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

[Dashuto]

This is the most well thought-out post I have read on these forums, and while I still enjoy the game much, I believe the OP is correct.

Something has always felt off to me about these save-or-die mechanics. The inability to compensate for weakness or recover outright feels minimal, and the ilvl can feel very pointless compared to the mechanics. Echo and Titan EX is proof of this.

[Litre]

I don't think gear needs to be handed down to bad players, there are many ways to make even second coil accessible, but that won't need to be addressed for a while. But yes in general, more creative solutions need to be made to address accessibility of content, instead of just, give them an echo boost! Which failed spectacularily, give them gear progression paths that take longer but do eventually make it possible to clear the content.

I think the hardcore should always get the best gear of course, the other players just need to wait, and when they get access to that gear, the hardcore should be at the next tier. Totally fine, anyone arguing that is going into the whole "I paid for this so I should get everything" entitlement argument, which is just not how MMOs work. But I am of the belief that most casual/mainstream players understand this and don't care if they have the best gear, as long as they have something to aim for and a concrete path to follow.

[Ooshima]

I don't think gear needs to be handed down to bad players, there are many ways to make even second coil accessible, but that won't need to be addressed for a while. But yes in general, more creative solutions need to be made to address accessibility of content, instead of just, give them an echo boost! Which failed spectacularily, give them gear progression paths that take longer but do eventually make it possible to clear the content.

I think the hardcore should always get the best gear of course, the other players just need to wait, and when they get access to that gear, the hardcore should be at the next tier. Totally fine, anyone arguing that is going into the whole "I paid for this so I should get everything" entitlement argument, which is just not how MMOs work. But I am of the belief that most casual/mainstream players understand this and don't care if they have the best gear, as long as they have something to aim for and a concrete path to follow.

Ooshima, totally agree, pacing is key, hard content should stay hard for a long time, if that content ever becomes nerfed to a certain point it's accessible by mainstream players there must be something just as hard and exciting to replace it for the hardcore players. Coil 2 ya should not be nerfed for a while.

It's just that Titan EX has been around for months and is unnecessarily frustrating, I just hate to see FFXIV lose players because of it.

One thing that begs to be reiterated, there are players that will NEVER clear Primals EX, second coil, or even turn 5 before echo at their skill level. But I respect them, they have jobs, or are new to MMOs, or both so they don't have the time to be good at games. Many of us grew up playing games so it's unfair to say "just practice" some may like the challenge others won't find it fun at all. They will always progress behind the rest of us players, beating content at the eased difficulty, and so things need to be balanced properly and at a proper pace.

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

[Gormogon]

I don't think gear needs to be handed down to bad players, there are many ways to make even second coil accessible, but that won't need to be addressed for a while. But yes in general, more creative solutions need to be made to address accessibility of content, instead of just, give them an echo boost! Which failed spectacularily, give them gear progression paths that take longer but do eventually make it possible to clear the content.

I think the hardcore should always get the best gear of course, the other players just need to wait, and when they get access to that gear, the hardcore should be at the next tier. Totally fine, anyone arguing that is going into the whole "I paid for this so I should get everything" entitlement argument, which is just not how MMOs work. But I am of the belief that most casual/mainstream players understand this and don't care if they have the best gear, as long as they have something to aim for and a concrete path to follow.

I'm totally looking forward to how end game raiding gets address in 2.3. With CT2, new primals, new classes/jobs, and if the limit break revamp makes it out by 2.3 how that will impact T6-T9. I feel more optimistic from all these options over Novus.

Yet as far as Coil 3 goes. I hope the cycle we experienced in Coil and Coil 2 don't repeat again.

[Litre]

Ooshima, totally agree, pacing is key, hard content should stay hard for a long time, if that content ever becomes nerfed to a certain point it's accessible by mainstream players there must be something just as hard and exciting to replace it for the hardcore players. Coil 2 ya should not be nerfed for a while.

It's just that Titan EX has been around for months and is unnecessarily frustrating, I just hate to see FFXIV lose players because of it.

One thing that begs to be reiterated, there are players that will NEVER clear Primals EX, second coil, or even turn 5 before echo at their skill level. But I respect them, they have jobs, or are new to MMOs, or both so they don't have the time to be good at games. Many of us grew up playing games so it's unfair to say "just practice" some may like the challenge others won't find it fun at all. They will always progress behind the rest of us players, beating content at the eased difficulty, and so things need to be balanced properly and at a proper pace.