Former WoW player: Suggested changes to FFXIV Raiding end-game

[Caitlyn]

- Yeah, tbh I hate trash too . As another poster suggested though, they could at least diversify the boss arenas so they aren't all circle/squares. What if one was a tunnel that you descended, or facing a boss while you scaled a tower? Another example is the Phantom Train fight in Sigmascape. That's still one of my favorite fights, but it would've been such a unique boss if you also had to traverse the train as part of the encounter. Instead, it's just another square arena.

I liked that part where you have to run on Shinryus Tail in the last phase while dodging his lasers : D

[Skiros]

If you want to kill Final Fantasy 14 overnight go ahead and do any of those suggestions. One of the most major attractions to this MMO is the ability to swap jobs easily. Apparently you have forgotten you also need to gear out those jobs each patch cycle that increases ilvl and Square Enix sure as hell does their patches at a much quicker cycle then Blizzard.

You would kill one of the most major attractions to this MMO overnight to appease an EXTREME minority of the community that admits they raid log and unsub in between patches. If you are hard up for everything the OP just listed then by all means go play WoW because they have all of that except the dungeon exploration stuff.

I do agree that the dungeon exploration stuff and formulaic formating of the dungeons makes them all look the same and standard.

Goodbye! Farewell!

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Goodbye! Farewell!

Wait, but He's still here, and OPs bad idea isnt in the game.

[Jeeqbit]

1) Shadowbringers dungeons introduced interruptable casts to a lot of mobs which make big pulls a lot harder to heal if the tank doesn't identify the right enemy from the crowd and interrupt it. There is one situation in The Twinning where two adds can be interrupted so your only option is to interrupt one and stun the other. This makes it a lot easier to heal, especially when it released and people were not as well geared. Both as a tank and a healer in that dungeon I can say that pull can be tricky and wipe sometimes. So saying there are not mobs you could prioritize quickly is not true. The dungeons are linear because everyone just picks the most efficient path like they do in Sastasha and Haukke.

2) Raids turned into arenas because going through a dungeon every time you run out of time or want to repair gear is annoying. Trash was removed from the hard versions in Heavensward because they know that serious raiders are not going to have trouble with trash, so why waste their time?

3) Harder versions of dungeons without telegraphs I wouldn't mind just for fun. I don't know if there is a point to harder savage raid scaling, because you could just do it minimum item level or scale your gear below the minimum item level to achieve the same result. A title may be nice for that but it would be just as easy to boast about it in other ways like your search info.

4) I don't agree about gear stats only being a slight improvement. As you said yourself fights are tuned to the minimum item level. Just a 5 item level increase to each party member makes a massive difference to DPS checks and survivability so the gear upgrades are very impactful.

Materia melds prioritize crit not because they need to but because in an MMO everyone maths out what is best. Some people do prioritize tenacity and I even prioritize skill speed. The fact you think you have to prioritize crit when you don't proves my point that the community maths out the best no matter how many "options" the developers create for you.

Set bonuses happened with Grand Company gear and I don't see the point in it personally.

Interesting things get done in Bozja because Yoshi-P doesn't want to change the formula outside of it but wants to create places where those rules can be broken. Perhaps the success of Eureka and Bozja will give them confidence to do these things outside of it but you may have to settle for getting this excitement from content like Bozja itself.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Did you actually read the Original post on this thread? Especially 1 and 3?

And that's correct, my suggestions are to appease the people who do not enjoy combat, and that way, once they are taken care of with their own priorities, the dev team will be free to implement challenging combat scenarios/raids/dungeons, that do not yield different rewards but are there for people who enjoy being challenged.

What is annoying to you may be awesome design to someone else. So it is important to recognize that your own taste doesn't determine whether something is actually annoying or not. And quite frankly more things to explore in dungeons wouldn't be deemed annoying by most people I would wager, especially if it can be ignored or skipped by the uninterested folks.

OK, let me rephrase that. It would have the most impact in savage, where it would also be more annoying.

I started raiding during coil, and coil is still my favorite raid series. No other raid has measured up to it for me. The trash pulls and exploration bits aren't what made coil great. They really only added to the atmosphere, which they have used solo instances and secondary areas for now.

And your right, my taste doesn't determine the games direction. The overall taste does. And you know what everyone did? They invented ways to skip trash in raids. Sac pulls, completely ignoring them all together in t10, etc.


Savage and ultimate exist for those who want a challenge, as does solo potd and hoh

[Puremallace]

This FFXIV. Not WoW. It should stay FFXIV and not become your new WoW. I dont want that WoW-players now ruining this game, like they did with WoW before.

What is funny about this entire post is he stopped playing in Cata when they killed off deterministic gearing after that expansion when WoW and FF14 actually did play pretty damn close. Hell that was the entire reason why everyone laughed when you said you could play every character on one job.,

Apparently some people have memory issues but I remember WoW players laughing hard because it was SOOO easy to roll an alt in WoW and gear it so the FF14 system that is LITERALLY being praised now as amazing right now was deemed trash back then. It warped into the current monster of systems to try and keep reiterating on MMO fundamental design and human psychology.

I am not sure why it is mainly raid loggers that come along every 6 months and make this same post about the game being boring and wanting new toys to play with not showing any remote concern for how it affects the rest of the game population.

This simplistic gearing system and abilities is the entire reason why ilvl sync works and makes Ultimates the amazing content that they still are to this day. How would these ideas even work when synced down in Ultimate with stats that would need to scale also?

I started raiding during coil, and coil is still my favorite raid series. No other raid has measured up to it for me. The trash pulls and exploration bits aren't what made coil great. They really only added to the atmosphere, which they have used solo instances and secondary areas for now.

The reason why Coils seems so different to everything we have gotten since is because they were trying to copy WoW raiding. Just piece all of the Coil raids together without the stupid PS3 limitations and it is a WoW raid. Trash packs...boss...trash packs...boss...trash packs...boss.

The reason you do not see trash in FF14 raids is because they do not drop any Bind on equip items so the only purpose they serve is to delay you from getting to the boss you want to in the first place. I cannot count how many times over the year that Blizzard has nerfed then buffed trash alone in raids because people would farm them WHICH COULD BE HEAVILY ABUSED IN FF14 to flood the auction houses and further kill crafting in that MMO.

Any hardcore raider can tell you what would happen if 520 ilvl gear was dropping in FF14 from trash in a raid. It would cost MILLIONS on day one to try and get an advantage over other FCs who would farm the items just to sell. The world first race goes from being an even playing field to some lucky group having nice drops and nuking the boss quicker.

I swear does anyone in the MMO look outside these forums to how these train wreck of ideas have derailed other MMO's?

[basketofseals]

What if one was a tunnel that you descended, or facing a boss while you scaled a tower? Another example is the Phantom Train fight in Sigmascape. That's still one of my favorite fights, but it would've been such a unique boss if you also had to traverse the train as part of the encounter. Instead, it's just another square arena.

Unfortunately, the FFXIV engine does NOT handle elevation difference in any way that's considered reasonable. They did more fun arenas in early coils, and that ended up with stuff like being able to cheese Twintania's dive bombs. If a boss were to try and do an AoE, it would just not hit people that are a certain distance up/down a ramp.

Although thankfully we're not at the level of spam clicking through "Target is too far above you" errors and praying you don't see "Target is too far below you."

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Unfortunately, the FFXIV engine does NOT handle elevation difference in any way that's considered reasonable. They did more fun arenas in early coils, and that ended up with stuff like being able to cheese Twintania's dive bombs. If a boss were to try and do an AoE, it would just not hit people that are a certain distance up/down a ramp.

Although thankfully we're not at the level of spam clicking through "Target is too far above you" errors and praying you don't see "Target is too far below you."

Those errors were so much fun. My favorite was "target not in LoS" because it was behind a pebble on the ground....

[Warlyx]

what not make dungeons more OPEN? u know like braflox before hellbender boss , isnt huge but its doesnt feel like a corridor at all

savage expert dungeon + system , SE has said NO ...and still dont know why , its a cheap and easy way to keep midcore players entertained , and a better way to farm tomes or gearing, it works on others mmorpgs , u can keep tomes on DR system for the ppl that want to stay the "classic" way , but give me a reason to runs dungeons again with some handicaps or something (M+ is one the best thing on wow )


bosses , they have improved mechanics overtime , hoping they keep that direction , more mechanics and less aoe dance is always good.

[Cebo]

What is funny about this entire post is he stopped playing in Cata when they killed off deterministic gearing after that expansion when WoW and FF14 actually did play pretty damn close. Hell that was the entire reason why everyone laughed when you said you could play every character on one job.

I almost feel like you're projecting someone else's arguments onto me. Where did I ever advocate getting rid of deterministic gearing? The token system is great, and I love how FFXIV loosens the tomestone restrictions with each patch as they prepare for a new tier. My suggestion was to introduce more varied materia options, enchants, or trinket slots. NOT RNG to gear stats or drops. You do bring up a good point that this would complicate ilvl sync'd content, but they could also make certain materia/enchants/trinkets level 90 only, and thus disabled on downsync.

As far as trash packs, you're right, no one likes 'em. And I get that that's the main reason every raid encounter has turned into just a battle arena since Stormblood and on. But in exchange, raids have felt more like extended trials, rather than an actual raid dungeon. And it makes me miss experiences like Bahamut's coils. I suggested it before, but they could just make it so the shortcut becomes accessible as soon as you cleared the boss once (or at least cleared the raid in normal mode), so you can skip all trash packs from then on.

Overall, I think all my points just come down to wanting one thing: More varied content. Dungeon experience is all the same with wall-to-wall pulls. Raids have turned into glorified trials / battle arenas. Gear has become mundane with just slight stat improvements, and pointless materia slots. I get that people will eventually map the best linear path to speedrun a dungeon, and math out the best materia to use anyway...but taking away these options makes the end-game experience very stale and monotonous. Case-in-point, Stormblood and Shadowbringers introduced nearly 30 dungeons between them, but only Bardem's Mettle really stands out in my memory. Because it was different and fun. The only other ones that stand out were because of their amazing aesthetic like Amaurot.