Idea Bag: How to get players to unlock older content (eg Raids)

[OliverQ]

I would ask myself why even play the game if I have no interest in unlocking content, especially the more fun content. Crystal Tower is insanely boring. Why would you not want to unlock the far better optional raids? I think they just need to do a better job of explaining where and how to unlock the new raids.

[UkcsAlias]

Instead of throwing more rewards at things, wouldn't it be better to find out why so many players don't want to do the content in the first place and then address that problem?

Lack of rewards for the effort put into it.
Long queue times that could have been spent better.
Due to lack of showing up, when it does can be frustrating (a lot more likely to wipe)

Those 3 combined are the worst offenders.

Since the 50 and 60 raids are excessively common, any raid beyond that rarely gets featured at all. And if you want one of those, queue times can easily go up to an hour (enough for 3 duties, and even 2x the lvl 50 aliance raids). As there is no lvl 90 raid in it, there is no reward other than glams/scrolls/minions/cards. You wont get any better gear here. And to make things worse as the chance to win the roll at the end is small, even just going for collecting these is tedious. Only collectors will be willing to do this, but most of them already have the stuff they want by now.

This is where the tomestone events help those raids a lot, as suddenly they are rewarding again (not the best rewards, but at least makes it worth going for with short queue times). Sadly only 1/3 raids for each expansion benefits here though so even there is suboptimal (i realy would have liked it if each raid would get a weekly boost of 5 tomes to movitate doing them over the last raid over and over).

And during these times, as they are played regularly, players learn quickly so wipes are less likely. Wipes take time after all (its not just the walking, but entire boss progress that was lost). But this wouldnt be an issue with better rewards.

But to solve it outside of tomestone events, there are ways, but usualy not worth it (or very short term). It needs a system that keeps them relevant for rewards in later content, and force rotations in them to ensure all raids are getting a time in which they are relevant.

[Myrany]

I would ask myself why even play the game if I have no interest in unlocking content, especially the more fun content. Crystal Tower is insanely boring. Why would you not want to unlock the far better optional raids? I think they just need to do a better job of explaining where and how to unlock the new raids.

What is fun for you is not necessarily fun for everyone. Extreme and higher trials are not fun to me. Extremes are right on the bleeding edge of what I am capable of doing physically and almost never pop in Duty Finder (or if they do they pop and someone trolls the group until everyone leaves). After trying a bunch of that stuff including the first 2 parts of coils I just sort of gave up on chasing blue quest markers to find out it was content I either cant do or wont get the chance to do. I just figured there were no more alliance raids so I didn't even look for them. I figured it was another abandoned system from ARR. I also did not know that normal raids could be done with duty finder so I didn't bother to unlock those either.

For me it was a case of why beat myself upside the head to unlock content I would never get to do or be able to do. Even so I have had a ton of fun over the years in this game without them. No regrets about playing the game at all even with content I didn't unlock.

[VerdeLuck]

What is fun for you is not necessarily fun for everyone. Extreme and higher trials are not fun to me. Extremes are right on the bleeding edge of what I am capable of doing physically and almost never pop in Duty Finder (or if they do they pop and someone trolls the group until everyone leaves). After trying a bunch of that stuff including the first 2 parts of coils I just sort of gave up on chasing blue quest markers to find out it was content I either cant do or wont get the chance to do. I just figured there were no more alliance raids so I didn't even look for them. I figured it was another abandoned system from ARR. I also did not know that normal raids could be done with duty finder so I didn't bother to unlock those either.

For me it was a case of why beat myself upside the head to unlock content I would never get to do or be able to do. Even so I have had a ton of fun over the years in this game without them. No regrets about playing the game at all even with content I didn't unlock.

All of the alliance raids are easier than Coils and have faster queue times in DF than Coils and Extremes. There is no reason to be limiting yourself to Crystal Tower only unless you're like the OP and are trying to minmax the amount of time it takes to grind an alt from level 1 to all 90s.

[Myrany]

Lack of rewards for the effort put into it.
Long queue times that could have been spent better.
Due to lack of showing up, when it does can be frustrating (a lot more likely to wipe)

Those 3 combined are the worst offenders.

Since the 50 and 60 raids are excessively common, any raid beyond that rarely gets featured at all. And if you want one of those, queue times can easily go up to an hour (enough for 3 duties, and even 2x the lvl 50 aliance raids). As there is no lvl 90 raid in it, there is no reward other than glams/scrolls/minions/cards. You wont get any better gear here. And to make things worse as the chance to win the roll at the end is small, even just going for collecting these is tedious. Only collectors will be willing to do this, but most of them already have the stuff they want by now.

This is where the tomestone events help those raids a lot, as suddenly they are rewarding again (not the best rewards, but at least makes it worth going for with short queue times). Sadly only 1/3 raids for each expansion benefits here though so even there is suboptimal (i realy would have liked it if each raid would get a weekly boost of 5 tomes to movitate doing them over the last raid over and over).

And during these times, as they are played regularly, players learn quickly so wipes are less likely. Wipes take time after all (its not just the walking, but entire boss progress that was lost). But this wouldnt be an issue with better rewards.

But to solve it outside of tomestone events, there are ways, but usualy not worth it (or very short term). It needs a system that keeps them relevant for rewards in later content, and force rotations in them to ensure all raids are getting a time in which they are relevant.

Actually I got tomestones (4 for the first and 10 for the second) for the first 2 parts of the lvl 60 raids I have done so far. 14 is for the third which I will do this evening after I have watched a video on it a few more time.

Edit: It is 6 moogle tomestones for the first part not 4 my bad

[Myrany]

All of the alliance raids are easier than Coils and have faster queue times in DF than Coils and Extremes. There is no reason to be limiting yourself to Crystal Tower only unless you're like the OP and are trying to minmax the amount of time it takes to grind an alt from level 1 to all 90s.

no actually I am not min/maxing. In my previous post I pointed out that I am working on unlocking them now. I just honestly did not know differently. I argued with extremes and coils and figured the alliance raid thing was an abandoned system and never looked for the raids until I saw people complaining on the forums that all they got was CT. That told me there were others to find. If you play alone. Don't have a mentor or anyone else to tell you differently that ARR experience is pretty convincing that there is nothing else for you.

[Payadopa]

Maybe they should just randomise EXP gains on a daily basis. Today you get more from HW raids, tomorrow it's EW alliances. Like Khloe.

[kaynide]

There already are rewards for doing Alliance raids, they're fun. Just because someone wants to mindlessly spam whatever has the higher xp to time return doesn't mean they need to be catered to with extra prizes dangled over their heads to get them to stop acting like that.

The problem isn't a player being lazy or that they need to "stop acting like that", it's that there really isn't a pull for a certain demographic to do the alliance raid series (including storyline). In other words, after finishing the main course and given all the options of desert, they choose not to take the perfectly good cake and instead go for the ice cream. Or a cookie. Or a brownie. So how do we encourage more people to try the cake, even if just once. More so for people who don't really like cake. We just want them to try it.

And I am absolutely 100% min/maxing- it's true. I spend most of my free time playing entirely other games and (in the current situation of FFXIV) I want as much XP/hour in game as humanly possible in as few hours as possible- less than 30 min a day in roulettes is perfect.

I would ask myself why even play the game if I have no interest in unlocking content, especially the more fun content. Crystal Tower is insanely boring. Why would you not want to unlock the far better optional raids? I think they just need to do a better job of explaining where and how to unlock the new raids.

Some people like vanilla icecream and refuse to try the rocky road. I dunno man. But I do agree, the raids should be much easier to spot. Like there should be an NPC in each STARTING town that just straight up directs you to all endgame content, for all expacs.. kinda like the Rowena rep selling stuff.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem isn't a player being lazy or that they need to "stop acting like that", it's that there really isn't a pull for a certain demographic to do the alliance raid series (including storyline). In other words, after finishing the main course and given all the options of desert, they choose not to take the perfectly good cake and instead go for the ice cream. Or a cookie. Or a brownie. So how do we encourage more people to try the cake, even if just once. More so for people who don't really like cake. We just want them to try it.

And I am absolutely 100% min/maxing- it's true. I spend most of my free time playing entirely other games and (in the current situation of FFXIV) I want as much XP/hour in game as humanly possible in as few hours as possible- less than 30 min a day in roulettes is perfect.

So, first time rewards are definitely a thing, but not especially well highlighted nor dangled for dopamine. Eventually, as a sort of game-wide adjustment/addition, we could do more to highlight what not-yet-attempted content is available to a player of a given level/progression (likely with brief descriptions [maybe even embedded videos] of the given content and an ignore button to remove or de-prioritize certain contents shown).

And I am absolutely 100% min/maxing- it's true. I spend most of my free time playing entirely other games and (in the current situation of FFXIV) I want as much XP/hour in game as humanly possible in as few hours as possible- less than 30 min a day in roulettes is perfect.

This, too, could just come down to adjusting how (A) roulettes work to offer similar reward-per-minute across the board, with all roulettes giving a similar degree of reward-efficiency and with capped tomes converting into the next tier down (and 2k tomes being automatically convertable to / usable as Poetics if one runs out of Poetics) and/or (B) offering further weekly rewards for roulettes or randomized daily further bonuses as to further vary which roulettes get used (with the weekly max for Roulettes with a large number of optional unlocks being the highest when everything in them is unlocked).

[Myrany]

Here is a thought along the lines of changing the unlock markers.

How about if it is aliance or normal the marker to start is one color. If it is extreme it is another color. If it is savage another color. etc

Then people like me could run around only picking up the quests for the stuff of a level they want to play.