Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Ibi]

Why did players participate in Mythic dungeons in wow? Why did players participate in dynamis, sea, sky, etc? What are one of the primary end goal of these activities, especially repeat clears? Power progression.

Firstly, having multiple different paths through which to pursue that power progression is going to be a much better way to retain players that stacking it all behind a single niche activity.

Secondly, what power progression is offered by mounts, titles, glamour gear, etc., which you said are rewards that need to be added to raiding?

People wanted powerful cool looking gear that enhance their character. What you don't seem to understand is that you guys HAVE plenty of diversified content, it's just not very compelling to do.

Here's the list of challenging end game content:

• Extreme Primals (at most one of which is relevant at a time)
• Savage

Five encounters is not "plenty of diversified content".

There is plenty of casual content, but the rewards and the acquisition methods for the relic are TERRIBLE!

No argument there, but what does putting more rewards in raiding do to fix that?

If you guys wanted more challenging content, maybe there shouldn't have been so much defending of SE catering to the lowest common denominator.

I'm going to go out on a limb and hazard a guess that maybe at least some of the people who wanted more variety of challenging content aren't the exact same people that were defending SE catering to the lowest common denominator.

Now, please pull your head out of rear please and understand that until the reward structure is fixed from top to bottom, for both raiders and casuals, that content will simply remain underwhelming and people will not be compelled to retain their sub. You can't just fix the bottom end of the reward latter and forget the top, that does not make for a sound latter.

If what you're actually trying to advocate is a rework of the entire game's reward system, great, I'd be totally on board with that.

What I object to is the idea that the way to fix the game's reward system is just to stuff a ton of rewards into Savage raiding, because no matter how good they are the vast, vast majority of the player base still won't do it.

[Duelle]

What I object to is the idea that the way to fix the game's reward system is just to stuff a ton of rewards into Savage raiding, because no matter how good they are the vast, vast majority of the player base still won't do it.

This is a very important point, but from a perspective I'm not seeing people take into account: difficulty of content and "cost" of entry.

The number of people actively raiding would grow if the content allowed for some leniency in execution (read: varied difficulty modes) and cost of entry was not that high. FFXIV's current systems of tomes and dungeon gear could easily accomplish the latter if the devs felt inclined to make it happen. The former won't happen without varying difficulty tiers and bigger raid instances.

The reason various difficulty tiers are needed is largely to ease people into the content, as not everyone handles jumps in difficulty the same way. Think of it like playing something on easy mode then working your way up in difficulty. Playing a game on normal and then trying hard is not really massive since you've already cleared the game and have an idea of how the mechanics work. Some people will obviously draw the line in their own progress (maybe someone decides to stop at normal mode, while others will push towards heroic for the better loot or because they want the achievement/mount), but the idea of raiding wouldn't be so intimidating to the average person, specially if you have guilds actively bringing people who are new to raids. And believe it or not, lenient mechanics at the entry/post-entry level do act as an encouragement to bring new people or non-raiding regulars because you don't run the risk of a wipe if someone messes up.

As the game's raids are right now, bringing someone new to something like Savage is like throwing a fresh lv100 at Mythic Archimond. It's largely unthinkable and obviously a daunting task to some.

[Sandpark]

The number of people actively raiding would grow if the content allowed for some leniency in execution (read: varied difficulty modes) and cost of entry was not that high.

Think of it like playing something on easy mode then working your way up in difficulty. Playing a game on normal and then trying hard is not really massive since you've already cleared the game and have an idea of how the mechanics work.And believe it or not, lenient mechanics at the entry/post-entry level do act as an encouragement to bring new people or non-raiding regulars because you don't run the risk of a wipe if someone messes up.

True except some people have a skill ceiling. No matter how much they practice, they will never reach the ceiling. Be it cerebral limitations or reflex limitations.

[Duelle]

True except some people have a skill ceiling. No matter how much they practice, they will never reach the ceiling. Be it cerebral limitations or reflex limitations.

And this goes back to how the content is tuned and the elements of the encounter. I mentioned a former guildmate that would bring his elderly mother to our 25-man raids in WoW. Sometimes she would get hit doing something like the dance for Heigan the Unclean or the eye beams for Kologarn. Her getting hit never led to a wipe (at most she'd die or take a near-fatal amount of damage). She'd apologize, we'd laugh it off and move on.

Now imagine (channeling SE in how they design Savage) if getting hit by the green geysers for Heigan turned the hit player into a bomb that exploded 5 seconds after contact and dealt heavy damage plus a potent DoT to the whole raid. People would rage and say "fuck bringing new people/non-top tier players to this".