Thread: The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

Originally Posted by Velhart

We live in an era where people don't want to be challenged anymore and want content that requires no thought for max reward. SE is obviously just catering to the 90% of the players. Poor SE doesn't feel its right to challenge people. I don't know if to blame them or the apparent mass majority who want this type of content.

Well business is business and seeking challenge in video games is overrated nowadays.

Shouting "filthy casuls are ruining muh gaem" is much better feedback than actually trying to provide constructive criticism.

Originally Posted by Cilia

Shouting "filthy casuls are ruining muh gaem" is much better feedback than actually trying to provide constructive criticism.

I have already offered my constructive criticism several times in this thread if you care to look. Much better and balanced content than the one SE thinks will work in the long run. Also to mention I am not a hardcore raider when I say all of this. If anything, SE has raids more in my favor in 3.2. That is not the point though, it isn't about me. It is about overall raid structure and how to keep the game healthy on a casual level, a midcore level, and a hardcore one. The way SE is taking it, you are alienating hardcore players in the -only- thing they have for this game. The -only- thing. There is no multiple content for them. It is that solitary one. You would think SE balance the content in favor of midcore/hardcore. No, it is casual/midcore. Seriously, people rather have content that lasts a month at best instead of Savage content on appropriate capped ilvl's can last till the game shuts down? If they want to add a three tier with one being story mode, then fine (I guess). You just can't rebalance content in the expense of the audience it was intended for.

SE only thinks of things in the short term and not long. Since 90% of the people don't Savage doesn't mean the 10% have to take the hit because of it. MMO's -need- their hard content. If anything, I would argue that casual players get pampered too much and need to accept that sometimes you need to put a little effort challenge wise to get what you want, big or small. Instead SE is just going to pamper you more till it gets to the point that you only need to pay the sub fee and you win the game. Anima weapons especially, they made it nothing but a grind and refuse to put interesting content in between because something like Chimera and Hydra are too hard for the people who don't like to press more than one button playing the game. SE should be trying to influence people to take up greater challenges and go beyond what they once believe they were capable of. That is one of the purposes of video games and now SE feels that challenge should rely on how much you are willing to hit the same mob, the same FATE, the same no brainer dungeon over and over. That is not challenging, its the very definition of tedious. Last I recall, tedious is not a syllable for fun.

Content on a easier level, midcore level, and hardcore all have a right to exist. Pampering to only the easier level however will only make things worse in the long run. SE needs to properly balance all three. With Savage gone going forward, you basically removed hardcore entirely. A lot of these groups who were once server/world first groups are dropping ship because the future this game is going in. I guess it doesn't matter because they are just part of the measly 10%, right? FFXIV as a challenging game in comparison to other MMO's who balance raiding way better than this, it is a joke. An absolute joke.

If someone asks "Why do I still play? Just go to another MMO?" I do actually like this game and care about it's well being/future. If I didn't care I wouldn't bother posting and drop ship myself. I write this likely waste of time paragraphs in some small glimmer of hope that developers see it and get their common sense working. It won't, but can't say I am not trying.

But yes, I guess I can expect more pitch forks to come. I am apparently the minority in this one.

Originally Posted by Adire

Why bother with something you know is very difficult if you don't want to do something difficult? Please, let people who want challenges have some fun too. Don't take that away, just don't do it yourselves if you don't want the challenge.

Here's the mistake you're making.
People can enjoy difficult. In fact, I love difficult. Old school Wizardry? My favorite thing in gaming.

A3S and A4S are not traditionally difficult. Coil 2 and 3 were. A3S and A4S are brutal and painful, one person makes a single mistake, even a tiny little error, and it's all over. That's not difficult. That's stupid. There's a reason why many people who clear A4S on a regular basis use the cheesing strategy rather than the "how it was supposed to be done" method - because they don't want to deal with the absurd difficulty and possibly RNG of it.

(While not completely related, I must also mention that, having made that tiny error, you also need to wait another 3 minutes before you can even engage again because SE doesn't reset ability timers upon a wipe. So much wasted time.)

There is no content in this game at the moment for those who enjoy difficulty but don't want stupid. This content has broken up groups and forced people to transfer to more active servers. When that happens, there needs to be changes. I'd even argue some of the Second Coil Savage were quite stupid as well. But fortunately, second Coil Savage didn't really reward you. It was just there to be punishing and give you a title. Meanwhile, stupid is all raiders have at the moment.

That is the problem.

Originally Posted by Velhart

Content on a easier level, midcore level, and hardcore all have a right to exist. Pampering to only the easier level however will only make things worse in the long run. SE needs to properly balance all three. With Savage gone going forward, you basically removed hardcore entirely. A lot of these groups who were once server/world first groups are dropping ship because the future this game is going in. I guess it doesn't matter because they are just part of the measly 10%, right? FFXIV as a challenging game in comparison to other MMO's who balance raiding way better than this, it is a joke. An absolute joke.

OK, let's tackle this.

You're forgetting one key thing here: limited resources. While I agree there deserves to be content that appeals to everyone, they have limited resources to throw at the game, meaning someone isn't going to get what they want. When resources are limited, you have to try and get the greatest gains; that means making content as accessible to as many people that want to do it.

Hardcore raiders got what they wanted. They deserve challenging content, I agree. But it's so difficult that it's affecting everyone else too. Not enough people are clearing Gordias Savage to make the devs happy, which led to both the Anima Weapon being delayed and being made relatively more difficult (by that I mean take longer). The Anima Weapons were highly anticipated by casual players as something to look forward to - it was "their" content, and they got shafted on it in more ways than one.

You're a proponent for Easy, Normal, and Hard Mode raids. Fair enough. But that means they have to develop, tune, and test three different versions of the same boss, which means three times the work, which means three times the money spent on doing that, which prevents them from implementing various other things. The reason the Gordias sections are comparatively tiny to the Binding Coil's Turns is most likely because they had to develop two versions of the fights for Normal and Savage. Casual players are already complaining that we're only getting 2 new dungeons per patch; if they went to an E/N/H model for raids we'd get even fewer.

Challenging content deserves to be in the game, and no, they shouldn't nerf Gordias Savage. But if it's being detrimental to the rest of the game, to everyone else, something should be done.

Now, I'm a casual player, but I do enjoy challenges. That said that's not why I play this game; if I want a challenge I'll play Bloodborne or something like that. (Seriously, you think punching out eldritch abominations with a pile bunker is easy?! No. But I do it anyway!) Here I play to jump on, do my dungeon, do some crafting if I feel like it, and be done. If I have nothing (absolutely positively nothing) to do I won't log on, and the Anima Weapon quest is something to do (I just feel like it's a bit excessive). No, I'm not satisfied with just doing the same content over and over (and over and over and over and over...), but enough casual players are that SE implemented what they did. Raiders wanted harder raids, and they got it - you don't get to set the difficulty, and if it's too much for you, complain to the hardcore raiders who wanted harder raids. It's their fault, not casual players, that raids are currently too much for "midcore" groups and so don't appeal to a broad enough audience to satisfy the developers, leading to the highest difficulty being lowered in 3.2.

You're right - there deserves to be content for all levels of play in the game. But you can't have everything.

P.S. I think the word you were looking for there was "pandering," not "pampering." They're two entirely different words...

Originally Posted by Arashmin

I'd buy that only if it wasn't what many other games are already managing. If it's a matter of resources, it's not going to take that much more to do it, and besides they're already spending tons of resources on side things when the main game is suffering so much. They could easily just pull out of doing another LoV, TT, Diadem, etc. and make some more content for the main game.

It doesn't have to be the latest raid either; Go back and rescale some of the older trials or dungeons into Extreme modes with scaled up stats and maybe one or two new mechanics in the treadmill for the boss programming.

XIV is unique in that it's aiming to provide a variety of content, not just endgame raiding. Some things will succeed, others will not. The people that are going to (are already?) complaining about there being no hardcore content are those who don't want to do anything but raiding instead of looking out at the beautiful world of Eorzea and learning about its people, culture, and history. They'd rather sit in Alexander fighting the same four bosses time and again - fair enough, but there ought to be things to do besides endgame raiding, which is what things like Lord of Verminion and the Diadem aim to provide. (Though I'm not sure if Yoshi-P added LoV because he wanted to, or because XIV is popular and profitable right now and thus a good way for Square to advertise the arcade game...)

If you retune old raids, you will just get the same complaints from raiders that casual players are giving out about their content - it's being rehashed.

Originally Posted by Cilia

XIV is unique in that it's aiming to provide a variety of content, not just endgame raiding. Some things will succeed, others will not. The people that are going to (are already?) complaining about there being no hardcore content are those who don't want to do anything but raiding instead of looking out at the beautiful world of Eorzea and learning about its people, culture, and history. They'd rather sit in Alexander fighting the same four bosses time and again - fair enough, but there ought to be things to do besides endgame raiding, which is what things like Lord of Verminion and the Diadem aim to provide. (Though I'm not sure if Yoshi-P added LoV because he wanted to, or because XIV is popular and profitable right now and thus a good way for Square to advertise the arcade game...)

If you retune old raids, you will just get the same complaints from raiders that casual players are giving out about their content - it's being rehashed.

Raiders are already at that point. If it's not relic rehash complaints, it's ThorEx or A#S mechanic rehash complaints. And it's not about doing that, it's about doing it with proper style, i.e. actually introducing new mechanics. But work, right?

I'm personally complaining about a lack of hardcore content, even having only stepped inside A1S and never ThorEx, if only for the fact that there's so little between faceroll and facecrush. Which is exactly why a third tier is tossed around a lot, because it isn't the hardcore raiders only, it's those of us who just want to play the actual main game itself and feel at least a bit challenged without having to dedicate our lives to do so. And the other currents options aren't any better in that regards - there's no challenge in Diadem, and there's no progress to be gained from LoV.

And culture? History? I'm sorry, in an MMO I'm there to play around and trounce things. If I want to learn about culture and history I click the random button on Wikipedia and learn about our own, which I do plenty of at work. And besides, the actual gameplay elements of such I've already experienced and have depth in, having maxed gathering and crafting, done all the sidequests and such that I care for, so what's supposed to be left if the challenges are inaccessible?