FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Ibi]

I've no issues with the raiders. Honestly don't. But it's the ones that don't actually see there's a problem with the raiding scenario that I don't get.

"Cool, you like the raids. You're enjoying yourself. You do realize, however, that it's about 5% of the community only, right? And that 95% of us don't necessarily care about the endgame direction?"

I know it's a bit hypocritical of me coming into a thread about the State of Raiding and say "Yeah, it's pretty broken because Raiding is just boring as hell" but the fact is that maybe the state of Raiding is like that because it's a dying breed. Maybe it's time that we look into another avenue when it comes to endgame stuff.

I don't know if only 5% of the community engaging in Savage raiding is seen as a problem with raiding by those people because that's pretty much the expected level of engagement with organized raiding (both in previous tiers in FFXIV, and in other MMOs, like WoW).

It's a problem with FFXIV's end game (and, again, also WoW's end game in Warlords of Draenor, which is a factor in their nose-diving subscription numbers over the course of the expansion) that organized raiding is the only meaningful end game, but that's not necessarily a problem with raiding itself.

If that makes sense.

Look and see what your playerbase is doing, S-E, and figure stuff that way. Not all of us want raids. We want more.

I think the number of raiders who'd complain about having more variety (possibly even at the expense of raids, if it was suitably rewarding/engaging content) is an extremely niche group. I know I was excited for Diadem (prior to its sub-par implementation), and I'm very eager to see what Palace of the Dead has to offer.

They admittedly kind of stumbled with A6s as it was a tad too hard (and requires such teamwork that it's going to remain unfriendly to PUGs on western data centers), but post nerf it's pretty much a Coil fight that is packed with mechanics.

Probably the biggest hiderance to PUGs in top tier raiding is the number of mechanics that require between one and eight members of the raid to execute them where a single failure by any person results in a raid wipe (either instantly or simply because it becomes near-impossible to recover).

A lot of those mechanics aren't all that challenging to execute correctly (e.g. High/Low Arithmeticks and Height), but the fact that they require perfect execution every time is always going to be a significant road block to PUGs because there's no long-term accountability to the rest of the group.

Which leaves me to wonder why people aren't raiding as much or the raids appear to be harder for most players. There are a number of reasons (non-exclusive story and gear for the most part etc.) but the harsh reality is that everyone got a little worse at the game with lv60. Rotations are more demanding. There are more buttons to press. Everyone has Greased Lightning, cast times, or both. Go back to level 50 content and remember how easy the game was back then. It was much easier to focus on the actual fights and mechanics instead of stumbling through your own rotation.

It might be just a semantic difference, but I think it's less that people got worse and more that the minimum bar for performance for most classes was raised significantly.

Say I'm capable of juggling batons and one day someone asks me to do it while riding a unicycle. Or to juggle chainsaws instead. If I struggle with one of those, I didn't get worse at juggling, I just had to juggle under more difficult circumstances.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

i dont consider raiding Alex normal nor Void ark :P

The game does though.

[randysquirrel]

I don't know if only 5% of the community raid, but if it were removed, I'd be fairly certain those people would just leave the game entirely. It is the only challenging content that exists at the moment.

I don't know anyone in their right mind that classes Void Ark as raid, I think it is fairly safe to assume that when most people talk about raid they are referring to Midas Savage

[Ibi]

I don't know if only 5% of the community raid, but if it were removed, I'd be fairly certain those people would just leave the game entirely. It is the only challenging content that exists at the moment.

It depends on what they used those resources for. If they could create an alternate form of challenging content, it's possible they could keep some portion of the raiders, while also providing content for people who would enjoy challenging content but may not enjoy the raiding format.

Not to mention that if raiding is the only thing you're playing FFXIV for, you're probably playing the wrong game in the first place.

[Thayos]

I don't know anyone in their right mind that classes Void Ark as raid, I think it is fairly safe to assume that when most people talk about raid they are referring to Midas Savage

It is a raid, but not a "raid." Most people associate raiding with progression endgame content, and Void Ark feels more like a catch-up system than an actual form of progression endgame.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

I think truthfully id just rather have seperated servers, an easy server and a hard server. Both with the same progression paths, except one is hard and the other with +500% xp and just hands out free 240s for logging in. Then people can choose what they want when they build their character. Instead of constantly nerfing everything to try and keep the casuals happy. I would be a lot more motivated to play longer hours and do hard content if i was on a server where the only way to gear up is to do hard stuff.

[Yukiko]

I think truthfully id just rather have seperated servers, an easy server and a hard server. Both with the same progression paths, except one is hard and the other just hands out free 240s for logging in. Then people can choose what they want when they build their character. Instead of constantly nerfing everything to try and keep the casuals happy. I would be a lot more motivated to play and do hard content if i was on a server where the only way to gear up is to do hard stuff.

And when you die, you have to start a new character - no reviving!

[Zojha]

And when you die, you have to start a new character - no reviving!

Don't forget the global free for all PvP.

[zosia]

Similar to what people have said here, I have posted this ages ago:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...misconceptions

Alex savage has been some of the worst designed raiding I have ever seen in any game.

What rewards are there for savage raiding? In all honesty, the only rewards are a small vanity item (mount, pet, soon to be a title) and dyable alex gear.

Raiders get no epic story that builds up with every fight you down.
Raiders get no BiS advantage for the next raid tier.
If your group is good enough, you can get 240 before the 3.3 patch. You only have to look through this thread to see many raid teams will not see a midan gob dip or twine before 3.3.

Honestly, it just feeeeels so good to be right! Alex savage raiding has dumpster-ed the raiding community.

No one wanted to do SCoB savage for vanity rewards. What a surprise that a similar reward system did not pan out for raiding in 3.x

You know why LFR works in WoW? Because raiders get showered in amazing rewards that FFXIV has yet to touch.

The ilvl difference in wow raiding gear is superior.
The aesthetics for mythic gear are much more distinct than the lfg gear.
Each wow raid tier comes with multiple mounts, titles, achievements (esp for accomplishing harder feats mid fight), epic BoEs, rare crafting materials).
Wow raids usually incorporate the legendary weapon into the raiding scheme (including LFR so more casual players can complete the quest).

No one wants to raid in this game because sinking 40+ hours into a fight like a4s or a8s to get glamour rewards just aint worth it. You can show up 6 months later, mop up the entire raid tier with 100000% echo and get all the rewards for a fraction of the work.

And don't even get me started on the dev team themselves not being able to beat a4s in it's entirety before releasing it. How does a Dev team think that's a good call? SE, can you use some of that cash shop money to hire decent play testers to vet your fights properly? Looking at how a6s was mismanaged, something tells me the dev team learned very little from gordias.

I predicted the current state of raiding and I can tell you this much: raiding will be dead in this game after the first patch of the next expansion. Raiding needs better rewards (weapons effects, making BiS useful for the next tier, a much higher ilvl in contrast to non-raiding gear), normal mode should come out a few weeks after savage (just like LFR in wow), and ffs can we get enviroments that actually feel like raids again? T1/T3 FELT more like a raid environment than any turn in coil or any floor in alex. This square/circle arena FOR EVERY SINGLE ENCOUNTER gets to be old fast.

I said this countless times in my previous thread, you only need to look at LOTRO to see what happens to a game when the raiding community gets snubbed/dies. So, unless you want this game to becomes the next LOTRO, I suggest that raiding incentives and design be overhauled for the last installment of alex.

[Melch]

.

Itemization, special stats, special effects, special weaponskills that you could unlock by raiding, and higher ilvl would definitely give more incentive for raiding. Also, they should completely remove the normal mode, get a better design for the gear on savage, and a better and more immersive story.