FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Jetstream_Fox]

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.

Not really, they are the same fights with a few tweaks and alterations, just like ex fights. Nothing would be fixed if it wasn't locked behind normal mode, the problem lies with how SE has handled the development of these fights, they're just not fun. Really if you look at a few other fights in 3.0 some of the more fun fights aren't even in the 8 man raid, VA is a good example with Sawtooth and Irminsul, wasn't something we really seen before, Cuchulainn was all over the place, wasn't anything new but it had it's fun. And while Angra Mainyu is from 2.0 that fight was fun and chaotic, and Cerberus had a very interesting twist to his fight. Granted these became facerolls, they were fresh and interesting fights, similar to the Coils.

The Coils had mechanics that were only present in Coils, which set all the fights on a different pedestal than the rest of the game, Alex has nothing like that, as everything was basically all the other mechanics from other fights. While the Son has introduced new fights and made things interesting, it's too little too late, the damage is done and that's the problem with the raids, SE took away the uniqueness and challenging content curve, and dished up us one raid with ridiculous difficulty and the other less tough and more unique. The raids don't know what to be at this point, because SE doesn't know what they want to do with a vast majority of the content.

[Toguro]

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I agree with all of this. However, no matter how unique the fights are, 2 versions of a fight will still be 2 versions of the same fight. Many people have said they don't like Alex because Savage is the same stuff but more mechanics. They wouldn't be able to say that if they could dive in to Savage at release. It'd be like old raiding again.

[Stanelis]

It's not even as simple as that. The trouble is we've got multiple raid difficulties dividing up the community at end game and an over emphasis on challenging the player to be what ultimately is an hp numbers machine under pressure instead of utilizing tactics. There is zero creativity in how players can tackle fights: They must be completed by following a strict routine, and messing up that routine means everyone pays.

That issue arises due to the simplicity of FFXIV battle system : no matter what you do, in the end, in raid, you're only healing and DPSing.

In order to make a healthy raid in FFXIV, SE would have to first make the battle system interesting when you play with a large number of players (eg increase the number of abilities which have synergies with the other member of the group). But it will never happen as FFXIV is a game designed to heavily favor solo play. In a game like FFXI (where the battle system is made with group play in mind, with little regard to solo play), the gameplay is different depending on how many people are in your group and the raiding used to be very healthy.

That issue is found in the current wow (where players have been starting to desert high end raid ever since blizzard implemented something similar with the wow 3.0 patch) and is ultimately why wildstar failed.

[Remus]

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I just wanted to say that Wildstar failed at launch because everything in the game was hard and there was no causal content not because of their raids.

[Stanelis]

I just wanted to say that Wildstar failed at launch because everything in the game was hard and there was no causal content not because of their raids.

Nope, wildstar failed because the gameplay was as simple as FFXIV's, which made the game uninteresting in groups and raids.

Also, the raids were indeed hard, but it was the same type of difficulty as FFXIV's savage raids : coordinated rope jumping encounters rather than encounters requiring mostly problem solving.

[Remus]

Nope, wildstar failed because the gameplay was as simple as FFXIV's, which made the game uninteresting in groups and raids.

That is incorrect. Anyone that has looked at Wildstar said they enjoyed the action type combat but the content wasn't casual friendly.

[Stanelis]

That is incorrect. Anyone that has looked at Wildstar said they enjoyed the action type combat but the content wasn't casual friendly.

As I said, the "action type combat" was relevant for solo play, not group and raid play. Very few people raided in wildstar because the game wasn't compelling enough. And I say that as someone who downed avatus.

Because the only content post cap was group play, the game crashed (as the battle system wasn't suited for that sort of gameplay). But that was an issue with the battle system, because I don't really think people would have played wildstar if it was a single player game, even if more content had been implemented.

FFXIV has the same battle system issue, while he is fine for solo and maybe 4 man content, he doesn't upscale very well for 8 man and 24 man player raids.

[Jetstream_Fox]

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If they added interesting tweaks to them I wouldn't classify them as the same fight, like if in the oppressors we got hit by mini and had to go inside the second oppressor to destroy it. I wouldn't personally say that it's the same fight as normal in that regard since it's something entirely new and not just an added mob or expansion of a current mechanism within that fight.