FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[KrenianKandos]

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.

No worries; perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my previous posts in regards to my stance. I believe that raids do have a place in an MMO; they have been a staple for years now. But I think it's time they start looking at other forms of endgame because the raiding style of endgame is becoming tedious for myself and many others I've spoken to. While I understand the whole idea of having raids every cycle, I disagree. Make a raid for those who want it, but each cycle should differ with the content added. While it would make raiders more annoyed with the fact they only have the same content, perhaps the gear would stay more viable and be less of a tiresome experience as it stays relevant longer? I think FFXIV has raiding going through its demise due to how good they're with pushing content out every 3-4 months. It shows the vertical progression problem for a company that can actually chug out content like they do.

The problem is that the only endgame progression in the game, at this time, is raiding. Period. There's nothing else unless you want to play another class and complete all the classes. The only progression other than raiding is the relic/anima quests and I'm forever grateful for that. But I'd like more. And Palace of the Dead seems to be a good step. Diadem could have been a good step but was completely and badly handled. I think a lot of us who don't raid want another alternative in the game instead of their general focus of chugging 8/24 man raids.

My argument is that raiding isn't working well because of two things:

1) They chug so much content out that vertical progression weaknesses is showing up their ugly heads and people feel like they honestly don't need to bash their heads in content to them, feels harder, for such little upgrades/rewards they could get later on.

2) The content itself isn't fun. At all. Gordias and Midas aren't fun story wise for a lot of us and some of us get pulled by the story. That's why we're content with storymode and that's it.

There's just a lot of weird little things that FF does right but kinda breaks the mold of raiding. That's why I'm thinking it's time for them to look at other stuff. I will always agree that there is place for raiding in an MMORPG. But I feel like it's high time they explore other avenues and I'm hoping PofD is a good start.

[Ibi]

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.

I don't know if only 5% of the community engaging in Savage raiding is seen as a problem with raiding by those people because that's pretty much the expected level of engagement with organized raiding (both in previous tiers in FFXIV, and in other MMOs, like WoW).

It's a problem with FFXIV's end game (and, again, also WoW's end game in Warlords of Draenor, which is a factor in their nose-diving subscription numbers over the course of the expansion) that organized raiding is the only meaningful end game, but that's not necessarily a problem with raiding itself.

If that makes sense.

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

I think the number of raiders who'd complain about having more variety (possibly even at the expense of raids, if it was suitably rewarding/engaging content) is an extremely niche group. I know I was excited for Diadem (prior to its sub-par implementation), and I'm very eager to see what Palace of the Dead has to offer.

They admittedly kind of stumbled with A6s as it was a tad too hard (and requires such teamwork that it's going to remain unfriendly to PUGs on western data centers), but post nerf it's pretty much a Coil fight that is packed with mechanics.

Probably the biggest hiderance to PUGs in top tier raiding is the number of mechanics that require between one and eight members of the raid to execute them where a single failure by any person results in a raid wipe (either instantly or simply because it becomes near-impossible to recover).

A lot of those mechanics aren't all that challenging to execute correctly (e.g. High/Low Arithmeticks and Height), but the fact that they require perfect execution every time is always going to be a significant road block to PUGs because there's no long-term accountability to the rest of the group.

Which leaves me to wonder why people aren't raiding as much or the raids appear to be harder for most players. There are a number of reasons (non-exclusive story and gear for the most part etc.) but the harsh reality is that everyone got a little worse at the game with lv60. Rotations are more demanding. There are more buttons to press. Everyone has Greased Lightning, cast times, or both. Go back to level 50 content and remember how easy the game was back then. It was much easier to focus on the actual fights and mechanics instead of stumbling through your own rotation.

It might be just a semantic difference, but I think it's less that people got worse and more that the minimum bar for performance for most classes was raised significantly.

Say I'm capable of juggling batons and one day someone asks me to do it while riding a unicycle. Or to juggle chainsaws instead. If I struggle with one of those, I didn't get worse at juggling, I just had to juggle under more difficult circumstances.

[Warlyx]

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

i dont consider raiding Alex normal nor Void ark :P

[MilesSaintboroguh]

i dont consider raiding Alex normal nor Void ark :P

The game does though.

[randysquirrel]

I don't know if only 5% of the community raid, but if it were removed, I'd be fairly certain those people would just leave the game entirely. It is the only challenging content that exists at the moment.

I don't know anyone in their right mind that classes Void Ark as raid, I think it is fairly safe to assume that when most people talk about raid they are referring to Midas Savage

[Thayos]

I don't know anyone in their right mind that classes Void Ark as raid, I think it is fairly safe to assume that when most people talk about raid they are referring to Midas Savage

It is a raid, but not a "raid." Most people associate raiding with progression endgame content, and Void Ark feels more like a catch-up system than an actual form of progression endgame.

[Ibi]

I don't know if only 5% of the community raid, but if it were removed, I'd be fairly certain those people would just leave the game entirely. It is the only challenging content that exists at the moment.

It depends on what they used those resources for. If they could create an alternate form of challenging content, it's possible they could keep some portion of the raiders, while also providing content for people who would enjoy challenging content but may not enjoy the raiding format.

Not to mention that if raiding is the only thing you're playing FFXIV for, you're probably playing the wrong game in the first place.

[Hayward]

i dont consider raiding Alex normal nor Void ark :P

So anything that more than 5% of the population can do isn't a raid.

Sounds legit. *sideeye*

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

I think truthfully id just rather have seperated servers, an easy server and a hard server. Both with the same progression paths, except one is hard and the other with +500% xp and just hands out free 240s for logging in. Then people can choose what they want when they build their character. Instead of constantly nerfing everything to try and keep the casuals happy. I would be a lot more motivated to play longer hours and do hard content if i was on a server where the only way to gear up is to do hard stuff.

[Yukiko]

I think truthfully id just rather have seperated servers, an easy server and a hard server. Both with the same progression paths, except one is hard and the other just hands out free 240s for logging in. Then people can choose what they want when they build their character. Instead of constantly nerfing everything to try and keep the casuals happy. I would be a lot more motivated to play and do hard content if i was on a server where the only way to gear up is to do hard stuff.

And when you die, you have to start a new character - no reviving!