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

[Bizniztyme]

Mix things up a bit. Ditto for the other hard bosses. I mean, they are suppose to be hard.

Just make it so that every darn time I go into that instance, it's not the exact same thing. It's boring. It's the opposite of challenging. The only challenge after you've run it 20 times, is finding 7 other people who have put in the work to memorize the pattern as well.

I agree that they should add some variety to content and battles. I'm not going to argue that but I'm not going to agree that it's boring and not challenging. I enjoy the fights quite a bit and feel it's really challenging but as I said I really do suck and I admit it. But read this thread, they don't want it hard. They want to make it easier. As I said, people are already having a hard time dodging already even if they have it memorized. Randomizing it, even fined tuned, will make it even harder for them to dodge and I'm not even talking about just one shot mechanics.

[Yukiko]

Impossible (brutal) Mode confirmed, we will get Primals and coil as it was original planed - zero state prebalancing!
We can achive a title to show we won content even devs could not win...

It was before they scripted it to make it easier - more random stuff

[Leelya]

For those that think the current system requires skill, I'd like to present another viewpoint. Youtube was out during FFXI, and there was still an extremely high number of linkshells (80% fair game?) who couldn't clear content. The HNM community still had to learn how to adapt to the random mechanics throughout the fight.

• In the case of FFXIV, your kill videos are the exact how to.
• The community has done a great job at simplifying these concepts in pictures (Titan picture guide comes to mind.)
• The community in general expects you to take off work for each new patch (Which isn't reasonable for many adults).
• If not you better stalk Reddit until you find a kill video, and memorize your role.
• Sit through 6-8hr sessions attempting to clear new content with a new party setup every 2 - 3 runs.
• You must player almost every day of the week the new patch comes out. Finding learning parties afterwards will be twice as hard.

Posting 1/2.

[Leelya]

This culture leads to an anxiety associated with new content that can't even be fully enjoyed with your friends. It also defeats the purpose of FC's and linkshells as you really have no content that more than 8 can play. (Yes, I know about CT and the German language queue up on 3). Many of us expect to be able to enjoy content with the community with an MMO and currently the upgrade path, and the mechanic driven gameplay doesn't lend itself well to a good gaming experience over time.

Posting 2/2.

[Gormogon]

This is good now elitist can't go mouthing off.

Reminds me of what happened towards the end of the BC expansion in WoW.

[Xine]

As far as people unsubbing because the game is boring to them and gates them out of content and some people apparently not caring about that, why do you think FFXIV failed to begin with in 1.0? It wasn't simply due to the graphic's engine failing. How many people do you know actually cleared Garuda HM after they nerfed the BLM burn in 1.0? That fight was severely unforgiving like a decent bit of the content is in ARR. People quit during 1.0 because it was completely horrible design and very few people save the best players in the world could actually take down. If it happens again, FFXIV: ARR will fail just as hard and there will no longer be an Eorzea.The horrible lag/latency problems that 1.0 had only added to the problems, literally every person I talk to who quit during 1.0 say they quit because the game was too unforgiving. Materia melding goes right along with that, fail a meld? You lost the equipment, materia and the catalyst, so penta-melds were damned near impossible to find in the markets.

Wanna know how far I made it in Garuda HM? I made it to phase2 every single time, but what happened after that? The rest of my party wiped to Aerial Blast because they could not keep up with the fight and how it worked. I could've cleared t5 pre-echo buff, but I kept failing because the people I went with failed at dodging Divebombs and worst part is, they were all i92-96 by the time they finally cleared it, and NOT due to being "overgeared with Echo", but because it took them that long to figure out the "mechanics" or rather, the script of the fight in order to finally get past it.

I personally don't think content should be made into a complete joke, nor do I think that content should be made so unforgiving that it makes people quit the game when its the ONLY content in the game that is considered endgame. Ways to fix this? Add more content that's considered endgame, or make fights a bit more forgiving for failing to PERFECTLY execute the fight's script. Given FFXIV: ARR is still a fairly new game, I'm not expecting for brand new content to come in the size of what 2.0 gave us at launch in every patch or every time SE decides its time to throw us a new patch. I don't even expect them to add that much content all at one time at any point in the game's future either save an expansion.

If those of you who enjoy doing Coil and keeping yourselves at the top, the game's older content should be eased a bit to make it more open to other players a few months after its released or made "old content." It's not about "White Knighting" or "gimping" content, its keeping the casuals/less fortunate players playing and interested in the game so they don't quit the game. It's a cascading effect where more people quitting means less money for the dev team to continue paying their employees so they can continue producing content for everyone, which includes the harder content for the elite players as well as easing old content for casual players. Unless people are willing to up and move on to the next game already.

I personally enjoy banging my head against a fight until I can get it right, but as others have already said, gating content by forcing a group of 8 players to perfectly execute the fight's script or fail is bad design for casual players. Not everyone has the memory capacity to memorize 8 phases and a rotation of 20 skills in a specific order for each phase of a single fight to continue. I know I sure as hell don't, I'm more reactionary when it comes to dodging those massive AoE markers on the ground. I'll move the split second I see it under my feet and I can dodge most stuff just fine, but then there's the matter of 7 other people dodging it at the exact same time or earlier to not get hit and cause a wipe because someone got hit and died to a 1-shot kill.

TL;DR version, unforgiving/gated content = less people subscribing which = GAME OVER, "End of Eorzea".

[Raenryong]

For those that think the current system requires skill, I'd like to present another viewpoint. Youtube was out during FFXI, and there was still an extremely high number of linkshells (80% fair game?) who couldn't clear content. The HNM community still had to learn how to adapt to the random mechanics throughout the fight.

The vast majority of FFXI players were horrible and didn't gearswap. All HNM fights were extremely trivial as long as you didn't have 18309213 melee giving the monster infinite TP. Tank/spank the whole way (except KB and Ixion I guess)!

[Serret]

In regards to combat and engame. I only partially agree with the op's post.

I agree that the game should be more flexible in terms of party building and party size.
Ex: I would like to be able to do content with a group of 4 experienced members, or if that isn't possible I'd take 6 instead.
The same could be applied to dungeons intended for 8m. Bring in more players we choose to, maybe even to show the fight to someone new or when clearing when 8m is not possible at that point.

About scripted boss fights, I do agree that they can turn dull after awhile, but at the same time a random fight could be unfair.
So why can't we have a bit of both?
Some fights that are scripted and some randomized fights? Or even a mix that involves scripted "key" sequences in a battle and lighter randomized sequences?
Why not even go beyond the "standard" MMO conventions and make a fight that's not just about players reacting to the opponent but t hat also involves the opponent reacting to players? Perhaps even trying to trick the player.
I believe that a mix between scripted and randomized would be ideal as it would give the player a sense of near-AI.

That being said, I don't mind certain death mechanics. But I believe those should be limited since they create an unfriendly environment for those involved when someone fails to meet the mechanics.

One such example is the orbs colliding in Ultima Hard Mode. Everyone needs to help in order to avoid a wipe, but if a single person fails, the party wipes. Everyone will be frustrated and the overall sentiment towards that person will be negative. This is the kind of thing I believe we should re-think.
I think we should be aiming instead for something like: if a person fails, another good player can intervene and save the party.

The doors in Diabolos for example. You can have the party decide who marks what and who opens what before the fight, and they can all help if they're organized. OR you can have a single player that knows the fight do the doors alone.
While it's a mechanics heavy fight, and while it's a fight with certain death boss skills, it's a battle where one good player can help a group of not so good players succeed.

In regards to bossfight mechanics I would like to also point something out.
Fights like Titan Extreme can be difficult for the wrong reasons. The Titan mechanics are fairly easy to understand, but reacting to them under 150+ms is NOT. I often find myself getting hit by a Weight of the Land when I've moved outside it's area of effect long before it hits, yet the game refuses to detect that I've moved out, this becomes even worse (or so I was told) if you're playing on a console due to an added delay. This needs to be fixed.
The fight becomes frustrating not because people "fail" at doing their job, but because the system will not detect their position correctly so there's nothing else you can do to progress within such a fight since you're at the mercy of lag and the server.

Finally, about combat I would like to conclude with the following. I don't think anyone is asking for "easier" content, I think everyone still wants a challenge. But we want FUN above all else.
Challenges and Fun aren't mutually exclusive. We can have both, but the fights need to be smartly designed.
We want a challenge, we want fun, and we want to feel like we're fighting an epic boss not playing against mechanics and lag.


As far as fun is concerned, I think that this game needs to go a bit beyond just combat. There needs to be more interesting things to do than just battling bosses.
While the basis for non-combat activities is set and probably to a greater detail than in other standard themepark MMOs it just doesn't go to enough depth and there's just not all that much to do.
Housing and decoration were first good steps but we need more. Where's the chocobo racing? Where are more fun minigames?
Why not add a degree of exploration and random puzzle and trap disarming in dungeons? (while a dungeon usually involves combat, these activities go beyond "bosses" and "trash").

[Byakuya]

you are missing the point here what he's trying to say we prefer to customize party size to allows others in fc or ls so they can participate as long as they have the gear IL and have access to events and not only 8 ppl limited . You can do kirin with 8 ppl if you want to but the point is the we wants to have a customize party size so everyone can participate on fc and have fun together. Try to run Binding Coil of Bahamut with more 8 ppl or lets said 18 it will by more hard them with 8 people with all the mechanics they have right now . Binding Coil of Bahamut is raid contend limit by 8 ppl only the system doesn't allow for more ppl on cuz Se made that way is more easy for them to have 8 or lest but they can change that if they really want . sky and dynamis or sea are open world content which is what we need more on FFXIV.
please forgive for my poor english.

Zumi

[Hoshikogi]

Building community and lasting relationships are the fundamental/original intentions for creating an MMO (or so the original creator of the genre states). Does the currently structured content support such a mentality? That was my most important self-perceived take-home message from that amazing wall of text.