/r/ffxivdiscussion: Interview /w Yoshi-P on the first Arcadion savage tier difficulty

[Swordsman]

Full Title: Yoshi-P on the first Arcadion savage tier difficulty, dps check and the next 7.2 savage tier

I thought I should share this thread from r/ffxivdiscussion with the official forums because it has some good info and insight into why the current savage tier's difficulty is the way it is.

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Original Post:

The original interview is in German (the link has a few lore questions for anyone interested)

Machine translated using DeepL/GT with minor adjustments.

Question:

The Arcadion - Light Heavyweight is the first part of Dawntrail's new raid series. In previous presentations, you said that the new end content would be more in line with the difficulty level of Heavensward and Stormblood. Now, more players than ever have completed the new raid in week 1 and the difficulty level has apparently dropped further. Was that just because this was the beginning of the raid series or did you expect less from the players?

Yoshi-P:

When you look at the difficulty of the fights, there are two variables. First, there are the mechanics that players have to play while staying alive, and second, there is the DPS, which is based on the individual attack values ​​of the classes.

Looking at the first part, the mechanics, I think we had some unique attack patterns this time that weren't too easy to complete. But since it was the first raid tier in Dawntrail, we didn't want to make it too difficult. It should be accessible and doable for as many players as possible, so that they have the motivation to want to play the future raid tiers.

Now let's take a look at the second variable, DPS. When developing the raid, we used the attack values of the classes with 7.0 and their balance as a pattern for the incoming damage.

With the release of 7.0, however, we noticed that the DPS of the new job Pictomancer clearly stood out from the other classes. We could have nerfed Pictomancer before the raid, but since many people liked playing it so much, we decided to bring the DPS of the other classes into line with that of Pictomancer.

So with 7.05 we raised the attack values of the other classes. At the same time, we also released the Savage raid with the necessary DPS calculations based on the damage of the classes at 7.0. However, since all classes now did more damage than originally calculated, the raid naturally became easier.

Unfortunately, adjusting the DPS of the classes took so much time that we were no longer able to make adjustments to the raid. We didn't want to hastily raise the required values to complete the raid, as it could have made the raid impossible to complete. So we decided to leave it as it was and accepted that even if 2-3 players die in the mechanics, the raid can still be completed if everyone does their best. Of course, this results in people saying that the raid is too easy.
To summarize, we didn't intentionally make the raid so easy nor did we underestimate players' skills.

We wanted the job adjustments to be received positively and not to hinder the players' fun with nerfs. This meant that many players were able to experience the sense of achievement of completing the raid. Word got around, of course, and many more players than usual have now entered this raid tier, which we see as a positive development.

But of course there are also many players who would have liked a more exciting race for the first kill or a difficult raid. I've heard that they are disappointed, and at the moment we're developing the savage raid for 7.2, which will have more unique and difficult elements for these players. There is also the Ultimate Raid, which will be released with 7.1. This will be difficult again, so prepare yourself well!

T/N: Yoshi-P probably meant 7.11 for the ultimate release, not 7.1. This is likely just an error on the editor's side.

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Notable Comments:

"so they decided to make more work for themselves by buffing half the roster instead of just kneecapping the actual problem by nerfing 1 (one) job, then did not have the time to retune the raid because of all the needless extra work they created for themselves? and that's all just because they were afraid of a few players crying about a clearly overpowered job getting slapped on the wrist a little?"

"I appreciate the communication but this logic is disheartening to me. Did they somehow not expect that jobs would need lots of adjusting in the wake of an expansion release? Savage raids are a rare enough occurrence that there is no excuse to not properly balance them. "Don't worry guys there's another tier coming in 8 months" is a pretty tone-deaf justification to those that consider raiding the main reason to play the game."

"Job strength is relative. In other words, when someone says "Don't nerf Picto, just buff all the other classes to match it. Oh you forgot to buff the content so now that's too easy", they don't realize that nerfing Picto would have had the same result but with a fraction of the work.
Devs have the unenviable task of trying to balance the game while simultaneously navigating the players that would get upset if S-E ever decided to employ a nerf, even if it's very obvious to anyone with half a brain that it is the most logical solution to their dilemma.
I personally don't mind that the raid tier is piss easy, I appreciate that they wanted the first tier of the expansion to be extra accessible. That's fine by me.
But it's a joke when devs can't employ nerfs at appropriate times, due to the anticipated reaction of the community's players."

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Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...n_savage_tier/

Feel free to post your own thoughts and comments below. Cheers.

[All_Nonsense]

Ultimately it's nothing anyone hadn't already parsed by seeing what happened. We already knew the reason things ended up this way. I just wish picto had been nerfed because you get some god awful people in M4S that make you wonder how they had enough coordination to turn on their PC, let alone clear the tier at some point. It really makes the raiding experience more miserable as a result that those folks didn't get filtered out, loathe as I am to say it.

[Uncle_Jafar]

Yoshi P talking about everything in game except a certain NPC.

[Alice_Rivers]

Looking at the Tank Roles section of this forum you can pretty clearly see a clearly unhealthy attitude to nerfs so I'm really not surprised that the devs are loathe to employ them in any way. That said, this is a corner they have painted themselves into with previous refusal to reduce OP things into line with the content that's already balanced around a given power level so I have little sympathy for them, it also doesn't help that they've steadily reduced content and job design to dps checks. If they had more mechanics than DPS and damage puddles then they would be to reduce people's damage output without such an obvious effect because people would be concentrating on doing other things.

Bottom line: This is a problem of their own making and it's on them to fix it, if they continue to refuse to do so then we'll see more 7.0-7.05s in the future.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Nerfing picto and gutting Viper's playstyle at the same time would have been a trash-tier look for this expansion that already has issues.

[Jeeqbit]

Obviously nerfing Pictomancer would have been the simpler solution here, but anyone who's been around a long time knows they try to avoid nerfs and just buff everything else instead because it's the better PR move usually.

I don't personally care if the raids are easier because of it, since I'm content with extreme difficulty. I prefer it when things are not a nightmare to PF so they don't force you into forming a static to get the necessary competency. But that's just me.

[Raven2014]

We wanted the job adjustments to be received positively and not to hinder the players' fun with nerfs. This meant that many players were able to experience the sense of achievement of completing the raid. Word got around, of course, and many more players than usual have now entered this raid tier, which we see as a positive development.

For me, this just show why Yoshi was a man that manage to save the 1.0 trainwreck and keep the game going strong for 10 years. He understand the psychology behind fun.


If anyone here had played Hell Diver 2 you will see why Yoshi's decision here reflect a much more healthy mentality for the game in the long run. HD2 launched earlier and took the world by storm, and probably had the most united and active community I have EVER seen. Yet by now the most prominent thing about it is the constant neft. If the the players find something fun, the fun got removed, and this toxic cycle had relegated the game to being a fickle candle comparing to the bright flame it was just 4 months ago. Sure, anyone saying it's better for PR is not wrong, but I don't think they appreciate the important of that to the health of the game in the long term.

On one hand, he recognized the issue, but the key is his approach to it and he picked the correct one. Sure, this may make some of the top players unhappy and unfulfilled, but doing it the other ways and he would make A LOT more people feel worse. The fun of the many is more important than the pride of the few. I do hope the next tier is more difficult, which I think it will be. But like I said, out of the two, they chose the better way to address that issue for this tier.

[gllt]

I like buff over nerf but I think these devs still regularly squash fun like non standard BLM rotations. So I don't exactly have the most faith in them..

[Basteala]

Ultimately it's nothing anyone hadn't already parsed by seeing what happened. We already knew the reason things ended up this way. I just wish picto had been nerfed because you get some god awful people in M4S that make you wonder how they had enough coordination to turn on their PC, let alone clear the tier at some point. It really makes the raiding experience more miserable as a result that those folks didn't get filtered out, loathe as I am to say it.

This might be a screaming hot take, but other than MCH and BLM, I don't think other jobs needed a buff at all. PCT needed small nerfs to bring it more in line with non raise DPS, BLM and MCH badly needed improvements because both were selfish classes pushing RDM DPS at best. Melee jobs aren't doing anything so challenging or iffy on uptime that they need to do like 25% more damage than your average caster or ranged DPS.

[Alice_Rivers]

<Snip>

Balance and fun should not be mutually exclusive. You can have healthy balance with a loose balance point that allows for adjustments for things that break out of that point and break other things (Dungeon WAR/PLD) and improve things that fall short of that loose balance point (EW MCH) without making things unfun (Healers/SMN). The problems arise when a dev team wants the game the play exactly the way they want and only the way they want or when they pursue perfect balance, that's how you get sterilisation and races to the bottom. No game is ever going to be perfect but recognising when to trim things and buff others is an important part of balancing anything, hence "balancing", FF14 already has egregious balance problems that need to be addressed and most could be toned down at least by a quick balance pass adjusting some jobs down and others up with complete reworks coming in 8.0. I know it's only the next major patch but it's still a long time away.