In need of alternative endgame content

[Xatsh]

I still don't really see why dungeon/raid lockouts are unusual to some people (unless you're new to the genre). Shouldn't this be... the normal acceptable method in an MMORPG?

Besides, allowing players free roam is rarely a good idea. We generally eat up content WAY too fast. I guarantee... GUARANTEE that if 10 versions of coil-like content were released, and patches were staggered by maybe 6 months instead of the 3 currently, people would still be complaining there's nothing to do for endgame. Of course, there's also problems with allowing the players too much access to things. When there's a risk that someone will literally die from exhaustion from playing your video game, that kinda raises a flag that people can't quite control themselves, even when their lives are on the line.

The issue is the way XIV is designed. Other games have lockouts but they handled them much much better.


I will use the big 2 other mmo that people in this game came from:

XI had lockouts - they involved between 6-50ppl could take any amount of people and there was numerous activities to do at once. (Equally valid content with and without lockouts)
WoW had Lockouts - you could take your entire/most your guild without leaving people out. Yes WoW had lack of content when you go to the end, but it was focused on the entire group.

XIV has linear content to the extreme... where 1 piece of content vastly superior to all other content in terms of reward. The same content forces a low man structure. And it imposes extremely strict lockouts (once a week only... most games it is 48-72hrs)

- You can do ct2 next patch, but everything is subpar compaired to coil and Solidery gear (Since it can be upgraded). Except the tombstones, oils and sands.
- New primals will last for alittle while. 1 month at most for people already at endgame.
- dungeons only purpose in XIV is to get Soldiery or Myth for Relic Quest
- Maps are for vanity pets or Alexadrite
- Old CT is vanity only
- Old Coil is subpar compaired to everything in 2.2
- Ifrit/Garuda/Titan are for vanity only or pet collecting
- Hildebrant quest is good once through for story
- Quest are good once through for story.

Unless you are collecting vanity items or pets... the only valid content is coil and Levi. And 1 has a week long lockout. For anyone who can beat coil the game has 3-4hrs a week worth of valid content.

That is the problem with XIV... there is 1 piece of endgame content and it has extremely restrictive lockouts. They need to either add more content that is valid or remove the lockouts... If people burn through it too fast the devs need to either A) design content faster or B) add different forms of content for endgame... not just 1 set of instanced boss fight (it is not even a raid technically).

[Hiruke]

The issue is the way XIV is designed. Other games have lockouts but they handled them much much better.

I agree 100%.

It's really annoying to get together a static of people who are:

1) near perfect in their game play
2) are able to play at the same times as you
3) don't get sick of the game and quit

If there was no lockout, you could at least mix up your 8 man group. Go with some people one day, and another set of people another day. Instead you're forced into either PFing it and hoping, or making a static. If you make a static, better hope everyone is super pro, and no one quits! Otherwise, you're now forced at least partially into the PF situation, or you just stop doing Coil altogether.

It's kind of silly that the whole excuse for this severe lockout is that "people will go through content too quickly". Who cares if people burn through content too quickly? The reality is that the top tier of players ALREADY BURN THROUGH CONTENT TOO QUICKLY. They'll either continue to do it after it becomes old hat, as they already do now, or they won't. Lessening restrictions will have zero impact on this. For some reason Yoshida cares about this extremely minute minority SO MUCH that they are making Brutal Coil specifically for them. Isn't that enough? Challenge in spades.

Besides which, this game lets you play any different job you want. Already beat all the content? Well, you can start going through it as a different job and/or getting gear for a different job. Or, you know, ALL THE JOBS. It would help if there was other fun stuff to do, even if wasn't endgame, but there's not even that. Everything in the entire game is just super tedious. Spiritbonding is tedious, getting marks/xp in PvP is tedious, getting animus is tedious. Nothing is hard, it's just designed to take the maximum amount of time for the minimum amount of fun/reward.

1% drop rates, extreme lockouts... SE seems determined to remove the idea of "achievable goals" from anyone but the most hardcore of the hardcore, and even they have to get burned out on all the tedium eventually. I hope they decide to take another look at how they design the game before that "over 2mil subs" drops back down to well under 1mil when everyone realizes there isn't actually anything going on in this game.

[ChiefCurrahee]

I will use the big 2 other mmo that people in this game came from:

XI had lockouts - they involved between 6-50ppl could take any amount of people and there was numerous activities to do at once. (Equally valid content with and without lockouts)
WoW had Lockouts - you could take your entire/most your guild without leaving people out. Yes WoW had lack of content when you go to the end, but it was focused on the entire group.

That is the problem with XIV... there is 1 piece of endgame content and it has extremely restrictive lockouts. They need to either add more content that is valid or remove the lockouts... If people burn through it too fast the devs need to either A) design content faster or B) add different forms of content for endgame... not just 1 set of instanced boss fight (it is not even a raid technically).

This is what I wanted to say, but didn't want to make the comparison in the OP because people wouldn't get past the vs. XI / WoW thing.

Another problem is how the iLvL on gear is going up and up, when does it stop? what's the point? Bigger numbers? Trivializing all previous content? if they just stopped at iLvL 60 and just made everything else a side grade or available for vanity we would have a much more balanced and WAAAAAAY more challenging content.

Keep coil the way it is, it's a hard type boss rush.

Add raid dungeons for 8 players with challenging trash mobs, gimmicks and multiple mini-boss fights leading to a mega boss. Gate the progression with Loot lock instead of content lock.

Add Tiered Levequests (think 1.0 faction leves) which would be gated by the number of Faction allowances day/week, each set of leves completed leads to more difficult challenges.

Make all these options on par with coil for gear progression.


The point is weekly lock outs is terrible and is making a stagnant endgame.

[Suellen]

snip

I mostly agree with this post. I'd like to add I think another problem is that the alternate form of endgame besides coil is way to reliant on tome grinding. I never played a game where they release party size dungeons that everyone does once and forgets about it because the drops are never relevant to anyone.

Even new players to the game that I've met will hit CT up once they hit 50 and then join in on the epic myth tome grind until your eyes bleed. I'll be honestly shocked if there is any incentive to play the dungeon released in 2.3 aside from curing boredom. (As I'd guess CT and Bray will still be the best options for tome grinding)

I imagine for casual players it will just be more CT+Brayflox for Myth/sol grinding plus the sands/oil thing down the line. All other content, no matter how flashy and exciting they'll try to make it feel, will get mostly ignored except when forced to endure it through a duty roulette.

[Welsper59]

A) design content faster

I enjoyed the read, as you had several valid points to give out (some of which I agree with, such as the linear progression), until you stated the quoted part. Short of hiring many more people, and bringing on a second director to the team, it's not something that can be made a reality. The 3-month expectations for content patches is actually very impressive as is with a game like this. Real world work conditions, the fact that it's people doing the work, and that there's only one director (who also travels frequently, as that's part of his job) makes it unreasonable to say that they need to "design content faster".

The problem you point out isn't necessarily that the content is lacking (because it really isn't if you include non-endgame/raid related material... which you really should), but rather that the direction of the game is the problem. What if content were rather limited in ilvl reward? What if progression rewards were upgrades, but in a minimal sense? That's kind of how games like XI and WoW (vanilla) worked. Although with WoW, raiding was pretty linear and WAY more restrictive. I don't think people would be happy with XIV if content were designed for 40-man groups or the like. Even exclusive 24-man content might be too demanding in this day and age, as even WoW struggles with their 25-man raid activity currently. Some FCs would be fine on that, but I'm quite certain that nearly every one of those people would naturally think that everyone should be fine with it too.

Bottomline is that no matter what they do, in a realistic sense, people will complain. Go to any game and I can guarantee you will find the following complaints at some point in time: "Not enough content", "Too easy", "Too hard", "Catering to the casuals", "'I'm quitting because of X complaint' threads", and so on.

We're stupidly predictable and never pleased. It's the way business works. This is why devs generally stick to their ideas without following their consumers demands without question. Unless it's an important, but broken system (which it really isn't), the devs just don't have much reason to go against the way they want their own game to work. If you've ever worked with others, or dealt with the public in general from a professional standing, you'd also realize how insulting the intelligence is of your fellow man and why we (the consumer) are not as smart (or right) as we like to think we are.

[Gilthas]

XI had lockouts - they involved between 6-50ppl could take any amount of people and there was numerous activities to do at once. (Equally valid content with and without lockouts)

Sorry, but FFXI's lockouts were absolutely horrible compared to what we have now. What you call "numerous activities to do at once" for a very long time was nothing more than "numerous stuff to camp where only 1 party/alliance in the whole ****ing server was able to experience said content". Even then the only reason why FFXI had these "numerous activities to do at once" was because these severe lockouts made it take a very very long time to get the best gear. We did the same stuff over and over for years because of this.

If there's something that they should change it's to change Coil's lockout to the item lockout that CT used and will use for the next section.

[ChiefCurrahee]

Sorry, but FFXI's lockouts were absolutely horrible compared to what we have now.

Um... 72 hour lock out on Dynamis, I think is was 48 on Limbus, SKY and SEA was combo of 1-3 hours spawns and force pop NM. Salvage was 24 hour lock out, Nyzul Isle was based on tokens acquired.

So in XIV we have 168 hour lock out on out 1 highest tier content and no lock out on stuff that by in large doesn't matter any more.

XI maybe have taken a long time to get 1 certain item you were looking for, but there was alternatives to getting similar gear available, and you could involve multiple groups if needed.

[Welsper59]

Um... 72 hour lock out on Dynamis, I think is was 48 on Limbus, SKY and SEA was combo of 1-3 hours spawns and force pop NM. Salvage was 24 hour lock out, Nyzul Isle was based on tokens acquired.

So in XIV we have 168 hour lock out on out 1 highest tier content and no lock out on stuff that by in large doesn't matter any more.

XI maybe have taken a long time to get 1 certain item you were looking for, but there was alternatives to getting similar gear available, and you could involve multiple groups if needed.

It's actually many years after XI launch that alternatives to getting gear were made available. When you actually think about the situation at the time, I think you'd enjoy the current lock outs more. Dynamis, open world HNMs, and Sky were relevant end game content for years before Sea/Limbus/Salvage/etc were made available. So just banking on those 3 content sources (primarily), you really didn't have much to go on. Especially if you take into account those HNMs being open world... you didn't get claim? That potentially 24hr wait just turned into a possible 48hr wait (4-7 days more if you were hopeful on the KB/Aspi/Nid claim). It didn't help that the gear that dropped from any given source was nowhere near the best for many jobs

Assuming you're being 100% truthful about what you want, it's not the lockout that's your problem, it's the progression methods. If the ilvl of gear from dungeons or CT were around the same as Coil, it'd offer you a lot more to do wouldn't it?

[Ooshima]

So after reading the various threads on alternative gear progression and alternative end game, without turn lock outs and favoring loot lock outs, how about this?

24 man full pre-made end game raid
=> This means that difficulty will be on par with current coil
=> As a reward of same difficulty, it will grant loot of current highest ilvl
=> Grants current tomestone and previous tomestone (such as soldiery + myth)

No entrance lock outs, but loot lock out. However, players need to address SE's concerns that one will end up being able to gear up faster that SE wants it to be and also SE's issues of mercenaries selling coil.

=> 10% Chance that a token will drop for the entire of 24 persons
=> Token can be exchanged with Rowena with any top ilvl gear of your choice
=> Once you receive token, you cannot receive it again until the next weekly reset