Chaotic Alliance Raid Experiment: Changes to Improve the Fun for More People

[Hastatus]

There are two glaring issues that make the CAR unfun for SOME people: the time that it takes searching/filling/refilling in PF and the difficult checks in phase two that make people want to quit.

Please consider these five changes to improve the fun factor.

Note 1: By 'less-skilled players' I think players that struggle with the Chaotic as it currently is; they will try extremes, want to do them, but may or may not be able clear or reclear them consistently. By 'more-skilled players' I think players who can complete the Chaotic as it is given enough luck with other players around them; these players are comfortable with reclearing savages. I consider myself more-skilled, but enjoy playing with anyone at any skill level.

Note 2: The amounts of currency below are just examples of a basic framework for demonstration purposes. They would probably have to be heavily adjusted, as would the cost of reward items.

1) Give players who are progging and helping people prog Demimateria I and II (DI and DII): those who are progging would get only DI and people who have already cleared would get DI and DII. Progging difficult content can take dozens of hours over weeks: players should be able to buy a piece of gear or two along the way. The lockout should be changed to 45 minutes (from 90 minutes). Payout of the D would be at the end of lockouts based on the average total health removed from the boss from the best 4 or 5 pulls. So if the payout is 5 DI and 5 DII upon killing the boss, players who do not manage to kill the boss and averaged 45% total health remaining at a lockout would receive 2 DI or 2 DI and 2 DII. [Approximate health remaining: 0-20% = 4, 20-40% = 3, 40-60% = 2, 60-80% = 1, 80-100% = 0; In practice one should probably pick health points that correspond to important prog points in the fight.] The purpose of such a payout system is to value everyone's time regardless of skill level even if players do not kill a boss. Yes, people who have already cleared are getting more, but they need to be incentivized because they could be off in farm parties hoping to guarantee clears. This way more players would be accepted into PFs. More players would stay for the lockout. More people would stay and try to clear even if mistakes were made because you would literally lose the chunk of the currency you already earned: 4 D is way better than nothing. The total stress level of players who dislike time sinks where you get no prog or earn nothing after potentially dozens of hours of PF filling would be greatly alleviated. It might even allow PFs to be more numerous and fill faster.

2) Make the content more accessible to a larger percentage of the players in terms of difficulty. Most of this fight feels perfect. The first and third phases is/are fantastic. The DPS check is very reasonable. But the 24-man towers and swap are just too much for many players. These mechanics do not teach as much as they filter out players. The whole fight would be a lot more fun for a lot more people without these two mechanics. The towers should be reduced to one person in each tower. And the swap should not be required.

3) Make the 24-man towers and the swap optional team challenges. Making the fight easier for the masses would potentially hurt the experience of the more-skilled players: I do love the towers and swap on a personal level, but I hate the way the number of participants in CAR is reduced with them and the negative, cringy attitudes it has brought out in PFs. If within the same content it were possible for more-skilled players to choose to do something extra-challenging a lot of them should be somewhat satisfied. So in this case if all 24 people were in their proper towers each player would get 1 DI and 1 DII automatically. If both sets of towers were done perfectly each player would get a third DI and a third DII. The swap would be optional: portals would appear on the ground with a countdown and if everyone alive was in their portal at the end of the countdown the swap would occur. A swap bonus would be granted to everyone upon completing the fight (only upon completing the fight). *** Another alternative approach to the swap mechanic could be that it only occurs if enough damage has been done to the CoD before the swap is supposed to happen: kind of like triggering a mini enrage. Basically if the raid damage is good enough they would trigger the bonus difficulty challenge. A similar damage check approach could be done with the towers: they would be blue without glowing circles if only 1 person is required but red with glowing circles if she is really angry and everyone is required. *** I'm sure other optional challenges could be thought up by SE that could make fights like this have a more dynamic difficulty based on the skill-level shown by the players who are present. Imagine hidden mini enrage bonus challenges that only the best of the best can trigger: you might think you have found them all but when the ilvl cap is reached groups might find some new boss mechanic that makes the fight even harder. If your shields and heals are too good and your DPS is too high maybe she might punish you even more by gaining extra health and triggering a short new phase. The point is that you can create a fight that has difficult optional team challenges and or a fight that adjusts to the skill-level of those present.

4) Create personal challenge bonuses so players can earn extra currency based on their personal skill and performance level. Upon reaching the lockout or clearing the fight players could earn extra currency for doing specific things. Some examples: not hitting anyone with your hand or eye attacks; sufficient use of mits for raidwides; avoiding all non-player-aimed aoe mechanics; doing sufficient DPS, healing, voking based on your job class; performing enough dps during a burst window; etc. At the end, two random challenges could be selected from a large list and you could get an extra 1 or 2 DI or DII if you fulfilled the requirements. Players who did not earn the bonus might consider how to improve for next time. Such bonus incentives would teach new players to use their mits or read their tooltips and skilled players could try to do everything to ensure themselves full bonuses no matter which ones are randomly selected. *** If numbers 1-3 were adopted I don't think this one would be necessary, but it would still be fun to have.

5) Create a Daily Chaotic Alliance Raid Roulette: Over time create a series of CARs in this style. Similar to Frontline PVP maps there would be a different CAR rotating each day. Instead of the daily rewards being allocated upon completion only, they would also be allocated upon reaching the 45 minute lockout. Since which alliance you are in could impact the tasks you are to complete you would choose which alliance (A, B, or C) that you want to be in. In fact it would be ideal if you had the option to select two or three alliances as well if you are comfortable anywhere. Make the currencies the same for all the CARs and have a growing pool of loot so people can get older mounts or hair even when new CARs and rewards are released. The goal is longevity. These CARs should be learned by new players years from now. They should remain alongside Extremes in terms of base difficulty and be an important stepping stone before going into Savage. If the Optional Team Challenges and or Mini Enrage Bonus Challenges are adopted it might be possible to have Mandatory Challenge Days where all the most difficult Savage mechanics are guaranteed to occur for the more-skilled players.

I am not suggesting such systems are employed for all content in the game, just this niche, more-difficult, more-time-consuming content where more people need to play together. If this content rewarded progging to value everyone's time, made extra difficult team challenges optional or dps-check based, and introduced bonus personal challenges I think a larger chunk of the spectrum of players could spend more time having more fun while learning or helping. More less-skilled players would have a safe place to challenge themselves and learn without feeling like time failing is time wasted. A larger number of more-skilled players would not feel so angry being present even if the less-skilled are having trouble or someone is having an off day. Such content would develop a more permanent longevity. Multiple Chaotic raids in such a format (preferably with the same or exchangeable currencies and overlapping reward pools) could eventually be part of a daily Chaotic Roulette and would make an ideal place for players to learn important mechanics which they could transfer to other parts of the game. I think difficult content with a dynamic-difficulty variability within a single piece of content would be a more fun place for larger numbers of people to easily congregate and have fun.

Thanks for your consideration,
Hasta.

[CalvinDescoles]

the only way this fight could be more enjoyable and what it need right now to be, is a solution to go in and out of the middle w/o taking 5 sec. It need nothing more.

[LuciaMirain]

The entire fight would be fine if you could raise people on the inner circle and let them run back to the outer platforms. Now you are basically screwed if your outer healer dies. It doesn't really need more "nerfing" than that. And yes, I am aware that there is an "all healers out-strat". But that little change would make it so you could actually "carry" players through the content.

[Valence]

The first and third phases are fantastic?

Guess we're not gonna agree here from the get go...

[Nadda]

The fight itself is fun it's the player size.

Most of the games high end raid content is designed around the 8 man cell. We've never had to accommodate 24 man anything before.

This type of content to me feels more like it was designed for the Japanese player base because they do Savage in their duty roulette.

Meanwhile in the west we organize for our high end content to clear it consistently - you only normally brave the Party Finder if you have no other options and even if you rehearse the universally used guide to a letter it's still dicey.

So Chaotic Raids are in this weird purgatory realm. 2 mounts and a haircut. The gear is cool looking for glams I guess? but not enough to get maybe a slightly upgraded 630 ilvl piece for all the headache it's worth when you can just chill and wait for 7.2 to launch and make it irrelevant.

And it also doesn't foster the comradery you'd get from a field operation like Eureka. Ain't nobody out here making discord groups to help people get clears of Cloud of Darkness.

I've looked at the fight - it looks fun, but the headache as a whitemage main of having to PF this thing makes it completely unattractive to me. I'd love to do it with 23 friends but FF14 has fostered a social structure of Small close knit groups. You're not gonna get 23 extras to do this. Maybe you can reduce that to 16 random npcs but it's still your full party vs the world.

Not with 10,000 men could you do this. Tis folly.

It was a bad experiment in my opinion. Specially since Chaotic Raids weren't even on the docket before they just sort of made it on a whim for 7.1.... I wanted my exploratory zones or something to sink my teeth into. It's why I made a post about how Midcore isn't a difficulty setting - it's an investment. There's no stocks to invest here. It's a barren chore.

[Hastatus]

I just finished my 40th or so pull of Chaotic in PF farm parties (NA) over the past several days requiring about 15 hours of searching/filling/pulling and I only saw 1 clear: both during bonus hours and outside of bonus hours, both during off hours and prime time, both in ilvl 720 and ilvl 730 PFs. The percentage of less-skilled players in PF is increasing while the more-skilled pool is decreasing due to being done with rewards. The fun is not very visible in people's comments and people are acting miserable. Yesterday I was accused of being in the wrong swap position when I know where to go and know where they should have been. I can't speak for other regions but in NA it only takes one or two people steeped in incompetence, shamelessness, or arrogance to show that this type of content is not right for this region in the long run. The bonus Demi IIs for helping new players clear might have been a bad idea for NA: helping players who are not fit to clear increases the chances of farm parties not clearing because players do not get enough practice before joining farm parties. I did 10 clear/enrage parties before moving on to farm parties: I am kind of upset with SE for creating the situation where I now wonder if this choice was good or bad. Did helping others actually lead to more wasted time later for myself and others?

Some parties I have seen want 10, 15, or 20+ clears but there are 'clear' liars now too (people who lie about number of clears). There needs to be an in-game metric that filters players more than just 'has cleared'.

6) Personal Clears Filter: Please record number of clears in game and allow players to set minimum number of clears as a PF requirement. The number cannot be set higher than your own number of clears. The number should be in increments of five (5, 10, 15, 20). Duty cannot be initiated if anyone does not meet the requirements.

Of course none of this would not be required if SE valued people's time within content and actually had rewards for players who spend dozens of hours repeating the same thing over and over, making no consequential mistakes, and spending a hundred pots in vain with nothing to show for it. The only way you are going to make content like this endure is if you figure out how to reward both a player's effort and skill over time rather than by successful completions alone where a single person can waste the time and energy of 23 people.

So pick one: reward players' skills whenever they are being expressed or filter out players with dificiencies. Players should be having fun playing video games so you might want to think very hard about it and choose the former and do it sooner rather than later. The tolerance of my patience is much higher than most so if it is being threatened, you are likely beyond the patience breaking point of many (this comment is intended as a metric only).

[Kohashi]

The only thing that annoys the fuck out of me is the fact I have to manually select the Ranged player from Alliance B to heal them and mind you, not all healing spells work on them as some are party-exclusive heals.

Other than that, I have no issues with the design of the fight.

[Nero-Voidstails]

to me I am just sadden that they didn't do a complete alliance raid with harder mechanic because yes cloud of darkness is the last boss but isn't the only important boss in the CT so I think it's well a bit lackluster. I do enjoy the fight but phase two is so hard to recover if to much die that's where my problem is

[Kohashi]

to me I am just sadden that they didn't do a complete alliance raid with harder mechanic because yes cloud of darkness is the last boss but isn't the only important boss in the CT so I think it's well a bit lackluster. I do enjoy the fight but phase two is so hard to recover if to much die that's where my problem is

I wish I could yeet into the void those who constantly gaze others and I have to heal that, as revenge :3.

[BigCheez]

Trying to make content fun for everyone is the reason that a lot of content isn't fun for anyone. "I want to do firmament but I'm a single dad with 3 jobs and 18 children" is the reason that we got island sanctuary. If you don't enjoy the chaotic alliance raid because it's too hard, it isn't for you. That doesn't mean that it needs to be made easier. It means you need to play different content.

If you don't think there's enough content in the game that appeals to you, that's a different problem and requires a different solution.