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

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.

I'm a fan of the lore/visuals etc in this game, but of course the people that want a variety of challenging content in a PvE game aren't going to be interested with a variety of non-challenging content instead, and vice-versa. However, the casuals and lore junkies get class, job, and sidequests, Moogle and Beast Tribe quests, sightseeing logs, crafting, gathering, targetable and non-targettable NPCs, seasonal events, Relic quest... all on top of the MSQ.

Those looking for a challenge get... Extremes and Raids. Except casuals wanted to see the story of raids too so let's have the raid structure changed to give them an easy mode version and throw everyone else into an overtuned hard mode nobody of worth asked for.

People will complain about everything. Then theyll curse out SE. I think theve done a great job with the game. They took a shit game and made it one of the most played MMOs. Sure there are things i would like to see different and of course i want more stuff to play as well, who doesnt. But they try to give us everything we want and we get it we complain. Ur never going to get away from complainers ir just not. The game isnt even nearly as hard as people make it out to be. Everyone wants to be a high end raider or considerd good but noone wants to go through the shitload of wipes to learn each step and phase correctly to get to that point. They just want everything handed to them and thats why more of the player base lacks the skills to play these raids and why u get a ton of jerkbags that think there gods gift (and usually lower skill level) in void arc and cts

Originally Posted by FeliAiko

Gordias Savage is certainly not what people asked for. Additional hardcore content outside of raids, perhaps, but not what raiders ended up with here. In a recent interview Yoshi mentioned how the feedback they got from SCoB was that it was too hard, so they released FCoB only to be told it was too easy. Now the logical step to take for your fourth raid would be to make it between your second and third raid in difficulty, not raise it to the level of your first Savage raid.

This is largely how I feel. SCOB was just a little too hard for my tastes, personally, which made raiding err more towards the side of stress than the side of enjoyment. FCOB hit the mark fairly well, but I could stand for it to have been a bit harder. In between should have been where they went to begin with.

The underlying reason they made Gordias so high was to prevent another 7 day clear. Well, they got what they wanted there (at the expense of the remaining raiding population). Now they apparently aim to make Midas in between Second and Final Coil difficulty, which they should've done for Gordias in the first place.

This had ripple effects throughout the game, really. The ease with which people cleared FCOB led them to come down hard on the viability of crafting as an advancement method, and seems to be one of the reasons they changed the overall structure of gear drops in Savage itself, too. (Whereas the pieces used to be spread throughout the turns, they're now all very strictly tiered based on the floor, which means raiders who hit the wall that's AS3 may never see some of the more iconic pieces (namely, the body pieces). This also may have been why we saw the tomestone weapons positioned not as a comparable alternative that can be acquired more easily (5 item levels below the raid weapon, but obtainable just by clearing the first two raid floors), but as an item on equivalent level. That left a lot of folks without a solid way to advance their weapon, putting a lot of hopes on the Anima questline that were undoubtedly not going to be met for some players.

In short, I feel like the team's ego got in the way of them continuing to use the overall structure that had been so successful in the past.

Ideally, they'd get rid of the two tiered mode of raiding too, or at least have a similar structure to Second Coil/Savage Coil instead of Easy/Hard. Making a non-challenging raid just because people missed out on the Coil story was silly. If the raids after Echo, maxed gear and nerfed mechanics was still too much for players, then they should've just accepted their apparent limitations and watched the scenes on Youtube or asked SE to release a special cutscene video of the story.

Normal mode shouldn't even be Normal mode--it should have been a (Story) mode and had no impact on gear progression. Farming Alexander ad nauseum for gear that was made irrelevant in only a months time was incredibly draining. Even more dedicated raiders were tired of Savage before they ever set foot into it because they knew they needed the gear from the original version to clear it, and Alexander Normal wasn't exactly engaging content.

Originally Posted by FeliAiko

Ideally, they'd get rid of the two tiered mode of raiding too, or at least have a similar structure to Second Coil/Savage Coil instead of Easy/Hard. Making a non-challenging raid just because people missed out on the Coil story was silly. If the raids after Echo, maxed gear and nerfed mechanics was still too much for players, then they should've just accepted their apparent limitations and watched the scenes on Youtube or asked SE to release a special cutscene video of the story.

You would think that. It is absolutely silly that SE would make a poorly made raid structure just so people can get that few minutes of cut scenes. Then justify it by putting progression gear in there you grind and fight other people for in a poor attempt to create some reason or longevity to it. It lasts a month or so into the patch, people already become sick of it, then it becomes dead content. Yep, that is the mode we want over actual challenging content for raids. Way to go SE!

Originally Posted by FizzleofHyperion

We have seen the results of this treadmill progression and how this vertical progression is burning people out making content unrewarding and unenjoyable cause people know everything will always get nerfed.

Maybe its finally time to take stuff to the horizontal progression a bit where people can feel that certain items and content can remain sacred and untouched and become rewarding? Many people don't mind the new relic being hard and time consuming for example, what bothers people is that by 3-5 months from now the content is gonna get nerfed so everyone can catch up.

Casual Joes can farm esoterics and get an item and be happy.

Great post. I totally agree.

The latest Tomestone Weapon *is* basically ~90% of the best weapon in the current patch. With 3.2, anyone that doesn't clear the final Raid of 3.2 can casually, relaxingly farm the latest Tomestones of XYZ and save up for 3 weeks and get the latest Tomestone Weapon.

Sure they still need the Key Item to upgrade it to Max iLevel, but it's usually only 10 iLevels behind.

Yoshi P adds that Key Item into the latest 24 Player Dungeon (Crystal Tower, Void Ark, etc.), the following patch, and everyone's caught up again.

Compare that to doing the ridiculous grind of the Relic Weapon Quest, where you have to do stuff like beat Alexander HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of times, absurd grinds, to get an equivalent weapon.

It's not even close to being balanced nor rewarding.

That's the issue.

Yoshi P please consider making the Anima / Relic Weapon something that would be a real alternative to the best weapon and could be interesting and challenging to attain.

That's more content that keeps players busy and interested, instead of a CHORE that is the current Relic Weapon quest.

From what I heard of the original Relic, it was on par with the raid weapon at the time which lead raiders to complain that raiding wasn't worth the effort since it was so easy to obtain rewards other wise.

I like to mention a comment by a dev in WoW from some years ago. One of the lead Devs on WoW was asked what was the biggest surprise he had found in MMO development. He said that it was players would do what was efficient over what they found fun. Simply put, unbalanced rewards can lead players to do things they find boring even if there is a more enjoyable alternative for them. This can lead to content being abandoned which is a problem.

Further I think people need to understand that not all content works for everyone but they still need to make options for the very wide variety of players. Too much customisation can lead to people who don't want to spend heaps of time experimenting or figuring out what actually works being turned off. Likewise too little leads to players who enjoy customisation to find things boring. Finding this balance is a constant issue for developers and screwing it up can be bad for everyone. Its also usually impossible to create a system that fully satisfies everyone. The Anima weapon is a perfect example of this. I agree (and apparently they also agree) that it is more grindy than is good but at the same time it was developed as a way to get a good weapon that required an investment of time, not overcoming challenging content. There are options for that already. Making it require challenging content defeats the purpose for the weapons in the first place.

There is also a point that the anima weapons, being a time investment like the old relics, were going to have to use old content. Developing new content sufficient for the time requirements for an anima weapon is something they don't have the resources for without cutting back on other content which I don't think anyone wants and I'm not talking about LoV unless you wanted to spend your whole time getting your anima doing minigame style content.

That said I think currently FF14 is too ridged and lacks sufficient customisation. Further the current Job progression is unsustainable due to the fact that we simply cant fit more skills into our skillbars. For many Jobs just adding 5 more skills next expansion simply isn't going to be playable.

Originally Posted by Alahra

Yoshi doesn't mention any changes to the normal mode for Midas, but I'm really hoping they structure it in a better way, especially if they're going to make us do it to have a chance at Midas Savage.

As far as I know, they're keeping normal mode the way it is for Midas. Something about yoshi being satisfied with how normal mode gordias turned out because of the high clear rates. The compromise is that they're going to make Midas savage less difficult.