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

May I? *slap*

Thanks for the responses to my question by the way, and I hope there are more. Personally, while I'm not as angry as on 3.15's release, that's more out of time and general socialness than what I've been hearing from SE. I like doing things with friends.

The interview didn't do much to convince me that they are going to change the course of monotony that is being apparent with Heavensward, or Yoshida's attempts to make raiding better also including making activities other than raiding worse. They need to paint themselves out of this corner they've made and figure out what the folks in the middle of the two groups are.

Originally Posted by Kaurie

Honestly, I think this is the issue. They want to classify people in to these big groups, but there isn't really a large category that people belong to. It's much more of a scale. Not every non-raider is on equal footing, not every raider is on equal-footing. They need content to match this scaling mentality, where things naturally progress.

Most definitely. I will agree that they've probably gotten too caught up in the numbers without necessarily taking the right lessons from them. With regard to the original EX Primals for instance, fewer people cleared Titan than they expected. But I do wonder how many players that did clear Titan went on to also clear Binding Coil and if that's something they had a way to track back then. The original three primals, both in their HM and EX incarnations, had a wonderful sense of "progression" to them that we've never really had anything comparable to since.

Ifrit HM had a relatively simple "follow the numbers" pattern with a basic DPS check, which prepared you for a slightly more involved pattern in Garuda HM (that also introduced tanks to kiting mechanics, since you had to drag her around originally), which in turn prepared you for the mechanics of Titan HM. At that point, the more hardcore players were probably comfortable enough to start doing Coil. It was the same with the EXes. Garuda EX was the first major "tank split" fight, which is a useful thing for healers to become comfortable with, and Titan EX made tank swapping front and center (with add phases that were reminiscent of T4 in terms of incoming tank damage), while Ifrit put an emphasis on focused DPS targeting and situational awareness with Searing Wind.

A "mid-core" player could reasonably progress through the six original Primal fights at level 50 and suddenly find that raiding wasn't as daunting as it once was in the past, both because of additionally acquired gear and just from progressing through the fights themselves. And they served as a pretty good "endgame substitute" for the non-raiders, too. I knew numerous players for whom clearing Titan EX was the pinnacle of achievement. These players often didn't really raid, but they still had a sort of similar content they wanted to do and clear.

But ever since that point, HM/EX primals haven't really served as any sort of stepping stone, and I think that's a bloody shame. EX primals are all sort of in between the HM/EXes of 2.0/2.1 now, and the "story" mode fights don't honestly serve much of a purpose outside of narrative, since they stopped putting rewards on them. I really do wish they'd go back to putting meaningful rewards on the Primals and making them more "progression" oriented as they were originally. I still feel like 2.1 was this game's peak in terms of the range of available content (even CT, while "easy" didn't really coddle the player the way the later 24-man raids have, potentially preparing them for more difficult content both in terms of drops and in terms of mechanics).

Originally Posted by Alahra

From their comments regarding Titan EX and EX primals in general, I think they were actually very disappointed with the clear rates for that content. They seem to have actually expected a lot more of the playerbase to use them as a gateway into Coil (which is how they worked for me, actually—I was never a raider before this game), but they took the lesson from them that a majority of the playerbase doesn't want content that hard. That has always greatly disappointed me and I've pretty much ignored EX primals ever since Leviathan because the reward to effort ratio just doesn't feel satisfying to me—they're just hard enough that getting stop-gap gear just doesn't feel rewarding for them.

EX primals were never gating coil though. Another problem with 2.x EX primals is that they never gave relevant rewards. Think Bismark EX with the weapons, except that was a reoccuring trend until shiva (the last EX primal no less) with her bracelets (and diamond dust upgrade, which was introduced later). Ramuh, Levi and Mog drops were all i100 , there was no sense of progression from the gear perspective.

Originally Posted by Kaurie

For me the issue isn't the ways to obtain gear. I don't care if there is only 1 way to obtain gear. I want variation in the gear, and I want progression to feel more natural. Alex 1-4 NM is basically all the same difficulty. Why not have 2 be quite a bit harder than 1, 3 quite a bit harder than 2 etc. It just seems really weird.

Like there should be a natural path between all raids A1->A2->A3->A4->A1S->A2s->A3S with each one getting a little bit harder (not potentially easier, and not waaaaay harder).

In my opinions, I believe Alex NM 1-4 was staggered pretty well for difficulty for the average player. That is just my opinion though. Have not done Alex HM so no clue but I from what I read they increased the difficulty greatly at AS3 which they are addressing in 3.2 from what I know.

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

EX primals were never gating coil though.

I didn't say they were gating it. I meant gateway in the sense that the original three EXes provided a further way for less hardcore players to become acclimated to 8-man content and more raid-like mechanics. And as I've said elsewhere on these forums, EX primal rewards past the first three have always been atrocious (even Shiva was pretty terrible in the end, though some of the bracelets were itemized well enough that they had some value), and I think part of the reason for that is that they took the wrong lesson from the "failure" of the original three.

Rather than keeping the difficulty closer to the original three and putting meaningful rewards on them, which will inspire people to push to clear them who might not otherwise, they've lowered the difficulty and lowered the value of the rewards to match. Ramuh EX and later Ravana EX were probably the closest primals to the original three in terms of complexity/difficulty, but both of them were released with ultimately lackluster rewards (Ravana had meaningful weapons for perhaps a month, but beyond that, learning the fight wasn't particularly worthwhile since tomestone weapons were available). I've not attempted Thordan yet since I didn't see the point in learning the fight only to replace the weapon with Anima a month later), so it sort of falls into the same category as those two (with Yoshi-P notably saying that the next EX Primals wouldn't be as difficult as Thordan—so we're probably back to the same old thing for those).

Originally Posted by Alahra

Quite frankly I'm not sure what else they could do to get people interested in challenging stuff. Those that want a challenge will seek it, and those that don't, won't, and the latter group consists of a larger portion of the player base than the former.

Make the difficulty constant and rewards worth it. Motivation is the biggest problem for many people.

- the rewards are so short lived the challenge isn't worth it. (better easier to get gear next month)
- the difficulty is so short lived the challenge isn't worth it. (echo / better gear makes it easier next month)

I would spend months and months on really challenging content if I knew the challenge would remain at a constant level and the rewards had long term value. but when you look at the points above. why bother?

zero motivation.

Originally Posted by Velhart

Ohh look at me, I have become a broken record.

Seems I have also.