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

**MilesSaintboroguh** · 01-15-2016 01:31 PM

I don't think scaling difficulty by adjusting numbers is the sole way of doing it. Wouldn't it just be a gear check for every difficulty step in that way then?

**Fluffya** · 01-15-2016 01:45 PM

Every fight involve a gears check since those gears are our stats. Its always the enemy dmg/hp/skills vs our dmg/hp/skills. One shot mecanism is a one shot mecanism only because we dont have the stats to survive it.

Im not saying that a scaling system would be perfect, but everyone would find is match in it.

**MilesSaintboroguh** · 01-15-2016 01:48 PM

What I'm saying is having the same mechanics with inflated numbers isn't something most people would want to look forward to I think. It's one of my biggest pet peeves in video games; take the same AI script, but inflate the numbers so the fight takes longer.

**Velhart** · 01-15-2016 02:15 PM

Originally Posted by Fluffya

Every fight involve a gears check since those gears are our stats. Its always the enemy dmg/hp/skills vs our dmg/hp/skills. One shot mecanism is a one shot mecanism only because we dont have the stats to survive it.

Im not saying that a scaling system would be perfect, but everyone would find is match in it.

You would have to adjust and balance each and every one of those scale levels. On a raid level that is a ton of work.

~~~~

If SE set up 3.0 to work you into raids like the start of 2.0 did, that is ideal how to work you into it. Except have Savage hooked onto it. Like I said, raiding is the only content hardcore have in this game, or at least did. Catering to the casual crowd should only be considered if you have the resources after the conditions have been met for midcore and hardcore players. Its the other way around in SE's mind.

Basically: Level up content > Bismark EX > Ravana EX > Alex Normal (FCoB difficulty) 1-4 > Alex Savage 1-4

Having the two primals is your gateway into what is to come in raids to get you ready and a warm up for your team. When the next even numbered patch comes out, you put Echo Buff on and make the mechanics easier and less punishing for players. Savage however is never dumbed down and actually stays on a sync'ed ilvl so it will always retain it's difficulty and novelty for beating even when we are a few patches in. This is how you balance content that was intended for midcore/hardcore audience while also eventually catering to casual level play.

If people hadn't noticed, for the most part it is a copy/paste of WoW's raid structure. It works is why I throw it around. Blizzard knows not many will go into Heroic, but they also realize there has to be that ultimate carrot in the stick because they care about the casual, midcore, and hardcore. They know casual players won't make it to Heroic, at the same time they know there is an absolute ton of content casuals can do till the Normal mode of the raid gets dumbed down and gear outweighs it. They know there has to be content for everyone. Sure they put an easy mode for raids in, but this did not affect Normal/Heroic at all because they were not removed in the process and how easy was approached was very different since many players at once were in there.

Again, it goes back to me saying that SE does not have their priorities straight. Casual players should not be taken into consideration first.

**Fluffya** · 01-15-2016 02:21 PM

Maybe, but it still the only way the programmers can make thing work. Unless they end up coming with an AI intelligent enough to take advantages of the players weakness and errors. But even so, we wont see that in a Mmorpg since the boss would simply ignore the tank aggro and kill the player after his mistake.

Right now, Alexander Savage is just too much for alot of raiders and they quit since there is nothing easier to do except faceroll contents. Same for midcore players. It isnt any better.

**Ibi** · 01-15-2016 02:25 PM

Originally Posted by Fluffya

Every fight involve a gears check since those gears are our stats. Its always the enemy dmg/hp/skills vs our dmg/hp/skills. One shot mecanism is a one shot mecanism only because we dont have the stats to survive it.

Im not saying that a scaling system would be perfect, but everyone would find is match in it.

That works for something like a leve because you're dealing with something that's very simple. About the only dials you have to play with on that are how hard something hits and how long it takes to kill, so it takes very few revisions to get it right.

If you want complex mechanics that actually make a fight interesting though, it becomes much harder to adjust. Take a mechanic like digititis. You can scale this based on the length of time between the markers going out and when the debuffs finalize, but you're no longer just looking at a simple comparison like outgoing damage vs player health. Now you have to take into account the potential distances between players, what you consider reasonable reaction times to be at each point on the scale, how big the penalty needs to be if the mechanic isn't executed correctly, etc.

Never mind that once you're scaling difficulty like that you also need to find a comparable way to scale the rewards.

Again, that's easy with leves. You take a small percentage of the base exp and add it on top. What's the right equivalent to do that when the rewards are loot?

Originally Posted by Velhart

If people hadn't noticed, for the most part it is a copy/paste of WoW's raid structure. It works is why I throw it around.

Again, it goes back to me saying that SE does not have their priorities straight. Casual players should not be taken into consideration first.

Per this post on MMO-Champion, only 60% of the player base completed the first raid of the current expansion, on any difficulty. Even the Raid Finder difficulty had been available for almost three months at that point.

That's not dissimilar to the 50% completion rate for Alexander Normal that Yoshi-P told us.

Conversely, the mythic difficulty (equivalent to our Savage) of that same raid had only two of its seven bosses that more than 2.5% of the player base had killed, with less than half a percent clearing the instance at that difficulty.

Again, not dissimilar to what we've been hearing lately about Savage clear rates.

So with the structure that Blizzard uses in World of Warcraft, both the top end clear rates and general participation rates are extremely similar to what we see in FFXIV. I don't think anyone would accuse Blizzard of taking casual players into consideration first in this expansion.

**Fluffya** · 01-15-2016 02:57 PM

Damage calculation is pretty simple in comparaison of the graphics and animations, that simple mathematics its not the hard part of it. They dont have problem calculating that player A have helmet 1456 with armor 214 and gloves 435. Else every time you are stacking buffs it would be a total mess.

The loots are probly the hard part of it. But you could allocate some tomes for clearing instance at lower difficulty setting to buy raid gears that would help you to reach the level where the true drops of that instance are. Nothing fancy, maybe one piece a month.

A scaling like that would encourage the players to keep going rather that just giving up.

**Velhart** · 01-15-2016 03:23 PM

Originally Posted by Ibi

So with the structure that Blizzard uses in World of Warcraft, both the top end clear rates and general participation rates are extremely similar to what we see in FFXIV. I don't think anyone would accuse Blizzard of taking casual players into consideration first in this expansion.

I meant casual players in the raid, not the game in general. The overall game needs the balance of casual, midcore, and hardcore content.

**Belhi** · 01-15-2016 04:54 PM

Yoshi P said he would make three difficulty levels if he could but he just doesn't have the resources for it. So he has to make two and try and balance them to work for as many people as possible.

**Velhart** · 01-15-2016 05:23 PM

Originally Posted by Belhi

Yoshi P said he would make three difficulty levels if he could but he just doesn't have the resources for it. So he has to make two and try and balance them to work for as many people as possible.

Which goes back to the argument that the two he chose was in expense of the audience the content was designed for.

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

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