Too little raid bosses

[Belhi]

Don't underestimate the value of variety. Regardless its still basically less content for the bulk of the player base so the very top end can have more. I'm not trying to be harsh about this. Its just a fact. 2 less dungeons means 2 less new things for most players. 2 less dungeons for 70% of the player base so 10% can get a couple of extra encounters. People do run dungeons, including expert dungeons for fun.

Its frequently a mistake that many players make is the assumption that what they find fun and consider entertaining content is true for the bulk of players. Tastes are hugely varied. There are some people who literally only play the crafting aspect of the game. I had an FC member annoyed that they would have to do the story now to get into crafting in Heavensward because they didn't enjoy any of the combat aspect of the game. Housing, gathering and crafting was their thing.

Assuming everyone sees Expert and High dungeons in the same light you do would be a big mistake. If people truly valued high end raiding as the crux of entertainment in FF14, there would be a lot more people having done Final Coil instead of the fraction that actually has. This is true for all MMOs. WoW's mythic raiding community is very small compared to the total player base. Infact one of the biggest criticisms that WoW has earned in recent times from its playerbase is the lack of dungeon content.

People want variety, even when grinding stuff.

Just to be clear, I do raid. I raided Mythic in WoW and the reason I haven't finished Final coil myself is my static members seemed to lose interest as we got closer to Heavensward so we ground to a halt at t11. This isn't that I would get less content. But I do value non raid content and also recognise that a lot more people enjoy non raid content than enjoy raid content. That's just the statistics.

[Jamein]

snip

I'm sorry, maybe I am not explaining myself as well as I thought.

I wasn't saying cut two dungeons and add in ONLY end game raiding + 1 more dungeon, I was also factoring in new primals/24 mans. in with this. I just don't see the point in creating THAT much new grind content, when you could use the resources for other things.

For example, 3 new dungeons, 3 bosses each, each boss has 2/3 mechanics? Cut out two dungeons and you've saved yourself the design time on 6 bosses and say 12 mechanics at least. Now those 6 bosses and 12 mechanics could be merged into one new end game raid boss, or primal or even make up half of a new CT. I'm look at this purely from a time management POV and what the dev team focus' on and I know this doesn't work quite as easily as this, but my point is if they cut down on the grindy content, and introduced more relevant content like more 24 man raids or primals, which offer gear on par with the current stuff, then I would imagine more people would feel like they were getting a lot more out of it. Ex-primals aren't something only 10% of the community do and even so I'm still asking for more 24 man raids, even if that means you get one patch with just one new dungeon, and the next patch with a dungeon + 24 man raid, or a patch with a dungeon + primal + ex primal (seeing as they say they design the primals in extreme first then cut them down for hard modes so it can't be hard to implement both.

I'm not so jaded that I think I'm the only one around, I just do not see the point in adding more grind content, when you could give the playerbase more variety in other ways.

Like I said, I'm just asking for a shift in developer focus and say spend less time making 3 new grind dungeons, you asked for variety and I'm sorry but look at the high level roulette, that thing is crammed full with variety.

[The-Real-Link]

I personally, feel that trials (even if only EX) are challenging enough for a player group to be counted as a raid, and of course all the turns of all coils and the towers. For example in WoW's current raid (Blackrock Foundary), one could very well have cleared all the trash mobs in Flamebender's forge area, then turned left and gone directly to Kromog. No trash in the way at all - just a boss to a boss, so we can't discredit turns in coil that are bosses only, as was mentioned.

I'd probably prefer the 4-6 months timeframe, with smaller chunks of content rather than a huge raid and then nothing.

That's the unfortunate thing with WoW atm for me, is that I've finished Blackrock on Normal and nearly on Heroic. Our guild is nowhere large enough to even contemplate doing Mythic, and those hard lock you to the group ID you're with ala how coil used to be, which thus leaves me having to pug it. But now that the leveling from 90-100 is done, it's Blackrock or oh wait, that's it.

[Belhi]

The high level roulette has variety because its had 3 new dungeons added to it every patch.

I see what your saying. One issue its that this thread doesn't seemed to have settled on the definition of what constitutes 'raid' type content which is the OPs issue. Some posters don't even count the 24 man stuff.

As for what your saying, Im not sure if in the end it would pay off. Its worth pointing out that every patch has added at least one new Extreme trial except this last one.

Agree with OP.
For example in burning crusade WoW(2 year period) received 5 full scaled raids with about 10 bosses in each and 2 small scaled raids.
I also dont count towers as raids because If I compare SSC, The Eye, BT, MH, SWP it was endgame, much more harder endgame than towers here.
So only comparable are Coils. In 2 year period here in FFXIV there are 12 bosses vs 50 in wow.

The raids you listed there didn't add up to 50 bosses. You didn't mention Kara though which was still a raid so technically your right. However its worth pointing out that since then WoW has never pulled off the same quantity of raid content for its expacs and that's with a substantially bigger team. Whatever the situation was that allowed them to hit that amount of raid content has failed to repeat since then.

Also The Eye and MH had only 5 bosses each and SSC had only 6. SWP had 8 and BT had 9. You only hit the figure you gave if you add Kara which had 11 encounters, Gruul's lair with 2, Magtheradon with 1 and Zul'aman with 5.

[LunnaRavenheart]

Also The Eye and MH had only 5 bosses each and SSC had only 6. SWP had 8 and BT had 9. You only hit the figure you gave if you add Kara which had 11 encounters, Gruul's lair with 2, Magtheradon with 1 and Zul'aman with 5.

But still more than 12, right?

[LunnaRavenheart]

Agree with OP.
For example in burning crusade WoW(2 year period) received 5 full scaled raids with about 10 bosses in each and 2 small scaled raids.
I also dont count towers as raids because If I compare SSC, The Eye, BT, MH, SWP it was endgame, much more harder endgame than towers here.
So only comparable are Coils. In 2 year period here in FFXIV there are 12 bosses vs 50 in wow.

[Kallera]

Unless i see a turnaround in how raids are set up with Alexander I'm not interested in this.

[The-Real-Link]

I also argue that it feels that there's a lot more in WoW simply because of the history of how long the game has been out.

But to be fair, we can look at Siege of Orgrimmar, which was the last major end game raid for MoP before Warlords came out. 14 bosses, but at the same time, that raid lasted about a year and two months with absolutely nothing for content - not even minor things, right until WoD launched. The reason why it may have felt like more in the sense of WoW is, as was said, your normal / heroic / mythic modes of varying difficulty. Something that SE did try with Savage and will be trying again with Heavensward.

[Kalandros]

Each Primal Extreme is raid content. Add 7 bosses right there. Plus 4 crystal tower bosses in 3 instances, 12 bosses. And 13 coils, 1 doesnt have a boss so 12 bosses. Add Ultima HM as well
32 Raid bosses in our "vanilla" duration. Plus a ton of trials that are equivalent of a hard mode dungeon and a ton of dungeons from lv 15 to 50.


WoW had less dungeons even though it had more Raid bosses.
But you know, take Molten Core for example. 4 Bosses were the same model - Lucifron, Gehennas, Shazzrah, Sulfuron Harbinger - with very minor differences in each fight (Mind Control, Reduced Healing, Magic things and Healing things) plus Majordomo also the same model, so 5 bosses have the same model with very easy mechanics. Then you got the other models that are mostly tank and spank fights, with adds.

Whats interesting there? Nothing. It was a painful grind through trash to get to boring bosses to eventually get to Ragnaros.

Blackwing Lair? A bit more interesting at the start with Razorgore and Vaelastrasz, but then it became tank and spank until Nefarian. Ugh Supression Room was a super boring thing to go through and there was too much trash.

ETc

I can go on.

FFXIV has more interesting content and raid-wise is a bit lacking but not that much behind WoW as some would believe.

Every outdoor S rank we have also has very little comparison in WoW - their outdoor raid bosses were rarer and since only the group who tagged got anything out of it, it was annoying to get anything from it.

[LunnaRavenheart]

...snip...

If we go deeper in comparison, dungeons in FFXIV are just run from A to B in 15-20mins. While in wow there was multilayered like BRD, Sunken temple with 4 floors, Mara which have predungeon larger than any dungeons here etc.

Also middle tier content like zul aman, zul gurub, kahrazan which is completly missing here in FFXIV because there is only easy faceroll content like towers which require 0 attention and endgame coil. So we exactly have zero middle tier content.

Anyway Coils feel more like Gruul, Magtheridon, Onyxia .. = 1-2 packs of trash .. and arena bossfight. Wow had full scaled maps. Which is also completly missing here.