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

Originally Posted by Kaurie

I would say that generally speaking hardcore content has a trickle down effect on two types of players. Casual/crafting type players make gear/food/potions etc which then sell for more via markets from hardcore player demand. Midcore raiders tend to look up to hardcore and aspire to be on that skill level - I know there is one guy in my raid who during coil would post these Lucrezia speed clears on turns that we were working on clearing.

It's probably impossible to quantify how much of an effect this "trickle down" has, if it even has one.

What's the actual economic impact of hardcore raiders on the non-raiding population? Could a similar economic impact be generated simply by having a larger pool of less-hardcore raiders?

How many of the people who "look up to" or "aspire to be" raiders like the top groups:
- keep playing based on that, when they might otherwise have quit?
- continue to raid based on that, when they would otherwise have given up?
- actually change anything they do in the game, based on that?

Would the person in your raid group who watches videos of Lucrezia speed clears have stopped raiding if those videos didn't exist?

Originally Posted by Velhart

Should ask the people who are able to clear raids before the next horizontal patch hits.

That would fall squarely into the category of anecdotal comments that I mentioned, rather than actual evidence.

Besides which I've been a part of that group at various times, both in XIV and other games, and I think that at best it's an unproven premise that you absolutely need to have ridiculously difficult content that only the upper echelon of players will even see in order for an MMO to be successful.

Originally Posted by Ibi

On top of that, you likely will lose some hardcore players due to it being too easy.

I'm not so sure of that. It's not as though the hardcore players didn't do Coil of Bahamut in ARR even though it was midcore. Hardcore players will engage with content that's below their preferred difficulty if there are significant incentives for doing so, the content is challenging enough, or if they like other aspects of the game, which still allows for some of that "trickle down" effect to occur.

On the flip side, midcore players won't "step up" to content that's too challenging (which is what we've seen with Savage) the same way that hardcore ones will "step down" to content that's less challenging than they would like (as long as, again, it's still challenging enough).

I don't know how significant the loss of players was when it came to FCOB being "too easy," and Midas is going to be somewhere in between SCOB and FCOB (at least, that's what they're telling us). Given that a lot of the raiding community saw SCOB as the pinnacle of the game's raiding content, I think aiming for somewhere in between Second and Final is likely to be the best compromise the developers can make between midcore and hardcore focus.

Originally Posted by Velhart

I would be interested to see how hard Savage would of been to approach if midcore players had something more FCoB level before hand.

They sort of did. AS1 and AS2 were comparable in difficulty to FCOB once you had the gear to clear them. It wasn't a full raid tier, but there was at least something there. The gap between FCOB and Savage difficulty was probably too big. If AS1/AS2 had been more in line with SCOB's difficulty, it's possible that some groups would have been better prepared for the jump to AS3, but it's really hard to say.

Originally Posted by Ibi

It'd be interesting to know how many people who couldn't beat A3S prior to having weapons from Thordan extreme obtained them and went on to beat A3S.

I'd imagine it's "not enough," judging by Yoshi's comment about item level not being enough to help with the DPS checks. It's possible Thordan was just too little too late though—I'd imagine some groups that had been at the AS3 wall for awhile when 3.1 dropped had already given up out of frustration. If the weapons had been available earlier they might have been able to have a greater impact than they seem to have.

Originally Posted by Kaurie

Once mid-core groups get there, they can get away with not having food/pots, as they are generally geared well enough to make the DPS checks without them.

I'd say a lot of midcore players still buy them, too. Hell, when my static cleared FCOB, we beat the DPS check at the very literal last second. Bahamut's final attack (was it Terraflare? I don't remember) finished its cast bar, the animation played, and then we got the fade to black from the last bit of his health ticked down. We wouldn't have done it that night if it weren't for food and pots.

Originally Posted by Alahra

I don't know how significant the loss of players was when it came to FCOB being "too easy," and Midas is going to be somewhere in between SCOB and FCOB (at least, that's what they're telling us). Given that a lot of the raiding community saw SCOB as the pinnacle of the game's raiding content, I think aiming for somewhere in between Second and Final is likely to be the best compromise the developers can make between midcore and hardcore focus.

It's hard to make a direct comparison because of the circumstances between FCOB being too easy, and Alexander Savage being too hard. In the case of FCoB, it was the only difficulty for that raid tier. and SCoB savage was still present at the time. There's also a variety of content at the time to suit people outside of raiding; those who didn't have a static could do the 24mans, PF their primals, DF old coil, among other things. Those with statics could tackle FCoB at a comfortable level when it was still relevant, and still have the option to do so by clicking off echo. The hardcores would rush for their world firsts, and at the time SCoB savage was still available to them as well. I mean I could also argue that SCoB was relatively much, much harder and unforgiving than FCoB before the nerfs, to the point that I'd almost consider it to be "hardcore" due to the amount of coordination needed to get through something like T7.

For people who didn't do coil even when it was DF accessible, it's a different problem altogether; Why were they not doing coil despite it being accessible on DF with echo (which essentially trivializes the fight)? And what do the clear numbers in general mean? What about in the case of Alexander? Getting clear rate numbers is tricky because only developers can truly get the solid numbers, versus player-made census that can only really go by achievements (if they have public display enabled) or items (which is tied to redeeming from achievement or winning a roll).

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

It's hard to make a direct comparison because of the circumstances between FCOB being too easy, and Alexander Savage being too hard. In the case of FCoB, it was the only difficulty for that raid tier.

You can't make a direct comparison, no, but the point was just that, in general, hardcore players will still do somewhat easier raids, while non-raiding/midcore players often won't step up to the higher ones. We didn't have significant player bleed around the time of FCOB due to the raid being easier than SCOB/SCOB (Savage), so I'm not sure we'll see a notable loss of players over the lowered difficulty of Midas relative to Gordias, either.

It's possible we will, but even if we lost every single player that cleared Savage, that's only perhaps 5% of the population or so (at most) which isn't large enough that it would be unable to be recovered from so long as the game continues to grow.