[SUGGESTION] Add some end-game content

[Zojha]

PotD will always be relevant because even if nobody needs anything at all from it, it will always be there to be challenged.

The same technically goes for old raids, no? Going in min iLvL synced for the challenge and all that. Except nobody (hyperbole for: Only a few crazy people) does that. Oh, and you can also name chocobo racing - also a game within a game. Lord of Verminion! You can also mention PvP in that line. Triple Triad! All suuuper popular and relevant. Right?

Yeah no. I totally agree that it works in games that are not MMORPG. A great many things work flawlessly in such games, such as having your save file deleted upon defeating the final boss with the only option being new game, getting the same rewards for something on very easy as on very hard, cheating to your heart's content, undoing your progress after every match, killing vital NPCs and preventing the MSQ from proceeding and a great many more, the list is pretty long and far from everything on it is going to be relevant for this case.

MMORPG work different and while I cannot provide you an exhaustive study on how they work, it's pretty clear that a lot of content that is "there to be challenged" is simply ignored by large masses of the community. And that has something to do with human behaviour.

When people come to play a game, they are seeking enjoyment. That's an ambiguous term, because it includes not just the genuine fun from being engaged by the content, it also includes enjoyment from pretty lights and characters, satisfaction from overcoming their own flaws, satisfaction from becoming more powerful, compensation for their small ego via social acknowledgement, satisfaction of greed and many other things. That's the driver, what makes people do stuff.
And just about every content in this game is going to appeal to one or more of these components, which the player will internally weigh against each other (preferences come into play here) and pick the activity he/she gets the most use out of. All fine and dandy so far.

And this is where the issue comes in: Rewards. Rewards are there to appeal to these components as well and thus, control people's behavior. Even if you would get more genuine enjoyment through engagement out of a certain piece of content, say, Triple Triad, you'll be lured away with appeals to other components of enjoyment somewhere else, like Dun Scaith. And how? By giving Dun Scaith better rewards than Triple Triad, for example by appealing to your enjoyment of stat progression and giving Dun Scaith progression relevant gear but not Triple Triad. And this is something that SE uses a helluva lot.

Lo and behold, content without rewards or where rewards have been attained dies quickly. No surprise there. And the worst of it, in the process, they are killing your original intrinsic motivation to do the content. That's something rewards simply do - interest in the actual activity goes down, replaced by interest in the reward. See also: Why speedrunning is popular, even in PotD.

As such: I'm sorry, but I do disagree PotD will remain relevant "just because". The rewards are all that keep it alive IMO.

[MomomiMomi]

When people come to play a game, they are seeking enjoyment. That's an ambiguous term

I'm going to stop you right there. This is the core of what I'm saying. They are only providing one form of enjoyment. What about the rest of the people who are looking for something else?

inb4 "play a different game". That's probably what's going to happen. It's what I'm already doing.

EDIT: posting limit

"one form of enjoyment"

Lets ignore 24mans, primals, anima quests, dungeons, hunts, PvP etc because it inconvenient to your argument? Fair enough if you choose not to participate in raids but there are other things to do. Asing for fresh content when people get bored after a couple of weeks is something alot of naysayers bring upon themselves imo.

"Something else" is far to vauge when you are being provided with things to do... Hell even crafter/gatherer mains are provided for in this game...

Endgame. We're talking about endgame. Primals, raids, and 24-raids are all essentially the same type of content.

Primals: Boss.
Raids: Corridor, boss.
24-man: Corridor, boss, corridor, boss, repeat.

Yes, one type of enjoyment in endgame. Even dungeons are the same, but I'd be hard pressed to fit them into endgame.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That's all well and good if gear made a game. But sadly, logging in and being handed the gear does not a good game make.

Neither does a game that relies on 1-5% drop rates for gear. That gets old pretty quick as well. People already hate that they have to run stuff multiple times to get drops if they roll low or it doesn't show up in a particular run.

[Underdog2204]

I'm going to stop you right there. This is the core of what I'm saying. They are only providing one form of enjoyment. What about the rest of the people who are looking for something else?

inb4 "play a different game". That's probably what's going to happen. It's what I'm already doing.

"one form of enjoyment"

Lets ignore 24mans, primals, anima quests, dungeons, hunts, PvP etc because it inconvenient to your argument? Fair enough if you choose not to participate in raids but there are other things to do. Asing for fresh content when people get bored after a couple of weeks is something alot of naysayers bring upon themselves imo.

"Something else" is far to vauge when you are being provided with things to do... Hell even crafter/gatherer mains are provided for in this game...

[Underdog2204]

Endgame. We're talking about endgame. Primals, raids, and 24-raids are all essentially the same type of content.

Primals: Boss.
Raids: Corridor, boss.
24-man: Corridor, boss, corridor, boss, repeat.

Yes, one type of enjoyment in endgame. Even dungeons are the same, but I'd be hard pressed to fit them into endgame.

Ohh one type of content sure if you disregard the most defining factor between them... Their difficulty and rewards.

So what kind of endgame would you like then? You can't cop out and say you don't have to specify what you want because yes you do, nothing seems to please. If you want a city building simulator you actually do need to play a different game... You are in the totally wrong genre.

[Dzian]

I want to see FFXI-style content. .

I'd love to see a lot of XI styled content in XIV. Einherjar limbus znm salvage assault Nyzul Isle, sky sea, even dynamis (maybe not the 4 hour long zones)

The problem really is that most of FFXI's endgame content was structured and built around fixed groups of players. fixed groups clearing wings of einherjar for example to get a set of "keys" in order to battle odin. or fixed groups working through appollyon zones building up a set of "keys" to fight omega. stuff like that wouldn't work in duty finder.

Virtually all of XIVs content is built around the duty/raid finder in an ultra accessible just queue it and go fashion. because of this. none of the content in XIV is structured in anyway. and if it was players would kick off big time. because hell even finding a group of 4 people to do palacae of the dead 101-200 is too much hard work. and theres posts asking for it to be duty finderable. (ok riad finder seems to be quite bad on the na side but that's because the player base doesn't touch it. seems a lot more successful on the jp side from what I've read)

it's a shame really because people have also been asking for structured content designed for fcs and stuff for the longest time hell even since 1.0. and in that regard many of ffxi's endgame systems could work incredibly well and be epic fun in xiv. but again the duty finder means it'll probably never happen.

I personally would love to see something like limbus in XIV. one of the best things about that and a lot of xis endgame was it didn't matter how many people you took. you could still make progress. in xiv all to often do you find yourself with 5 people wanting to do something and 1 is left out or 7 people wanting to do something but can't get an 8th..

was never a problem in xi if one of your guys didn't turn up for a run you just went without them. xiv one of your guys doesn't show up and the group falls apart..

[Underdog2204]

Snip

Not good enough coz it involves fighting and killing a boss... *shrug*

[Vhailor]

I dunno if i'd say they nailed it. Their game design prevented me from even getting to end game :P In fact, the game design of XI prevented me from even unlocking subjobs or advanced jobs at all.

And the OP has 9 likes, I'd say that's not a substantial amount of players.

6 months is a pretty long time for something to be relevant, considering most people finish games withing weeks. I'm all for more ways of getting gear, but asking for it to last super long just makes new content useless, IMO, when you can already have gear thats just as good from months ago.

Going off the number of likes on a forum that has heard this same conversation ad nauseum does not a good metric make. Similar types of threads to this have been coming up ever since XIV: ARR released, and they've generated (cumulatively) thousands of pages of discussions. It's clear there's interest.

I agree that the barrier to entry for XI end-game was high. I wasn't intending that to be kept. All that said, at the end of the day, MMOs should never shy away from content that requires tens of hours of investment. By all means, keep creating more casual content that people with less time can enjoy, but there needs to be some content with meat on its bones, too.

Finally, as to your comment about length of gear relevance, SE should again follow the model they already laid down with FFXI: introduce new gear that offers improvements while not rendering old gear irrelevant. They're fully capable of it, so why not design it? It successfully drove FFXI's end-game for years; was it really necessary to scrap it in favour of an idiot-proof iLevel system requiring no thought whatsoever?

Neither does a game that relies on 1-5% drop rates for gear. That gets old pretty quick as well. People already hate that they have to run stuff multiple times to get drops if they roll low or it doesn't show up in a particular run.

This is a very tired argument. There are plenty of examples in FFXI (or other MMOs) that managed to create deep and time-consuming content without resorting to 1-5% drop rates. I agree that, if forced to choose between playing the RNG for a year and the current system, I'd pick the current system; thankfully, those aren't our only options.

Ohh one type of content sure if you disregard the most defining factor between them... Their difficulty and rewards.

So what kind of endgame would you like then? You can't cop out and say you don't have to specify what you want because yes you do, nothing seems to please. If you want a city building simulator you actually do need to play a different game... You are in the totally wrong genre.

Hijacking slightly, but I'd like content that honestly feels different. Like FFXI had.

I want options like Sky or Sea, where I can work my way up through tiers of NMs to spawn and beat a wide variety of bosses (note that the content contained in these two sets of events is more than XIV: ARR has featured over more or less its entire lifespan, raid-wise). I want options like BCNMs and KSNMs, which provide both a chance at decent rewards AND an extra reward for killing monsters out and about in the world. I want large-scale group options like Dynamis and Einherjar for Free Companies, mid-size options like Salvage for Duty Finder, and small-size options like Assault for entertaining myself with friends.

FFXIV is lacking this variety and depth. None of the Raids launched thus far have featured the amount of content of any one of these items, and they're rendered irrelevant within six months to boot (let alone the other end-game options FFXI had).

And people like you, who are trying to defend the amazingly shallow experience that FFXIV's combat-focused end-game provides, really do a disservice to everyone. The most anyone can honestly say about XIV's end-game is that it works for their needs. If that's your position, just state it and move on (or don't).

Trying to argue that it's got plenty to do is absurd, because CLEARLY there is a number of players for whom the content isn't enough. SE shouldn't just ignore them.

[Frowny]

The only things that would come close would be the savage raids (where, obviously, all of the dev team's effort went -and that's really great for maybe 10% of the playerbase (and that's a wildly exaggerated guess **)

** I find it most interesting that we never get even the most basic statistics, like how many characters did the savage raids in their release patch and the total number of characters in Heavensward for that patch. I guess it makes for good advertising hiding the fact that so few people care to do the content you pour your development team's efforts in; and, perhaps, a good display of self-delusion.

I'd argue many are just too scared to try. This tier isn't that bad and was my first step into raiding; players ignoring what they already have is the real self-delusion.

[Cherie]

I've never understood why people turn their nose up at "savage" raids or any other kind of difficult end game fights and then say there is no end game content... (for them I guess)

I feel ya on the fact that the raids are feeling like they are lacking something. I've raided in other games (wow,rift...etc) and the "golden days" of that was that even when we had bosses like illidan on farm (back when it was a new raid) it would still take quite a bit of time to get to him and beat him. Even then there might be a second whole raid to do, so you had something to do for two or three days, even in "farm mode". Here in ffxiv, once you get a raid on farm, you are done in a single night usually and then since you have nothing to do for the rest of the week as a static group. The members kind of lose touch and the groups tend to fall apart after they reach the farm stage...even before everyone has their stuff "farmed"! It's because they lose their purpose as a functional group. Sure they might play other games together or get the band back together for the next raid "tier" but I'd say that is more the exception instead of the rule.

For most, since the raid content is so short, even the first boss can be intimidating for most people as everything else in this game is much easier (laughably easier in comparison). If the raid content was a bit more drawn out, it would be much easier for the devs to fan out the boss difficulty more but since we get 4 bosses each tier they go from easy to hard pretty quick. Wouldn't it be great if the raid content was more popular and they put in like 10 bosses instead? Almost everyone would probably *try* raiding then. Because the first 2-3 bosses could be easy enough to wet people's appetites. The way it is now, people even avoid a9s, as easy as it is, because they just fear the steep climb. And that is sad... because it makes threads like this one where people are saying "we want more endgame content but no thanks on the raids!"? I would guess that is because they see the raids that we do get and haven't tried raids in other games that are more in depth.

Am I wrong? What do you guys think about it all?