Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Lisotte]

My entire FC raided in the Coil days, most players aren't that hardcore or driven or anything, but raiding as an FC immediately fell apart with Alex. The gear largely doesn't matter, but seeing the story in a timely fashion totally does. So for Coil, seeing the story alongside the community, and on the side, getting the best gear in the game, was a great motivation for people (not to mention the fights were challenging but tuned very well). With Alex the combination of being able to see the completely lacklustre story in a couple days via normal mode, and poor numbers balancing/poor fight design immediately killed off raiding for most of my FC.

Cosmetics, achievements, all the other fluff, can keep you going for a while for sure. However in my FC the only people actively playing much each day are mostly just those few still raiding. I've gotten bored with the game atm but at least raiding 3 nights a week keeps me logging in.

[Jynx]

How passive aggressive.

First: You need to fix your post as you quoted me twice but once outside the quotations.

Second: Neither of us know how they developed it besides what they said they did. You can take them for their word it doesn't make sense to me that's all I'm saying.

The fights were obviously not designed savage then toned down, the normal part of the raid has presence in all the design choices and it shows with how sloppy both sides of it feel to play. You don't have to believe me as I'm only stating my opinion and how it looks and feels to me. If they did design it savage then tone it down purely they need to get the guys who designed coil off of making cash shop suits and put them back onto encounter design.

The develops can make great content, they have before and I'm sure they will again. I'm calling them on their bad design choices, and I don't feel they have the good faith for me to take them at their word.

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Among everything else removing the story incentives, the gear prestige, the sense of accomplishment was neutered by these choices. It's the everyone gets a gold star mentality that is driving more serious players away from the game and the lack of long term goals and high milestones to reach for are making casual and midcore players lose interest as well.

Take it with a grain of salt as this is only my opinion, but it shows in what little community we have left.

I hope you have a great day!

Oh my how... "Passive agressive"

[Alym]

Second: Neither of us know how they developed it besides what they said they did. You can take them for their word it doesn't make sense to me that's all I'm saying.

The fights were obviously not designed savage then toned down, the normal part of the raid has presence in all the design choices and it shows with how sloppy both sides of it feel to play. You don't have to believe me as I'm only stating my opinion and how it looks and feels to me. If they did design it savage then tone it down purely they need to get the guys who designed coil off of making cash shop suits and put them back onto encounter design.

A couple of points: First, you said you're not a raider, so I'm not sure you can comment on how Savage feels; that's not meant to be elitism, just fact. As someone who has played plenty of Normal and Savage, it feels to me that Savage was terribly designed and then Normal was the result of terribly designed fights with pieces ripped from them. That doesn't make Normal the problem to me. That makes Savage the problem. Second, your argument has been, "I'm not a raider but even I know Savage was ruined so they could design fights that they can tune to a lower difficulty for Normal mode. Sure, SE claimed Savage Second Coil was the fights how they were originally designed and Coil was the toned down version of those, but we can't believe their lies about Savage being how they design fights. Sure you can literally see the mechanics in Normal Alex that were cut from the Savage Alex fights in graphical glitches, but I know better. I know they designed these fights for Normal mode, but we don't know for sure how they designed them so you must be wrong. As someone who doesn't raid, I feel it was obvious Savage fights were ruined by Normal mode." I could respond with my own feelings, as I've clearly laid out before, but your argument hinges on SE lying and experience that you don't have.

You can't with one hand say that we don't know how they design fights so I must be wrong and then on the other say you're right because they obviously design fights a certain way. Both things can't be true.

It's impossible to have a well-reasoned argument with someone who feels the developers lie about their own content. That sort of accusation allows you to discredit anything they say or do to meet your own ends. Their word is the best proof we have and, coupled with comparisons between the fights in Normal and Savage, it makes perfect sense. I guess I'll just have to leave it that. There is no sense in continuing this circular argument.

I hope you have a great day!

[TripPsyc]

While people are debating Alex normal vs savage effect on the raiding community I noticed this topic has not been discussed in regards to previous coil runners not running Alex Savage. First I can only speak from my experience and those I know, a major of players I know and talk too, self included, do not run savage because of the nature of the statics and the unfriendly attitudes of the current raiding community. I can say hands down that while coil was happening people in general seemed not just more friendly but more inviting to learning and raids in general. While you might agree or disagree with that observation, to new players coming into this game or simply old players raiding new, think how this would drive them away from it, but asking for a change in the community attitude, will probably just add more attitude....

[TaranTatsuuchi]

...
This is a sandbox MMO, there are plenty of non raid activities.
...

Just a correction here, FFXIV is actually a themepark MMO.
Just because it has non raid activities doesn't mean it's a sandbox, or not a themepark.


A themepark MMO is one that takes you on developer designed experiences, MSQ, raids, etc.

A sandbox MMO, at its core, is a game designed in a way that the devs do not provide game experiences, they just provide tools and systems that allow the players to create the game experiences with their interactions.

[Cakekizyy]

Just a correction here, FFXIV is actually a themepark MMO.
Just because it has non raid activities doesn't mean it's a sandbox, or not a themepark.


A themepark MMO is one that takes you on developer designed experiences, MSQ, raids, etc.

A sandbox MMO, at its core, is a game designed in a way that the devs do not provide game experiences, they just provide tools and systems that allow the players to create the game experiences with their interactions.

Would you consider EQ a sandbox or themepark?

[Archaell]

Savage is a lot of hard work with low rewards, no wonder people aren't eager to do it.

I would like to see a little social experiment. How much would the raiding population change were all the weekly restrictions removed? Making the savage the only place where you could gear up in the best ilvl for several patches, and allowing players the freedom of movement between the groups.

Right now the amount of raid time we have depends on other 7 people in the static - if someone clears it with a different group the static gets punished and you probably kicked. I don't think this is helping the clear rates and overall appeal of the hard content. There are times when I have nothing better to do, I could be helping people with clears, but nope, the raid day is the next day so you can't touch it today... this is seriously annoying, because it discourages the raiding community to help the newbies.

[Duelle]

I would like to see a little social experiment. How much would the raiding population change were all the weekly restrictions removed? Making the savage the only place where you could gear up in the best ilvl for several patches, and allowing players the freedom of movement between the groups.

I'd suggest the opposite. Create normal modes tuned for 8-man groups and 24-man groups. Even if tuned similarly, a 24-man group has a higher chance of recovery (thus allowing more room for error) and allows for more people in a guild to run content. Back when I raided our 25-man groups always rotated people who weren't cutting edge but could follow directions. It also allowed our guild to befriend other guilds because we sometimes needed extra bodies, and our leaders would sometimes talk to friendlies and ask if anyone hadn't been able to raid that week.

[Reinha]

Savage is a lot of hard work with low rewards, no wonder people aren't eager to do it.

I would like to see a little social experiment. How much would the raiding population change were all the weekly restrictions removed? Making the savage the only place where you could gear up in the best ilvl for several patches, and allowing players the freedom of movement between the groups.

Right now the amount of raid time we have depends on other 7 people in the static - if someone clears it with a different group the static gets punished and you probably kicked. I don't think this is helping the clear rates and overall appeal of the hard content. There are times when I have nothing better to do, I could be helping people with clears, but nope, the raid day is the next day so you can't touch it today... this is seriously annoying, because it discourages the raiding community to help the newbies.

Flexible rewards could help. Flexible group sizes would also help, I believe. I don't think that would be an easy thing to code in this game though. But it's pretty clear to me that when the average player becomes older he/she gets more responsibilities and the raiding having a strict schedule and depending on every team member showing up just doesn't fit the picture. If people were allowed any number between 8 and 16 to participate in the scaling boss fight, teams would not need to have a "bench" and could continue to recruit past 8 raiders to ensure progress even when someone has IRL business. The rewards could scale like they do in WoW; every light party (4 people) ensures a chest and extra people would bring an additive 25% chance to get another chest. An 11 person team would mean two chests and a 75% chance for a 3rd one.

Another issue with a small static group size is that compositions become very strict. You need 2 tanks, 2 healers, 1 support, and other dps for good ST and good AoE. What if your fc is building a static and they already have SCH, AST, BRD, SMN? Good luck joining as anything other than a tank or melee. Some players do not enjoy more than 1 or 2 jobs or roles and this might deter a lot of people from playing with people they are familiar with in game, like their fc. I can only speak for myself but if it comes down to raiding with strangers or not raiding at all, I'll choose the latter every time.

[Brian_]

Normal mode is a massive mistake. Level 5's CEO was right in pointing it out to Yoshida.

First off, it kills off a lot of the hype and anticipation behind the story and big reveals. I can only imagine how anticlimactic it would've been to defeat Nael van Darnus, Louisoix, or Bahamut if all it took was 10 minutes with maybe a single wipe. These enemies are supposed to be a threat to the realm. They should feel more substantial to defeat.

Second, putting the gear, even if it can't be dyed, into normal mode does two things. It takes away unique glamours from raiders that they could show as a badge of honor. And, it's horrible for gear progression. They already have catch-up gear in odd patches. They don't need an additional gear reset on an even patch. As is, unlocking WCoM / downgrading lore / putting Midas Savage into DF in 3.4 will be pointless because you can just get higher ilevel gear from Alex normal. This led to complaints about needing to farm normal for gear needed for Savage progression. In response, SE added crafted DoW/M gear on par or better than normal gear which further invalidated old gear. Before, the gear you had from an older patch mattered. As such, doing that content mattered. Now, after you clear A8S, nothing matters. If early prog is your goal, you're just going to buy a full set of crafted gear and pick up a few pieces of normal gear that might be better. All that gear from Midas Savage? worthless. Weeks and sometimes months of prog for nothing. That's what normal took away from savage.

Next, normal killed the mid-core difficulty. When you can just toss your investment on the story, aesthetics, and fight design into a casual mode, you no longer have to care about keeping your hardest content reasonably accessible. You can make it all about the challenge just like SCoB Savage. If normal didn't exist, they would be forced to tune Savage for a lower bar or risk having their investment of resources wasted when only a tiny portion of their player-base can experience it.

So, when you combine a sharp spike in difficulty with irrelevant rewards (no story, no unique fights, no relevant gear), of course you're going to see a big decline in your raiding population. And, when you kill off a person's desire to do content with a higher skill-cap, you also make it more common and acceptable for people to not care about their skill. When the skill cap of the content you do is Alexander NM and maybe an EX trial, is it surprising that so many people don't know how to play their roles? It should be expected.

But, what's the most damning loss with the decline of raiding is the loss of its social aspect. The friends I made raiding are the people who keep me playing this game. I don't play this game for the effectively nameless DF randoms I met during Alexander NM. I play the game because of the bonds formed during weeks of progression, the moments of laughter and levity amidst the frustration and disappointment, the outburst of triumph after finally overcoming an obstacle, and the calm after the storm when we can bask in our reward together.