Is EX/Savage content a battle or a dance number?

[NolLacnala]

As much as I agree with the song/dance routine, the moment they introduce RNG factors into the fight, you end up with Wash Away>Digititis aka the game has chosen for you to die

[HyoMinPark]

I know my opinion on this is going to be very unpopular, but at this point I just don't care anymore.

Guess what? Same problem happens with EX/Savage. The required skill for the current content is just far to high above the average player to complete it. It's so high, in fact, that even good players often have to spend hours each week working on it. This isn't some quick "hey random-dude-i-hardly-know, can you make me a thing-a-ma-bob?", it's a serious time commitment to get into this stuff. If you are interested in it, but your friends aren't good enough (even if they happen to be interested in it), you're kind of stuck. Even if you bother to seek out a static that is good enough to go for it, you're going to have to resign to reserving several hours per week to your "new" friends giving your old friends the cold shoulder.

The only solution is to quit making content that's well beyond the abilities of an average player.

Could the bolded statements in this post make the “average player” sound any more like an incompetent fool? Savage content in this game is not some extremely hard thing that can only be done by 1% of the playerbase (the “hardcore players”). A lot of “average players” can and have cleared Savage content. Stop creating a divide between players, and insinuating that the “average player” cannot do hard content. I very much consider myself an “average player” that has some borderline “hardcore” tendencies due to the sheer amount of time I play this game while not busy with school or other life/adult things, and I find it mildly insulting that you think Savage content is something above “the average player’s” skill level (for the record, I have cleared this tier).

Also, seems like a lot of people find more than enough time to run with their statics, and also socialize with friends. Some players are in statics comprised of nothing but their friends. It’s not an impossible feat to deviate X amount of hours to raiding and Y amount of hours to goofing off with your friends.

And with regards to “spending several hours a week” and “its a serious commitment to get into [Savage]”, the same applies to anything in this game: crafting, gathering, leveling alt jobs, level alt characters, role-playing, Savage, etc.. The example/comparison-contrast you’ve given with Crafting and Savage is a very poor example.

Adding to this post so as to not use up another post count:

And even if you do happen to be fine with fracturing the player base between those who clear savage and those who can't (or chose not to in order to spend time with their friends), you face another problem:

Again, if you are neglecting your friends to clear Savage, that’s on you. Not because the content demands it.

Development costs. I'm more than certain that SE has spent more on developing unending coil than they will get from 6 months of subscription time of all the players who will even attempt it between 4.11 and 4.20 (when ilvl is expected to increase) especially since you can't even attempt it without an O4S clear.

Ultimate was a lot of reused and retuned assets. Some things were new, yes, but not the overwhelming majority. Also, considering when Ultimate dropped, FFXIV had the highest view rating on Twitch that it has EVER had, that is a most definite plus. Because now people are paying attention to the game, and that can bring in new players if they see something they like about it.

Also, 5150 from the JP playerbase received a sponsorship deal with their Ultimate stream.

There's quite a bit of noise that we seem to be getting less and less content each patch, and if SE continues to try to develop content that most players will never even see, that notion will only gain more and more traction.

I will agree that 4.1 was incredibly stale in terms of content; if I wasn’t raiding, I would not be logging in. However, trying to say that Savage/Ultimate is taking away from casual content is false. 4.1 was empty not because of Ultimate, but because the developers, once again, delayed Eureka, which is now probably not coming out until AFTER 4.2 (probably in 4.25 something from what I’ve been hearing). So while 4.1 was stale, don’t blame it on Ultimate.

Basically, I'm not saying difficult games shouldn't exist, but rather that difficult content shouldn't exist within an MMO where a majority of the content can be cleared by casual players.

“Casual players” can still clear Savage—“casual” does not equate to “bad” or “poorly skilled.” Just means that they may not be as invested in the game time-wise as more “hardcore” players. A lot of casual players complain about the negative connotations behind calling them “casual”, usually equating it with being “sub par”, and yet you’re using “casual” in a negative sense: you are insinuating that “casual players” are not good enough to clear Savage. Which, again, it not some game-breakingly difficult content that only 1% of players can ever clear.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Guess what? Same problem happens with EX/Savage. The required skill for the current content is just far to high above the average player to complete it. It's so high, in fact, that even good players often have to spend hours each week working on it. This isn't some quick "hey random-dude-i-hardly-know, can you make me a thing-a-ma-bob?", it's a serious time commitment to get into this stuff. If you are interested in it, but your friends aren't good enough (even if they happen to be interested in it), you're kind of stuck. Even if you bother to seek out a static that is good enough to go for it, you're going to have to resign to reserving several hours per week to your "new" friends giving your old friends the cold shoulder.

The only solution is to quit making content that's well beyond the abilities of an average player. I know hardcore players won't like hearing this, but do you think Nintendo would sell very many more copies of Mario games if they started tuning the last set of levels in each game to the level that FFXIV's savage content is tuned to? Hell no.

Want to show off your awesome gaming skills? Do it like they've been doing it since at least the days of the Atari... pick something and speed run it, set/break records and record videos of it.

Mario Odyssey is a 40+ hour single player game with no long term retention. If every bit of content can be easily completed within a day, why even bother playing? The entire point of a theme park MMO is catering to a largely diverse audience; something for everyone. Savage isn't intended for the "average" player, but a demographic who prefers challenging content. Take away that aspect of the game and you severely impact everyone. Who will be buying all the crafted gear, pots and food when each one is rendered obsolete? Telling raiders they're essentially only allowed their fun by speed killing easy fights comes across incredibly entitled. It wreaks of the whole "everyone needs to feel special" mentality. As for pushing aside friends. A friend and I are in two different statics that raid 5-6 hours per week, respectively, yet we still spend hours together doing random stuff or just chatting. You're only giving your non-raider friends the "cold shoulder" if you want to.

[-BlueGreen-]

So what is Dark Souls? Devil May Cry? Ninja Gaiden? Bloodborne? Cuphead? Do those just not exist?

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/72895/dark-souls-ii/
Global Total as of 07th Oct 2017 (units): 1.32m

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/6963/super-mario-galaxy/
Global Total as of 07th Oct 2017 (units): 11.39m

Mario out-sells Dark Souls almost 10:1 in some cases, but I'll give you that the release years are way different, so here:

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/73166/s...ario-3d-world/
Global Total as of 07th Oct 2017 (units): 4.87m

That's still better than 3:1, and Nintendo did that with a console that was basically DOA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._game_consoles
PlayStation 3 Sony 2006 >83.8 million
PlayStation 4 Sony 2013 67.5 million
Wii Nintendo 2006 101.63 million
Wii U Nintendo 2012 13.56 million

The main takeaway from those numbers is that there's simply not nearly as many people interested in (or good enough for) games with such high difficulty. Granted, there's still just enough of a market to justify those games existing at all (and for that matter, I add Battletoads to that list of yours, an old favorite of mine when I want something with challenge), but with a huge difference: They're almost exclusively single player games (sometimes they add local multiplayer like Battletoads). You screw up and die on one of those games, your fault. Random person on your team screws up in FFXIV? Wipe. Your fault? Nope, but you still die. You pretty much have to have a full team of good players to clear such content, you simply can't mix in weaker players even if they are your friend or everyone in the group will just be banging their heads against the wall (and who enjoys that?).

And even if you do happen to be fine with fracturing the player base between those who clear savage and those who can't (or chose not to in order to spend time with their friends), you face another problem: Development costs. I'm more than certain that SE has spent more on developing unending coil than they will get from 6 months of subscription time of all the players who will even attempt it between 4.11 and 4.20 (when ilvl is expected to increase) especially since you can't even attempt it without an O4S clear. There's quite a bit of noise that we seem to be getting less and less content each patch, and if SE continues to try to develop content that most players will never even see, that notion will only gain more and more traction.

Basically, I'm not saying difficult games shouldn't exist, but rather that difficult content shouldn't exist within an MMO where a majority of the content can be cleared by casual players.

[CreinCrein]

A lot of those "dances solved by pressing WASD" can be solved by using player skills/abilities tho. Rescuing the PLD in O1S the moment he's about to be pushed back to keep uptime, gap-closing skills during knockback/draw in mechanics, using movement skills to cancel displacement, optimizing uptime while you're moving to dance (ruin 2, aero spam, other instants). The "dance" is just the framework that you sculpt your entire kit around, and is (imo) nothing but a bare minimum required to clear the fight.

[LazyC]

Does anyone else find it comical that the thread creator complains about the poor design of the first two savage fights which litterally everyone agrees are poor design and difficulty levels and yet completely refuses to try the better more designed fights which are the last two because he thinks he knows exactly what to do cause he can watch a video or read a text list of abilities without knowing at all how they work.

and then proceeds to say that no one has any idea what hes talking about. LUL

[Dualgunner]

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/72895/dark-souls-ii/
Global Total as of 07th Oct 2017 (units): 1.32m

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/6963/super-mario-galaxy/
Global Total as of 07th Oct 2017 (units): 11.39m

Mario out-sells Dark Souls almost 10:1 in some cases, but I'll give you that the release years are way different, so here:

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/73166/s...ario-3d-world/
Global Total as of 07th Oct 2017 (units): 4.87m

That's still better than 3:1, and Nintendo did that with a console that was basically DOA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._game_consoles
PlayStation 3 Sony 2006 >83.8 million
PlayStation 4 Sony 2013 67.5 million
Wii Nintendo 2006 101.63 million
Wii U Nintendo 2012 13.56 million

In your numbers, is that accounting for the amount of people who will buy Nintendo products for the fact they're Nintendo products? Or the fact you're comparing one of the most celebrated publishers against the comparatively no-name FromSoft? It's also worth pointing out that that site has different statistics up here for different consoles: http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=dark+souls&publisher=&platform=&genre=&minSales=0&results=200
Dark Souls 1 (PS3): 2.05m
Dark Souls 1 (360): 0.99m
Dark Souls 1 (PC): 0.07m
Dark Souls 1 (Total): 3.11m

Dark Souls 2 (PS3): 1.32m
Dark Souls 2 (360): 0.75m
Dark Souls 2 (PC): 0.19m
Dark Souls 2 (PS4): 0.64m
Dark Souls 2 (X1): 0.24m
Dark Souls 2 Total: 3.14m

Dark Souls 3 (PS4): 2.1m
Dark Souls 3 (X1): 0.59m
Dark Souls 3 (PC): 0.11m
Dark Souls 3 (Total): 2.8m

They're still outsold, but when you're presenting numbers you should probably take into account multi-console releases, especially if the site tracks their sales differently.

Random person on your team screws up in FFXIV? Wipe. Your fault? Nope, but you still die. You pretty much have to have a full team of good players to clear such content, you simply can't mix in weaker players even if they are your friend or everyone in the group will just be banging their heads against the wall (and who enjoys that?).

The alternative is everybody steamrolling everything in their path(and who enjoys that?).

Point here is: Who are you to dictate what other people should enjoy? I, and a lot of the people here, do enjoy smacking our heads against a wall with a group, cooperatively trying to defeat the boss for the sense of accomplishment for defeating it, and the loot given as well. It's helping not just yourself, but your team, develop and grow stronger against difficult odds.

And even if you do happen to be fine with fracturing the player base between those who clear savage and those who can't (or chose not to in order to spend time with their friends), you face another problem: Development costs. I'm more than certain that SE has spent more on developing unending coil than they will get from 6 months of subscription time of all the players who will even attempt it between 4.11 and 4.20 (when ilvl is expected to increase) especially since you can't even attempt it without an O4S clear. There's quite a bit of noise that we seem to be getting less and less content each patch, and if SE continues to try to develop content that most players will never even see, that notion will only gain more and more traction.

You mean all the reused assets and minimal development/balancing time that went into Ultimate that the devs have said affected nothing else? Fact is, you don't know and I don't know how much it cost to develop Unending Coil, but the entire fight is reused assets from T5, T9, and T13. Not to mention how, during the Ultimate world progression, several twitch streamers got sponsorships for their streaming progress, which means more advertising for XIV and indirectly more income for FFXIV.

Basically, I'm not saying difficult games shouldn't exist, but rather that difficult content shouldn't exist within an MMO where a majority of the content can be cleared by casual players.

Basically, you're saying that people who don't enjoy the game the way you do should run away to other genres.
You said it yourself, the majority of content can be done by casual players. So raiders and people who want a challenge, but at the same time love this game, should absolutely be able to get something harder. Something worth gearing up to do.

[-BlueGreen-]

Could the bolded statements in this post make the “average player” sound any more like an incompetent fool?

Let's see, almost 2 full weeks for the first clear of unending coil. I guess we can all spare that kind of time that took, right?

If you're clearing this stuff and you think you're "average", then you're being overly modest. This is what you get when you take some truly average players into O1S:

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/fNG1v...pe=damage-done

That clear came after about 3 weeks of working on it about 8 hours per week (and even then we had to fill in the two healer slots with random people from the PF because we just couldn't get enough FC members for it at the time). Personally, I learned and cleared it in a single night about 3 weeks before the above clear. In that three weeks, I was either in O1S with them helping them to learn it and improve or we were running other things to help them get better gear.

Don't believe me? Take another look:
O1 story 50th percentile (average players can clear this):
https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/16...amount&boss=38

O1 savage 20th percentile:
https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/17#boss=42&dataset=20

The 50th percentile (average) DPSer from O1 story can't even match the 20th percentile of people clearing O1S. Given current ilvls and such, at this point a full team of all ~20th percentile savage raiders could probably clear O1S, but I doubt they would get a whole lot further than that. Players who tend to struggle to even do 20th percentile numbers in savage often tend to struggle with just surviving mechanics.

By the way, I quickly looked you up on fflogs and you are being entirely too modest when you call yourself average. Even though my performance percentile pales in comparison to yours, even I don't have a right to call myself average.

[Dualgunner]

Let's see, almost 2 full weeks for the first clear of unending coil. I guess we can all spare that kind of time that took, right?

If you're clearing this stuff and you think you're "average", then you're being overly modest. This is what you get when you take some truly average players into O1S:

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/fNG1v...pe=damage-done

That clear came after about 3 weeks of working on it about 8 hours per week (and even then we had to fill in the two healer slots with random people from the PF because we just couldn't get enough FC members for it at the time). Personally, I learned and cleared it in a single night about 3 weeks before the above clear. In that three weeks, I was either in O1S with them helping them to learn it and improve or we were running other things to help them get better gear.

Are you using anecdote? Really? Your one selective experience is what the entire average player population has experienced?

Don't believe me? Take another look:
O1 story 50th percentile (average players can clear this):
https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/16...amount&boss=38

A whopping 1,567 parses uploaded for DPS.

O1 savage 20th percentile:
https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/17#boss=42&dataset=20

28,836 parses.

The 50th percentile (average) DPSer from O1 story can't even match the 20th percentile of people clearing O1S. Given current ilvls and such, at this point a full team of all ~20th percentile savage raiders could probably clear O1S, but I doubt they would get a whole lot further than that. Players who tend to struggle to even do 20th percentile numbers in savage often tend to struggle with just surviving mechanics.

Are you claiming that the data pool from o1 story, with 1567 parses, can be compared to the data pool from o1s, with 28,836 parses? I could claim the data is skewed because people generally don't upload outside of Savage and EX.

By the way, I quickly looked you up on fflogs and you are being entirely too modest when you call yourself average. Even though my performance percentile pales in comparison to yours, even I don't have a right to call myself average.

Perhaps she means average in that she doesn't dedicate overmuch time to this, or to raiding in general? Her numbers themselves don't necessarily push her out of the average player activity trends.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Let's see, almost 2 full weeks for the first clear of unending coil. I guess we can all spare that kind of time that took, right?

You mean the content specifically designed for World First/Extremely Hardcore raiders that only reused already existing assets? How about we look at Savage, which was cleared in twenty hours; thirty four for the previous tier.

If you're clearing this stuff and you think you're "average", then you're being overly modest. This is what you get when you take some truly average players into O1S:

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/fNG1v...pe=damage-done

This may sound harsh, however those aren't average players. They're simply bad, or inexperienced. Alte Roite is a complete pushover if you put forth a reasonable enough effort to learn what little mechanics he throws at you. How about instead of complaining how difficult the fights are you practice? At this point, it almost seems like you're arguing for a participation trophy. Referencing Story mode is irrelevant as very few people bother to upload parses from it, thus the results will be heavily skewed. Regardless, once again, the whole purpose behind themepark MMOs is diverse content for multiple demographics. Savage aims at appealing towards players who wish to challenge themselves not the "average" player just looking to play for fun. If that were all FFXIV offered, it'd get rather boring since what point would any of the gear, consumable and etc even serve?