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

[Kuwagami]

Of course the OP doesn't want just tank and spank. What the OP wants is irrelevant mechanics and gear carried encounters.

"Oh sorry guys, I got hit by that red circle... hehehe. Healz pls."

Let me tell you what happens when a party member gets hit by a "mechanic" that isn't deadly: nothing. As a healer, I just toss some AoE or simply let Eos deal with it. Maybe, if I'm bored, I may actually bother healing the person hit directly... though honestly I'd probably just toss a Bio or something instead.

Why? Because if you aren't going to die from a mechanic then there's really no rush to heal your HP.

Unless, of course, you want a sequence of non deadly mechanics that will kill you if you aren't healed in between them, to which I ask: why so adamant on moving all the game difficulty on the healers and tanks? That would simply make healers complain "this is too hard!" and we are back to square one.

First, tell me which part of the game isn't heavily relying on tank/healers ?

I've done all the content up to levi Ex and T5 with both my i95 WAR and i84 bard. I've been up to T2 and garuda Ex on my i75 DRG.

Well, my experience so far is : dps is ez mode. You only have to care about instant kill mechanics, while tanks and healers have to deal with a lot more mechanics in between. And don't tell me "there are dps checks", because these are only here to know if you have enough gear to beat the content, or if you know your job.

On the other hand, healers (from what I see, since I have no healer at end game) have a lot of stress to make up for the group's mistake (if they are forgiving...), and tanks have to be careful about the horrible positioning of their comrades, the AoE hate rampage of some healers, the lack of focus of some teams, etc etc... The whole game revolves around tanks and healers, and dps are just here to dance around doing the missing dps to kill before timers.


What if, for some fights, tanks would just have to tank (aka taking damage for the party) without dancing around to avoid 10s of AoEs, while making it easier for dps in the same time ? What if healers would just have to heal, without having to wonder every damn second if they won't make one of the dps die if they continue to save the tank's ass ?
What if dps had the difficult part of the fight for one time ? Just like, you lose if your dps isn't good enough, not because one of you lagged/failed a jump/was learning ?
(of course if you're learning it would still be difficult in some way, with a few mechanics. Key word is : "few")

The last patch (well it's been the case since Ex primals) introduced only fights with "1 death => wipe" for the masses. "Normal" people can't recover from a death in SCoB, or in titan Ex, or similar fights. Nothing is really difficult as far as I can tell. It's just "DDR : ARR", and you get "Game Over" screen if one of the 7 other players misses a step. This is BS. There is no difficulty in one-shot mechanics. You just die the time you learn them, and then it's a perfect score every single time you attempt it.

And yeah, I said "not difficult", because a fight you can do without any errors just because your learned the pattern is not "difficult".

This is the first mmo I stuck around to play, so I have zero experience with the end game scene in other mmos. So out of curiousity I want to ask, do other mmos rely on insta-death mechanics in the same manner ffxiv does? are the raids/trial styles similar as in they have scripted patterns and get out of aoe asap style?

I played a few obscure korean MMOs, which relied on really hard bosses which required like 50-100 players to clear them, with like 3 or 4 AoEs in total. All the AoEs were instant death for non-tank players though, but the majority of the fight was mostly "survive the attacks, kill the adds popping, pary for the boss to die before enrage". But on the other hand they were on the shitty "grind your level and gear with 1 to 5% probability to loot/enhance your gear" soooo... I don't miss them that much.

That said, many western MMOs are going the "pattern" way, because it seems harder at first (yay, hardcore players will be happy the time they beat it) and then become piece of cake once you master them (yay, mainstream/casuals will beat it in 3 month/2 years, they'll stay). I'd say it's a right "commercial choice" if you want to keep people playing for the fights.

If you really want them to stay though, you gotta give them something to do. Atma was in a way a step in the right direction (socialization, even though it only lasted 3 weeks). The union feature they are planning for 2.4 *CAN* become a really good feature for socialization too. Treasure and monster hunts, as well as exploration log, will add things to do if you want to explore the world with friends. But well, for now that's all. As many said in various topic, you can't go in a dungeon with like 6 or 20 people, just for the fun of it.

[Liger]

I really like what you have mentioned too, but I have one comment maybe you forgot and I am guess that is why the Dev took this direction in development.
When started, FFXIV ARR had a good number of players " Legacey Players" at lvl 50 and alot were already at itme lvl ~70 when the game came out. I am guessing SE did what they did just to slow the progress of the players and have more time to spend in developing the game.

[Dano]

Encounter design is one of the best things this game does. The very pattern based, very kinetic, very team driven feeling is what makes these types of game shine at cap. If anything we need more of it outside of the end game, that leveling to cap disconnect is a big problem in the genre right now.

When I started seeing examples of FFXI encounter design like it was something to be lauded my eyes just kind of glazed over. I liked that game, for what it was, back in 2005 but there is nothing to learn from it in terms of combat, mechanics, encounters, etc. It was and is a vague and awkward EQ-like with all of the nonsense that comes with that dark ages design methodology.

There are plenty of things this game could use like better itemization, more options and venues for gearing and customizing... Looking back at the dark age of the genre where difficulty was solely fueled by timesinks and vague, almost superstitious nonsense is about the last thing we need to be doing right now.

quote for new page, i agree.

edit: I disagree with OP, while the endgame content are mechanic heavy they aren't very strict or even punishable and you can reasonably prepare for them if you practice enough or done your homework.

[Ragecake]

This game is successful.

There is nothing wrong with end game content.

SE shouldn't fix something that is not broken.

There are so many things wrong with this post, it's not even worth mentioning it.

Respect lost to the OP AND the translator and those who agree with this post.

I'm not even sorry.

[Kuwagami]

"I think you say BS but I have no counter arguments so I'll just try to insult you and to make you sorry for not being as happy as I am"

sorry for the little trolling here but you do not contribute at all and your post can be summarized pretty easily by what I wrote....

Instead of just saying "Nay", could you people try to argue a little bit ? like, trying to justify how a mechanic driven fight can be harder than what you call "tank and spank" ?
(besides the learning time, which can be pretty long in both case)

[Litre]

No, he's purely trolling, probably the first of a flood of players since maintenance began... The game is successful ---> therefore it is perfect ---> nothing needs to be changed... Haha love that rational reasoning right! It's ok for him, therefore it must be ok for everyone, since he is the only person in the world!

Anyways back to the topic, please remember and read carefully the OP msg, that many of you are biased based on your skill level, there is already a noticeable exodus of players, if not players leaving, just players playing less and less, nobody cares anymore. The hardcore players are unhappy because they can't help other players and there's no fruits for their labor, and the casuals are unhappy because there are mechanics roadblocks they can't pass easily.


Then there's a bunch of mainstream players who either enjoy it as it currently is, likely because there is still doable content they can clear and have yet to. Or are slowly getting frustrated by wiping from honest mistakes by other players, with no chance of salvaging the fight. Especially as they start farming some primals or early coil, where mechanics become even more unforgiving.


If they don't add more content that casual players can access, or at the very least content that mainstream players can help casual players with, there will be no community to keep them from finding a more accessible game.

[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.

[Ragecake]

sorry for the little trolling here but...

I love how you apologize like you're being hurtful.

Instead of just saying "Nay", could you people try to argue a little bit ? like, trying to justify how a mechanic driven fight can be harder than what you call "tank and spank" ?
(besides the learning time, which can be pretty long in both case)

(besides the learning time, which can be pretty long in both case)

LEARNING?

What is there to learn in a tank and spank?

WHAT!?

The game is successful ---> therefore it is perfect ---> nothing needs to be changed...

I never said this. Straw man argument.

It's ok for him, therefore it must be ok for everyone, since he is the only person in the world!

^--Works both ways.

It's bad for me. Therefore it must be bad for everyone, since I'm the only person in the world.

Okay now I'm done. See ya!

[Gormogon]

Anyways back to the topic, please remember and read carefully the OP msg, that many of you are biased based on your skill level, there is already a noticeable exodus of players, if not players leaving, just players playing less and less, nobody cares anymore. The hardcore players are unhappy because they can't help other players and there's no fruits for their labor, and the casuals are unhappy because there are mechanics roadblocks they can't pass easily.

If they don't add more content that casual players can access, or at the very least content that mainstream players can help casual players with, there will be no community to keep them from finding a more accessible game.

Totally.

Yet one of the things I learned from the other MMO's I've played is that all that hard work amounts to nothing. Replacing a group of friends just to play with another more skilled and capable group of individuals that may or may not become your friends isn't really gratifying for me. It was simply just another experience with a different group, akin to having a change of class the following semester and not being put in the same class room with your actual long term friends.

I don't need to force myself and progress and stress over it. If there is a roadblock there that stops the people I play with from progressing I can do my best to pull more weight or simply accept that the roadblock is there and the party will eventually break and all I can do is simply put that time into something else which is what I've been doing. I didn't have much to do between 2.2-2.28 once I finished my Animus outside of that all I had was beast tribe dailies and soldiery farm then nothing but free time for me to play other games inbetween.

[Litre]

See ya!

See ya too ^^

I don't need to force myself and progress and stress over it. If there is a roadblock there that stops the people I play with from progressing I can do my best to pull more weight or simply accept that the roadblock is there and the party will eventually break and all I can do is simply put that time into something else which is what I've been doing. I didn't have much to do between 2.2-2.28 once I finished my Animus outside of that all I had was beast tribe dailies and soldiery farm then nothing but free time for me to play other games inbetween.

Ya but people hitting a roadblock, then playing less and less because they're frustrated and see no way around that roadblock is exactly the problem we're trying to address. And it sounds like you have personal experience with that, so in cases like this I rather these players see something on the horizon that lets them know that eventually, at their skill level they will be able to clear that content.

It might take a bit more work (ATMA farming, farming gil for better gear/materia, etc) but eventually! Right now there is no light at the end of the tunnel for these guys, and they'll leave, there's plenty of MMOs out there, but I don't want to see FFXIV fail. Now with the JP post the OP translated, seeing the agreement and constructive arguments here, I have a renewed sense of optimism, that heck if we're making a big deal out of this on both sides of the pacific, maybe they'll listen.

And once again we're not asking for drastic changes, we are asking for a balancing of some mechanics, "mechanics" that insta-kill now should still be "mechanics" that insta-kill now, but one day with proper gear they "won't insta-kill". So maybe they become auto-dodgable, or when you have a certain iLvl they should do 25% less damage/knockback whatever. If casual players knew that, they would be a lot more eager to reach that iLvl/dodge skill and try again.