Don't do chaotic raid again

[Darnath]

I don't think its in Square Enix's best interests to let 'slower folks move on' and frankly that's an awful mindset for an MMO. I don't want my casual friends leaving, I want them to have content to do too, I don't want FC's filled with just Raiders, I want an FC filled with all kinds of players.

It's kinda the corner they backed themselves into though.

They started to scale back the difficulty in DF tier content with ShB and EW. Slower folks finally got to enjoy something more than just MSQ.
Now Masaki Nakagawa wants to bring stuff back to HW/StB tier for story mode and us slower folk are going "Uhhh, now what?". He and YoshiP are locked on this pattern so /shrug.

Right now I'm keeping myself occupied levelling the rest of my DoW/DoM and crafters but once that's done? It's unsub time

[BigCheez]

I don't think its in Square Enix's best interests to let 'slower folks move on' and frankly that's an awful mindset for an MMO. I don't want my casual friends leaving, I want them to have content to do too, I don't want FC's filled with just Raiders, I want an FC filled with all kinds of players.

Raiders aren't sticking around either. You get a savage tier that takes about a week to clear once per year and an ultimate that takes about a month to clear every 18 months.

The core audience for FFXIV is MSQ Andys. I think they've basically realised that they make more money by catering to a huge audience who buy an expansion and sub for 1 month than they do by catering to a smaller audience who pay their sub for the full 2-3 year cycle.

It's definitely worse for the game but I don't think SE care.

[Darnath]

Raiders aren't sticking around either. You get a savage tier that takes about a week to clear once per year and an ultimate that takes about a month to clear every 18 months.

The core audience for FFXIV is MSQ Andys. I think they've basically realised that they make more money by catering to a huge audience who buy an expansion and sub for 1 month than they do by catering to a smaller audience who pay their sub for the full 2-3 year cycle.

It's definitely worse for the game but I don't think SE care.

I'll agree. They need to finally decide which group they're going to cater to and tell the rest "Sorry, this game isn't for you". Like how the Souls games have the courage to tell slower player "We aren't for you, play something else."
When you try to give attention to everybody, especially with how long content is taking to develop now, nobody's happy.

[Daralii]

I'll agree. They need to finally decide which group they're going to cater to and tell the rest "Sorry, this game isn't for you". Like how the Souls games have the courage to tell slower player "We aren't for you, play something else."
When you try to give attention to everybody, especially with how long content is taking to develop now, nobody's happy.

FromSoft's games can carry the company without trying to appeal to everyone with a pulse. XIV is already struggling to carry SE because almost nothing else they make turns enough of a profit to make up for all the failures.

[BigCheez]

I'll agree. They need to finally decide which group they're going to cater to and tell the rest "Sorry, this game isn't for you". Like how the Souls games have the courage to tell slower player "We aren't for you, play something else."
When you try to give attention to everybody, especially with how long content is taking to develop now, nobody's happy.

MMOs can easily cater to and provide content for both hardcore and casual players. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

I think the current extreme, savage and ultimate release schedule + an improved version of criterion would be enough to keep raiders playing if there was also some more casual battle content to play with friends in between. That gap should be at least partially filled by the exploration zone but that never starts until way too late in the expansion cycle and the majority of the playerbase have generally already given up and moved on by the time it releases. IMO the exploration zone and relics should start in x.1 at the very latest and there should also be some other form of more casual content as well. I think SE would benefit from looking at what WoW has done with delve recently and doing something similar but better.

I think SE are hell bent on taking the profits from FFXIV and dumping it into doomed projects instead of reinvesting the money into the development of FFXIV. They're just doing the bare minimum to keep people buying expansions every few years and don't really care what happens in between.

[Avoidy]

It's so funny to me that yoshida waited an additional week to release dawntrail because (in his own words) he wanted to give players time to enjoy the elden ring dlc, but he couldn't hold off a week for chaotic so people could enjoy christmas. But that's unrelated to OP's complaint.

In my mind this is just more "busting your balls in pf until your whole team memorizes the thing" raid content that I'm really not into. This standard of difficulty where you just waste hours of your life "until everyone gets it" isn't enjoyable to me and honestly never has been. It's only gotten worse as the jobs have become more robotic and standardized because I can't even enjoy playing my class while running the content back. I haven't logged on in weeks because there's just nothing substantive to do outside of that tier of content and there hasn't been in months; it's just been savage and ultimate and unreal and now this. This chaotic thing could have been a cool way to revive old alliance raid content that people avoid due to level capping. Imagine fun stuff like dun scaith or orbonne, but now you get your whole kit. Alliance Raid (unreal) style, or something. The difficulty could've been a nudge above normal but below extreme, serving as the buffer zone between difficulty segments that many players have been wanting for years. The rewards could have been high ilvl stuff for people who care about that, as well as dyeable versions of the undyeable armor sets that people love from these alliance raids. idk, maybe it's too simple or would've felt recycled. I can really only speak for myself when I say that reviving old content and making it enjoyable in 2024 at a difficulty level that felt approachable to everyone would've been more enjoyable than yet another single floating lady boss fight in a floating void arena that you get to "prog" with 23 strangers until most of them stop dying to the same thing over an hour in.

Not even saying "don't do it again" because I'm sure there're people who love this stuff. Just, there's a really clear 2-tier difficulty system in this game that needs to be addressed. You're either falling asleep in normal mode, or you're busting your balls in pf until everyone learns the synchronized dance. For people who fall in the middle of that, or don't really find themselves enjoying either type of difficulty (hello), there just isn't anything to look forward to until next year *maybe*.

[Kaurhz]

It's kinda the corner they backed themselves into though.

They started to scale back the difficulty in DF tier content with ShB and EW. Slower folks finally got to enjoy something more than just MSQ.
Now Masaki Nakagawa wants to bring stuff back to HW/StB tier for story mode and us slower folk are going "Uhhh, now what?". He and YoshiP are locked on this pattern so /shrug.

Right now I'm keeping myself occupied levelling the rest of my DoW/DoM and crafters but once that's done? It's unsub time

Honestly speaking in terms of casual content, I don't actually think the current difficulty is far off what we saw in HW/SB. Much of HW was lent to having some terrible design decisions embedded, in combination with sheer lack of QoL. Stormblood I actually found is a little easier than current. Some may agree and some may disagree with this statement, but I think current casuals are better than what casuals back then were, both naturally and because of various QoL.

Now what they need to do is find what difficulty they want to aim for and then stick to that difficulty as when they constantly yoyo around on difficulties, that is when you get issues.

Difficulty isn't as much the problem, but giving casual players very little to actively do is. I see value in raiding, don't get me wrong, so I don't want to divert this into an us vs them, but if all they release is extreme+ content after extreme+ content then this is what will put a lot of players in the position of this game not being for them, not the innate difficulty of casual content. Raids are healthy but they don't have the same sustain and replay value as what relics/ exploratory does.

[Rekko]

It's so funny to me that yoshida waited an additional week to release dawntrail because (in his own words) he wanted to give players time to enjoy the elden ring dlc, but he couldn't hold off a week for chaotic so people could enjoy christmas.

That's because Christmas isn't that big of a deal in Japan.

Also, to echo some peoples complaints so far, DT has had several bits of High Tier content now. Savage, Extremes, Unreal, Ultimate, and now Chaotic. Whereas mid core players are left leveling everything or simply playing other games.

I've been playing since 1.0 and honestly im starting to get bored and might unsub if it doesn't change. While i appreciate the extra time its had on devs to push out content, it really doesn't help with that extra month between patches.

[Teno]

There is nothing less fun than depending on 23 other people to not screw up
The playerbase has shown it cannot handle 24 man content when it's even simple stuff like regular alliance raids
It's an absolute mess in chaotic

You're comparing savage to casual alliance raid ? Git gud dude.

[BigCheez]

That's because Christmas isn't that big of a deal in Japan.

Also, to echo some peoples complaints so far, DT has had several bits of High Tier content now. Savage, Extremes, Unreal, Ultimate, and now Chaotic. Whereas mid core players are left leveling everything or simply playing other games.

I've been playing since 1.0 and honestly im starting to get bored and might unsub if it doesn't change. While i appreciate the extra time its had on devs to push out content, it really doesn't help with that extra month between patches.

It's actually because Christmas won't affect their sales figures while competing with Elden Ring on expansion launch would.

RE: the rest of your post - unreal, extreme and savage are firmly midcore content. I don't consider anything other than ultimate to be specifically hardcore content. I know a lot of people who aren't particularly good at or invested in the game and they still clear savage. It takes them months of raiding one or two nights per week to get it done, but they get it done eventually.

I think what you're referring to is casual content? And I agree, there isn't really enough of it. You just get cut and paste beast tribes, a hildy quest and eventually an exploration zone if you somehow managed to stick out the first year of the expansion while having absolutely nothing to do.