Issue With End Game Raiding

[Almalexia]

The fact that endgame is built on having eight-person statics -- AND ONLY EIGHT PEOPLE, no more or less -- is really what's suffocating endgame.

The 4/8/24 lockdown is but a symptom.

No flexibility in itemization plus a pathological fear of imbalance means a every piece of content requires a strict DPS assembly line quota. Different BGM will play, different colored lights and floating markers will flash, but you are ultimately doing a familiar dance. We will never see Salvage, Dynamis, Limbus or any content with logistical complexity until the itemization moves away from bigger numbers on the same stats.

Once the itemization becomes more diverse, the content will follow suit.

[Saccharin]

No flexibility in itemization plus a pathological fear of imbalance means a every piece of content requires a strict DPS assembly line quota. Different BGM will play, different colored lights and floating markers will flash, but you are ultimately doing a familiar dance. We will never see Salvage, Dynamis, Limbus or any content with logistical complexity until the itemization moves away from bigger numbers on the same stats.

Once the itemization becomes more diverse, the content will follow suit.

I dont see how you think that more interesting itemisation will lead to harder fights. The reason FF14 has those fights is the fundamental design of the game and server code. The 2.5 second global, the negative effects of even a little high latency are the reason why we have rather mundane fights compared to other raiding MMOs.

I'm in favor of making story/normal mode be tuned to a similiar range of difficulty as the EX primals. The latter is already tuned in a way that it becomes accessible through the process of gearing (and eventual echo), and prevents it from being delegated to a weekly routine from release like void ark or dungeons. In a wider perspective, there's a lot of content for players who have no interest in raiding, there's content for players who want to invest a lot of time for raiding, but only EX trials are there for players who want to raid but can only invest a small amount of time due to outside of obligations and finding other players to do so (which isn't necessarily easy, especially with smaller servers transferring off for gordias progression)

Story mode works for what it is so dont even think about trying to make it 'harder'. If you can't put in the effort for savage then you just dont raid. Simple. As I said in the bit you quoted this isn't WoW.

[RiceisNice]

Story mode works for what it is so dont even think about trying to make it 'harder'. If you can't put in the effort for savage then you just dont raid. Simple. As I said in the bit you quoted this isn't WoW.

Again, that's the problem. There is no other raid content that isn't savage difficulty (which wasn't the case for coil days). What story mode is doing right now is an entirely different purpose of what coil (or even EX trials) accomplished, and the introduction of story mode and savage mode is missing that purpose (and EX trials are far/few inbetween).

There are groups (and I personally know a few at least on my realm) that have started and cleared during FCoB days, most of them before echo. They wanted to get their group together ahead of time and break into raiding so they're familiar with each other going into 3.0's raiding content. You can't honestly say that normal/story mode is tuned as a static content, so the next one up is savage mode. Did raiding in FFXIV suddenly become something that isn't for them over the course of an expansion, and was it even a good choice at that considering what Gordias had accomplished with the raiding community/population.

[Reinha]

Again, that's the problem. There is no other raid content that isn't savage difficulty (which wasn't the case for coil days). What story mode is doing right now is an entirely different purpose of what coil (or even EX trials) accomplished, and the introduction of story mode and savage mode is missing that purpose (and EX trials are far/few inbetween).

There are groups (and I personally know a few at least on my realm) that have started and cleared during FCoB days, most of them before echo. They wanted to get their group together ahead of time and break into raiding so they're familiar with each other going into 3.0's raiding content. You can't honestly say that normal/story mode is tuned as a static content, so the next one up is savage mode. Did raiding in FFXIV suddenly something that isn't for them over the course of an expansion, and was it even a good choice at that considering what Gordias had accomplished with the raiding community/population.

Well "savage" would have to be either Coil difficulty or the current savage difficulty. There is no way the devs are going to put resources into making 3 difficulties of the same raid or get rid of one of the most popular PvE modes in the game (normal Alex). Coil may be considered a nice in-between difficulty for statics, but the truth is it wasn't that popular back in the day. Only about 10% of players cleared it in JP realms and a disappointing 0.1%-4.8% cleared in NA/EU realms. Normal mode, or easy mode as some like to call it, is here to stay because people actually play it. And going by the responses to AS6 nerfs I don't think raiders would be too happy to have all of savage mode lowered to Coil standards.

[Ibi]

The 4/8/24 lockdown is but a symptom.

No flexibility in itemization plus a pathological fear of imbalance means a every piece of content requires a strict DPS assembly line quota. Different BGM will play, different colored lights and floating markers will flash, but you are ultimately doing a familiar dance. We will never see Salvage, Dynamis, Limbus or any content with logistical complexity until the itemization moves away from bigger numbers on the same stats.

Once the itemization becomes more diverse, the content will follow suit.

You're vastly overselling the importance of gear in Salvage, Dynamis, and Limbus.

You could have cleared all three events in groups equipped with nothing beyond the sets you could purchase with assault points (Amir, Pahluwan, and Yigit sets), and items of equivalent stat complexity in your other equipment slots, and those have no more variety in terms of stats than what we're getting in FFXIV.

I think you're also overselling the complexity of the events.

Outside of their final bosses, Limbus and Dynamis especially were very simplistic in nature. Most or all of FFXIV's 24-man raid bosses could rival the Dynamis bosses, with the potential exception of the Shadow Lord, in terms of complexity. Heck, even four-man leveling dungeons are more complex than 95% of Dynamis.

[Khemorex]

@ OP : maybe you should consider to join a static wich isnt that far into progression as you.

my last raid static was 3 turns behind me , but it was very fun to teach them at least for me
i dont raid actively atm , because i dont want to feel forced to log in at a specific time.
+ sometimes i have to work overhours , wich puts me in a bad mood when im not able to log in time during the week ^^

[Uchia]

You nailed the problem head on, most people I've spoken to in-game have this same problem and have stopped raiding, They should go look at DCUO where you can log in whenever you want in that game an raid any day, time an with whoever you want to raid with, without struggling to find people an not spend 2 hrs+ in pf waiting for people to join or replace someone.

[Garotte14]

What you're experiencing isn't new or isolated to FFXIV. Is there something wrong with it? I don't believe so.

There are plenty of things to do in this game at your own pace, but the core of this game is an MMO. The foundation of a game like this, is your ability to become a team and work with others.

I'm like you. I love to raid. I've gone through 5 statics since Beta, and server transferred twice.

If you love to raid, then you're probably more about the accomplishment than the gear. So doing an easier 4 man Alex/Coil would be less rewarding.

So my advice is, you have to decide what you want. The system in place isn't flawed. If you want to raid and that's why you play, keep looking and server transfer if you have to. Statics are breaking up everyday, so an opening can become available any day. If you don't want to leave your FC and friends, create an alt to visit when not raiding.

That reward sometimes takes sacrifice.

[Awful]

I've only cleared A5S and I can empathize I used to be a hardcore raider in 2.0 and now I can barely get anyone from my static consistently on. It really sucks and I'm in the same boat do I keep playing or just quit? It's honestly just a headache to get everyone on and when they do its 1 cycle and we're done till before reset. The raiding needs to change that's for sure but there's not many ideas left that hasn't already been said.

[Warlyx]

I've only cleared A5S and I can empathize I used to be a hardcore raider in 2.0 and now I can barely get anyone from my static consistently on. It really sucks and I'm in the same boat do I keep playing or just quit? It's honestly just a headache to get everyone on and when they do its 1 cycle and we're done till before reset. The raiding needs to change that's for sure but there's not many ideas left that hasn't already been said.

Alex gordias killed raiding for lots of ppl......