Is Endgame Just a Cycle of "Static Killers?"

[Lisotte]

snip

The actual answer is that historically we've seen that SE tends to pay more attention to their JP community and the percentile of JP players who have completed this raid tier is leaps and bounds above what NA/EU have done. And plenty of JP players have done this pugging them, really raid finder actually works as intended for them.


Also I just gotta say... SE barely caters to the raiding community at all. I also think you've confused "hardcore" with "raiding." Plenty of raiders are hella casual, unless you consider playing the game for 2-3 hours at a time hardcore. But anyway, SE barely, barely caters to the hardcore community. Which is sad considering they're the most dedicated players, but what they get is a measly FOUR fights per raid tier, and their gear reward is only barely marginally better than if someone just went out all in tome gear. Compare this to all of the casual content we get, dungeons per patch, primals of the hm and ex variety, glamour, housing, not to mention story mode of all things.

I had assumed you had something against statics, but I guess you just have something against hard content in FFXIV period. Which is pretty -- mindboggling? But in a weird alternate reality where SE somehow removed all hard content from the game, what exactly is the point of getting all that tome gear every week for? Do you really need it for playing FFXIV Candyland? That's the real reason you see raiders (including dumb ones like the one in the link you posted) ask for better gear than you get from faceroll content. They're the only ones who need it! For as little as SE gives raiders these days, they're never going to totally fk them over because that would be totally antithetical to the entire kind of MMORPG SE has made from the beginning with FFXI and also with FFXIV too. What you're asking for is chopping off the hard boss at the end of a video game. You're asking them to cut out Ganondorf of Sephiroth, which would be a real head-scratcher for an MMO that is as focused on vertical progression as FFXIV is.

[Mysteltain]

Think i don't even know why this thread was made for... from what i can gather they're mad they can't do savage that's what this is boiling down to right? an optional content where the gear obtained from it is not even needed to do basically everything in the game, i also don't understand why you have this war against statics for you seem to think anyone who's in a static is a terrible person and should feel bad for ever wanting to get together with the same group of people a few nights a week and have some fun.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one a little confused about the point of this topic. The title implies concern that endgame was a design in futility, as the TC holds the fear that endgame is designed to be so difficult as to purposely break up the groups tackling it. Yet the actual content and posts of this thread show a lack--and frankly, refusal--of understanding what statics are and what the nature of endgame is in FFXIV as of 3.x.

[Auteur]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one a little confused about the point of this topic.

At risk of being accused of using Trump tactics, the point is that PvP needs be made viable in this game to channel the competitive angst endemic to NA players. That's a major cultural difference between JP and NA (esp USA), which makes a PvE only game like PSO2 great in JP but dead on arrival in NA: the JP player base is on average much more able to act cooperatively. "Competitive PvE" is a misnomer and it's bad that competitiveness is being solely channeled into PvE, leading to poor recommendations for the game's overall health (like bad power spiking of PvE content).

Big picture though, I contend if the "99%" comes at loggerheads with the "1%" over content or direction FF14 is going, the majority 99% should win every single time. SE has to, and it seems they know, that this game is simply not meant to be catered to the hardcore players; they are not trying to compete with the F2P grinders for this small small share of the market. Yosh-P mentioned in an interview that he recognized the "silent majority," implying that AS was developed due to the hardcore (turns out erroneous) complaints that PvE content wasn't hard enough.

I remember seeing a comment in another thread that a hardcore player acknowledged, "I realized this game was not meant for me and I was never going to be [SE's] target audience." This is correct and honestly has to stay this way to maintain a sub-based model. Attempting to appeal to the hardcore only works for F2P, as many many many game devs are finding out. Sub is all about quantity and appealing to everyone; F2P you can leverage a small group with that cash shop.

[Mysteltain]

At risk of being accused of using Trump tactics, the point is that PvP needs be made viable in this game to channel the competitive angst endemic to NA players. That's a major cultural difference between JP and NA (esp USA), which makes a PvE only game like PSO2 great in JP but dead on arrival in NA: the JP player base is on average much more able to act cooperatively. "Competitive PvE" is a misnomer and it's bad that competitiveness is being solely channeled into PvE, leading to poor recommendations for the game's overall health (like bad power spiking of PvE content).

Also, the benefit of having PvP is being able to bifurcate and channel certain toxic hardcore players (i.e. toxic to the base at large) into that arena where that mindset is to be expected and is ok.

On the one hand, it wasn't necessary to bring politics into the thread in any capacity; never ends well. On the other, I did get a good laugh. So let's call it a wash, haha!

[Brian_]

Realistically, any decent mid-core group can clear everything but A8S. In terms of relative difficulty, there were really only a handful of fights in this game that were really catering to the HC player-base -- A3S, A4S, A6S (before nerfs), and A8S.

And what portion of the game's content does that equal to? Easily less than 1%.

So SE isn't catering to their HC players. They get no unique story, no unique gear, no unique fights. Last patch all they got was 1 mount. This patch all they got was 1 minion. The only lasting thing you get that some random casual can't get later on is the time stamp on the achievement.

So is it really any wonder why so many of them are feeling like it's not worth it? You spend millions of gil on progression, hundreds of hours learning fights, and get very little out of it besides the experience.

It's a complete joke to imply SE caters to their HC players.

[KarstenS]

It got nerfed because it was a static breaker, Yoshi P himself said he made it too difficult.

It got nerfed because it was harder than the next floor (A7S). Most groups finished A7S much faster than A6S.

[KarstenS]

The FFXIV team still received complaints about this, and have stated that the next tier of Savage will be more akin to Final Coil.

Thats not fully correct. They are balancing the last tier of Alexander around the following issue:

Regarding Midas, Let's just say the level cap was still 50 and you could use the level 50 rotations. I think the clear rates would have been way way higher. After checking the data and logs, we noticed "Understanding the mechanics,judging,dodging and maintaining the level 60 rotations on top of that" is what created the enormous gap between players. There are a lot of buffs you need to manage and maintain and not only that, but the phase transitions or enemy mechanics disturb that rotation. This led to requiring players to flexibly judging in certain situations. Back in binding coil of Bahamut, there were some harsh mechanics, but the difference in rotations directly slashed the gap in difficulty. It's too late to change the rotations during the 3.x series so we'll lower the difficulty of the final tier of Alexander instead.

In a more recent interwiew Yoshida did state the same and he also clarified, that Savage is meant to be hardcore content and not to be for everyone. So the difficult for final Alexander is more like a workaround, which will get changed back in 4.0 with the next raid.

[Androir]

Who is in need of statics anyways? i almost had completed every "normal" raid here. If you feel forced to going to a static group then no one can change it but you.
for epic i need better equip then averange of 207 and some guide or dugeon with traps which are making common sense. Thats all.
Whats a static killer anyways? You mean premade groups wont be existing any longer? Why? because of the raid finder?
If your group isnt wanting to raid together this way then it is no raid group anyways.

[Ametrine]

Who is in need of statics anyways? i almost had completed every "normal" raid here. If you feel forced to going to a static group then no one can change it but you.
for epic i need better equip then averange of 207 and some guide or dugeon with traps which are making common sense. Thats all.
Whats a static killer anyways? You mean premade groups wont be existing any longer? Why? because of the raid finder?
If your group isnt wanting to raid together this way then it is no raid group anyways.

"Static Killer" isn't referring to alternative methods to enter content at all reducing the need to form them (though it may be a minor factor).

She's talking about content so outrageously unforgiving that many teams trying to clear savage level content are giving up after weeks (!) of trying without any reasonable progress. It's too hard with little reward, and takes a huge amount of dev time.

[Klamor]

Who is in need of statics anyways? i almost had completed every "normal" raid here. If you feel forced to going to a static group then no one can change it but you.
for epic i need better equip then averange of 207 and some guide or dugeon with traps which are making common sense. Thats all.
Whats a static killer anyways? You mean premade groups wont be existing any longer? Why? because of the raid finder?
If your group isnt wanting to raid together this way then it is no raid group anyways.

Don't ever refer to Normal-mode as raiding... ever again... just don't.