/r/ffxivdiscussion: Interview /w Yoshi-P on the first Arcadion savage tier difficulty

[Raven2014]

Balance and fun should not be mutually exclusive. You can have healthy balance with a loose balance point that allows for adjustments for things that break out of that point and break other things ...

Well sure, ideally that's what supposed to happen ... but how often you see thing happen as ideal? I'm sure HD2's developers thought they're balancing for a better game because it's unthinkable they want to kill their golden goose, yet that's exactly what they're been doing despite being told constantly to stop doing that. Also, my point wasn't exactly about how they're doing the balancing or the technical aspect of it. I'm just pointing out the spirit behind the decision, and for me that's the right mind set to have.

If the tier feels a bit easy to clear, sure someone may feel a bit disappointed. But IMO, that's far better than make the players feel bad. And the best way to make someone feel bad is to neft what they enjoyed. The next time the group wipe to enrage, it's likely most people not gonna tribute to the game being challenge, they gonna think "I'm wiping because I was nefted!!". And that will just gonna feed into a negative feedback loop. Also remember that it wasn't 1 or 2 tiers ago that we had the exact opposite problem where fights were overturned, and while you can point out there are unhappy people in either case, the overall mood back then were far more negative and toxic comparing to it is right now where it's still general good vibe despite some complains.


Again, this is not like they are saying things are fine. They acknowledge the issue, that means they gonna address it in the next tier. The point is to handle an issue that already exists this tier, they went about it the best way.

[Rueby]

I look forward to the next overtuned tier.

[Zarkovitch]

Oh baby, P8S part 2. Let's make the next tier lock jobs and make players quit due unbalance. What will go wrong? Idk, I see no flaw make this game a bad rep already story worse than ARR! Why not killing raiders, like you know, like last expansion. Good chat, SE. Just dont fudge up this time.

[Saraide]

He says in the interview that their extreme aversion to nerfs, even if it would just be potency numbers, made them misjudge the DPS check. This is so dumb.

[PeridotOlivine]

This meant that many players were able to experience the sense of achievement of completing the raid. Word got around, of course, and many more players than usual have now entered this raid tier, which we see as a positive development.

I really hope they do take the increased player engagement with the raids to heart. This is a great savage tier ive had a lot of fun going through with a static of friends, so im hopeful they arent going to overcorrect difficulty next tier.

At points in the past its definitely felt like the difficulty ramp was far too steep for trying to take a more average player into hard content, and I think theyve done a much better job at making the difficulty curve of the various levels of content smoother and more approachable now. I definitely think these changes will be reflected both in the tier clear rates and in just how many players at least attempted the earlier fights, and getting more players involved in content is only better for the game in the long run.

[Valence]

People have short memories and care too much about an ever improving world first competition which biases their view.

I've played through Apshodelos and Eden's Gate and both were extremely similar in terms of DPS checks. You could have a couple of death and still clear their last fights the same. In terms of learning progression, it was also identical on my end since with similar statics it took me for all of them around 3 weeks (12h a week give or take). Your mileage may vary of course, but on my end, I really didn't see any difference.

If anything people are just out of Abyssos and Anabaseios, that have proven especially gruesome comparatively to what we had in previous expansions for 2nd and 3rd tiers (notably in the lower fights).

I do agree with people's reactions to SE's takes though. Their reasoning is shaky or inconsistent.

[EponaTBHSMH]

When I read the comments I feel like a lot of people have missed this sentence in the interview:

"Unfortunately, adjusting the DPS of the classes took so much time that we were no longer able to make adjustments to the raid."

SE did not simply forget to adjust the raid DPS to values that were different from 7.0 tuning, they do care about a certain balance however they work with deadlines and if somehow they don't have time then most likely we will see these changes for the next big patch even if from a player perspective this seems really long because it takes a couple of months.

It's very possible that not only FRU has much tighter DPS check on the phases but also we might get something close to what happened to p8sp1 and p8sp2 last expansion and I very much think SE would rather have people complain that the content is easier rather than having to write this huge letter of apology when P8S was tuned 1% higher than what they usually do

I also believe SE has been consistent lately when it comes to not nerfing things so this is very in line with what they do

[Hanayumi]

Really sounds like they shouldve just nerfed pct, most players like it cause its just interesting to use not just cause its damage is nutty...

[BigBoom550]

Really sounds like they shouldve just nerfed pct, most players like it cause its just interesting to use not just cause its damage is nutty...

This was less likely to cause issues.

Picto existed not just in the context of savage raids, but all content. Nerfing picto exclusively for the sake of savage raiders would *not* go over well. Buffing everything else means midcore and casual people get something nice and are more likely to participate in Raids, while equalizing them for all other content.

[MartinFreeman]

Yoshi P talking about everything in game except a certain NPC.

He knows he's on the block for that. It's a matter of time.