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

[Zyrusticae]

At this point I have to point out some parts of the OP that you seem to have glossed over or otherwise ignored:

http://ffxiv-fan.com/endcon225

First of all, a word regarding perspective

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?"

You often hear comments from people saying they personally feel the game is fun or not fun. My goal here is to explore how we can maximize the number of people who thinks the game is fun.

After all, the less people we have subscribed to an MMORPG, the less money there is to go towards future development costs, the game will begin to die out and then it's Game Over.

So, from the perspective of how we can keep people entertained and playing, the following is my own opinion on the current state of end-game contents.

Once again, 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" .

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.

Also, for those of you who think the current state of FFXIV is awesome, reading this might feel like a bit of a downer, so maybe you should not read any further if you're happy with things the way they are now.

Let's take a look at the first Coil as an example:

In Turn 1, you no longer need to feed the slimes to Caduceus, so that's a huge easing of difficulty.

In Turn 2, Allagan Rot is (still) the faster method. However, anyone who cannot properly handle the mechanic will still die and possibly wipe the party. The mechanics has been eased to the point where even if one or two people mess up you may still be able to clear it. Nevertheless, the enrage method remains the mainstream strategy.

Turn 4 has been unquestionably eased.

In Turn 5, if you cannot deal with the mechanics of divebombs, twister, etc., you will not be able to win no matter what your character or equipment level is, with or without Echo. In fact, if your DPS is too high, you will actually run into trouble with Conflag/Fire Balls.

So despite the first Coil being nerfed to cater to the supposedly mainstream crowd, the "if you cannot deal with the mechanics, then you can't win" principle remains unchanged.

In T5, there may be situations where you can recover from a poorly handled mechanic. But if you were to ask someone whether you can still win if the tanks died to a divebomb, the answer will always be "no".

Nevertheless, there are probably people out there who thinks it's not that bad and that it's easier to get people carried through.

What about the Second Coil then? Now that everyone has more HP, more DPS, more healing power... do you have any chance of winning without handling all mechanics perfectly?

Personally, I believe this "mechanics-driven battle system" that makes character level, item level, and Echo all feel more or less irrelevant is what's going to drive many players away.

In the future, even when the contents get nerfed, they don't actually get "eased". You will still have your Allagan Rot mistakes and your Voice/Shriek mistakes. For those players who dislike dealing with such mechanics, the contents will become no less annoying and no more entertaining even after a nerf.

I noticed this myself for the first time when I easily cleared T6 on my Scholar, despite White Mage being my main job.
I have only limited experience with my Scholar, and only cleared T5 with it a couple of times. Suddenly I'm clearing the Second Coil with it easily.

And this is precisely because the battle system is tuned to be heavily driven by mechanics. The fights are designed so that you can probably clear it as long as you have a basic understanding of your role and know the mechanics of the fight. Experience and gear only comes after that.

In a mechanics-driven battle system, an understanding of the mechanics makes the fight easier, not higher character or item levels.

Your character or item level is nothing but a measurement of the "minimum requirement" necessary for clearing the content.

That's why many end-game fights in this game - including Coil - can be cleared quickly if everyone fully understands and can respond to the mechanics. On the other hand, if you cannot adequately respond to the mechanics, then you will never be able to clear those contents.

It doesn't matter if they raise the level cap or increase the ilvl of your gear, if you cannot address the mechanics, then you cannot hope to clear the Second Coil.

If the development team changes the instant-death mechanics of these fights when the time comes to nerf the Second Coil, it will only serve as proof of how unbalanced the battle design currently is.

(emphasis mine)

It's worth noting that Square Enix can be wrong about their ideas of how many people should be able to clear certain content. Making it difficult for "mainstream" players to simply find groups to do initial clears and making it literally impossible for the majority casual playerbase to complete the content AT ALL is not good for business.

Remember, this isn't about ME, PERSONALLY being unable to get clears - though that certainly doesn't help my impressions of the system as it stands. The original Japanese poster himself has already cleared the content. This is about the long-term health of the game and how the current system may be self-defeating.

Anyway, the OP did a very admirable job of touching on all of this in the one post, so I won't keep reiterating their points here. Just try not to approach it from the perspective of "oh, they just want to clear it more easily!" and instead look at it from the perspective of the long-term health of the game and the difficulty for new players of getting into the endgame.