FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[dejavutwo]

...

Gearing up from a raid does have a purpose though - preparing for the next raid.

[Ashiee]

Gearing up from a raid does have a purpose though - preparing for the next raid.

Unless they do something like they did this patch by outclassing all of last two patches best gear immediately with fairly easy to get and meldable crafted higher item level gear.

[Toguro]

Raid(Savage):
Allow this raid to be THE challenge that hardcores want. Keep that A3S funeral difficulty. Savage is Savage and the best can beat it. Lock behind Raid(Normal). Raiders would by now, have the gear necessary to fight and take on this challenge. But what good would it be if the rewards weren't good? A raid of this difficulty should noooot have expendable rewards... I think a good idea of a reward would be non-gear rewards. How about exclusive cool-looking glamour rewards. Make them lv1 so you can wear at anytime. Can drop glamour(including weapons), minions, mounts, music, furniture, haircuts...? etc, titles from achievements. Anything that can last forever. It better be good too. And please, pleeease make them a guaranteed drop. Example: Beat A8S, chest piece drops. But not one, no, 2 drop. As well as other things. No one in their right mind would want to blow the brains up trying to beat Savage for rewards with a 3% drop rate that's stupid. Make it 100%. Either make 2 of each drop or allow a few things to drop every time. No weekly lockout. That's dumb.

For reference

Savage reward ideas

[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.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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.

You did say "branch away," which does imply patch cycles shouldn't necessarily include raiding. Or at least such was my interpretation. Seems I was mistaken.

Nevertheless, my point remains. Saying raiding makes up a small amount is a bit disingenuous. All content does if you divvy it up into small doses. Crafting, gathering, dungeons, roleplay, raiding, socializing, exploration, achievements... all of these on their own probably don't garner high percentages anymore than raids. Sure, there is cross over but that sill wouldn't amount to much. So in a sense, you could lump them together just as easily and say "90% don't care about crafting."

I very much disagree. Gordias caused a slow spell that hasn't quite recovered because of how tuned it was. And if we're being honest, I doubt Savage is all that difficult to make as it's essentially tweaks to normal mode, which is popular. That being said, I do think FFXIV should try other content. We need a midcore that isn't necessarily just primal fights. So here's hoping Palace of the Dead, Aquapolis and Deep Dungeon (3.5) lay out the ground work.

[Kaizencorr]

I'm sure this is an old argument, but I feel it's relevance still stands strong. Why can't we have real raids where we actually raid a place? Could you have imagined if we had used dungeons to prepare ourselves gear wise for say raiding Castrum Meridium. That to me was closer to an actual raid especially if you have ever done it at minimum ilvl. Have multiple paths involved with different loot down different paths making it so your group orientation determined which paths you take. Knowing if you had a DRG and a SMN, there was a section where you had to go to get gear for them(making nap exploration more important in the beginning). Though it wouldn't be a 100% drop of course. Heavily guarded by intelligent trash or a mini boss. With a timer that actually made it about the choices you made until your gear was better at which point you could even consider approaching the final boss.

[Kaizencorr]

Or imagine Alexander condensed into one raid opening up the environment for exploration instead of a linear path leading to each sections boss. Raids now are literally just trials with trash.

Or as another example imagine diadem being an island hopping raid, eventually culminating in going into those caves to get to the final boss.

[Warlyx]

there is no trash in savage , outside the 1 turn ...but thats a dps check

[Kaizencorr]

there is no trash in savage , outside the 1 turn ...but thats a dps check

I was speaking about raids as a whole, not just savage. I don't believe I used the word savage at all.