How's Ultimate?

[RukiaFae]

I think it is great that raiders got this. I think it is so cool that teams are still trying to clear it. I'm enjoying watching others enjoy this content. Yes it is only for a small portion of the community sure but it is only 3 fights for the life of an expansion. That's not much effort or exclusive content for just hard core raiders. There is plenty of stuff for everyone to get.

[loreleidiangelo]

I think it is great that raiders got this. I think it is so cool that teams are still trying to clear it. I'm enjoying watching others enjoy this content. Yes it is only for a small portion of the community sure but it is only 3 fights for the life of an expansion. That's not much effort or exclusive content for just hard core raiders. There is plenty of stuff for everyone to get.

I think this is a fact that might be going a bit overlooked when it comes to the idea of "content only for the hardcore" - that there are plenty of people who are getting entertainment value over watching other people attempt it, without the stress or frustration of attempting it themselves. A few in the FC/some Linkshells actually watch us stream stuff when it's new, even if they won't actually do the content personally. Entertainment value isn't just limited to some narrow scope of participation only - look at esports or regular sports viewing, for instance.

[bswpayton]

I think this is a fact that m

hmm I still debate whether its justifiable tho , even if it is a tweaked fight , how many threads have you seen askin for more housing those resources could go there, how many post askin to change the msq dungeon those resources could go there, flyin in the old zones etc. Yea thats all casual stuff, but Ive seen many arguments about when people ask to tweak other aspects of the game and its a widespread no Id rather them use resources on new stuff. In fact one of my very first post was askin for tweaks to the msq 50 dungeons. Many people where opposed , but yet ultimate comes out and those same type of people are like oh thats just rehashing old stuff its not really takin up resources.

Ultimate is great for people that make me enjoy the game more like happs, and xenos etc, but I mean if it didnt exist they wouldn't just up and quit the game either because they currently make a living off streaming this game. But I wonder how many peoples awful experiences in the level 50 msq has made them quit the game Id be willin to say more have quit from that than hc raiders would quit if this ultimate didnt exist. I just find it hypocritical all the other post that have gotten bashed askin to rehash old content, but when this comes along it gets a pass.

[Texa]

hmm I still debate whether its justifiable tho

1. The housing team is completely separate from the battle design team and Yoshi-P has already promised more housing for the next major patch
2. Praetorium and the other one aren't going to be changed, finding a different way to get the story from the cut scenes in for content that is four and a half years old would not be proper use of the cut scene design team's resources and a fair amount of newbies use party finder and unsync the content now anyways
3. They already compromised on not having flyable zones in ARR with us by increasing land mount speed which is really only useful in those areas to begin with

[Zojha]

I think this is a fact that might be going a bit overlooked when it comes to the idea of "content only for the hardcore" - that there are plenty of people who are getting entertainment value over watching other people attempt it, without the stress or frustration of attempting it themselves.

The issue with that entertainment value however is that people do not need to subscribe to your game in order to get it. It primarily benefits the streamers, not the game or the people who make it, hence why you couldn't develop a game on that premise - You'd need to start to monetize the streams for that concept to work out, else you'll just be sitting on a pile of disproportionate costs. For the game as a whole, it is far more beneficial to put that entertainment value into something that requires participation OR start to monetize the streams.

It isn't always possible - There were League of Legends streamers who made a living out of streaming themselves insult their teammates and rage and people got enough kicks out of that to finance those people. You can't really control that and you can't really condone that either, since it's technically against your ToS, so making a proper contract... would put you in a bad spot. But in general, you want people to actually need to BUY the product you're selling to get its value.

[HyoMinPark]

But the part of the community that does that is VERY small which is a major problem

Because, in a game that caters majorly to the casual playerbase, the more hardcore side of it aren’t allowed to have something designed for them? Every piece of content released in this game is catered to the majority—i.e., the casual playerbase. Just look at the Stormblood Ex primal: Lakshmi and Susano rolled over, Shinryu—while fun—is definitely not on par with Thordan Ex at release, and Deltascape Savage is about the same difficulty as Creator, if not easier. V3S, while a mechanic dance, is far easier than A11S. Neo, while fun, is easier than Alexander Prime. Point is, everything in this game caters to the casual crowd, yet they seem to be the ones that complain the loudest when content is released for the other part of the playerbase for once.

I'd say people don't really have a interest in the content. I don't really care about the gates on the this, I doubt I'll ever run it as it has no rewards I'm interested in. I just think that calls for more content of this difficulty need to be tempered by the fact that very little of the paying player base will engage with this content. It will be interesting to see how much of the player base does it and how long this content stays active for.

Considering there was thread after thread being made complaining about gating Ultimate behind clearing V4S and how “unfair” it was, I’d say enough people are interested in it to make it worthwhile to implement. If we want to discuss interest, I know a lot of people that are not interested in Ex primals—doesn’t stop the developers from making them. I, myself, am not interested in any of the new dungeons being released, because they’re just copy-pastes of all the previous dungeons with arbitrary gates set up to temper tanks that want to pull larger groups of mobs. Doesn’t stop the developers from making more dungeons. Same thing can be said about any piece of content: not everyone is going to be interested, and the content isn’t going to last forever. Considering SE had to put in an Alliance Roulette with a massive EXP reward to get the queues rolling for the older 24-mans....

In other words, it seems like you’re saying “I’m not interested in this piece of content, so it’s not important, and it’s going to die quickly.” Just because you don’t like something, or just because you have no interest in it, doesn’t mean that other people don’t as well.

[jameseoakes]

Because, in a game that caters majorly to the casual playerbase, the more hardcore side of it aren’t allowed to have something designed for them? Every piece of content released in this game is catered to the majority—i.e., the casual playerbase. Just look at the Stormblood Ex primal: Lakshmi and Susano rolled over, Shinryu—while fun—is definitely not on par with Thordan Ex at release, and Deltascape Savage is about the same difficulty as Creator, if not easier. V3S, while a mechanic dance, is far easier than A11S. Neo, while fun, is easier than Alexander Prime. Point is, everything in this game caters to the casual crowd, yet they seem to be the ones that complain the loudest when content is released for the other part of the playerbase for once.

I wish the extreme hardcore would stop using casual for everyone not doing bleeding edge progression it makes it sound like most people do it rather than sub 5% of the player base, which is the issue here.

In other words, it seems like you’re saying “I’m not interested in this piece of content, so it’s not important, and it’s going to die quickly.” Just because you don’t like something, or just because you have no interest in it, doesn’t mean that other people don’t as well.

In an honest reply to this, I expect this content to die quickly as I'm not sure the demand is really there. I think this content probably has been needed as the extreme parts of the raid community have been calling for this while say everything else is too easy. But SE will need to look at the participation rates and see if this content is a good use of there resources or whether they should be aiming at boarder segment of the player base. I may well be wrong the community really raises to this and gets inspired by it, time will tell on this but the last time we had really challenging content the raid community fell apart.

[Divinewindx]

I've spent like 10 hours or so inside of Ultimate. I never got to prog Coils as I started back in HW launch, so I really enjoy these fights, they're essentially entirely new fights to me that are reminiscent of a6s pre nerf difficulty, so not too bad, at least on a individual level, it's just on a group level, its difficult because it requires consistency.

[bswpayton]

Because, in a game that caters majorly to the casual.

While the dungeons are easy and certainly, and it's just pull as many adds as possible. The money put into them is worth more than making content that maybe 10k out of 500k will take part in. I love when people in statics call all content easy. While this content is pluggable let's not act like the path isn't different, then having people u trust and play with on the regular doesn't cloud the perception of said content. Are having pasers and call outs don't make a difference or having people that's dedicated enough to wiping hour after hour with u on said content doesn't make a difference. This fight while nice just wasn't warranted, it's proof in the numbers many peoples flogs stop at v2s or 3s. Let's stop acting like everything shares the belief that the content is a push over when looking at things from ones on pov.

[Kalia]

Ultimate is fantastic. As someone who loved Midas (and Gordias with the exception of A4S), I've been waiting so long for the return of challenging raids. I feel like square struck a great balance between difficulty and hope as well, as we are progressing through the content at a steady pace, but it's still taking a substantial amount of time without the presence of a gear gate.

Remember that the difficulty of Gordias/Midas hinged on a gear gate - A4S was nearly impossible week 1/2 simply due to the amount of damage and lack of HP. Gear gating is the easy path to extending content. The fact that square was able to produce a fight that did not account for vertical gear progression that could keep top raiders struggling for this long already is a testimony to great fight design deveopers on their staff. It gives a huge amount of hope for future raids, too!

Gear gating is NOT what we have with unending coil. Unending coil is a litany of dances and mechanics sprinkled with RNG that you can react to. It's truly fantastic fight design that pushes party coordination requirements to the next level. That's really difficult to do in a game that's had an active competitive population for 4 years, through 7 raid tiers (8 if you count SCoB savage).

While I can empathize that a lot of people won't challenge this content, my hope is that this content inspires some players to try a little harder and maybe get to experience challenging raids. It's really a wonderful experience if you're up to the challenge of upping your game and team coordination.