FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Kaurie]

Oh. Then what's the problem? Or is there even one?

I think your opinion is justified, but a little odd in this thread. It'd be like me going into a "State of Crafting Thread" and say that having crafting as the main means of non-combat content is a waste. It's an OK opinion, but just a weird place to state it.

I actually agreed with many of your points, I feel they are missing their potential and handicapping themselves unnecessarily.

An overall better endgame scene would help keep more players engaged between patches and probably result in a stronger raid community. It would also give raiders more to do after they have raids on farm status. SE shouldn't be treating these raids as the game's sole progression endgame. It's making the whole game weak.

I agree a better overall endgame scene would be best for the game. However, I don't think MORE raid options is the answer. If you see my post a couple of pages back, I do a comparison to WoW. I found the biggest issue in FFXIV is the massive dilution in content for each difficulty level. This leaves 2-4 encounters per difficulty level (24, Trial, Normal, Savage) every 6 months. Conversely, WoW, which has focused all of its raiding into one focal point, was able to set up 4 varied difficulty levels and offered 13 encounters for each level (LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic). FFXIV resources are spread too thin designing different stories and graphics, that there is just very little content for each sub-market. Overall, there is a lot of content, but for each bracket of player, there is very little. This results in either a) burnout on content being farmed too much or b) mechanics are tuned very hard to the point that you wipe for weeks. Neither of these systems result in a very fun raiding scene. I think a better raid scene would be to focus the end-game content in one area (i.e. Alexander, despite my dislike for the story/atmosphere) and then creating more encounters and more difficulty levels. We could easily copy WoW here and have a DF level (maybe slightly fewer mechanics than normal, or no enrages, or perhaps allowing more players), normal (as current normal), extreme (trial level difficulty for each fight), savage (as current savage) and then have that dev time gone towards providing more than 4 encounters per raid patch (or having more frequent raid drops, but I'd prefer the former)

I'm among the many who are effectively shut out of raiding, so I can't comment on why X raids are fun or not fun for Y reasons. But from obvious participation metrics, the state of raiding in this game is pretty bad, and I'd say it's everyone's problem given the widespread impacts.

Shut out, as in you cannot find a group or you are just not interested any more? I am personally the leader of a casual-to-midcore static (depending who you ask I guess). I just formed it by making PF's and asking friends to recruit up. Plenty of people want to get in, so if you are interested, I'd start recruiting and just make your own. You can even state it that it's a fairly casual-friendly atmosphere, so people are not too scared to join. I do hear people say they need to perfect their rotation before they start raiding (or whatever), but often they are perfectly fine to start.

I wish we had better participation metrics. Do you have anything concrete?

[WeekendSoja]

My definition may be a bit outdated than because horizontal progression for me means with the release of content, the available tier is in line with or "within" said content.

And vertical progression is the tier above said content.

So based of of this old mans definition, horizontal content is "content", that is within accessible levels of gameplay whereas vertical progression is a knock above accessible and provides vast challenges to the player base. All in which encompasses the respective contents rewards.

So, I guess my interpretation is leaning more towards the actual raid content whereas your is leaning towards raid gear rewards. Two separate aspects but all of which kind of fall in line.

[Thayos]

I think your opinion is justified, but a little odd in this thread.

Explained in an edit above.. will repost here.

Yeah, I did. Adding raid content is kind of a waste of time given the way raiding is set up and the lack of other more accessible progression-oriented endgame content. And that's a big reason why, imo, the state of raiding in this game isn't very strong.

An overall better endgame scene would help keep more players engaged between patches and probably result in a stronger raid community. It would also give raiders more to do after they have raids on farm status. SE shouldn't be treating these raids as the game's sole progression endgame. It's making the whole game weak.

Shut out, as in you cannot find a group or you are just not interested any more? I am personally the leader of a small casual-to-midcore static (depending who you ask I guess). I just formed it by making PF's and asking friends to recruit up. Plenty of people want to get in, so if you are interested, I'd start recruiting and just make your own. You can even state it that it's a fairly casual-friendly atmosphere, so people are not too scared to join. I do hear people say they need to perfect their rotation before they start raiding (or whatever), but often they are perfectly fine to start.
I'm among the many who are effectively shut out of raiding, so I can't comment on why X raids are fun or not fun for Y reasons. But from obvious participation metrics, the state of raiding in this game is pretty bad, and I'd say it's everyone's problem given the widespread impacts.

I actually did just start a new weekly content static for folks like me (adult, full-time jobs, second jobs, contract jobs, and families somewhere in there, along with fitness/sleeping/generally being responsible). But we only have the time within our schedules to meet for about one hour per week (and it took us a couple months to find eight people who could do even that). We all agree it would be pointless to do savage-level raiding, so we're committing ourselves to other things, starting with Thordan Ex.

Re: Raid participation rates, I go by figures people have gleaned and posted on reddit. I go by figures the devs have posted in the past. I go by what I actually see and hear from others in games, and from what I read on the forums. And by the fact that so many people clearly come and go between patches, because endgame in XIV simply isn't worth doing. As I said before, it's just such a waste. I don't understand why this dev team clings to this structure of raiding. I think a structure like you described might make things better, but honestly I think there has to be something better. I'd rather have some form of endgame that is more accessible for free companies with larger and more variable groups of people, but if I say more then I'll definitely get off topic.

[Hyperia]

One of the major problems I've seen with raiding is the emphasis on each person having to do things exactly right, and so much as one screw up causes the whole group to wipe. This is what discourages many raiders from integrating players newer to the fight. Adding someone who doesn't know the fight yet is pretty much asking for the whole group to wipe multiple times before they reach the point they were at again.

Its hard for slower learners too. When one person is consistently screwing up, and not picking it up within a few tries, the rest of the party starts to side-eye them. I've seen many cases where a person is trying their hardest, and *will* eventually get it, given enough time, but the rest of the raid just doesn't have the patience. They'd rather find someone who can either pick it up faster, or better, knows the fight already, so they can finally move on.

Its not a case of 8-man parties, because one look of World of Warcraft tells you parties much larger can work. No, I think the problem is a combination of how one person's mistakes can cause the whole group to wipe, and a very justified lack of patience in veteran raiders.

The best things the devs could do, I think, is to tweak the raid design so that one person screwing up accidentally doesn't equal an auto-wipe for the whole group. A raid should be very salvageable if one DPS, or even one healer or tank, dies. Normally death=Yeah we aren't going any farther. It shouldn't be that harsh. Yes, there should be SOME consequences if a person dies, but right now the punishment levied on the group for a minor screw from one is far too harsh, IMO.

This so much, so much....

I remember back in older games when something bad happens like a player dies, the whole raid slows or stops DPS, gets the people back up and then continues. There were no hard enrages or DPS checks. You had as long as your physically could jump rope or your raid lockout timer lasted. Getting rid of DPS checks and hard enrages would allow for a lot of creativity for the developers. Go in with whatever raid comp works for your group, take as long as you need till the job is done. This would also eliminate the "you must bring XX class to the raid" problem and allow people to play the jobs they want, I'm looking at you MCH vs BRD debate.

[WeekendSoja]

I see a lot of observations pointing the finger at the content of the game blaming the content and its unfair difficulty. I want reverse this argument and make the statement, can we as players become more capable?

Is it FFXIV culture to be impatient with slow learners, is it practice to join a instance with no preparation (this covers a multitude of resources, in-game items like potions and food, out-of-game voice chat tool to enhance the groups raid awareness and camaraderie), is it commonplace for people to hide behind their anonymity and put in less effort in hopes that the capability of others can still defeat the trial.

As a final fantasy title, I had assumed that the populace would be of an older generation do to the titles long standing history but hearing all this makes me feel like either a whole new demographic has taken over and all past FF fans have left or we are children guided as adults.

[Hyperia]

I see a lot of observations pointing the finger at the content of the game blaming the content and its unfair difficulty. I want reverse this argument and make the statement, can we as players become more capable?

I am thinking that the players are starting to reach the limits of what they can handle in the terms of class complexity and then the added content complexity. If it was content complexity alone, I wouldn't doubt that players would step up to it but with more and more and more abilities / talents / skills being added, were starting to get overwhelmed. Even the UI developers are starting to worry how many more hot bars / cross bars they can add to account for rising complexities.

I would like to see upgrades rather than new stuff all the time when it comes to what our classes do, that will limit how much we have to handle. If you cant fit it on 2 bars, then we have to ask ourselves, are we overloading players.

In 2.0, when I played BRD on raids, I could handle a large number of jobs due to the relative ease of the class. Amp things up in 3.0 with more skills, abilities and talents (Wanders Minuet... hate hate hate) along with increased pressure from DPS checks, one shot mechanics and overall difficulty increase of raids, and things get really tricky. Alexander Gordias was just plain mean, no way around it, Midas feels a bit better but could still use a bit of refinement. Thordan EX when it came out was way too much on mechanics, it felt like a hand full of raid bosses all at once. Sep EX was the magic fit, not too many mechanics, deaths were forgivable along with mistakes.

I would like to see 3 tiers of raids myself:
Normal - Gear up loot and story
Hard - Better loot, requiring normal mode gear near the end
Savage / Extreme - No loot, titles and mounts / pets only

I place Savage in the no loot category so people don't feel pressured to do it, the titles only worked really well with SBoCS and people still do it for the titles.

That's my take on the raiding so far.

[tjw]

Getting rid of DPS checks and hard enrages would allow for a lot of creativity for the developers. Go in with whatever raid comp works for your group, take as long as you need till the job is done.

Thing is though, FFXIV is different from other MMOs in that healers and tanks here can push out comparable DPS, even in the current raid tiers. Getting rid of DPS checks and hard enrages will just make everyone go 5 healers, 1 mana bitch and 2 tanks, because there's no need to have high DPS if parties can just heal through everything. You say creativity by the devs, but without DPS checks and enrages, everything will just become how long your healers can keep you up without running out of MP. The game can't go back on the DPS capabilities of healers and tanks either because of how the combat system is built.

[Alisa180]

I see a lot of observations pointing the finger at the content of the game blaming the content and its unfair difficulty. I want reverse this argument and make the statement, can we as players become more capable?

Is it FFXIV culture to be impatient with slow learners, is it practice to join a instance with no preparation (this covers a multitude of resources, in-game items like potions and food, out-of-game voice chat tool to enhance the groups raid awareness and camaraderie), is it commonplace for people to hide behind their anonymity and put in less effort in hopes that the capability of others can still defeat the trial.

As a final fantasy title, I had assumed that the populace would be of an older generation do to the titles long standing history but hearing all this makes me feel like either a whole new demographic has taken over and all past FF fans have left or we are children guided as adults.

To answer your question of 'is it FFXIV culture to be impatient with slower learners': In my experience, yes.

Being a player newer to the raid scene, my desperation to raid led me to take the advice of the response of several to those who had trouble finding a static: Starting my own. Unfortunately, I found out the impatience works the other way around, too. We had immense difficult finding capable DPS. One NIN said he wasn't willing to join a static that hadn't cleared Hummel yet. A pair of excellent DPS quit after one day, because they had 'gotten farther with a PUG', and quickly lost their patience with the learning speed of the group (it took me WAY too long to figure out how to handle the first set of bombs in AS5... But note I DID eventually get it).

What it boils down to is this: With how encounters currently work, a group effectively progresses at the pace of their slowest learner. That innately pre-disposes progression groups against slow learners, and new players. To many people, it seems to make much more sense to 'cut the dead weight' and find someone who can pick it up quicker or already knows it, so they can get on with it already. It can get frustrating to see the same person screw up over and over again, and we are culturally inclined to view failure, especially repeated failure, as a sign that one is 'bad' in some way, regardless of the amount of effort they're actually putting in. When that failure costs the whole group so heavily...

In effect, progression groups tend to see those who haven't mastered the fight yet as the reason they haven't progressed/cleared yet. And the sad thing is, they aren't entirely wrong. Slower learners and newer players need people who are willing to run the fight with them as many times as it takes to get it. But most people don't have that patience. Most shouldn't have to either, I might add. The way it works right now in IMO is ridiculous, and plays a not-insignificant role in the stagnation of the raid community.

[Toguro]

I think because the difficulty: reward scale is off, people turn away from Savage. They see the difficulty and compare it to the reward and think after the 15th wipe "you know what? I'm done, not worth it".

Reward counts for more than just gear. Story counts as a reward as well. I simply think gear is a good enough reward for midcore content not A3S level content. Savage should have other unique rewards besides gear.

[KarstenS]

I remember back in older games when something bad happens like a player dies, the whole raid slows or stops DPS, gets the people back up and then continues. There were no hard enrages or DPS checks.

How old? Enrage was even in vanilla WoW a thing.