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

[ApolloGenX]

They are adding all kinds of stuff for all kinds of play types. I believe they just need time. Just look at this latest patch. Supposed to be a small patch but they added quite a bit of new stuff for people to do. It's not always about battle content and getting loot.

They definitely need time, no doubt.

I am just here asking them to take a wide view and design varied content. I don't think anyone is asking for "everything to be X or Y".

The content they have been putting out, though is following the exact same pattern... so at this point my concern is that future content will be more of the same... but hopefully they will get creative.

[Bizniztyme]

They definitely need time, no doubt.

I am just here asking them to take a wide view and design varied content. I don't think anyone is asking for "everything to be X or Y".

The content they have been putting out, though is following the exact same pattern... so at this point my concern is that future content will be more of the same... but hopefully they will get creative.

Let's hope so.

[Litre]

We're digressing again, and I think the OP needs to put this part in BOLD because many of you are so biased and don't see it :

this is not a post about making arguments like "well I think the game is fun because I can clear the contents" or "you just don't think it's fun because you can't clear the contents" .[/COLOR]

To make such an argument is like having someone say to you "I have practiced, reviewed and studied hard to learn English and now I can read and write English at the top-university level and have no problems with daily English conversations so it's fun for me. A ton of people in the world also speak English, so if you work hard at it you can be just like us too!" (You'd think "what a snob!")

I do not intend to write about the end-game contents from such a one-sided standpoint.

The largest group here, the casual players, have all yet to still challenge the Extreme Primals and Coil. But the reality is that a large portion of this group have already stopped playing altogether.

Many players are stuck on Extreme Primals due to the mechanics-driven nature of the fights. They can't react to them even if it's explained to them. They simply cannot clear unless they get lucky.

Even with the power of Echo, as mentioned earlier, it does nothing to help them clear the fight if they cannot deal with the mechanics. If they could then they would have cleared them long ago even without the Echo buff or the now-higher gear level.

Even with a new patch, there's not much for them to do (since they're still stuck on old contents), and so they get bored of the game and quit. It's only natural.

For example "bias":

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...

- No, the OP is not asking for a decrease in difficulty (read the Follow-Up) because many people have that misconception
- No, the OP is not asking to remove mechanics, but merely keep them and ease/balance it so the mechanics can "EVENTUALLY" be overcome by gear, albeit months after the content is released
- But this highlights your bias completely, see you're a competent player, this probably isn't your first MMO - you've got good reflexes and good mouse/keypad control I'm sure. Ok when my girlfriend plays she can barely control her camera and the character at the same time, and her mouse control isn't the best, she didn't grow up playing CounterStrike like me, oh really?
- Your quote "you could probably beat them both in i80 gear" simply shows your ignorance, I am not attacking you, lots of us here are like that - there are people that couldn't beat it even if they had iLvl120 gear, try to understand that. These are not gamers, imagine you trying to get your mom or dad to play, (generalizing here, maybe ur whole family are PRO gamers), but you get my point right? They'd be like... cooldowns what are those? Even after 2 months of playing they'd understand many things, but still.


So lets reiterate this again, get off your high horse, what's easy for you is not for others, Many players are stuck on Extreme Primals due to the mechanics-driven nature of the fights. They can't react to them even if it's explained to them. They simply cannot clear unless they get lucky. Please don't forget that FFXIV has a large influx of players who joined simply because it was FF not realizing what they got themselves into.


Then there's this, this is called "sample bias", this person probably plays with a pretty good FC, tackling end-game content and is completely oblivious to the many casual players who haven't even figured out how to join a FC (just an exaggeration but you know).

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.

Lesser-skilled players? Who are we talking about here, remember Yoshida said under 5% of the player-base has beaten Turn 5. Yes so the PROs, you are skilled, and the lesser-skilled are the mainstream players. You are completely overlooking a large swath of players who tried Titan once and said "this isn't fun". So many people only hang out with other skilled players that they have a false sense of who the average player is, truth is, you probably don't even know any within your 5 LS and 1 FC, well probably there'd be a few but you probably don't party with them or talk to them much, they're probably still lvl 43 or something.

- What do you mean by win in waves based on skill? You think they will keep regrouping, practicing and attempting it at the current difficulty, until there are enough people it reaches critical mass and then a wave of players beat it? Wrong, perhaps a few, but others will just quit (what we don't want). You don't know it, but you are coming off as really elitist, like you can't understand why it's so hard for others simply because you find it so easy. Perhaps investing time and practice will eventually help them beat it, but you also make the false assumption that these players have the time to do it, and that they enjoy it enough to do it (for that sense of accomplishment). But newsflash, I know a lot of people, who don't like that level of challenge, you probably know a few kids like this, when they played other FFs they grind on the world map, leveling up to 10+ the required level to beat the boss. Ring a bell? They are playing the game for the story line and the experience, and when they beat it, they are happy to play on easy/normal mode.

Ok I'm going to keep iterating this, at the current difficulty, many players will not EVERRRR beat this stuff, I have, but I also know players who have 2 second reflexes and will eat 1/3 landslides, I don't want to imagine them at harder dungeons.

This blog post is not written from the perspective of what I think about the game based on which contents I can or cannot clear. It is primarily written from the standpoint of "how can we prevent players from leaving FFXIV, or to gain more new players?"

At the current rate, we will simply bleed casual players until all we have left are your regular MMO players, it won't be Final Fantasy anymore. Just another MMO with FF style.


So what many us here are asking is: when you nerf old content, do it comprehensively so that the mechanics are also nerfed to not be insta-kill but hurt a lot, then they have at least the "hope" of one day getting good gear another way, quests, buying it, materia, etc and then beating it And at the rate these players are progressing, by the time they reach the content they only need to experience a fight that's "hard" for them, even though you find it hilariously easy, try to be respectful that there are a variety of different people.

You're playing on hard mode, you deserve the cool stuff first, that's fine, please realize there are players that never play "any" games on hard, they play on easy, they enjoy playing games, and it's challenging enough for them. They want to relax, not watch YouTube videos, practice and get harassed by you hardcore players, who simply don't understand their difficulties, coming from a non-gamer background. And we need these people to support the game/developers so FF can continue to flourish.

[Ramesses]

Thank you, Litre... and +1 to you as well for writing this.

Yet again, a large number of people are STILL concluding that the OP is suggesting that content be made simpler... even after there are at least five instances where both Emile and the Japanese player mentioned otherwise. Heck, even I mentioned it in my last post... and still several people are making this wrong assumption.

Sigh... anyway, the ancient saying still rings true... that assumption is a constant human weakness.

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.

Once more, as already explained by Litre above, it must be understood that the intention of the OPs suggestions are not to make the game easier so everyone can breeze through Coil 6 to 9. There is a lot more going on in the OP's post that you need to consider before making these assumptions. A lot of people who are unfamiliar with the evolution of this game and the gaming industry in general are still just throwing words and assumptions at this problem. Part of this problem actually started waaaay back during the Alpha test of December 2012 where there were some certain players who were new to the FF franchise. Thus, they didn't have that FFXI or FFXIV 1.0 mentality and proceeded to either compare the Alpha build to WoW or complained about almost every single thing that the Devs had created.

There were times that the Alpha forums got disgustingly ugly and I had a new level of respect for how horribly the humans could treat each other. By the time Beta arrived in February, there was already the beginnings of a divide... the old hardcore players of FFXIV 1.0 who were giving useful feedback and the new players from other games who had no respect for what it meant to be a Beta tester for FFXIV. And by March, there were some Legacy players who openly swore on the forums to create a wall between themselves and the new "rabble"... and who could blame them? There was a lot of wailing and ranting from the rabble (the new testers) about the difficulty of content, about them not being able to bulldoze through everything in one weekend, about the UI, about the graphics... heck, they even complained about the grass.

This divide eventually transferred to launch and now made many things into a double edged sword. SOME (emphasis on "some") old hardcore FFXIV 1.0 and Legacy players decided to create a niche for themselves and just steamrolled through the content and intentionally shut out the new players. They said "Screw those noobs and their rude behaviour... this is our land and we helped save this bloody game. They have no right to be here or even talk to us"

Then you had a separate set of Legacy or old FFXIV 1.0 players who were somewhat Casuals due to their jobs and real-life commitments. Thus they had limited time to play per day but were mature enough to endure the new players. They were the ones who realized... "Ahhh, seems not all of these new players are so bad after all. They just want to have fun like we do"

But as time went on, even these "tolerant" Legacy casuals realized that they were being stuck now and again with a handful of new players who were adamantly rude, didnt want to become skilled or were just plain lazy and wanted everything handed to them on a platter. And when they tried to be reasonable with these "kids", they got jibes, insults and rage-quitters in return

Unfortunately, the general mechanics gimmicks of end-game content has now thrown them into the mix of another demographic of mainstream players which created a bottleneck for them... hence the double edged sword we are now experiencing. Thus, you now have a mainstream group that is further split into the following three groups:

• Many Legacy casuals cant advance to the ex primals of second coil because the Legacy hardcore who could have helped have already isolated themselves behind their walls.
• Many Legacy casuals who are actually skilled but can never find enough skilled players to help them get through this bottleneck created by the game's mechanics
• The new casuals who just want to have fun with the primals or basic-level end game content but are either shut out by the hardcore or insulted by the rude immature casuals

There are a couple more "grey area" groups... but hey, the truth is grey. There ARE competent players in every segment of those groups... and there ARE elitists in every segment of those groups. Truth of the matter is SE has to find a balance that maintains their player base or else people will start to leave. The key is that EVERYONE needs to be able to be advancing in SOMETHING without having to deal with bottlenecks or a ton of irrational people. When push comes to shove, SquareEnix must make a solid yearly balance sheet that screams profit.

FFXIV ARR should always be about progression with a healthy amount of mutual respect, risk and reward... and not offering a prayer everyday that you get online that you'll hit the lottery in finding seven other people who have the skills AND temperance endurance to get the job done

[Gormogon]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Crystal Tower exactly the thing for people like the OP's blog post?

From my point of view it ain't.

Coil is constant end game content and HM dungeons, EX primals, and CT are all part of that content. What is being developed constantly end-game that has such longevity that is on par to what Coil stands for? Main Scenarios, Hildebrand quest lines, relic, and beast tribe dailies even if put together are don't have the longevity, challenge, and goal that Coil provides.

One of the simplest ways to address the issue of casuals progression is to simply revamp the world to allow open world dungeons.

Where instead of being isolated to 8 man instances to do Twintania per se. You can now tackle Twintania in an open world environment dungeon as such as you would currently tackle FATEs in game.

[EmiliM]

Thanks for the response guys. I'm appreciative of those who are trying to help elaborate and further clarify my original post (thanks Litre lol). And while I see many other critical posts, I feel the great majority of those are borne out of misunderstanding and fear that shifting the fight away from gimmicks/mechanics would make things too easy or "tank-and-spank-y", which is obviously not the OP's intention.

It's hard to imagine how you can manage such a shift away from mechanics-driven fights while maintaining the same level of challenge (the OP certainly took his/her best stab at it), because non-mechanics-driven fights are incredibly hard to balance and have much shorter shelf-life (see T4). Nevertheless, I think we've simply reached a point where enough people are frustrated (if this thread is any indication) that Yoshida (and the rest of us) should stop and think whether we really want to keep going in this direction.

A couple of my FC mates needed to run Gilgamesh yesterday for the story. Absolutely no one was doing it in DF, so we ran it as a FC. The fight was super easy, nobody got any rewards.

Yet it was more fun than any other fight I've done in recent memory. Certainly more fun than your daily roulette chores and coil runs that are either filled with annoying fails or a few clears where the overwhelming sentiment was usually relief (that it's finally done with) rather than joy.

And as you walk about in your hard-earned shiny new high allagan gear and realize that - outside of the select few people who knows about the grueling rope jumping you needed to do for it - nobody else in the game around you actually cares and you'll still wipe the floor with it next week if even one person in your static is missing, you do really need to start to think whether it's all worth it.

[ApolloGenX]

And as you walk about in your hard-earned shiny new high allagan gear and realize that - outside of the select few people who knows about the grueling rope jumping you needed to do for it - nobody else in the game around you actually cares and you'll still wipe the floor with it next week if even one person in your static is missing, you do really need to start to think whether it's all worth it.

There are a lot of posters here who simply are not able to believe that this is true. It would invalidate their playing and crush their sense of accomplishment. Some players need to believe that others "care" or "notice" or they will be faced with the prospect that they invested huge quantities of time into a video game for "nothing"

[Kiara]

Hi EmiliM,

Thanks for translating. This is a GREAT Original Post and I absolutely agree.

With our current XIV being so heavily Mechanics-driven (Gimmicks), it really does spawn a bunch of problems stemming from this. As Sylkis pointed out, our current system is designed so it's like expecting a perfect "80/80 Jumps" (using the Group Jump Rope analogy, with 8 players doing 10 Jumps each), instead of allowing room for Player skill and flexibility.

The biggest problem with our current system is really that:

* If even one person screws up once / dies, it's usually a wipe. Reset.

Even in FF XIV 1.0 (like Ifrit Extreme) it was more forgiving, but still MORE challenging than 2.0's Ifrit Extreme. I remember a few runs in random /shout parties in 1.0, where we had 4 - 5 deaths (back then, we also had people who could use a Raise GC Item), and we were still able to recover and kill Ifrit EX. That wouldn't be possible in 2.0.

Another great point is the feeling that if you're a good enough player (or have enough of them), that they can "combine" and overcome a few mistakes from lesser-skilled players and still have success for the whole party.

Most of the hardcore fights in 2.0 right now are about Memorization more than anything.

One forum poster made a great analogy that it was like joining a "scripted dance": You join in and follow all the steps correctly, then you win. And you need 7 other people to memorize and follow the dance exactly as well. Otherwise, it's pretty punitive and you fail.

I definitely want challenging fights. I do find some of the Gimmicks that Yoshi P is using interesting and certainly better than plain old "tank and spank," but the vast majority of the fights are really about figuring out the obscure Gimmick / Trick and memorize what you have to do, when, and just do it. It should be a lot more than this.

[Gardthorne]

It's a pretty good post with some very valid observations. A lot of it runs contrary to the design philosophy the development team seems to have adopted though. Hopefully the post gets a good look from the dev team, but it essentially asks them to change what are probably the long-term plans for this game. Maybe we'll see some of these ideas implemented by the first expansion.

[Kiara]

Thanks for the response guys. I'm appreciative of those who are trying to help elaborate and further clarify my original post (thanks Litre lol). And while I see many other critical posts, I feel the great majority of those are borne out of misunderstanding and fear that shifting the fight away from gimmicks/mechanics would make things too easy or "tank-and-spank-y", which is obviously not the OP's intention.

Hi Emili,

BTW, did this blogger ever end up posting their thoughts on the JP Forums? It'd be nice if it got some notice on those forums as well for the devs to reply to.