FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Hayward]

...

You know as well as I do that kind of exclusivity (and the mentality that comes with it, from the tone of your post) makes MMOs less attractive than they can be (FFXI proved that about as clearly as any).

All this silly talk about segregating servers for "hardcore" players (quotes due to players talking loud and saying nothing) and/or asking for item level differences that would eclipse non-raiders to the point of irreparable game imbalance needs to stop. SE really would shoot themselves in the foot catering to such a small group of players who, in all truth, want to let everyone else know that they're special snowflakes and the rest of us are not.

[Iromi]

snip

Wow...one of the best posts I've seen in a long time. Nailed it totally..and yeah, it is already dying and will continue to die if they do not wake up and do something. But you know SE...they only do things when the subs drop severely (look at 1.0) lol

[Aleo]

Would much prefer if they went for more bosses over making a midcore difficulty. With more bosses the developers would keep the total completion time for the raid the same but to fit more bosses in that time they would reduce the difficulty of each boss thus making it more accessible and having no need for a midcore difficulty. This would benefit more players as they would experience a greater variety/creativity in the raid overall.

[Zenji]

I think people raid for the wrong reasons. It's less about gear that will be replaced soon or how fast you complete content and more about that fun you have when your running it with a cool group of people. Wiping, making jokes, wiping, improving, WIPING. and that awesome feeling of accomplishment and comradery when you clear difficult content together. Yeah man. That's what it's all about.

[CookieMonsta]

I think people raid for the wrong reasons. It's less about gear that will be replaced soon or how fast you complete content and more about that fun you have when your running it with a cool group of people. Wiping, making jokes, wiping, improving, WIPING. and that awesome feeling of accomplishment and comradery when you clear difficult content together. Yeah man. That's what it's all about.

Problem is, people like this are too rare. The vast majority of the game is complete face roll, the only time you have to perform at the peak is Savage content.

Intangible rewards like heightened rotation skills, raid awareness, improved communication protocols are not as valued, thus the raid community becomes tiny and cannot sustain itself.

[Velhart]

The problem with this entire game's structure in general is that they do not remotely attempt to balance Casual, Midcore, and Hardcore playstyles. All three need to be in a healthy state for an MMO to be successful in the long run. Right now the one taking the beating is the midcore audience, which is actually a decent amount of players. Currently the content midcore have is one primal, and Savage raiding. It is debatable rather if Midas(Savage) is considered hardcore content, but currently midcore groups are hitting walls and quitting similar to the first tier of raids.

It is sad that SE believes that a story mode for casual players was much more important than making balanced content for midcore/hardcore players in the -one- piece of content in the game that is actually challenging. You can bring the pitchforks at me if you want, but story mode should of had no priority over making a Coils level difficulty raid tier and a Savage mode one. Similar to how 2nd Coil worked. Actually, 2nd Coil did it almost completely right. All they needed to do was put actual better gear in and more people would of been influenced to take it on.

I am not necessarily saying that a Story mode shouldn't exist, despite not liking the concept of it. However, this is content built in the mind for midcore/hardcore players and they should of been catered to first before casuals were. Sorry casuals, but you own 95% of the game, I think you would live if you have to wait for an echo buff to beat the content for the story. You dealt with it before, you can now. There has to be a balance in end game content, and right now it is broken.

Feels pointless saying all of this however. SE is intent on keeping this imbalanced structure going and making sure each piece of content in this game has a hold-my-hand mode to the players who cannot feel compelled to hit anything more than one button. They need to better manage their resources.

Of course I will get the incoming, "Casuals have the right to get all the story the game has." I will argue that you shouldn't get everything handed to you on a silver platter, even if it is story content. Coil's story to many was a major reward in completing the content. Even myself, I cared more about what happens next and farming gear as a secondary thing. You can either do two things. One, wait till the content is accessible enough with gear/echo to take it on. Two, you can watch it on YouTube, assuming it doesn't "ruin your immersion."

Again, I am not saying casual content should not exist, and it is understandable it is the majority of content. However, when you do add the challenging content in, you really need to make it count and not cater to the casual side UNLESS you can manage resources for three modes.

Since everything I said above won't happen because SE does not know how to balance anything right, can you at least add achievements in Savage for doing content in a certain specific way like WoW does? Something for people closer to max ilvl. Something that makes them change strategies around to earn the achievements. Can reward things like mounts, minions, titles, etc. Something to show bragging rights. Oh wait never mind, can't reward those things or you will make the casuals angry. Well scrap that idea, because if the casuals are not happy about it, it is a no go.

tl;dr - The balance of casual, midcore, and hardcore content in this game is horrible.

[loreleidiangelo]

In regards to the gear...I don't really care if it performs better than the faceroll tome gear after the catch-up period is over, but by god it sure better LOOK better than the same gear that people can get for semi-afking a dungeon a day for 20 minutes 6 days out of the week.

Second Coil was the best example of this, IMO. All the gear was so superbly designed and different from other gear...you really stood out wearing it. Right now all my raiding friends are wearing glamour of actual cool stuff over their Midas Savage gear, which is just sad.

[Velhart]

In regards to the gear...I don't really care if it performs better than the faceroll tome gear after the catch-up period is over, but by god it sure better LOOK better than the same gear that people can get for semi-afking a dungeon a day for 20 minutes 6 days out of the week.

Second Coil was the best example of this, IMO. All the gear was so superbly designed and different from other gear...you really stood out wearing it. Right now all my raiding friends are wearing glamour of actual cool stuff over their Midas Savage gear, which is just sad.

As silly as it sounds, glamour is a big motivation tool for people. I do agree that while the sets don't look terrible, they don't push beyond other easier gear sets to obtain. As extreme as Bahamut's gear sets looked in Final Coil, you did not question that it was in fact raid gear and you did not see that elsewhere.

[Jeykama]

Right now all my raiding friends are wearing glamour of actual cool stuff over their Midas Savage gear, which is just sad.

That might be because it's kind of difficult to have a full set of Midas Savage gear and they already have an aesthetic they like? One of the problems of unique-themed gear is that it doesn't mix&match well.

tbh I raid for challenge and the jump-roping. The gear possibly looking top-tier enough to wear as a primary look is just a bonus (you can only really have one primary look after all) What would help a lot is more bosses (with fewer mechanics I guess) and smoothing out the difficulty curve of obtaining said gear if we need it as a stepping stone. The book tokens are a good step forward but having 13 slots to gear out and only 8 drops a week with all 3 melee requiring unique gear is disheartening. The lore upgrade tokens should also always drop if you have at least 1 chest - getting screwed out of both upgrade items is a huge slap in the face because we had one helper for A7S and rolled the wrong chest.

It is also pretty lame that relics can be competitive/superior to raiding weapons yet raiders don't get tossed any bones to assist in relic progression when considering the relic vs. raiding time sink. Not even precision gordian pieces or a significant amount of lore to reduce the weekly stuff to do.

[Thayos]

I said this earlier in the thread, but I think it's worth repeating. The state of raiding in this game would be better overall if raiding weren't the dominant form of progression-related endgame.

Even before Alexander, the participation rate of coil was very low. The result is the bulk of players sweeping through the easier content of each patch and then unsubscribing until the next big content dump... and that cycle continues. The result is far fewer people participating in endgame activities simply because the game's only available endgame progression content isn't that interesting. It's not engaging.

Someone said something a page or two back about how "people don't want to spend 40 hours on a single fight for crappy/meaningless rewards" (I'm totally paraphrasing), but the point of the statement was that rewards were the problem. Couldn't disagree more. The bigger problem is that most XIV players don't want to spend so much time trying to beat a single fight. Raid incentives aren't the problem... RAIDING itself is the problem.

Not saying that raiding has no place in this game... but if raiding is only engaging for a small fraction of the playerbase, then raiding should really just make up a fraction of endgame. SE needs to be innovative and create a new system of endgame that's engaging for more people. This entire game was designed with casual/midcore players in mind, all the way from its simplistic combat system to its easy-to-complete quests that can be handled in 5-10 minutes each. It makes no sense for the game's only progression endgame content to be highly tuned raids that require hours of practice even with a static.

This game is nearing its second expansion, and still it's completely barren of any viable form of FC-friendly battle content. SE's only attempt at flexible, accessible FC battle content was the Diadem, and that was.... a massive, uncreative failure. I struggle to even call that content because it's so utterly pointless.

Anyway, before I ramble too far off course....

The state of raiding will improve when the state of XIV's endgame improves. This game is in dire need of some kind of endgame that's accessible and engaging for the players the rest of the game was designed for. Get those people to stick around and be active in game between patches, and that will bring more people into the fold for raid groups. A more accessible endgame scene will also give people greater incentive to immerse themselves in their jobs, which will result in an overall more skilled playerbase.

Raiding will always be problematic in 2016 and beyond, especially in a game designed far more for casual players than hardcore players. The participation rates will always be low, and skilled players who have enough free time for statics will always be hard to come by. Raiding will always have a place among the most passionate players, but you can't expect players to become passionate enough to pour hours into single fights without first engaging them. FFXIV's lack of endgame for the game's average player is why people aren't getting engaged enough to become passionate.