Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood - June 20 2017

[Fiye]

Isn't there a limit to how much you can cater to the lowest common denominator though? Honestly, if one isn't at the very least trying to do bird farms, I have no idea why one would play this game.

The problem is with a design aspect though. Lets say we get rid of the relic weapon and the free upgrade materials the 24 man raid (And lets also remove ultima accessories)

So in the current content cycle casuals would have been stuck at ilv260 with no chance of moving into i270 so why would they play? Do the cutscenes and 24 man raid and call it a day because their main job is at i260?

Right now at least the Relic weapon provides a gate of time. A significant amount of time. More time than it takes me to get my weekly clear for A12S right now.

Raiders can get ilv capped gear now. Casuals can wait for the content patch that'll come in 18 weeks to unlock an equivalent weapon.

[Lucavi]

Isn't there a limit to how much you can cater to the lowest common denominator though? Honestly, if one isn't at the very least trying to do bird farms, I have no idea why one would play this game.

Everything depends on sales and sub retention. If Hardcore raiding retained the bulk of the subs, companies would shift solely towards raiding. If casual content dominated the retention, you'd see the opposite. Its all about making changes and reading the reactions to those changes.

Blizzard, for all their faults, are pretty good at reading this. They do, however, have a shit ton of past metrics to go off of as well.

[haroldsaxon]

The issue I have with relic is that its all old rehashed content - they use it to populate old content and CTRL C + CTRL V old steps. Its abhorrently lazy design, when if they really want to re-populate old content, they should make roulettes for that. They could combine Expert Roulette with Level 60 roulette too, and level 50 roulette with levelling. Put a 24 man raid roulette in, and a Normal Mode raid roulette.

If I was doing it, I would make the i275 step (and even i270 step) gated by an item from raid lockouts - and then once raid lockout gets removed, put these items in for the general populace. But for the "core" steps in a patch (i.e. from main on patch release) should be done in the overworld - and I don't mean the easy mode fates, or the waiting hours for a specific fate. Make the overworld dangerous and encourage exploration for an item. But that will never happen because the vast majority of players are lazy and feel entitled to a relic.

The fact that people "loved" the latest step that was not engaging or fun to do in any way just shows. God forbid doing a step that is actually engaging and enjoyable game design that can't be done in half an hour.

[Destinye]

You know, the fact we got more information of relevance out of an obscure Live Letter for a regional version that's way behind the global one (and has no attachments to it either), than any of the Fanfests really reflects well on the dev team.

It shows just how little they have to do/say to get people's money though. Korea/China is a bit different.

[Spider-Dan]

Also I don't know what some of you guys are on about. Given the low difficulty of the raid, the token system, and the upcoming expansion, this is the one tier where it's definitely worth it to farm the raid.

The difficulty is still >= coil, and coil at least gave you storyline.

To be brutally honest, Savage SCoB had better rewards than Savage Alex, especially since the only reason to do either (or any raid in this game) is basically towngear/glamz. Titles serve the same purpose, and even better, they don't take up inventory.

[solracht]

The difficulty is still >= coil, and coil at least gave you storyline.

The context I was talking about was [in Heavensward], but even if we're including ARR: I don't think "storyline" is a relevant reward when we're talking about reasons to farm a fight. Doing 16 A12S runs is objectively more rewarding than doing 16 T13 runs, only one of those options guarantees you'll get what you want + extra items. Sure, I agree Coil had storyline as an extra incentive to go into the fights to begin with, and Alexander definitely left a subset of people with no reasons to raid at all (those that just wanted to see the experience/story), but that's not really what my post was about.

Something else I didn't mention: there's also the extra accessibility into the raids thanks to cross server PF, so given everything I really think it's the best tier to actually farm (even including ARR). Just the first 2 fights give you access to most of the gear (via tokens) and they're both incredibly easy, don't even need to bother with the harder encounters for the best effort/reward ratio.

To be brutally honest, Savage SCoB had better rewards than Savage Alex, especially since the only reason to do either (or any raid in this game) is basically towngear/glamz. Titles serve the same purpose, and even better, they don't take up inventory.

This feels like total baiting so I don't know why I'm touching it, but no. Even if the ilevel increases were temporary, they were still a reward with tangible and noticeable effects for at least 3 months. Also if we really wanted to play this angle: mounts/minions are more noticeable than titles. I don't even have titles toggled on and I know I'm not the only one.

[Spider-Dan]

The context I was talking about was [in Heavensward], but even if we're including ARR: I don't think "storyline" is a relevant reward when we're talking about reasons to farm a fight. Doing 16 A12S runs is objectively more rewarding than doing 16 T13 runs, only one of those options guarantees you'll get what you want + extra items. Sure, I agree Coil had storyline as an extra incentive to go into the fights to begin with, and Alexander definitely left a subset of people with no reasons to raid at all (those that just wanted to see the experience/story), but that's not really what my post was about.

Something else I didn't mention: there's also the extra accessibility into the raids thanks to cross server PF, so given everything I really think it's the best tier to actually farm (even including ARR). Just the first 2 fights give you access to most of the gear (via tokens) and they're both incredibly easy, don't even need to bother with the harder encounters for the best effort/reward ratio.

I don't think it's quite fair to include system-wide (or essentially system-wide) QoL changes when comparing the two raids. That's less of comparing AS to coil and more of comparing HW to ARR. It's like saying AS is better because DRK+WAR is a better setup than WAR+PLD.

This feels like total baiting so I don't know why I'm touching it, but no. Even if the ilevel increases were temporary, they were still a reward with tangible and noticeable effects for at least 3 months.

But the only place the rewards are really "tangible and noticeable" is when you are in Alex Savage; outside there, they are really just e-peen overkill. In essence: outside of glamz, the only reason to get Alex Savage gear is to help Alex Savage progression.

Also if we really wanted to play this angle: mounts/minions are more noticeable than titles. I don't even have titles toggled on and I know I'm not the only one.

There are 5 titles from 5 SSCoB turns and only two mounts/one minion from 12 AS turns, which you won't even have an opportunity to get until you can clear the full set of each tier.

[solracht]

I don't think it's quite fair to include system-wide (or essentially system-wide) QoL changes when comparing the two raids.

If you want to be pedantic, I'll amend it to "this is only the best raid to farm because FCOB didn't have tokens and cross server PF" but I don't see what difference it makes. This tier, at this point in time, is the best time to farm raid gear. That's all I tried to say in my first post.

After seeing the edit, I feel like you started arguing a point I wasn't making.

But the only place the rewards are really "tangible and noticeable" is when you are in Alex Savage; outside there, they are really just e-peen overkill. In essence: outside of glamz, the only reason to get Alex Savage gear is to help Alex Savage progression.

Most of the raid gear isn't actually needed to clear the raid either (the biggest upgrades aren't even accessible until you're done), so if you think gear does nothing in non-Savage content outside of "e-peen overkill", then you might as well just throw the raid in there too.

At which point what's worth discussing is how worth it "e-peen overkill" is. I know clearing all the easy content faster and being able to carry people through EX trials definitely makes that gear worth it to me those first months (without even including the benefits inside the raid).

There are 5 titles from 5 SSCoB turns and only two mounts/one minion from 12 AS turns, which you won't even have an opportunity to get until you can clear the full set of each tier.

It was 4 turns/titles from S-SCOB.

Also I really don't want to continue with the "in theory" talk for this. Very few people gave a fuck about SSCOB at i130, nevermind at i110. To say the rewards were better feels very detached from reality and with what most players seem to care about.

[Shenrien]

Can confirm, zero fucks were given in my group and still in my current group about s-scob titles. No one wants them and everyone sans the RPer doesn't even put on a title in my group.

[Fiye]

My newish raid group finally got around to getting them.

T7S took 2 tries. =/

[Fievel]

Well yea they're level 50 fights

[Fiye]

Yeah but T7S has like 600k HP (I think?) and most groups I've been in can't burn that much HP in less than a minute.

And since its 2.X era design the phases just start so you're dealing with more and more and more adds and this is the unnerf version so if someone sneezes the wrong way they're dead and that means more mechanics because it takes more time and it just snowballs into a giant mess and god damnit I hate that fight.

[Edelweiss]

Still rather annoyed there wasn't even a title for any of the Heveansward Savage installments at all, much less any good titles period, out of Alexander.

Then again, titles in XIV have been dogshit in comparison to XI, so what else is new.

[Obsidian]

I'll probably be The Redeemed forever.

I think the chances for truly great titles/achievements went out the window after the community bitched about The Crying Game despite most having never watched the movie or understanding the reference.

[Spider-Dan]

Also I really don't want to continue with the "in theory" talk for this. Very few people gave a fuck about SSCOB at i130, nevermind at i110. To say the rewards were better feels very detached from reality and with what most players seem to care about.

I suppose I am a victim of my own bias.

The itemization in this game has made Alex Savage (and raid gear in general) seem like a completely pointless waste of time to me. Sometime around 3.2 it hit me... if I'm not going to use it for glamz, why do I care? It's going in the trash shortly anyway.

If you have a solid raid static that can knock out the full tier in a couple weeks then sure, no biggie. But other than that, it seems like a lot of headache for little return.

[Sho]

What do you guys think if they just outright removed relics from the game?

I guess i should have added a bit more, like do you believe relics are keeping the game afloat. Or if just straight removing them would increase playerbase in extreme/raids. Maybe more content created?

Before up guys even wake up, we should probably reexamine these questions. SE just recently added i280 weapons to the new Diadem, and the salt level across the chat boards (and especially Reddit) has become UNREAL.



People really don't realize just how important to the game Relic Weapons are (for mostly bad reasons). Maybe they will now, lol.

[Taint]

All they need to do is make Animas i280 in 3.56. BiS would still be Derpadem but the playerbase would be happy.

[Shenrien]

Well they needed to give some reason for you to go there other than for a minion and a mount, kinda dumb that this was their idea but I get it. It's probably very unrealistic that weapons will pop up of that caliber very frequently given how the 210 pieces of old diadem were mostly all shit and getting anything that was worth keeping was equivalent of winning the lotto.

[Edelweiss]

It doesn't need to be anything but medicore in terms of secondaries to be an assured BiS; only tanks have the risk of Parry in some quantity.

The given stats of the 280s alone before secondaries are a tremendous increase over the 275s.

[solracht]

If they simply needed a carrot they could've handled this so much better, like adding i300 hands or i290 pants... or really any slot except for weapons, because clearly the community cares about their relics. Alternatively they could've used this lull period where apparently "nothing matters" to try actual interesting systems like letting you upgrade the ilevel of all of your current gear, or something even more imaginative like letting you grind out extra effects.

I get that they needed something, I don't get why this was their answer. The devs are absolutely clueless.