How to make the 3rd raid difficulty work

[Ghishlain]

Yes they do. If they didn't, more people than virtually-nobody would be going back and trying to min-sync clear A4S and A8S, or do the former with Nisi since they probably didn't originally. Or heck, min syncing SCoB Savage. Challenge in and of itself doesn't drive people enough to put in dozens of hours of time on a fight.

Having a gear reward still matters, at the end of the day. An i280-equivalent weapon would be "vanity" for most intents and purposes, but would feel far bigger than that and would eventually have a real value of some time savings down the road. It wouldn't be any worse than i275 weapons are now, and nobody complains about those.

Also, the use of such a reward can increase the content's staying power, especially if it's locked to the class you cleared on as described before. Theoretically that could be done with level 1 weapons too, but you'd be relying a lot on people universally getting super hype over the looks of every piece, which is obviously impossible.

Every single player looking to get on the leader board for FFLogs speed kills would like a word with you.

There's no reward for trying to beat the hardest content in the fastest time possible yet people still do it - for the challenge, for the prestige, for the ego - it doesn't matter but they're literally doing it for zero in-game reward.

SCH and WAR videos who solo EX Primals - no (worthwhile) reward
Low man Sophia EX clear - no (worthwhile) reward
PotD Solo Ranking does exist - no (worthwhile) reward

The players do exist for these kinds of challenge.

And yes a reward may help incentivize players to partake on the content but I would still prefer that to be showoff pieces that do not contribute to a player's stat progression in any meaningful way.

[Reynhart]

There's no reward for trying to beat the hardest content in the fastest time possible yet people still do it - for the challenge, for the prestige, for the ego...

For the fastest farm giving you plenty of time to do something else...

SCH and WAR videos who solo EX Primals - no (worthwhile) reward
Low man Sophia EX clear - no (worthwhile) reward
PotD Solo Ranking does exist - no (worthwhile) reward

You're right, no (worthwile) reward...but also no weekly farm enforced so that people won't start complaining that there is nothing to do...which, by the way is also not enforced by neither a title reward nor the challenge to beat the content, giving your top-tier content absurdingly low lifetime.

Definitely not worth the cost.

[Ghishlain]

For the fastest farm giving you plenty of time to do something else...

The speed kill groups have done the fights enough times to gear their mains, secondary, and tertiary jobs to the teeth. They have no use for "faster" kills.

Let alone the fact they'll wipe for a few hours in an attempt to shave five seconds off their final kill time.

Yeah, the people doing speed kills and killing things like Refurbisher 0 in 2 minutes and 36 seconds aren't doing it for efficient farming.

You're right, no (worthwile) reward...but also no weekly farm enforced so that people won't start complaining that there is nothing to do...which, by the way is also not enforced by neither a title reward nor the challenge to beat the content, giving your top-tier content absurdingly low lifetime.

Definitely not worth the cost.

If the content is challenging enough to keep world first players going at it for a month, then I think we've achieved the "WTH KINDA DIFFICULTY IS THIS?!" nail since it'll keep most progression raiders well beyond that (assuming they can even clear it) - something for them to strive for.

Keep it minimal ilvl even after the gear level increases and the content will stay around.

[Cetonis]

snip

Anecdotes ignoring scale. The number of groups putting any serious amount of time into getting speedkill rankings is in the (low) double digits. Mayyybe two hundred players at best, probably less. Similarly miniscule numbers of players do the other things you linked. That's not worth making an entire piece of content for.

Several thousand people each put the time in to clear Gordias and Midas Savage. Thousands more spent a lot of time trying. Those offered unique, extra-powerful weapons at the end. Zero complaints about said weapon existing. I don't recall substantive complaints about Coil gear either. It was just the story issue.

The catch-up gear process is about fairness to people wanting to start raiding on the next tier, and about incentivizing odd patch casual content, not about responding to desperate cries over raid gear exclusivity.

If you're SE, why in the hell would you put a bunch of effort into a whole new piece of content, and then run the risk of people not caring by offering some pure vanity reward for it? When there's absolutely zero downside whatsoever to making the reward more enticing.

[Ghishlain]

Anecdotes ignoring scale. The number of groups putting any serious amount of time into getting speedkill rankings is in the (low) double digits. Mayyybe two hundred players at best, probably less. Similarly miniscule numbers of players do the other things you linked. That's not worth making an entire piece of content for.

Several thousand people each put the time in to clear Gordias and Midas Savage. Thousands more spent a lot of time trying. Those offered unique, extra-powerful weapons at the end. Zero complaints about said weapon existing. I don't recall substantive complaints about Coil gear either. It was just the story issue.

The catch-up gear process is about fairness to people wanting to start raiding on the next tier, and about incentivizing odd patch casual content, not about responding to desperate cries over raid gear exclusivity.

If you're SE, why in the hell would you put a bunch of effort into a whole new piece of content, and then run the risk of people not caring by offering some pure vanity reward for it? When there's absolutely zero downside whatsoever to making the reward more enticing.

I'm going to just have to agree to disagree. I do not believe an ilvl incentive is necessary.

I will openly admit that I am biased as well. I've always felt that my critical comment towards the "it's too easy!" crowd is the fact that the vast majority of those players haven't even attempted to try to challenge themselves. Like you've said in your previous post, min-sync A4S or A8S, doing A4S with Nisi, heck even do A8S and not sacrificing Water. Even A8S with current gear scores and echo presents a pretty stark challenge compared to A12S with the same gear.

I think for me the biggest issue with giving an ilvl incentive is that suddenly there will be a group of players who feel entitled to attain that boost, even if the intent of the content was to crush you over a million times before you can beat it. It'll lead to, for the lack of a better word, whining.

I do believe part of this issue is the fact that there isn't enough content. I feel we both agree that there needs to be more content overall that is appealing to both the midcore and to elite players alike (note not elitist players) and the fact that YoshiP is contemplating this "next level of challenge" is a good thing for the game's health. You can't have super hard content as it'll alienate the midcore and you can't have above average content as it'll alienate the elite players so it'll be good to have the two different levels of content available and should placate many of the "too easy!" or "too hard!" comments.

I'll also expand on my thoughts about why I do not believe ilvl reward is important as it stems from my own perception on how they should do this challenging content. The content should be designed with min ilvl forced on, thus it becomes a matter of player skill to clear the content and not player gear. ilvl rewards mean nothing to this content and thus no need to be rewarded either. However, rewarding ilvl boosts would encourage what I stated in my third paragraph of this post - more whining. Perhaps that won't happen, and perhaps I'm being too critical of the overall population, but that is my thoughts behind it.

Time will tell what will happen because in the end, all these posts are our personal opinions for the Dev team to read and for others to provide additional input or disagreements too.

[Magic-Mal]

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Beating super hard content for gear that's only 10 ilvls higher, that may or may not even be BiS(because of side stats), and that will also be made trash in the next patch where the average crafter has gear as strong as yours, is not a great incentive to me at all.

As long as you keep the difficulty synced, a mount will never be trashed. A hairstyle will never be trashed. A minion will never be trashed. A weapon glamour or armor glamour will never be trashed. Music will never be trashed. Furniture will never be trashed, unless you trash it.

However if the content only rewards i280 gear but we're at i380 and the content is still synced, people won't even bother. You're doing irrelevant content that's really hard. Because it's all outdated.

Vanity rewards are never outdated. People still farm ponies allllll the time. And people will still farm birds later.

a previous post:

(Examples)
Glamour:
-Faust/Hummelfaust/Faust Z armors and weapons
-A10S Gobbiewhatshisname's gunblade or gear
-E.D.D Lance

Furniture:
-Alexander Statue
-Cruise Chaser statue
-Faust Z striking dummy

Minions:
-Wind-Up Steamroller
-Wind-Up Refurbisher

Mounts:
-Gobwidow
-Onslaughter

These are the kinds of rewards I'd expect from the "end of the game when you beat everything" challenge.

When it comes to raiders, they always are showing off the stuff no matter how ugly it is because it's prestige stuff. So that's not even an issue.