Lack of End Game Content

[Kamatsu]

The only way to really prevent WF groups from day 1/2/3-ing it is to gear gate, which (if we recall back to Gordias) nobody likes.

If you read enough of the post's here in this thread from those pushing for 'endgame raiding' this is exactly what they want. They have said that endgame raiding without exclusive gear with better stats is pointless... yes they want endgame raids, but they want it to have gear that's better than non-raid gear.

So say they get what they want... what happens when they clear the new endgame raids and have the new BiS gear? They ask for more raids that are harder, that require the prior raids BiS gear to complete, etc.

If all they were interested in was 'hard' raids, trials, etc... then they have plenty of options - the Ultimate's, doing raids & trials synched @ min ilvl, etc. But they've said enough times this isn't what they want... they want SE to work on raids that are 'current', that are set at the end of the 'current content'... and they most def want it to bring in gear-gating, as they specifically have said time and again they want the raids to have better gear as otherwise not really worth doing.

I also find it amusing how they constantly try and claim that FFXIV was 'their game' that 'casuals' ruined. Funny thing is XIV has never been an end-game raiding game. While some of it's content was harder at launch than it is now, it was never about the endgame raids... but the story to get there. Unlike games like WoW where the "story" ended in the games raids... XIV's raids were side-story, had important lore but not needed to complete for the story.

What they could say is that companies like Blizzard ruined their 'genre' since they saw that they could make lots of money by making an MMO that was accessible to everyone. Thus WoW came into being - an MMO that was accessible to casuals, that ppl could solo most of the content... sure it had endgame raids, and focused a lot of it's marketing & dev time on the raids... but fact is unlike prior MMO's like Everquest, UO, etc people could play solo and do the vast majority of the content solo. About the only thing that couldn't be solo'ed was dungeons, raids, world bosses and some area's/events in the open world. There's a specific reason hunter's were the most played class in WoW for the longest time - it was the easiest class to solo content with.

Prior to WoW, the MMO's that were around were a lot harder, more focused on grouping, etc. Games like Everquest were extremely hard to solo, had group-only fights/area's/mobs to fight, had timed group-only raid mobs, etc. There were also other MMO's like UO that were hard to solo due to open-world PvP design rather than hard-to-fight ai enemies... which meant playing in groups to stop being ganked by other groups of players.

And then came WoW, which made MMO's popular due to being able to be solo'ed. And so came the flood of "WoW clones" and the "casulazation' of the MMO genre... as dev's turned away from hard content that only a small % of ppl had any interest in, and moved instead to 'easy' content that the masses liked and would pay for., There's a reason that the big MMO's (whether due to financial success, or being 'known' and still earning enough to be online) that are still around are heavy story focused MMO's, that focus a lot on being able to be played solo, with just a touch of non-required hard-content -> MMO's such as ESO, FFXIV, SW:TOR, GW2, etc.

[Kaylessa]

What they could say is that companies like Blizzard ruined their 'genre' since they saw that they could make lots of money by making an MMO that was accessible to everyone. Thus WoW came into being - an MMO that was accessible to casuals, that ppl could solo most of the content... sure it had endgame raids, and focused a lot of it's marketing & dev time on the raids... but fact is unlike prior MMO's like Everquest, UO, etc people could play solo and do the vast majority of the content solo. About the only thing that couldn't be solo'ed was dungeons, raids, world bosses and some area's/events in the open world. There's a specific reason hunter's were the most played class in WoW for the longest time - it was the easiest class to solo content with.

Prior to WoW, the MMO's that were around were a lot harder, more focused on grouping, etc. Games like Everquest were extremely hard to solo, had group-only fights/area's/mobs to fight, had timed group-only raid mobs, etc. There were also other MMO's like UO that were hard to solo due to open-world PvP design rather than hard-to-fight ai enemies... which meant playing in groups to stop being ganked by other groups of players.

And then came WoW, which made MMO's popular due to being able to be solo'ed. And so came the flood of "WoW clones" and the "casulazation' of the MMO genre... as dev's turned away from hard content that only a small % of ppl had any interest in, and moved instead to 'easy' content that the masses liked and would pay for., There's a reason that the big MMO's (whether due to financial success, or being 'known' and still earning enough to be online) that are still around are heavy story focused MMO's, that focus a lot on being able to be played solo, with just a touch of non-required hard-content -> MMO's such as ESO, FFXIV, SW:TOR, GW2, etc.

Yeah, WoW killed Everquest by aiming at a more casual audience, that is definitely true. Blizzard have been really good at taking a genre, and making it popular by simplifying it. Hearthstone, WoW etc. They became huge by stealing the best bits from other games … which is why it's not surprising they've just pinched FFXIV's level sync idea for dungeons and are testing it in their PTR :P

ESO isn't heavily story focused. Unlike FFXIV which has a strong main story, ESO has more in depth sidequests which makes for a more interesting questing experience and ties into their strong exploration gameplay. Still strongly solo though

[CorbinDallas]

snip

No, we really don't want another Gordias. Gordias Savage single handedly almost killed the entire raiding scene in this game, leading many people to give up altogether, quit the game, transfer servers (cross world wasn't a thing back then). It broke apart statics and friendships because if you didn't have the gear, one misaligned cooldown early on and you may as well just wipe, because you aren't meeting that enrage. One death, wipe. One incorrect Digititis pass? Wipe.

That's how bad it was. My static at the time spent the whole 6 months of 3.05 - 3.2 regularly raiding and only got as far as Cascade in A3S. Talk to literally anyone who was actually there and participated in that content and they will tell you the exact same thing. There's difficult, there's ultimate, but what we don't want is sadistic time wasting.