Luckybancho census shows criterion savage was a complete and utter failure

[Striker44]

I can safely say m+ is a gigantic success in WoW while criterion is... well... a gigantic failure.

Idk why you're out here trying to tell people they should be grateful they aren't getting fun and rewarding content (aka m+) and that they should be happy with the unrewarding soulless bore that is criterion.

Please make it make sense lol, and last thing, stop pretending they read these forums, the only thing they might be reading are the JP ones if even that.

Before you speak nonsense, stick to the reality and don't blame the issues with that piece of content on the playerbase.

Actually, this was one of the biggest fears I had - that what people were seeking was bringing M+ to FFXIV. My opinion is that WoW's focus on M+ is one of the things that led me to leave that game, as I saw it lead to a focus on e-sports and the utterly, utterly toxic crowd that attracts. It felt here like we had the WoW exodus going and a push to turn FFXIV into the same thing I had chosen to leave behind. I've been beyond grateful that the FFXIV devs didn't give Criterion meaningful gear rewards, and stuck to the philosophy that it's meant to be high-level content, but for 4-person groups instead of 8-man raids. The "reward" comes from the satisfaction of working together to defeat difficult content.

Personally, I wouldn't call M+ a "gigantic success", either. It's far from the only cause, but I count it as a significant part of WoW's decline. It's popular - among the select portion of the original playerbase that remains, but it helped drive out far more people in the process. That's not a success...

[ForteNightshade]

The population of "active players" ignores anyone leveling through 70. That could be 1/10 or 1/3 or 1/2 of current players, for all we'll know. That's why it is not irrelevant in any analysis.

And I've been reading that ask for "harder four man content" for nearly a decade now ... not "Mythic+ dungeons please". Well, except over the last 4 years when the WoW players decided to migrate from the abominations that were Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands.

Be thankful, or you'd be running some variant of Mythic+ Sastasha over and over and over and over and ...

We're specifically talking about the clear rates for Criterion though not the overall "active player" count. Hence why it isn't relative to this discussion. Regardless, Luckybancho does this to help mitigate bots and free trial accounts that don't stick around. He acknowledges it isn't a full proof system but more of a general estimation.

Then you haven't read often because I've been on this forum for nearly eight years on two separate accounts and seen Mythic+ brought up constantly. Nevermind elsewhere on the Internet. Hell, Mizzteq herself asked Yoshida directly during the Shadowbringers media tour. And I'm rather certain Happy's brought it up too. All of this was well before the WoW exodus.

I also love how your rebuttal is little more than a strawman. Where did I say they would copy M+ wholesale? FFXIV wouldn't necessarily use it for gear rewards like WoW does. Therefore, we wouldn't be spamming it the same way. Either way as Stormpeaks points out, M+ is widely successful whereas Criterion flopped so spectacularly I think Lord of Verminion has seen better numbers. Suffice it to say, maybe they're on to something.

The diamond in the rough is ultimately regular criterion and it is what imo SE should focus at.

I've said it multiple times before but it bears repeating. The simple solution is to reduce Criterion's difficulty to what it always should have been: EX while slightly bumping up Variant. Just enough to compensate for adding all the lost action nonsense and letting players go wild. From there, toss in the damn relic and make Criterion give a substantially bigger reward towards building it for incentive sake and bam, you've fixed the two major issues with Endwalker: lackluster repeatability and poor reward structure. Now the Savage version can abandon the whole "no rez" aspect that virtually no one likes and instead add new mechanics but require said lost actions and maybe set bonuses on your relic to succeed. Finally, you can slap the "no rez" on an achievement where it's always belonged and there you have it.

Why they ever thought Criterion in its current state would be attractive baffles me. Ultimate works because it's a brand new fight. Criterion Savage is literally the same thing but with higher damage numbers and raise. All for what had been no rewards. It was all but guaranteed to fail the second they released it in that state.

[MitsukiKimura]

When I saw the rewards from Criterion/Criterion savage the moment they released this content, I instantly laughed and felt bad. They required you to run this sort of content with minimal deaths/no deaths for "Materia". Why bother with this when you can partake in a hunt train for x10times the reward and less time involved. Always felt like the team behind EW's patches do not understand the concept of meaningful rewards for time invested. 22minute encounter with multiple bosses/adds and all I get is weapon glamour though this is only worth it if the person has not done ultimate fights and isn't already using weapon glamour from that. True the item level is same as P12S savage though you can't really complete this content without being near cap item level in the first place so makes it kind of pointless. 7 months have passed since the last raid tier you'd think they would allow Savage gearing materials be available from this let alone unlock the tome Cap.

[Hyperia]

While the rewards are definitely a problem with Criterion, the chosen difficulty is the larger issue. We wanted dungeons that are harder than Expert, which really is easier than the MSQ dungeons (go figure). Having an echo option in would be a useful tool for the Devs to gauge if it's too hard. I'm not sold on the harsh death penalty for savage, I would prefer that they just hit harder and require more DPS to clear. Variant solo is also a pain as the bosses have too many hit points and take a long time to clear. Using them as a faster option to get a future relic would also generate more interest along with adding a roulette option.

TLDR: They made them too hard with too little reward for the effort expended and no easy option to get help besides using PF which is undesirable.

[xbahax92]

Another issue of dev view vs. player view.
Dev's think this way is the most fun, while in reality it rarely is.
And if content isn't successful: it's players fault, cause "players cannot find a common denominator".
Best example was Eureka. Kill monsters in chains for hours non-stop. For a single cluster drop. Great concept btw. /s

[Colt47]

Part of the problem is that they are slow to change things during an expansion. FFXIV development feels a lot like a railroad: They build the railroad ahead of time and then people start riding the train down the rail road. If people don't like the trip they can't really build another railroad from the station to where the train currently is, move the train to the new track, and then continue, they can only keep building on that track and try to change it's course.

And at the same time they are doing this players are growing tired of FFXIV since after an expansion hits, it is all downhill until the next expansion. They basically bleed players all the way to the next launch and just have tiny bumps in activity with each patch, usually just for the content released and then players vanish. Content like savage and Eureka aren't meant to be "fun" as much as a way to keep some of the people playing during the downtime so they can justify the electricity needed to keep the servers running. It's a brutal reality with live services that in the end, money needs to flow or the service dies. They can't really rely on people just forgetting to unsubscribe, they need people to have at least some minor justification to keep subscribed. So we end up with a lot of padded out grind fests or difficulty walls.

FYI, this is also why the concerns of devs typically are about how fast people clear content, more than if it is fun to clear it in the time they anticipate. People just burning down savage in two weeks is not what the devs really want so they try to amp the difficulty up a notch, while still leaving enough wiggle room for the crazy people who are at the top percentage to clear during that time. However, difficulty walls are problematic because they are binary and require group play, where as grinds like Eureka and Bozja are just throwing bodies into a blender and completing small objectives each day. The latter is simply way more sustainable than the hardcore content. So functionally, they picked hardcore content to add to the game at the end of an expansion, when people are tired of playing and no one has any hook in them to get them into doing it, and likely are going to just walk away to other things.

[Johners]

Actually, this was one of the biggest fears I had - that what people were seeking was bringing M+ to FFXIV. My opinion is that WoW's focus on M+ is one of the things that led me to leave that game, as I saw it lead to a focus on e-sports and the utterly, utterly toxic crowd that attracts. It felt here like we had the WoW exodus going and a push to turn FFXIV into the same thing I had chosen to leave behind. I've been beyond grateful that the FFXIV devs didn't give Criterion meaningful gear rewards, and stuck to the philosophy that it's meant to be high-level content, but for 4-person groups instead of 8-man raids. The "reward" comes from the satisfaction of working together to defeat difficult content.

Personally, I wouldn't call M+ a "gigantic success", either. It's far from the only cause, but I count it as a significant part of WoW's decline. It's popular - among the select portion of the original playerbase that remains, but it helped drive out far more people in the process. That's not a success...

The problem with Mythic+ is that it's on the same gear path as raiding. However, the alternative is having two gear paths for PvE content which would only segregate the PvE players while doubling the play time for people that want to do both. People lament the era of "raid or die"... but the PvE end game was miles better then. Thankfully XIV is still "raid or die" for it's gearing. If you actually present the alternative, you'll never get the genie back in the bottle.

[Solakor]

Criterion dungeons are SE trying to fix what they broke in the first place, which are the normal dungeons.
They made the normal experience so bad that now they have to try and compensate with these arbitrary systems and are making them half baked.
It's funny and sad.

[Colt47]

Criterion dungeons are SE trying to fix what they broke in the first place, which are the normal dungeons.
They made the normal experience so bad that now they have to try and compensate with these arbitrary systems and are making them half baked.
It's funny and sad.

I don't think that was what they were trying at all. What they were doing is trying to make content that required less testing that could fill the same role for post game grind content so that they can keep the lights on for the server. Unfortunately, savage and hard mode content are cheap to make compared to entire zones with unique encounters, hence why instead of building Eureka, they built island sanctuary and criterion. Island Sanctuary is completely non-combat based and forms the "adventure" kind of content, while the variant dungeons are the combat end and criterion + criterion savage are the current challenge mode content similar to how Bozja had the special fates that you could 1v1 a guy.

The problem they got right now is that people would rather just stop playing than complete the hardmode content they released and this isn't just applying to Criterion Savage. Standard Savage has no life left in it at all. People who are still trying to clear are basically zombies that are doing it because we have social obligations and sunk cost fallacy. The sooner it gets done the sooner it can be dropped and I'm pretty sure a lot of people can back me up on that one. It's discouraging to even say that, considering how much effort people put in to clearing it, but that's why I've been beating that horse for ages that they need to at least put in some kind of echo at this point because there isn't going to be anyone left.

[Tsumdere]

When I saw the rewards from Criterion/Criterion savage the moment they released this content, I instantly laughed and felt bad. They required you to run this sort of content with minimal deaths/no deaths for "Materia". Why bother with this when you can partake in a hunt train for x10times the reward and less time involved. Always felt like the team behind EW's patches do not understand the concept of meaningful rewards for time invested. 22minute encounter with multiple bosses/adds and all I get is weapon glamour though this is only worth it if the person has not done ultimate fights and isn't already using weapon glamour from that. True the item level is same as P12S savage though you can't really complete this content without being near cap item level in the first place so makes it kind of pointless. 7 months have passed since the last raid tier you'd think they would allow Savage gearing materials be available from this let alone unlock the tome Cap.

The most insulting thing about the weapons is that you need the P11S material to make it instead of the weapon being a straight drop. Relics are around the corner so the ilvl is useless. I'm not going back to the tier I cleared months ago to upgrade for a mediocre glow. Imagine if they made you use the weapon upgrade to make Ultimate weapons glow lol.