Chaotic Alliance Raid Experiment: Changes to Improve the Fun for More People

[Valence]

Trying to make content fun for everyone is the reason that a lot of content isn't fun for anyone. "I want to do firmament but I'm a single dad with 3 jobs and 18 children" is the reason that we got island sanctuary. If you don't enjoy the chaotic alliance raid because it's too hard, it isn't for you. That doesn't mean that it needs to be made easier. It means you need to play different content.

If you don't think there's enough content in the game that appeals to you, that's a different problem and requires a different solution.

This is missing the point completely. People are fighting for limited development resources and want to draw the blanket to themselves as much as possible, and that's fine and expected. I sure as hell do for myself as well. I have incompatible tastes with some other posters and players, and I do my damn best for my own affinities to be heard. This thread is no different.

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

Trying to make content fun for everyone is the reason that a lot of content isn't fun for anyone. "I want to do firmament but I'm a single dad with 3 jobs and 18 children" is the reason that we got island sanctuary. If you don't enjoy the chaotic alliance raid because it's too hard, it isn't for you. That doesn't mean that it needs to be made easier. It means you need to play different content.

If you don't think there's enough content in the game that appeals to you, that's a different problem and requires a different solution.

Genuine question, why are you against an easier version of the same content with reduced drop rate/rewards?

You can still get your stuff faster than people who farm an easier version, you can still go for the harder version from the get go and learn/do the fight just like now.
If you think having an easier version undermines the higher difficulty version of the fight because its decreasing its popularity and make the rewards less rare, then maybe it wasn't about the journey after all, but the destination.

Having an easier version of a content that prepares you for the real deal is a 100% good thing, it creates and endless supply of people for the hard version who learned the fight on easy by doing it 50 times.

I said in another thread somewhere that i challenge anyone any day that if an ultimate had a carbon copy version but tuned in a way that you can survive mistakes and the fight is more recoverable in general, it would be a huge addition to the game.
It would make more people engaged with the content overall and that is a positive thing.
Lets say there is a difficulty like that but with less shiny weapons as rewards(think like the hellhound weapons from pvp, normal without effects and crystal with effects).
People who managed to do the easier version without vulnerability stacks consistently, would definitely move over and do the real version overtime, and i fail to see how that would be a bad thing for anyone except elitists.

There are a tremendous amount of people in this game who want to do higher difficulty fights and able to, but dont want to learn them by watching youtube guides and/or wiping 45285875 times in the same fight in order to do so.

[Arrius]

There are a tremendous amount of people in this game who want to do higher difficulty fights and able to, but dont want to learn them by watching youtube guides and/or wiping 45285875 times in the same fight in order to do so.

Then they shouldn't bother trying.
Striving for self-improvement is a thing you should go for when it comes to such content. That includes knowing and executing safe strats, seeing videos how that works and optimizing your equipment for it.

Wiping will happen regardless, but you should prepare yourself that you will stick to such fights for hours.
Discipline and Determination will get you to your goal - It works for the Japanese players, which likely also know the FFXI boss fights that can take a whole evening or night to defeat.

[BigCheez]

Genuine question, why are you against an easier version of the same content with reduced drop rate/rewards?

You can still get your stuff faster than people who farm an easier version, you can still go for the harder version from the get go and learn/do the fight just like now.
If you think having an easier version undermines the higher difficulty version of the fight because its decreasing its popularity and make the rewards less rare, then maybe it wasn't about the journey after all, but the destination.

Having an easier version of a content that prepares you for the real deal is a 100% good thing, it creates and endless supply of people for the hard version who learned the fight on easy by doing it 50 times.

I said in another thread somewhere that i challenge anyone any day that if an ultimate had a carbon copy version but tuned in a way that you can survive mistakes and the fight is more recoverable in general, it would be a huge addition to the game.
It would make more people engaged with the content overall and that is a positive thing.
Lets say there is a difficulty like that but with less shiny weapons as rewards(think like the hellhound weapons from pvp, normal without effects and crystal with effects).
People who managed to do the easier version without vulnerability stacks consistently, would definitely move over and do the real version overtime, and i fail to see how that would be a bad thing for anyone except elitists.

There are a tremendous amount of people in this game who want to do higher difficulty fights and able to, but dont want to learn them by watching youtube guides and/or wiping 45285875 times in the same fight in order to do so.

Because it devalues the rewards from the harder version and people would likely just farm the easier version due to there being less chance of failure.

I don't think having a practice mode for ultimates would be a good thing either. Being able to practice a mechanic in isolation in a sim is one thing but being able to practice the whole fight in-engine while also practicing your rotation alongside the fight would massively cheapen the experience.

[Valence]

Oh no, devaluing ego rewards, le gasp.

[BigCheez]

Oh no, devaluing ego rewards, le gasp.

This isn't 9gag.

It's healthy for an MMO to have aspirational content with unique rewards.

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

Then they shouldn't bother trying.
Striving for self-improvement is a thing you should go for when it comes to such content. That includes knowing and executing safe strats, seeing videos how that works and optimizing your equipment for it.

Wiping will happen regardless, but you should prepare yourself that you will stick to such fights for hours.
Discipline and Determination will get you to your goal - It works for the Japanese players, which likely also know the FFXI boss fights that can take a whole evening or night to defeat.

Im sorry but this is complete and utter nonsense.
You are basicly saying that doing a 1 to 1 copy of a fight but on easier mode 50 times, to experience it firsthand and learn how the fight actually works, is somehow less commitment than watching a guide and copy what random youtuber lays out for you.
Just because a mechanic dosn't kill you and 7 other player for a mistake and you can actually recover to progress and see 2 more mechanics before its all falling apart slowly but surely, does not mean that you will never understand how the mechanic works and how to do it correctly.

You would have an arguement if the majority of people would learn the fights blindly, but we all know that this is not the case, especially not when its not current content anymore and people can even unsync it so even the reward is not so much of an achievement after a while.
People just look up on youtube how to replicate the universally agreed strat and copy it so everyone in the party is on the same page.
If anything, this is what i would call no self improvement or no determination.
I would take 7 easy mode player who did the fight 50 times any time of the day over 7 guide enjoyers who did the hard version already 5 times.

At the end of the day, what you need to realize is that if we both climb a mountain without gear, we are on the same skill level and can do the exact same thing at the end of the day.
The only difference is that you chose to do it without gear from the get go and broke every bone you have in the process, while i climbed the same mountain 50 times before but with every possible safety net.
Only the method of learning is different, not the struggle itself.

[Kaurhz]

Genuine question, why are you against an easier version of the same content with reduced drop rate/rewards?

You can still get your stuff faster than people who farm an easier version, you can still go for the harder version from the get go and learn/do the fight just like now.
If you think having an easier version undermines the higher difficulty version of the fight because its decreasing its popularity and make the rewards less rare, then maybe it wasn't about the journey after all, but the destination.

Having an easier version of a content that prepares you for the real deal is a 100% good thing, it creates and endless supply of people for the hard version who learned the fight on easy by doing it 50 times.

I said in another thread somewhere that i challenge anyone any day that if an ultimate had a carbon copy version but tuned in a way that you can survive mistakes and the fight is more recoverable in general, it would be a huge addition to the game.
It would make more people engaged with the content overall and that is a positive thing.
Lets say there is a difficulty like that but with less shiny weapons as rewards(think like the hellhound weapons from pvp, normal without effects and crystal with effects).
People who managed to do the easier version without vulnerability stacks consistently, would definitely move over and do the real version overtime, and i fail to see how that would be a bad thing for anyone except elitists.

There are a tremendous amount of people in this game who want to do higher difficulty fights and able to, but dont want to learn them by watching youtube guides and/or wiping 45285875 times in the same fight in order to do so.

I agree with this, but I think the issue isn't necessarily to do with the following:

people in this game who want to do higher difficulty fights and able to, but dont want to learn them by watching youtube guides and/or wiping 45285875 times in the same fight in order to do so.

I think it's more that people have been requesting for a difficulty between normal and extreme for a very long time, and they haven't really been hitting that spot. In fact, they haven't really hit that spot since BA (Maybe also DRS), which was near enough over 6 years ago.

I think when the original desire for 'harder' 24-man came in, I think a lot of people were expecting a level of difficulty similar to BA, even from those that may have enjoyed this Chaotic specifically.

Some people like to say that regular Alliance Raid is that difficulty, but it really isn't, and even if you wanted to try and argue that fact it really hasn't even been close to that level of difficulty since Dun Scaith which was well over 8 years ago.

Edit: I also know some people like to make the argument of "Well, doing older extremes when you're overgeared is effectively this difficulty". We should not need to wait for several months to go back and do an older extreme encounter out-of-patch to have something that really should already exist natively in the game without over-gearing or unsync to act as that healthy medium.

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

Because it devalues the rewards from the harder version and people would likely just farm the easier version due to there being less chance of failure.

I don't think having a practice mode for ultimates would be a good thing either. Being able to practice a mechanic in isolation in a sim is one thing but being able to practice the whole fight in-engine while also practicing your rotation alongside the fight would massively cheapen the experience.

Unsyncing content already devalues the rewards so in the case of extremes and savage, it should not matter. All you achieve by not having a 1 to 1 copy of the fight on an easier version is gatekeeping the rewards for a few months at best, while also robbing people from content they could enjoy.
In the case of ultimates, i specifically said that the rewards are not the same, normal version would be without effects, that you can upgrade by doing the ultimate version. Its literally content for people to do in a less punishing way for a scuffed version of the weapon while teaching them for the real deal, its a win-win because at the end of the day they have fun and you have more people to fill the party finder.

For chaotic, i doubt that they will keep it unsyncable, because it makes no sense to have it queable with less people but not adjust the mechanics based on that+ the rewards are purchaseable so they also lose any sentimental value from day 1.

[Arrius]

I agree with this, but I think the issue isn't necessarily to do with the following:


I think it's more that people have been requesting for a difficulty between normal and extreme for a very long time, and they haven't really been hitting that spot. In fact, they haven't really hit that spot since BA (Maybe also DRS), which was near enough over 6 years ago.

I think when the original desire for 'harder' 24-man came in, I think a lot of people were expecting a level of difficulty similar to BA, even from those that may have enjoyed this Chaotic specifically.

Some people like to say that regular Alliance Raid is that difficulty, but it really isn't, and even if you wanted to try and argue that fact it really hasn't even been close to that level of difficulty since Dun Scaith which was well over 8 years ago.

I can also argue that powercreep attributed a lot towards the deminishing of Alliance Raid difficulty because a lot of abilities have changed/their potency vasty increased over the expansions, and the item sync wasn't able to dampen that to keep it reasonable challenging.
As such you get the Crystal Tower raids being a snore fest and a give a false impression of how they have been on release.
That's why I advocate that they go back to CT and the Mhach raids and give them a polish up - And might as well breathe new life into the Coils on top of it.