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

[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.