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.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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.

I do feel some form of hybrid horizontal progression could benefit the game. Perhaps gear that boosts abilities by 3-5% or slightly speeds up cooldowns just to offer a little change in flavour. Although that wouldn't help mitigate the feeling of running the same content over and over again. A personal gripe is how short the story has been. 3.1 lasted maybe 90 minutes or so?

In a strange way, I actually like the idea of LoV in theory. If they streamlined it into an almost Pokemon style mini-game where you could "level" your minions it might have worked. Diadem fell into a similar problem with them not really knowing what to do with it. There is still some potential, but it needs a full overhaul. Way I would like to see it handled is a more meaningful sense of exploration. Hell, toss in some fanservice like us getting to see bits of other Final Fantasy worlds. And make it so enemies scale based on the amount of people actually fighting them.

They seem to be exploring other avenues. We'll have to wait and see whether this attempt turns out better than LoV and Diadem. It really needs to for them to keep the whole variety MMO theme going.

[KrenianKandos]

I do feel some form of hybrid horizontal progression could benefit the game. Perhaps gear that boosts abilities by 3-5% or slightly speeds up cooldowns just to offer a little change in flavour. Although that wouldn't help mitigate the feeling of running the same content over and over again. A personal gripe is how short the story has been. 3.1 lasted maybe 90 minutes or so?

In a strange way, I actually like the idea of LoV in theory. If they streamlined it into an almost Pokemon style mini-game where you could "level" your minions it might have worked. Diadem fell into a similar problem with them not really knowing what to do with it. There is still some potential, but it needs a full overhaul. Way I would like to see it handled is a more meaningful sense of exploration. Hell, toss in some fanservice like us getting to see bits of other Final Fantasy worlds. And make it so enemies scale based on the amount of people actually fighting them.

They seem to be exploring other avenues. We'll have to wait and see whether this attempt turns out better than LoV and Diadem. It really needs to for them to keep the whole variety MMO theme going.

Instead of content in the form of dungeons and raids, I would love to see Merit points or quests in order to heighten your skills to do something similar to your idea of horizontal progression.

So follow me on this:

Next expansion, you get quests that allow you to do epic adventures. These adventures allow you to learn something in a new form of experience bar, and when you hit the experience bar max, your skill 'heightens' to a new ability or a new addition to the skill. You could get one of three choices that allows you to change your playstyle a bit.

So as I play a Dark Knight, let's go with Souleater, one of the key attacks. This could then branch off to three things:

Souleater 1) Damage multiplier goes up to x%, a flat dps increase for people who want the easy way.

Souleater 2) Health restoration skill is active even outside of Grit, giving a constant heal to the class no matter what they're doing.

Souleater 3) Adds a debuff effect to the Souleater attack of a main stat.


Something in that regards. Furthermore, that would allow horizontal progression as your skills don't go up in power due to your gear, but with other methods of endgame progression to maximize your character.

See? Something as simple as allowing skill growth would greatly change endgame components and allow flexibility in your classes to do multiple things. You'd make different classes do different things no matter what. Of course, this would come back to people who min/max and make it so that you pretty much are stuck wanting to maximize their potential, but it still allows people to benefit and choose three unique skills to tailor their needs and wants.


A skill progression endgame is a lot more interesting, to me, than a gear progression. You build the bar up, then do some epic quest to 'unlock' the skill. Then you can add onto this some more.

This serves two purposes too: 1) removes the need to add extra abilities every expansion because of skill bloat; in my opinion, we are already there. 2) Allows another form of progression instead of gear/raid.

This would come with a catch though: people who raid will feel like they have to do this progression to maximize their potential. Which is a fair argument for those who 'just' want to raid. But either way, raiders and hardcore raiders at that will maximize their potential so i don't see it as much of an issue.



This is just one simple example where we are going 'away' from vertical progression such as raids and ilvls and gear and offering a different, horizontal dimension to the game. And it isn't something that is really seen in the current MMO genre. I doubt some people would like this as it sounds too much like 'Light' grinding but you can't just do quests all the time either and stick it with raiding like we did with the Zenith weapon. Some people don't want to raid.

So, this allows everyone to do their own thing and still feel like their character has room to grow, without the absolute need of raiding. Some people can do the gear, others can expand on their skills and make their characters even more potent in certain areas.



For LoV, I would have preferred a simple, straight up Pokemon like fight with skills. I like the idea they tried to do things differently but I didn't really care for a strategy based game where you send minions to destroy buildings as a goal. The allure of Pokemon was to be able to level said creatures and get new skills. While that would have taken a lot more work on the devs' part, it would have been pretty neat. I don't hate it but I don't really care for LoV.



I hope that if they decide to reintroduce Diadem, that they take the first part of the mission objective and expand on it: Make it a 60 or 90 minute of objectives and goals to explore and delve into the caves and the surroundings. Let us explore the area, like it should have been, and give us goals and achievements. The faster we complete the goals, the more rewards at the end. This would allow a speed run to happen and challenges in order to get better rewards that way. That way, people who don't want to spend 90 minutes doing their stuff can leave.

So you tier it:

Your minimum requirements to get tomes/min items is this this and this.

And then you have bonus objectives that add to tome amounts + items and increase the chance of getting a rare item the more time you're there. This would push people to explore and be in the area because they simply just can't afk and not explore for 90 minutes; they have objectives that add to the rank system.

So make it LIKE a rank system:

C - Mininum
B - 1 bonus done
A - 2
AA - 3
AAA - 4
S - 5+

I dunno, I'm just shooting off ideas here. Some might be hated, others loved, but still. The essence is to show that there is SO MUCH MORE they can do instead of what they've delivered us, and this is just me brainstorming!