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

[Litre]

........oh look at that killing the same enemy a couple of times is not as fun as the first few times you did it, who knew? this is totally an RPG only problem and not a problem of all games even single players ones you are just replaying.........

No, I'm playing a game right now called Faster Than Light which is amazing! Random scenarios occur that I need to react to, even with a pause button the random elements make it exciting, multiple play-throughs have all been great. Right now FFXIV is almost completely scripted, that'll get boring much faster than if a fight introduced random elements that you need to react to.

And before you say it:

If you can't observe a preset, scripted battle it will be even tougher to do randomized battles.

I think you're forgetting a key other point the OP mentioned though, that the random effects you need to dodge are not insta-kill mechanics.

What's that mean? Well if you're a DPS with good gear, or a good healer, you can compensate for their screw up. This may motivate you to get better gear or try harder for that gear because you know it may turn around a fight, saving you and your friends time, a huge benefit I believe. Right now, there are some mechanics (not all) , where you can only watch helplessly as they get knocked out of action completely, from which the remaining party is unlikely to recover from. If the developers placed less emphasis on mechanics, then with good enough gear and skill the rest of the party should be able to compensate and win more easily - it's all about balance.

This brings us back to a very important point, IF gear was made more relevant, that would be an additional reason for players to beat the bosses, other than the hurrah of winning and adrenaline rush, which I can find in any multiplayer game. Even many multiplayer (non-MMO) games have rewards that improve your win-rate.

But currently in FFXIV, as the OP mentioned, there are too many mechanics that make gear completely irrelevant, if Leeroy in T5 forgets to dodge divebomb and knocks everyone into the purple fire it's an insta-wipe. What if with good enough gear that fire could be resisted up to 50% damage, the guy who screws up dies but everyone else who has good enough resist gear gets taken down to 2k HP, if healers are on the ball they may be able to get the tank back up fast then aoe cure the rest. I would take this implementation over an echo buff any day! At least when someone screws up there is some chance, even if it's 5% and with good gear 10% chance we could recover -not 0%.

And when T5 first is released, nobody should have resist gear high enough to survive this mechanic, but later on absolutely! Why shouldn't I be able to in 2 months from now, take my friend who just started into T5, with my superior gear and help him carry it? I want him to catch up to 3rd coil or whatever the current content is anyways, with the status quo even 5 months from now there will still be people who can't get this mechanic down 100% and it only takes 1 out of 8 to kill everyone.

Mechanics are awesome, they just need to be less debilitating, for "mainstream" players, a term which the OP coined, sometimes you'll have fun, other times it may be frustrating when someone screws up and causes the whole party to wipe. Right now that's all there is, but what if you could lick your wounds, and try to beat some other quests and get some other better weapon then go back and try again, except this time when someone screws up, your 10% extra healing wand is able to salvage the fight? Right now, in some fights, not all, it's not possible. Titan EX and T5 is the main example for now.

[Rose_Vilehart]

*snip*

actually no i was going to say this: you are asking a roleplaying a game..........a game in which you enter the role of someone usually in a fantasy world and follow them/you along their story and battles............to be completely randomized like FTL, which btw also has BS because whether or not you get enough parts to beat the last boss is ALSO random meaning you can play though the game only to find out the game screwed you, also FTL ships are not bosses, they are all basically just enemies, since the game take a strategy approach to it however they feel like bosses, the only actual boss is the last enemy and that boss has a slightly randomized ai but it is mostly scripted, i know i tested it......

Another thing you dont seem to understand: this is an rpg, most of the appeal of rpg bosses is looking at the boss, trying it, getting your ass whooped again and agian until you realize "ok i think i worked out his pattern now i know when to block/cast silence" and then figuring out the best strategy to beat them, this game would not benefit from bosses just doing random things halfway through the fight, no strategy would be able to be formulated and bosses would be considered "cheap", you destroy your own argument here.

[Litre]

Another thing you dont seem to understand: this is an rpg, most of the appeal of rpg bosses is looking at the boss, trying it, getting your ass whooped again and agian until you realize "ok i think i worked out his pattern now i know when to block/cast silence" and then figuring out the best strategy to beat them, this game would not benefit from bosses just doing random things halfway through the fight, no strategy would be able to be formulated and bosses would be considered "cheap", you destroy your own argument here.

I do understand that appeal, I agreed that bosses are fun and the mechanics are great, and I do love the challenge of figuring out bosses, formulating strategies, etc... we want phases and some predictability of course BUT you are taking a total extreme here, I am not, and I hope nobody is advocating for completely random fights!

The OP and I both believe that the mechanics are too unforgiving, and there needs to be a better balance between mechanics, DPS checks and "some" (not complete) randomness.


- There should be some things that I can expect coming, and plan to dodge and memorize for, such as phases, mechanics and coordinated telegraphed attacks, but if it hits me it should not wipe the party.
- There should also be elements that I need to react to, and therefore are reliant on reflexes, not memorization

The benefit from this balance is that items are more relevant, if someone else fails to dodge the mechanic the party doesn't wipe and with good enough gear you can overcome that setback. If you fail to dodge a random attack through a small mistake you should not wipe either.

All FFXI players come from a game where there is a healthy balance between mechanics and reactionary situations, all these challenges can be surmounted with good enough gear, but only months after the content is released. This way the hardcore get a chance to beat it at the start and when they get better gear, they can help their guildmates through it later. This gives me an incentive to obtain that gear, which is also absent from the game due to the heavy reliance on insta-kill mechanics. In Second Coil, insta-kill mechanics are fine since this is the highest tier end-game, but why are storyline fights like this too? Like the OP says it leads to more frustration than there should be and some people giving up.

If SQEnix gave me an item, that enabled Tempered Will (knockback resist, probably specific to Earth damage at a certain level for balance purposes) on a 30 second timer, imagine the instant appeal! It should only be obtainable through far harder content, but still I would aim for that immediately, why? Because I have tons of friends in my LS that still have a hard time clearing Titan EX. But right now there is no such item, Titan EX you win or lose based on mechanics, if just a few people make one mistake, then no item and nobody can salvage the fight.

[Raskbuck]

Emilia, thank you for sharing your thoughts on the matter.

As someone who has been playing since Beta/early access, I haven't touched the Extreme Primals or the Binding Coils of Bahamut due to similar reasons you have mentioned. The mechanics in and of itself can be quite intimidating for players who want to experience the content for the first time, and I believe that might be due to the excessive number of instant-death conditions.

I don't consider myself a bad player by any means, but it is incredibly frustrating to find groups that are willing to remove other people mainly due to these mechanics. Like you have pointed out, no amount of gear or Echo will fix the issue at its core.

So what kind of content is out there for those of us who don't want to deal with these mechanics? Well, there is crafting; which is essentially irrelevant in the market and has little to no place in high-level endgame. Truth is, there is not much to do for us "casuals" that have no interest in Coils or Extreme Primals, and that is discouraging.

I want Square Enix to succeed, so don't take this as an attack. I sincerely hope they start addressing these things in the future patches.

[Ooshima]

Snip

I can understand where that point is coming from but I'm still not agreeing to it.

Some fights are meant to have a certain sense of difficulty, some fights are meant to be the toughest, like coil2.

Whilst gear itself can be seen as largely irrelevant to instant kill mechanics, but the thing is not all mechanics are instant kill. In fact, most are not. This is where gear could help you in a way or another.

Higher HP means you can endure hits better, for example, less prone to getting knocked out by tumults when you didn't manage to get topped off earlier. Higher HP from gears also helps you in enduring big hits such as Circle of Flames from Melusine or able to eat Nael's double dive without heals or you could eat double dive with a Second Wind self heal if your healers happened to get caught in something else.

Having better gear also ensure that you can deal more damage given the same skill level which actually can save the fight when shit hits the fan. For example, in one of my recent carry runs on Titan EX, 2 DPS accidentally fell down due to miscomm and it was left with me (BRD) and a SMN. Because we are so geared (i110 weapons and average ilvl over 100) we can still go past Superbombs safely. Of course this is an example if being severely overgearred but it doesn't change the fact that gear helps. In fact Titan EX was doable with 3 DPS back then in 2.1 with i90 gears shows that gear can help.

Some of these tough mechanics are recoverable thou. We've recovered from 1-2 deaths from kiters and healers in T7, dead DPS on Turn 8. I've seen many teams on Turn 9 having DPS die a couple of times and still cleared. Depends on the severity of the mistake - and of course, gear helps in here. When starting out in T9 with i95ish gears having your DPS die 1 or 2 time may result in you hitting the enraged timer, but as you gear up having your DPS die 1 or 2 times to divebombs or elemental attacks aren't too bad as your other geared DPS can cover for the loss. Gear is not that irrelevant, but only irrelevant when you make big ass mistakes such as firing your curse voice across the area and freezing almost everyone else.

With all these said, let us recall that most of the most punishing mechanics are either scripted or have some major indicator coming. One shouldn't be caught surprised by it. Say T5, Twintania disappears and you know it's time for divebombs so by the conventional strat, move your butt into the pit and get ready. There's really quite some time allowance there, it's not like DB indicators come 1s after Twinny disappears. The reason you can't make it in time is probably you are losing concentration. Cursed Voice from T7 have a timer ranging from 5s-9s - misfiring it is totally your fault (yes at times I lost concentration and misfire too).

Let us discount those who insist that they enter blind - with so many nice players out there making written guides and video guides, and assuming that the player have practiced umpteen times on it but still making the same old mistake (such as eating Lunar Dynamo on T9 after say hours of practice) - who else other than that player is to blame?

Don't get me wrong thou. I won't say I am a hardcore elitist but I won't say I'm not one. But I will try to be fair whenever I can. In this case I can only say that if one have did their homework and after hours of practice and making the same mistake over and over again, either keep practicing and improve yourself, if not that player is really undeserving to clear. I do get punished when I failed mechanics myself and I could only blame myself for it. I mean I know what's coming and I still failed to it afterall - it's like you see an oncoming train and you still walked into it

Ultimately it is up to SE to decide the direction of the game. So far what I can only see is that SE have no intention to make this a game catered to the hardcore but trying to be as inclusive as they can. Not perfect as they are now and there are still issues such as server lags which they could address better, but I can see a certain direction. It appears that SE wants to make it all inclusive so I won't be surprised that coil will be as tough as they could offer without making it overly hardcore.

Meanwhile if anyone wants to play a game where things aren't as punishing maybe there are some more casual MMOs or even single player RPGs out there which gear does make things easier, allowing you to faceroll through it (most FF non MMOs are like that anyways, grind and overpower yourself and the story boss is a joke). There are really a lot of games out there with vairying difficulty from mindless hack and slash to some kind of difficulty where you have to learn a combat system, gear attributes or even managing combos etc.

Practically speaking I think SE have been accommodating to suggestions or request that they would accommodate. But if their direction is to make this came accommodating all players from casuals to hardcores, then it is inevitable that coil will be tough. It would be inevitable that there will be very very punishing mechanics that would differentiate those who has the skill to manage it or those who simply can't, such as those who still dies to T5 divebombs despite trying for months. As such if one thinks that this game is too tough then one should probably move on to a more enjoyable game. Don't get me wrong again here but what I mean is there is no point paying for a game you won't even find it enjoyable and entertaining. I'm sure Yoshida gets this himself that he will not able to satisfy everyone.

The game is still new and personally I'm still watching it. TBH I don't find 2.2 as enjoyable as 2.1 - 2.1 is still the most enjoyable patch. The balls is still on Yoshida and his team to decide the direction of the game, whether they could convince their bosses that this is the direction and to convince them that this is the direction despite any sales loss or that this direction is the result of the good sales they get etc. In fact Yoshida may not even have that much power we think he have. It may be even up to SE higher ups to decide FF14 should be a game with some difficult but may get lesser revenue or to cheese it to grab more casual sales. But certainly if FF14 degrades to something like KOEI's Dynasty Warriors series I wouldn't be paying a monthly subscription of this much to play it though.

[Litre]

Some of these tough mechanics are recoverable thou. We've recovered from 1-2 deaths from kiters and healers in T7, dead DPS on Turn 8. I've seen many teams on Turn 9 having DPS die a couple of times and still cleared. Depends on the severity of the mistake - and of course, gear helps in here. When starting out in T9 with i95ish gears having your DPS die 1 or 2 time may result in you hitting the enraged timer, but as you gear up having your DPS die 1 or 2 times to divebombs or elemental attacks aren't too bad as your other geared DPS can cover for the loss. Gear is not that irrelevant, but only irrelevant when you make big ass mistakes such as firing your curse voice across the area and freezing almost everyone else.



With all these said, let us recall that most of the most punishing mechanics are either scripted or have some major indicator coming. One shouldn't be caught surprised by it. Say T5, Twintania disappears and you know it's time for divebombs so by the conventional strat, move your butt into the pit and get ready. There's really quite some time allowance there, it's not like DB indicators come 1s after Twinny disappears. The reason you can't make it in time is probably you are losing concentration. Cursed Voice from T7 have a timer ranging from 5s-9s - misfiring it is totally your fault (yes at times I lost concentration and misfire too).

Don't get me wrong thou. I won't say I am a hardcore elitist but I won't say I'm not one. But I will try to be fair whenever I can. In this case I can only say that if one have did their homework and after hours of practice and making the same mistake over and over again, either keep practicing and improve yourself, if not that player is really undeserving to clear.

Thanks for your well thought out post But I guess you can see your own bias, you do your homework and love the challenge and overcoming it, I do too. But all the recoveries from mistakes you mention happened in the end-game, you have good players already pushing through the hardest content. I think at that level things are fine as they are, it's new content, what we are saying is that even that content should be doable EVENTUALLY by players that are simply unable to dodge every mechanic.


Fixing this is as easy as, instead of this mechanic not being instant death, it does something like 6k damage! Pretty much death for anyone with current gear, but in 2 months even DPS might have 8-9k HP and be able to survive one of those. In this way gear is more relevant and becomes increasingly more relevant as time goes on and content becomes accessible to more people, simply because they have better gear.

Like it or not, there's plenty of players there that need that 25% echo boost to even stand a chance, I would argue that eventually maybe 3-4 months after content is released, it'd be possible to be 50% stronger than those who cleared it the first time, so echo 25% + gear 25%. Right now there's plenty of mechanics that even with 100% of a boost you cannot survive, Titan EX keeps coming up in this respect - give us 25% knockback resist with echo, that way if someone runs to the middle they might die but least not be knocked off etc...

This is what we mean by balancing the mechanics vs gear dependency, if it's 100% mechanics and 0% gear, then you either memorize the patterns or you'll never beat it. If it's 90% mechanics and 10% gear, it's unlikely to be possible for a group of unskilled players to beat it, but a couple or few may be able to beat it with others carrying them.

Frankly even an encounter at 70% mechanics/30% gear dependent will be very hard/unbeatable by some casual players, now put yourself in their shoes, you can't find a group of 8 that can dodge mechanics reliably for the life of you, higher levels don't care about you, nor can they help you much. And you've basically reached the end of the game, it's stonewalled and you're frustrated, some will keep practicing others will give up.

Now imagine if there were alternative paths to try to get better gear such as, quests, materia, buying better gear, this gives them something to strive for, they can get closer and closer to winning, you can't improve your ability to dodge, you're just not that skilled, but you have a way around this, and at least one day you know you can beat it, isn't that a lot more optimistic?

The hardcore can have their insta kill, 100% mechanic battles, knock yourselves out and you deserve the best gear for that, the casuals shouldn't have to face something so frustrating, unless they go off the beaten mainstream/casual path for a challenge, I'd be happy if they did, but not everyone's the same.

[Ooshima]

what we are saying is that even that content should be doable EVENTUALLY by players that are simply unable to dodge every mechanic.

I think eventually it will be. Yoshida had said before that he wants players to be able to move on to the newer contents, but probably he wants it at a controlled pace?

I feel that a certain degree of balance will be good. While I do welcome more players to pass coil1 and enter coil2, but I do hope that they reach coil2 with some basic lessons learnt. Look around the forums, enough of threads complaining about bad players. I can't imagine Yoshida blindly pushes through say 90% of the player base into coil2... Probably every hour you will see a new thread complaining about bad players in coil2

I get the sense that things will get nerfed down in a gradual pace. Looking back at some of the oldest content since 2.0 - AK for example. With higher level gears more accessible and high level players entering via roulette, it is some form of a soft nerf to what was one of the toughest dungeons back in 2.0. A further nerf by removing the bees from Demon Wall made the fight a full pushover.

Things like echo, combined with high voltage nerf really made T2 another pushover fight. Most things are quite nerfed down as it is, there might be further nerfs in the future if data still shows that a significant amount of players are stuck there. I don't think the development team would want to see players stuck there forever either, but probably like I've said earlier, they didn't want them to go past them easily to the point that they learnt nothing, and suddenly got a shock when they reached coil2 which is the real deal. The same kind of shock when new players reaching Brayflox NM and Stone Vigil and then, Garuda NM - which is a great spike in difficulty. Not only players may feel disheartened and also possibly subjected to verbal abuses by other players who got there before the nerf.

All in all I think there is a rationale behind the amount of nerf applied. I'm not Yoshida thou so that's as much as I could conjecture here. But it's a fact that there is a lot of things that have been nerfed down with Twintania and Titan EX as the final placeholder.

I find it a good thing that the devs hasn't overly nerfed them yet - because these fights does teach players a couple of things. Landslide still serves as a reminder that coil 2 will have things you need to note. Like for example - Cursed Voice - both landside and cursed voice have a significant amount of time before it is actually triggered, and if you don't handle it it's easily gone case for you. Divebombs is some sort of a repeated mechanic in T9 and it also reminds you about stacking, which again stacking is part of Titan EX's strategy and also for T6's Acid Rain. Some of these things really taught me well and prepared me for future contents - I'm somewhat glad that they aren't nerfed down too fast.

It is not that I am an elitist and doesn't want people to pass thru content so I feel like a special snowflake, but from a more objective point of view, what good does it do, really? Maybe players feel satisfied when clearing content, which is undoubtedly true, but again if they are clearing it mindlessly without learning things and ended up facing current contents with a steeper than intended difficulty spike, what would happen? I guess some of them would come to forums to lament about the crazy difficulty of coil2 although it shouldn't be that bad if they did learn something or coil2 players coming to forums to lament about the influx of bad players etc. Both are not a good thing to me.

[Kuwagami]

Look around the forums, enough of threads complaining about bad players. I can't imagine Yoshida blindly pushes through say 90% of the player base into coil2... Probably every hour you will see a new thread complaining about bad players in coil2

I would like to correct this part real quick :
There aren't a lot of bad players. In fact, there are tons of average-to-good players.

But there are tons of people who don't have the time/will/success in learning do-or-die mechanics.

no time => well, speaks for itself.
no will => their problem I guess ?
no success => this is the bothering point. They can't learn mainly because of 2 things : it's do-or-wipe, and noone wants to let them take the time to learn.

"Don't waste my time"
"you're just so noob get out of my party"
"your dps is crappy l2p"
"OMG why you can't dodge such an easy thing ?"
and so on. These are only examples, and anyone PUGing something to learn it 2 weeks after the content is live has experienced it at least once.

Heck, for 2.2, it was TWO FREAKING DAYS after the patch going live that people were "know levi ex ins and outs or GTFO. Weapon proof, 1 fail = kick". One week after, the same applied to T6. Cmon people....

Hell, a T1 learning party got flamed because they couldn't handle the split (2 new tanks) the first time they tried, and 3 people raged out after a single wipe. We replaced them, wiped at the ADS, 4 new people left. How are they supposed to learn that way ?

Do a test, form a levi Ex learning party, and intentionally die at fear add or right when the rails go off. People will quit, the party will disband, noone will have learned anything.

In moggle mog, people rage out if you take the delta attack once. They rage out if noone cancels the pom flare/holy (although they didn't do anything about that). I could continue for a long time....


Honestly, I can only see 2 fixes about that problem :

1) Fix the community. An attempt about as useful as trying to erode the Everest with a knife.

2) design more forgiving fights. There is no need for a fight to be "A mechanic every 3 seconds and every one of them is insta death". A few fights like that are fine. Just don't do that for all

I think our exchanges have come to some sort of agreement I agree with whatever you've just said. I think Yoshida does have a good intention in mind but probably the ideas and execution needs further refinement, definitely. I can understand players getting impatient and sometimes I get impatient at certain things too, but sometimes I look back again and see that ARR is just under one year, I can cut them some slack, maybe. Not trying to be SE's White Knight (I won't bother because some things really sucks about them which my #1 complain is server inconsistency and lag and 90k) but I think Yoshida was given a daunting task to overturn the fortune of FF14 1.0 to what it is right now, in quite a short period of time, while gathering feedback and implement as much QoL improvements and changes as he could afford to, in his own judgement. As I said earlier, I would give them more time in view of this, but of course after a year or two it's still the same old methods then I think it's something really worth complaining to the max

I would like to thank you for this post. It sums up a lot of things I've been thinking about recently. Give them time, judge them on what they do or don't do after a significant period.

Extension (3.0 right ?) will be the decisive step for ARR probably

[Ooshima]

I would like to correct this part real quick :
There aren't a lot of bad players. In fact, there are tons of average-to-good players.

Well, there's a lot of ways to see it. On surface value of what you have said, it's also true. But from the more "elite" players who cleared them easily, if you are not above average you are probably labeled as bad. See the difference?

And like you said, those things like "CLEARED ONLY", "NO NOOBS" PF recruitment that appeared few days after a new patch can be discouraging. I see from both sides of view thou as I have been on both sides before. Once I've cleared a content and my intention is to smoothly then of course I would probably have a "noobs please get out and don't waste our time" attitude. I think it's a bit of human nature.

In Patch 2.2 I concentrated my first week on 3 star crafting and thus by the time I wanted to clear Levi EX, I am way behind everyone. Yes PF are all filled up with "PROS ONLY" parties and hardly any learning parties but eventually I cleared it with a semi learning party.

I haven't been subjected to much raging during learning parties - probably I'm in a JP server where people are probably more mindful with their words and only complain behind their friends, FC and LS about really underperfoming players. I think the situation is worse at NA servers, I was from NA server before so I'm guessing so. But that's really player issues I have to say. Tough to change a human.. I think Yoshida rather bang his head on how to improve the game than player attitude and behavior. Well, toxic people are everywhere..

I would like to thank you for this post. It sums up a lot of things I've been thinking about recently. Give them time, judge them on what they do or don't do after a significant period.

Extension (3.0 right ?) will be the decisive step for ARR probably

NP. Sometimes I rage over a lot of things but it's good to take a step back and think about a bigger picture. I think a good testing point will be either the 1 year mark or coil 3 (suspected to be the last coil before expansion), which I think by then it is really a lot of time for the development to have a good grasp of where they should, and want to head to.