Curious state of raiding and could something from the early days of XI fix it?

[Yamimarik]

/snip

First off, I know this, very well, I never said they don't, but NM's and HNM's that drop a rare item in a horizontal progression game that would allow you to not upgrade it for years on it, just really doesn't fit in the current model of MMO we have now for FFXIV. Maybe I didn't convey that as clearly as I should have in the above post, but I am now. I don't mind Hunts or NM's even ZNM's, but a claiming system and abysmal drop rate of 1% or lower on an item that you keep for years and years on end, does not appeal to me any more nor do I think it would work here if tried and implemented.

I'm not in denial at all, again maybe you should re-read what I said in both my comments here. I'm all for them pulling ideas from other games even their own, what I don't want to see is a direct copy/paste of said idea and tried to just be shoved into our already established FFXIV system. I personally don't think it would work and yes some people actually want and ask for such things, which personally makes no sense to me at all.

[panderin]

The entire point of this post wasn't a copy and paste of XI. People are nostalgic about of ofc, it was major to many of us. It was just to think about how those ideas could be modified to fit the XIV model. I know good and well it won't work being copied and pasted....I don't think there is a person who has discussed in this entire post who is insinuating that as an idea. I think most people are taking it as a talking point for a potential branch of talking points. Like you stated in previous posts and like many others have stated, many many good upgrades came with XIV but we also lost so really good stuff so lets look at the things we lost and see how this game is lacking because for a lot of us it is lacking. It might work if those old things were reworked. That is what the whole thread is about.

[Welsper59]

First off, I know this, very well, I never said they don't, but NM's and HNM's that drop a rare item in a horizontal progression game that would allow you to not upgrade it for years on it, just really doesn't fit in the current model of MMO we have now for FFXIV. Maybe I didn't convey that as clearly as I should have in the above post, but I am now. I don't mind Hunts or NM's even ZNM's, but a claiming system and abysmal drop rate of 1% or lower on an item that you keep for years and years on end, does not appeal to me any more nor do I think it would work here if tried and implemented.

I'm not in denial at all, again maybe you should re-read what I said in both my comments here. I'm all for them pulling ideas from other games even their own, what I don't want to see is a direct copy/paste of said idea and tried to just be shoved into our already established FFXIV system. I personally don't think it would work and yes some people actually want and ask for such things, which personally makes no sense to me at all.

Agreed, but that's generally not what people ask for when they relate the concept of NMs and HNMs (or future iterations of that system). You seem to attach the horrendous drop rates for (most) gear to the content itself, when most of the others advocating for XI content are simply looking at the content. The drop rates don't have to come attached, nor do any other dev controlled variables. What people want is the concept, because bottomline is that while it's "simple" in design, it did a lot to make the game feel like an MMORPG (thanks to needing to be a close-knit group within your server).

I did actually assume you were referring to NMs as the idea in general, rather than all the variables attached to them, when you mentioned it. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Dzian]

This argument gets thrown around all the time in discussions like this, but I've never seen any evidence produced for it that goes beyond anecdotal.

Even reading these forums you can see many people say the rewards just aren't worth it. and across the industry as a whole there have been numerous studies into gamers and there habits not all of directly related to mmos but still there's a wealth of evidence out there.

Speaking of which. Do you have any source for that claim or any actual numbers to back it up?

9th Vanadiel Census

Here ya go. this is from 2009 so Before Abyssea. take a look and you can see that 40% of the player base had progressed through COP and reached chapter 8 "Emptiness Bleeds". despite it being notoriously difficult content. what you can also see is that 25% of players had cleared COP entirely and had unlocked "The Last Verse"

So 40% of the playerbase was taking on the hardest content in the game. (more if you count those making progress but not upto chapter 8 at the time) lets look at xiv where what percentage of the playerbase is even attempting the hardest content in the game? If I recall the raiding population in xiv equates to 3-4%
That is a very significant difference and it shows that difficulty is not the deciding factor in whether or not players take on challenges.

Players love challenges but they need to be worthwhile. the rewards need to justify the challenge, and in modern mmos that just doesn't happen which is why the endgame populations are so small. in many cases being difficult isn't what turns players away. the lack of incentive or reward is.

if the rewards were worthwhile and actually valuable. you might find 40% of the playerbase tackling savage instead of 4%

[Ibi]

Even reading these forums you can see many people say the rewards just aren't worth it. and across the industry as a whole there have been numerous studies into gamers and there habits not all of directly related to mmos but still there's a wealth of evidence out there.

I'm not saying no one ever says that, my point was that there is vastly more feedback (at least on this forum) that it's the difficulty of the content that's providing the barrier. You may not agree with that, but it seems ridiculous to simply ignore that feedback.

With regards to actual studies, the only definitive conclusion that the various things that show up from Google searches (such as the Daedalus Project and this paper about Game Reward Systems) seem to reach is that different players are motivated by different factors to different extents.

There's certainly not anyone that I can see saying "People will try to overcome any amount of challenge as long as the rewards are good enough."

9th Vanadiel Census

Here ya go. this is from 2009 so Before Abyssea. take a look and you can see that 40% of the player base had progressed through COP and reached chapter 8 "Emptiness Bleeds". despite it being notoriously difficult content. what you can also see is that 25% of players had cleared COP entirely and had unlocked "The Last Verse"

So 40% of the playerbase was taking on the hardest content in the game. (more if you count those making progress but not upto chapter 8 at the time) lets look at xiv where what percentage of the playerbase is even attempting the hardest content in the game? If I recall the raiding population in xiv equates to 3-4%
That is a very significant difference and it shows that difficulty is not the deciding factor in whether or not players take on challenges.

CoP's final mission was added in July 2005, four years before that survey.

In 2008, the completion percentage was 27.34%. In 2007, the completion percentage was already down to just 10.89%.

Unfortunately, the 5th and 6th Censuses doesn't provide comparable figures, but given the two drop offs we do have, it wouldn't be surprising at all if the figure for 2006 was below 5%. Especially given that they decreased the difficulty of a number of aspects of the CoP Missions in June 2007, which would have increased the number of players who cleared it that year.

Players love challenges but they need to be worthwhile. the rewards need to justify the challenge, and in modern mmos that just doesn't happen which is why the endgame populations are so small. in many cases being difficult isn't what turns players away. the lack of incentive or reward is.

if the rewards were worthwhile and actually valuable. you might find 40% of the playerbase tackling savage instead of 4%

If the difficulty of Savage were comparable to the difficulty of CoP, you might find 40% of the player base tackling Savage instead of 4%.

Even prior to the adjustments to CoP's difficulty, they weren't even close. The majority of CoP was significantly easier than even the easiest Savage fight. Anyone saying they are either a) hasn't done both, b) has done both but forgotten what the difficulty of the CoP missions really was, or c) is intentionally ignoring that to try to prove a point.

[Lan_Mantear]

Even prior to the adjustments to CoP's difficulty, they weren't even close. The majority of CoP was significantly easier than even the easiest Savage fight. Anyone saying they are either a) hasn't done both, b) has done both but forgotten what the difficulty of the CoP missions really was, or c) is intentionally ignoring that to try to prove a point.

The play styles between these two games are different enough, that it would be difficult to make an accurate determination on which one had the 'harder' end game content.

FFXIV is all about item level, memorizing mechanics, and rotations. You are stuck in an arena and encounters are heavily scripted. Once those have been mastered, any content becomes a walk in the park. The real difficulty lies in finding the opportunities to learn those mechanics. Some have easier than others.

FFXI was more about creating multiple strategies for each encounter, and when that didn't work, throwing as many able bodies against something until you all pass out from fatigue or it dies. The encounters encouraged players to think outside the box, from using the environment by dragging the boss across zone away from its spawn point to a more advantageous location to utilizing multiple roles to maximize battle efficiency by kiting theboss to an ambush of black mages and summoners. Or whatever else players could contrive.

Which is more difficult? That's like asking what tastes better an apple or an orange? They are both fruits, but an orange is not an apple.

[Ibi]

The play styles between these two games are different enough, that it would be difficult to make an accurate determination on which one had the 'harder' end game content.

FFXIV is all about item level, memorizing mechanics, and rotations. You are stuck in an arena and encounters are heavily scripted. Once those have been mastered, any content becomes a walk in the park. The real difficulty lies in finding the opportunities to learn those mechanics. Some have easier than others.

Which is more difficult? That's like asking what tastes better an apple or an orange? They are both fruits, but an orange is not an apple.

Keep in mind that I was talking specifically about the Chains of Promathia mission fights, rather than XI's battle content in general. They were less predictable than XIV's instanced fights, certainly, but they were still somewhat-scripted, arena-based fights. You knew more or less when whatever you were fighting was going to use a TP move and, based on the what mob it was and what's its HP was, there was a fairly limited selection of attacks that you knew it was going to pull from.

It also meant that a lot of the factors that were relevant to content elsewhere in the game (positioning, throwing bodies at something, switching group compositions on the fly, etc.) had either limited applicability or were not applicable at all.

On top of that, unless you were playing with an extremely sub-optimal party composition, the margin of error on almost all the Chains of Promathia mission battles absolutely dwarfed that of any Savage fights. Even a fight like Omega and Ultima, regarded one of the most difficult fights of the expansion, could be cleared with multiple deaths, even if people were resting on the sidelines for the duration of their weakness.

You don't have that luxury in Savage, especially in a group that's working toward their initial clear. Even a single death or major mechanic failure can easily make an attempt unrecoverable.

[Lan_Mantear]

Even a fight like Omega and Ultima, regarded one of the most difficult fights of the expansion, could be cleared with multiple deaths, even if people were resting on the sidelines for the duration of their weakness.

You don't have that luxury in Savage, especially in a group that's working toward their initial clear. Even a single death or major mechanic failure can easily make an attempt unrecoverable.

It seems to me, you are comparing FFXI MSQ battles with FFXIV Savage content. That's not entirely fair.

If we were to compare the final MSQ battles for COP (Promethia) with Heavensward (Niddhogg). Well I remember spending an entire night just getting to then defeating Promethia with my static group. Vs, the <20 minutes it took to defeat Nidhogg in Party Finder. That should probably speak for itself as to what I thought was more difficult.

If you want to compare end game fights. It'd be better to compare Absolute Virtue and other SEA NMs with current Alexander Savage and Extreme trials.

[Ibi]

It seems to me, you are comparing FFXI MSQ battles with FFXIV Savage content. That's not entirely fair.

I agree completely.

Dzian was trying to imply that CoP's 40% clear rate after four years was somehow an indication that it's not difficulty that's keeping people out of Savage, just a lack of rewards.

My post was an attempt to point out why that's a ridiculous conclusion to draw.

[Lan_Mantear]

I agree completely.

Dzian was trying to imply that CoP's 40% clear rate after four years was somehow an indication that it's not difficulty that's keeping people out of Savage, just a lack of rewards.

My post was an attempt to point out why that's a ridiculous conclusion to draw.

Ah, I see. I personally find merit in both systems, and find them challenging enough in their own right. I would certainly like more FFXI-esque battle introduced to FFXIV, but without the additional time-sink FFXI was famous for.