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

[Hiruke]

I believe I only partially agree with the translated blog post.

Regarding mechanics-ladens encounters...

I think an "appropriate" use of mechanics is fine, but definitely agree that going overboard on mechanics is more problematic.

For example, I love all of the primal battles, especially the Extreme versions, especially Leviathan EX. Many of these use instant-death mechanics, but by and large they appear to flow smoothly, and don't "feel" completely arbitrary. Personally, I wish whoever designed Extreme primals would design all the battle content in the game. If they do already, I wish they'd design it more like primals instead. Perhaps more importantly, for these battles, I don't think there are so many mechanics or that they are so dissimilar from one another that you can't rather easily memorize them all.

That said, I completely agree that for "mainstream" or "casual" players, stuff like Extreme primals is something of a nightmare. Personally, I'm often dumbfounded at how folks can fail at Ifrit EX, which is honestly about as easy as it gets. I'm disappointed, but understanding, of why folks fail Garuda EX, Titan EX, and Leviathan EX, however. I always thought the Echo was kind of pointless, because of what was raised by the blog poster: Echo doesn't mitigate mechanics, and mechanics need to be cleared in order to win, period.

However, I still think primal fights are essentially perfectly designed. If they want these fights to be easily cleared by folks who can't do mechanics, they will need to make the Echo mitigate mechanics specifically. Perhaps do things like code Landslide to push you back X distance based on damage dealt, so that when you get Echo-buffed, you are pushed back less, so are less likely to fall off the edge, rather than automatically pushed off. This is not an "easy fix", but if the overall plan is to make the Echo able to get even "casual" folks through content, it's something that needs to be planned for.

Simply removing mechanics entirely would be a shame, and would make these fights no longer as fun and interesting as they are.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Binding Coil Turn 5. My first problem with all of Binding Coil is that the monster designs aren't very interesting, making it kind of boring no matter what. Fighting Titan is fun. Fighting a giant robot ball... less fun. I think Turns 1 through 4 are relatively well done, without too much overuse of mechanics. Turn 5, however, feels like an arbitrary pile of random mechanics. I can do Turn 5 perfectly, and have since long before any Echo buff, but I've always hated that fight, and still do. Probably the most annoying part, even if they are easy to overcome, are divebombs. You literally blank out while dpsing the snakes, and just wait there for a little circle to pop up. The snakes themselves are basically trivial, as evidenced by the fact that you mostly ignore them as you wait for the mechanic. You can't even really see Twintania, so it's not like you would ever react to where she is and dodge out of the way, you simply stand in your little hole, run up the hill a few steps when you see the circle, then run back down into the hole. Amazing. None of the mechanics flow well, seem to really fit together, or anything. It's just a bunch of random nonsense designed to annoy you. I don't know what's interesting about dodging invisible wind mines, but there you go. Twisters. There's like 5+ instant death mechanics in this encounter.

It's kind of difficult for me to express what I like so much about Levi EX, and what I dislike so much about Turn 5, even though I can clear either with equal ease, but that's kind of where I'm at in terms of mechanics. I will say that I absolutely hate "managing dps while also managing timers", which is the joy of Conflag/Fireball. FFXIV is the only game I know of that manages to punish you for being too efficient with your dps (sorry, you did too much to Twin, time to leave your buddy in a Conflag while you go to dodge divebombs!), especially without bothering to tell you the HP % of the monster.

Regarding "content for everyone"...

I personally think the flaw in the design philosophy is trying to make all content all things to all people. I think it would be better to have content that mostly only appeals to hardcore players, and then also content that mostly appeals to mainstream players, and also content has appeals to all players, especially casual players. A lot of casual players like to level, but making only leveling content would be boring for everyone else, right? It's not that different to say making only hardcore raiding content will be boring for everyone but hardcore raiders. Coil really won't have much appeal to non-hardcore players, regardless of Echo, due to the difficulty of mechanics. There's no way on earth casual players will ever beat Second Coil Turn 1, much less Turn 2 or beyond.

I think the real problem is a lack of diverse content, which I hope is addressed by the expansion. It would be good to have the super hardcore content, and also have better/more alliance content, more in the vein of Dynamis/Salvage from FFXI, maybe also some Limbus type content. Make it interesting enough so that hardcore players have fun helping and doing the content, and not so hardcore that mainstream/casual players will hate it/can't do it. It's definitely possible. Certainly more feasible than imagining ways to get casuals through Coil.

The dev team seems to have two conflicting design philosophies: 1) Everything must be super accessible (which is why FATEs are so boring - to make them something you can just hop in and do rather than something even partially challenging) and 2) endgame content must be crazy hard. The Echo buff is an attempt to overwrite 2) with 1), and obviously it doesn't work. It's trying to make stuff hard when it first comes out, then drag everyone else through after the fact. I think they should just give up and realize that casuals will never beat mechanics just by having more HP. And I think the "super accessible" philosophy is kind of wrong to begin with. "Fun" should be the driving factor, not "ease of play" necessarily. Otherwise you end up with horrible things like the animus quests. They are very easy to do, but absolutely zero fun. Dev team seems to think casuals just want to grind forever, which seems wrong, because a lot of people seem to hate the relic upgrade quests. Relic upgrade quests have essentially become the "content for no one" instead of for everyone.

Regarding the battle system...

I don't think more randomized elements necessarily equates to a more "skillful challenge". The blog poster mentions Titan, which already has randomized elements, in terms of bomb placement. I agree Titan being able to randomly do Mountain Buster x3 would make the encounter more challenging, but it's very valid to say that sometimes maybe he doesn't do that and the fight is magically way easier.

I do think the base battle system is a bit boring. This is best evidenced by FATEs. There is nothing particularly interesting about FATEs, or fighting any kind of trash monster, really. This is because basically all trash monsters may as well be interchangeable. Just dps them, tank them, heal tanks. Boom. Done. I'm not really sure what the solution is here. Maybe there isn't one. The only thing that made some normal monsters challenging before was the chance of the tank losing threat, which has more or less been alleviated by the patch that gave tanks like a million times more enmity. Short of giving monsters more troublesome abilities, or making threat more hectic, I don't really know what you would do here without simply remaking the battle system to be more "active".

Lockouts and gear gating...

The blog poster talks about paying a "practice" cost. I personally don't have a problem with this. I understand this doesn't appeal to "mainstream" or "casual" players, but I addressed my thoughts on that in a previous section.

To me, the annoying things about lockouts, and some other systems in place, is the heavy gear gating. I understand people do this to extend the longevity of your MMO, but it's kind of annoying to the extent it's done. When Binding Coil was current, I couldn't get caster gear to save my life, despite there only being 1-2 other people in my group who even wanted/needed caster gear. Because certain things just never dropped. Like ever. In a game where you can level up and use every job, it's odd to have systems in place that essentially assume you only have 1 job. Maybe I want to use both WAR and BLM as "mains"? Well, too bad. Better wait for the content to get nerfed so you can farm the gear after the fact.

I'd rather be able able to win dungeons either as often as I'd like, or have a limited number of wins available per week, or really anything other than maybe taking forever to get drops at all. Just by way of example, let's say you are clearing Second Coil Turn 1 every week. First week, you get 2 MNK pieces. Second week, you get 2 tank pieces. Third week, you get a healer and a BRD piece. So on and so forth. But you only want caster pieces. This can be kind of frustrating, as the weeks stretch on, you are probably going further and further into Second Coil, but aren't really upgrading your gear. It makes more sense to be able to farm Turn 1 to get the gear, to put that gear to good use in challenging Turn 2, since the difficulty increases each Turn.

There's also gear gating in terms of drop % in general, sometimes pretty severe, such as with Levi EX. If the mirror drop rate isn't less than 1%, I'd be amazed. After 100+ wins, I've seen exactly one mirror. Why? If an iLVL 100 weapon is so amazing you can't just "give it away", maybe make the fight harder rather than just make the drop super luck-based. Some people might get it on their very first win. Did they "deserve" it? Conversely, how many wins until I "deserve" it? 500? 1,000? A million!?

I think SE should recognize that once folks get the gear for their main job, they can continue to farm for off jobs. The content doesn't become obsolete the second you get gear for a single job. This will become more and more the case as more jobs are added. There are currently 8 classes, with 2 more on the way soon. When all of those classes have 2 jobs, that's 20 jobs. It sure will be fun only being able to get the top gear for 1 of those 20 jobs, right?

I even more hate lockouts because it forces you to run with a static group. What if like half my team quits out of nowhere? Then what? I have to go fishing for new members, people who might not be as good, and have to cycle through a bunch til I find someone who's a good fit. Now, if you could run Coil as much as you wanted, you could trade out people at will, and just leverage your FC/LS. It's just very exclusive, whereas if we want mainstream/casual players to enjoy the game more, it would be better to make it inclusive. If it's annoying for me, as a "hardcore" players, I can't imagine how much mainstream/casual players don't even want to trouble themselves with Coil.

Stuff I flat-out disagreed with...

I don't really want to see people set larger party sizes for current contents. An alliance in Twintania... no thanks. However, I do think there could/should be a place for a new content that is more like Dynamis from FFXI, where a skilled core group can push forward a larger group of hangers-on. I also do think there is a place for content limited to only 8 people.
I think pre-50 dungeons are boring. Mostly because you don't have all of your good dps abilities, so monsters take a million years to die. Fighting trash isn't fun, so much as it is tedious.

[LanceValiant]

I haven't fought any of the end-game content yet (Lvl 45 BLM), so I can't speak about the coil turns and whatnot, but for the dungeons pre-50, I'd have to say I have had a lot of fun. I have no complaints really; I mean, yes, some of the mechanics in some boss fights were just downright "OMG WHY!!!??" but I was eventually able to overcome them.

It's not that hard. In end-game, the fights are labeled (Hard) and (Extreme) appropriately. I can think of PLENTY of Final Fantasy games where the fights were heavily mechanics-based. You had to have specific gear or items equipped or you weren't going to make it and they were VERY hard to beat.

People just need to suck it up and learn the fights. Find friends/people who know the mechanics and go on Learning-Runs. I get discouraged too, but you just gotta keep going; besides, it's a great feeling when you've persevered.