FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[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.