Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[Sandpark]

Pretty much anyone, regardless of skill, can see the coil story first hand right now.I think the primary exception is Bahamut prime, but he is only one expansion away from being soloable by all jobs.

So, yes, Velhart is right, you should not get everything handed to you on a silver platter. If you don't want to pony up the skill and time to see the raid story when it's current, you should just wait until you can do the fights on your terms rather than dragging down the entire game to meet your play style.

Not my playstyle. The majority's playstyle. Midcore/Casual outnumber Hardcore by a wide margin.

The more story locked from the majority is bad for business. Better gear, harder content is fine for the elite. Creating story for a tiny minuscule pushing the larger percentage to not ever experience is bad.

The solo thing doesn't hold water. I don't care if I can solo every single thing in the game 2 years from now. Raids are designed to be group content, content that is not getting played by most people now. Waste of development.

[Reinha]

There exists a compromise in making the story a reward. They could exclude snippets of the story from the normal difficulty mode whilst keeping only the most relevant scenes. Detailed character backstories, some visions of the past, some interactions between story characters, hints to upcoming events etc. are not necessary to know what happens in the raid. If they kept the main interactions and events (who are these story characters, why are we raiding this place, how do we do it and the conclusion) in the normal mode story but excluded all the rest, would that make savage rewarding for raiders?

[dukka]

At this point it seems it's all about the money. He saved FFXIV (and possibly SE as a whole) with the release of 2.0 and people praised him as the saviour of the franchise. Unfortunately, he found that catering to the lowest common denominator is the most profitable business model, so why should they bother with another method at this point?

congratulations, you have successfully discovered that games are a business and not something that should be influenced by a small, overly vocal minority

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Why bother locking the story behind optional hardcore content if we can just youtube it and have zero reason to even touch the raid?

[Istaru]

Why bother locking the story behind optional hardcore content if we can just youtube it and have zero reason to even touch the raid?

Then you are OK getting rid of brain dead easy story mode for a middle difficulty version since it can be watched on YouTube? Jk

Seriously, there should be some kind of real reward for raiding. Right now, there aren't any of significance.

[Sprinks]

congratulations, you have successfully discovered that games are a business and not something that should be influenced by a small, overly vocal minority

The fact that greed is now the #1 driving force behind the game is the problem. Cash shop patches are proof of that. The overly vocal minority are the people that want everything handed to them, not those of us that like challenge. What is the point of doing raids? The gear? Yeah, ok. You're going to replace that in 2 months. I hate Cut scenes, but Coil got it right! I actually gave a shit about why I was fighting and clearing it. I quit raiding after clearing T11, but went back and finished so I could see what happened. This is coming from someone that SKIPS EVERY DAMN CUT SCENE!

Even with the 2 difficulties, people STILL can't clear the raids to get to the crappy story that they are hashing out. Keeping some things special is ok! If you really need the story THAT bad, try!!! make friends, go attempt the content, EARN THINGS!

[Frederick22]

The 2 mode difficulty is good, is a nice way to have the casuals experience an small version challenge on raid and savage for elite.

The story was good.. cheese but good, but yes it could have being something more dinamic. Pretty much being a virus and have all defensive sistems of alex tring to kill you. That every single boss repesents a part of Alex.

I agree with the rewards, not just gear but at least something more. Maybe achivements? Special reward if you clear final run multiple times maybe?

[zosia]

Not my playstyle. The majority's playstyle. Midcore/Casual outnumber Hardcore by a wide margin.

do you actually look at the stats or do you just like to assume that since casuals are the majority that there is no need to be diligent?

You do know that even at level cap, you are a minority player? Does that mean that we should cater the game strictly to leveling? No, that would be a dumb way to design a game. I forget the stat off of the top of my head, but admittedly by SE own stats released about 30% of the player base makes up the end game community.

Coils had a 10% participation rate, with about 5% reaching a full clear before heavensward.

That's nearly a third of endgame players that participated in coils. This notion that we are talking about 1% of the player base is ridiculous. If Alex had not destroyed the raiding community, we would still see this similar pattern of participation.

In reality, when raiding was at it's healthiest in this game, close to a third of endgame players were trying coil and many of them were able to actually down some bosses.

Source:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ea-Census-2014
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...e8ff1bcf34c5ae

The more story locked from the majority is bad for business. Better gear, harder content is fine for the elite. Creating story for a tiny minuscule pushing the larger percentage to not ever experience is bad.

It's not locked, you choose to lock yourself out of it, which is perfectly fine. It's your prerogative to choose what you spend your time on, but it does not mean that your choices have to be detrimental to others.

The solo thing doesn't hold water. I don't care if I can solo every single thing in the game 2 years from now.

Sure it does, you don't need to solo anything. You could have gotten 3-4 people together right after hitting level 60 (just a few weeks after HW) and destroyed T1-13.

Raids are designed to be group content, content that is not getting played by most people now. Waste of development.

Again, this is just more of you wanting the entire game to cater to you. This game is full of casual content, you just want 100% of the game's content to cater to you, it's very greedy. Once you take Raiders and non-level capped charters into account, you and your ilk comprise about 25% of the player base, not such a hefty margin to warrant that 100% of the game cater to you. Thus, you should not have everything handed to you on the silver platter, you are not as large of a demographic as you think.

[odintius]

I can get behind the story and difficulty as a reward for doing raiding its after that though that would make me want to keep repeating it and the current rewards for it imo are not worth it.

[Nalien]

I'm pretty sure SE doesn't even know what to do with raiding anymore even though people have given suggestions.

The main problem is the odd belief that people doing the bare minimum of the games content should get a similar level of rewards... Nowhere is this more true than with Relic weapons... I've no idea why anyone thinks the item level those quests provide is acceptable given the content involved... It makes no sense to me, item level doesn't even really matter that much unless you're doing Savage... Yet people feel entitled to that item level for doing some of the easiest content possible...

I really wish SE gave us either branching Relic quests, or multiple Relic quests... Take 2.0, we had the Relic Reborn weapons, then we had the Primal Focus weapons... Could have upgraded both IMO, Relic Reborn has you farming FATEs? Primal Focus has your farming Coil. Need a rare drop from Snowcloak to get Excalibur? Balmung needs a rare drop from Shiva (EX). That doesn't make the drops from raids any better, but it at least adds some additional value to the content... Such a shame that both Relics would need to be equal though... Such an absurdity... It's genuinely backwards; The more effort you put into this game, the less rewarding it becomes... Someone who rarely plays is likely going to be excited when they pick up some Lore gear for doing basically nothing. Meanwhile, someone who busts their ass off raiding gets to watch as other players rapidly get the same item levels for a fraction of the effort... By all means, reward casual players as well, but the notion that they need the same rewards as hardcore players? It's stupid... All it does is make the MMO less attractive for hardcore and casual alike...