Ultimate hiatus feedback

[Emileigh]

I understand that it's a different team taking care of Ultimate and its balance, and it's actually a very valid point and I agree. But my point remains, it's still a bunch of resources that need to be allocated to it, which seems wasteful at the end of an xpac. They could dedicate same resources on a) Something else for 4.5. I'm sure they could find something for everyone to enjoy if they really wanted to; b) Some new content for the new expansion, so it's hopefully not as lacking in endgame as 3.0 or 4.0. Either would be more benefitial than a new Ultimate.

To anyone who is ocmplaining about the lakc of Ultimate in 4.5 - did you actually already clear both Ultimate? Am I really in the minority here seeing that everyone I've seen attempt either Ultimate has cleared neither? It would be a different story if most people who've attempted cleared Ultimate, but in its current state I really do not see the point of yet another one when most people who want it still have 2 fights to clear.

with the current amount of extra resources available and their past track record of things, I just cannot see them creating anything meaningful with the absence of ultimate. I would like to see more content for everyone, and I think it is a worthwhile field to persue , but avocating the removal of one thing for another isn't beneficial to either us, I believe.

Since you asked, ill share my expierience with ultimate. I have cleared ucob and am working on uwu currently. I am in 2 groups for it. My first group is a bunch of really close friends. we run one night a week for one lockout each. We do this not because we think we are actually going to clear this way but because we have grown tired of farming savage. Ultimate is something fun we can do together, and it will last until the next tier at least.
My second group is the group I cleared ucob with. We will be starting to raid here in 2 weeks, and expect to have it cleared in a month like we did with ucob.

The topic is extremely relevant to me and effects me directly. My casual group will have grown bored with ultimate and have stopped running it after the next savage tier, and my midcore group will have long completed it. Next savage tier will be 1 week of content for my midcore group, and 2 months of content for my casual group. Then what?

[Remedi]

@Hyomin I linked to you the most recent luckybancho in another thread https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ay_2018active/ it was regarding the overall players int he game it was taken before 4.3 however I can't read japanese so I'm not sure if it has the UCoB clears. They only translated sigmscape clears.

Anyway I want to say that I'm not progging ultimates or planning to however that is my choice alone and what I choose to do in the game is noone busnsness let alone SE. I made a choice of what to do and what not to do in the game and that choice is mine alone and shouldn't influence other ppl enjoyment imho


edit @Hyominpark: I see, that is a pity would've been interesting to know

[Sebazy]

There's a tremendous amount of work that goes in the Ultimate fights for balancing it "just right". I don't think it's just a matter of reused assets or not, there's other stuff like this that comes into play. You're acting like creating a Ultimate fight takes no effort, which I can't agree to. In software development it's always a matter of switching resources around, so take from one place to give to another. Ultimate is no different.

Already covered this one:

Lets say that in both cases, we start with our beloved Sudo who will brainstorm and storyboard out concepts, perhaps with the hand of a concept artist or two. At this stage, an Ultimate and Dungeon would be pretty similar with the dungeon having more of an artistic focus whilst Ultimate would lean more towards rougher concepts focusing on how Sudo envisions a party would tackle his mechanics.

From there, things branch out massively. Dungeon design is primarily art, both 2D and 3D. Modern game content requires very substantial teams of artists to get done at any real pace. Meanwhile, Ultimate isn't art heavy at all, you'll get a few new animations and effects with the bulk of the work being a drag and drop away via the CVS. That's not to say that it's free content though as it just isn't. Rather, it needs very significant amounts of QA due to the extensive tuning required to get the balance and difficulty right.

TLDR = Yes, creating an ultimate encounter takes significant resources, but it's resources that are almost entirely separate and non transferable to other content. You simply do not have world builders and artists sitting there doing QA for hours on end. Meanwhile, SE will 100% have a QA team on hand for this sort of task. Thus it is by far the most labour efficient means of keeping raiders occupied and subbed that we've seen from SE so far. Want a time sink that gives similar value for about as little content creation work? Let's have another Atma fate grind yay

As is with no 4.5 ultimate lined up, my FC has got BFA pre orders in for something to do. Barf =(

Wrong. x.5 patches have been patches of nothing FOR EVERYONE, not just for raiding ppl. If they just add something for raiding ppl, it still leaves the 99.9% with nothing to do. If they're actually going to put out something in 4.5, I'd rather have it be something most people can enjoy. Retaining some of 99.9% is more valuable than retaining a few from the < 1% that would even try the next Ultimate.

Got this one too, but here's a refresher:

You do understand that 4.5 will likely bring a good amount of casual content right?

Going by 3.5 and previous trends we will see something like the following:

Eureka update
PotD/HoH update
Multiple additional relic steps over the subsequent mini patches that follow
Several staggered MSQ updates
Additions to crafting side content via deliveries, scrips etc
Likely another significant side quest chain (Hildy/Schol) or beast tribe.
Aquapolis/Canal thinger additions
1 additional expert dungeon
A number of additional squadron dungeons

You'll also get the following content that falls somewhere in the middle:

24 man raid
8 man primal

Meanwhile, you'll also get the following high end content:

.


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the resources they said they are saving are not effected by the ultimate fights. The battle design and balancing teams obviously have more free time than the art, music, and story questing teams. And those are the teams most heavily effected by the upcoming expansion as well. It was an attempt to utilize their resources most effectively while producing more content.

Anything else would be far more work for a team that yoship has constantly said is at its limits.

My theory behind Ultimate 3 getting canceled isn't quite a case of them reshuffling development hours to other content, so I'm mostly with you on this one (I'll be very surprised if we magically get 2 roulette dungeons for 4.5).

Rather I think it's a case of them not having enough experienced battle designers to avoid the format going stale. Sure they can throw the task to Sudo again and I'm sure lot will relish another meat grinder to throw themselves into, but as mentioned already, we've been there before and the fatigue will likely set in in a big way. They could give the task to someone new, but lets not forget that the last time Yoshida did that, we got Alte Roite.

I honestly don't think anyone wins regardless of the outcome. All the QA hours that got freed up aren't going to make Eureka good. Mind you, the salt we could see from a Sudo designed Eureka fate would be pretty amazing

[Nestama]

Isn't Heaven-on-High going to just be 100 floors and nothing else? Dunno if SE are going to release any new 'Rogue Dungeons' in SB after that one.

[Ceasaria]

They could give the task to someone new, but lets not forget that the last time Yoshida did that, we got Alte Roite.

Alte Roite was cool (maybe my prefered fight in delta) even if it's too easy.
Don't forget the designer of Sunanoo, was the one who did the chocobo races. He was new in the design of battles and he succeeded in my opinion.
So maybe, let him do the next Ultimate ?

[Sebazy]

From a raid perspective, it was a dungeon boss with millions of HP and 3 mechanics spread across 5-7 minutes. It was just too simplistic for Savage IMO. Every single team within my FC cleared it within their first or second pull with the more casual teams I help with taking less than an hour to clear it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

My theory behind Ultimate 3 getting canceled isn't quite a case of them reshuffling development hours to other content, so I'm mostly with you on this one (I'll be very surprised if we magically get 2 roulette dungeons for 4.5).

Rather I think it's a case of them not having enough experienced battle designers to avoid the format going stale. Sure they can throw the task to Sudo again and I'm sure lot will relish another meat grinder to throw themselves into, but as mentioned already, we've been there before and the fatigue will likely set in in a big way. They could give the task to someone new, but lets not forget that the last time Yoshida did that, we got Alte Roite.

I honestly don't think anyone wins regardless of the outcome. All the QA hours that got freed up aren't going to make Eureka good. Mind you, the salt we could see from a Sudo designed Eureka fate would be pretty amazing

Zeppe brought this up on SotR. And I have to agree that even just a single encounter brought up to Ultimate's difficulty would be something fun. At least I believe so. While the grand spectacle of Bahamut and Ultima are nice, I'd be happy with say, an extremely challenging Gilgamesh or Odin. I'm sure they could get creative even if both fights would be shorter still. Better that than nothing at all until 5.1 imo.

I suppose on the bright side, when nothing much gets added, people can stop crying how Ultimate stole all the content.

[aster_tataricus]

more ulti please se

[Aquaslash]

Or instead of developing another ultimate for 1% of players they can do interesting dungeons with more mechanics(like Vault pre-nerd) and primals for 50+% of the playerbase? And make it standart expirience so the game wouldn't feel like boring faceroll. More midcore stuff. the "in-between" difficulty of raids, same as it was in gordias and midas before, while current story mode stay the same.

I had to stop reading from page 5 on max post mode just to reply to this.

You know God doggone well that the NANOSECOND they apply any nuance to the dungeons/primals/easy raids that people everywhere will holler "Please nerf" harder than D.Va trying to get a 6 man bomb. Remember Titan Hard? The OG relic steps? Steps of Faith? Wiping City of Mechanics? All nerfed harder than fusion rifles on Destiny. We don't even get stuff like Totorak any more cause people don't really want anything more than hallway fests even though they complain about it (what they actually want is wall to wall pulls Brayflox style)

[HyoMinPark]

I had to stop reading from page 5 on max post mode just to reply to this.

You know God doggone well that the NANOSECOND they apply any nuance to the dungeons/primals/easy raids that people everywhere will holler "Please nerf" harder than D.Va trying to get a 6 man bomb. Remember Titan Hard? The OG relic steps? Steps of Faith? Wiping City of Mechanics? All nerfed harder than fusion rifles on Destiny. We don't even get stuff like Totorak any more cause people don't really want anything more than hallway fests even though they complain about it (what they actually want is wall to wall pulls Brayflox style)

Actually, Weeping City was never nerfed. The others, yeah, but Weeping City was untouched. It only got “easier” because people outgeared it to the point where it was just throwing bodies at the bosses. Much like today’s 24-mans; they’re all wars of attrition at this point. Your overall point I do agree with though. Any sort of “hard” content is immediately met with calls for nerfs—especially if it’s MSQ-locked.