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

[SarcasmMisser]

The other thing I don't understand that seems to be brought up a lot in this thread is this idea that the proposed changes would somehow prevent you from maintaining your statics. What exactly about the proposed changes make any of your come this conclusion? There is absolutely nothing to stop anyone from forming a static and doing the same content with the same people if they wanted to regardless if weekly lockouts were in place.

It wouldn't which was exactly my point, if hard mode Alexander is as difficult as some rumors are suggesting it will be static only on difficulty alone. But people think that if it wasn't for the lock out all those groups would open up and pugs will be paradise. Pugs are damn harsh on hard content, and the focus on statics is just a scapegoat that helps people ignore that there might be other reasons why people don't want to raid with them.

Also if there is something that I would describe as strong bonds and friendship it is 8 man raiding. Stuff like 40 man raiding is just a mess, people don't even know everyone's names a lot of the time. It's suspect when people who have trouble fitting in for some reason hate so much on people who have tightly bonded with other players.

[Ladon]

It wouldn't which was exactly my point, if hard mode Alexander is as difficult as some rumors are suggesting it will be static only on difficulty alone. But people think that if it wasn't for the lock out all those groups would open up and pugs will be paradise. Pugs are damn harsh on hard content, and the focus on statics is just a scapegoat that helps people ignore that there might be other reasons why people don't want to raid with them.

The alternate to statics are NOT pugs! You could very well have 12 very good people all in your FC that you would like to play with regularly. If lockouts were removed, people are going to field players from their FC well before they even consider a pug. That is the exact goal of the proposed changes! To allow more people to play with the people they want to, not screw 4 of your FC mates every week and make them go find a PUG themselves to finish the content for that week.

[Yukiko]

First: Big thanks to the community in 1.xx
It needed so many discussions with SE to finally get skirmish and garuda loot systems, even on ifrit we had a very hard time untill they added the token system. There was a reason why we liked garuda (compared on how many players did that content each day, including shouts), and not because the fight, it was the pgorgress we had and we could help each other! Relict with hamlet was such a pain to fight the RNG and worst part of memories because it had timers... (how will you win when your friends are sleeping? Sometimes there were not enough players to even start the raid).

But lets change to what we have now, lets take shiva as a more positive example: while the token system on shiva seems like a good idea it helps nothing, all it does is that you can catch up faster and upgrading the weapon the instant you get it. The problem is: a token system is ment to fight the RNG but on shiva we still have to roll against 7 others and in add we still have to wait for the correct weapon to drop! You can have 100 of tokens and still not gotten your desired weapon... However, its much better than it was with the mirror from Leviathan!

Helping each other is one of the keys... is it realy that hard to bind loot on individual player? Why it must be a group loot system at all?? To pass on loot is not helping each other, because everyone needs it...

[SarcasmMisser]

The alternate to statics are NOT pugs! You could very well have 12 very good people all in your FC that you would like to play with regularly. If lockouts were removed, people are going to field players from their FC well before they even consider a pug. That is the exact goal of the proposed changes! To allow more people to play with the people they want to, not screw 4 of your FC mates every week and make them go find a PUG themselves to finish the content for that week.

Isn't that an argument for flex raiding and not against lockouts? They could remove all the lockouts but imo the same situation will remain, they can't all play together. The issues being brought up in the thread are very mismatched with the thing being blamed and it is suspicious that people are so fixated on the loot lockout but talk non-stop about friends. Do they even have any clears? If they were such great friends they would at least help them learn the fight and get clear experience there's nothing stopping them from doing that.

Just straight up I think people just feel entitled to loot and they will take aim at the biggest barrier there until they get a 8 man WoD. Then they will complain about RNG like so many threads here.

[Hiruke]

Isn't that an argument for flex raiding and not against lockouts? They could remove all the lockouts but imo the same situation will remain, they can't all play together. The issues being brought up in the thread are very mismatched with the thing being blamed and it is suspicious that people are so fixated on the loot lockout but talk non-stop about friends. Do they even have any clears? If they were such great friends they would at least help them learn the fight and get clear experience there's nothing stopping them from doing that.

Just straight up I think people just feel entitled to loot and they will take aim at the biggest barrier there until they get a 8 man WoD. Then they will complain about RNG like so many threads here.

How do you figure, exactly? If, using Ladon's example, there were 12 people who wanted to play together, obviously they couldn't all go into the same specific run, but they could do multiple runs throughout the week, changing party composition to get everyone in. In FFXI, we did this kind of thing for the larger BCNMs (against the Behemoth/Fafnir/Adamantoise type mobs, for instance) and, well, a lot of content, actually. Just rotate people in and out so everyone gets to play. That's basically what they are looking for.

Sure, there are people who just want loot and easy content. I'm not one of them, but I still think lockouts are stupid (at least the way they are designed in this game). There's little benefit to being forced to static up with 8 people unless they are all SUPER HARDCORE about the game. Otherwise, you get the problem of statics breaking, losing members, not being able to find new members, etc. etc. Statics disintegrate and add stress to the player's lives ALL THE TIME.

There's a huge swath of people between the super casual and the bleeding edge hardcore. Obviously world first groups (or the second wave just behind them) could care less about lockouts or not. Not having lockouts would greatly benefit pretty much everyone else, though.

(If you're talking about the "flexible raiding" system from WoW, I don't really think that would fly with how content is currently designed. Turn 7 with 12 people sounds pretty awful. Also, I'm pretty sure people are talking about not wanting RAID lockouts. LOOT lockouts are mostly fine, except how SE has designed their "assist" system for Final Coil, which is pretty much garbage and has no benefit other than for 8 people who have already cleared for the week and want to practice for some reason. That said, loot lockouts are mostly useless for Coil because it can take a ridiculously long time to get the specific thing you want to begin with, and also hey, you've got 9 other jobs you could potentially gear out as well...)

[Sapphic]

The alternate to statics are NOT pugs! You could very well have 12 very good people all in your FC that you would like to play with regularly. If lockouts were removed, people are going to field players from their FC well before they even consider a pug. That is the exact goal of the proposed changes! To allow more people to play with the people they want to, not screw 4 of your FC mates every week and make them go find a PUG themselves to finish the content for that week.

If they are that desperate, do what some of our static did, including myself. make alts. Doesnt take long to level up one job, get cross class skills and gear up. Crafted, WoD and poetics gear is more than enough to get the first 3 turns of FCOB down.

It's suspect when people who have trouble fitting in for some reason hate so much on people who have tightly bonded with other players.

Simple reason, in my opinion, Jealousy. "We can't do it so no-one else should!" They are on the outside looking in with spite. When they can't join because they aren't social, aren't good enough or just too lazy and expect some random static to appear and just invite, you know, just because. Or they expect statics to drop members to pick players at random to carry them through content that they, themselves are too lazy to organize themselves.

Or, in best case, they try once to make a static, didn't work so give up and complain.

Any form of hard content promotes making a static, because yeah, having to teach phase 1 every single time is not going to drive you crazy. Not to mention no-one wants to go the pug lottery every single time due to how many bad players that are unwilling or too lazy to meet the levels required for certain content.

Pretty much everything is puggable except for 1 piece of content, and some want to take that away.

I don't PvP, do you see me advocating removing it? No! and you never will because there are some players who enjoy it and I'm not that selfish to think all aspects of an MMO should cater to me. Same applies to hard content.

[SarcasmMisser]

There's a huge swath of people between the super casual and the bleeding edge hardcore. Obviously world first groups (or the second wave just behind them) could care less about lockouts or not. Not having lockouts would greatly benefit pretty much everyone else, though.

I agree that this game lacks mid-core content, the last patch just had nothing and its like SE assumes that everyone who doesn't raid can't even tie their own shoelaces. It's either you raid or you mash keyboard on hunts while watching youtube on the other screen. I hope the different modes of heavenward raids does that, and flex honestly wouldn't be a bad idea for the normal mode so everyone could play together. Hard mode if it lives up to its name will always encourage statics, regardless of the lock out. I don't think people will go back and help those that call them friends as much as people let on, why aren't people already doing this to get them clear experience?

If that was the case all these people would have final witness titles if their friends were that benevolent. This isn't XI, the process of learning difficult raids then farming them just doesn't like having to introduce new people into the ordeal, its a burden.

[Yukiko]

Back on Melmond (good old days FFXIV 1.xx) I had JP friends, US friends, UK friends, FR friends, ... Obviously we are not living in same timezone! In FFXIV 2.xx it is very hard to find raid times. No the problem is not the time itself but to have it each week again and again. The gamedesign is not made for rotations, but thats what we have to do because of obviously reasons with timezones... SE expect us to have the same 8 Players stick together all the time for nearly every content - expect the 24 player or the 4 player dungeons... True, its just an assumption and as we see on JP servers proven wrong, but still with all that group rope jumping its the image SE is giving us...

Try the group rope jumping with 3 players, lets say you make it to 100 jumps -> switch out one of those 3 and you will not make it that far for a while. The new one doesnt know the rhythm of the others as example...
Edit: Ask yourself: Why did the rotation work in 1.xx but not in 2.xx ?

[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.

[Kiara]

The alternate to statics are NOT pugs! You could very well have 12 very good people all in your FC that you would like to play with regularly. If lockouts were removed, people are going to field players from their FC well before they even consider a pug. That is the exact goal of the proposed changes! To allow more people to play with the people they want to, not screw 4 of your FC mates every week and make them go find a PUG themselves to finish the content for that week.

Well said Ladon. Completely agree.

Sarcasm, I'm not sure you get it: Perhaps in your experience all you know is having 8 players only (Static) and anyone beyond that is "gimp" or "lesser" or can't do stuff, or is asking for a handout.

Maybe you've never had a Free Company or LS or groups of Friends beyond 8 people exactly.

One of the main points in this thread and the OP is about re-examining the Raid System for 3.0 to improve upon it.

"Yes," even if they open up the Lockout the 9th or 10th person in your FC or LS can't go with the first 8 on the first run, but they certainly can go *afterwards*.

* A good group can clear, say, each Turn of Final Coil in ~10 minutes.
* So first group of 8 players in your FC / LS / Friends goes in, clear it (10 minutes).
* You can now rotate in other GREAT FC / LS / Friends and do another run.

This isn't about opening it up to PUGs. This is about being able to do stuff with people you may actually like or want to do stuff with beyond 7 people in your current static.

I know plenty of great players in various FC and LSs (and just solo players who don't do stuff in their relaxed Crafting FC) who can clear Final Coil with no issues, but they can't run it with their FC / LS other Friends.

Why?

Because of this Weekly Lockout. One of the top JP players on my old server chose not to join any FC / LS by choice. He just PUG'd each week for the heck of it (his playstyle). So don't equate people not having a Static to being lesser in some way.