MrHappy interview with Yoshi-p (Raid boss tiers, set bonuses)

[Bourne_Endeavor]

They already had the ultimate carrot in Coil (brand new content with no easy option, exclusive gear and story) and people still didn't want to do it. It's time they accept that raiding simply isn't popular on this game.

Except it is, when you look at the larger picture. If you just split crafting and looked at the number of people who actually participate, it's numbers wouldn't be higher than Savage clears. In fact, the number of people generally caught up on story isn't even half the playerbase if we go by the Lucky Bancho census. FFXIV is a game made up of many pieces that appeal to different types of players. You can't just look at one piece of content and say "more people collect glamour! So that's clearly all they should focus on." WoW has similarly low percentages yet they still hype up their raids each expansion.

[Ririta]

You can't just look at one piece of content and say "more people collect glamour! So that's clearly all the should focus on." WoW has similarly low percentages yet they still hype up their raids each expansion.

That's not what I'm doing at all. I'm saying that raiding is niche and bribing people into doing them won't actually increase the numbers.

And if you're gonna use WoW as example, the lack of things to do outside of raiding was a common complaint from Cataclysm and forward.

[Ashua]

They already had the ultimate carrot in Coil (brand new content with no easy option, exclusive gear and story) and people still didn't want to do it. It's time they accept that raiding simply isn't popular on this game.

Not really. You can still aquire same i level gear as raiders. What they need to do is disallow same I level gear as savage modes if they want to balance the game a bit better. If you do not raid then you have no real purpose in having I level on par with raiders.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Not really. You can still aquire same i level gear as raiders. What they need to do is disallow same I level gear as savage modes if they want to balance the game a bit better. If you do not raid then you have no real purpose in having I level on par with raiders.

I'm sorry but your mentality is exceedingly wrong. Letting Raiders have better gear then non-raiders over long periods would not make raiding more popular and if anything it would likely hurt the game more than help. Raiding doesn't even need the ilevel of gear it gives out. Early access to higher level gear is just one of the baits (i.e. rewards) for players to do harder content multiple times.

While it seriously hurts the E-peen of most raiders, the 24-man and Tomestone "charity" gear actually allows casual, midcore and hardcore players to all participate meaningfully in the same content.

Coil's biggest problem was tied to barrier of entry. Because T5 and T9 prevented access to the next stage of the raid series. New players with interest in raiding found it hard to catch up as the players who knew the content were all passed it and had little interest in going back to help others clear it. The Normal mode completion unlocks Savage system of Alex along with "charity" gear makes Savage Raiding far more accessible.

[Ririta]

Not really. You can still aquire same i level gear as raiders. What they need to do is disallow same I level gear as savage modes if they want to balance the game a bit better. If you do not raid then you have no real purpose in having I level on par with raiders.

They should've done that ages ago and ilvl sync them outside of raids so casual content is still balanced.

[Dzian]

They already had the ultimate carrot in Coil (brand new content with no easy option, exclusive gear and story) and people still didn't want to do it. It's time they accept that raiding simply isn't popular on this game.

raidings never been popular in any vertically progressive game. the rewards are to short term to justify the difficulty for the average gamer. if you look at horizontal games the endgames were massively popular.. almost 80% of the player base were doing COP in ffxi for example something like 2/3 of the player base did nyzul isle raid.. everquest was similar the raiding population was much higher. than any vertical game.

anywaysssss regarding set bonuses. while it sounds interesting I think the fact it's going to be limited to raiding gear suggests the set bonuses wouldn't be that powerful.. saying this because Yoshi has also said he doesn't want raiding gear to be more powerfull than tome stone gear as that would give raiders a big advantage across all content..

so if the set bonues are powerful enough it will create a big gap between the player base that Yoshi is trying to close.. and if the gap is that big it will alienate players. look at zurvan ex for example where there was a trend for almost all party finder groups to require ilevels impossible to reach for players not doing savage..

on the other hand though if the set bonuses aint that great then it's really not going to provide an added incentive for players to go after the sets as they won't be any better than the tomestone / current raiding equivelant. unless they make raiding gear worse before factoring in set bonuses but that seems kinda backwards

also if it follows 4.0 those raid gears with there set bonuses will follow the same fate as current teir gear has done.. 3.2 landed and raiders replaced there Gordian stuff with basic crafted gear of higher ilevel... same thin happened with creator in 3.4. raiders replaced there 240 midan gears with 250 crafted stuff before even attempting savage... makes the raid gear even more useless..

so yeah it'll be curious to see what they do with set bonuses. but it's not something i'm particularly interested in when gear is still gonna be junk in a couple of months soon as the next patch hits.

Well non-raiders do not need the best ilvl just to run some faceroll dungeons or 24man raids.:

Raiders don't "need" the best gear either because you have to actually complete the raid without that gear in order to get that gear. and having completed it without that gear it clearly proves they don't "need" it

and as I said above the raid tier gear isn't even used to enter the next tier. because soon as the patch lands theres better crafted gear available to everyone

[Talraen]

raidings never been popular in any vertically progressive game. the rewards are to short term to justify the difficulty for the average gamer. if you look at horizontal games the endgames were massively popular.. almost 80% of the player base were doing COP in ffxi for example something like 2/3 of the player base did nyzul isle raid.. everquest was similar the raiding population was much higher. than any vertical game.

Where did you get those numbers? In my experience in FFXI, the vast majority of people hadn't even gotten past the Promyvions, let alone "were doing COP" in any capacity. Unless you count repeatedly banging your head against the first set of content in the expansion as "doing it." And 2/3 of people doing Nyzul is ridiculous. You can't just take the numbers from a hardcore linkshell and extrapolate them to the whole population.

But yes, a higher percentage of people in those older games were raiders. But not a higher actual number. The number of people willing to raid hasn't really changed much over time, which is why newer and more popular MMOs don't focus first on raiding. Attracting non-raiders is how you make more money.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

everquest was similar the raiding population was much higher. than any vertical game.

How long ago did you quit Everquest? Because it has pretty much ALWAYS been a vertical game. Even expansions that did not raise the level cap had gear that was a vertical increase in power over the previous expansions' gear.

Raid Kael to get gear so you can raid Temple of Veeshan, or Skyshrine (depending on what faction you wanted to use, and one set was slightly better than the other). Use that gear, and complete the massively delayed key quest, to get into Vex Thal. Use that gear to raid the Planes of Power, which was an excercise in vertical raiding in and of itself. PoP culminated in the Plane of Time, which gear would take you into the Gates of Discord expansion (which I have heard no one beat before the next expansion raised the level cap from 65 to 70), which was another excercise in verticality in and of itself. Tacvi gear would help you out in beating the six trials to get into the Citadel of Anguish in Omens of War, and on and on and on.

Each expansion's end game gear was upgraded by the next expansion's gear. Group level gear was eclipsed by group gear, and raid level gear was eclipsed by raid gear, and raid gear was not eclipsed stat-wise by group gear for several expansions. Right now, the tier 2 group gear from Empires of Kunark is as good or better than the raid gear from The Darkened Sea (the Arx raid gear), a couple expansions prior to EoK.

[TaleraRistain]

everquest was similar the raiding population was much higher. than any vertical game.

....what in the world? EverQuest is the grand-daddy of vertical progression games. The raiding population was high because you hit a hard content ceiling if you didn't raid. The new content was designed around the gear the raiders could acquire and was often way too hard for a non-raider to even attempt. Raiding permeated every facet of that game.

[Airget]

Ya I think set bonuses would be interesting if say had to get 5 fragmented materia pieces from the body/head/hand/legs/feet, to create 1 "set bonus" materia that you could then put on another piece of gear. in a way a pseudo "set bonus" that moreso rewards you for collecting the whole set rather than needed to equip the whole set. But with that in mind the idea is that this would replace the loot from spirit-bonding since the means of which to gain certain materia has in a sense made spirit-bonding somewhat obsolete with DOW/DOM.