3.x series needs a variety of endgame content.

[ChiefCurrahee]

To me "endgame content" = "level 60 cap content, whether its DoW/M, DoL, DoH"

Let's make a list:
Bismark EX, obtaining all 13 weapons.
Ravana EX, obtaining all 13 weapons.
Alex(normal)
Alex(savage)
The Hunt HW Areas
blue scrips DoH
blue scrips DoL
red scrips DoH
red scrips DoL
PvP Rank 50
Anything that offers Esoterics as capping esoterics every week, falls under "endgame" progression.


So how much of this list do you go through on a daily/weekly basis?

If 2-4 you are playing less than 5% of available content ingame. less than 40% of available HW "endgame" content.

FFXIV core game revolves around battle mechanics, high end progression only comes from battle related content. You can be a max star crafter but the things you make will always be a grade below what the current battle content offers. So Red & blue scripts are not end game content, especially if you aren't a devoted crafter/gatherer.

The hunt is a joke. It serves no end game progression until they patch in token exchange for upgrade components, PVP is an even bigger joke. FFXIV is not a PVP centric game, it will never be. It merely a system in place to mark that box off, of things this game offers.

Glamour is not endgame content either. so when in the world would I farm 26 inferior weapons from Bismark and Ravana when I have a ESO weapon?

Alex normal offers lower grade gear and esoterics full potential is locked behind Alex Savage progression.

So what does that leave us with for end game progression?

<crickets>

ALEX SAVAGE AKA COIL REBORN.

So I again say there needs to be ALTERNATE content in place that offers SAME LEVEL of progression rewards as alex savage, but with a different flavor.

the biggest problem lays with the vertical progression system where every patch introduces a increased iLvl and makes everything previous obsolete.

If SE halted the iLVL @ 180 and all future 3.x content was iLvl 180 then yes, Bismark and Ravana would be end game content, high level dungeons would be endgame content, crafters would be able to create end game gear.

GLAMOUR would become endgame content (like the stats? hate the look? glamour)

End game encounters would be balanced better around actual mechanics and maybe even progress past the "more dots, more dps" which we've been conforming to for the past two years.

Did they make a mistake by making a vertical progression through 2.0 and stick with it through 3.0? No, but they shot themselves in the foot from the get go with the decision because each subsequent patch negates everything they did prior which leads to a barren endgame landscape.

[ChiefCurrahee]

If the devs had the cajones to halt all future iLVL progression @ iLVL 210 until the next expansion it opens up the dev team to create some interesting gear properties like "enhances x ability" or "reduction to cooldown" or "gear set bonus"

They could introduce interesting materia like TP or MP regen.

All future content would be relevant until the expansion.


But there are some many people who are stuck in the "need more power, must see bigger numbers" and stroke their E-peens with DPS numbers

Hell if they left the ilvl cap @ 90 from 2.0 then everything 2.0 offered through 3.0 would all be valid endgame content. All turns of coil would be just as relevant as each section of alex, and all those extreme primals would still be haunting some people.

It's a shame that all that stuff gets tossed in the garbage every 3-6 months.

[AskaRay]

Glamour is not endgame content either. so when in the world would I farm 26 inferior weapons from Bismark and Ravana when I have a ESO weapon?

Speak for yourself please. Glamour is serious endgame for me.

[Jonditaru]

snip

THANK YOU. So many people can't grasp the idea that relevant and endgame content variety pretty much non-existent. Hate to mention ffxi, but with each expansion they introduced new content, while keeping everything previous to it relevant. At least until abyssea came out. Instead, we get content patches every few months that make everything previous to it pointless. Heavensward was supposed to EXPAND the entire game. Not replace and make content obsolete. Vertical progression is definitely a hindering factor for this game's future success.

[Besudo]

Tooooooooooooo much 'we neeeeeeeed thisssssssss' threads with no actual valid points other than a. it sucks and b. this sucks more lol If you want something to be added, be more constructive and pitch some actual ideas to the devs.

Alright, I'll bite. I never bother posting on the forums, never care much. But the attitudes that are popping up on here to defend the lack of content is disappointing. Criticizing something you like doesn't mean you hate it- it means you want it to become better so you can like it even more.

I would like to see raids that actually have more than one boss. People say "oh we have 4 Alex raids." No, we have 4 bosses, not 4 raids. Having one boss with a small amount of trash is not an entire raid; it's a single boss. Why can't we have content that has the bosses in the same place? Is it to make it look like we have more than we do? I took issue with this in Coil as well- they did not add full raids, just bosses. We could have had them all in the same place like CT raids, then have it with the weekly reset with the lockout on it. Then they could have added another raid, perhaps with the same amount of bosses so we could at least have 2 different raids and get rid of the illusion of the wealth of raiding content. A lot of people like pvp, maybe a raid similar to WoW's Wintergrasp, where you have to control the pvp area to be able to access the raid. That would put a little more focus on the GC than there is now and expand people to a different part of the game that some shy away from. Sure, pvp isn't everyone's thing (I suck at it myself) but the gear from the raid would be a welcome new source. And it's not required, just something that would help you but you have other choices. This would mean a tweak to the system of changing GC but they could simply extend the cool down and increase the cost. There would be ways to prevent hoppers from just moving to be able to raid.

I would also like to see larger raids. As a healer, I dislike alliances, like in CT. I think they could be much better implemented. I know that you get a bunch of randoms in your CT run but it's frustrating that basic spells don't work on other alliances and it kinda makes you shrug and just heal yours because you know the other healers aren't helping out with your group (side note- it's not needed in the CT series most of the time but if someone messed up your group with bad raid mechanics, how many raids wiped because the other healers never moved to heal anyone else?). If they had a better system for alliances and made them like they were actually a part of your group and not just a bunch of weirdos that happen to be in the same run as you, I think a lot more people would be on board with the larger size. Yeah, it's not easy to get that many people to work together. But other games do it, I think that we can too. Plus, that would help with larger sized groups that have too many people for the current raids. I was told that FF11 allowed you to bring more with you, why was that left on the wayside? Or maybe have different loot and difficulty between a larger set raid and smaller set raid. There are definitely many options here they could look into that would be an improvement over our current system. And they don't have to retroactively change the old content, they can just post that it's a new thing going forward.

So there aren't a lot of people running savage right now (I would really like to see a new official census on this though). I thought that, when they released Alex, there would have three tiers of difficulty. Just like with WoW (I guess people hate that but you have to take some things from it), they have the easy LFR version that is currently the DF version we have. I thought we would have a savage mode that was just a normal mode of the dungeon. And then an ex mode for the hard core raiders (like the world first people and the ones that dedicate large amounts of time to raiding and want a hard challenge, similar to the Coil savage but with actual rewards instead of titles). Having that extra step would have been nice. Most of the people I know either dislike the current Alex savage because it's boring to them or can't get into it because the pugs aren't being run like they were with coil and it's harder for them to get good enough players to get the runs knocked out. This leads to lots of players taking breaks and that's something that all players should be worried about. Why? Because the more people that decide "eh, I'm just not going to resub" after their break effects the bottom line for SE. And while that isn't an issue NOW, down the road, it might be. Less development, less patches, less everything. A community should be concerned about this sort of thing and balance the desire to defend the game they like with the understand that losing players means bad things in the long run. I'm not saying cater to their every whim, far from it- but the dismissive attitudes on the forums make me sad to see such dislike for when someone even hints they're not happy with something. Anyway, a middle ground would have been nice for those that aren't hardcore with raiding and would have given people who aren't as good something to work on, instead of just being walled on savage for various reasons.

As for the new primals, there is no reason to run them when eso tomes came out. You miss the first boat on that sort of stuff, with no rewards to re run it? Too bad, you're out unless you have friends or an FC that will take you. "That's your fault for not making friends in the game." That's a lame excuse. Yeah, everyone would love to make friends in the game but I know a lot of people that don't like to run with FCs- I don't like them much myself. There needs to be something besides ponies to get people back in older content- more glamour options, tokens to redeem for rare items or hard to get mats for crafters (an easier way to get the harder items you need, not another new mat that's hard to get), or just overall more enjoyable mechanics. And think about this for a moment- content that is current level that has decent progressive gear is already considered old. I feel bad for new players and have stopped recommending people come play. Besides the monster of level 50 (not the stuff before it, JUST the level 50 mess) content you have to get through to even get to the new expac (this is ignoring if you want to play any of the 3 new classes), the sad fact remains that no one wants to run old content unless there is something cool they can get and glamour doesn't appeal to everyone. There needs to be something besides a relic introduced or ponies to get people back to the current level older places.

And what about gear progression? I feel that each step we take with new content completely kills the last step. No one needs to grind hunts to get the seals for upgrades because you just buy them straight from the vendor now. Couldn't we have given hunts something else to get than just killing them? Content can be repurposed, why are we not seeing that? And why couldn't we have other sources of gear? Why is each content patch almost erasing the last step in counter productive way? Yes, I know that gear gets outdated and needs to be replaced but it feels like, if you get a bit behind on your tomes, you could just shrug and wait for the next patch that will be the equalizer and give you some easy items to catch up. When did having to work for gear to be able to do new content become a bad thing? This would help out with getting people back in older place- stop introducing new tome gear, let's look to new avenues for gear to explore. And what about dungeon drops being actual upgrades? I actually had my hopes up when I first hit level 60 and saw that there were drops in the dungeons I could use. That was swiftly killed since I just got tome and hunt gear. Why even drop gear at all (excluding new players)? Grinding dungeons for rng drops isn't what most people want to do but it's still something. Maybe a token at the end of the dungeon you can save up so you can get a similar version of the item that isn't a good? There's no shame in having the exact same gear piece that has lesser stats. Just make it a different color and marked that it's not the full blown item with a small ilevel difference. I would rather be spending my time running a dungeon for a sweet drop and collecting tokens to cash in to help out with that than just logging in once a day to do a single roulette, shrug, and then go play a different game. Materia could have played a part in tweaking gear stats and set bonuses would be nice. There is little to almost no play with these mechanics, outside of relic and crafted gear for the materia. Having materia slots for actual gear is something that I expected and am constantly surprised they didn't implement. Again, lots of options they could look at here that would be much better than what we have.

I'm sure I'll get told I'm dumb for wanting more but it doesn't really matter; it's one of those things you even wonder why you bother since it feels like the devs don't actually read any of this stuff. I just think there are much more options to make content better than we currently have. This is coming from someone that has multiple alts (no, not leveled classes on the same toon, actual different characters) on the same and different servers. I like this game but the luster is leaving it. And the excuses of "oh it's only be out for xx" doesn't work either- what about FF11? Does the exp the company have from that not count? This isn't their first mmo. They can do better and I'm sure they know it.

[Jonditaru]

snip

It's a shame posts like this get ignored. Everything said here is pretty spot on with great suggestions on how things could make this game so much better.

[ChiefCurrahee]

It's funny the amount arguments that come from people when we ask the devs to give us more content because we like to play this game. a large amount of us ran coil for nearly 2 years. I think many of us were hoping to see some innovation come from the expansion. Clearly that didn't happen. We may criticize the fact that they gave us more of the same, but that's because we care and we want to see some variety.

Asking the devs to give us more paths and content that challenges us at max level to make this game even better, and to improve it for everyone. Then be meet with resistance from people saying if we don't PvP or exhaust script allowances, haven't collected 26 weapons for no other purpose than glamor or capped my weekly tokens is just absurd.

[Daralii]

with each expansion they introduced new content, while keeping everything previous to it relevant. Instead, we get content patches every few months that make everything previous to it pointless. Heavensward was supposed to EXPAND the entire game. Not replace and make content obsolete. Vertical progression is definitely a hindering factor for this game's future success.

The problem with horizontal progression models like that is that it penalizes new players, as opposed to everyone having more or less a clean slate every time the ilevel goes up. While this is absolutely fine, it's the kind of thing the devs have said they don't want in their iteration of 14. Because of that, I don't know how well more interesting stats would work, as much as I'd like them. WoW tried to work around that somewhat with mastery, which is the kind of thing I could see being introduced, but I doubt they'd introduce a new secondary stat mid-expansion.

Also, it's disingenuous to say Heavensward didn't make the game bigger. It made a lot of content irrelevant, but it's still a net increase.

[Stanelis]

The problem with horizontal progression models like that is that it penalizes new players, as opposed to everyone having more or less a clean slate every time the ilevel goes up.

If it is trully horizontal progression, then no, new players aren't penalized. Because it means that every piece of content added can be completed without completing the previous content already in the game. What you improve by completing the content is your skills, game knowledge and your group's coordination rather than your gear.

However, the developers would have to implement encounters which completion depends more on the skill, game knowledge and coordination of the players rather than on their item level, therefore they ll have to improve their game design.

[Daralii]

If it is trully horizontal progression, then no, new players aren't penalized. Because it means that every piece of content added can be completed without completing the previous content already in the game.

However, the developers would have to implement encounters which completion depends more on the skill and coordination of the players rather than on their item level, therefore they ll have to improve their game design.

Probably. My thought process was that people who've been playing longer have had more time to either get lucky with drops/rolls or get tokens for the optimal gear for their job, which could potentially last for years. Alternatively, pieces they want/need drop from older content that people aren't doing as much, not because it's been made obsolete, but simply because it's old.