FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Millen1]

I really like to raid though hard to find a group. I only have an A5S clear cause my friends were missing their whm that week. It would be nice if Savage dropped loot like the EX primals, more reason to do them. Sure the best of the best would have all the gear they want in a short amount of time but many others would still be working on the first few items. Loot motivates me, no loot, not a lot of motivation. I like savage as hard as it is, I would just like to be able to get more loot out of it for the amount of work that goes into clearing it. In A1S it rained healer loot. Took a month for our cast to get the pages for his first item while I was well geared out as a healer. 1 month effort for one ring on the first floor if you have bad luck really sucks. The second month was just as bad if I recall for him.

[WeekendSoja]

That's all RNG based when it comes to chest drops. Can't fault anything but a casino-like system, some people or groups just hit the jackpot more often than others. In this regard, if the roles were switched and it took you a month to get your healer gear and it rained caster gear, it all fell on the shoulders of RNG-sus.

To expand on what you said, raising is fun, no doubt, but if you have glanced at the current hot topic of parsers on the forum, people here are afraid of accountability. Having a hard time clearing this portion of the raid? Let's calculate a solution using these hard numbers from the parse...oh wait...lols jk ya'll.

I mean, real-time numbers provide so much more detail than just beating a stationary dummy but no one wants to step forward and be like, "it's me that's holding us back, but give me a moment and I will make the adjustments to push us over this bump!"

[Ceasaria]

Palace of the Dead should be in the midcore content, i hope.

[WeekendSoja]

It's SE's vow to consistency. Same pattern for each patch regarding horizontal and vertical progression.

Because it's patches that dictate when content is released...expansions are honestly just a big terrain patch which opens the world and the possibility of new content for FFXIV. From 3.0 to 3.1 which, on SE's time line is a proposed half a year, you get a Alexander release, normal and hard, void ark, and max level 4-mans, all of which stay prevalent till 3.2 where the new Alexander tier is released.

So now in re-evaluation, you have horizontal progression with 4-mans, primals, void ark, and Alexander normal as horizontal progression for each patch whereas vertical progression is prolonged inbetween every other patch.

With this mindset, obviously SE wants everyone to try the vertical progression.

This is like SE's the parents with a huge mansion (savage content) and we are their children, sadly only 1% of the children come to visit the mansion and stay for a while lmao

[Kaurie]

So now in re-evaluation, you have horizontal progression with 4-mans, primals, void ark, and Alexander normal as horizontal progression for each patch whereas vertical progression is prolonged inbetween every other patch.

That is vertical progression. Horizontal progression is when you have many ways to obtain gear of the same general power level - generally with varied secondary stats for creating different builds. Horizontal progression at the moment is choosing between the Relic and lore weapon + choosing what materia to put on your gear. All other gear choices are vertical.

[Thayos]

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

Oh, I see.

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.

[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?

[Thayos]

Did you come in to a "state of raiding" thread to talk about how adding raid content is a waste of time?

Nowhere in my post did I say raiding was a waste of time. If you're among the small percentage of players who can raid, then good for you. Raiding is gaming, and we're all gamers.

I look at XIV's raid-centric endgame as more of a waste of potential. If SE only has the resources for one type of progression-oriented endgame content, then I think the devs could think of something with more widespread access and appeal.

So yeah, it kind of is a waste of the devs' time, with their goal being to engage players and maintain subscriptions. But raiding itself isn't at all a waste of time for those who can actually do it. More people would do progression content if they could!

[Kaurie]

Nowhere in my post did I say raiding was a waste of time. If you're among the small percentage of players who can raid, then good for you. Raiding is gaming, and we're all gamers.

I look at XIV's raid-centric endgame as more of a waste of potential. If SE only has the resources for one type of progression-oriented endgame content, then I think the devs could think of something with more widespread access and appeal.

I did not say that you said raiding is a waste of time >.>

[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.