The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

[Velhart]

I hope is that one day someone will provide some actual evidence of this kind of statement, instead of just throwing it out there as though its truth is self-evident. The only thing that's ever provided to corroborate it is anecdotal comments from people saying things like "Yeah, I remember being inspired to raid by some guy wearing <insert raid loot here>!"

Should ask the people who are able to clear raids before the next horizontal patch hits.

While on the other side of things you have a game like Wildstar, designed specifically to have "over the top difficulty to keep your hardcore players engaged" falling flat it on its face shortly after release.

Don't take what I say as definite, but the people I associated with who played Wildstar didn't quit because of it's difficulty. They were just not satisfied with the quality of the product. If anything, I always heard praise of Wildstar keeping things challenging.

Given that it's only ever provided, at most, four challenging fights per six months, it's always been a "midcore" game. If you're a serious hardcore raider, looking for something to play, FFXIV has probably never been very high on your list.

True the game has been more towards a midcore set up. The difference is we have seen what the developers are capable of when making Savage. Before my mindset was that this is what they are capable of in terms of making hard content. Then Savage for 2nd Coil came around and it took it do a level that hardcore did enjoy. It's only real set back was it's lack of rewards that killed the motivation. I remember people beating it and getting much satisfaction out of it, especially Savage Turn 7. It would be great to see this return for them, but it looks like that is not a thing anymore. Clearly making Easy Mode that is only relevant for a few weeks is much more important than something that can last till the game shuts down if you use ilvl sync properly.

It is speculation though, who knows what they will do in Midas. The bigger point is they should be focused on trying to get that hardcore audience in, not give them reasons to not want to play.

Unfortunately, I haven't made it to A3S and A4S quite yet , but based on A1S and A2S, I don't see how he couldn't make more difficulties. I mean A1S changes from A1N are -these attacks do more damage, this buff lasts longer and now there are twice as many adds! Like I'm sure they just needed to copy paste some code, adjust a few numbers and duplicate a couple lines of code. A2S seems pretty much A2N with higher damage output.

Look to 2nd Coil Savage as a reference. They can easily make turns much harder. Regular 2nd Coil itself was pretty difficult.

They keep on throwing out content that is seemingly copy pasted and then going on to talk about how they can't add more due to resources. Look, either give us quantity or quality, but don't hold back on both.

Pretty much. I can't make an accurate comment without knowing how they work internally, but I don't ever like to see a dip in quality in content like raids so they could put something in people don't care about. If that is how it works.

I just think that there are so many factors to the success of an MMO. One of those factors is providing appropriate hardcore content. I would say that generally speaking hardcore content has a trickle down effect on two types of players. Casual/crafting type players make gear/food/potions etc which then sell for more via markets from hardcore player demand. Midcore raiders tend to look up to hardcore and aspire to be on that skill level - I know there is one guy in my raid who during coil would post these Lucrezia speed clears on turns that we were working on clearing.

Really good point. Hardcore content does help keep things up in this department also.

Again I like to point out, I am not a hardcore raider myself. I simply care about the balance of all three play styles. Each has the right to exist, but they all need to be balanced properly.