FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Moomba33]

I know this might be hard to believe, but Diadem is end game content and works the way you say it. People will get bored of that faster than raiding. Also while some may not enjoy raiding, there are lots of other players who do. In games in general, there will always be a small group of players willing to take the hardest content in. This is no different from MMO's.

I liked Diadem when it first came out honestly. Myself and 4 FC friends would go to Easy mode as a five person party and do the objectives for some eso before joining other parties in clearing monsters out of the caves and stuff. What killed it for me was when the meta became camping dino island in normal mode and SE nerfed the tome rewards for the lower modes so it wasn't worthwhile to go as a small party anymore.

I think if it were to be restructured to be more objective based I'd like it again.

Sure, Final Fantasy games have frequently had fights that are significantly more challenging than anything found in the game's story, but they generally rewarded you with nothing more than a shiny trophy and were almost always divorced from any actual story content.

Look at Omega and Shinryu, Ruby and Emerald Weapons, Omega and Ultima Weapon, Ozma, the later bosses of the Monster Arena, or Yiazmat. A couple of them rewarded useful items, but by and large they were there for the challenge alone.

For someone coming at it from that perspective, of course it makes sense that they should be able to see the whole story without having to do difficult raiding content, and you're going to have a hard time getting them to disagree just because FFXIV is also an MMO.

This sums up my feelings on story in raids well. Offhand the closest thing to story being locked by tough content I can think of in the single player games is XIII's missions unlocking a couple of datalog entries.

[Thayos]

I know this might be hard to believe, but Diadem is end game content and works the way you say it. People will get bored of that faster than raiding.

The Diadem was horribly implemented... probably the worst piece of battle-oriented content since anything in 1.x. It could have set the foundation for filling out the game's endgame scene, but instead it was just a huge zerg fest with no strategies or long-term objectives. It only "works" in that you don't need exactly eight people to enter it. Everything else about the Diadem sucks. It's like a giant, boring, empty dinner plate -- SE didn't even bother to put food on it.

I seriously thought the point of Diadem was to introduce a new type of endgame into FFXIV. Now, I honestly can't even speculate on exactly what SE was trying to accomplish with that content -- it's that directionless.

[Marcellus_Cassius]

Yet it was filled and gave people something to do. I stepped on it on release but looking back now that its gone I want it back.

[Thayos]

Yet it was filled and gave people something to do. I stepped on it on release but looking back now that its gone I want it back.

You mean it was spammed for drops by the raid community and abandoned by everyone else within two weeks.

Also, it wasn't endgame. It was just a big open area where you zerged things for drops -- basically a giant, ongoing FATE with drops. Zero strategy, zero long-term objectives, zero reasons to work toward any goals as a FC, zero things to need to learn (other than finding Dino Island), zero sense of accomplishment, zero things to even really accomplish.

Long term, Diadem's only real use was for gathering.

Seriously, what a waste.

If anything, the complete failure of the Diadem is proof that the "casuals" are more than just facerolling one-button pushers. Most casual/midcore players are simply yesterday's hardcore players who are now busier and have less time. Casual/midcore players deserve content that's engaging, not the brainless pile of scrap we got in the Diadem.

But maybe the Diadem was never meant to be endgame? As I said above, I honestly can't tell you. No clue what SE was thinking. It's like trying to find meaning from a 2-year-old's finger painting.

[Marcellus_Cassius]

To me it was a good 2-3 hours of play every night, never saw it die down till the gear from it was outdated. It was good for us casuals as you'd put it, yes we need shit to do too.

Edit: I would like to see it retooled as something with FC involvement like sky/sea from xi

[Ibi]

It was just a big open area where you zerged things for drops -- basically a giant, ongoing FATE with drops. Zero strategy, zero long-term objectives, zero reasons to work toward any goals as a FC, zero things to need to learn (other than finding Dino Island), zero sense of accomplishment, zero things to even really accomplish.

Long term, Diadem's only real use was for gathering.

Exploratory missions really didn't even have a way to meet SE's intended goals: "Exploratory missions were implemented as a new type of content based on the idea that items can be randomly obtained through farming and players could create their own rules and approaches. Up until recently, there were many limiting rules and a focus on set content in FFXIV."

They sort managed the first concept when it came to battle classes, but only in that the items that were obtained were random. The method for obtaining them was anything but.

The only way to obtain useful items at any worthwhile pace was to kill as many star-level mobs as possible. Killing lower level mobs, gathering, and exploring all had either no useful (for battle class) rewards or rewards that were woefully infrequent.

As for players creating their own rules and approaches, that might have worked much better if there hadn't been one approach that was at least an order of magnitude more efficient than any of the others.

[Thayos]

As for players creating their own rules and approaches, that might have worked much better if there hadn't been one approach that was at least an order of magnitude more efficient than any of the others.

I was so hopeful that what SE meant was essentially, "We're going to give you some really cool stuff to do and leave it up to FCs, linkshells and statics to determine which objectives they'll complete and how to handle drops."

Nope. They really just tossed us into a giant room with a feeder bar.

Has the dev team even said anything recently about trying to salvage Diadem, or has it just kind of been left for dead? Would be a shame if they've abandoned it, because there's no reason why a repurposed Diadem would even need to be obsolete.

[Velhart]

It was a case of the squeaky wheels getting the grease.

On the one hand, we had an 81-page thread on the forums about people wanting a story mode.

On the other hand, we had people that SE apparently interviewed wanting even harder raids, along with reactions like the ones at Fanfest, consisting of a chorus of booing, in response to them even contemplating reducing Coil's difficulty.

Meanwhile, the people who enjoyed raiding at the difficulty of Coil mostly just went about that without complaint.

That's what got us the normal/Savage split we had in Gordias, which resulted in the two groups that were making the noise before being satisfied (or at least more than they were in Coil), and the people who were satisfied before, but aren't now, speaking up.

It's clear (comparing Midas to Gordias, and their willingness to adjust A6S so quickly) that SE are listening to an extent, but they're generally glacially slow and overly cautious to react to anything that wasn't overwhelming breaking their intention on how players should be consuming content.

Which more goes back to the notion that they tried to please both extremes in the raid, at least for Gordias and a lesser extent Midas. Its true they are trying to bring Midas down to please more midcore, but it is still not the proper balance they should be working with. We already heard from them they can only do two of the three difficulty modes. So they went with story and Savage. What is upsetting about it is if we do not include the story (and I will get to the story in a moment), that they decided to add a mode that was in cost of the audience raiding is intended for, midcore/hardcore. Again, Midas kind of fixing things, but ultimately it should be how 2nd Coil was set up that should be the way to go. Don't have to agree with me, but that is when raiding was set up at it's best, at least the structure, not the execution (not including better items in Savage).

That's all well and good in principle, but echo buff (and between 20 and 50 additional item levels of gear) didn't allow casual players to beat the content for the story in Coil.

That's why we ended up with story mode in the first place.

Which goes back to an idea I had which was keeping an ilvl on Savage so it is always difficult and earning things from there still means something, even years from now. Make the Normal Coils level difficulty the one they dumb down and add echo buff to give the more casual side what they want. The argument here lies basically in if casual players deserve the story now or later, which goes to the next thing....

Because you tend to view XIV as an MMO first-and-foremost, and a Final Fantasy title second. Other people look at it the other way around, and it's hard to make a case against the stories having always been a significant aspect of what made the series as popular as it is.

Sure, Final Fantasy games have frequently had fights that are significantly more challenging than anything found in the game's story, but they generally rewarded you with nothing more than a shiny trophy and were almost always divorced from any actual story content.

Look at Omega and Shinryu, Ruby and Emerald Weapons, Omega and Ultima Weapon, Ozma, the later bosses of the Monster Arena, or Yiazmat. A couple of them rewarded useful items, but by and large they were there for the challenge alone.

For someone coming at it from that perspective, of course it makes sense that they should be able to see the whole story without having to do difficult raiding content, and you're going to have a hard time getting them to disagree just because FFXIV is also an MMO.

The question is, where do we draw the line in if the story gets in the way of proper raid structure too much? Alex to me drew the line here. Yes, Final Fantasy is a story driven game and done well for an MMO. However, that does not give it the excuse to be a poorly structured MMO in the process. You have to remember you have to make the content last, people get the story at the beginning and things like story mode Alex only become a chore at that point, and people don't care about it after a few weeks. The raid structure is in a poor state right now because people apparently need that story any way they can. We can argue FF is a story driven game, but that gives it no excuse to be a poor MMO for it.

I say this as someone who is a very big fan of the Final Fantasy series and a lore nut for both FFXI and FFXIV. It felt better to achieve parts of the Coils story working for it than basically having it handed to me like 95% of the game already does. Sure not everyone thinks like that, but ask yourself, did it not feel good to overcome a very hard turn in Coil and get a satisfying cutscene for it? Just saying, we did not have to expense midcore/hardcore play just so people can get their fill immediately. People can feel free to disagree with me, but I believe in earning things through hard work.

Even more so if they're familiar with FFXI, which really didn't put any of it's story behind difficult end game fights (certainly nothing as tough as any of Coil). Even Chains of Promathia's missions, which were the toughest road block for any part of the story, could mostly be trivialized if you were willing to take a little time farming up anima/yellow liquid/shu'meyo salt/etc.

FFXI gated it's story in it's own way. It was very difficult finding groups to take on content and took a lot of preparation and preferred jobs to take things down. I remember being stuck on Ouryu for a good while in CoP and it felt satisfying finally beating him and getting the CS for it. Same with the 3 Mithra fight, Omega/Ultima Weapon, etc. I definitely don't believe FFXI handed the content to you, it was something you did need to earn. Despite being outdated concepts somewhat, they did a good job wanting you to strive for more.

I've not personally seen any complaints about things like the gobwalker mount, faustlet, only equipment from savage being dyable, Savage SCoB rewarding titles, etc.

If they're there, the volume is miniscule compared to people who cared only about the story.

It was mostly a joke. I was just giving an extreme example.

All the above said, I can't argue with this statement at all.

Which goes back to my saying. FFXIV developers need to know when to make a proper Final Fantasy game and a proper MMO. People can say it is subjective on what makes a proper MMO, but looking at this year, it is very much a thing that SE does not want to cater to all three as much as one or the other. Relics were dumbed down, Savage has scared away a lot of midcore groups, hardcore players are bored with the game. SE needs to know what content is made for which audience. 95% of the game can be casual which is fine, but where it really matters in challenging content like raids, they need to make sure the intended audience for the group is taken care of before diving into things like Story mode. WoW did bring an easy mode to raids, but they did not take away Normal/Heroic mode in the process. They did not sacrifice one, but added. Again I don't entirely agree with an easy mode, but I know it is a thing. WoW at least made it work, or at least when I played it a few years ago.

The only thing I see SE doing at this point is making Savage easier and easier per tier till more midcore groups want to come back. Midas is that first step. Which in turn will cause an imbalance on hardcore players. Not saying Midas is easy, in fact it is quite challenging, but it is easy to see that SE is willing to make it easier just to get more numbers in instead of making proper midcore/hardcore tiers similar to WoW. Ohh yea, shouldn't compare too much to WoW before someone goes "Why don't you just go back?"

[CookieMonsta]

I also had a thought since the Gordias/Eso gear days. Part of the reason they have so much issue reconciling Raid 240 gear and Alternative 240 gear is their unwillingness to play with Secondaries (never mind the low impact of secondaries). For example, I feel like their gear stat allocation is done pretty much by a random generator with some minor human tweaking around a certain amount of end-values. The result is if you equip a full set of something (Lore, Midan Savage, Midan Normal etc etc) your stats are actually perfectly balanced and tuned with minor variation in the overall number between sets, in fact the balance is so good on DRG you can damn near predict what the A8S accuracy cap will be because a full Lore set gives exactly 700.

With their current system, I can forsee more creative gearing processes where you can ensure the Raid pieces have the best secondaries vs the Tome pieces, even in a full set so the realistic performance gap is bigger than 5%. Ensure that ideal builds are only possible with almost full raid drops. Because as it stands now, a toon with full tome gear actually comes within 2% of ideal BiS.

e.g. Full Tome casual http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UAC0
2645 stat weight

BiS requiring clearing ridiculous content http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/UABZ
2681 stat weight

[Ibi]

Midas kind of fixing things, but ultimately it should be how 2nd Coil was set up that should be the way to go. Don't have to agree with me, but that is when raiding was set up at it's best, at least the structure, not the execution (not including better items in Savage).

I agree with the basic principle and definitely with the thought that SCoB is the best actual implementation of raiding FFXIV has had so far. I know you and I would disagree on some of the details, but that's just because we have differing philosophies on some things.

The question is, where do we draw the line in if the story gets in the way of proper raid structure too much? [...] We can argue FF is a story driven game, but that gives it no excuse to be a poor MMO for it.

I agree here too. My solution would be that raiding should have no story line that's exclusive to it.

What if Coil's story had been told through dungeons, and the raids had been, say, assaults on the various Garlean bases around Eorzea? They could easily have made the raid encounters just as interesting and rewarding, without the backlash from players who felt that they were cut off from a significant segment of the story (and nobody's going to argue that Coil's story wasn't significant in the game's overall tale).

It felt better to achieve parts of the Coils story working for it than basically having it handed to me like 95% of the game already does. Sure not everyone thinks like that, but ask yourself, did it not feel good to overcome a very hard turn in Coil and get a satisfying cutscene for it?

I'm someone who originally played FFXI for the story (and re-subbed last year to see all the story they added after I originally quit in 2009) and someone who primarily plays FFXIV for the story, but if I'm being really honest, for me personally, I'd have to say no.

The satisfaction for me came from overcoming the hard turn itself. I loved the cutscenes, don't get me wrong, but even seeing T12's outstanding cutscene was just icing on the cake of the exhilaration of clearing it on what would have been our last pull of the second week of FCoB.

People can feel free to disagree with me, but I believe in earning things through hard work.

It was mostly a joke. I was just giving an extreme example.

Fair enough, but my point was more that there certainly are things (mounts, minions, titles, better gear, exclusive dyes, etc.) that people could earn from hard work that wouldn't ruffle anywhere near as many feathers.

FFXIV developers need to know when to make a proper Final Fantasy game and a proper MMO.

I think the biggest thing they need to know is when they can do one without having to step on the toes of the other.

They can absolutely hold true to everything that's iconic about a Final Fantasy game while also making a proper MMO.

IMO they could start by looking at a lot of FFXI's systems, though I'm still holding out hope that maybe Palace of the Dead will (à la Nyzul Isle) be a step in that direction.

WoW did bring an easy mode to raids, but they did not take away Normal/Heroic mode in the process. They did not sacrifice one, but added. Again I don't entirely agree with an easy mode, but I know it is a thing. WoW at least made it work, or at least when I played it a few years ago.

Eh, there's a new "Raid Finder has killed WoW and should be removed yesterday" thread every day on the official forums and MMO-Champion. Together with an accompanying "If you're not even doing Raid Finder, why do you care?" thread.

Not saying Midas is easy, in fact it is quite challenging, but it is easy to see that SE is willing to make it easier just to get more numbers in instead of making proper midcore/hardcore tiers similar to WoW. Ohh yea, shouldn't compare too much to WoW before someone goes "Why don't you just go back?"

On the one hand, shove 'em. On the other hand, there's no denying that WoW's raiding scene (barring the obscene content droughts at the end of each expansion) has a much better structure than FFXIV's.

Unfortunately for WoW, that's about the only thing it's had going for it over FFXIV for quite some time.