is just not true.

I know quite a few FC that have *great* players (who perform well in end game), but they are beyond the 8 pre-established people in their FC's static.

If there was no loot lockout / penalty, even keeping at a fixed 8 Player Raid, they could've joined and run w/ their FC via being rotated in for each raid:

* First team (8 players).
* Rotate in extra FC / LS / Friends that couldn't go the first run.

Instead, they are all forced to start finding their own static or just PUG / Party Finder each week.

[Duelle]

Raid size of course would alleviate a lot of the issues, but your claim that "Lockouts have nothing to do with why people aren't seeing content and running with their FC" is just not true.

I know quite a few FC that have *great* players (who perform well in end game), but they are beyond the 8 pre-established people in their FC's static.

Which again, goes back to raid size.

Back when I raided in WoW we had a core group that ran 10-man hard modes while also having raid nights were we'd run 25-man content. Your class leaders and the better players in the guild would be part of the core group while your family members and more casual individuals would run 25-mans (one of our core group members would bring his mom to DPS 25-man raids, for example). Here's the thing: they were effectively seeing the same content (Ulduar). Sure, the 25-man group was not pushing the big red button for Mimiron or killing Steelbreaker last during the Iron Council fight, but they were still seeing the same dungeon and meeting the same bosses.

I'll admit this modus operandi died when Blizzard merged raid lockouts (back then you would have one lockout for Ulduar 10-man and one lockout for Ulduar 25-man, allowing you to run the instance twice per week but for two different raid sizes), but it was still infinitely better than allowing the same instance to be spammed with super low drop rates.

If there was no loot lockout / penalty, even keeping at a fixed 8 Player Raid, they could've joined and run w/ their FC via being rotated in for each raid:

* First team (8 players).
* Rotate in extra FC / LS / Friends that couldn't go the first run.

Instead, they are all forced to start finding their own static or just PUG / Party Finder each week.

Again, all you'd need is a 24-man mode for the content in question. If it turns out like anything that I've seen during the time I raided, you'd still have spots open to fill on raid nights (we used to ask friendly guilds if they had anyone that wanted to raid with us that week or, worse came to worst, PuGged). If you're worried about strict raid sizes I'd suggest SE lift the idea behind flex raiding from WoW.

[Kiara]

Which again, goes back to raid size.

Back when I raided in WoW we had a core group that ran 10-man hard modes while also having raid nights were we'd run 25-man content.

Again, all you'd need is a 24-man mode for the content in question... If you're worried about strict raid sizes I'd suggest SE lift the idea behind flex raiding from WoW.

Hi Duelle,

I never played WoW, but the reason I'm focusing on the lockouts aspect is because Yoshi P has spoken a few times about the focus on NON-Large Scale Raiding (there were at least 2 interviews / reports I think that he was interviewed and stated those things). So in my mind, he's not going to be creating a 24-player Alliance / Large-Scale End Game Raid any time soon (not counting the casual-focused Crystal Tower group).

I like the sound of this flex raiding system in WoW, what was it about?

One thing I also appreciated from Final Fantasy XI was its flexible party sizes / battles (early years, I have no idea what happened later):

If you had claimed a King (Nidhogg, King Behemoth, etc.), it wasn't locked to just 1 Party of 8 people. Nor was Dynamis (64 players and that could be run with VARIABLE number of players not just exactly 64). Sky, Sea could rotate in people, etc. All of these things engender and empower a Free Company (Guild) / LinkShell (or Groups of Friends) to do stuff together beyond a stringent fixed "8 Player Static ONLY!" mentality.

[Alistaire]

No thanks.

You wanna expand on that? Obviously voidwatch had its issues, mostly to do with the drop rate % for good stuff, but that's a long-standing problem with ffxi and not with the voidwatch model itself, which could easily be adapted to ffxiv's RNG system, as good or as bad as you may think it currently is, and still be better than ffxi's RNG by a longshot. The voidwatch content model is solid, the voidwatch drop rate model was terrible but kind of had to be to be in line with the rest of ffxi.