Former WoW player: Suggested changes to FFXIV Raiding end-game

[MilkieTea]

In what way does having additional dungeon difficulties beyond the one-and-done faceroll as per OP's point #4... (1) have anything to do with gear, given that the rewards suggested were some "additional tomestones, titles, minions, and mounts", let alone (2) "make the end game a living hell for the other 99% of the playerbase who does not raid log"?

You're reading point #3, not point #4. OP's point #4 is about gearing.

Edit:

4) Gear stats are very boring. Besides glamour, there is no excitement to end-game gear when it's only a slight stat improvement, and every materia meld is prioritized for Crit. I would love for more interesting materia options (new competitive sub-stats or enchant procs), set bonuses, or even a trinket slot. I understand balance is an issue. But I also don't think that should excuse SE from not even attempting to make more interesting gear options. They definitely have the creativity in them, as Bozjan has shown. We lack that carrot on a stick to keep playing end-game.

[Cebo]

1. I agree largely, but the thing about dungeons is that they can only really remain challenging if people don't improve at the game.

Responding to your well-thought out points in kind:

1) I was really just referring to the design and layout of dungeons in this first point, not the challenge. It's disappointing that other than Bardem's Mettle, the ~30 dungeons we've gotten across SB and ShB have just been hallway simulators with different window dressing. Just as a simple example, why not have a new version of Haukke Manor with three wings and parties can tackle each wing in any order they so choose?

2) You're probably right about the nostalgia of past raids like Coils, Karazhan, and Icecrown making me forget about the tedium of farming them later . But at the very least, I'd like to see more varied arenas besides our usual circle/squares. I didn't realize though that there are engine complications that may prevent boss arenas from having different elevations, like Twintania/Caduceus.

3) Yup, I recall that heavy gear check in Gordias. I feel a scaling echo buff though for enemies would be simple to implement, and gives us an additional challenge like PotD. It also gives more incentives for groups to continue farming once they clear a Savage tier. Like I mentioned, my static has typically fallen off after clearing the first Savage tier in an expansion, and I think that's largely because there isn't any further content to make use of the gear upgrades. At that point, farming for more gear is just epeen flexing for DPS parses, and we inevitably get bored. And knowing that we can easily catch up in this game in a future raid cycle, why keep grinding?

But really, my suggestion was more for 4-man dungeons than Savage raids. It'd be nice to have some challenging small-group content to do in the interim of Savage tier releases, even if the only reward are bonus tomestones. This doesn't have to be Savage levels of difficulty, but like you mentioned above with Pharos Sirius in 2.1, SE is perfectly capable of designing 4-man dungeons to not be completely faceroll. And it's a way for us to actually make use of our improving gear ilvls.

4) You're probably right about set bonuses doing more harm than good. It'd also discourage the flexibility we have now mixing and matching raid gear and tomestone gear. I still feel our current materia options are very lackluster. I just don't think the complexity is there right now. Probably a hot take, but I even preferred Accuracy materia over Direct Hit, cause it added more nuance in gear customization (they just needed to display our hit % in the character window instead of leaving it to guesswork). As for my suggestion on trinkets, I only bring that up because I really enjoyed the Lost Action system in Bozja lol. Would love if a more minimal version of that was brought over to the main gameplay via a trinket slot.

[Shurrikhan]

I think more varied boss arenas would be the way to go currently as the boss fights are the focus.

That'd be a better expenditure of resource, imo, than "trash", but that's assuming the "trash" is as braindead as, well, trash.

For my part, I'd actually really like to see a more cohesive raid, as per the alliance ones, so long as the "trash" can be made interesting (and, ideally, CDs are all reset upon entering the boss arena proper). But yes, I'd take some variety in boss arenas over even good "trash" fights any day, despite loving ​the sense of exploration to a raid.

The part that doesn't quite sit right, in any either-or discussion of the two, though, is how much the two seem connected. True, we lost unique boss arenas (a la T1, T2, and especially the original T5) well before we lost trash, but it seems like there'd be some wasted opportunity or break in cohesion in introducing those boss arenas if not for some efforts meant to situate it prior, even, to the boss fight itself. Idk. It's just a nagging feeling.

1) Dungeon design has become more boring with each successive expansion. I am not talking about the aesthetic or music, which has improved tenfold. I am strictly talking about the design. Whereas in ARR we had unique dungeons like Haukke Manor and Qarn, with multiple side/secret paths and mobs that had to be interrupted or prioritized quickly (ie. bees), SB and ShB dungeons have become incredibly linear with wall-to-wall pulls to each boss. While I understand that over time people would speed run dungeons in the most efficient way, the current formulaic dungeon design leads to a stale experience.

I don't think it's the pathing that makes dungeons feel formulaic. If it even has a impact, it's probably notably less than well, almost everything else. While I'd enjoy a dungeon that actually takes advantage of its multiple paths -- such as by having a series of bosses available through multiple routes, each granting some bonus that carries over with designed intent into the fights after it, or even a dungeon in which we attack an Imperial base and it actually feels like an attack (franted, as a fresh PuG nightmare, I would not put that on a roulette) -- Haukke, like Matoya's Reliquery or w/e it's called, only feels worse to me for its backtracking.

2) Raid design too has simply turned into boss arenas, with no dungeon to actually explore. The boss encounters themselves are great, but I have not felt the same sense of wonder exploring a raid, as I did in Coils. It's sad that after 8 years playing this game, nothing has topped the experience of first venturing into Icecrown Citadel in WoW.

See above. I miss that exploration component, too, and the ocassional actually good trash fight, but I wouldn't sacrifice much for it.

3) 4-man dungeons and Savage raids need scaling difficulty. Savage is challenging, but since they are now designed to be cleared in initial crafting gear, they are completed rather quickly in a patch cycle, leaving very little to do for months on end. SE can take a page from Blizzard's book and introduce a scaling + system; ie. if you clear a dungeon/raid, you can then attempt a +1 version that scales enemy health/damage (eg. reverse echo), and then +2, and so on. Rewards for these challenges could include additional tomestones, titles, minions, and mounts.

Agreed. I'd love some replayability there, especially just to give some sort of content for those who like playing with friends but don't have enough simultaneous logged on to do 8-man content on the regular.

4) Gear stats are very boring. Besides glamour, there is no excitement to end-game gear when it's only a slight stat improvement, and every materia meld is prioritized for Crit. I would love for more interesting materia options (new competitive sub-stats or enchant procs), set bonuses, or even a trinket slot. I understand balance is an issue. But I also don't think that should excuse SE from not even attempting to make more interesting gear options. They definitely have the creativity in them, as Bozjan has shown. We lack that carrot on a stick to keep playing end-game.

Just keep it within reason, apart from balancing out the secondary stats we have now. FF7R, for instance, seemed to do a decent job with the amount of choices it brought. I certainly wouldn't want gearing to feel convoluted, though I suppose one could already make the case that the illusion of choice in our stats (worse, in some regards, than even in modern WoW), especially for how stale their effects are, is already pretty unintuitive.

[Juun]

Former WoW player here too. I want FFXIV to stay how it is and not cater to requests that other games do it better. Im pretty sure the reason WoW is in its current state is due to requests from the playerbase like this.

[Garnix]

1) I think dungeons just need two difficulties, like raids and trials. I don't even think we need mythic+ or this kind of system. But at least 2 difficulties, especially if we only get one dungeon per patch.
I also think that the same should apply to 24-man raids as well.
That would give raiders a little challenge to work on during odd-numbered patches.
+ aside from the struggle of putting a team together, watching Delubrum Savage runs was fun.

2) Raids became like that because people do not like trash pulls, and that's probably also why they added some solo instances in the Omega quest for example: so you just have to do it once and be done with it.
The sense of exploration in Coils was also related to the fact that there was no 'story mode'. The story and exploration was one of the rewards for doing the raid. You will never get this back.
The problem in terms of exploration with Eden is that it did not have any of those solo instances where you'd make your way to the next area either. It was just like "Oh let's go to the thunder plains" and we then get warped to the thunder plains. "Let's go to the jails of Eulmore" and we get warped there etc. That's why it really felt like moving from one boss to the next with nothing in-between.

3) Gear gating is not fun IMO. But maybe that's just me. I think they could give more rewards for doing min iLvl/no echo runs in general though.

4) Maybe it is boring, but since we are speaking about end-game raiding, it means we are mostly speaking about people who would try using the optimal stats anyways. So everybody would use the same items in the end, no matter what.
As you mention, Bozja proves that you can have fun with things....by breaking the balance. And I don't think breaking the balance would make savage raiding better. Rather the opposite in fact...
IMO, more than the gear itself, the carrot should be the fun of figuring out the fights together with your mates. If fun is not enough to make you sub, I don't think gear progression should.

They should definitely step-up in the amount of hard content they are releasing though. Especially with the amount of WoW refugees coming in lately, who are used to playing a raid-centric game.

[Wavaryen]

Also former wow player, and agree with others on this state. Things are fine as they are.

[DrWho2010]

Especially with the amount of WoW refugees coming in lately, who are used to playing a raid-centric game.

yes let's make this game that isn't WoW into WoW and then everything will be solved! smh

[Larirawiel]

I agree with the TS, especialy point 1, 2 and 4. That a reason why i can't play FF14 for a longer period of time. You know one dungeon and you know them all because the only differences between the dungeons are different colors.



I find point 3 is not a good game design offering content with different difficulty levels. It is all about cutting costs and a reason to make less new content.


Cheers

[TeraRamis]

I just feel like, as things stand, gear in FFXIV is pretty close to being worthless - especially when ultimates normalize item level. Is that a problem? Uh, I dunno - not really? There's so much about the game that doesn't really revolved around the gear (and thus, by extension, the high-end raiding scene) that even a minor change in this regard would mark a fundamental shift in the paradigm that governs FFXIV. Having said that, I do miss the feeling of just overpowering content at the end of an expansion because you've evolved into such a terrifying beast. That never really occurs in this game. Yeah, you improve your gear, and some people have the nicest items possible, but, at the end of the day, individual performance has as much (or more) to do with dodging stuff and not dying than becoming a human flamethrower.

Honestly, if I had to make one thing about FFXIV more like WoW (and, really, this is the only thing), it's the PvP. Because the PvP in this game is just terrible.

[Vyrerus]

Responding

1) What about Bardam's Mettle makes it not a hallway simulator? Is it the fact that you can look out upon an endless expanse of plains at first, though you cannot walk beyond the hall?

2) Over time people have forgotten the actual reason for the elevation change to Twintania's arena. It wasn't that elevation changes allowed for, "Divebomb Cheese." It was that the slope leading into the arena had a staggeringly strange affect on enmity and line of sight. You can actually "cheese" the divebombs on any section of the outer ring. People misunderstand this mechanic all of the time, both then and now. The actual cheese came from stacking everyone, and everyone moving forward and back promptly, causing Twintania to always divebomb from the same angle. The divet was used so that add pickup of the Asclepius was easier to do. They have some leeway on arean design and elevation changes. It's just, in order to fight across elevation, melee oriented jobs including tanks would have to be given their own separate platforms, because part of verticality goes against their melee distance. Proof of concept: Copperbell Mines First Boss -> You can hit it with any ranged attack if you get the right angle before it drops down to fight you in melee range.

3) That's just your static coming to terms with what has always been true about games with a vertical progression gearing system. The only actually important gear is entry level/clearing level gear. Everything beyond that is actually fluff and bluster. This has been true for FFXIV in every instance. Ultimates have already solved your problem, though there aren't enough of them for every iteration of BIS, but then, if you already understand the proof of this concept, then you understand that gear upgrades are transitory by nature, so you should be playing solely for the gameplay, not for a carrot on a stick.

It would be nice to get new dungeons that present more of a challenge. They could conceivably add dungeons that split your party or have spontaneous split paths, like in 24 man raids, such that the same dungeons feel a bit different every time, but I think that the dev team has shied away from dungeons on the whole.

4) My only beef with Direct Hit is that it's basically Crit Junior. It's basically what the Crit stat was originally in this game back in 2.0 before HW added the stacking crit damage. I don't really miss accuracy in gearing, because while it made sense to a degree, it also made people do stupid things like, "I only need accuracy from flank/back." Then that caused things like 1% wipes where, because the boss turned on a DPS after a tank screwed up, the DPS missed, and the boss managed to hit enrage cause it didn't die due to misses. Also though, caster innately having to stack less accuracy gear than everyone else was kind of lame. I don't think Trinkets would be balanced either. The small increases would either be boring or flex fluff. Anything special is automatically inimical to standard fight design. If Trinkets are really good though, what drops them? If they're not worth the hassle, then it's a waste of dev time etc.