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

[Makado]

Mechanics make the fights interesting. One of the things said was why not make enemies just tough. Would you like to sit and fight a solo enemy just standing there attacking for 20 minutes? Why would you like to do it in a party then?

In the end we just need more. More sidequests, STORIES, memories, and fights. Which I'm sure will come.

[RentisB]

Which fights were difficult aside from the obviously broken AV/PW? Abyssea gets bashed a lot (mainly because it went crazy with 3x Atma) but the enemies in there were actually mechanical. Briareus/Cuelebre/Micua... Serpentes Gloves NM for instance from the first three Abyssea zones all had interesting mechanics, especially done lowman. Lowman RDM on things like Cuelebre/Mict without Atma was a very refreshing challenge for XI. Abyssea only became easy when they overdid the Atma/buff thing.

From what I remember mostly I'd say it was mostly the BCNM/instanced stuff before everything was zerged. Zergs suck -_- Dynamis Lord uh, Omega/Ultima, even some of the story fights were difficult till newer gear came out. The kings were hard for a time. The dragons of CoP were really hard, and they all had "mechanics" that you couldn't just tank and spank. I do agree with lowmanning Abyssea stuff too.

I dunno, nothing in 14 so far has given me that "rush" I got from some of the stuff in 11 did. Could be my nostalgia, who knows.

[Raenryong]

Laziness. Some people DON'T WANT to do the research. They don't wanna go on reddit and see the plethora of rotation guides. They don't parse and push themselves. That's why. Even at the end of the day though, knowing how to handle bosses is more important than handling the class. If you can dodge and pay attention to boss mechanics, and remember them well..you're a FFXIV God. It doesn't really matter about how well you manage CD's or how high your DPS is

That's completely untrue. A DPS who does poor DPS is horrible regardless of whether they survive or not. Not making a DPS check = wipe, no matter how well you dodge. There are also instances where a very high dps player can mess up, die, and still have the most damage at the end of the fight. A healer who can't heal but can dodge well ... you'll end up with a dead party.

[Zirael_Foxfire]

I agree with pretty much everything written by the original poster.

My biggest complaint about FFXIV endgame is, you can't play endgame with all your friends on the jobs you and they want to play. You need 8 people to attend on very specific jobs, no flexibility allowed. If someone is missing, you either need to cancel event or progress and leave 1 person behind for a whole week.
From developer perspective, I understand it is hard to make a fun and challenging content allowing flexibility. The lazy option is to make scripted fights executed by 2Tank+2Healer+4DPS. The game doesn't care who your friends are. The equation has to be perfect or you don't get to play.

My second complaint is, Coil T5 and Titan Ex are too unbalanced and do not allow casual players to clear them. Producer Yoshida said that there will be no more echo increases for Coil because players win it currently at decent rate. I laughed so hard. A casual player clears T5 or Titan Ex if he farms up 1-2M gil and pays for the win. Supposedly developers play this game privately - log on your private characters, make a party and help some PUG casuals get the win. I do just that to help my FC/LS casuals, and the task is just horrendous. We get 5-6 people through party finder and they keep flying off the arena within 2 minutes.

I know when making the game the developers heavily studied other MMOs on the market, but failed to get some good ideas from them. Like, WoW had weekly raid lockouts, but then developer figured out that people want to challenge the fights more than just once, either for fun, or more importantly to help their FC/LS/friends to not feel left behind. So they made it that every week you are able to cast lots only on your first win. After that, you can play again, but can not lot anything. FFXIV Developers reasoning for not doing the same is that they don't want people who are too weak to access content they don't deserve to win. It messes up with schedule, equations, content progression and what not. Nowhere in that one person's desire to play with as many people (this is MMO...) whatever, whenever, however they enjoy. We're treated like pieces of chess, not people trying to enjoy a game with friends.

[Zantetsuken]

I wonder how many of the Coil/EX fights in this game could be easily beat with bot scripts controlling each party member.

Actually...

I have a sneaking suspicion this is exactly how these battles are tested internally.


Lower dev costs and variables... faster iterations, cleaner results, apples-to-apples feedback...

yep...

ARR is a bot-vs-bot world. We're just playing in it.

[Amberion]

I spent entirely too much time in Sky and I'd classify those fights as boring.

I liked it, but a big part of that was that I liked helping out my LS members getting stuff. That and spending time doing stuff with them.

Anyway, I sort of agree with the OP. In many fights, it's more that you fight the mechanics instead of the boss itself. Almost feels like they could remove some bosses and just have you survive x min by staying out of markers on the ground.

[Yumi_umi]

Imo i think OP is going along the lines of
" what ever happened to improvision? "
Barely there are times you\\'ll be able to improvise during the fight.
All the improv usually happens outside the fight. Theory crafting?
Turn 2 enrage, smn using titan to tank mog ex, ifrit HM and caster LB3, etc all were devised after the fight due to observations during the fight.
None were intended by the devs but ppl made it happen and so it became the norm of the majority.
Because of this, the potential improv that could happen due to whatever reasons is drastically lowered thus causing the fight to be all planned out before even stepping in.

It\\'s just impossible for SE to give a damn about this as they have bigger things on their minds
I.e gold saucer, 2.28, 2.3, other minor patches, probs frontlines as to how they took time to promote it.

[OSUBuckeye4]

I gave up on Titan EX because it's BORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRING!

First 10-12 times I attempted it, I messed up.

Next 40-50 times I attemped it, I ran everything flawlessly and watched someone else mess up, got frustarted, then ran it again and watched the same thing happen.



If SE is going to continue with the scripts, maybe they could mix it up and have a boss that has 5-6 different scripts that it is capable of running... and your job is to figure out what script you're dealing with, and battle accordingly? At least that would provide some level of critical thinking.

Doing the same fight OVER and OVER without any change in the mechanics is just flat out boring. The end result of victory isn't a really a sense of accomplishment, it's more a dull "cool, onto the next thing" type feeling.

It's like memorizing the answers to a test and then sitting down and filling them out without even bothering to look at the questions. There's not a whole lot of reward felt when your teacher hands you the test back with the "A" on it, because you didn't really even know the material, you just memorized the answers. The real reward is in mastering the material and being able to demonstrate it in a practical setting, no matter what is thrown at you.


Anyways, I spend most of my time in game these days crafting, doing dailies, and leveling up alternate classes... I don't even bother with the scripted stuff anymore, it makes me want to poke my eyes out with pins.

[Amberion]

All the improv usually happens outside the fight.

That is not improvisation though, that is planning.

[Leelya]

Great post that accurately describes why I haven't logged on and played in several months although I still pay my sub.