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

[Yukiko]

(good use of an absolute statement as there is proof to back it up)

You know, not everyone is english teacher or professor of english writing... so yea i guess you like to pinpoint things just to attack "examples" because out of arguments?
And for the notes, i never said it was impossible! All I said is the tank can forget beeing MT when having weakness, i never said it will end in a wipe, if you workaround with aggrohandling thats not negating my "example".

Edit: nice highallegan gear, so yea for coil 6-9 he is overgeared...

[Archulak]

You know, not everyone is english teacher or professor of english writing... so yea i guess you like to pinpoint things just to attack "examples" because out of arguments?
And for the notes, i never said it was impossible! All I said is the tank can forget beeing MT when having weakness, i never said it will end in a wipe, if you workaround with aggrohandling thats not negating my "example".

Edit: nice highallegan gear, so yea for coil 6-9 he is overgeared...

There's not really any aggro handling the monk was 2nd on threat and he just stood in front of it so it didn't lazer the party, and about that high allegan gear it all drops from t6-7 which he's been pugging for a couple weeks, so no for t8 he's really not that over geared also he got the sand from that run so that's why he has the i110 chest.........

[Mcclebby]

I agreed with the OP/blogger. XIV:ARR focus too much on execution or rather just dodging of instant kill mechanics. Given the similarity or the idea of this game is build around WoW. WoW itself have more then one kind of execution to avoid instant KO(Stack on tank during certain move, Spread out, click this) and more variance of boss mechanics then XIV:ARR has(e.g. Look at Ulduar)

P.S. IMO(Just mine really!) using XIV:ARR is a new game and similar excuses does not excuse it from the lackluster content or boss mechanics it provide for the audience given that XIV:ARR is not a new IP from SE or is it the first time SE is doing a MMO.

[blowfin]

On the topic of gating, what do people think of content being added into the Duty finder once it's already been rinsed by players in their statics and PF groups for 3-6 month? Frankly I think this ideology creates/facilitates a class divide in the playerbase and is unhealthy for the game. There are those who clear (and rinse) the content in the first patch cycle by virtue of having a static or a solid FC/LS, then there is everyone else. Once the content is added into duty finder it actually becomes HARDER to clear for players attempting it for the first time because there is a lack of experienced players who still want to do the content. The content has more than likely been outdated (hi2u EX primals), and people have their drops. Let me re-iterate that, because it's very important, PUGs in DF have a much harder time clearing content in Duty Finder than static groups and solid FC's/LS. Coil2 for example (even thought it's PF only), if you clear it in PF you're as tough as Chuck Norris, if you clear it in a static/FC/LS group you're merely a mild badass.

So, why not put everyone on a level playing field when the content is first released to foster more interaction in the community? Why is the content dished up on a plate to those with solid groups only? Why does this discrimination exist?

P.S. My reasoning for it would be firmly in the "artificially extending the life of content" box, but I'm interested to read people's thoughts on this.
P.P.S Echo once the content hits DF is a very bad band-aid fix for this issue, it's almost as if SE are quite happy to admit they're pro-actively segregating the community.

[Kuwagami]

The main focus was (I'm sure of it) to make us socialize and form strong communities (see the recent interview of Yoshida praising BG's organisation). The major drawback however, is the creation of static parties which, even though they are fulfilling the role of "beating the content", fail hard at the "socialization" part. I'm sure the original intent was to form groups of 20-50 friends who could run the content together (DF searching in all servers, kinda hard to socialize), but the players interpreted the lockout otherwise and made statics.

[blowfin]

The main focus was (I'm sure of it) to make us socialize and form strong communities (see the recent interview of Yoshida praising BG's organisation).

Well, this idea has failed quite badly then. It works to segregate much more than it works to bring people together.

I'm sure the original intent was to form groups of 20-50 friends who could run the content together (DF searching in all servers, kinda hard to socialize), but the players interpreted the lockout otherwise and made statics.

Coil lockout is very detrimental to the development of social groups for a variety of reasons. These are due to the game design though, not the choices of players. By forming a static people are simply taking the path of least resistance to clear the content.

[Roris]

Some phases are more recoverable, some others aren't as much, had that death happened during a Dreadnaught it probably would have been harder to recover if not a certain wipe. You also don't need millisecond precision but it certainly seems like that sometimes due to the wonkyness of the game's netcode and mechanics in general, biggest example I can think of right now is if a tank Shield Lobs or Tomahawks just a split second later an add will fly off before turning back. The strict order of boss attacks is still there too, all Second Coil bosses will always follow their same set script, the only randomization elements are who gets targeted by what and certain spawns. Of course this goes back to implementing randomization in battles which has already been discussed, including ways to properly implement it and avoid too many hard hitting attacks in a row.

A decent example of this is Nael himself in 1.23, his attacks were mostly randomized and didn't really follow a set script, although he had so much randomization in fact that we got to see a lot of back to back laser teleports in a row and even double and triple fast meteors. There wasn't really a 100% accuracy cap either so I also got a meteor miss with 618 macc. Still, 1.0 battle mechanics, heavy RNG that could really screw you over at times and other engine issues aside, it's a fight that had some interesting mechanics, especially the arena layout with its multiple levels, most arenas in this game are just flat arenas, also just the way everyone played a certain role in the fight and how everything was carried out. You could predict some of his attacks by his dialogue but the way he attacked changed each time, while the secondary mechanics themselves still happened consistently without randomization at set health percentages.

Just look at a Rivenroad Hard guide and compare it to a T9 guide, depending on the guide you'll probably notice the Rivenroad one lists his general abilities but never mentions exactly when Nael's moves will happen in a set sequence, while the T9 guide probably lists the exact order of his abilities as they happen in the fight because the order never changes. It also didn't have an excessive amount of secondary mechanics and all of them were evenly spaced out and didn't really overlap with Nael's attacks, so it felt like you were actually fighting him instead of the mechanics, even on meteor duty since you could always go down to fight him or go up and help break his regen.

Certainly a more interesting fight than the on rails move here, now then move over there, then move over here again mechanics from Second Coil and closer to what some people are asking for in fights for this game, of course tweaking those heavily randomized elements a bit.

[kukurumei]

I agreed with the OP/blogger. XIV:ARR focus too much on execution or rather just dodging of instant kill mechanics. Given the similarity or the idea of this game is build around WoW. WoW itself have more then one kind of execution to avoid instant KO(Stack on tank during certain move, Spread out, click this) and more variance of boss mechanics then XIV:ARR has(e.g. Look at Ulduar)

P.S. IMO(Just mine really!) using XIV:ARR is a new game and similar excuses does not excuse it from the lackluster content or boss mechanics it provide for the audience given that XIV:ARR is not a new IP from SE or is it the first time SE is doing a MMO.

That's false. As you are cherry picking one(or two) fight in ARR vs one(or two) fight in WoW to make a point that can be made anywhere, any game if given enough samples.

There is a lot of variations in ARR content. Only a very precious few are just bad. In fact the OP in this case hasn't even really did enough to give an honest opinion, as for a fact our tactics have totally blown SE's dev staff dozen of times.

T1 : There are at least 3 different types of tactics with the last one radically different. Heck the fact that wars was the "they suck" back in 2.0 proves that SE QC had prblems with our tactics.

T2: enough said

T4: on record the way we do it is totally not the way SE designed it. SE was baffled on how they used PLD's HG to bypass the dreds.

T5: ditch divebombs was never a legit tactic, nor is running into conflags(SE had to fix that) nor was chain stun dreds.

Garuda ex: totally not designed that way, as proven by 3 tank split
Titan ex: the only fight designed as played (though i wonder about that as stacking up his ass seems totally different then release videos)
Ifrit ex: semi designed well, but I bet it wasn't totally since we have 2-3 type of tactics to this day

The list goes on. None of the fight is really "rope jumping" more like band music. If someone screws up it's a chain reaction, but each song is played slightly differently with different imagination and different feel depending on the band.

In the end stop cherry picking things It's over playing the problem

Heck T6 LoS is totally bypassing mechanics, and while T7 is normal, T8's one tank is totally against dev policy (they enforce 2 tanks)

[Kuwagami]

Heck T6 LoS is totally bypassing mechanics, and while T7 is normal, T8's one tank is totally against dev policy (they enforce 2 tanks)

What to say about Ifrit Ex LoS or T9 solo tank/solo heal ?

And titan could be bugged under certain conditions in 2.0, and maybe 2.1 with Ex version having the same bug. You could make him fall from the edge and possibly kill him from above. (tested and semi realized on HM by friends for the fun back then. they failed their bait and thus had to all jump in order to make him fall after them). Totally hacked though There's no legit method to bypass any of his mechanics (except cover to prevent a MB stack maybe)

[Gormogon]

snip

The emphasis is on "can". A lot of points are gonna rely too much on "some have" scenarios. Yet those that don't also rely on a lot of individual points of "most have not".

We can repeat that endless cycle or we can address the issue.

The percent that has cleared all of the First Binding Coil of Bahamut we can literally make a massive list of "circumstances" that allowed for those individual clears from 2.0 to 2.2 and the percent that has cleared up to T9 a smaller list since the current luxuries for the First Binding Coil of Bahamut don't exist for the Second Binding Coil of Bahamut. An equally big list will exist for the other side as well yet it will do neither side justice because they are all "individual" circumstances.

While you may not see it that way. The problem from there was brought here and here has relevance to there since it's part of the same service.

Everything stated about end-game is not a myth nor is it a problem that is new to MMO's. Issues like these should be given importance and a sound solution and conclusion needs to be given for the better of Eorzea and all player bases hardcore, elitist, mainstream, and casual. Whatever happens will obviously affect someone.