Raid Finder and a General Problem I Needed to Get Off my Chest

[Dzian]

The only change raid finder needs is to actually lock options until players have progressed that far into content

Using my personal experiences with Sophia ex for example, I got her down to around 6% a few times in my first couple of attempts shortly after the patch.

So then a few days later I ticked duty incomplete with the purpose of completion in the raid finder because I was at a point where I had the mechanics down just needed to beat the enrage and get the clear.

And then for almost 2 weeks every group I got was full of people that were ticking completion even though they had never even entered the fight before. And a lot of them couldn't even make it to phase 2.

All of those players should of been choosing practice instead of wasting everyone's time. And they all complained when the vote abandon goes out after 1 or 2 wipes in the second phase.

You shouldn't be allowed to check practice phase 3 until you've made it past a certain point in the fight. You shouldn't be about to check duty incomplete > completion until you've got the boss down to a ceretain point when the enrage goes off.

Once I got my clear the raid finder duty complete > completion was pretty successful. i'd say 50% of groups cleared it in one shot. 30% cleared it wiping once. and maybe 20% were abandoned. so about an 80% win rate in my personal experience. much better than using duty finder.

[ErryK]

What KarstenS is saying is you are making a connection where there isn't one.

You know why extreme primals are easily done in Duty Finder? Because they're open to everyone.

You can't really say that for all primals though because there are three that aren't there. They're in RF for a reason. The connection you are trying to make is that things like Bismarck EX (tuned to i160~180), and Ravana EX (tuned to i170~190) are just as easy as Nidhogg EX (tuned to i220~i240) and Sophia EX (tuned to i240~i250) with any party composition and setup (by composition I mean amount of people with/without fight EXP) . While yes, you can potentially beat Bismarck and Ravana, you can't just take the same party and expect to beat it in Sophia EX.

The RF is there for the reasons stated on it: to separate practice from farming (2 options, duty complete + completion and duty incomplete + practice), or kill (duty incomplete + completion). The duty complete + practice combo is stupid and useless because if you've killed the content, why are you going in to practice? I personally can't make sense of it. But the RF is there to separate the 3 categories: farm party, kill party, progression party (practicing any phase of the fight). The idea is to assist groups regardless of party setup.

On the other hand, duty finder is there to commit to doing a duty regardless of what status your personal progression is at, and the reason for that is because it isn't regarded as difficult or 'current' content.

[Dzian]

The duty complete + practice combo is stupid and useless because if you've killed the content, why are you going in to practice? I personally can't make sense of it. .

If people were more honest this setting would get used a lot more I think. clearing it once doesn't mean you've mastered it yet.

this is why most farm parties fall apart because people clear it once or twice and think they've got it on "farm" despite being carried.. or maybe you're switched jobs or something. cleared it as a tank but practicing as a healer....

[Cold_Raven]

Raid Finder is pretty good... for the one-latest primal.

All others should be kicked out into regular DF.
There's no reason why Sephirot and Nidhogg are still in Raid Finder. And, if anyone hasn't completed these fights yet, it's almost impossible to use Raid Finder while locked under the "Incomplete" status. So they're pretty much stuck with PF only. If you're on a smaller server, you might not be able to find peeps...

Also, for those who have completed, they should be allowed to "also include" incompletes if they want... just to make their q's shorter if they'd like.

Such is my judgment!

[Moomba33]

In my opinion only the current Ex Primal and Savage should be in Raid Finder with the older ones being in DF to help queues. I had to use party finder to get past Nidhogg because I only got 3 pops in RF after hours of waiting in queue over 2 weeks.

These topics tend to get low support though. It seems like a lot of people only use use it for current content anyways:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...vs-duty-finder
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-ex-back-to-DF

[Kurogaea]

....

Actually I worded that wrong. "Extreme Primals are easily ran in Duty Finder", but I'd be lying if I said players didn't complete an ex primal using Duty Finder.

Another thing people are confusing this topic with me calling the mode useless. I said it was unneeded, not meaning it isn't helpful. We can still have raid practice options and farming in raid finder, just asking for another option for general running of the content that's not splitting up queues.

[ErryK]

It's splitting it up to put like-minded individuals into the same instance. If one wants to practice without exp, then they queue up for that. If one wants to practice with exp, they put in for that, etc.

It's like saying "We should have separates queues for cheques and cash." then saying "Wait, why not make one queue which allows people to use both?" which means longer queues as well as longer processing times as it is one person dealing with many, instead of 2 people dealing with many. Two heads are better than one, two queues are better than one.

[LineageRazor]

Raid Finder works well if you choose to run under duty completed. There's usually enough folks farming - even for older content - in order to find a group. It's the progression bits that are a lot more iffy... Splitting the pool of members the way it does makes an already difficult queue nigh-impossible.

That said, I know from personal experience how frustrating it can be to have the first part of the fight down pat, and eager to practice later phases, only to be constantly queued up with a fresh newbie who has to learn the first phase. The odds of actually getting any later-phase practice done are slim.

The pool of players doing later phases at any given time is simply too small. I don't think that it's a problem that can be solved with any kind of tool. At least Raid Finder as it stands DOES provide one purpose, in that it saves late-progression players the frustration of getting saddled with yet another newbie. Too bad it does so by preventing the late-progression player from getting any kind practice at all...

[Arutan]

You know why extreme primals are easily done in Duty Finder?

.... what

/10char

[Rita1989]

Let's be honest once the cross server PF is up it will replace how harder EX primals are ran the reason why it's dead in RF and was dead in DF as well is your almost always dealing with multiple new players who don't know the fight and even if you make progress your going to have to rinse and repeat this progress because time runs out.

I cleared Thordan a couple times in DF but that was because most of the party was premades never cleared with 8 random people.