On Ultimate Off Ultimate

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I watched enough the first few days to know that I personally never seen this, but then again, I personally grow tired of seeing folks fight the same fight days, weeks, and months on end. I low balled both numbers and tried to play devil's advocate, but since you brought it up, don't you think this game has more than 2 million active subs throughout the world? My point still stands I think.

I know some would like to see this game turn into an e-sports game, hell, it would make them money if that was so, but I cringe at that thought.

Like I said in an earlier comment ITT, I'd grab my pitchfork right along with ya, if I had seen even 50k people interested in watching those few folks fighting UwU.

No, it doesn't. The closest public census we have puts the active playerbase at approximately 600,000. The game hasn't broke over one million since Heavensward. And even then, it only ever came close. At least according to these unofficial censuses.

And I loathe the idea of this game becoming an e-sports because the devs simply have no idea how to properly cater towards that market. We needs only look at the disarray of PvP for demonstrate that.

20k+ is still more than ten times this game ever gets on Twitch otherwise barring a new patch. Even then, it struggles. Ultimate and new tier releases are the only things that garner any attention.

[Paladinleeds]

INB4 people are triggered that I ask for more raid content.

To be fair, it seems we want similar things. As in more higher difficulty stuff. It just seems our approaches to how it should be done are different. That being said, them throwing more raid content at us isn't something I'm against. But I feel pushing up the difficulty of things (except Ultimate, that's in a good place already IMO) in the raid department would be good. But yes, let's bridge the difficulty gaps.

[Anarnee]

I'm really bummed to hear that there will not be another Ultimate in 4.0

Is it sad that this patch I have had the most fun watching other people playing, rather than playing myself?

[polyhedral]

Just to let you know, I'm not against having more ultimate at all. I welcome any content that is challenging. I just wish it was like it was in FFXI, and allowed more than 8 people to experience it at a time. I just wish my fears of elitism and toxic behavior wasn't as contagious as I've seen in the past, and currently happening because of said content. I just hope this game doesn't turn into e-sports cash driven toxic af atmosphere. I appreciated Eureka at launch a lot, because it finally felt like the community could gather together and play the same content together.

Hell, I've been through that whole end game struggle years back, and myself, don't care to go back to that lifestyle. I can't do that again, too old, maybe too apathetic. Or maybe I just don't see the rewards in this game for that lifestyle, but I can see why some people, the few that do this content, does it. It may be good advertising for SE on twitch.

I don't know exactly where the phrase "poopsocking" comes from, all I know is that someone actually did it fighting pandemonium warden in xi for 18 hours to win. I played for years without any LS being able to beat AV before I quit the game. Comparing to this game, well, I don't really know what point I'm trying to get at to be fair. At least it's winnable? Or maybe not near as challenging as it should be? How does SE include content like this, and make more people interested?

I'm not to blame for their decision, but I kinda can understand why they limit it? IDK, I really wish they'd dedicate more resources to this game also, so everyone can have their own slice and flavor of cake in game. This alone frustrates most players. Most comments I've read find it hard to understand the reasoning behind a lot of their decisions.

Maybe I'm just really salty this game isn't FFXI-2. Maybe I'm just wearing nostalgia glasses.

[Rockette]

I personally think ultimate should have been bought out earlier in the tier. After 16-18 weeks of mind numbing savage raid, most the raid community are completely done with savage. If they bought out ucob earlier and then uwu earlier then there would be a better flow I think.

[Reinha]

Heh, you focus on that, but you missed this?

"Certain 3rd party tools allowed players to capture and show the packets sent from the servers, earlier than they should be shown. (note: They are talking about 3rd party tools calling out Gaol targets in Ultimate before they even show up on the screen). However, they don't think it was that crucial of a problem, because that phase takes place early on in the battle.

To counter this in future content, they will need to add another layer of protection. They want to change the timing and how they send the packets, and also improve how the effects/animations allow you to detect the mechanics, in order to confuse those 3rd party tools."

You should be worried they are going to break all the third party stuff due to ultimate raiders. Hopefully it wont be all content.

This makes me sad. I was fine with easy content being reduced in order to get some content for the few hundred hardcore players, but if some of them need to cheat to get the kill then why even bother making more Ultimate fights? It's clearly too challenging to those who use a bot to help them let alone the vast majority who doesn't even try the fight. Just tune savage fights so they cater to more people.

[RiyahArp]

Sigh, ok here's the secret to getting them to care about ultimate.

You forget about it, and you work on increasing the amount of players that do savage and successfully clear the last tier. If you get that percentage high enough, ultimate suddenly becomes a lot more attractive. That means less raid logging, and more building and coaching b-teams in a real raiding fc, not just statics or pugs. The only way you get more endgame is by having more endgame players.

[Lambdafish]

To be fair, it seems we want similar things. As in more higher difficulty stuff. It just seems our approaches to how it should be done are different. That being said, them throwing more raid content at us isn't something I'm against. But I feel pushing up the difficulty of things (except Ultimate, that's in a good place already IMO) in the raid department would be good. But yes, let's bridge the difficulty gaps.

I disagree tbh, I think the difficulty of omega is perfect. If you want an example of why raid difficulty should not be pushed up, look at gordias. By adding a 5th raid tier that is on maybe brute justice level (i,e, more difficult than now, but not quite gordias), it will allow a much smoother (except chardanook but thats a different discussion altogether) difficulty curve throughout the raid tier, without it becoming inaccessible, stale, and impossible to PUG.

[ErryK]

Personally, I feel Ultimate resources could go into bettering the savage raids to make them more savage. The only fight from current savage that really gives me trouble is O8S, but that's just my opinion.

I originally felt that one Ultimate was enough per expansion.

[Rockette]

I disagree tbh, I think the difficulty of omega is perfect. If you want an example of why raid difficulty should not be pushed up, look at gordias. By adding a 5th raid tier that is on maybe brute justice level (i,e, more difficult than now, but not quite gordias), it will allow a much smoother (except chardanook but thats a different discussion altogether) difficulty curve throughout the raid tier, without it becoming inaccessible, stale, and impossible to PUG.

At the start of Stormblood they went into depth of why Gordias was a mistake. The classes had all changed, rotations were more complex. There were new players starting the game. The fights were, as described, Savage.

It took my group months to get through it. I cried at the end of A4s. Man, it felt like an achievement though. It still does, even now. But they were right. It was way too hard to start an expansion with.

After they explained their mistakes with Gordias, I also remember live letters saying that they would start Savage raids in Stormblood at a Creator level difficulty and scale them up progressively through out the expansion as players got used to new rotations and new players had time to acclimatize to the game.

They have not kept to that plan.

Maybe I'm one of few who think this but I find Stormblood savage too... vanilla. I thought the Midas tier was perfect. Not back breaking hard, but not so easy that every midcore group is gonna clear week 1.

I love the concept of Omega in terms of fight story line but both tiers in stormblood have been week 1 -2 clears for mid core groups. Then the 18 week wait until savage...

Edit: I'm worried about my group in light of this news, to be honest. There's no way people are going to stick around for long after we clear the next tier especially if we're looking at a year wait until the next expansion.