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

[Melithea]

Sorry, I'm at a point where I can't find more words to explain what I want to say.

Well that's unfortunate because the reason I'm here is to try to extract a more well-explained position from you and the people who share your mindset. Half of you claim that your complaint is that mechanic-laden fights just aren't fun, but you struggle to actually explain or define what a fun fight is. You (general) claim that the problem is not the difficulty of the fight, but your only real complaint about the mechanics in the more difficult fights is that they are too hard (or that failure is too "punishing", thus motivating you to actually succeed rather than ignore the mechanic).

What really blows my mind is the proposed solutions. Because all of them are either bad or would have unintended consequences that make things worse. For all the thought and passion that's gone into this, the people who don't like the current way Titan EX and Second Coil work can't seem to agree on what they would actually rather have.

If people can't handle Titan landslides now you really, really, REALLY don't want a random fight no matter how much you may think you do. The problem with a random fight is that you basically can't tune the difficulty, unless all of the "random" choices are essentially the same. So the fight is either so homogenized it's not fun or challenging except both at the perfect ilevel and ideal luck, or the same players who can neither memorize nor react to the current content will simply get blasted and be right back to complaining that it's too hard and not fun (because in the end fun = winning).

Unfortunately, not every fight can be Gilgamesh. Coil was clearly intended to be more hard than fun.

[Gormogon]

snip

I found myself surprised with what players find difficult ever since I started raiding in WoW.

but you struggle to actually explain or define what a fun fight is.

3 types of fun

1. true fun, enjoyable while it’s happening.
2 fun only in retrospect, hateful while it’s happening
3. not fun at all, not even in retrospect. As in, “What the hell was I thinking?" (Think VO2 Max or Anaerobic exercise)

[Dano]

Getting people to do that during the middle of a fight is pointless.

If I was a tank I'd go in with a macro that indicates twisters are being casted. There's many alternatives but a surefire way for a fight like this is VoIP since we don't have access to DBM in FFXIV.

focus target is something you learn very early in the game, and you can focus target Twin right at the start, they've fix the game so that the FT bar doesn't disappear when she disappears/divebombs. Seriously, if people can't dodge twisters then they are tunnel visioning too hard.

Unfortunately, not every fight can be Gilgamesh. Coil was clearly intended to be more hard than fun.

thank you and agree.

[Kuwagami]

If you just bring in a bunch of random atks then you end up with fights not being determined by skill but by luck in which RNG pattern you happen to get, you also need to make sure that it's actually possible to survive the combinations that can occur meaning that even your hardest hitting skill a boss can have can do NO MORE than half a players hp pool if it can happen twice in a row.

Again that "black or white" thing... Randomizing attack order doesn't mean it's 100% RNG. If you have a pool of attacks in which the boss takes (let's say) 70% of them before repeating, and if you code it a way that hard hitting attacks have a counter (i.e, hard hitting blow for 80% of tank's health can't occur again before 4 other attacks, even if it's the ending attack of the previous rotation), you have a non-scripted fight where you can have hard hitting stuff as well.

snip

Actually I suggested a way to do it right under that quote. I also said a few comments after that obviously it wouldn't work for everything (Titan being effectively the best example of that). Gilgamesh is at the other extreme side of the balance, with only one gimmick being here for the lulz rather than for any sort of difficulty.


I obviously can't speak for all. That would be pretentious and preposterous. But what I would find more fun are hard fight without that many super punishing mechanics. overuse versus balance.

If T5 was able to keep its difficulty after mastering dives/twisters, it would probably become my favorite fight for one simple reason :
There is no overuse of mechanics. Punishing ones are twister and dives (but even dives aren't that punishing). Conflags too if your reactivity isn't that great. Yet the fight overall was difficult the first times, when the gear was barely enough to let you live through DS, or to kill DK without problems unless derp.

I will probably enjoy the brutal version of it if they release it. I know however that I don't like T6 at all due to the mechanic > mechanic > mechanic > mechanic > mechanic aspect of it.

Well, we can always agree on a disagreement, but what I find fun in hard fights is when I have to figure out how to play my job the right way to overcome difficulty. Not dealing with mechanics all the time and doing my job when these mechanics let me do something I actually decided on my own.
The latter was my feeling on Coil2 and that why I stopped it. It's also why I wasn't proud of beating Titan HM back in time, or Ex a few month ago, but just relieved. Relieved that the painful experience was finally over.



Edit :

Unfortunately, not every fight can be Gilgamesh. Coil was clearly intended to be more hard than fun.

That sentence made me sad while reading it again. Indeed, not every fight can be Gilgamesh (which is only here for the laugh). They should not be anyway. A few of them is fine to give a smile when we do them.

However, every fight should aim to be fun, even if insanely hard. Else you just don't want to do them, and the purpose of creating it is lost.

There is nothing such as enable easy mode but having the same rewards. Even for a game like Dynasty Warriors the best tier weapon drops from Chaos Mode. If you selected Easy Mode it drops shit weapons. There was a suggestion around for an easy mode coil with no loot rewards or maybe just Allagan Tomestones which by all means I would welcome it if SE decides to do it. Probably for the sake everyone able to follow the story and lore which to me is a good thing that SE should probably consider. The only bad thing about now is that casuals who can't clear coil are gated behind the story and lore (although they can watch from youtube but that's totally not the point, the feeling is different when you experience it in-game) which I think an easy mode coil with no top tier loots should alleviate this.

But if you are the kind of person who wants the best thing but without working hard for it then FFXIV isn't the place. I'm not even sure if there exist a game that has an easy mode but gives the best items.

I can't remember someone serious asking something like that.
=> easy mode with no reward for the sake of the lore was asked
=> no overuse of team rope-jumping was asked

There were also personal attacks, trolling attempts, stuff like that happen every now and then. But this thread isn't about "give ez mode with same reward"

[Ooshima]

Hate to say this but I have no idea what some of the people are trying to bring forward.

I don't really see how "Focus Target" is really so hard. Drag the Focus Target UI to the middle of the screen or on level, or which ever you are comfortable with. Personally my Focus Target and Target bar, including my whole weaponskill bars are all centered/eye-leveled in a way or another to keep tract of casts and buffs/debuffs/procs.

If you can't really handle all these simple things then Coil isn't something for you. I'm not even trying to be elitist here for it is a fact that there are always people who are extremely slow at learning.

However all of us here have to realize that this is NOT your KOEI Dynasty Warriors type of game where you can have the option of starting the game in Easy Mode and simple hack through 1 star to 5 star rating battles even though you are the slowest learner or worst gamer around. Don't get me wrong, I've played every installment of DW and it's pretty fun to me. But no, FFXIV isn't your DW. You don't have an Easy Mode to cheese down the supposedly 5 star rating battle to something that looks like 2 star on "Normal Mode". Right here, Extreme mode means something and Coil means business. If you can't handle it then it isn't for you. If you don't find it fun, you should really look for other games that fits your bill. No point wasting your time trying to change a base design philosophy set for this game nor your money on this game. You are certainly better off with another game that makes you happy (why do you want to pay for a game and make yourself angry?).

There is nothing such as enable easy mode but having the same rewards. Even for a game like Dynasty Warriors the best tier weapon drops from Chaos Mode. If you selected Easy Mode it drops shit weapons. There was a suggestion around for an easy mode coil with no loot rewards or maybe just Allagan Tomestones which by all means I would welcome it if SE decides to do it. Probably for the sake everyone able to follow the story and lore which to me is a good thing that SE should probably consider. The only bad thing about now is that casuals who can't clear coil are gated behind the story and lore (although they can watch from youtube but that's totally not the point, the feeling is different when you experience it in-game) which I think an easy mode coil with no top tier loots should alleviate this.

But if you are the kind of person who wants the best thing but without working hard for it then FFXIV isn't the place. I'm not even sure if there exist a game that has an easy mode but gives the best items.

[Roris]

(because in the end fun = winning).

Coil was clearly intended to be more hard than fun.

Winning is fun yeah, but that second quote is precisely the issue the OP talks about, it's just plain not fun getting those wins. Some people do get all their enjoyment from knowing they're above everyone else and have progressed beyond them so props to them I guess.

Personally seeing all the cutscenes up to T9 even after having Youtube'd them was great, just getting there every week is so unfun and not enjoyable, and I really get zero kicks from knowing some people can't get there or are still stuck in T5 so it's just a drudge, when it could all just be better executed to you know, have fun in a videogame instead of turning into an unfun chore.

[Archulak]

Winning is fun yeah, but that second quote is precisely the issue the OP talks about, it's just plain not fun getting those wins. Some people do get all their enjoyment from knowing they're above everyone else and have progressed beyond them so props to them I guess.

Personally seeing all the cutscenes up to T9 even after having Youtube'd them was great, just getting there every week is so unfun and not enjoyable, and I really get zero kicks from knowing some people can't get there or are still stuck in T5 so it's just a drudge, when it could all just be better executed to you know, have fun in a videogame instead of turning into an unfun chore.

This post is just opinions and everyone's is different. In my opinion coil is super fun to do every week, I wish that I could have even more to run through but that's pretty unrealistic from a dev standpoint. Brutal will also be super fun when it comes out. I also get no enjoyment out of lording over people like I'm better than them or something I just enjoy having tons of fun joking around and figuring out new things that people haven't thought of before and experiencing things that are challenging, and even when it's on farm I still find it fun to push the limits on what I can do. I do agree that there could be a bit more RNG with atk order and that would be cool, but in my opinion the only dangerous mechanics in games are one shots, everything else is a joke so I don't agree that it's lazy design it's more like a necessity to add any real sense of danger.

And I can't remember if it was in this thread or the ex coil one but for all the people that say "1 death = wipe that's, how tight it's tuned" here's proof to the contrary.

Near the end the solo tank dies and they still clear.

[Dano]

Winning is fun yeah, but that second quote is precisely the issue the OP talks about, it's just plain not fun getting those wins. Some people do get all their enjoyment from knowing they're above everyone else and have progressed beyond them so props to them I guess.

Personally seeing all the cutscenes up to T9 even after having Youtube'd them was great, just getting there every week is so unfun and not enjoyable, and I really get zero kicks from knowing some people can't get there or are still stuck in T5 so it's just a drudge, when it could all just be better executed to you know, have fun in a videogame instead of turning into an unfun chore.

I personally can't wait to do coil on tuesdays because i find it fun to get loot and practice on turn 9.

[Ooshima]

However, every fight should aim to be fun, even if insanely hard. Else you just don't want to do them, and the purpose of creating it is lost.

I can't remember someone serious asking something like that.
=> easy mode with no reward for the sake of the lore was asked
=> no overuse of team rope-jumping was asked

There were also personal attacks, trolling attempts, stuff like that happen every now and then. But this thread isn't about "give ez mode with same reward"

The thing is that there is a lot of underlying meaning. I have been following these discussions and the underlying complaint is that soldiery is i100 and not top tier like HA unless you have sands and oil, which is again gated in Coil2. And people having difficulty clearing Coil2 and thus the surge in complaints compared to Coil1, because you can simply dressed in i90 myth gear without stepping into Coil1. I don't even recall this much and level of complaint in Coil1 because fundamentally myth gear = coil gear in ilvl.

The word fun is again fundamentally subjective. Everyone's definition of fun is different, SE can't definitely satisfy on that. But of course if you can clear it it is somewhat fun, and if you can't clear it at all I'm sure most people will say it is not fun or even rage quit. Human nature.

Perhaps instead of purely complaining about how not fun the fight is, propose something in detail?

In many pages before people were bringing up of extremely random fights but I share the same view as Yoshida - if given the existing scripted fights and people can't handle it, don't expect the same people to be able to handle random attacks.

Other than that, I haven't been seeing any major proposals either.

[Xine]

Apparently nobody has ever played around with the RPGMaker series. Instead of being completely randomized, skills mobs/bosses use can be given a percent chance of them being used, and if programmed like they do in FFXI/XIV and other games, add new skills after certain a HP%. Its randomized to a point but not entirely random and definitely not completely scripted. Personally I have fun with random fights like that, having to memorize fights is a pain in the ass and my memory doesn't work that well.But given how the game has "move out of this giant orange circle or die" mechanic, its a little boring. Reacting works just fine for me a majority of the time (assuming my connection doesn't decide to lag like it has since 2.28 dropped) and I can move out of anything just fine knowing ahead of time where my "safe areas" are (think stacking on Titan HM/EX to have more room open for dodging WotL.)

However all that aside, the OP states that he, as someone who consistently clears SCoB, finds the idea of "team jump roping" boring. Which if anyone hasn't figured out by now, is where this thread should be, not talking about "make the game easy mode". There's a massive difference between hard fun and easy fun, just as there is hard boring and easy boring. If something is easy, yea its fun to some people, but that same easy thing, is boring to other people. It should be mentioned there is no possible way to EVER satisfy everyone and there will ALWAYS be someone who has a complaint. This is a fact of life. The only other option is to satisfy the majority since the majority is what keeps these MMORPGs alive for more than a few months or even a couple of years.

Back when a majority of WoW and FFXI players were on their own games so-to-speak, there were people who enjoyed FFXI for what it was, a long grindfest that offered random challenges and rewards for time spent, while at the same time had enough content that casual and mainstream players could enjoy while the "hardcores" went out and did every single bit of content there was in the game. I never played WoW, but the mass majority of WoW players who started playing FFXI complained about EVERYTHING that FFXI was. The difference from what I've heard from a majority of people who played WoW and went to FFXI said "WoW is boring, everything is too easy and people do nothing but attack each other" (be it physically attacking in game or verbally.) Ever since Abyssea came out FFXI started heading in that direction, easy mode. FFXIV started out as a severely punishing and about as much of a grindfest as FFXI was pre-ToAU. Once FFXIV went into 2.0/ARR, it went easy mode.

One thing people do need to keep in mind is that FFXIV: ARR is a new game, it had to be rebuilt from the ground up, old irrelevant content/items/equipment was trashed and simplified. Severely punishing mechanics and content was eased (See Garuda Hard Mode in 1.0 vs 2.0). Graphics, equipment, UI, terrain, everything about the game was completely changed and worked in to the new graphics engine and the terribad lagfest that was 1.0 was fixed into 2.0. No, there's not a massive amount of content in the game right now unless you want to play all 9 jobs and gear them up to i110 with their Relic Weapon Novus and High Allagan Weapons (why you'd want both is beyond me, but some people are completionists.) However just doing that for one job is almost impossible at this point in the game due to the limitation of only being able to enter SCoB and clear each turn once a week. Given that, you DO have the option to do other things in the game, it's just that repeating the same old content we do have gets boring, therefore people stop playing and some ultimately quit altogether.

If anyone really expects a game to "get better" overnight, or even a single player to "get better" overnight, then you're all in for a world of disappointment. That shit don't work. Want a lot of content for the game? Give it a few years to accumulate new content. Practice makes perfect, but time makes a masterpiece. The current content gets boring after you clear it every single day/week. Personally I'm getting sick of the same 3 dungeons in Duty Roulette Low Level. I wish they'd eventually add in a few new dungeons for leveling so people aren't spamming the same exact dungeons all the time to exp and level up. Anyone remember XI? Sure there was the "usual camps" people went to for leveling, but there was about 3-5 or more different camps people could use to get their exp. But as I just stated, I don't expect it to come overnight or even in the next patch, maybe the first expansion at the earliest.

But back on topic, this thread was created with the intentions of discussing how to make content more enjoyable and hopefully getting rid of the "team jump roping" in the future. Since we don't know how the devs plan on easing T5 and some of the other "hard" content currently in the game with the 2.3 and 2.4 patches and beyond, there's really no point in saying making it a bit more randomized in the future could make it more enjoyable and easier or far harder and more boring than it is already. Although in my own opinion, watching people fly across Bahamut's hand to divebombs is probably the funniest thing about that fight, but it does suck when they hit the wall and insta-die. But as much as I hate to repeat myself and the OP, casuals are the majority of the game's population, the more of them that quit, the longer it'll take to get more, better quality content. If enough of those casuals and mainstream players quit because they can't do what they want to, or they stop having fun, this game will eventually die and there will be no more game for you to play. If you're too stupid/blind/ignorant/retarded to understand that, there is no hope for you. I'm sorry. And this just in, FFXI content was somewhat randomized like I mentioned earlier where certain skills had a higher percent chance of being used than others and casuals still managed to faceroll the content with "power in numbers" and there was other harder content that was similar that only the "no-lifers" could take down (See Pandemonium Warden and Absolute Virtue pre-Abyssea.)

Edit: On the topic of relying on randomness to complete things in this game, 3* crafting can be considered RNG (Random), gathering for HQs is also RNG. You want your Heavy Wolfram Cuirass HQ'd? You need to rely on RNG even with all HQ materials (Hasty Touch method or hope for an HQ with the "safe" method.) The game's percentages are a percent chance that something will or will not happen. Such is the nature of percentages in this case. So lets say you give Titan say a 5% chance of using Mountain Buster (aka Table Flip), there is a 5% chance he will use it at any given time in the fight. However in the event Yoshi explains as his reason for going against this idea, he has a diminishing chance of using Mountain Buster back to back, and the percent diminishing with each use. You want to stray away from Randomness so the majority can clear content? Look again at Crafting HQs. Granted this can be argued that it's supposed to be hard and not everyone can do it. Well.....T5 is meant to be hard and not everyone can do it regardless if its randomized or if its made a completely scripted fight as we have (note however I am simply using it as a reference and nothing more, any fight can be used in its place here and I mean ANY.) If we seriously want to argue the difference between a fight being random is too hard for people to adapt and react to, HQ Crafting and Gathering should also be looked at. Yes, the 3 options available in the game (Crafting, Gathering and Battle) are different, but that's beside the point, the point here is randomness and reliance on the RNG, why its used for HQ Crafting and Gathering and why its NOT used for Battle mechanics. Personally I don't have an issue with how Crafting and Gathering is done, I believe its perfect the way it is save for not being able to craft/gather anything of any great importance save sub-par gear. Just thought this should have been mentioned since Randomizing fights and how its "too hard for casuals" was also mentioned as a way to "attack" how it could make fights more fun and entertaining or thrilling than simply executing your DDR skills.