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

[Damane]

What? No. Saying that story and not gameplay is the most important aspect of some game is a strange thing to say. When people talk about 1.0 and ARR story never gets mentioned. 1.0 presented story better than ARR yet it failed because ultimately gameplay is what matters in a game. That is why it failed and that is what ARR improved even at the expense of cutscene and voice acting quality.

Maybe I'm in the minority but I like the fights in this game. Branding team rope as something negative in a coop game is something I don't get. Yes the success in a coop game comes from the performance of the whole party not from the performance of an individual. That has been the case for every multiplayer game.

while teamplay is important. if 1 or 2 people fail in your party there is no way to save the fight, this is something I dislike immensly here, especially when useing the duty finder. The comparison the OP made was: ok if you have 2-3 people failing an EX primal fight in 14 there was no way for you to win the fight no matter how much individual effort you put in. This is extremly frustrating for people that can deal with the mechanics, but cant get through the fights because they get dragged down by 2-3 other people in the Duty finder. Whereas compared to other MMOs or in this case FFXI you could still save the fight from failing if you were: skilled, had the gear and had the 2-3 key jobs covered, half your alliance/party could wipe to a fight, but you still had the chance to recover by different means, if the remaining people had the skill/gear/and knowledge to hold the mob/fight it while the rest was recovering. This isnt possible here, because the mechanics make a recover nearly impossible in most cases, which in the end renders echo buffs useless.

[Dyvid]

while teamplay is important. if 1 or 2 people fail in your party there is no way to save the fight, this is something I dislike immensly here, especially when useing the duty finder. The comparison the OP made was: ok if you have 2-3 people failing an EX primal fight in 14 there was no way for you to win the fight no matter how much individual effort you put in. This is extremly frustrating for people that can deal with the mechanics, but cant get through the fights because they get dragged down by 2-3 other people in the Duty finder. Whereas compared to other MMOs or in this case FFXI you could still save the fight from failing if you were: skilled, had the gear and had the 2-3 key jobs covered, half your alliance/party could wipe to a fight, but you still had the chance to recover by different means, if the remaining people had the skill/gear/and knowledge to hold the mob/fight it while the rest was recovering. This isnt possible here, because the mechanics make a recover nearly impossible in most cases, which in the end renders echo buffs useless.

Well if you lost 2 healer or tanks then it would have been wipe in any game. The problem I'm seeing is now DPS are just as much responsible the groups success. And let's be clear, if one or two die it isn't insta wipe it's one or two continually die over and over that is insta wipe. Also the reference to FFXI doesn't work be if you compare alliance to alliance then you don't see a lot of wipes in CT/ST unless they are completely clueless.

[Damane]

Well if you lost 2 healer or tanks then it would have been wipe in any game. The problem I'm seeing is now DPS are just as much responsible the groups success. And let's be clear, if one or two die it isn't insta wipe it's one or two continually die over and over that is insta wipe. Also the reference to FFXI doesn't work be if you compare alliance to alliance then you don't see a lot of wipes in CT/ST unless they are completely clueless.

you are misinformed, even if your tank or healer dies in FFXI, you can still recover. Hybrid jobs can cover alot of ground if your healer is dead and recovering, and melees are the usual tanks in FFXI, even if your designated tank dies, a melee or in some cases a mage can take the spot and tank stuff for some time until the rest recovers.

[Edli]

ok if you have 2-3 people failing an EX primal fight in 14 there was no way for you to win the fight no matter how much individual effort you put in.

2-3 people failing? That's 1/3 of the whole party, of course the party should fail.

[Damane]

2-3 people failing? That's 1/3 of the whole party, of course the party should fail.

why should it? if 1/2 or 2/3 of the PT is badass i dont see why they should be hammered with a fail, just because mechanics dont alow for a recovery or progression through the fight. Its all about covering your weakspots in a PT. This is frankly not possible in FFXIV, where as in 11 you can do that, you can cover your PT weakspots with dedicated people that have the excellent gear/skill/knowledge. In that sense even if 2-3 of your friends arent a top notch player you can still take them with you, because you can cover the ground by your hardcore people. I still play FFXI, and we have people that dont have the gear/skill on the same playing lvl as our hardcore members, but we can do raids/events with them, because we can cover their weakspots. This isnt possible in 14.

This makes fights that much more interesting is if you can recover from an almost wipe.

[RiceisNice]

2-3 people failing? That's 1/3 of the whole party, of course the party should fail.

Two would be 1/4th of your party. This would also turn around to how the party size restriction can lead to problems like this, but you can't add more players either because of the 8-member enforcement, and the nature of the fight mechanics making it unfeasible to add more players anyway. You might not see it as a bad thing persay (and I don't either, to an extent), but it just further enforces people playing with a small collective group and essentially locking out others who can't get into or find one)

There's also the problem that if the tank dies, the party dies stemming from the dps (or anyone else in the party) being unable to tank for even a second and no contingency plan to do so (especially the case if the fight has a mechanic that keeps the OT occupied at all times, such as adds or stacking debuffs). Sure the DRG has keen flurry (which is next to goddamn useless because PLDs and WARs cant cross into it), but chances are, he (and any other dps) will still get one shot'd to an auto attack.


Being able to recover with losing 1/2 members shouldn't be possible under most circumstances. I mean it shouldn't sentence the entire party to the wipe when the boss is down to like 5% or so, but if half your party is dead (out of eight), it's essentially a carry at that point. But like OP has mentioned, the mechanic-driven nature of the fight discourages from having 1 or 2 people messing up that it will lead to a wipe, and as mentioned above, make you bring the same people in over and over just so you don't risk having a new person be unfamiliar/unexperienced to the mechanics and wipe the entire raid. This sort of thing allows for no lee-way or room for compromise (such as outgearing or echo in the case of T5)

[SirTaint]

11 had great 6-8 man content.

Limbus, salvage, assaults, meebles etc

[Lux_Rayna]

DPS checks, heal checks, tank checks are secondary. you can have the best geared tank/DPS/healer, if they cant dodge for shit because of different reasons (not knowledge of the fight/lag/whatever else) you have lost, period. Gear plays a role, but its rather on the 3. place. What matters more is: 1. mechanics, 2. job knowledge/ability rotation/combo rotation after that gear ties in as 3. however mechanics make it impossible to recover in almost any case.

I dont consider that a problem though. Maybe mechanics could be slightly more forgiving, but SE nerfs them after awhile anyway.

[RiceisNice]

I dont consider that a problem though. Maybe mechanics could be slightly more forgiving, but SE nerfs them after awhile anyway.

If only that was really the case. T5, despite echo, still has dive bombs among other things that will wreck absolute havoc if one or two people are not up to it.

The problem with "team rope jumping" was already mentioned in the OP translation; It gets really boring for people who cleared it (since it's all scripted and monotone), it frustrates mainstream players because of the focus of mechanics that more often than not, they cant afford to bring in 2 or 1 people that's unfamiliar to the fight (thus requiring a static), and out of reach for casual players (which probably makes up the majority of the playerbase). Whether or not people see that as a problem, they're all players who pay for subscription. You can't really afford to cater to one exclusively, and definitely not shut out a majority group either; It leads to a slipperly slope of dropped subscriptions, dropped revenue for production value, and ultimately drop in contents.

I don't mind some team rope jumping or mechanics where people need to stay alert (EX primals for example), but some of them just gets outright ridiculous, especially when it's (and this is my interpretation) supposed to be accessible by most of the playerbase (T5 as an example, not so much savage or even second coil).

And to top it all off, it's just the lack of overall meaningful content. Atma, Ramuh, hard mode Levi and Ramuh, the "Expert" dungeons, it keeps piling on. I'm half expecting the new dungeons in 2.4 to give us ilvl 90 drops...

[Seif]

I find the meaningless stats of gear very unmotivating for all the rest of the content which is exactly just to grind better gear. Getting to ilvl 100 means nothing and you're not really rewarded for obtaining better gear because fights are on strict rails no matter what.