"Raid difficulty is difficult to balance" Its not at all.

[Daniolaut]

Ok, updating original post, for a few disclaimers.

First off since so many people are unaware you can subscribe to both FFXI, as well as FFXIV, you in fact can. I have enough money to afford both, as well as my job and pay grants me ample time to enjoy both video games.

Second, I am not saying I know more than "the development team."

***I am saying, if they can take ideas from World of Warcraft, they can take ideas from Final Fantasy XI.**

Since the director himself admits to struggling to find a balance for difficulty and pleasing the community, I note that FFXI has a system where there are varying levels of difficulty for all endgame fights. Can he copy it exactly? Maybe, maybe not, can he utilize the idea? Absolutely, because there are already systems in place in XIV such as Alexander story mode and savage mode, as well as hard and extreme version primals. I'm simply suggesting he utilize this more, but also include content for solo players (returning or new players, since they get abused by the community more than helped, or just for the sake of variety of content) light parties (people with different schedules) and keep the already existing methods.

Its really not that difficult of a concept to grasp.




Original post
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Hello, I heard a statement by Naoki Yoshida, and I would like to offer some assistance.

"its difficult to balance raid difficulty"

"When we make it too difficult, they complain, when we make it too easy they complain."

"It is very difficult to get the balance right."

He then follows up, with saying, that if he made differing levels of difficulty, then he would have to double the development team, and they simply do not have the funds for this.





If the development team for XIV, if it is a "skeleton crew" then the development team for XI is just a bone.

I would like to direct his attention to a video game called Final Fantasy XI.

In Final Fantasy XI, you have 5 difficulty levels for *all* end game fights.

There are also multiple levels of endgame fights.


Here is an example from FFXI:

Throne Room
Macrocosmic Orb "Story Battles"
Very Easy - Item level 103
Easy - item level 106
Normal - item level 109
Difficult - item level 119?
Very difficult - item level 125?


Shiva (Hard) battle:
Very Easy - Item level 113
Easy - item level 116
Normal - item level 119
Difficult - item level 120-124
Very difficult - item level 121-129

Ambuscade:
Has two teirs..
Which is updated to new fights, and rewards every month

Normal:
Very Easy - Item level 109
Easy - item level 114
Normal - item level 119
Difficult - item level 124
Very difficult - item level 129

Intense:
Very Easy - Item level 119
Easy - item level 124
Normal - item level 129
Difficult - item level 134
Very difficult - item level 135+

They accomplish this by utilizing all fights already created, and then adding or taking away enemy actions and adjusting HP/STR/INT etc of the enemy as well.



If Final Fantasy XIV utilized this, they could include fights, with varying difficulties, such as:

-All Job fights (the job quests fights)
-Story battles such as fighting the Gobbue with Y'stola in La Noscea, all of them through the entire story.
-All instances ranging from Cape Westwind, The Chrysalis, up to The Warring Triad


If they did this, not only would the game explode with content, and a massive amount of variety, but players would no longer have to rely on "running two different dungeons in expert roulette" or "spamming PvP" or "spamming the same fight over and over" to get drops and tomes. We could do a large insane amount of varying content, suited from the solo player with his chocobo (or I would love to see trusts being added to the game) all the way up to the max level players having their faces smashed in with content leaps and bounds more difficult than Alexander Savage Floor 3 at release.


They could accomplish this the same way XI does. The harder the fight, the more and better the rewards.

Also, why not go ahead and add buffs to raid gear, and gear set stats? It should be the best gear in the game, and people who put the time into the game, should have access to equal item level gear, (but obviously its not as good because its not raid gear sets with raid gear set bonus' etc.)


For example:

Solo content with chocobo/trusts? Take 2 months of farming drops to obtain a gear set such as:



Raid fights at item level 270+ difficulty, granting gear such as:





To me there is no reason why raid gear cant be the gear with gear set bonus' and stat/ability bonus'

This is the gear the community "should" want equipped, and *should* want to seek after.

Lastly, if the NA/English forum team only responds to anything but in-game/content related posts, then yes, the NA/English crowd/playerbase is going to come off as "annoying" and or "annoyed" and or "unhappy" or needing to "calm down."


Thats just my two cents.


Another thing since a lot of people are unaware...

In order to post on the forums one does not need to be subscribed, one needs to only have logged into the game (which free trials are a way to sign in for free. Obviously now, I am subscribed to the game again. A few friends returned early, so I did as well.)

[BigRed5392]

different games, different engines, different devs.

also not all of those were in ff11 at start.

also ff11 doesn't have the class/job system we have. Prior all content had 1 difficulty, but players in ff11 were more organized, also all servers are located in japan.

[Kosmos992k]

I see.

So, when you have 10 years of game design and development under your belt and have a proven track record of producing balanced content that players cannot break, then come back and repost. Until then, you're nothing more than a Monday morning QB throwing passes from his couch.

[Daniolaut]

And lastly, lastly, remove all gear lock out/tome lock outs.

This is not an online game where you can only play 1 job, so the gear/tome system should not be based on a game that you can only play 1 job. (This isnt World of Warcraft, so why is gear/tomes locked weekly? FFXI gear/tomes is not locked weekly, because you can play multiple jobs.)

If we could gear multiple jobs, we would play multiple jobs (possibly fixing the lack of tanks issue) and thus more people would have more fun playing more jobs and doing more content.

Again my two cents.






I mean literally the systems for this idea are already in place.

-Multiple different types of fights from solo (story battles such as the Grand Company skirmish with Raubahn) to 4 man (story mode Ifrit/Garuda etc.) to 8 man (Ravana story/hard mode) to raid (Alexander floor 3 that the raid community complained about being too hard.)

-Random loot/gear system (Diadem gear)

-Tome system (Scripture)

-Token system (Alexander story and savage modes)

-Varying difficulties of fights (Oh look, Alexander story mode and Savage modes again. As well as Ifrit story, Hard, and Extreme.)

They would just have to implement solo fights, 4 man fights, and "casual" fights. All from already existing fights as from mentioned above.


This would solve issues where people are getting vote kicked because of low or minimum item level gear.

Also, they could adopt the FFXI "average item level system" as well. Seeing as people say "weapon is the most important." In FFXI, 50% of your average item level comes from your weapon. So if youre rocking full ilvl 119 gear in XI, but your weapon is not item level or is really low, (putting on a level 70 weapon for example) your item level is 109. Just for an example.

This system would solve issues of end game players being bored, cause they'd have much harder fights.

This would solve issues for players like me, who have enough free time to play 45 hours a week, and could gear all jobs, and do a large array of activities instead of just doing 4-5 things over and over and over each patch/expansion.

This would solve issues of people not having a real way for "stepping stones" for gear when they return, because they dont meet minimum item level restrictions.

This would prevent or alleviate "hardcore dps focused" players from running into other players.

etc etc.

Honestly to me, it seems like if they took more ideas from XI, it would solve all the problems of XIV.

I see.

So, when you have 10 yers of game design and development under your belt and have a proven track record of producing balanced content that players cannot b reak, then come back and repost. Until then, you're nothing more than a Monday morning QB throwing passes from his couch.

I am not a developer no, but The FFXI team is, and they create content with varying difficulty.

If they can copy aspects from World of Warcraft, they can take ideas from XI. I see no reason why they cannot.

The people with your mindset limit the creativity and ideas offered by the forum community. I mean literally what you said has no regard to what I said. Its literally as if you didnt read the post at all whatsoever.

The XI development team has more than 10 years of experience. In fact they have 15 years of development experience, and success. So me being a developer or not has absolutely no bearing on this subject to any degree whatsoever. None.

You simply said because I personally am not a developer, even though the people I am suggesting they take ideas from are, proves to me, youre simply in disagreement for the sake of disagreement.

Maybe you enjoy only doing 2 different dungeons for expert roulette, doing 1 version of PvP, and doing only 4 raid fights and then getting bored cause you cleared them within the first few weeks to first few months, but not everyone does.

My suggestion wouldnt actually change your enjoyment of the game, it would only add to what currently exists.

So on that note, i'll go back to playing video games and not continue to restate my point. Clearly you, and anyone who agrees with you does not want to see varying difficulty, as you failed to offer your own ideas, or direct them to a game they could take ideas from (which thats all I did, I didnt come up with some fanciful, unrealistic idea, because XI does in fact exist, and has existed, and has been successful. In fact, it was named the most successful Final Fantasy of all time. Thank you for your response though, i guess.)

different games, different engines, different devs.

also not all of those were in ff11 at start.

also ff11 doesn't have the class/job system we have. Prior all content had 1 difficulty, but players in ff11 were more organized, also all servers are located in japan.

World of Warcraft is a different game, with a different engine, yada yada, yet they pull ideas from there.

I am very confident they could easily utilize this idea to create face smashing content for the deathly hard seeking crowd, as well as content for a small group of 4 pushing "sub par dps" utilizing a similar idea, with a crew smaller than what they are using now.



And to further touch on what you said, if:

-XI is as old as it is (meaning it has 15 years of content to update in such a way)
-didnt have all the fights it has now with the varying difficulties (again, 15 years worth of content to update)
-does in fact have a smaller budget than XIV
-has a smaller crew than XIV
-did in fact go back and recreate all of these fights with varying difficulty (15 years of content again)
-on an older more limited, and outdated system from XIV's (and doing it for 15 years of content)

there appears to be even less of a reason why the XIV team could not do something at least remotely similar, significantly easier, if not even better seeing as they would have the insight during the creation process. Also see above, where I state the systems for this implementation are already in the game right now. Just needs to be tweaked for all play styles.

[Llus]

Without knowing how the system is developed or the complexity of the codebase and no knowledge of software development you can't determine for someone else the level of difficulty involved in the suggestions you propose.

For example:

I have a corvette which is front-engine and would like to shift the weight to the rear where many other sports cars have their weight to improve traction and off-the-line performance. I know cars can have engines in the back, they've been doing it for years; so it should be easy right?

I have a laptop with an intel core i5 CPU and AMD Radeon M370; I know other computers have intel core i7 CPUs and MSI GeForce GTK 1080 and want them for my laptop so it should be easy right?

[MicahZerrshia]

Difficulty is one thing. Setting Def+HP too high is quite another.

Difficulty should not be about beating a brick wall with a toothbrush until it falls, it should be about interesting mechanics, unscripted fights and (we learned from coil) good story to go along with good loot.

Ppl complained because it wasn't interesting, it was just too high of def and HP making things too difficult to do before enrage.

[SendohJin]

If they can copy aspects from World of Warcraft, they can take ideas from XI. I see no reason why they cannot.

Ideas isn't implementation, if you can't see that than there are lots of things you can't see.

why are iphones not more similar to ipods than Android phones? why can't iphones be smaller, lighter and have better battery life like ipods?

[ReplicaX]

The staff reduction from XI was mostly reallocated to him for ARR. Some of his senior team members he assigned in management and content creation roles previously worked on XI. To think that a Producer/Director doesn't pay attention to another team within the same company, working in the same genre, and does not get discussed at team meetings for ideas is ludicrous. This is not directed specifically towards you, its a general statement.

TLDR: IMO, Stay on point with your suggestion, there is no reason to defend yourself with points only known within the Company and both development teams. Do not go outside your experience as an end user.

While I do not agree with your suggestions, that does not mean they are invalid or impossible. That is for SE to decide.

[Aramina]

Random guy on the internet vs. Producer of the game... I wonder who we should believe?

[Ririta]

To me there is no reason why raid gear cant be the gear with gear set bonus' and stat/ability bonus'

Have you ever played WoW?
You don't know how dividing this is. Between trinkets and set bonuses, a raiding player can easily deal over double the damage of a non-raiding player. Getting into groups mid tier is almost impossible.

Groups for the easier difficulties (ie flex/normal) often had requirements that would get you in heroic or mythic. Nobody wanted to "waste time" on properly geared groups.

Dungeon balancing was out of control because they had to balance it towards the average players. It wasn't a pretty sight to see a raider pulling and killing everything, making people feel worthless as they struggled to keep up.

And the mythic difficulty dungeons only made it worse as, just like normal mode, you pretty much had to overgear before you'd be accepted in groups.

"Just make your own party!", people would say. Well, personally I just stopped playing the game and came back here. Hellfire Citadel was fun and all but it's clear that their "difficulty bloat" and "raider worship" took its toll on the game. Hell I'd rather if the game remained in its Cataclysm self - at least my heroic dungeon gear was enough to get me into content.

I don't know how it is today in Legion. But WoD really sucked for average players.