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

[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.

[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

[silentwindfr]

the op have raise some interesting point.
the end game is not really challenging. understand me, i don't say it's hard, i say it's not a mmorpg challenge! it's a dance challenge, we must learn the step for avoid the gimmick and survive the insta kill skill. mmorpg is more than gimmick fight... actually is not gimmick fight. but let's be honest, some mmorpg like WoW did put this in front for long...

they say random is not possible... i say is not true! i say they need to have some sort of random into the fight... we can't have fight like T5 with multiple phase with 1-2 gimmick per phase for a long time per phase... is not fun, is not challenging! it's boring! people say it's challenging because they don't want to learn to play them class or be able to adapt to a fight. they want simple and predictable fight.

i hope they will change them way to bring fight and make true mmorpg challenge! what the point to level up a class have tons of skill if we only repeat over and over a cycle.

[TomTom1968]

[...]Yet coil and it's difficulty doesn't need to change, in fact it can get harder.

Thing about optimizing for more players having fun is having separate forms of entertainment all which progress at a steady and enjoyable pace evenly for every category of player.[...]

Not sure if Coil should be harder. I am not even sure why the Endgame in Coil is as tough to beat as it is.

I have beaten T5 last week (finally) and saw a nice Feature on the PS4 telling you the rating for each trophy you receive. The "Twintania defeated and Coil 5 cleared"-trophy is rated as "ultra rare" with a whoppin' 4,5% success rate for the PS3 and PS4 players.

Something feels terribly wrong about this since this is content that was already available in 2.0 and it got nerfed with Echo and changes/removal of certain boss skills have been applied as well.

But still, not even 5% of the console players have beaten it. And SE has decided to leave Echo as it is because their research showed that many people have cleared the content. But about what kind of people are they talking about? Good groups who clear it numerous time? Joe Average surely does not profit that much from Echo.

Doing Trials and receiving Titan HM clearly shows me that for Joe Average, the main problems are about mechanics, concentration, memorization and reaction time and those problems start way before considering jumping into Coil.

Not sure how it is looking on the PC but thinking that not even 5% of the player base has beaten this content makes me wonder for whom this content is designed for.

I know, lots of people on this Forum are Hardcore players who would like to have it even harder. Nothing wrong with that. But seeing the rating of this trophy clearly shows me that they belong to an absolute minority. So is Endgame in Coil something for a minority? Normally, designers want that their developed content can be enjoyed from as many people as possible. But when it is a bout Coil, a small percentage of the user base seems to be enough already.

I also know it is tough to please everybody. But the system as it is, is favoring a minority and that just seems odd to me. And before those comments come in, no I do not want everything to be handed over instantly without efforts at all. I just wished that the Coil and Ex mechanics would not demand such a level of perfection of playing a job as they do because the majority doesn’t meet these requirements.

[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.

[Alkimi]

I don't really get what the OP is asking for here. Make all the fights easier so people don't quit?

There's basically only 2 ways to make boss fights difficult, gear checks and mechanics. Remove the mechanics part and all you have is gear checks which can eventually be overcome by anyone.

As an example Turns 6 and 7 are very much mechanics based fights, you could probably beat them both in i80 gear, possibly lower. If you do Turn 6 in a certain way (Feed 1 slug to each slime) then there are basically zero dps checks on that fight and you can take as long as you want (maybe the bee but it still takes a while before it starts one shotting people). The only real dps checks in Turn 7 are the first set of adds who can overwhelm you if the first 2 aren't killed quick enough. The Prosector is made trivial through use of LB3. Melusine does have an enrage but it's extremely lenient and very few people will ever see it.

Turn 8 is a lot more of a gear check, but it's also a massive test of your DPS's ability to perform at their jobs properly. They probably need to be doing 330+ to beat the enrage and the vast majority of DPS in DF/PF parties I see simply couldn't manage half that. Many will need to heavily overgear it AND require echo, so will have to wait til 2.4. It does have mechanics but they're fairly simple in comparison to the other 3 turns.

Turn 9 basically brings everything together and tests you at everything.

[Pibz]

Not sure if Coil should be harder. I am not even sure why the Endgame in Coil is as tough to beat as it is.

snip

I also know it is tough to please everybody. But the system as it is, is favoring a minority and that just seems odd to me. And before those comments come in, no I do not want everything to be handed over instantly without efforts at all. I just wished that the Coil and Ex mechanics would not demand such a level of perfection of playing a job as they do because the majority doesn’t meet these requirements.

See now this is the thing that worries about this kind of threads.

Take a look from the perspective of people that want to do do raid progression, they have 1 , 1 piece of content released every SIX months(although it appears they're introducing a super hard fight this patch 2.3), "casuals"(or people who can't/want for whatever reason progress through raids) get every other type of content this makes up for more than 90% of the content in the game(EXs, dungeons for tomes, crystal towers, pretty much every pve piece of content that isn't coil).

So you are saying that the 5% that want a challenge aren't allowed to have 5% of the content dedicated to them? Seems pretty unfair to me.

Now let me clarify, i have absolutely nothing against "casuals" and i realize they are maybe the majority playing the game and i understand coil has story and some are interested in it.

Taking all this in consideration my hopes for the future would be that for coils AND ct(please yes) we get 2 versions of the fight: 1 version for DF that is fairly easy to complete ala current ct1, and 1 version of the fight that provides a bigger challenge and reward for those that want that. This way, everyone can experience the story and see all big bosses and what not, and everyone can try their hand at a more challenging version, please make it happen SE.

Anyway what you said(reducing difficulty in content) isn't what the JP OP wants, I truly believe he only wants same/more difficulty but a difficulty that is closer to the true sense of the word, even though i don't agree with how he/she says that would be achieved.

[TomTom1968]

[...]Take a look from the perspective of people that want to do do raid progression, they have 1 , 1 piece of content released every SIX months(although it appears they're introducing a super hard fight this patch 2.3), "casuals"(or people who can't/want for whatever reason progress through raids) get every other type of content this makes up for more than 90% of the content in the game(EXs, dungeons for tomes, crystal towers, pretty much every pve piece of content that isn't coil).

So you are saying that the 5% that want a challenge aren't allowed to have 5% of the content dedicated to them? Seems pretty unfair to me.[...]

I know the problem exists for both sides and I can partially agree to what you said. But imo, Coil and Ex Primals are far more than 5% of the Game. I am somehwere inbetween a Casual player (I like my DOH and DOL very much and make regular use of them) and a progressive player because I also enjoy the Endgame contents. I need longer than people focussung solely on this kind of content but so far there was no fight I could not clear. And I am not complaining because of my situation. I can handle the content even with my slow speed of learning things. But all in all, speaking of non hardcore elements, there is not that much for me to do so I need the mixture of casual and endgame contents to keep my busy.

There are three dungeons of which one is played regularly (Brayflox). I can spend half an hour with tribe quests and 15 minutes with gathering a map and defeating the enemies. Once per week, I can spend 2-3 hours on the Agenda. But that's pretty much it speaking of things I am interested in. When I reflect the last months, 80% of the time I have spent was with Ex primals and Coil. Patch 2.3 will hit us in Summer and I by this time, I will prolly have just started to dive into Leviathan Ex.

I know players who are in my FC or on my friend list who have not even started with Ex Primals and/or Coil. But the new content demands that the old one was cleared so these people will fall more and more behind. There should be more than the Echo buff to help them. Don't get me wrong, there should be hard content to make the progress orientated players happy. But the content in this Game is partially so hard that it divides the playership too much in my opinion. The suggestion of the OP to have two version of Endgame content might be a solution to this. I think it is not that people want the best and ultimate Gear for free. It is more that they know that there are many fights and dungeons in this Game they will probably never see. It can be frustrating knowing that the situation will get worse with each new patch they release. Reduce loot quality and keep the best gear for the hardest content but give them a true chance to enjoy the Endgame content in an easier version.

[Faelan]

I agree with the OP on few points. What I feel lacking in FF14 is the lack of freedom. Mainly, it is the way bosses are "solved".

FF14 requires ONE method of killing a boss - thus, you need to memorise the solution. This is challenging in the beginning, but once you've learnt it, it becomes boring. It also creates frustration between players at different levels of memorisation. This lack of randomness makes it initially-hard, ultimately-easy instances, which reduces its longevity.

In comparison, in FF11, perhaps because most of the bosses were "open world" (sky, dynamis, world bosses), there was no real limit to how many members can participate and it was possible to change a standard strategy to cover an individual's deficiency.

Although, were actual FF11 fights "hard"? Not really... it was just more welcoming and forgiving to individual mistakes. But I do miss the range of things one could do in FF11 as small team... like soloing sky-keys as RDM/NIN... In FF11, you set your own difficulty bar. In FF14, I think it'd be impossible purely due to the lack of abilities a class has and the world-CD, and plus the rigid instance party setting (must be 4 or 8 men for instance).


One easy solution to this problem, is to let the players adjust the difficulty of the current FF14 by free'ing the instance entry restriction. E.g. Even if it's 8 men Titan-Ex, let 6 men try it if they want to. Even if it's 4 men Brayflox, let 2 people duo it if they wish.

Also, as some other ppl mentioned, introduce a certain degree of randomness in a fight. I'm sure it's possible to "control" the randomness so that for example, 4 plumes wouldn't go off in a row (although it'd be fun if it did tbh). Part of "fun" comes from being surprised, which FF14 lacks direly.

For a long time solution, perhaps FF14 needs to release a few open world bosses so that players can choose to participate killing bosses in less-restricted style, both in terms of being free to make their own parties and creating a "solution" for the boss.

The problem with this, is that then we come back to a LFG waiting game (but already, DPS has to wait for up to an hour for instances so, perhaps that's not a big deal...).

[Okashii]

The echo was suposed to help casual players clear the harder fights to make up for the lack of gear.
The problem is that gear has nothing to do with it, it's the spam of instant death mecanics by almost every single boss in this game post 50 that makes it impossible to beat by most casual players.

This is ridiculous though. Once hardcores have won, then you want less hardcores to win BUT NOT people below that. You want people to win in waves based on skill so that everyone can have a sense of accomplishment. And a lot of lesser skilled players are clearing this content. Even pretty low skilled players can actually dodge divebombs but only now can they handle healing in that fight better.
theres not a spam of instant death mechanics. some are instant death, others are a lot more recoverable than that. gear helps a lot. helps push phases to see less of something. helps carry you through OTHER hits you may take so that you can focus more on the more difficult mechanics.