Is the new Ultimate too hard?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

It’s too hard because you need real life coordination. The dedication to it isn’t for anyone who can just go in and do it like a dark souls game. That’s a design flaw. It’s created for the most toxic of people. Who lets be honest demand the highest performance which requires you to install mods to know your performance.

Maybe the solution isn’t 3rd party mods but in game mods created by the developers themselves. For these fights players could choose specific developers mods that assist in the fight? Or just stop making game modes for the high tier toxic community. With that much toxicity comes great corruption.

Or just... Don't engage in the content if it's too difficult?

[Delis]

It’s probably a little too easy now that Its been revealed that they are all scrub lord cheating noobs

Not everyone is, but yeah let's paint everyone in a group with a broad brush because of the actions of a few. Plenty of teams, competing that are streaming and not using cheats. Just because you don't like a group of people doesn't give you the right to bash them all because of a minority of the group.

[Deedlit]

Hahahahaha.

[Vahlnir]

It's supposed to be hard. Personally, I would love to have a weapon or two from Ultimate. However, I know that I am not the target audience, and I really don't think I'm capable of juggling that much for 20 minutes straight, and that's okay. Some things just aren't meant for me.

[ForteNightshade]

They do need to figure something out to make them more enjoyable to watch. Not gonna draw people in if it looks miserable. And if it doesn't help bring in new players I cannot see it being worth the dev time involved for how little engagement it gets.

Ultimate is literally the biggest draw FFXIV gets on twitch. Even the MSQ doesn't bring in the numbers Ultimate and Savage World Prog do. It's undeniable Ultimate drew in people from the WoW exodus given that community's penchant for raiding. The engagement also comes from its longevity. Ultimate is among the very few bits of content that lasts almost indefinitely. UCoB is nearly six years old and still be cleared to this very day. Both it and UwU saw massive upswings in participation throughout Covid. Even the less power crept Ultimates like TEA and the very recent Dragonsong have a healthy PF scene relative to their respective difficulty.

It all comes down to what you enjoy. Someone who isn't interested in difficult content will look at the sheer amount of demand Ultimate asks of you and say "Nope! That looks awful". Meanwhile, someone else will look at Euphrosyne or EX5 and think "Wow, this is so boring. It's way too easy." Different strokes for different folks and all that.

[Somnolence]

IMO the difficulty of ultimate should be such that midcore static should have reasonable shot to clear it within a patch. Because the purpose of ultimate's is to bridge the gap for savage raiders between savage patches.

Kindred spent thousand pulls to reach final phase. This seems excessive.

This one likely will cause more of static collapses than DSR

[Amarande]

Or just... Don't engage in the content if it's too difficult?

Being that the comparison to Dark Souls was made, it seemed to me the point being brought up wasn't so much a matter of "not enough skill" for it, but the team logistics and culture matter.

You could be the most absolutely perfect player on the planet, and it won't do you any good unless you can assemble seven other players that cut the mustard. The toxicity gets in this way (especially when many people have such an obsession with clearing it first - I expect that groups going back to do older Ultimates to pass lull time are likely a lot more chill), especially when you also add in not only needing to have the potential, but needing to PROVE you have the potential (how much MMO forum conflict erupts over disagreeing over community standards of proof?).

A lot of people who might clear Ultimate sooner or later doubtless nope out of even trying it exactly because they don't have the patience for player pettiness, to put it bluntly. Some have probably even given up on bothering with Savage for the same reason - dealing with the politics of player culture just isn't fun. I went to high school over half a life ago. I have no desire to repeat it.

Ultimate is literally the biggest draw FFXIV gets on twitch. Even the MSQ doesn't bring in the numbers Ultimate and Savage World Prog do. It's undeniable Ultimate drew in people from the WoW exodus given that community's penchant for raiding. The engagement also comes from its longevity.

Which is another issue as well: the business realities of running a major MMO tend to require every means necessary to keep the customers rolling in, which means maintaining continuous attention (to often obviously aging titles, which need to compete for that attention with the plethora of brand new things, at that).

And it's surely pretty dang hard from a business conscience standpoint to pass up that much hype and marketing that the community does for you, even though it's clear that focusing on these raiders has negative knock on effects

IMO the difficulty of ultimate should be such that midcore static should have reasonable shot to clear it within a patch. Because the purpose of ultimate's is to bridge the gap for savage raiders between savage patches.

Kindred spent thousand pulls to reach final phase. This seems excessive.

Yep. Trying to curry the best of the best's favor definitely throws other, and likely far larger, segments of the player population under the chocobo.

I guess they could if they felt like nerf it later, as many developers do after the spectacle is over, though this is likely to receive no small amount of negative feedback also. (On the other hand, what you can't do is release it easier and then buff it later. See what happened to LOTRO raiding.) We cannot always be happy, apparently.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Ultimate is literally the biggest draw FFXIV gets on twitch. Even the MSQ doesn't bring in the numbers Ultimate and Savage World Prog do. It's undeniable Ultimate drew in people from the WoW exodus given that community's penchant for raiding. The engagement also comes from its longevity. Ultimate is among the very few bits of content that lasts almost indefinitely. UCoB is nearly six years old and still be cleared to this very day. Both it and UwU saw massive upswings in participation throughout Covid. Even the less power crept Ultimates like TEA and the very recent Dragonsong have a healthy PF scene relative to their respective difficulty.

It all comes down to what you enjoy. Someone who isn't interested in difficult content will look at the sheer amount of demand Ultimate asks of you and say "Nope! That looks awful". Meanwhile, someone else will look at Euphrosyne or EX5 and think "Wow, this is so boring. It's way too easy." Different strokes for different folks and all that.

I've been playing this game since 2010 and the only times I've ever watched it on twitch are live letters and my close friend if he's in a fight h haven't cleared.





Watching random people on twitch play the same game I'm logged into is just unappealing. Maybe it's an age gap thing.

[MilkieTea]

I've been playing this game since 2010 and the only times I've ever watched it on twitch are live letters and my close friend if he's in a fight h haven't cleared.

Watching random people on twitch play the same game I'm logged into is just unappealing. Maybe it's an age gap thing.

It's an eSports thing, mostly. To make an apt comparison - Worlds 2022 was one of the biggest events of the year, gathering an audience larger than the superbowl, just to watch top League of Legends players compete for a prize pool of millions. The majority of this audience was also logged into League, playing and watching at the same time.

Since the WF race is a competition, and an acknowledged one at that, it stands to reason that it's a similar event to Worlds 2022 (though the presentation is different). You're still rooting for your fave team of players to "win", or the underdogs to "win" etc.

Then out of the WF race (same with out of Worlds 2022), you'll be watching these people to see them play, or have fun etc. It's kind of like watching a real sport that you also happen to play.

[angienessyo]

My group is in P2 of the ultimate so I can't give my view of the whole fight, but I've been watching what's ahead in the world race. And honestly it's hard to say. People thought DSR was too hard and people eventually figured out strats that made it more manageable. I imagine this fight will eventually have some concrete strats that take some of the bite out of it. When I look ahead of what's in the fight my thought is "this will probably take a bit for me to get through" and not "there's no way I can ever do this", so I don't think it's too hard.