FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Thayos]

I may be wrong, but I don't think this is due to people not wanting to raid, I think it is due to the jarring skill gap in progression.

That's partially true, but many people want progression that doesn't require hours of practice per fight -- which many players would refer to as "beating your head against a wall."

I think back to the glory days of FFXI, and never did anyone spend so many hours wiping in rapid succession to single bosses. That kind of challenge appeals to a limited scope of gamers... to others, that's just not fun. There's a lot more competition nowadays for people's time... over the past decade, the average age of MMO players has risen from the mid 20s to the mid 30s. That's why SE built XIV the way they did, to be more accommodating for casual and midcore players. But the endgame scene wasn't built to match.

Raiding shouldn't be XIV's core progression endgame. It should be the most elite form of endgame, but it should be treated as something that only appeals to a small fraction of the playerbase. The core of endgame should be based on engaging a larger portion of players. Everyone would win from that, including those in the raid community, who'd have a more engaged and skilled playerbase to recruit from.

[Ibi]

It is sad that SE believes that a story mode for casual players was much more important than making balanced content for midcore/hardcore players in the -one- piece of content in the game that is actually challenging.

It was a case of the squeaky wheels getting the grease.

On the one hand, we had an 81-page thread on the forums about people wanting a story mode.

On the other hand, we had people that SE apparently interviewed wanting even harder raids, along with reactions like the ones at Fanfest, consisting of a chorus of booing, in response to them even contemplating reducing Coil's difficulty.

Meanwhile, the people who enjoyed raiding at the difficulty of Coil mostly just went about that without complaint.

That's what got us the normal/Savage split we had in Gordias, which resulted in the two groups that were making the noise before being satisfied (or at least more than they were in Coil), and the people who were satisfied before, but aren't now, speaking up.

It's clear (comparing Midas to Gordias, and their willingness to adjust A6S so quickly) that SE are listening to an extent, but they're generally glacially slow and overly cautious to react to anything that wasn't overwhelming breaking their intention on how players should be consuming content.

I think you would live if you have to wait for an echo buff to beat the content for the story. You dealt with it before, you can now.

That's all well and good in principle, but echo buff (and between 20 and 50 additional item levels of gear) didn't allow casual players to beat the content for the story in Coil.

That's why we ended up with story mode in the first place.

Of course I will get the incoming, "Casuals have the right to get all the story the game has." I will argue that you shouldn't get everything handed to you on a silver platter, even if it is story content.

Because you tend to view XIV as an MMO first-and-foremost, and a Final Fantasy title second. Other people look at it the other way around, and it's hard to make a case against the stories having always been a significant aspect of what made the series as popular as it is.

Sure, Final Fantasy games have frequently had fights that are significantly more challenging than anything found in the game's story, but they generally rewarded you with nothing more than a shiny trophy and were almost always divorced from any actual story content.

Look at Omega and Shinryu, Ruby and Emerald Weapons, Omega and Ultima Weapon, Ozma, the later bosses of the Monster Arena, or Yiazmat. A couple of them rewarded useful items, but by and large they were there for the challenge alone.

For someone coming at it from that perspective, of course it makes sense that they should be able to see the whole story without having to do difficult raiding content, and you're going to have a hard time getting them to disagree just because FFXIV is also an MMO.

Even more so if they're familiar with FFXI, which really didn't put any of it's story behind difficult end game fights (certainly nothing as tough as any of Coil). Even Chains of Promathia's missions, which were the toughest road block for any part of the story, could mostly be trivialized if you were willing to take a little time farming up anima/yellow liquid/shu'meyo salt/etc.

Can reward things like mounts, minions, titles, etc. Something to show bragging rights. Oh wait never mind, can't reward those things or you will make the casuals angry. Well scrap that idea, because if the casuals are not happy about it, it is a no go.

I've not personally seen any complaints about things like the gobwalker mount, faustlet, only equipment from savage being dyable, Savage SCoB rewarding titles, etc.

If they're there, the volume is miniscule compared to people who cared only about the story.

tl;dr - The balance of casual, midcore, and hardcore content in this game is horrible.

All the above said, I can't argue with this statement at all.

Raiding shouldn't be XIV's core progression endgame. It should be the most elite form of endgame, but it should be treated as something that only appeals to a small fraction of the playerbase. The core of endgame should be based on engaging a larger portion of players. Everyone would win from that, including those in the raid community, who'd have a more engaged and skilled playerbase to recruit from.

Absolutely.

[Velhart]

It was a case of the squeaky wheels getting the grease.

On the one hand, we had an 81-page thread on the forums about people wanting a story mode.

On the other hand, we had people that SE apparently interviewed wanting even harder raids, along with reactions like the ones at Fanfest, consisting of a chorus of booing, in response to them even contemplating reducing Coil's difficulty.

Meanwhile, the people who enjoyed raiding at the difficulty of Coil mostly just went about that without complaint.

That's what got us the normal/Savage split we had in Gordias, which resulted in the two groups that were making the noise before being satisfied (or at least more than they were in Coil), and the people who were satisfied before, but aren't now, speaking up.

It's clear (comparing Midas to Gordias, and their willingness to adjust A6S so quickly) that SE are listening to an extent, but they're generally glacially slow and overly cautious to react to anything that wasn't overwhelming breaking their intention on how players should be consuming content.

Which more goes back to the notion that they tried to please both extremes in the raid, at least for Gordias and a lesser extent Midas. Its true they are trying to bring Midas down to please more midcore, but it is still not the proper balance they should be working with. We already heard from them they can only do two of the three difficulty modes. So they went with story and Savage. What is upsetting about it is if we do not include the story (and I will get to the story in a moment), that they decided to add a mode that was in cost of the audience raiding is intended for, midcore/hardcore. Again, Midas kind of fixing things, but ultimately it should be how 2nd Coil was set up that should be the way to go. Don't have to agree with me, but that is when raiding was set up at it's best, at least the structure, not the execution (not including better items in Savage).

That's all well and good in principle, but echo buff (and between 20 and 50 additional item levels of gear) didn't allow casual players to beat the content for the story in Coil.

That's why we ended up with story mode in the first place.

Which goes back to an idea I had which was keeping an ilvl on Savage so it is always difficult and earning things from there still means something, even years from now. Make the Normal Coils level difficulty the one they dumb down and add echo buff to give the more casual side what they want. The argument here lies basically in if casual players deserve the story now or later, which goes to the next thing....

Because you tend to view XIV as an MMO first-and-foremost, and a Final Fantasy title second. Other people look at it the other way around, and it's hard to make a case against the stories having always been a significant aspect of what made the series as popular as it is.

Sure, Final Fantasy games have frequently had fights that are significantly more challenging than anything found in the game's story, but they generally rewarded you with nothing more than a shiny trophy and were almost always divorced from any actual story content.

Look at Omega and Shinryu, Ruby and Emerald Weapons, Omega and Ultima Weapon, Ozma, the later bosses of the Monster Arena, or Yiazmat. A couple of them rewarded useful items, but by and large they were there for the challenge alone.

For someone coming at it from that perspective, of course it makes sense that they should be able to see the whole story without having to do difficult raiding content, and you're going to have a hard time getting them to disagree just because FFXIV is also an MMO.

The question is, where do we draw the line in if the story gets in the way of proper raid structure too much? Alex to me drew the line here. Yes, Final Fantasy is a story driven game and done well for an MMO. However, that does not give it the excuse to be a poorly structured MMO in the process. You have to remember you have to make the content last, people get the story at the beginning and things like story mode Alex only become a chore at that point, and people don't care about it after a few weeks. The raid structure is in a poor state right now because people apparently need that story any way they can. We can argue FF is a story driven game, but that gives it no excuse to be a poor MMO for it.

I say this as someone who is a very big fan of the Final Fantasy series and a lore nut for both FFXI and FFXIV. It felt better to achieve parts of the Coils story working for it than basically having it handed to me like 95% of the game already does. Sure not everyone thinks like that, but ask yourself, did it not feel good to overcome a very hard turn in Coil and get a satisfying cutscene for it? Just saying, we did not have to expense midcore/hardcore play just so people can get their fill immediately. People can feel free to disagree with me, but I believe in earning things through hard work.

Even more so if they're familiar with FFXI, which really didn't put any of it's story behind difficult end game fights (certainly nothing as tough as any of Coil). Even Chains of Promathia's missions, which were the toughest road block for any part of the story, could mostly be trivialized if you were willing to take a little time farming up anima/yellow liquid/shu'meyo salt/etc.

FFXI gated it's story in it's own way. It was very difficult finding groups to take on content and took a lot of preparation and preferred jobs to take things down. I remember being stuck on Ouryu for a good while in CoP and it felt satisfying finally beating him and getting the CS for it. Same with the 3 Mithra fight, Omega/Ultima Weapon, etc. I definitely don't believe FFXI handed the content to you, it was something you did need to earn. Despite being outdated concepts somewhat, they did a good job wanting you to strive for more.

I've not personally seen any complaints about things like the gobwalker mount, faustlet, only equipment from savage being dyable, Savage SCoB rewarding titles, etc.

If they're there, the volume is miniscule compared to people who cared only about the story.

It was mostly a joke. I was just giving an extreme example.

All the above said, I can't argue with this statement at all.

Which goes back to my saying. FFXIV developers need to know when to make a proper Final Fantasy game and a proper MMO. People can say it is subjective on what makes a proper MMO, but looking at this year, it is very much a thing that SE does not want to cater to all three as much as one or the other. Relics were dumbed down, Savage has scared away a lot of midcore groups, hardcore players are bored with the game. SE needs to know what content is made for which audience. 95% of the game can be casual which is fine, but where it really matters in challenging content like raids, they need to make sure the intended audience for the group is taken care of before diving into things like Story mode. WoW did bring an easy mode to raids, but they did not take away Normal/Heroic mode in the process. They did not sacrifice one, but added. Again I don't entirely agree with an easy mode, but I know it is a thing. WoW at least made it work, or at least when I played it a few years ago.

The only thing I see SE doing at this point is making Savage easier and easier per tier till more midcore groups want to come back. Midas is that first step. Which in turn will cause an imbalance on hardcore players. Not saying Midas is easy, in fact it is quite challenging, but it is easy to see that SE is willing to make it easier just to get more numbers in instead of making proper midcore/hardcore tiers similar to WoW. Ohh yea, shouldn't compare too much to WoW before someone goes "Why don't you just go back?"