Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

[Tsunenori]

snip

I'm pretty sure you're talking about my static specifically, because everything you said is exactly what's been bothering my group lately. That and one of our healers is probably the weakest mechanically of the entire group and dies to Acid Rain every time we get to Phase 3. It's frustrating spending well over a month on a fight, doing enough damage to push phases, and being completely incapable of progressing because of a few individuals whom, while they're generally good people and friends of the whole group, are slower on the take. The only T6 clear we had was when two of them were out for a night and we pugged a couple of players.

The answer however isn't "get a better raid" or "kick those scrubnubs" because that's exactly what the blogger was talking about being the problem. Because my friends don't dance, and if they don't dance, then should they really not be friends of mine? I don't necessarily agree with that. I'm a patient person, but my patience with the instakill mechanics is wearing thin. I can handle them, but it feels like the majority cannot and over time that will be unhealthy for the state of the game. It'll be interesting to see how fight design progresses through the next year.

[Kerrigen]

Heh, a good post on these forums. Thanks for taking the time to translate it.

I mostly agree with this guy's point of view and I think the points he raises are a good portion of what doesn't work with this game at the moment, and for the forseeable future (at least until the first expansion drops I guess).

I hear a lot of people saying how this is wrong and the current encounters (of which many are amazing) are the way to go and it's this way or the highway. Although I played it back in the day, I'm not a FF11 apologist (heck I hate the nostalgia goggles a portion of the player base has over this game) but if there's something this game did well, it was the absolute variety in content and encounters you could low-man or tackle in a multitude of ways, making it quite friendly to build a healthy community. I don't believe it was intended as this game was unbalanced as hell and the devs more often than not had no idea of what they were doing, but it somehow worked and I got to play with everyone I knew from my LS, regardless of skill or time commitment to the game. This game could certainly benefit of such a variety without throwing away the current "hard", mechanic-driven content which has its place too.

FF14 right now is "Statics: The Game". There's no denying that. Either you have, and can maintain (which is becoming more and more of a headache with people's interest waning with all the frustration) a static, or you're royally screwed and have nothing of interest to do, except maybe carrying less skilled or more casual players through older content. Forget playing with everyone in your LS/FC on anything that matters (you can still party for meaningless tome dungeons or the occasional meaningless Peisteskin map you could duo anyway, yay I guess).
The combination of lockouts, gating, learning (aka time) requirements we have right now makes for a content structure and hierarchy in which less and less players are willing to partake. I also believe it's one of the causes of that really nasty, impatient and unforgiving mentality a lot of people have in this game and it cascades down to all content.

As for the "mechanics-driven content", I don't think he's wrong either. I'd qualify my playstyle as fairly hardcore (and my time commitment pretty low) and I don't have a lot of problems learning and executing mechanics but I can't disagree with this part:

The current "mechanics-driven battle system" is considerd bland by the hardcore gamers (the biggest problem here, I think), frustrating by the mainstream gamers, and actually prevents the casual crowd from playing altogether.

At the moment, almost every single endgame fight in this game feels like a glorified Heigan Dance, which gets stale fast, especially when less skilled/commited players have a hard time learning and the content isn't easy enough that you can just shrug it off and fully carry multiple people.
These past days and because there isn't much to do, I've started to take more casual people from my LS through Ex Primals and T5 to get them back in the race (and before they quit the game out of spite and because they have nothing meaningful to look forward to, being roadblocked by a couple of fights).
From the cries of rage I was hearing through mumble during Titan Ex, I can tell you the mechanics in this fight (among others but especially this one) are extremely frustrating and painful to "mainstream" players, as easy as they feel to me. We had 3 first-timers and we had to carry one of them, who died maybe 8 times during the winning attempt. He's by no means a bad player, he's even decent, he just has a lot of trouble dealing with the kind of mechanics stacked plumes or landslide are (and an unhealthy dose of lag, too).

I don't have a solution but this game isn't in a good place to last long if the content structure stays the same throughout the first expansion. Hardcores are getting tired of playing the game of statics revolving doors. Mainstream players are in a place where they have to deal with a really unfriendly community that can't really achieve anything meaningful using Party Finder, so why bother. Casual players can't even attempt content. Free Companies are useless, glorified statics.
Variety is important, and over-reliance on a single or a handful of unforgiving mechanics for "difficulty" in every fight as a main game design pattern won't get FF14 far.

[AkiraTsurugi]

This is coming from people I raid the Second Coil with, it quite honestly saddens me this is the case, they just want the loot. To me is more about progress and how much better I can adapt to situations.

While some ideas are very welcoming, it's not a very thought-out post, from the Dev perspective. I do however, agree with the time spent practicing is kinda dumb, I always felt as there was some mechanic that we could me missing in fights. We have to learn a fight each time, but you know? I enjoy that now, it's basically knowledge trading between players to finally down the beast.

[Luxx]

I really don't want this game more easier than it already is.
When I re-sub I'm going to continue coil and do the ex Primals because the rest of the things are joke in this game.
While I LOVE CT, it really is so easy the dungeons even HM are soo easy. The great Pharos Sirius, Child's play...I actually like struggling a bit in this game and trying to get the plays down in the game.
I don't play all that seriously, but the baby crap does get boring.

Also, I agree with Marta: Stop the insta death mechanics.
I really like Sylkis idea. Can't like it enough.

-Change instant wipes as a result of a failed DPS check or a failed "rope jump" by a single person to some sort of resource drain or detrimental effect for the party, and/or buff for the boss
--Examples
--If Titan heart is not broken, then empty everyone's MP and the limit bar
--Rot should kill the one person who had it only and buff the boss etc

-Change unrecoverable deaths so that it is possible to get back into the game
--Examples
--If you fall of the edge in titan/leviathan, you have to take time to climb/swim back up (which may cause a failed DPS check)
--If you have weakness then you might not be able to survive. Change it so that weakness reduces your capability to do your job well rather than reduce HP.

[ZReport]

@Bizniztyme Just to run it back, I took out the time to quickly jot down who was for and against the bloggers subject matter in the OP.

Agree: 15
Disagree: 11
Middle Ground: 7

A couple of the posters could be argue between agree and middle ground, but one can safely say using this as a very rough testbed that the opinon is just about split even, with just a few more leaning towards the Blogger's viewpoints. Of course one would have to magnify this amongst 1 million plus subscribers, and then pare that down to just those who attempt any form of endgame. However, you can safely say 55/45 or 60/40 in favor of the Blogger guy.

[Eagleheart]

Weakness already does reduce your vital statistics, not just HP. o.o

The blogger had some good points, and dev team has some good points. One hopes that Balance™ between the two will one day be found.

[yahhzoo]

I do not agree with everything said. The term team jump rope is something I haven't heard before but it is very true, if one person trips the whole raid will trip. One hit death mechanics can get tiring, I do not want them removed just would like to see less of them.

[Hachi-Roku]

CT is as forgiving as it gets for endgame and has a lot of chances to recover if things get messy and I still dread PFing that because people are, in fact, that bad.

FFXI is still running, by the way.

[Eagleheart]

CT is as forgiving as it gets for endgame and has a lot of chances to recover if things get messy and I still dread PFing that because people are, in fact, that bad.

FFXI is still running, by the way.

FFXI doesn't really have any mechanics to speak of, is heavily dated graphicswise, is deeply entrenched and seemingly uninviting to new players, is not advertised, nor is it looking to maintain two million subscribers going forward.

I realize that Spartan wit is a thing to be desirous of, but there is a point in debate where exposition is necessary.

[Youmadesca]

I do have to admit that quick enrage is indeed annoying, because of the fact when someone mess up, there's most likely no way to recover because the boss'll hit his enrage because of the time you "wasted" recovering. A long term enrage that build over time would probably be better.

Other then that, i'm feeling the fights as they are right now are well made.

That being said, i do not agree with 95% of what you posted.

You keep saying that gear/echo/whatever doesnt impact the fight in any way, which is 100% wrong. It does help, to a point.

For instance, on twintania, you'll need less peoples stacked to eat the fireball and thus, more time to kill the conflag, conflag which will die waaaay quicker because of the better gear/echo. You can also completly ignore the initial strategy to kill the snakes. Killing them anywhen in any order works now because of echo. Also, the dreadknight will hardly ever kill someone now, as it just get destroyed as soon as it spawns.

On t6, higher dps will ease the fight alot (skipping a second honey and, eventually, completly ignoring the last phase).

On a side note, taking FFXI as an exemple most of the time will most likely lower your credibility toward any sane player that actually played that game. Yes, FFXI was memorable, but peoples tend to forget waaaay too quickly the bad sides it also had.

No, you cant make a party how you want. You probably think you were able to, but that's only because this game had waaay too many jobs, and most of them were simply fundamentaly working the same. I've been in several dynamis/sky/sea/hnm ls, and there are several jobs i've never seen. Certain jobs were made for certain piece of content, and using something else was just plain useless.

What FFXIV did right on that side, is the fact every jobs are different, even if they take part in the same "role", and every of them can take part in any content without feeling useless.

Alot of other thing could be said regarding that post. But overall, i'd recommend you re-sub to FFXI and stick with it, till you realize FFXIV is not so bad, after all.