State of the Game: Savage+ Dungeons and End Game Leves

[Derio]

Savage dungeons would not work. And ultimately it would fall to where once the healer dies its game over because the damage intake would be too high.

Mechanics that promote difficulty such as tankbusters, tankbusters that require tank swaps, heavy unavoidable damage.

Even if you were to make it 5 man content it would still just be a damage modifier on a dungeon rather than actual mechanics, and the fact that you can only do so much with 4 people.

[KaldeaSahaline]

It really isn't fair to make a comparison 1 on 1 also because of how mmmh forgiving blizzard fanbase really is, blizzard has 15 years of gaming and fanbase that can allow them to survive an expansion like wod, can it happen here? No it really won't

FF14 had 1.0. You want to talk about a forgiving playerbase? WoD had a ton of bad things about it. People forgive, but they do not forget. This applies to both games IMO and is why a 1 to 1 isn't as unfair as you are saying it is.

It took them 3 tries to find a way for challenge mode to took off and honestly they needed the help of a carrot on a stick + D3 team and that is with a background that made it easy for it to work.

What were the 3 tries (MoP/WoD CMs 1 & 2?)? CMs were a huge success. People loved them. Blizz took it one step further by improving them and making them more mainstream via Mythic+.

FF14 feels to much stiff at the moment for mythic+ to work well, they need to sort that out before they can reliably do something like that here OR they could try and find something else, eitherway it's not something that will come out in a way it'll require time and trial and error.

Now this we can agree on 100%.

Because honestly I want you to picture all the trashes in each dungeon having like 20x the health and doing moderatively more dmg, that would be like having HP sponge enemies and I don't know how much fun it'll be

Bingo bango bongo.

Oh, yeah. F' that. I do want more than an HP buff. I have no idea how Mythic+ works, but from the sounds of it is really is just an HP/DMG up buff which really doesn't change the way you have to approach the dungeon or anything. That does sound boring.

Mythic+ does far more than just HP/DMG up buff. Mythic+ is some of the most fun gaming I've ever had in over a decade of MMO's. It absolutely changes the way you approach a dungeon.

At its core it's a scaling dungeon system. You get a key for a random dungeon that you then try to beat the timer on. At the first few levels, there are no affixes, just raw hp/dmg modifers. Depending on how fast you beat the dungeon the more your key "levels up". Once you hit level 4, an affix gets added. It might be something like:

• volcanic eruptions spawning underneath you frequently forcing movement
• enemies drop threat more frequently
• killing an enemy boosts other enemies HP/Dmg forcing you to kill around same time
• enemies enrage when low on HP, dealing significantly more damage
• slain enemies burst when killed draining your HP

Here's a full list of them if you're interested.

At level 7, you get a second affix so now you have to deal with both issues, and increasingly more damage/HP of enemies.

Then at level 10, you get one of two affixes (fixed for the week for all keys):

• Tyrannical - increases boss damage by up to 15% and HP by 40%
• Fortified - Trash has 20% more HP and deals 30% more damage

These are in conjunction with key scaling modifiers. What these affixes do is drastically change which dungeons become harder and which parts and how you approach them.

I'll give an example. In the Eye of Azshara dungeon when we were pushing early +15 keys, the final boss gave us a really hard time. His mechanics are fairly straightforward:

Dodge lightning bolts and tidal waves, stack up for Meteor effect, and spread out for Arcane Bomb. When the boss gets low on HP, he gains a buff where he attacks faster and hits harder and his auto attacks splash the entire area.

The issue we had here was that the passive unavoidable AOE damage of that phase made it very hard to be healthy enough for the meteors. It meant we had to get creative to find ways to have our healer DPS as much as they could while also giving him time to stabilize, while we could avoid stacking for meteors. What ended up happening is I would help heal right after meteor to help stabilize the party so we had enough HP for the next one.

I have dozens more examples of times we had to get creative to solve the puzzles Mythic+ presented us, and it's why I defend it so heavily.

There's no point making a "challenge" mode that is just 10x the HP, and utterly devoid of anything new.

There are exactly 0 people in this thread who have requested that, so either please put an iota of effort into actually reading/understanding what people want. No one wants an HP sponge update.

This is about what the dev team should be putting resources into, and the raiders only play 1% of the content. It's not in the dev teams best interest to design new content that only raiders play, since they don't respect the developers enough to not spoil it.

Source? Also why do you think that only raiders would be interested in harder dungeon content? Your immense hatred for raiders literally oozes out of your word selection. Your bias is honestly depressing and not healthy at all.

If the developers are going to spend any development time on anything new, I'd rather they come out with new content, and not give us 20 versions of Ifirit, Titan and Garuda again. They should be designing content to have more than 2 days of longevity, and that is perhaps why they are releasing content in smaller and smaller amounts more frequently.

Like? Give examples of new content they should come up with. Mind you I agree that that the content durability design is awful.

I the past I've given examples of how I would design content:

Here are a few links:

• http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ish-Eureka-was
• http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ork-%28LONG%29
• http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Eureka-Concept

If you've not ever looked at how the HP scales in FFXIV, every single monster in a dungeon is the same level, and has the same HP except the bosses.

I'd have to turn on HP values again to verify this, mind sharing your source and how you determined this? Not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious how you quantified it.

If they would just knock it off with the Enrage Timer (which to me is the most blatant piece of crap ever made just to prolong content health, I seriously doubt they just added it for a sake of a challenge) then I guarantee more players would start giving more of a damn what Savage Content has to offer because you don't have to worry about some crazy timer you have to beat.

Enrage timers are incredibly valuable. They show us who is contributing and who is getting carried.

Kind of like the DRG who does nearly half the DPS of a tank.

I'm going to outright say it, the only reason Deltascape Savage, Sigmascape Savage are difficult is not because of the mechanics involved but because of that stupid Enrage Timer that should be removed from the game. You just don't punish players like that when they're so close to their reward for having to slog through these fights, that is a big slap in the face for parties when got put through hell to make it to the end only to fail because of a timer.

Enrage timers are a mechanic whether you like it or not. And failing that mechanic has consequences. I would VERY STRONGLY recommend you getting some help with your performance if you continually struggle with enrage timers.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Mythic+ does far more than just HP/DMG up buff. Mythic+ is some of the most fun gaming I've ever had in over a decade of MMO's. It absolutely changes the way you approach a dungeon.

At its core it's a scaling dungeon system. You get a key for a random dungeon that you then try to beat the timer on. At the first few levels, there are no affixes, just raw hp/dmg modifers. Depending on how fast you beat the dungeon the more your key "levels up". Once you hit level 4, an affix gets added. It might be something like:

• volcanic eruptions spawning underneath you frequently forcing movement
• enemies drop threat more frequently
• killing an enemy boosts other enemies HP/Dmg forcing you to kill around same time
• enemies enrage when low on HP, dealing significantly more damage
• slain enemies burst when killed draining your HP

Here's a full list of them if you're interested.

At level 7, you get a second affix so now you have to deal with both issues, and increasingly more damage/HP of enemies.

Then at level 10, you get one of two affixes (fixed for the week for all keys):

• Tyrannical - increases boss damage by up to 15% and HP by 40%
• Fortified - Trash has 20% more HP and deals 30% more damage

The irony here is Kisai mentioned earlier any changes, in her bias assumptions, would mean less new content yet if they actually implemented something like described above, they could all but scrap new dungeons for 5.0. The new revamp would simply make the old dungeons feel entirely different, and far more engaging.

[Remedi]

What were the 3 tries (MoP/WoD CMs 1 & 2?)? CMs were a huge success. People loved them. Blizz took it one step further by improving them and making them more mainstream via Mythic+.

Ye tehy were the first 2 tries and they were nota huge success

according to mmochamp bronze were completed by 11.1% of playerbase and gold about by 10.1% which honestly is about the playerbase of ff14 but on a userbase of 5 mil is quite low and since they contiunously improved them I can say that they were not happy till they said fuck it now they give loot

Don't misunderstand I loved MOP CMs, but honestly it was quite hard to find ppl that cared about them, in my guild nobody run them and had to resort to other friends.

and frankly blizzard can shit out a game devoid of content with multiplayer and it will sell like hot pancakes, the same won't happen with SE, Blizzard was never in danger of going bankrupt in these years, they embody success for most ppl, and they don't even create anything new, they simply create something that works for the many.

I don't want to downplay what happened with 2.0, but honestly gathering 10 mil players each expansion release it's not easy for most ppl and still maintaining about 5 mil after 15 years, man we need to give credits to that

[KaldeaSahaline]

Ye tehy were the first 2 tries and they were nota huge success

according to mmochamp bronze were completed by 11.1% of playerbase and gold about by 10.1%

You're strictly basing success off of participation rates? By that standard you are saying that Ultimate and savage are a waste of dev resources then right? That's incredibly juvenile analysis and you know it.

There's MUCH more to it than mere participation rates.

PS. - do you post on MMOchamp frequently in the FF14 section? We may know each other

and frankly blizzard can shit out a game devoid of content with multiplayer and it will sell like hot pancakes, the same won't happen with SE, Blizzard was never in danger of going bankrupt in these years, they embody success for most ppl, and they don't even create anything new, they simply create something that works for the many.

Would you mind clarifying this statement? What game(s) did they "shit out" that were "devoid" of content?

Speaking personally I feel SE is just too hamstrung by finances (suits). I have no dataset to support this, it's merely my feelings based on playing their games over the years.

I see something like FF15 and I think to myself, who thought this was good? Like what team of developers were proud to put it on their resume?

I think about the combat and how it felt like it was a mobile game. I think about how abrupt the story is and how the elements they added were just cringy.

It sucks when you think about the source materia SE has access too. Some genuinely brilliant and cool stuff, yet they're the only dev who seem to struggle to utilize it well.

[Remedi]

You're strictly basing success off of participation rates? By that standard you are saying that Ultimate and savage are a waste of dev resources then right? That's incredibly juvenile analysis and you know it.

There's MUCH more to it than mere participation rates.

PS. - do you post on MMOchamp frequently in the FF14 section? We may know each other



Would you mind clarifying this statement? What game(s) did they "shit out" that were "devoid" of content?

Speaking personally I feel SE is just too hamstrung by finances (suits). I have no dataset to support this, it's merely my feelings based on playing their games over the years.

I see something like FF15 and I think to myself, who thought this was good? Like what team of developers were proud to put it on their resume?

I think about the combat and how it felt like it was a mobile game. I think about how abrupt the story is and how the elements they added were just cringy.

It sucks when you think about the source materia SE has access too. Some genuinely brilliant and cool stuff, yet they're the only dev who seem to struggle to utilize it well.

Partecipation rates + what they did after launch (the added a weekly to get a LFR quality gear (tidus laugh)and then in wod.
Honestly Bronze clear rates should be at least double the gold ones not about the same (P.s. I thought it was 20% tbh), which makes me think that partecipation was low, perhaps below what blizzard itself believed it to be, because then they went and changed it all based on some ppl feedback from the first one and then they revised them completely with mythic+ by also adding the carrot on a stick, I think we should consider this a factor to the popularity when thinking about them.

I posted on mmochamp a couple times, but really I haven't much more than that.

The game I considered shat out is OW, while I recognize it is a good game, it is a terrible blizzard game, there's really no content besides multiplayer and all blizzard games had that component on top of a solid single player mode, what's worse is that they do have Pve story maps, but they keep it ransomed to events. Honestly that felt a betrayal on their quality, perhaps it started when they decided to split SC2 in 3 games, but really they went too far.
Frankly they idd cobbled the game from the remnants of titan project (their words not mine) added some multiplayer aspects to it and then sold it, while just writing the story afterward.
That really irks me, comparing it to masterpieces of the past really makes ti come up short
Let's also consider that games with the same focus as OW have failed btw, it makes me think that it's really about just the game but also who made the game that sold the it

[KisaiTenshi]

Mythic+ does far more than just HP/DMG up buff. Mythic+ is some of the most fun gaming I've ever had in over a decade of MMO's. It absolutely changes the way you approach a dungeon.

I have not played WoW, I played Mabinogi which every piece of content had a "beginner", "easy", "hard", "extreme", etc tier that the dungeon actually changed for, but ultimately the monsters were just buffed up, and you could still faceroll it by bruteforce throwing bodies at it, or spamming hundreds of pots.

At its core it's a scaling dungeon system. You get a key for a random dungeon that you then try to beat the timer on. At the first few levels, there are no affixes, just raw hp/dmg modifers. Depending on how fast you beat the dungeon the more your key "levels up". Once you hit level 4, an affix gets added. It might be something like:

...

I have dozens more examples of times we had to get creative to solve the puzzles Mythic+ presented us, and it's why I defend it so heavily.

Great, so you actually enjoy a mechanic that another MMORPG has. That doesn't mean it would work here, where all the dungeons and monsters are balanced against the jobs.

There are exactly 0 people in this thread who have requested that, so either please put an iota of effort into actually reading/understanding what people want. No one wants an HP sponge update.

Yet the actual description for Mythic+ is literately that. I know there is more to it, but you're ignoring the elephant in the room that the FFXIV content doesn't scale in that direction.

Source? Also why do you think that only raiders would be interested in harder dungeon content? Your immense hatred for raiders literally oozes out of your word selection. Your bias is honestly depressing and not healthy at all.

Because the raiders are the ones that present all the bad ideas that would create nothing but DPS sponges if no thought is put into it.

We have a Tank-Healer-DPS setup, Increasing the HP of the mobs only increases the time it takes to kill the mobs, it adds no additional mechanics. And a lot of that comes from the trash mobs in content lacking any kind of defensive actions. There are never "healer" mobs, there are rarely tank mobs in dungeon content, only in guildhests and solo content are healers and tanks ever present.

Like? Give examples of new content they should come up with. Mind you I agree that that the content durability design is awful.

One of the key things missing in existing content is not having the mobs play by the same trifecta. If the content was to be "made challenging" the entire RPS scheme needs to be fit. eg Party tank attacks belligerent DPS, Party healer heals party tank/party DPS, party DPS attack belligerent healer first and ignore belligerent tank, or split the belligerant's tank attention to make them stop defending their healer. These things exist in the solo content when the belligerents are other player-character npc types. Monsters don't do this at all, and some bosses have add phases that are closer to throwing DPS, not healers into the battle.

And I imagine the reason for this is that SE doesn't see any value in making the trash mobs an endurance test either. They're road cones, nothing more.

I'd have to turn on HP values again to verify this, mind sharing your source and how you determined this? Not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious how you quantified it.

This is a complicated matter, suffice it to say, basically I suspect there is a level table the server follows when it spawn mobs, and thus all mobs of X level have the same HP in the same way that players with no gear would. Player-type mobs have gear, monsters that aren't bosses do not, hence the consistent HP/MP.

Enrage timers are incredibly valuable. They show us who is contributing and who is getting carried.

IMO, all bosses should have an enrage timer, even MSQ. Obviously the reason there aren't on MSQ is because the content needs to be clearable by players who haven't played any of the content (jump pots) to understand the mechanics, so they're more forgiving than they need to be. As I've said in the past, existing content's difficulty curve is basically a low bar to clear, and then suddenly the end content spikes up because the gear creep no longer allows it to be a faceroll.

Like existing content has 90 minutes to do content that can be cleared in 10 minutes if done perfectly. There is no reason an enrage timer should be hit except to say "you're doing this horribly wrong"

[KaldeaSahaline]

Great, so you actually enjoy a mechanic that another MMORPG has. That doesn't mean it would work here, where all the dungeons and monsters are balanced against the jobs.

It also doesn't mean that it can't work here. You're dismissing it due to your irrational bias.

Yet the actual description for Mythic+ is literately that. I know there is more to it, but you're ignoring the elephant in the room that the FFXIV content doesn't scale in that direction.

You talk to me about 'ignoring elephants" in the same sentence where you make an elephant sized assumption that just because content doesn't currently scale, that it can't be made to. You also cite Mythic+ as if it was ONLY a HP sponge styled mechanic. Not only have you not played WoW, let alone M+, but you ignore the insight I provided.

It's 100% evident you're not interested in discussion. We all knew it before, and we all know it now.

Because the raiders are the ones that present all the bad ideas that would create nothing but DPS sponges if no thought is put into it.

See above. More irrational bias, furthering proving my point. Not to mention you're just simply dead wrong. I am a raider and I cited 3 examples of times I presented ideas (regardless of good/bad), but they do MUCH more than create DPS sponges and there's no way in hell you can claim I didn't put any thought into it.

Just disrespectful...

One of the key things missing in existing content is not having the mobs play by the same trifecta. If the content was to be "made challenging" the entire RPS scheme needs to be fit. eg Party tank attacks belligerent DPS, Party healer heals party tank/party DPS, party DPS attack belligerent healer first and ignore belligerent tank, or split the belligerant's tank attention to make them stop defending their healer. These things exist in the solo content when the belligerents are other player-character npc types. Monsters don't do this at all, and some bosses have add phases that are closer to throwing DPS, not healers into the battle.

Ok - now this is actually worth discussing. Speaking personally this is much closer to WoW design than you probably think and something as far as FF14 dungeon design could stand to have.

Mythic+ actually does a good job of preventing the ignoring of tanks type mobs quite well, usually by ability usage or affixes like Bolstering.

WoW has touted a new type of battle script developed by AI in that enemies will harass healers, CC tanks to bypass them, etc. I'm genuinely curious to see how it plays out and how it evolves because it could be the next big step in MMO combat innovation.

With regards to add phases in FF14, I've long criticised them on these forums (and others). They very heavily over-utilize the "intermission" style adds that present very binary gameplay functions. I've always said that T6 Bulbs were a great example of add design. Slightly random, real consequences, but don't lead to immediate wipes, etc.

This is a complicated matter, suffice it to say, basically I suspect there is a level table the server follows when it spawn mobs, and thus all mobs of X level have the same HP in the same way that players with no gear would. Player-type mobs have gear, monsters that aren't bosses do not, hence the consistent HP/MP.

WAIT - you said above that you specifically know that every mob has the same HP in a given dungeon, now you're saying that you suspect it? Which is it?

For reference, if you had ACT you could verify this easily as it can read the HP values of enemies. I've never used the function because HP values are ultimately irrelevant in this game.

[KisaiTenshi]

Ok - now this is actually worth discussing. Speaking personally this is much closer to WoW design than you probably think and something as far as FF14 dungeon design could stand to have.

Mythic+ actually does a good job of preventing the ignoring of tanks type mobs quite well, usually by ability usage or affixes like Bolstering.

WoW has touted a new type of battle script developed by AI in that enemies will harass healers, CC tanks to bypass them, etc. I'm genuinely curious to see how it plays out and how it evolves because it could be the next big step in MMO combat innovation.

With regards to add phases in FF14, I've long criticised them on these forums (and others). They very heavily over-utilize the "intermission" style adds that present very binary gameplay functions. I've always said that T6 Bulbs were a great example of add design. Slightly random, real consequences, but don't lead to immediate wipes, etc.

See I would prefer that any theoretical M+ on FFXIV actually provide solutions that aren't just "BiS DPS", and the way the game scales mobs doesn't work that way. I've never seen a MMORPG game ever scale trash mobs in a way that just didn't turn it into gear durability/stamina endurance test. Like in present content, eg the Lighthouse, you can start with your gear at 100% and end up with 17% at the end if it goes particularly poorly (which is what it did on release, since people died to mechanics that weren't clear yet.)


Yet every time a suggestion thread comes up, it's inevitable that players ask for more DPS tools to make gameplay faceroll easy. This mindset needs to change, or every piece of content is just going to be "dps sponge."

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Because the raiders are the ones that present all the bad ideas that would create nothing but DPS sponges if no thought is put into it.

This coming from someone who presented this for how to fix Secret of the Lilies.

Secrets of the Lily II
Any GCD heal that recovers at least 10% HP, removes 5 seconds from all currently ticking oGCD recast timers (including role actions like Largesse, Swiftcast and Lucid Dreaming) until there is 10 seconds remaining. Per player healed. So an efficiently executed Medica/Medica II/Cure III will shave 20 secs off a light party and 40 secs off a full party. Can not recast Asylum while Asylum is still up. (Admittedly this could probably break Swiftcast and POM if there is no floor recast to using either.)

An improvement so hilariously overpowered, White Mage would make Heavensward Warrior blush. This change literally renders Astro and Scholar entirely obsolete. In fact, the new meta would be one WHM and five DPS. That's how absurdly powerful this is. And yet, you have the audacity to call out raiders for having bad ideas? Your bias makes even the most elitist raider look humbled. Alas, you're still the one claiming hardcore raiders overheal and practically jumped for joy when you assumed White Mage's initial Stormblood release would force healers to use Cure/Cure II when everyone all but laughed at Secret of the Lilies. You have no business discussing anything regarding optimization or balance.