FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[KrenianKandos]

Raid because..... it's fun?

It isn't.

It really really isn't.

And the small number of participants that actually 'clear' the content prove it.

[LaylaTsarra]

It isn't.

It really really isn't.

And the small number of participants that actually 'clear' the content prove it.

Beating your head against a duty for weeks on end to clear isn't fun for a lot of people. I know i could care less about doing it. It's why there are so few raiders in my opinion. It's why SE feels the need to create a multi-server raid finder and has acknowledged problems with people transferring servers to find others who want to raid. The raider mentality is strong on this forum however.

[Reiryuu]

Beating your head against a duty for weeks on end to clear isn't fun for a lot of people. I know i could care less about doing it. It's why there are so few raiders in my opinion. It's why SE feels the need to create a multi-server raid finder and has acknowledges problems with people transferring servers to find others who want to raid. The raider mentality is strong on this forum however.

Most raiders probably get capped as fast as possible, raid on their days, and then never log in till next raiding time giving them lots of time to go on the forums. Others are in game enjoying themselves most likely.

[LaylaTsarra]

Most raiders probably get capped as fast as possible, raid on their days, and then never log in till next raiding time giving them lots of time to go on the forums. Others are in game enjoying themselves most likely.

I'm all for people doing what they enjoy. I'm not in anyway trying to demean those who enjoy raiding and the more power to them if that is their thing. I have some good friends who enjoy raiding and I'm happy for them. It's just that many people do not share that sentiment and prefer more casual content and doing lots of other things.

[KrenianKandos]

Beating your head against a duty for weeks on end to clear isn't fun for a lot of people. I know i could care less about doing it. It's why there are so few raiders in my opinion. It's why SE feels the need to create a multi-server raid finder and has acknowledged problems with people transferring servers to find others who want to raid. The raider mentality is strong on this forum however.

I've no issues with the raiders. Honestly don't. But it's the ones that don't actually see there's a problem with the raiding scenario that I don't get.

"Cool, you like the raids. You're enjoying yourself. You do realize, however, that it's about 5% of the community only, right? And that 95% of us don't necessarily care about the endgame direction?"

I know it's a bit hypocritical of me coming into a thread about the State of Raiding and say "Yeah, it's pretty broken because Raiding is just boring as hell" but the fact is that maybe the state of Raiding is like that because it's a dying breed. Maybe it's time that we look into another avenue when it comes to endgame stuff.

The way people lash at others because we point out that raiding isn't the end all be all that people want it to be and that we're 'treading on their fun, man!' is astounding. You mean..we can't have an opinion that differs to yours?

It's all so silly on a forum meant to discuss things.

(In no means am I directing this at you considering you're agreeing and furthermore pushing the point that it really isn't fun and S-E is having to push tools in order to entice people to raid.)

While I get the idea behind how they want it to be very much World of Warcraft with an FF IP (Yoshi basically said this at the 2.0 inception), it's time to branch away, IMO. Raiding is ok but there HAS to be something else in the world that either people have not thought up or that is implemented in other games that would be a bit better than raiding? My opinion stands: The playerbase honestly doesn't care anymore about raiding and no matter how much you try to put incentives for people to do it, the fact that you opened the story mode is good enough for 95% of the playerbase.

Look and see what your playerbase is doing, S-E, and figure stuff that way. Not all of us want raids. We want more.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Snip

If you consider both the NA and JP demographics, raiding is likely far more popular than you're giving it credit. We saw greater burnout this year due to how challenging Gordias turned out to be. Midas has been better received overall, as have all extreme primals in Heavensward. Granted, the primal fights have never been all that criticised. Nevertheless, they have tried new content; Lord of Verminion, Diadem and etc. No one does them. Now I'm not saying either is necessarily good, but forum goers don't tend to make up even a quarter of the general audience. The state of raid isn't bad in FFXIV, but there is a noticeable gap between skill levels, which makes the lack of a larger midcore segment all the more apparent. That said, JP players do not have near the difficulty NA do. So I doubt you'll see changes to the formula now.

[KrenianKandos]

If you consider both the NA and JP demographics, raiding is likely far more popular than you're giving it credit. We saw greater burnout this year due to how challenging Gordias turned out to be. Midas has been better received overall, as have all extreme primals in Heavensward. Granted, the primal fights have never been all that criticised. Nevertheless, they have tried new content; Lord of Verminion, Diadem and etc. No one does them. Now I'm not saying either is necessarily good, but forum goers don't tend to make up even a quarter of the general audience. The state of raid isn't bad in FFXIV, but there is a noticeable gap between skill levels, which makes the lack of a larger midcore segment all the more apparent. That said, JP players do not have near the difficulty NA do. So I doubt you'll see changes to the formula now.

The two examples that you used are a bit curious. Only one of them was really a well tried attempt.

Lord of Verminion is really not an answer for horizontal progression. At best, it's a side game in a main game. At worse, it's nearly pointless and a waste of time. That was not what the regular playerbase was asking for at all and I think this was stemmed from an April Fools joke that a certain minor vocal group said "That would be so cool!" and took it for gospel.

Diadem's major problem was that it became a complete grindfest against mobs the whole time after you were done the quests. They completely butchered the entire zone by doing it as a glorified FATE, which people were more than vocal about FATEs being pure shyte. That's again a case of them not listening to the playerbase asking for meaningful content. Grinding my face against dinosaurs for 70 minutes is absolutely stupid.

They had something with the Diadem. They completely mucked it up. It was supposed to be about exploration; heck, it has all the makings to be interesting like that!

It turned out to be ridiculous. Pointless. And incredibly gimmicky because the gear dropped could have been BiS depending on how the rolls were made on the item. It was such a mess that I still shake my head thinking about that place.

And I would be very curious to see the stats pointing out the percentile of raiding in both JPN and NA. I will still wager, that if you put both playerbases together, that it's STILL around 5%.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The two examples that you used are a bit curious. Only one of them was really a well tried attempt.

Lord of Verminion is really not an answer for horizontal progression. At best, it's a side game in a main game. At worse, it's nearly pointless and a waste of time. That was not what the regular playerbase was asking for at all and I think this was stemmed from an April Fools joke that a certain minor vocal group said "That would be so cool!" and took it for gospel.

Diadem's major problem was that it became a complete grindfest against mobs the whole time after you were done the quests. They completely butchered the entire zone by doing it as a glorified FATE, which people were more than vocal about FATEs being pure shyte. That's again a case of them not listening to the playerbase asking for meaningful content. Grinding my face against dinosaurs for 70 minutes is absolutely stupid.

They had something with the Diadem. They completely mucked it up. It was supposed to be about exploration; heck, it has all the makings to be interesting like that!

It turned out to be ridiculous. Pointless. And incredibly gimmicky because the gear dropped could have been BiS depending on how the rolls were made on the item. It was such a mess that I still shake my head thinking about that place.

And I would be very curious to see the stats pointing out the percentile of raiding in both JPN and NA. I will still wager, that if you put both playerbases together, that it's STILL around 5%.

And yet one could argue 5% of people liked Lord of Verminion. I know plenty who did. Your stance is to remove content that only a small portion of the population likes, but you could cherry pick most aspects of FFXIV in separated doses and those percentages wouldn't be high. How many people enjoy crafting, especially hardcore crafting? Probably within the 5-15% range-- equivalent to raiders. Should we remove it too because that clearly isn't catering to the majority interest?

Most MMOs are devised of small subgroups of players whose interests fall under certain areas. They won't like everything-- possibly not even half the overall content. But what they do like keeps them playing. If you start trying to only focus on one or two groups, you'll inevitably chase away far more players in the long run. Consider the implications no more raids would have. That impacts crafter since why bother buying expensive gear you'll never need? Dungeons may feel more repetitive because it's all we have from a gameplay perspective now. You can't simply look at raiding and say, "well, only x% actually do this. So we can cut it out with no harm done." I suspect you'd be very surprised how even fights like the extreme primals impact the game.

I didn't realize HW primals are more well received than ARR. Personally, I found almost the complete opposite - where my least favourite fights are Ravana and Sephirot EX and my favourites are MogEX and LeviEX.

I can't speak for everyone of course, but of the people I know both personally and among the Twitch channels I hang out in, Ravana, Thordan and Sephirot EX are all very popular.

[KrenianKandos]

And yet one could argue 5% of people liked Lord of Verminion. I know plenty who did. Your stance is to remove content that only a small portion of the population likes, but you could cherry pick most aspects of FFXIV in separated doses and those percentages wouldn't be high. How many people enjoy crafting, especially hardcore crafting? Probably within the 5-15% range-- equivalent to raiders. Should we remove it too because that clearly isn't catering to the majority interest?

Most MMOs are devised of small subgroups of players whose interests fall under certain areas. They won't like everything-- possibly not even half the overall content. But what they do like keeps them playing. If you start trying to only focus on one or two groups, you'll inevitably chase away far more players in the long run. Consider the implications no more raids would have. That impacts crafter since why bother buying expensive gear you'll never need? Dungeons may feel more repetitive because it's all we have from a gameplay perspective now. You can't simply look at raiding and say, "well, only x% actually do this. So we can cut it out with no harm done." I suspect you'd be very surprised how even fights like the extreme primals impact the game..

Pardon me, but I have never once said for them to remove raiding. At all. I understand there is a request for raiding and I'm fine with that. What I stated is that I wish they would realize that raiding is not the end all, be all of endgame. That's all. And the fact that there is a small percentage of raiders proves that the main core of the players does not think raiding is worth it, fun, or a useful place to sink their time in.

5% for LoV is very very generous. I would say less than that. Far less. I have absolutely NO idea where LoV came out of, really. Like I said previously, I think it was some sort of April Fools joke that people actually said "Yeah, that looks cool." Every time I go on Sargatanas and in the LoV area, it's pretty empty. As in, barely anyone in there playing. I'd be surprised if I've seen 5 people in that area any given night.

Your post is set in the manner that I stated to remove raiding. I never said that. I fully understand that the raiding scene is still prominent. But it is dying. It's not as popular as it was in the past, and that's because of a number of reasons. All I ask is for more endgame and not always raids. Be interesting with your endgame. Not just the standard "Raids raids and more raids!"

Palace of the Dead is a good step, if they don't Diadem it. We'll see if that will sate me. I'm cautiously optimistic.