FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Velhart]

In regards to the gear...I don't really care if it performs better than the faceroll tome gear after the catch-up period is over, but by god it sure better LOOK better than the same gear that people can get for semi-afking a dungeon a day for 20 minutes 6 days out of the week.

Second Coil was the best example of this, IMO. All the gear was so superbly designed and different from other gear...you really stood out wearing it. Right now all my raiding friends are wearing glamour of actual cool stuff over their Midas Savage gear, which is just sad.

As silly as it sounds, glamour is a big motivation tool for people. I do agree that while the sets don't look terrible, they don't push beyond other easier gear sets to obtain. As extreme as Bahamut's gear sets looked in Final Coil, you did not question that it was in fact raid gear and you did not see that elsewhere.

[Thayos]

I said this earlier in the thread, but I think it's worth repeating. The state of raiding in this game would be better overall if raiding weren't the dominant form of progression-related endgame.

Even before Alexander, the participation rate of coil was very low. The result is the bulk of players sweeping through the easier content of each patch and then unsubscribing until the next big content dump... and that cycle continues. The result is far fewer people participating in endgame activities simply because the game's only available endgame progression content isn't that interesting. It's not engaging.

Someone said something a page or two back about how "people don't want to spend 40 hours on a single fight for crappy/meaningless rewards" (I'm totally paraphrasing), but the point of the statement was that rewards were the problem. Couldn't disagree more. The bigger problem is that most XIV players don't want to spend so much time trying to beat a single fight. Raid incentives aren't the problem... RAIDING itself is the problem.

Not saying that raiding has no place in this game... but if raiding is only engaging for a small fraction of the playerbase, then raiding should really just make up a fraction of endgame. SE needs to be innovative and create a new system of endgame that's engaging for more people. This entire game was designed with casual/midcore players in mind, all the way from its simplistic combat system to its easy-to-complete quests that can be handled in 5-10 minutes each. It makes no sense for the game's only progression endgame content to be highly tuned raids that require hours of practice even with a static.

This game is nearing its second expansion, and still it's completely barren of any viable form of FC-friendly battle content. SE's only attempt at flexible, accessible FC battle content was the Diadem, and that was.... a massive, uncreative failure. I struggle to even call that content because it's so utterly pointless.

Anyway, before I ramble too far off course....

The state of raiding will improve when the state of XIV's endgame improves. This game is in dire need of some kind of endgame that's accessible and engaging for the players the rest of the game was designed for. Get those people to stick around and be active in game between patches, and that will bring more people into the fold for raid groups. A more accessible endgame scene will also give people greater incentive to immerse themselves in their jobs, which will result in an overall more skilled playerbase.

Raiding will always be problematic in 2016 and beyond, especially in a game designed far more for casual players than hardcore players. The participation rates will always be low, and skilled players who have enough free time for statics will always be hard to come by. Raiding will always have a place among the most passionate players, but you can't expect players to become passionate enough to pour hours into single fights without first engaging them. FFXIV's lack of endgame for the game's average player is why people aren't getting engaged enough to become passionate.

[Kaurie]

I said this earlier in the thread, but I think it's worth repeating. The state of raiding in this game would be better overall if raiding weren't the dominant form of progression-related endgame.

Even before Alexander, the participation rate of coil was very low. The result is the bulk of players sweeping through the easier content of each patch and then unsubscribing until the next big content dump... and that cycle continues. The result is far fewer people participating in endgame activities simply because the game's only available endgame progression content isn't that interesting. It's not engaging.

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. In WoW, the % of players who raid is a lot higher, and I think that is because there is a much more natural sense of progression. Fights get progressively harder, starting with fairly easy to easy, to easy-ish, to medium, to challenging, to hard, quite hard. This is made easier with having many more bosses to fight as well. Conversely, in FFXIV, it goes from very easy to easy to quite hard.

[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.

[Lacus-Clyne]

yea, i really unsatisfied with the way of the savage present to players. not all ppl can do it.. even if there is peoples can do it or really WANTS to clear it but if the team performance is bad like player pc crash, lagging, other player dead half ways, dc, late, leadership issues etc n wipe the team then to solve it we change team but problem repeats, ended up other player can't have good experience in FFXIV. some more the highest ilvl is ONLY from savage. it is creative if there is more variety to get same quality i240 rather then just 8 peoples. my FC is big, we got alternative communication, a call im sure peeps willing to come to get the highest ilvl contents.

[Jeykama]

Right now all my raiding friends are wearing glamour of actual cool stuff over their Midas Savage gear, which is just sad.

That might be because it's kind of difficult to have a full set of Midas Savage gear and they already have an aesthetic they like? One of the problems of unique-themed gear is that it doesn't mix&match well.

tbh I raid for challenge and the jump-roping. The gear possibly looking top-tier enough to wear as a primary look is just a bonus (you can only really have one primary look after all) What would help a lot is more bosses (with fewer mechanics I guess) and smoothing out the difficulty curve of obtaining said gear if we need it as a stepping stone. The book tokens are a good step forward but having 13 slots to gear out and only 8 drops a week with all 3 melee requiring unique gear is disheartening. The lore upgrade tokens should also always drop if you have at least 1 chest - getting screwed out of both upgrade items is a huge slap in the face because we had one helper for A7S and rolled the wrong chest.

It is also pretty lame that relics can be competitive/superior to raiding weapons yet raiders don't get tossed any bones to assist in relic progression when considering the relic vs. raiding time sink. Not even precision gordian pieces or a significant amount of lore to reduce the weekly stuff to do.

[Velhart]

I said this earlier in the thread, but I think it's worth repeating. The state of raiding in this game would be better overall if raiding weren't the dominant form of progression-related endgame.

Or you know, structure it better? The best stuff in the game needs to be behind the most difficult content in the game.

Or we can continue the direction they are going and dumbing down each content to meet the needs of players who only press one button. Just ask the relic quest. Hey remember that time when there were interesting quests and fights in the relic quest? Well casuals didn't like putting effort beyond smashing their head on their keyboard. So SE dumbed it down to meet those needs.

There only needs to be more midcore to solve most of the game's issues. There was a time when there was a lot of midcore content to tackle. Primarily the relic quest in 2.0. Had Chimera and Hydra, which at the time were decently challenging fights. Reasons to visit previous primals. No we can't have that anymore, its just too hard for one button players.

I can understand to an extent that developers can only put but so much per patch. But seriously, did anyone ask for Lords of Verminion? SE needs to get their priorities straight big time.

[Moomba33]

I said this earlier in the thread, but I think it's worth repeating. The state of raiding in this game would be better overall if raiding weren't the dominant form of progression-related endgame....

I've got to agree with this. I've personally got no interest in spending hours learning one fight. I did try to push myself through Coil back in the day for the story before becoming stuck at t9 and it was a really frustrating experience. I was really happy when Heavensward gave us Alex normal so I could experience the story without doing the real raid.

From my perspective XIV would be better off if the developers focused on fixing Diadem to be more fun and relevant and adding more forms of endgame progression other than raiding. Raids themselves shouldn't be removed or anything since there are people that enjoy that level of challenge but I think adding variety to the endgame is more important than incentivizing raiding.

[Velhart]

I've got to agree with this. I've personally got no interest in spending hours learning one fight. I did try to push myself through Coil back in the day for the story before becoming stuck at t9 and it was a really frustrating experience. I was really happy when Heavensward gave us Alex normal so I could experience the story without doing the real raid.

From my perspective XIV would be better off if the developers focused on fixing Diadem to be more fun and relevant and adding more forms of endgame progression other than raiding. Raids themselves shouldn't be removed or anything since there are people that enjoy that level of challenge but I think adding variety to the endgame is more important than incentivizing raiding.

I know this might be hard to believe, but Diadem is end game content and works the way you say it. People will get bored of that faster than raiding. Also while some may not enjoy raiding, there are lots of other players who do. In games in general, there will always be a small group of players willing to take the hardest content in. This is no different from MMO's.

[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.