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

[Ibi]

To be fair to Wildstar, there are players (such as myself) who quit shortly after leveling to max level and it had nothing to do with difficulty or it being too hardcore.

Yeah. It's not that it failed because it focused on that, so much as that it didn't succeed despite focusing on that.

Velhart claims that it's "common sense" that an MMO "needs" to provide over the top difficulty for hardcore players, but it's clear from Wildstar that doing so isn't a guarantee that an MMO will succeed.

[Kaurie]

Absolutely, correlation is not necessarily causation.

But the game did heavily sell itself as focusing on the crowd that Velhart claims it's "common sense" that an MMO "needs" to provide for, and was a failure in spite of that.

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.

That said, if you solely focus on raids and nothing else then you're out of luck.

I think Wildstar did right:
-Crafting
-Raiding
-Lore
-Humor
-Build customization
-Housing

Wildstar did wrong
-Poor UI
-Client optimization
-Semi-action combat sucked for non melee classes
-Class balancing (when I played, I'd do 2-3x DPS on my Warrior as other classes and I'd put in 1/3 the effort)
-Interrupt Meta - after playing for a short while you realized the ONLY combat mechanic in the entire game was using interrupts

[Alahra]

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

That's pretty true, and not something I'd thought of specifically before. That "trickle down" effect is something that was muted quite a bit in Heavensward because of the lower participation in Savage and the massive changes to crafting (which largely removed their interaction with the raiding scene except for food and potions—something only two of the DoH classes make, which has further effects on DoL classes). Hardcore content is definitely an important part of an MMO, but making the content and focus too hardcore can have repercussions that undermine the positive effects that content has on the rest of the game.

[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.

[Ibi]

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.

It's probably impossible to quantify how much of an effect this "trickle down" has, if it even has one.

What's the actual economic impact of hardcore raiders on the non-raiding population? Could a similar economic impact be generated simply by having a larger pool of less-hardcore raiders?

How many of the people who "look up to" or "aspire to be" raiders like the top groups:
- keep playing based on that, when they might otherwise have quit?
- continue to raid based on that, when they would otherwise have given up?
- actually change anything they do in the game, based on that?

Would the person in your raid group who watches videos of Lucrezia speed clears have stopped raiding if those videos didn't exist?

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

That would fall squarely into the category of anecdotal comments that I mentioned, rather than actual evidence.

Besides which I've been a part of that group at various times, both in XIV and other games, and I think that at best it's an unproven premise that you absolutely need to have ridiculously difficult content that only the upper echelon of players will even see in order for an MMO to be successful.

[Kaurie]

It's probably impossible to quantify how much of an effect this "trickle down" has, if it even has one.

It is virtually impossible without removing it. As an environmental scientist, I view this as an ecosystem where every aspect is interconnected whether it's immediately apparent or not. If you remove one aspect of it, it has trickle effects that would be impossible to predict. If there is one thing I think human's (should have) learned by now with all of the environmental degradation we have done is to not mess with ecosystems. Here is an interesting story of unexpected consequences:

“In the early 1950s, there was an outbreak of a serious disease called malaria amongst the Dayak people in Borneo. The World Health Organization tried to solve the problem. They sprayed large amounts of a chemical called DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. The mosquitoes died and there was less malaria. That was good. However, there were side effects. One of the first effects was that the roofs of people's houses began to fall down on their heads. It turned out that the DDT was also killing a parasitic wasp that ate thatch-eating caterpillars. Without the wasps to eat them, there were more and more thatch-eating caterpillars. Worse than that, the insects that died from being poisoned by DDT were eaten by gecko lizards, which were then eaten by cats. The cats started to die, the rats flourished, and the people were threatened by outbreaks of two new serious diseases carried by the rats, sylvatic plague and typhus. To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the World Health Organization had to parachute live cats into Borneo.”

[RiceisNice]

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.
.

After my raid group had finished farming FCoB, we'd move onto SCoB Savage as it was something for us to tackle until 3.0 dropped. Although the latter is definitely not something you'd want in the forefront for the raiding community (like what we see right now with savage, and it's led to proably an unrecoverable state from server transfers). Even if it was not our ideal content, it was something for us to tackle because it was an escalating slope of difficulty even if you were over geared for it, if only because of the mechanic checks behind the fights. Although personally, SCoB is my least favorite raid because of the mechanics behind it, but I'm just following what my raid group wants to do before 3.0 launched.

[Ibi]

It is virtually impossible without removing it.

Which it sounds like SE are going to do in 3.2, and it'll be interesting to see the results.

My suspicion is that even if every single person that's cleared A4S to this point clears A8S in the first two weeks and quits because they have absolutely nothing else to do (which would say as much about the non-raiding content available, or lack thereof), the impact on the economy will be negligible and you'll actually end up with a higher percentage of the players tackling and succeeding in Savage that you have now.

But that's just my feeling, and I have no data to back it up, so I'm not going to try and claim that it's "common sense" (or anything similar) that that will be the outcome.

However, a lot of the damage that's been done may be irreversible. There are likely players who quit based on the difficulty of Savage (who would have stayed around if it had instead been at Coil difficulty and they'd been more able to make progress) who won't come back regardless of how difficult Midas is.

On top of that, you likely will lose some hardcore players due to it being too easy. If Gordias had been at Coil-level difficulty, you might still have lost those players, but now they're going to lose them in addition to the group they already lost by alienating them with Gordias' difficulty, rather than losing them instead of that group.

[Velhart]

That would fall squarely into the category of anecdotal comments that I mentioned, rather than actual evidence.

Besides which I've been a part of that group at various times, both in XIV and other games, and I think that at best it's an unproven premise that you absolutely need to have ridiculously difficult content that only the upper echelon of players will even see in order for an MMO to be successful.

You shouldn't take what I say as a fact. It is my opinion on how I believe proper structure works in MMO's. It ultimately lies on the developers to create quality in terms of all three branches of players. I am not going to throw documents and statistics around, or make you believe what I say is absolute. I will argue however based on personal experience being on all three levels of players in the many years I have played MMO's. When one branch suffers in quality/quantity, the other will be affected also.

As for my common sense quote you like to throw around. Yes, I do believe adding challenge to video games (the thing it sets itself upon on since it's conception), is a common sense practice in the industry.

[Alahra]

On top of that, you likely will lose some hardcore players due to it being too easy.

I'm not so sure of that. It's not as though the hardcore players didn't do Coil of Bahamut in ARR even though it was midcore. Hardcore players will engage with content that's below their preferred difficulty if there are significant incentives for doing so, the content is challenging enough, or if they like other aspects of the game, which still allows for some of that "trickle down" effect to occur.

On the flip side, midcore players won't "step up" to content that's too challenging (which is what we've seen with Savage) the same way that hardcore ones will "step down" to content that's less challenging than they would like (as long as, again, it's still challenging enough).

I don't know how significant the loss of players was when it came to FCOB being "too easy," and Midas is going to be somewhere in between SCOB and FCOB (at least, that's what they're telling us). Given that a lot of the raiding community saw SCOB as the pinnacle of the game's raiding content, I think aiming for somewhere in between Second and Final is likely to be the best compromise the developers can make between midcore and hardcore focus.