FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Ibi]

I think they should get rid of normal mode altogether, make savage mode the only mode available like it was back in coil (But keep the current difficulty), use the time not spent working on normal mode to tailor more casual contents to add more diversity to the game instead.

The problems with this are:

1. Creating brand new content is considerably more work than creating a normal raid by turning down an existing Savage raid. Ditto for things having the rewards be a version that can't be dyed, etc.
2. It completely flip-flops the effort-to-target-audience ratio. Given that resources are finite and raid development, from all we've seen, is particularly costly, it results in the developers putting a significant amount of time and effort into developing end-game content for a small part of the end-game population and a small amount of time and effort into developing end-game content for a significant part of the end-game population.

That's not going to be a particularly palatable solution for the developers.

[Toguro]

I think they should get rid of normal mode altogether, make savage mode the only mode available like it was back in coil (But keep the current difficulty), use the time not spent working on normal mode to tailor more casual contents to add more diversity to the game instead.

Bad idea to get rid of normal mode. It was put in for a reason. I think the mistake they made was locking Savage behind Normal which gives everyone the ability to say "it's the same fight no new story".

Many things would be fixed if Savage wasn't locked by normal.

[Jetstream_Fox]

Bad idea to get rid of normal mode. It was put in for a reason. I think the mistake they made was locking Savage behind Normal which gives everyone the ability to say "it's the same fight no new story".

Many things would be fixed if Savage wasn't locked by normal.

Not really, they are the same fights with a few tweaks and alterations, just like ex fights. Nothing would be fixed if it wasn't locked behind normal mode, the problem lies with how SE has handled the development of these fights, they're just not fun. Really if you look at a few other fights in 3.0 some of the more fun fights aren't even in the 8 man raid, VA is a good example with Sawtooth and Irminsul, wasn't something we really seen before, Cuchulainn was all over the place, wasn't anything new but it had it's fun. And while Angra Mainyu is from 2.0 that fight was fun and chaotic, and Cerberus had a very interesting twist to his fight. Granted these became facerolls, they were fresh and interesting fights, similar to the Coils.

The Coils had mechanics that were only present in Coils, which set all the fights on a different pedestal than the rest of the game, Alex has nothing like that, as everything was basically all the other mechanics from other fights. While the Son has introduced new fights and made things interesting, it's too little too late, the damage is done and that's the problem with the raids, SE took away the uniqueness and challenging content curve, and dished up us one raid with ridiculous difficulty and the other less tough and more unique. The raids don't know what to be at this point, because SE doesn't know what they want to do with a vast majority of the content.

[Toguro]

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I agree with all of this. However, no matter how unique the fights are, 2 versions of a fight will still be 2 versions of the same fight. Many people have said they don't like Alex because Savage is the same stuff but more mechanics. They wouldn't be able to say that if they could dive in to Savage at release. It'd be like old raiding again.

[Stanelis]

It's not even as simple as that. The trouble is we've got multiple raid difficulties dividing up the community at end game and an over emphasis on challenging the player to be what ultimately is an hp numbers machine under pressure instead of utilizing tactics. There is zero creativity in how players can tackle fights: They must be completed by following a strict routine, and messing up that routine means everyone pays.

That issue arises due to the simplicity of FFXIV battle system : no matter what you do, in the end, in raid, you're only healing and DPSing.

In order to make a healthy raid in FFXIV, SE would have to first make the battle system interesting when you play with a large number of players (eg increase the number of abilities which have synergies with the other member of the group). But it will never happen as FFXIV is a game designed to heavily favor solo play. In a game like FFXI (where the battle system is made with group play in mind, with little regard to solo play), the gameplay is different depending on how many people are in your group and the raiding used to be very healthy.

That issue is found in the current wow (where players have been starting to desert high end raid ever since blizzard implemented something similar with the wow 3.0 patch) and is ultimately why wildstar failed.

[Jetstream_Fox]

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If they added interesting tweaks to them I wouldn't classify them as the same fight, like if in the oppressors we got hit by mini and had to go inside the second oppressor to destroy it. I wouldn't personally say that it's the same fight as normal in that regard since it's something entirely new and not just an added mob or expansion of a current mechanism within that fight.

[Thayos]

It completely flip-flops the effort-to-target-audience ratio. Given that resources are finite and raid development, from all we've seen, is particularly costly, it results in the developers putting a significant amount of time and effort into developing end-game content for a small part of the end-game population and a small amount of time and effort into developing end-game content for a significant part of the end-game population.

This is why the Diadem was such a letdown...

We already know these devs are short on resources, and Diadem was an opportunity to install the infrastructure for a form of endgame that could have been expanded over the rest of the game's life. I feel like that kind of innovation is critical for the game's long-term health. Otherwise, XIV will always be gimped by an endgame that caters to such a small percentage of players.

[Kimimoto]

We already know these devs are short on resources

With them being so short on resources they should really turn Void Ark into a real raid. It's just being wasted as a catch up raid. It's going to drop i230 I imagine, so the only people who are going to take the gear are alt classes or people who can't be bothered to get capped. I doubt either alts/lazy persons are really into raiding. Therefore make Void Ark into a real raid that drops i235 gear that would be relevant to raiding Savage. Then you would have an actually difficulty curve in the game, not just Expert Roulette --> Sepphy Ex/Savage.

Also making gear matter again, that's a huge incentive for a lot of Raiders. Do these catch up patches even matter? Are they really catching people up for Savage? If that's not true they're catching people who can't do/won't do Savage for nothing. Sepphy EX weapons became obsolete in a month and a half because they're not atleast i230 with good secondaries. With a free i230 tome weapon Sepphy EX instantly becomes irrelevant content instead of a stepping stone to Savage. Stop wasting content please.

Squeenix it's alright if some people can't complete PvE content, it gives them something to work at instead of getting capped each week and logging off. Maybe we shouldn't set the standard to if Yoshi can do expert on his BLM, and set it to something that will challenge players a bit.

[madolyn]

With them being so short on resources they should really turn Void Ark into a real raid. It's just being wasted as a catch up raid. It's going to drop i230 I imagine, so the only people who are going to take the gear are alt classes or people who can't be bothered to get capped. I doubt either alts/lazy persons are really into raiding. Therefore make Void Ark into a real raid that drops i235 gear that would be relevant to raiding Savage. Then you would have an actually difficulty curve in the game, not just Expert Roulette --> Sepphy Ex/Savage.

I feel like 24 man raids should have been introduced as a stepping stone to the 8 player raids /savage and not released on odd patch numbers as catch up

[Colt47]

The trouble with raiding is that they are using a broken system that divides the community up rather than bring it together. Old raiding had people who were hardcore to the bone leading people with all different kinds of commitments and they all were necessary to complete the challenges presented by raiding. What we need is an environment that encourages bringing new people into raiding that doesn't punish the people who have been there longer, and the current system just doesn't do that.