FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Synestra]

Has the dev team even said anything recently about trying to salvage Diadem, or has it just kind of been left for dead?

They said Diadem will get major updates trought 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 so it seems they will take it serious thistime, that many updates seems to indicate total overhaul and that sounds promising.

[Velhart]

They said Diadem will get major updates trought 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 so it seems they will take it serious thistime, that many updates seems to indicate total overhaul and that sounds promising.

I won't doubt that SE will utilize Diadem somehow for the new relic quest.

[Dalvy]

My only concern is shared with Level 5's CEO, who brought it up in a live letter: when are we going to get more engaging raids like Coil? It's looking more like those really were 'the old days'.

[Ampheni]

Coil were my favorite raid so far. I do still like alexander savage, and I don't think it's too difficult, in fact I think the difficulty is just right for a raid. But the problem is, I don't feel as rewarded as it did when it were coil, like many people said, it's just a dye-able piece of normal mode gears. Where as I work my ass off to get to watch all those wonderful coil story, now they just hand it out to me in normal mode, it just...doesn't give me that kind of incentive to run it anymore. I do still raid, but it's solely for challenges now.

I think they should get rid of normal mode altogether, make savage mode the only mode available like it was back in coil (But keep the current difficulty), use the time not spent working on normal mode to tailor more casual contents to add more diversity to the game instead.

[Ibi]

I think they should get rid of normal mode altogether, make savage mode the only mode available like it was back in coil (But keep the current difficulty), use the time not spent working on normal mode to tailor more casual contents to add more diversity to the game instead.

The problems with this are:

1. Creating brand new content is considerably more work than creating a normal raid by turning down an existing Savage raid. Ditto for things having the rewards be a version that can't be dyed, etc.
2. It completely flip-flops the effort-to-target-audience ratio. Given that resources are finite and raid development, from all we've seen, is particularly costly, it results in the developers putting a significant amount of time and effort into developing end-game content for a small part of the end-game population and a small amount of time and effort into developing end-game content for a significant part of the end-game population.

That's not going to be a particularly palatable solution for the developers.

[Thayos]

It completely flip-flops the effort-to-target-audience ratio. Given that resources are finite and raid development, from all we've seen, is particularly costly, it results in the developers putting a significant amount of time and effort into developing end-game content for a small part of the end-game population and a small amount of time and effort into developing end-game content for a significant part of the end-game population.

This is why the Diadem was such a letdown...

We already know these devs are short on resources, and Diadem was an opportunity to install the infrastructure for a form of endgame that could have been expanded over the rest of the game's life. I feel like that kind of innovation is critical for the game's long-term health. Otherwise, XIV will always be gimped by an endgame that caters to such a small percentage of players.

[Kimimoto]

We already know these devs are short on resources

With them being so short on resources they should really turn Void Ark into a real raid. It's just being wasted as a catch up raid. It's going to drop i230 I imagine, so the only people who are going to take the gear are alt classes or people who can't be bothered to get capped. I doubt either alts/lazy persons are really into raiding. Therefore make Void Ark into a real raid that drops i235 gear that would be relevant to raiding Savage. Then you would have an actually difficulty curve in the game, not just Expert Roulette --> Sepphy Ex/Savage.

Also making gear matter again, that's a huge incentive for a lot of Raiders. Do these catch up patches even matter? Are they really catching people up for Savage? If that's not true they're catching people who can't do/won't do Savage for nothing. Sepphy EX weapons became obsolete in a month and a half because they're not atleast i230 with good secondaries. With a free i230 tome weapon Sepphy EX instantly becomes irrelevant content instead of a stepping stone to Savage. Stop wasting content please.

Squeenix it's alright if some people can't complete PvE content, it gives them something to work at instead of getting capped each week and logging off. Maybe we shouldn't set the standard to if Yoshi can do expert on his BLM, and set it to something that will challenge players a bit.

[Toguro]

I think they should get rid of normal mode altogether, make savage mode the only mode available like it was back in coil (But keep the current difficulty), use the time not spent working on normal mode to tailor more casual contents to add more diversity to the game instead.

Bad idea to get rid of normal mode. It was put in for a reason. I think the mistake they made was locking Savage behind Normal which gives everyone the ability to say "it's the same fight no new story".

Many things would be fixed if Savage wasn't locked by normal.

[madolyn]

With them being so short on resources they should really turn Void Ark into a real raid. It's just being wasted as a catch up raid. It's going to drop i230 I imagine, so the only people who are going to take the gear are alt classes or people who can't be bothered to get capped. I doubt either alts/lazy persons are really into raiding. Therefore make Void Ark into a real raid that drops i235 gear that would be relevant to raiding Savage. Then you would have an actually difficulty curve in the game, not just Expert Roulette --> Sepphy Ex/Savage.

I feel like 24 man raids should have been introduced as a stepping stone to the 8 player raids /savage and not released on odd patch numbers as catch up

[Colt47]

The trouble with raiding is that they are using a broken system that divides the community up rather than bring it together. Old raiding had people who were hardcore to the bone leading people with all different kinds of commitments and they all were necessary to complete the challenges presented by raiding. What we need is an environment that encourages bringing new people into raiding that doesn't punish the people who have been there longer, and the current system just doesn't do that.