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

[AiChyan]

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

I'm not even sorry.

No one is sorry you don't respect them really

[Kuwagami]

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

It's called being polite

LEARNING?

What is there to learn in a tank and spank?

WHAT!?

Aiatar (Brayflox story mode) is a tank and spank fight. Yet there are a few gimmicks to know (OMG poison pools, gotta move)

On a certain extent, Ultima is also a tank and spank. HM version has a tank swap, and there are a few things to dodge, but mostly you just hit a dummy while some shit happens around. Especially in the phase with no primal power.

Tank and spank isn't necessarily a joke. Mobs usually hit really hard and you have to keep up with tanking, healing and dealing enough dps to get the shit done before no mp/CDs left. And at equal gear the fight remains hard no matter how many time you did it.

Ya I don't agree with the OPs suggestions, but the issues he brought up are too true to ignore. We are going to bleed players to Wildstar and the likes unless we do something to appease the casual/mainstream players stuck on Titan or whatever. Making content more accessible over time through something more comprehensive than just echo buffs is a start.

from what I can see, wildstar is trying to become "the most hardcore raid game ever" with..... only insta death mechanics. FFXIv has nothing to worry about losing people bored of the system to wildstar

[Litre]

Overall I disagree with the OP. I like the mechanics-driven fights. I like learning the dance, and dealing with a little randomness here and there. I liked finally getting titan ex with a grp of people in an LS who also wanted to get it down no matter how many times they wiped at first. Not saying the game cant improve, i just dont think OP's suggestions would improve it. But alas, i do not feel like writing an essay on the matter. So I bid you adieu.

Ya I don't agree with the OPs suggestions, but the issues he brought up are too true to ignore. We are going to bleed players to Wildstar and the likes unless we do something to appease the casual/mainstream players stuck on Titan or whatever. Making content more accessible over time through something more comprehensive than just echo buffs is a start.

[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.

[Gormogon]

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.

That I agree with and I stated it in the start of this thread that one of the ways to address this issue is to simply make separate content as long as it gets released evenly and consistently with the other content.

I simply stated my personal experience because I know I can cope with it but I agree expecting others to do so as well, since money is involved, wont work out so well. There's no consistent gain but constant delay in trying to address that demograph of players.

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.

Yeah there isn't. There's many ways to address this easier but the issue will always arise that those "hardcore" players and especially "elitist" are not gonna enjoy seeing casual and mainstream players get loot because they don't deem that they deserve it and it's an impossible issue to tackle because they wont compromise. As far as I've noticed the majority end up agreeing with "get good or take a hike" and that's a bad mentality to have since it kills communities.

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.

One of the simplest solutions would be to have some way to "nerf" bosses or "buff" a group.

As an example lets say that in turn 6 there were 2 paths which the group can take instead of going straight for Rafflesia. 1 of them buffs the group, akin to giving echo. The other you simply block the bee's from appearing or there's a way to get Rafflesia to lose those devour stacks.

The downside is that it take time as one would need to deviate from the path to go tackle those optional objectives and they only last for a certain amount of time. Aside from taking longer to start the boss fight you also get penalized by losing a piece of loot in the process.

Yet I doubt this idea will swing. Since those hardcore will feel like gear is being handed to bad players. Yet it's just an idea to try and address the issue. Sadly there needs to be a way to get "hardcore" and especially "elitist" to come to terms in agreeing with something justifiable.

[Litre]

Ya there's a whole other thread about it - titan and echo, it's a wonder why a moderator hasn't added something yet given the attention this is getting. If they added echo to help players through itI think they're already seeing the flaw in that.

The OP resonated with me the most because of this: "In other MMOs I loved helping my friends and guildmates clear older content, I wanted them to catch up and enjoy the new content with me, and as I started the game I was helped by many extremely nice players too!"

I wanted to show them lots of fun content, and I definitely didn't like seeing them getting stuck, frustrated or quit. But now in FFXIV there is some content that is just so difficult to help others clear! Like it'd be ok if 4 really good players could compensate for 4 casual/average players, but if I need to find 6-7 people just to carry a couple players through? Not everyone has that kind of time! It's easy to see why it has created a toxic community.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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