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

[Dano]

Encounter design is one of the best things this game does. The very pattern based, very kinetic, very team driven feeling is what makes these types of game shine at cap. If anything we need more of it outside of the end game, that leveling to cap disconnect is a big problem in the genre right now.

When I started seeing examples of FFXI encounter design like it was something to be lauded my eyes just kind of glazed over. I liked that game, for what it was, back in 2005 but there is nothing to learn from it in terms of combat, mechanics, encounters, etc. It was and is a vague and awkward EQ-like with all of the nonsense that comes with that dark ages design methodology.

There are plenty of things this game could use like better itemization, more options and venues for gearing and customizing... Looking back at the dark age of the genre where difficulty was solely fueled by timesinks and vague, almost superstitious nonsense is about the last thing we need to be doing right now.

quote for new page, i agree.

edit: I disagree with OP, while the endgame content are mechanic heavy they aren't very strict or even punishable and you can reasonably prepare for them if you practice enough or done your homework.

[Zarzak]

While a lot of this post is solid and makes sense one core point he keeps harping on I will disagree with.

Yoshi-P has said that “making the fights scripted is so that anyone can clear it once they have the patterns memorized”, and designed the fights using this philosophy. But because of the “mechanics-driven” problem mentioned earlier, the fights are never really eased/nerfed and remain only beatable by those who can deal with the mechanics.

We can train pigeons to act as guidance systems for bomber planes, We can memorize the route to take through an entire city to get from A to B, we can memorize thousands on thousands of random facts/words/etc/etc/etc.

EVERYONE can memorize the mechanics. Whether they do or not is entirely up to them.


I still agree having EVERY event mechanic driven is a mistake (should be a mix of mechanic driven, brute force, mix, gimmick [considering mechanics and gimmicks different things.. IMO a gimmick is something semi amusing/supposed to be such as if you summoned a giant mongoose to attack Caduceus], etc)


But I can't agree that, with the exception of diagnostically mentally disabled individuals, there is a person playing who can't manage "if a red circle appears under you... move out of it"



Also IMO the "have as many or as few as you want!" is a really unbalanceable system. If they are tuned to 24 people sure skilled players can do them with 20. but suggesting that 8 amazing players should be able to do what 24 average players can just tells me the event isn't tuned right. (dps check for example to keep adds from piling up in an event like Turn 4... that would be saying 1 amazing player is doing 3x the dps of an average player.. say average these days is 200.. they are doing 600?)

Having larger raids AND more raids would alleviate the problem though. Currently it is not realistic to have a bench. Why? Because a bench would need at minimum someone for every role to be able to fill in no matter who misses (so a melee dps, caster dps, bard, healer, and tank)... In the current raid size that's over half a raid sitting on their hands keeping themselves from getting lockouts in case they are needed. Then with the number of raids. With only 4 events we can't realistically cycle the bench in so everyone gets some raid time for the week. The total raid time start to finish is only an hour. "Ok you get 1 event this week!" is not going to fly with anyone who WANTS to raid"

Having 24 man raids would allow a couple things.

1. a healthy bench (4-5 players)
2. allow particularly skilled groups to still run even if they have 1-2 people miss

Having MORE raids would allow a couple more.

1. allow a healthy bench via allowing you to realistically cycle in your bench to get raid time

- Doing a quick search/going from experience this is what current MMOs have compared to FFXIV

Traditional MMOS (ya know.. the ones where you actually group with people to play the game)

---FFXI can't find a list of the current SoA raids. But if it's anything like it used to be then there are several hours worth of relevant content to raid (used to be SO MUCH MORE but I hear they basically reset gear and made the old stuff irrelevant)

---EQ: VoA expansion top tier had 8 raids (total length of all 8 combined.. ~4 hours) but it was still relevant to farm at least the tier before for months after the top tier was cleared.. which is another 3 raids adding an additional hour or so of content

the big "modern" MMOS

---Rift: Tier 2 (couldn't find info on new tier offhand and quit b4 it released) had 8 raids in 20 man and 4 in 10 man. Again guilds still often went and hit up previous tier for an hour or so a week to fill in slots/new members/etc.

---WoW Top tier has 14 raids. Far as I know there are also 2 tiers of difficulty (normal/heroic) and guilds run both? (not sure on that)

2. let you raid multiple nights even during farm so you can do things like have 2 scholars on roster.. One that can't raid every Tuesday/Thurs and one that can raid every night the other can't


Simply put having nothing available but 8 man raids is doing nothing but hurting the raiding environment. Sure do what Rift/WoW did and provide some small scale raids (8 mans) but give us a REAL CT (8-9 bosses tuned for a premade raid like we were expecting) and release alongside the 8 man coil.

[Pandorine]

I do recognize boss fights have this "do-or-die" mechanics, which may give a boring appeal to the fight once you master ir, or when you don't. However, from my experience this far, I have been in awful/awesome/meh runs, and some of them the group I was in had to improvise either because some party member dced or whatever. Guess what? The group nailed it. I've had tankless fights, healerless fights, and so on. Is the content rough? Is it demanding? Is it too much of the same? My two cents: with proper gear (not over gear) and proper synchrony AND class know-how you can beat this game and enjoy it.

[Pandorine]

Cont.To the fights it demands immense effort, like second coil: I would not change them. To Titan (NM, HM, EXM) - AOE's come out too fast and due to kill you if you lag. So the fight should be redone having that a lot of players do not have or own stellar internet connection and dodging in that fight is 100% essential. (do-or-die lag as a mechanic is a real issue).

[Kiara]

Hi EmiliM,

Thanks for translating. This is a GREAT Original Post and I absolutely agree.

With our current XIV being so heavily Mechanics-driven (Gimmicks), it really does spawn a bunch of problems stemming from this. As Sylkis pointed out, our current system is designed so it's like expecting a perfect "80/80 Jumps" (using the Group Jump Rope analogy, with 8 players doing 10 Jumps each), instead of allowing room for Player skill and flexibility.

The biggest problem with our current system is really that:

* If even one person screws up once / dies, it's usually a wipe. Reset.

Even in FF XIV 1.0 (like Ifrit Extreme) it was more forgiving, but still MORE challenging than 2.0's Ifrit Extreme. I remember a few runs in random /shout parties in 1.0, where we had 4 - 5 deaths (back then, we also had people who could use a Raise GC Item), and we were still able to recover and kill Ifrit EX. That wouldn't be possible in 2.0.

Another great point is the feeling that if you're a good enough player (or have enough of them), that they can "combine" and overcome a few mistakes from lesser-skilled players and still have success for the whole party.

Most of the hardcore fights in 2.0 right now are about Memorization more than anything.

One forum poster made a great analogy that it was like joining a "scripted dance": You join in and follow all the steps correctly, then you win. And you need 7 other people to memorize and follow the dance exactly as well. Otherwise, it's pretty punitive and you fail.

I definitely want challenging fights. I do find some of the Gimmicks that Yoshi P is using interesting and certainly better than plain old "tank and spank," but the vast majority of the fights are really about figuring out the obscure Gimmick / Trick and memorize what you have to do, when, and just do it. It should be a lot more than this.

[Litre]

Even in FF XIV 1.0 (like Ifrit Extreme) it was more forgiving, but still MORE challenging than 2.0's Ifrit Extreme. I remember a few runs in random /shout parties in 1.0, where we had 4 - 5 deaths (back then, we also had people who could use a Raise GC Item), and we were still able to recover and kill Ifrit EX. That wouldn't be possible in 2.0.

Another great point is the feeling that if you're a good enough player (or have enough of them), that they can "combine" and overcome a few mistakes from lesser-skilled players and still have success for the whole party.

Totally agree, without this feeling, there is a less of a community because older players can't efficiently help newer players.

[Alkimi]

Even in FF XIV 1.0 (like Ifrit Extreme) it was more forgiving, but still MORE challenging than 2.0's Ifrit Extreme. I remember a few runs in random /shout parties in 1.0, where we had 4 - 5 deaths (back then, we also had people who could use a Raise GC Item), and we were still able to recover and kill Ifrit EX. That wouldn't be possible in 2.0.

1.0's Ifrit Ex was not challenging in the way you would expect. The only difficulty in that fight was fighting the unresponsive UI and horrible servers. 2.0's Ifrit Ex only has 1 insta-wipe mechanic, failing to kill nails in time, exactly the same as 1.0. You can also recover fine from many deaths in the new version and still win.

[Adler]

I only read OP post and nothing else. Would like to comment about "casual players are people too, remove instant death thing and let them learn their jobs and have fun" part.
The base idea is same as in real life - there are people that are fast learners and people that are slow learners. Then there are people that don't even care to learn and find it easier just to get things get done by others - by whining, leeching or simply waiting for a miracle to happen. I see casual players that play ff xiv just for couple of hours on weekends and know their jobs very well. They only ask for help when they want to do some hard content for 1st time but they also ask for advice or watch/read a guide before. These casual players get end game content done relatively fast. Then there are "the casual players" that basically spend more time in ff xiv than out of it, they usually have 1 or 2 job at level 50, have no idea how to do it proper and talk a lot about "poor mechanics", "broken game" etc.
So - some people are just doing their things quietly, levelling up jobs and learning how to use them well. They progress slower in endgame but they do progress steadily. And then there are some other people that just decide they want to beat THAT DUNGEON/TRIAL. So they spam df or pf never getting past the initial phase of that fight, blaming tanks, dps, healers, Square Enix, lag, cat, mom or whatever else. After 100 wipes they might still have not seen a guide but probably will have made dozens of complaint posts in forums already.

[TThibi]

What the title says, also this game is in no way comparable to any other mmo development wise yes ffxiv has been out for years since 2010 in fact but dont forget the first iteration failed miserably and nearly died. The reborn version is only just over a year old other games like Wow and FFXI are in their 12-13th year and highly evolved from the original state. Comparatively FFXIV if held next to ffxi is barely into Rise of the Zilart which if others have played ffxi they know the original game was capped at lvl 50 and included the first 3 nations and the city of Jeuno. Rise of the Zilart was packaged with a few advanced jobs including summoner and released the next level cap 60 along with additional continents to encompass the story. Quiet down about endgame because there is no such thing yet, in terms of SE's established schemata for developing games we have 3 expansions before anything remotely endgame will be added.

[Dashuto]

snip

A very good point, this game does not even have its "Rise of Zilart" yet.