Are you happy with the current raiding structure in this game?

[Gucci_Charms]

SE Should have made coil unlimited entry for any turn.

however had a weekly loot lockout for each turn like in ST. (with tweaks obviously for dual drops a.k.a 1 accessory 1 main gear loot roll.)

solves every single problem people have in my honest opinion :|

^ What this guy said.

The difficulty of coil isn't problematic. They're all doable if you put in the time to learn and learn from your mistakes. In terms of gear, however, the whole lotto RNG mechanism in place is pretty ridiculous. I have some friends on my list who have only gotten 3 drops since SCOB was released. Others already have their primary class geared and are working on their second or third class now.

I feel really bad for the players who get screwed over by weekly lotto RNG.

I would prefer to have a weekly loot system per turn. That would give more incentive to re-run the turns to help out your friends, FC, or LS mates with the fight. It would also reduce the community divide the current end-game coil system creates in every server.

[Fendred]

I was reading the new player harassment thread, and near the end people were bringing up the roles, their previous experience learning those roles, and it got me back to thinking about them. One of the things that makes end game raiding tedious yet orderly is the role system.

Sometimes I think it would be better (in future games) to base how classes work off what people expect them to do. Like when someone plays a heavy armored knight as a new player who never stepped into an MMORPG before, they probably think of their character as a heavy armored killing machine first and a shield to protect their allies second. The roles in MMORPGs always felt superfluous to me not in that they didn't serve an important purpose, but that it is a very narrow way to view a profession. Especially when the resulting end game systems inevitably funnel a player into a specific class via lockouts or long grinds. A multifaceted role may appear a contradiction in terms, but that's exactly what I think future MMORPGs need to keep themselves interesting. Something between the highly specialized roles of today and the jack-of-all trades.

Back on the subject of FFXIV, the multiple job system let a single player approach a single encounter from multiple angles. That was what made end game so potentially interesting to me as a veteran MMORPG player: The potential to have different party configurations to tackle end game bosses with different strategies. However, if we are going to be funneled into single roles via a classical lockout method, then the burden of that expectation falls upon a single job. How can they make a paladin flexible enough to be as interesting as the option to switch between a paladin, monk, and white mage?

[Exstal]

That would give more incentive to re-run the turns to help out your friends, FC, or LS mates with the fight.

This actually my ticket to hit 100m gil!

Let's doooooooooooo it

[Lethorian]

With as hard as CT1 and 2 are for some people despite how ridiculously easy it is, I'm not sure more large scale raiding is the way to go. Atomos, anyone?

Yea but that isn't a fair comparrison, ANYONE can que up for CT/ST. For an actual raid situation let's say your FC has 2-3 groups clearing 8-man content, if nothing else to a certain turn. SE then releases content that requires more people and you can now combine your first, second, and if required, third coil groups. You can assume everyone would be in the same voice chat with some sort of centralized leadership. These two scenarios are entirely different. I highly doubt they implemented an alliance system JUST for CT/ST. I'm sure they have bigger plans for it.

[Kiara]

Raid lockouts are standard in MMOs because players can clear content much quicker than it can possibly be developed.

Definitely agree with the OP, Xatsh, Hippo and many others:

The lockout and focus on NOT being able to help out your Guildmates or Friends (outside of your small Static) is what's ruining this game.

@ dejavu: Great point about finishing content too fast (which is why Yoshi P is doing the lockout). But we have to ask this:

* The Dev Team brought this on themselves with the bigger decision to go straight Vertical Progression and Boring, Limited Stats on Gear (which leads to less gear).

Look at the effort and time wasted on making more "level 50 dungeons": Did we really need Pharoh Sirius, Stone Vigil (Hard), Copperbell Mines (Hard), etc.? It's all roughly in the same range where players don't even need them for EXP any more.

If Yoshi P and the Dev Team took that Development Time and spent it on making OTHER End Game Dungeons besides Coil, that had Side Grade Gear with Interesting Stats (e.g., Enmity+ Gear for Tanks, or "Enhances Bloodletter" or "Enhances [XYZ]" etc.), they could've *extended* the "breathing room" between patches, and make it more accessible.

There'd be more gear choices, more rewards to go after, and more areas to explore. Choosing to go do Kings, or Sky, or Dynamis, or BCNMs, or Sea, etc., that were all relevant and interesting is far more compelling than having *1* Dungeon w/ a Weekly Lockout (Coil) and NOT being able to help your FC / LS / Friends out week after week.

The Lost City of Ampador is beautiful, lovely music, and has Diabolos as a Boss. If they added more challenges, some side paths, upped the difficulty, it *could've* been an End Game Dungeon to get some [Other Gear / Drops] if we had more interesting horizontal progression. Instead, it's wasted on useless gear (that gear it currently drops could be moved to countless other dungeons).

The other thing is they could've spread out and made a more interesting set of Gear / Rewards, similar to needing Abjurations when they were relevant to upgrade CURSED Gear, or needing some Rare Material (only from Dungeons) that then needs some Crafters to help craft. Or Rare Materia (Counterattack, Double Attack, HP Absorb, etc.).

I really hope they change things around and improve things for 3.0. For the betterment of FF XIV and a healthy *community* of players.

[GalkaBikini]

is what's ruining this game.

Didn't know I and the other hundreds of thousands were playing a ruined game.

[FriendlyUncle]

The more players you involve in an instance the lower the difficulty SE is going to implement. This is why CT is the casual raid, more people = less difficult mechanics. They don't trust or expect more than 8 players to be able to work together cohesively enough to design an interesting raid around. Just the sad truth.

I agree to a point, but there is no reason why they can't design a large scale raid that is difficult. WoW has done it with Naxx, yeah only the super hard core got to see it but they need something they can strive towards and work at as well. Give them some challenging content they can bring a significant portion of their team to that will occupy them after clearing the short quick raids like BCoB. The pubbies can work through it later when it is more accessible to them either through filling spots with another FC group, PF, or Echo.

The amount of challenging content in the game is very slim at the moment. Even as a casual I find very little to be challenging outside a few encounters. I might only have time for a few dungeons a night or a bit of a raid on the weekend but I would like to have some challenging gameplay in those so it at least keeps me awake.

And we certainly need more content that is challenging and rewarding for FCs to try and tackle as a group. Hopefully SE wakes up, I find the game somewhat fun but as someone who doesn't have a static or a lot of time the content is mostly all zerg aside from a few bits and pieces.

[FriendlyUncle]

As do I. Some of these fights have multiple one shot mechanisms. Take titan ex in its prime, no echo and low LV gear. One death the vast majority of the times meant wipe. If we're to have the same difficulty for 25 that would mean throwing continuously oneshots at 25 players and expecting not one of them to die for the whole fight. That's just crazy talk. In not a single game I've played with 25, 40 raids a single player didn't have so much influence in the whole fight. In these big fights you're supposed to handle easily one of two deaths.

I agree and thats one thing that is far too prevalent in the game. Cheeky one-shot mechanics. It is shit gameplay and a lazy way to make fights challenging imo.

[GalkaBikini]

I agree to a point, but there is no reason why they can't design a large scale raid that is difficult. WoW has done it with Naxx

A lot of the difficulty from early WoW raids amount to nothing more than simply numbers. When it came down to it, there weren't really a lot of mechanics. It was, Tank needs to have X amount of HP and X amount of mitigation. Healers need to be able to heal X amount. DPS needs to be able to do X amount of DPS. And any WoW mechanics were moot when you've got DeadlyBossMods practically playing the game for you anyway.

TLDR; Naxx wasn't hard.

[YuriRamona]

I really hope they change things around and improve things for 3.0. For the betterment of FF XIV and a healthy *community* of players.

So much truth. We wasted a lot of development time on the new dungeons almost every patch and they only serve to help cap Soldiery (which is already given out as a reward elsewhere). All they had to do was make these dungeons tuned to i80-i90 and give out i100-i110 rewards. These dungeons filled an already oversaturated space by being i55-i70 and giving out i60-i80 rewards that has been trumped by i90 mythology gear which has already been available from Day 1.

The next mistake was eliminating the availability of Darklight from tomestone rewards. It really left me scratching my head. So, you want new players to grind out 30-45 minute dungeons for a sliver of a chance to get a green i60-i80 drop? Those same casual players who are falling behind in the first place because they don't have the time or mental energy to play for enough hours every week? You want to take Darklight away from them? And then keep i70 crafted gear prohibitively expensive by turning their ingredients into GC seal items?

In any case, there are plenty of ideas implemented in FFXI that have had years of field testing and could be implemented with improvements into FFXIV. Considering how much the game has already stolen, it should just finish the job.