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

[TaleraRistain]

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.

Hard disagree here. I feel for the WoW players that they're finding themselves without their preferred game to play. However, this is not WoW and the solution is not to have this game become WoW. WoW players should appreciate this game for what it offers, and if it's not offering what they need, then there are other options. We all have that choice and many of us stay here because it's not like other games out there and doesn't focus on the same things.

[Garnix]

Hard disagree here. I feel for the WoW players that they're finding themselves without their preferred game to play. However, this is not WoW and the solution is not to have this game become WoW. WoW players should appreciate this game for what it offers, and if it's not offering what they need, then there are other options. We all have that choice and many of us stay here because it's not like other games out there and doesn't focus on the same things.

Again, I am not saying that it should become WoW and become all about raids.

I am a casual player myself and don't do any difficult content whatsoever.
I think that the team is doing a good job for players like me. The amount of non-endgame-raiding content is fine. And they are adding more and more and more over time.
Including that Island Sanctuary which is likely to become a big part of my time in game depending on what it actually ends up being.

However, what I am observing is that a lot of the criticisms the game is getting, especially with Shadowbringers, and even from people who have been playing the game for years, are about the lack of challenging content.
So, while I personally don't care, I think they should not cater to any specific audience. Which means there should be more casual content AND more difficult content.

[Jojoya]

Again, I am not saying that it should become WoW and become all about raids.

I am a casual player myself and don't do any difficult content whatsoever.
I think that the team is doing a good job for players like me. The amount of non-endgame-raiding content is fine. And they are adding more and more and more over time.
Including that Island Sanctuary which is likely to become a big part of my time in game depending on what it actually ends up being.

However, what I am observing is that a lot of the criticisms the game is getting, especially with Shadowbringers, and even from people who have been playing the game for years, are about the lack of challenging content.
So, while I personally don't care, I think they should not cater to any specific audience. Which means there should be more casual content AND more difficult content.

Any game has to decide on what audience it wants to cater to. It's impossible to please everyone. There's not enough time to make enough content for everyone to get something they want.

Deviate from what had been a successful formula and you end up with a WoW - a game with a player base a fraction of the size of what it had been at its peak with the numbers being masked by a reboot of the original game that's turned out to be more popular than what the game has become.

[Cebo]

Any game has to decide on what audience it wants to cater to. It's impossible to please everyone. There's not enough time to make enough content for everyone to get something they want.

Deviate from what had been a successful formula and you end up with a WoW - a game with a player base a fraction of the size of what it had been at its peak with the numbers being masked by a reboot of the original game that's turned out to be more popular than what the game has become.

This is what I don't get though. Asking for more varied dungeon designs and boss arenas doesn't seem like it's catering to hardcore raiders at all. Do casual players really enjoy every end-game dungeon resulting in the same wall-to-wall pull then boss ad nauseum?

And adding a scaling challenge mode to dungeons, where the only reward is extra tomestones, titles, or cosmetics, doesn't affect the casual playerbase. It'd solely be an optional challenge, providing more end-game content to those that want to partake in it, and NOT at the expense of casuals missing out on gear/story. If people don't care for it, that's perfectly fine. They can simply ignore it, just as I ignore crafting or mahjong cause it's not my cup of tea. Why deny the option of having challenge modes to other players?

[Controller]

This is what I don't get though. Asking for more varied dungeon designs and boss arenas doesn't seem like it's catering to hardcore raiders at all. Do casual players really enjoy every end-game dungeon resulting in the same wall-to-wall pull then boss ad nauseum?

And adding a scaling challenge mode to dungeons, where the only reward is extra tomestones, titles, or cosmetics, doesn't affect the casual playerbase. It'd solely be an optional challenge, providing more end-game content to those that want to partake in it, and NOT at the expense of casuals missing out on gear/story. If people don't care for it, that's perfectly fine. They can simply ignore it, just as I ignore crafting or mahjong cause it's not my cup of tea. Why deny the option of having challenge modes to other players?

I think the fear is we all seen what M plus and other systems did to WoW. I mean people in WoW don't want it, so asking for it here is like asking a dog to jump off a cliff. It just seems like a bad idea. And alot of people would rather it never be tried at all then for it to be tried but a different way. Pretty much it didn't work in WoW so noone wants FFXIV to even try to make it work here. Also same with dungeons. People say they want crazier dungeons but when dungeons were crazy noone liked them. So people just want things as they are cause changing it can cause chaos.

[Cebo]

I think the fear is we all seen what M plus and other systems did to WoW. I mean people in WoW don't want it, so asking for it here is like asking a dog to jump off a cliff. It just seems like a bad idea. And alot of people would rather it never be tried at all then for it to be tried but a different way. Pretty much it didn't work in WoW so noone wants FFXIV to even try to make it work here. Also same with dungeons. People say they want crazier dungeons but when dungeons were crazy noone liked them. So people just want things as they are cause changing it can cause chaos.

TBH, though, the fear that these changes will turn the game into WoW seems like a knee-jerk reaction to any suggested improvements. It's almost as if people forget that FFXIV was WoW-inspired to begin with. A lot of the suggestions in the OP were even in Classic WoW, before it devolved into its current sad state.

For example, I think the scaling difficulty that WoW introduced is a solid system that adds more challenges and longevity to the end-game. But I feel the toxicity that it bred in WoW came from the limited mythic keys and scaling iLvl requirements. Take away the key system and scaling gear, and you just have an optional challenge with no tangible rewards besides titles/cosmetics. People still have their normal duty roulette if they just want to stomp through the dungeons while watching Netflix (much like levelling through Floors 51-60 in PotD). But if someone wants to challenge themselves further, they can stack on incremental difficulty increases to the dungeon (ie. PotD floors 100+). To me, arguing against scaling difficulty in 4-man dungeons is akin to saying having PotD 100+ challenges is bad for the game.

[ForteNightshade]

I think the fear is we all seen what M plus and other systems did to WoW. I mean people in WoW don't want it, so asking for it here is like asking a dog to jump off a cliff. It just seems like a bad idea. And alot of people would rather it never be tried at all then for it to be tried but a different way. Pretty much it didn't work in WoW so noone wants FFXIV to even try to make it work here. Also same with dungeons. People say they want crazier dungeons but when dungeons were crazy noone liked them. So people just want things as they are cause changing it can cause chaos.

... this is, once again, blatantly untrue. M+ is cited as one of the better aspects of WoW and has been routinely asked for in FFXIV. What WoW players dislike about M+ is how they're expected to farm for upgrades that are entirely RNG, and that it's the only way to improve their gear. A FFXIV comparable would be the Atma step except you have no other alternative; not Savage, not dungeons, not raids, nothing. You either farm for an RNG drop endlessly or your progression grinds to a complete halt. Oh, and the next expansion will completely invalidate all that work.

In other words, Mythic+ as a concept is beloved. It's the execution and needless RNG components that are the issue.

Putting all that aside. Refusing to adapt ideas other games have accomplished, even if the implementation is flawed will lead to a stale game. FFXIV literally started off as a WoW clone in concept. So much so, Yoshida outright forced the entire dev team to play it so they understood the type of game they were crafting. So to suddenly throw out ideas WoW has goes against the very decision that created FFXIV to begin with. If you can take from your competition and improve upon where they failed, you're only going to attract more players because you're offering something they can't get in the way they prefer.

[Shurrikhan]

... this is, once again, blatantly untrue. M+ is cited as one of the better aspects of WoW and has been routinely asked for in FFXIV. What WoW players dislike about M+ is how they're expected to farm for upgrades that are entirely RNG, and that it's the only way to improve their gear. A FFXIV comparable would be the Atma step except you have no other alternative; not Savage, not dungeons, not raids, nothing. You either farm for an RNG drop endlessly or your progression grinds to a complete halt. Oh, and the next expansion will completely invalidate all that work.

But, but, the people who pride themselves on having barely touched it, if at all, tell me it's horrible! It actually killed this one guy's neighbor's goat and badmouthed his cat. /s


Really, though... it's nearly drool-inducing to imagine scalable content without all the WoW-wrapped BS:

No keys. No weekly affixes (outside of maybe light bonuses during Relic grinds, but that'd be dungeon-specific). No Vault. No ilvl crawl.

Just pick the dungeon you want to do, at whatever difficulty level you want to do it. Add, if you want, whatever "Trial" (i.e., a cohesive set of dungeon-adjustment or "Affixes" actually tailored to feel cohesive together) to make some things easier and other parts harder, but generally just... fresh/different. Use the rewarded currency to actually buy the pieces you want, instead of being forced to wait on RNG. Unwanted drops get automatically converted into currency.

/chef's kiss

[Controller]

... this is, once again, blatantly untrue. M+ is cited as one of the better aspects of WoW and has been routinely asked for in FFXIV. What WoW players dislike about M+ is how they're expected to farm for upgrades that are entirely RNG, and that it's the only way to improve their gear. A FFXIV comparable would be the Atma step except you have no other alternative; not Savage, not dungeons, not raids, nothing. You either farm for an RNG drop endlessly or your progression grinds to a complete halt. Oh, and the next expansion will completely invalidate all that work.

In other words, Mythic+ as a concept is beloved. It's the execution and needless RNG components that are the issue.

Putting all that aside. Refusing to adapt ideas other games have accomplished, even if the implementation is flawed will lead to a stale game. FFXIV literally started off as a WoW clone in concept. So much so, Yoshida outright forced the entire dev team to play it so they understood the type of game they were crafting. So to suddenly throw out ideas WoW has goes against the very decision that created FFXIV to begin with. If you can take from your competition and improve upon where they failed, you're only going to attract more players because you're offering something they can't get in the way they prefer.

But that's what I meant. The only example people use is what it is currently in WoW.. so when they talk about it being somewhere else THATS what that recall. And thats what they DON'T want. Noone is talking about the idea.. they are talking about what it is. And what it is noone wants. That's what I was talking about. Now if those people who I keep hearing from on the WoW forums and youtubes and everything else never touched the content then they could've fooled me. Asmongold is one of those people. If it's THAT hated then I agree. If SE can make a version of that that isn't what is in WoW then kool... But the only example we have is what is current. And THAT is what noone wants.

[TaleraRistain]

Again, I am not saying that it should become WoW and become all about raids.

I am a casual player myself and don't do any difficult content whatsoever.
I think that the team is doing a good job for players like me. The amount of non-endgame-raiding content is fine. And they are adding more and more and more over time.
Including that Island Sanctuary which is likely to become a big part of my time in game depending on what it actually ends up being.

However, what I am observing is that a lot of the criticisms the game is getting, especially with Shadowbringers, and even from people who have been playing the game for years, are about the lack of challenging content.
So, while I personally don't care, I think they should not cater to any specific audience. Which means there should be more casual content AND more difficult content.

They already have Savage and Ultimate and sometimes Extremes. The challenging content is already there. But it's the typical problem of people who only focus on one aspect, chew through that, and then want more more more. They are never satisfied. This game doesn't cater to that mindset. It tries to have a balance for everyone.