Why IS the savage lockout system the way it is?

[Dzian]

This guy gets it.

As much as it sucks, the current system is incredibly effective at deterring split raids and paid carries and that sort of thing. The last thing the high-end community needs is to have to roll a second character, MSQ it, level it, gear it, and start clearing fights 8 times a week in order to be "optimal".

It's also effective at destroying communities and bonds. Punishes players for helping each other. Which is arguably one of the reasons participation in the content is low.

Someone in your fc or network asks for help on a saturday evening.. Well sorry we did it Thursday so can't help because you'll be punished and get no loot. .so sucks to be you..

Mmos are meant to be about teamwork and working together but xiv does everything it can to discourage that on basically every level. From savage raids right down to the msq... you can't proceed with this quest while in a party.....

[RyuDragnier]

It's also effective at destroying communities and bonds. Punishes players for helping each other. Which is arguably one of the reasons participation in the content is low.

No, participation is low is because players don't want to learn mechanics, they just want to get fed rewards. Look at how many people have tried to nerf regular trials over the years rather than learn the fights. Look at how many players do everything to avoid getting anything other than Crystal Tower raids because they don't want to put in effort. Look at how many people gamed the MSQ roulette before the changes so they only got Prae instead of CM. People want rewards for little to no work, and that is why participation is low, because they don't want to work for their rewards. Btw, I really hate that I even had to go on that tirade because I'm not a fan of the "lazy people" spiel you hear a lot these days, but unfortunately that seems to apply to this community quite a bit, and they'll brush off the reasoning for why they do it as "efficiency."

[LisSquid]

Someone in your fc or network asks for help on a saturday evening.. Well sorry we did it Thursday so can't help because you'll be punished and get no loot. .so sucks to be you..

It's wild because finding fills on WoW from people who already cleared, and will get no loot, doesn't deter the participation. I feel like the intent is less to kill split raids/carries (which I don't think that poster understands what a split run is. You can 100% do them on 14..), but to encourage more participation from people who haven't done it. Which we see doesn't really work.

[Alaray]

I can't speak for SQEX, but as a former game dev I can absolutely tell you why I would implement the lockout this way. (Even if, as a player, I find the lockout mechanics annoying.)

Players in general will try to optimize content, and FFXIV players in particular will do this to an extreme degree.

Let's say the lockout was only a personal lockout: when you clear for the week, you can't roll on loot after that point, but it doesn't affect the group. So you could have seven people who've already cleared for the week, and the eighth would still get to roll on two chests. (In fact, since the other seven already cleared for the week, that eighth just gets everything in both chests.)

Now what you have is a scenario where a static could have each have two characters: one 'real' one, one 'throwaway' alt.

The party groups up with seven 'throwaway' alts and one player's real alt. They clear the first fight of the tier... and the seven throwaway alts pass, while the 'real' alt takes all the loot. Now the real alt logs out, that player swaps to their throwaway, and another player switches off their throwaway to their real alt. Party clears the first fight again -- the throwaways all pass (six of them have to anyway, since they cleared once), and the 'real' alt takes all the loot. That person logs out and swaps back to their throwaway, another swaps to their real alt, the group clears the first fight of the tier...

In essence, a determined group could have farmed nearly all their savage gear within a week or two that way. And if you think people wouldn't do that... you would be surprised. :|

Moreover, you could now have folks be like "we'll sell you a clear and all the loot" because it doesn't matter how many times they've cleared that week; the person they're selling the run to can still get both chests. (Not that people don't sell loot via clear now, mind you -- lord knows we see those advertisements in PF periodically as it is -- but at least they can only do it once a week under the current system.)

1: Who cares if someone is being funneled loot? Someone getting gear in such a manner doesn't actually affect me, and the amount of people willing to do the raid that many times with the amount of geared, leveled and progressed alts is more than likely an extreme minority. No midcore/casual static would care to do this, and any that did would just burn themselves out. Even in WoW, where this behavior does occur, it's generally only the high-end groups that will do it for a gain in power to pursue what they want (which is usually related to competitive edge in Mythic WFst).

People already do runs in FFXIV with alts to funnel gear to another character in the group that is a main, and then repeat the process. The amount of people who actually care to do this are, more or less, a minority as most people aren't interested in leveling + MSQ completing and spending the gil to gear + get raid consumables for an alt, and almost no casual or fun-minded groups would really push to do this. More players likely drop off the moment they cleared the tier, feeling that it's beaten and then wait for the next tier.

2: Selling will always exist, if it were to pick up suddenly then it's on SE to actually crack down on it. I don't believe players ought to be inconvenienced for an inadequacy in moderation on SE's part. Ultimates are sold, Savage clears are sold, Savage clears for loot are sold, Parses are sold, pretty much every facet of raiding is sold at this point, not to mention bots for leveling and gil selling etc...

3: If you're the average player who enjoys raid content, it feels better to be able to gear multiple jobs so that you can play multiple roles (or jobs within the same role) to add a feel of replay-ability to the fights going forward, to keep them somewhat fresh for the time they're around. You can use the gear you wouldn't have under the current system to learn new jobs without feeling like you're a 100% detriment to the run (as a shoddy BLM in 580 crafted is going to just perform far worse than a shoddy BLM in raid/tome gear, and in the latter case the bad output might not be so low as to render the run un-clearable).

It also feels good when you can, at no penalty to your friends, do raid content with them on a different day if they just so happen to want to. Which is something an MMO should be about.

The current iteration of the system encourages: Run 1-4 on Tuesday reset, when most people are doing it and groups are more plentiful, and then if you don't... hope the PF doesn't die too badly off in the later days in the week as the pool of players interested in doing the content dwindles after they get their lockout consumed. Which does have a side-effect of lowering participation heavily over time as is, as there's 0 incentive to run the fights more than 1 time a week and, even if you want to, any group you join at this point you penalize.

I'd trade a handful of sweaty statics gearing all their characters in the first week, if it meant I didn't have to sit in a P4S party for more than three hours waiting for it to fill (which is what contributed to me just not really raiding anymore, the time waiting around is abysmal). Especially if loot systems encouraged people playing more roles, so there could be more off-job geared tanks in the pool, off-job geared healers in the pool and so on.

I'd rather raiding feel more rewarding, worth doing for people who have spent their lockouts for the week, and I feel that adding a better replay-ability factor would be a good thing to keep the tier feeling fresher for longer. Even if that comes with some groups being able to gear fast, because again, those groups don't actually affect what I'm doing in any meaningful way and I don't really care if someone got a fourth turn weapon day 1 or not; I mostly care about having a populated PF that has a healthy pool of players to do the content with throughout the week.

Situations that'd require moderation due to illicit activity is, frankly, not my problem to solve. That's squarely on SE to put some actual effort in to fix: making their game worse for the "what ifs" just feels like a cop out to having to expend any more resources than is absolutely required to keep the game running, vs. improving the experience over time.

[Oizen]

Thing is that's speculation rather than an actual answer from the FFXIV team. The only thing that we can comment on our end about it is the effect the system has on how we play the game. The system causes a lot of social problems among players that doesn't seem to get talked about much. It can and has forced people to choose between playing with friends and playing with those that are more about completing the content, and the system also negatively impacts the quality of life being provided by the party finder tools. It definitely feels like the devs haven't given it much thought if they haven't even bothered to talk about it.

Do you honestly, truly expect the developers of this game to say "yeah this is in the game to eat up your subscription time"

[technole]

I've lived with weekly lockouts since I was a wee bean, but I hate the fact you can't help people after you've cleared (or just wanting to do the fight again) without taking their loot away. That is the worst feature of Savage, imho.

I think one of the things I have encouraged people whom live in the party finder, might be closer to a clear, late in the week, or just late in-general to a savage tier is to accept the 0-1 chest situation for the first one. That way they can get into reliable 2-chest weekly clear parties next lock out. It's a major difference and at-least you get the page. It's better to clear first, the rest becomes easier rather than being stuck in some P3S wall waiting for subpar players.

Current setup is so much better because we did not used to have duty complete required, so someone would lie about their clear and/or chests situation.

[ZedxKayn]

If anything doesn't make sense it's this supposed need to change things up partway through, which would be potentially disruptive in a static situation. Savage is no place to be flip flopping. You should know what you really want to do by the time you get there. If you still don't know, wait and figure it out.

In my static nearly every one would be down to flex their role if someone wanted to reclear on a different job, but no one did that because we didn't have the gear. Variety in jobs keeps the fights interesting for a longer period of time. 2 months on the same job is incredibly boring. People can want to do different stuff in a video game depending on the day and their mood and it's very silly that XIV suddenly doesn't enable that when it comes to gearing. It also applies for ultimate, a fair amount of ultimate raiders are perfectly capable on clearing the fights on more than one role, a significant amount of legends I know actually have done it.

[Packetdancer]

As much as it sucks, the current system is incredibly effective at deterring split raids and paid carries and that sort of thing. The last thing the high-end community needs is to have to roll a second character, MSQ it, level it, gear it, and start clearing fights 8 times a week in order to be "optimal".

*vibrates as she tries to keep from screaming internally*

That said, if I could change any one thing about this lockout system, I would make it so that the chest limitation does not kick in until two people in the party have cleared that week. It would still avoid the gear-cheesing, but it would get rid of the massive headache when you need to find a sub for a static member on a given raid night; I feel like that would do away with like... 70% of my personal annoyance with the lockout system as currently implemented.

(The remaining 30% of my annoyance with the system, I recognize there's no way to eliminate my annoyance without also introducing the very "cheese the gear grind" scenario I mentioned before.)

[Lieri]

Theres no mmorpg that is at least half serious with PVE that doesnt implement weekly lockouts for their newest raid. If the system is not broken dont fix it.

[Kolsykol]

Imo I just hate the RNG with a passion...
Especially when stuff like the chest piece are 8 books, just why...
I have the worst luck imaginable with gear ( for some reason I am ultra lucky with mounts ).
It's very frustrating to just repeat the cycle week after week rolling 1-40, even if I by some miracle manage to roll 80 I still lose.

The tomestone gear also shouldn't take two weeks a piece I am in a situation now where I have too many upgrade materials and too little to upgrade lol.
Imo you should be able to downgrade books too, if I don't need book 3 anymore then let me downgrade them to book 1 or 2 to gear alts.
I'd also much prefer personal loot tbh, the problem with personal loot imo has never been the actual personal loot it has been that randomized stats and such have been tied to it ( looks at Diablo and WoW ).
I am not saying you should get gear every kill necessarily, but I think you should maybe have a set items you could loot every week and the chests dropped like they do now but for you personally.
And then you could choose to spend one of those set number of items on one of them or pass and use them to loot in another of the fight.
The RNG is just srsly unfun as hell I hate it, it's not even fun when you win imo I just feel relieved.
The RNG really just feels like more of a waste of my time and I feel the same way in other games too, I want more control over my gearing progress.
To actually be able to plan out what I am getting next week.