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

[Ksenia]

The important point that the writer want to point out is the game mechanics currently are really "scripted", which isn't good at all. He (or she) doesn't say want to nerf or make the game more and more casual.

pretty much.
tl;dr - They are saying the game is monorail content, cookie cutter.

[silentwindfr]

i think the best choice it's to maybe look in the direction of the procedural generation, maybe randomize some part of the content, without go into a full random, but add some unknow in what will face. can increase drastically the replayability of the game.

[Magis]

OP nails it with the mechanics problem. I heard someone put it (think it was on Reddit) as "You are not learning your job, you are learning the boss". It makes artificially difficult (oh one guy got killed by an instant KO? Wipe!), and extremely boring once you yourself got it down.

[nokinator]

Ive been around along time.. the OP was the best read I have had in a while and I would hope that whomever monitors and reads the forums on the Japanese side takes that post and posts it to Yoshi Ps and the teams computer screens literally

[EmiliM]

So I created a thread in the Japanese general discussion forum in reference to this:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...81%84%E3%81%A6

I doubt it'll get the same level of response it did here, seeing as how Japanese players tend to be far more stoic than the rest of us. Nevertheless, it should increase the chance of a dev (if not Yoshida himself) at least giving it a read and some thought.

I think most of us probably realize the issue we've raised here is embedded far too deep in the game for any kind of changes to happen right away. And chances are they can only keep churning out new contents and hope to somehow manage to hold people's interest long enough until the "casual" side of the game becomes more filled out, sort or like trying to make the carpet big enough to sweep things under.

I hope it works.

[silentwindfr]

all we can do it's say it enough time for make them realize something is wrong and little by little change it... it's impossible to change all in one time it's a given, however, slowly make change into the game it's what they must do.

indeed the game can please a part of the community and can potentially stay like this. but it's that what yoshida wish for FF14: ARR, to be a niche game? or be a really good game that will keep player.
they need to open more the talk with us. he did say a lot in the past, that mmorpg it's a service, it's time to maybe do some survey about what they people really want. they can't simply judge from what we do. if something is not there we will not try it, if we have only the raid to do... it's what we will do. please Yoshida, do some survey, check what the people really feel about the game and what need to be adressed!

don't forget us, because we don't forget you, we are still there! we are still fighting for the game! don't abandon us

[Lamentations]

on a personal note, I find it absolutely ridiculous to have to watch 15 minute videos to just "get" the mechanics of a fight, because theyre so impossibly obscure or tightly scripted that you can't just learn them by doing without 7 other people spitting venom at you. i'm very oldschool about that. watch video or GTFO is making me ask "why do i play this again".

Oh I got venom spit at me in a separate "you-tube warrior" or gtfo thread, the mechanics being unforgiving has seen population react just as unforgivingly, this is part SE's mechanics, part playerbase reaction to it.

While I get frustration, "demanding" watching you-tube as a "courtesy" to other players over mechanics is pure trash.

To the original poster, bravo.

[Raenryong]

I swear to god you guys, if the next Coil is just four fights against training dummies... it's like few people here have actually played difficult games and instead just braindead stuff like FFXI.

[Iriadysa]

Please tell me what's difficult in Coil once you have mastered the mechanics. I'd love to change my point of view.

Also, don't give us the "die-and-retry games were difficult". They were not difficult (ie, possible in one go by some random skilled player), they were designed to be impossible for 99.99% of the people and for the arcade.

Do you know how many times I've seen people die to simple stuff like landslides or twisters, despite being absolutely clear by that point about exactly what they should been doing to survive them? I cannot count them.

Nothing is "difficult once you have mastered the mechanics" unless you start reaching the human reaction time limits, which XIV doesn't even come close to nor attempts to do so, and yet people keep failing on tasks where they actually should've already "mastered the mechanics". Because, really, what's so hard about "mastering a mechanic" like Landslide or Twisters? Nothing. If you die to it, your current skill level for that encounter is poor and you must improve.

But hey, that's all right people, keep on believing everything is easy and you just don't do it because "it's too boring" or fail at it because "it's not asking me to be skilled, it's asking me to have 10ms ping". I'm sure you'll love your gear carried "skill" encounters in the future, shall Yoshida actually listen to the people in this thread.

[Iriadysa]

I'll try to stay calm but...

Twisters or landslide are easy ?

try to listen to it at least once : it's easy for YOU. Doesn't mean it's easy for everyone (don't serve me the "you didn't do it and that's why you say that", I have beaten both T5 and titan Ex, both on a flawless basis, no hit taken apart the compulsory ones.)

The mechanics behind twisters and landslide are so simple that there's no learning time for it. Summed up:

Landslide: move away from the straight rails that come out of Titan's center.
Twisters: move and don't stop moving until Twisters is finished casting. Don't cross paths with anyone else nor yourself.

Are those not easy enough for you? I cannot see anything, anything at all complex about those mechanics. You don't have to even play the encounter once to understand how to beat these mechanics, so this isn't a "die and repeat" case.

So if the mechanics are not complex to understand or hard to memorize, what is the real difficulty behind them?

Landslide: people have poor reaction times.
Twisters: people are not paying attention (for twisters you don't even need high reaction times, as long as you move before the cast is over you are golden).

And people are still asking for easier content. It baffles my mind.

The point here being that the mechanics (which is the main critique through out this post of biblical proportions) are for the most part not complex and the difficulty lies in people simply not being able to execute them correctly, not understanding them.

(I still think the execution is super easy, but I can understand how this differs from person to person)

I have no doubt I would have been able to go at least up to T9, maybe even beat that T9 once before 2.4 comes. But I don't think it's worth my time

This is just gold. I used to know someone like you. He could solo anything in a game I played before XIV.

He just couldn't be arsed to do it because it would "take too much time". And thus he never did it. Not even once.