We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Honestly my biggest issue with the game, and maybe this is true of other MMOs as well, I don't know, but...

Why raid? Sure, there's the vaunted ilvl increase, but WHY? What do you need it for other than to raid?

I just wish there was some content, even ONE piece (I'm not counting Ultimate) of content for raiders that you needed raid gear to be able to do. Something different, something you could go into after raiding to make use of your gear because, outside of raiding, you don't need that gear for ANYTHING. Hell, unless you care about min-maxing, you can get on just fine with crafted/tome gear half the time.

I stopped raiding in Deltascape because, outside of Ultimate which had the same issue, I didn't see a reason to raid. Farm raid to do raid to farm raid to keep doing raid. Rinse and repeat. Combine with the constant gear turnover, lack of initiative outside of the raid itself, and it's just... Eh.

Or I could just be burned out and salty. That's a possibility too! :P

It depends on your objective. For a good number of people, FFlogs is what keeps raiding alive. It essentially functions as a scoreboard not unlike what we have for Deep Dungeon. How you choose to view it is entirely subjective. Some are hyper competitive, others just want to see continual self growth.

That being said, it would be nice if there were more content at max ilvl. Mythic+ could fill this role perfectly if properly implemented. Sadly, the devs seem utterly terrified of doing anything difficult outside Ultimate. And even that happened only to stop raiders from unsubbing in the odd numbered patches.

[Magic-Mal]

Thats still way too harmless. Hmmm...you need a certain (specialist) crafted item to try to capture it and one part of it only drops in Pagos in certain chest that has a drop rate under 0,1 %. The other one can be found in Diadem 2.0 because we want to keep the content alive. After you crafted it you can only use it once and the pet itself has only a capture rate of under 10%. Also it has a certain time and weather condition to spawn and if its spawns you need to wait a random amount of time to try and capture it...also this is not a pet that only spawns for the person but is catchable by everyone. Happy (toxic) hunting.

Community reaction: That is too complicated and not fun.

Devs: See we do exactly like they asked us to do and they still complain.

x) It may be a bit over the top but I honestly can start to see them doing something like that..

You forgot one part! Obligatory: You can only catch a maximum of 2 pets per week.

[TaleraRistain]

Honestly my biggest issue with the game, and maybe this is true of other MMOs as well, I don't know, but...

Why raid? Sure, there's the vaunted ilvl increase, but WHY? What do you need it for other than to raid?

I just wish there was some content, even ONE piece (I'm not counting Ultimate) of content for raiders that you needed raid gear to be able to do. Something different, something you could go into after raiding to make use of your gear because, outside of raiding, you don't need that gear for ANYTHING. Hell, unless you care about min-maxing, you can get on just fine with crafted/tome gear half the time.

I stopped raiding in Deltascape because, outside of Ultimate which had the same issue, I didn't see a reason to raid. Farm raid to do raid to farm raid to keep doing raid. Rinse and repeat. Combine with the constant gear turnover, lack of initiative outside of the raid itself, and it's just... Eh.

Or I could just be burned out and salty. That's a possibility too! :P

There's a problem with this sort of thing. Raiders get greedy. They conquer the raid content, then are bored in group or solo content. So they ask for group and solo content to be made more challenging. They never recognize the idea that the gear they are wearing is not designed for the content. So of course it is going to be easy. I've seen this in far too many other games to start supporting it here, unfortunately. This is the one MMO I've played that actually tries to not allow this gear gap to grow out of control and lock players out of their content. The most egregious example I saw was EverQuest II's Kunark expansion. When it first came out, the solo mobs hit like Mack trucks and you could only succeed it in it if you had raid gear. We warned the developers in beta that those of us in gear gained just through questing and solo content were inadequate, but they still allowed it to release broken. Then they had to do massive fixes when people started to quit.

[Dragon_punch]

One thing needs to be addressed is the Main story quests. For a new player looking to play with friends its overwhelming to get caught up. It wouldn't be a problem if most of the content wasn't gated by MSQ. Not to mention that most of the "fun" for a lot of jobs don't happen to much later thanks to the constant shifts in traits and abilities for 50+ the overall first half of the game is off-putting for newer players.

Allow friends to share their MSQ with party( Objectives, npc locations, etc.) As well as allowing party to participate in instanced fights. Were playing a MMO but for a newer players its a single-player game with a some dungeons between story. It wasn't bad on release, but now that were going into a 3rd expansion worth of story related content this seriously needs to be addressed.

Another issue is the content. With how far in-between patches are, their really needs to be content that has lasting appeal. For instance hate it or love it Deep dungeon will always be played because it's another alternative to dungeons and sitting through queue.

[ko_]

Thats still way too harmless. Hmmm...you need a certain (specialist) crafted item to try to capture it and one part of it only drops in Pagos in certain chest that has a drop rate under 0,1 %. The other one can be found in Diadem 2.0 because we want to keep the content alive. After you crafted it you can only use it once and the pet itself has only a capture rate of under 10%. Also it has a certain time and weather condition to spawn and if its spawns you need to wait a random amount of time to try and capture it...also this is not a pet that only spawns for the person but is catchable by everyone. Happy (toxic) hunting.

Community reaction: That is too complicated and not fun.

Devs: See we do exactly like they asked us to do and they still complain.

x) It may be a bit over the top but I honestly can start to see them doing something like that..

To be honest. I bet the devs say that NOW! With diffculty, with raiding, and with euerka. I can see them saying that already. " but you wanted things to be easier, and wanted FF11 systems in XIV." :c

[HyoMinPark]

There's a problem with this sort of thing. Raiders get greedy. They conquer the raid content, then are bored in group or solo content. So they ask for group and solo content to be made more challenging. They never recognize the idea that the gear they are wearing is not designed for the content. So of course it is going to be easy.

You’d have a point... if said level cap content wasn’t also faceroll easy without raid gear. It’s made even easier with BiS, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t easy to begin with (see: Swallow’s Compass). Expert dungeons and 24-mans are not super challenging content to do at the minimum item level, and they become even more trivial once you outgear them. The only content that may pose a challenge at minimum item level required are some of the Extremes (not all) and Savage.

Asking for more content to have teeth to it isn’t greed on the raiders’ part; for example, people complain about Royal Menagerie because of its sudden spike in difficulty compared to everything else, but it wasn’t designed on account of the raiders, nor with raiders in mind (the only content designed with raiders in mind anymore is Ultiamte—Savage has become increasingly midcore). I think content at cap should be more challenging to promote players actually learning things like proper rotations, etc., and it will also help with the transition from something like dungeons or Expert Roulette or a 24-man into Extremes and, eventually, Savage. As it stands now, the jump in difficulty is too high; I personally find it detrimental—because players will get to cap and they decide to tackle something like Savage only to discover that they were woefully unprepared for it, and subsequently cry for nerfs to the content. (Well, not even Savage really—look at Royal Menagerie, Castrum Fluminis NM... and before that, Weeping City, Dun Scaith, and Final Steps of Faith.)

There needs to be a gradual increase in difficult through leveling to prepare for end-game, and then gradual levels of difficulty at end-game as well. Not sudden spikes like we saw with most of 4.0’s content leading up to Royal Menagerie (which isn’t even hard, but it demands far more of players than anything else up to that point).

[Miste]

There's a problem with this sort of thing. Raiders get greedy. They conquer the raid content, then are bored in group or solo content. So they ask for group and solo content to be made more challenging. They never recognize the idea that the gear they are wearing is not designed for the content. So of course it is going to be easy.

Did you read what the poster asked for??? They didn't say to make our regular casual content more difficult, they were suggesting adding another mode besides ultimate to use raid gear in. Something you can do after you beat the raid tier to use the gear in. I can understand why they want to do something besides Ultimate. It is a large time investment that not everyone has time for, so to have some alternatives would be nice.

Maybe, for example, they might enjoy savage level dungeons?? They would be less time investment, and optional, just like the savage raids, so if you don't want to do them then you don't have to. It would simply be a challenge mode of existing dungeons where the mechanics and mobs are more difficult.

So really your response to them has nothing to do with what they asked for. Asking for our usual casual content to get more difficult is a separate topic. I was gonna point out how easy some content is even at minimum item level, but I noticed Hyo answered that so I'll leave it to her. You can make things a liiiitttle more challenging without going from 0 to 100 immediately.

I wouldn't make assumptions based on other totally different games with totally different communities, nor use the mistakes of a totally different dev team in another game to be wary of it happening here. It is reaching.

Also, I'm not sure why you are assuming all raiders, in any game, don't realize that the gear they get from raid level content isn't designed for casual stuff. I raid and I recognize it, I am quite sure I would not be the only one???? The fact I recognize it means you probably shouldn't be making blanket statements like that about raiders in general. Don't need anymore of that nonsense.


As for savage (this is in general, not towards anyone specific) it should be fun to do first and foremost. So, if you aren't having fun learning the fights etc, and simply doing it for the gear rewards then I'm not sure if that is a good idea. To each their own of course, but it will be kinda boring and suffering to do content you don't have fun doing.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

There's a problem with this sort of thing. Raiders get greedy. They conquer the raid content, then are bored in group or solo content. So they ask for group and solo content to be made more challenging. They never recognize the idea that the gear they are wearing is not designed for the content. So of course it is going to be easy. I've seen this in far too many other games to start supporting it here, unfortunately. This is the one MMO I've played that actually tries to not allow this gear gap to grow out of control and lock players out of their content. The most egregious example I saw was EverQuest II's Kunark expansion. When it first came out, the solo mobs hit like Mack trucks and you could only succeed it in it if you had raid gear. We warned the developers in beta that those of us in gear gained just through questing and solo content were inadequate, but they still allowed it to release broken. Then they had to do massive fixes when people started to quit.

I healed Swallow's Compass with Anemos gear and used only Regen and Assize despite the WAR having a hodgepodge of i340 and i350 gear. That's how easy the healing requirements are. Many casual players are asking for harder content, albeit not at raid levels. People, in general, want content that keeps them alert and asks something of them. Healers, in particular, complain about DPSing yet virtually everything does so little damage they would literally AFK otherwise. Once again, I have healed Sigma Normal without raid gear; in fact my friend and I typically heal together whenever new tiers release. One of us always winds up as a gimped DPS because the checks simply don't exist. I'll do Alphascape Normal on WHM or SCH come 4.4 in my various bits of i360-i370 gear and I guarantee you I'll spend far more time DPSing because the content doesn't ever ask two healers to participate.

And you accuse raiders of being greedy yet it was our content which has been watered down because you complained it was too difficult. How are we the ones entitled when the likes of Thordan EX, Sephirot EX and Brute Justice Savage were all taken away because you couldn't do it? I'll go you one better. We were promised three Ultimate fights this expansion only for the devs to renege and stop after Ultima. So please, tell me again how raiders are the greedy?

[Magic-Mal]

You’d have a point... if said level cap content wasn’t also faceroll easy without raid gear. It’s made even easier with BiS, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t easy to begin with (see: Swallow’s Compass). Expert dungeons and 24-mans are not super challenging content to do at the minimum item level, and they become even more trivial once you outgear them. The only content that may pose a challenge at minimum item level required are some of the Extremes (not all) and Savage.

Could be just my opinion but early HW, meaning 3.0-3.1, was the when the basic dungeon content was the most fun with 3.3 having the best 24-man. Then Rabanastre second and Dun Scaith third.

The original Saint Mocianne's Arboretum dungeon along with Vault of course, are my favorite dungeons ever. Fighting the hornet queen was actually something you had to be on your toes for as a healer and tank because her Stinger Cell tankbuster attack hit hard as heck for a dungeon. You HAD to use cooldowns to not take get 75% HP chopped off. I remember always trying to predict when she'd do it because there was no cast for it and she'd do it frequently but suddenly. And I remember the hornet bee formations being really deadly to players who got caught. We also of course had the lovely King Thordan EX and then blessed with our favorite Sephirot EX(more frustrating than today's raids imo but also my favorite EX).

It's a shame that right after that point everything got super easy and the old content like Arboretum and Vault got nerfed to the ground.. Once Sophia came around with respawn after falling and the 3.2 and 3.3 dungeons, I knew the game's difficulty level was going downhill. Then we got Zurvan. That sealed the deal.

[KageTokage]

I really wish we could get true "hard" modes for existing four mans that spice up the abilities on both the trash and bosses.

There are a lot of ways to recycle old content and make it interesting for the present that I don't think they're taking much advantage of.