The Live Letter XXVI and why change is necessary.

[PetiteMalFleur]

In the live letter today Yoshi-P address many issues with the current tier. I'm reading a lot of polarized responses from people who don't understand why this tier stood out as a failure compared to past tiers. This post is an attempt to clarify why the changes Yoshi-P committed make in 3.2 are necessary to the growth of this game.

1. There is less content to do than 2.X gave us.

This is in part because the dev team was able to recycle old content from 1.0 and release it alongside newly developed content, such as coils. But there's also the fact we got no new content at all for 5 months and when we did it was 1 primal, VA, and diadem. Diadem is boring. Everyone zerged it until the nerf and now no one runs it so this is essentially the same as having just one primal and a 24 man raid after 6 months. People killing savage don't need any of this content so complain about having nothing to do. The people who were struggling with savage gave up and quit raiding since they could obtain that gear elsewhere polarizing the community and creating a further vacuum in content.

2. The raids are inaccessible.

Alexander is not well designed. People mass transferred to continue progression killing off smaller servers. People gave up or quit the game. It was unfair to design a raid tier where people had to pay $18 on top of their monthly sub just to continue to enjoy the game. People who chose not to pay for server transferred and couldn't access the content are playing the same as if the content isn't even in the game so complain about lack of content.

3. Gordian Savage was too hard.

The devs didn't like how quickly FCoB was killed, and with a story version of the same raid, they decided to challenge players with content more along the difficulty level of SCoB savage. Unfortunately, this killed off a lot of statics. I personally had to kick members of my group who had raided with us for two years in order to down the content and prevent my static from disbanding. Many others decided the difficulty was insurmountable and opted to disband rather than lose friends by kicking them.

If the difficulty level had been a final tier raid I believe it would have been fine. New players who started at expansion would have been experienced with earlier raids behind them and brand new players would have a lot of other content to continue progressing on before attempting something of this level.

This is why fights like T12/13 were successful. While they were not as difficult as the current savage they provided a real challenge to many groups. Yet individuals could combat burnout by farming ponies and repeating older raids.

4. The effort versus rewards is not worthwhile for savage.

Before 3.1 many people had decided to quit raiding to wait for the catchup patch, but after 3.1 we had an exodus of players giving up on savage believing the time needed to down a3s was not worthwhile. Even players I know who downed a4s before 3.1 said the time they sacrificed did not feel as though the rewards matched the difficulty.

5. The content felt dry.

Now this portion is subjective but it's based on the feedback I've heard from many raiders in game. (I won't go into dungeons because most of us know how Pharos and Steps of Faith were received.) However, the new raids held an uninspired story with bosses that most disliked. Particularly a4s. We went from Bahamut to robots. I have no interest in the story like I did the first time I entered T5 and realized I would be fighting Twintania on Bahamut claw. Progressing through coils felt epic and facing Phoenix then Bahamut was truly immersive.

6. Savage rendered certain raid comps useless.

Have you seen a group down a4s without a warrior? How many down it without a scholar or dragoon? People were forced into roles they did not enjoy in order to provide optimal raid comps in order to down content.

7. The difficulty and item level of savage directly impacted the design of 210 relic weapons and diadem nerfs.

Savage content is nearly irrelevant and this is their attempt to save it. Gordian weapons at 215 would have been great. Diadem gear at 205 would have been a good balance as well. I'm not sure what they were thinking when they implemented the current item levels but for those who killed a3s before 3.1 the instant flood of 210 gear felt like a slap in the face while those who hadn't killed it realized it didn't matter. The raiding community was outraged while the majority turned to diadem to fill in those gaps in item level. The hardcore who actually took time off work and neglected their real life commitments to raid realized that it does not pay off in this game.

8. Initial gear progression locked people into a single job.

A paladin switching to dark Knight after discovering the pitfalls of their job meant wasting weeks of esoterics. A team who couldn't find a scholar and made their whm switch to open up recruitment set that individual back weeks behind the rest of their team. Overall the job specific gearing instead of role specific felt like it penalized individuals and groups severely when roster issues arose.

These points are why I believe future changes are necessary and am relieved Yoshi-P addressed them. I love this game but understand why players are choosing to unsubscribe. Hopefully next tier will bring people back to the game to make it fun again.

Edited to add point #8.

[Catwho]

Some very valid points, and welcome changes.

However, SE may have also learned to be more careful when people start saying they want "harder content" because while only a small minority of people actually want genuinely hard content, a larger more vocal group are only saying they want the hard content but what they really wanted was something no harder than Titan HM was in 2.0. Difficult, but not impossible.

I will disagree that it was the raiding content that drained the smaller servers because people transferred to other servers, however. I think a lot of the server drain was simply because people stopped logging in. Final exams and Fallout 4 took precedence. I had more people log in last week than I'd seen since before 3.1 came out, because they were finally ready to dig into 3.1 content they'd been delaying.

[PetiteMalFleur]

I will disagree that it was the raiding content that drained the smaller servers because people transferred to other servers, however. I think a lot of the server drain was simply because people stopped logging in. Final exams and Fallout 4 took precedence. I had more people log in last week than I'd seen since before 3.1 came out, because they were finally ready to dig into 3.1 content they'd been delaying.

Very valid points you make. Your right that it often isn't "game is boring, I'm fed up going to unsubscribe." However, the very fact people turned to other games is exactly what I'm talking about, although using much simpler, black and white terminology for the sake of clarity. Overall the game failed to compete with the market. Half my static are currently playing another mmo. Not because they hate ffxiv but because the other game is currently more interesting than ffxiv. That is also an issue I hope these changes will help fix next tier.

[Niamh_Rillemaugh]

I will disagree that it was the raiding content that drained the smaller servers because people transferred to other servers, however. I think a lot of the server drain was simply because people stopped logging in.

If anything, it's a mix. There was already a drain pre-3.1, hell Faerie felt almost dead. However, people have put together some data on transfers over the course of a month: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1891972249

[Catwho]

Yeah, I was one of the Balmung transfers in that spreadsheet because that's pretty much the ONLY way to get an alt on that server, and I needed it for my blog. (I've got clones on about 20 servers now.)

[AnimaAnimus]

The drain actually started not too long after 3.0 as Heavensward was only exciting until you finished the main story then everything just went downhill from there.

Unfortunately, as I have learned since relaunch, as with all live letters and issues addressed there in you must also approach it with "I will believe it when I see it" since they do not always follow through on things they address or say are being added to the game.

[MizoreShirayuki]

This was posted on the FF14 subreddit by Ayrikka and I thought it could be reposted here because it is quite valid:

"The 3.2 live letter puts the game in a better state/direction than it was pre-live letter, but it's still far from good. In fact, the live letter reinforces the fact that the devs don't actually understand their own game/players, and don't, in fact, play their own game.
Here's what I'm talking about:
Furthermore, we also understand that obtaining an item level 210 weapon for clearing the fourth area of the extremely difficult Alexander: Gordias (Savage) is an issue due to the fact that this is the same item level as that of the upgraded Esoterics weapon. Had Savage offered an item level 215 weapon, it would have given a clearer identity to those who cleared this content. It would also have made it possible to implement the Esoteric weapon upgrade and Anima weapons earlier, and in turn made those easier to obtain.
Here we see them drawing an incorrect or incomplete conclusion about an issue.
The problem with Savage gear has nothing to do with the item level. It has to do with the reward structure as a whole, and the questionable itemization of the game as a whole. Alexander Savage is simultaneously the most difficult raid tier this game has seen, and the least rewarding:
Weapon upgrades are on the last boss instead of the second boss we saw in Coil.
All jewelery and other minor pieces are front-loaded with high-value pieces being in the tail end, where previous coil was mixed.
Due to the difficulty, the time to loot ratio is REALLY bad.
Diadem gear's (and by extension sometimes crafted gear) very high stat caps causing a lot of disparity between difficult to acquire raid gear and other sources. I find this most baffling because it's something they should have learned from XI...the XI team would have just released augments to the raid gear at the same time to increase it up to the same levels (which you could also do through Diadem to, once again, give raiders objectives).
Considering Savage (and by extension relic, esoterics, and diadem gear) item levels the problem is wholly inaccurate. If anything, they MUST be the same/similar due to how tightly multiclassing is already restricted in this game by content lockouts. It is already incredibly difficult to gear alt classes to an acceptable-to-not-just-take-your-main-everywhere level, and further locking that behind raid only is a bad idea.
They've been hellbent on killing off the more unusual/interesting aspect of their game, between gear availability issues, lockouts, and crafting specializations. They need to f---ing stop it.
Diadem
Reduce the content time, and turn it into content that does not rely greatly on player skill.
We'll be introducing changes via maintenance in order to reduce the content time of exploratory missions and to make adjustments to the balance of item circulation, while making it into a place for collecting items and spirit bonding.
The skill level is not a problem in Diadem. If anything, the skill level required is low. The issue here is REALLY bad design in putting gathering content in the same place/same queue/same parties as battle content. Also, it is once again a reward structure issue. No one wants to kill Braichiosaur because omg the meteors. Why? Because he drops the exact same loot as other monsters of his rank.
This has been a recurring problem in XIV going all the way back to 2.0 (and maybe even further, but I lack 1.0 knowledge). When you're designing and testing content, it's fairly easy to know when something is faster/easier than something else. And it's fine/good that some things are easier than other things. But the rewards should be scaled appropriately. Just like when they made a big fuss about Brayflox HM farm for Animus. The problem is not the content or anything, it's that they can't be bothered to go "Okay, Lost City takes longer, so we'll add a few more tomestones and maybe an extra crafting drop to it".
Making something that's already relatively trivial in the majority of it's combat areas even easier is just an incorrect conclusion.
Furthermore, on the topic of spiritbonding, the spiritbond system has been a disaster since 2.0, and the community has been all sorts of vocal about it. They haven't fixed it. They don't plan to fix it. And when it comes down to it, spiritbonding, as it is, is a direct detriment to every party you're in.
Anima Weapons
Will not be the strongest weapon at the same time as the rewards for clearing the hardest difficulty content.
However, due to the fact that the item level for Alexander: Gordias (Savage) is 210, we were unable to make the current Anima weapons any higher than this, which resulted in concerns being raised about Esoteric weapons and the lifetime of weapons that are to be implemented in Patch 3.2. Furthermore, with the difficulty of Savage being very high, Anima weapons have become the sole option for obtaining item level 210 weapons for some, and we understand there is an issue with there being no other options.
Firstly, the main problem here is that his first point regarding relic strength is DIRECTLY OPPOSITE to what he said like six months ago. He explicitly stated that BY DESIGN this set of relic weapons will always be more powerful than their raid versions equivalents, and always on odd patches to create a sort of ebb and flow and give raiders something to work on between tiers still.
So imagine our surprise when they're f---ing not.
The other thing here is a lack of acknowledgement over what, exactly, relics should be. They should be actual content...not repeating the content we've already done 1000 times, another 1000 times to carry noobs.
Additionally, the increased time to complete (pushing closer to 200 hours, assuming you DF it, which you will have to do especially if you do more than one because farm parties are already dead) effectively removes relics as an alt-class weapon option, leaving only Thoridan weapons.
Their concern over not releasing anima too early also shows a lack of caring about multiclassing. Furthermore, they're missing out on the biggest opportunity (and also issue) they have -- multiclassing, by it's very nature, encourages people to repeat content a LOT. This is also why, with what multiclassing we CAN do, we're EXTREMELY grumpy when relic comes along and makes us do the same content over and over AGAIN...because we've already repeated it extensively.
The new crafted equipment we will be implementing in Patch 3.2 is strong. You’ll be able to use this new gear at the same time as the new accessories, and since you can also advanced materia meld this equipment, I think there will be a demand from those who are striving to complete the raid quickly.
They've flip-flopped on this issue more than John Kerry on political issues. And for good reason -- because the design is s--t -- largely because the materia system is s--t, and needs a complete overhaul (again). Which, again, the community has been all sorts of vocal on since 2.0, and has gone completely unaddressed.
Why do chest/leg pieces have higher stat caps but the same amount of materia slots? Why is materia so difficult to acquire because spiritbonding is a s--t system with s--t math backing it? Why are half your stats useless or near-useless? Why is materia completely ignored when level synced, instead of scaled? So on and so forth.
TL;DR While the live letter info is an improvement over the state of the game mere hours ago, it's not enough. It still shows a large disconnect between the developers and the player-base."

[PetiteMalFleur]

snip

I felt the gear itemization for each floor was fine and made sense with the page system, which was a positive change. I agree with much of what else this person is saying though.

MizoreShirayuki - you may want to edit the post's language due to the stricter forum rules.

This post reminded me of another issue which I added to the OP.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I do feel fights of A3S difficulty have their purpose in the game. Unfortunately, when it accompanies a lengthily lull in content, this leads to the insurmountable wall feeling many gamers had. Savage was all that remained, and the difficulty spike was immense. It's as though they started playing Bloodborne without realizing. What I think may be a good balance to still include the actual "wall" fight would be scaling existing content on occasion. That way the devs are not designing new fights a fraction of the playerbase won't play.

Thordan EX looks to be a great middle ground. So I hope they do continue to tune fights to that level despite what has been said.