Alexander and FFXIV's Future Raid Scene

[Kaiyoko]

I don't disagree about incentivising players, but sticking with 4 fights per patch even with great incentives is not going to stop the bleeding. There needs to be more difficult content - just just with raiding. Everything else in this game is a boring snooze fest.

I'm not saying more end game fights per patch is a bad thing and wouldn't keep the hardcore raiding audience busy, but 4 fights per patch works with the general audience if they incentivise it properly. The average player of this game had a difficult enough time memorizing 4 fights in the coil days. Average players were just barely clearing the final fights before the next patch which is what you want. I've seen in this thread that 35% is the FCoB clear rate when it was current, which I believe is pretty damn good and is what SE should be aiming for.

I prefer Savage content and I want more Savage content. I just don't see adding more difficult fights that are out of the general players reach helps anyone but players similar to me ( which is an insignificant portion of the player base ) and that doesn't improve the game and it's population. Unless the average skill level of players increases, more difficult content similar to Gordias/Midas wont make players better, they need people cycling through easier raiding content similar to the Coils 1st.

[octopus]

I've seen in this thread that 37% is the FCoB clear rate when it was current, which I believe is pretty damn good and is what SE should be aiming for.

I'm not sure where that number comes from and what "current" means (before HW? before echo? before 2.5?). There was a fan survey that was done on 2.56 patch day (when echo was added - http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckybanc...0/e031cf97.png) that counted people who had the Louisoix minion, and that was less than 5% for all of NA servers.

Edit: added link

[Kaiyoko]

I'm not sure where that number comes from and what "current" means (before HW? before echo? before 2.5?). There was a fan survey that was done on 2.56 patch day (when echo was added - http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckybanc...0/e031cf97.png) that counted people who had the Louisoix minion, and that was less than 5% for all of NA servers.

Edit: added link

It was 35% mentioned previously in the thread, so I misspoke, but based on your link that wasn't accurate. My statement still stands in relation to adding more of the fights per patch of similar difficulty to current Alex Savage.

[haroldsaxon]

I'm not saying more end game fights per patch is a bad thing and wouldn't keep the hardcore raiding audience busy, but 4 fights per patch works with the general audience if they incentivise it properly. The average player of this game had a difficult enough time memorizing 4 fights in the coil days. Average players were just barely clearing the final fights before the next patch which is what you want. I've seen in this thread that 35% is the FCoB clear rate when it was current, which I believe is pretty damn good and is what SE should be aiming for.

I prefer Savage content and I want more Savage content. I just don't see adding more difficult fights that are out of the general players reach helps anyone but players similar to me ( which is an insignificant portion of the player base ) and that doesn't improve the game and it's population. Unless the average skill level of players increases, more difficult content similar to Gordias/Midas wont make players better, they need people cycling through easier raiding content similar to the Coils 1st.

I agree that there should be more difficulty levels. I never did say that there shouldn't be just savage level fights. I was just saying that there shouldn't be just faceroll content. But either scenario, having 4 fights for 7 months is just begging for people to, at best, unsubscribe between patches

[Lokus]

Yoshi already went on record a while ago that he's completely fine with players unsubbing in between patches so he's not really pressured to try and keep people playing on a consistent basis.

[LinktheDeme]

Yoshi already went on record a while ago that he's completely fine with players unsubbing in between patches so he's not really pressured to try and keep people playing on a consistent basis.

If that's true it says a lot for how profitable FF14 is. It makes me wonder how many people feed the cash shop and what the costs of running FF14 really are at this point

[Edelweiss]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...rsary_21_page/

[octopus]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...rsary_21_page/

He posted the full interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._needs_to_ask/

[Kaiyoko]

He posted the full interview:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._needs_to_ask/

[octopus]

Famitsu also posted the interview online (in japanese), linking here in case there's anything new (slycer signal?):

http://www.famitsu.com/news/201608/26114162.html

edit: reddit discussion link - https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...craft_weapons/

[Kaiyoko]

Apparently there are i250 crafted weapons. Looks like everyone should just clear Savage once, don't farm the gear, and wait till crafted comes out the patch after xD

[solracht]

Just when I thought they couldn't make the transition to the next tier any worse than it was in 3.2... The only thing that's missing in this shitshow is a confirmation that the Raid Finder will still be required to enter the raid in 3.4 (as it would ilevel gate the final two floors).

Funnily enough, this upcoming tier might be the only one with meaningful rewards assuming the raid gear allows you to skip 90% of the leveling gear next expansion (like in 3.0), but then again, at this rate they'll probably have a vendor at the start of 4.0 with Final Alexander ilevel gear and they'll make that the baseline ilevel for the expansion.

[Kaiyoko]

Just when I thought they couldn't make the transition to the next tier any worse than it was in 3.2... The only thing that's missing in this shitshow is a confirmation that the Raid Finder will still be required to enter the raid in 3.4 (as it would ilevel gate the final two floors).

Funnily enough, this upcoming tier might be the only one with meaningful rewards assuming the raid gear allows you to skip 90% of the leveling gear next expansion (like in 3.0), but then again, at this rate they'll probably have a vendor at the start of 4.0 with Final Alexander ilevel gear and they'll make that the baseline ilevel for the expansion.

Nah the intro job quest that you pick up for the new areas will just give you a full set of Final Alex gear.

[Kaisha]

The only thing that's missing in this shitshow is a confirmation that the Raid Finder will still be required to enter the raid in 3.4 (as it would ilevel gate the final two floors).

They really need to drop iLvl requirements on all content when it's a full premade, and that includes ignoring the 30min penalty for ditching a mess in DF prior to running raid.

[solracht]

Take it one step further, they need to let you avoid using the DF entirely. Clicking on a dungeon/raid entrance should let you skip the ilevel requirement and allow you to enter with a partial group.

[Ophannus]

XI had a mass exodus during CoP. Whether it was because people loved WoW, hated CoP, or a mix of both is in the eye of the beholder, but the exodus was definitely there. But XI's subscription peak was definitely during CoP, and fell off before TAU; TAU just stopped the bleeding.

Problems with CoP:

1. Forced level caps: 30, 40, 50, 60. There was no level-sync during this time, so you were forced to procure gear for those caps, much of which was pricey, especially for the good stuff.

2. Battles were HARD. The first 'raid' of the expansion, the 3 Promyvions required you to climb 4-5 floors at level 30 cap with monsters 10+ levels above you that aggroed on sight and could wipe the floor with you. Upon release, you needed 18+ people just to get to the top, let alone only 1 job could cast Raise at level 30 -- WHM, and if your WHM died without Reraise, you had to all exit and reclimb. The bosses were difficult too but could be weakened with specially crafted potions made from drops of high level mobs in the dungeon.

3. Due to #2, people often only took specific setups, usually involving WAR/NINs as both tanks and DPS. Many jobs were excluded due to poor performance at said level caps.

4. The amount of backtracking/traveling was INTENSE, and there were no Mounts or insta-teleports to these zones, which are far as fuck and take 30min to travel to for a 5s cutscene, then back and forth, often with high level monsters in the way.

5. The new endgame zones were gated behind story progression, which meant most players did not have access and didn't want to go through days/weeks/months of storyline chapters to get there.

6. No duty-finder meant shouting/begging to get into parties to progress through the story. If your gear sucked and didn't know how to play, you were excluded HARD from some battles/fights.

7. The gear dropped in endgame CoP was pretty crappy, (Jailer gear...+7sword skill +7VIT...yawn). Compared to Sky stuff, which was mostly BiS by a huge margin (holy fuck +15DEX and +5 haste).

[nekura]

Don't forget Sea pop item drops weren't 100% either.

[Spider-Dan]

Mostly correct, though I wouldn't agree with the "crappy gear" part; WS gorgets were great for everyone and Limbus was probably the single best event in the 75 era.

You left out the fact that CoP was the only retail expansion not to introduce any new jobs, and that you had to complete Promys just to access a stripped-down, useless version of the expansion hub city. TAU had 3 new jobs and 2 fully-functioning cities with Jeuno-linked AHs from day 1 of the expansion.

[haroldsaxon]

Yoshi already went on record a while ago that he's completely fine with players unsubbing in between patches so he's not really pressured to try and keep people playing on a consistent basis.

He said it takes 2 dev's to design a fight (pre testing) in his latest interview. It really wouldn't take much money to increase the amount of content - especially for the midcore. With the active players dropping from 700k during Heavansward to around 400k now, he should re-evaluate his position.

[Fiye]

It takes more if you go beyond the design of the fight. In the famitsu article he states that one person designs the fight with a pre and post ultimate. He decides the number of phases, what kind of attacks there will be, and in essence how long it'll be and the phases.

After that they start shipping off requests to the team responsible for modeling, rigging, animations, particle effects, stage design, and music. Not to mention all the sound effects and whatnot that goes along with it.

Then they put it all together, test it with invincibility mode with foot notes on how to do the mechanics. Do some tuning in the meantime until they enable a mode where HP fully fills back up after they hit 0 HP.

Remember at fanfest they described 4 people (And an occasional 5th) who were in charge of designing the fights. Including how Mr. D (The guy behind SCOB and Titan Hard/Extreme) was going to be the guy behind Alexander.