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

[RiceisNice]

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.

It's hard to make a direct comparison because of the circumstances between FCOB being too easy, and Alexander Savage being too hard. In the case of FCoB, it was the only difficulty for that raid tier. and SCoB savage was still present at the time. There's also a variety of content at the time to suit people outside of raiding; those who didn't have a static could do the 24mans, PF their primals, DF old coil, among other things. Those with statics could tackle FCoB at a comfortable level when it was still relevant, and still have the option to do so by clicking off echo. The hardcores would rush for their world firsts, and at the time SCoB savage was still available to them as well. I mean I could also argue that SCoB was relatively much, much harder and unforgiving than FCoB before the nerfs, to the point that I'd almost consider it to be "hardcore" due to the amount of coordination needed to get through something like T7.

For people who didn't do coil even when it was DF accessible, it's a different problem altogether; Why were they not doing coil despite it being accessible on DF with echo (which essentially trivializes the fight)? And what do the clear numbers in general mean? What about in the case of Alexander? Getting clear rate numbers is tricky because only developers can truly get the solid numbers, versus player-made census that can only really go by achievements (if they have public display enabled) or items (which is tied to redeeming from achievement or winning a roll).

[Alahra]

It's hard to make a direct comparison because of the circumstances between FCOB being too easy, and Alexander Savage being too hard. In the case of FCoB, it was the only difficulty for that raid tier.

You can't make a direct comparison, no, but the point was just that, in general, hardcore players will still do somewhat easier raids, while non-raiding/midcore players often won't step up to the higher ones. We didn't have significant player bleed around the time of FCOB due to the raid being easier than SCOB/SCOB (Savage), so I'm not sure we'll see a notable loss of players over the lowered difficulty of Midas relative to Gordias, either.

It's possible we will, but even if we lost every single player that cleared Savage, that's only perhaps 5% of the population or so (at most) which isn't large enough that it would be unable to be recovered from so long as the game continues to grow.

[Moomba33]

For people who didn't do coil even when it was DF accessible, it's a different problem altogether; Why were they not doing coil despite it being accessible on DF with echo (which essentially trivializes the fight)? .

Echo and nerfs certainly made most turns DF friendly.
My sticking points were with t5 and t9 which remained giant brick walls for quite some time as echo did nothing to help with things like divebombs and the mechanic was never adjusted to my knowledge.

A few of my friends were unwilling to try coil at all until we could undersize it in Heavensward since they were afraid of screwing up with people they didn't know.
I myself know how terrible it feels to be the cause of a group's failure but my desire to see the story made me willing to try every now and then.

[Ibi]

You should focus more on making an actual argument instead of trying to point out how I phrased it.

What is there to argue? I assumed you were using the normal definition of common sense, which made it sound like you were trying to claim what you were saying was a fact. You've clarified that you weren't, and that you were actually just asserting an opinion. I'm not going to tell you your opinion is wrong, even if I have a different one.

I doubt this made much of a difference. If all of my SMN stats were made to INT equivalents using stat weights - I had with my 200 eso weapon 3404 INT. With my Relic, I am at 3445. Thordan EX would have been about half way in between. That 40 INT gain to my relic is roughly a 1% increase in INT, and has indeed given me about a 1% increase in DPS - from 1333 to 1343 on my dummy parse. The issue is that all stats, including weapon damage and main stat, are becoming less important with each gear step (diminishing returns and all).

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was thinking less in terms of the actual contribution from the weapons themselves (though that's obviously a factor) and more that Thordan Ex requires more coordination than A1S or A2S, but less than A3S, so it could have functioned as a stepping stone in terms of actual fight difficulty.

Again COP was an example of this. there were many complaints of it being too difficult but at the same time it was content that many people persevered with and eventually overcame. because the rewards for making progress were epic.

CoP was in kind of a weird place anyway. A lot of the difficulty was due to the content being level capped, and people lacking appropriate gear because of inventory or resource limitations.

The lack of balance between FFXI's jobs could also be very significant. My static had problems on very different fights than most groups, due to our composition lacking jobs with high burst damage. We cleared the first airship battle, with Omega and Ultima, in a single attempt, but were stuck on Tenzen for quite some time. We eventually beat it by having me tank it as thief, using Perfect Dodge to make his weapon skills miss and delay Cosmic Elucidation, giving us enough time to make it through.

Even looking at the Promyvion fights, many players got through them by taking summoners and rangers as the only damage sources, because their high damage two hour abilities let you get through the much more deadly low HP component of the fight much faster. For some people, perseverance was simply leveling up a job that made it easier.

There's not really anything similar available in FFXIV, because no composition change is going to make your group significantly stronger.

I'm also not sure that any of the fights in CoP required the same level of coordination that most of the raid encounters in FFXIV do.

[Kaurie]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was thinking less in terms of the actual contribution from the weapons themselves (though that's obviously a factor) and more that Thordan Ex requires more coordination than A1S or A2S, but less than A3S, so it could have functioned as a stepping stone in terms of actual fight difficulty.

Ahhh that makes sense. In fact, that is the line of thinking our static is using. We're hoping to down A2S soon (nearly there, but one member's motherboard went and it's slowed us a little), and then we're on to Thordan EX before tackling A3S.