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

[Darra]

So why is it suddenly ok to demand changes to something that some players aren't interested in either because they want to do it, but they don't want to do it either?

Before you say about 5% this 10% that. I would love more players to take on challenging content and progress as that would validate more resources being pout into creating challenging content instead of the small amount, in comparison to the other content that is vastly more doable by more players.
We get one piece of challenging content every 6 months compared to the myriad 4 people dungeons, the much easier 24 person raids, primal fights, side quests, main story quests which, pretty much, everyone can complete. Yet you want to take away that one piece of content aimed at those who enjoy a challenge? Don't you think that is a bit selfish overall?

At what point did I or the OP ask for nerfs and everything to be made easier? This discussion started out as one criticizing the way every raid boss follows the same principles, one that requires someone to memorize the boss HP %'s that trigger set skills, it was also criticizing the lack of options (options like taking 3 healers into a raid, or using Titan-Egi to tank). I have done all of the raid content in game, and I find it all too easy. The only thing I've found hard, is the fact I am forced to change my camera angle just for dive bombs, and this is more of an annoyance than it is a difficulty. The fact that I as a scholar can go into T13 and spend 60% of the fight in cleric stance and never drop below 40% of my mana and do not require a bard to play Mage's Ballad for me when I'm in ilvl 118 gear, tells me it's too easy. I have nothing against scripted boss fights, it's the fact that there is little to no leeway in when these mechanics are performed makes it a test of memory more than a test of how good I am at playing whack-a-mole with people's HP bars, especially when most of the time the damage players take will either kill them outright or leave them with enough HP that they wont need a heal for at least another 20-30 seconds so I don't have to rush to heal them.

The second point I think you've missed is that you're assuming people don't do Coil because they do not want to. There are a lot of people that want to do it, but they don't know enough people, they aren't in the "IT" crowd or they can't find enough people that're good at memorizing AND competent with their job. This game was originally set up in a way where you get 8 people together and do the content then you can't help out others. Recently they made changes so that the lockouts in FCOB were removed so you could help other people, but look how long that took to implement. I've seen many FC's with 100+ players, the one thing they all have in common is that they are all a collection of static raid groups, until content is put in the DF or they changed the lockout/loot chest quantity, players from group 1 didn't raid with players from group 2, so you effectively have no benefit being in an FC that size. If you look at WOW for example, they used to have 40 & 20 person raids, then somewhere along the lines they made a good decision, they allowed content to be raided as a 10 person group or 20 (maybe it was 25, it's been a few years now since I played). What's good about this is that you have content that scales based on how many players you have, the boss HP was adjusted based on the group size, the amount of people hit by some mechanics was increased too. The 10 player versions were harder because each person dying would be felt that much more than in the 20(25?) player version, but most importantly, players had the choice, the choice of doing the harder version or the slightly easier version. This offered the best of both worlds, it meant that players were given an option, not forced to play an easy mode, or get miserable in a mode too hard for them.

[Zfz]

That alone make it very clear: Not all content is made for everyone, because they design it with the focus on "shall only get beaten by x % of players till day y".

They adjust it to get people who are not or can't do the content to finish it, i.e. they try to bring in more and more people into the content, which is exactly what I said. Two sides of the same coin.

[KarstenS]

They adjust it to get people who are not or can't do the content to finish it, i.e. they try to bring in more and more people into the content, which is exactly what I said.

But a little bit different, than some think or want it to get.

They have their timeline with an amount of players that should have done it after the amount of time they definied. When they see, it doesn't match, then they plan to audjust. Back in earlier days, after patch 2.2, the raisng of echo in BCoB got a break. The reason was simple. The number of players that finished grew faster than intended. So it got a break over serval weeks.

The point of what I'm writing is: the audjustments are already planned before the content get released. Its all about matching their intended numbers when and how they come.

[Bitty]

To the OP - I regret I have but one like to give. Thank you for taking the time you did to translate and thank you to the original Japanese Player who took the time to write down his/her thoughts.

Not going to bother reading the rest. Everyone has an opinion. As a (dreaded) casual player, I don't have a problem NOT clearing the most extreme stuff. Just don't let the Main Story get caught behind it.....

[BlaiseArath]

Okay, so, seriously, all the people giving Nektulos crap, its easy for you to use every logical fallacy at your disposal but can you actually discount anything he says? So far i haven't seen any of you do that at all. You dance around his argument and say he hasn't done it so he doesn't know (which is bullshit and you all know it, you don't need to do a fight to watch a video or understand that its a big old pattern).

Everything he's said thus far about it being mechanics driven is true. Its a mechanics driven combat system. Not saying this is bad, or that it means the fights are too hard... but what hes saying is accurate regardless of if he's been there, and if you actually had an argument to stand on you would address what he's saying instead of attacking a strawman of him not having been there. Plain and simple and everyone with a brain can see right through you

[Velhart]

Was there a point bringing this back up? SE has already announced a lot of things the OP is complaining about and making adjustments towards some of it in the expansion. Why don't people wait and see what happens before bringing things like this back.

[Yukiko]

Another big part was focussing and optimize dmg output. Hell. How to DPS was always our longest part in all add phases.

Are you in one of those statics who kick jobs because of "optimizing DPS output"?

[Velhart]

Are you in one of those statics who kick jobs because of "optimizing DPS output"?

I would blame developers more for SMN being undesirable in raids.

[Felis]

Was there a point bringing this back up? SE has already announced a lot of things the OP is complaining about and making adjustments towards some of it in the expansion. Why don't people wait and see what happens before bringing things like this back.

Because we can be Necromancers only in the forum ^^

[Kallera]

Because we can be Necromancers only in the forum ^^

That and the problem is still an issue in the content that we have now. How do we know there have been appropriate changes to content if we haven't seen it yet? There is still wild speculation about what an standard difficulty Alexander would be like. Is it going to help address the divisiveness coil created?