I dont think anyone can disagree with this article.Follow

edit: double post

Edited, Aug 14th 2016 7:25am by BrokenFox

Hardcore Hio. Sigh.



Apparently you ONLY keep up with the raiding community, which is so very, very small. Yet disproportionately active on that one JP server.

And are you kidding me about raiders not complaining? Good lord, do you even look at the OFs?

And you also further proved my point that some of SE'so changes are things nobody asks for, lol. SE is not ignoring the poor little raiding community whilst taking all its cues from the filthy casuals. SE is simply trying to improve a game that was never really meant to be a hardcore gaming hotbed in the first place. Which I've told you many times, and I'm shocked I've even needed to tell you this. It had been obvious this whole time.

Edited, Aug 14th 2016 9:06am by Thayos

Again, if people aren't performing "up to par" then the game itself isn't doing a good job in teach them how to play that way. Seriously, show me any quest/mission that's the effective equivalent of, "To be a good BLM, you must use your abilities in XYZ order!" It doesn't exist, so one shouldn't be dreadfully surprised when someone out there makes the connection that in spamming Blizzard, they never run out of MP, thus they can keep nuking infinitely regardless of the DPS drop. This further escalates into the inability to demand someone know of a particular website or video, as well. So, a lot of this comes back to the frustrated people being unwilling to teach while tagging that desire to something like wanting a grading system.

And I say it's flawed because it's something people could easily troll others on. Want to tank a DPS' grade? Don't cure them. Don't draw the mob's attention as the tank if they pull hate. It doesn't matter how well they actually know their rotations if they're dead, because you're doing 0 damage that way. "But the healer's grade would tank!" They've already got the advantage of faster queue times than a DPS and likely wouldn't suffer to being lower tier. Moreover, do we judge a healer as "better" if they simply healed more? Because knowing mechanics can lead to dodging damage, which technically means they'd be healing less over time. Which similarly applies to tanks soaking it up while obviously being reliant on the healer for sustainability.

The present solution, in absence of the game being better at teaching, is to make your own groups the old fashioned way. Yet, they want all the convenience of LFG tools without any of the risks. Sorry, trying to run from the alleged problem isn't fixing it. And like it or not, maybe ability bloat is a thing.

I post on the OF (on both sides) so of course I read it. No progression groups complained about A6S and demanding nerfs, especially none of the world first groups beyond the strict time limit and having to start over when you wipe. Which fyi, Yoshi has already stated they watch the world first groups tackle the content. So unless I missed Lucrezia complaining about A6S on the OF..then I'm not sure where raiders complain. Maybe you're talking about the group of players that occasionally do raids like Coil and Alex Savage and not the ones who are world first progression? The "world first" groups don't exactly post on OF because, well, you have people too happy to tell you that you and raiding don't matter in this game, so why interact? Most progression groups stick with BG or Guildwork.

They did, however complain when SE nerfed it because not only were the nerfs actually unnecessary, they didn't make changes that are ACTUAL problems with that floor since no matter how you slice it, the main changes that nerf brought didn't exactly speed things up because a big wall in A6S for the more casual crowd are Blaster and Swindler and the main nerf was to Vortexer (final robot) which they aren't even getting to. So I'll ask you again:

Which group complained? The ones that believed Yoshida when he said Savage would be more tuned to Coil difficulty, or the group of players that were working on A7 and A8S thus not actually complaining about A6S?

Hint: Most progression groups beat A6S before the nerfs went into place.

Idk though, it's kind of weird to call a group of players "hardcore" in a non-hardcore game, especially a game that takes VERY little work to master its content. It's like considering people who cap tomes and get a weekly drop "hardcore" while ignoring the content base isn't exactly "hard" remember the basic distinction between "Hardcore" and "Casual" usually fell onto which type of games the person likes to play. Since hardcore in terms of MMOs usually means a group of gamers who get rewarded the best for their time and effort.

However XIV doesn't have the itemization to support that, because EVERYONE has the ability to get EVERYTHING, players just choose not to largely (it is a choice, don't kid yourself.) Now if there were more items like found in XI or even PSO2 where you do content to build certain weapons with unique effects, then you'd have a point about "hardcore players", otherwise, remember how Yoshi said it'd take 2-3 hours to do Palace of the Dead in a straight sitting? I'm guessing you'll consider people who cleared it quicker than that and obtained a weapon or two in the first week "hardcore" players despite being clearly "casual" content.



Btw, some of the top players in XIV are controller players and there's an entire website dedicated to proving this, including Dragoons, and I don't just mean on the JP side either. So the game is beyond playable on controller. The issue is, up until the highest form of content, your rotation doesn't truly matter, which is why you never get that efficiency down because controllers have more than enough space for rotations even DRGs. DRG has the most elaborate rotation, but it also has the smoothest compared to, you know, Machinist.



Yeah, it's a shame people were feeding SE that the older style WoW setup is "what MMOs should be" instead of telling SE to imporve on 1.x which had the overall better battle design. A big problem is Yoshi is far too scared of how players will treat each other to really do something good with the system. PvP vs PvE proves it, hell they already have the system in place for Machinist, DRK, SCH (probably SMN too), WHM and such where combos/free casts will activate occasionally, meaning they can easily have a system that removes quite a few button presses if they simply must remain on a rotation system.

However, many people say XIV is perfect as is which is why Yoshi went on record to say the formula won't change at all for 4.x and only hinted at a "simpler" rotation, but he's said the same thing quite a few times prior to Heavensward and well, people had to essentially relearn their job which is a big reason 3.x content is such a poor design because as I said there's really no content that forces or goads you into getting better, which is why you have people jumping straight into 60 content like Ex primals and not know a damn thing about their jobs or realistically, how to play.

Kind of why people were actually afraid of the "jump potion" Yoshi hinted at during E3, because despite how insanely helpful it would be, people already rarely know how to play or take the time to improve their DPS/Tanking/Healing, jumping straight to 60 in a game with very little "build up" content would be pretty bad, so despite feeling otherwise, 2.x had the better setup since the difficulty slowly ramped up and ex primals dropped useful gear which actually were some of the better items you could get, meaning..GASP! They already know how to create a better content flow and need to go back to it. People say Coil was hard, but honestly, keeping track of the party finder and even some old videos where shouting was the main form of gathering people at Wineport, more people did Coil compared to Alex Savage for a reason. Even if people did Turn 2 in a weird/lazy way (since its so much faster to just do it normally than sit and wait for enrage timer..as you could do 2-3 in the span of 1 enrage but I digress.)

Yoshida said back during Coil 1 that the content they develop first isn't the version that gets released until after they make tweaks and changes to the content is THEN when they release it and in 3.0 they'll start releasing the original and an edited version (normal/story mode as people call it.) So in all actuality, you're lucky they decided to actually spend more time, money and resources developing an additional version of the content (story mode) instead of tuning one set of content to be reasonable which would then free up the valuable time and resources they need to create even more content since dropping story mode would free up quite a bit of resources and dev time to create something else, it's not just copy/paste/delete a move or two like you seem to think.

"Nah, the game would have failed, lots of people would have quit, blah blah blah!"

XIV did fine before Heavenswards was a thing and seems to be doing fine (even though most of it is just people on Balmung and Gilgamesh realistically), so I'm fairly sure them focus firing on making a well tuned raid content like they did back during 2.x era would have done so much better than now, since literally no one asked to make Savage a standard, people just wanted them to go back to Binding Coil difficulty.

Also, there was no Savage Coil 1 as optional content, there was Savage Coil 2 as optional content though which contradicts:



As you're not a raider maybe you're just not understanding the concept but, if raiders were complaining about the difficulty of Coil 2...why did Yoshida allow them to release the initial version of Coil that normally goes unreleased because it's significantly harder with far less indicators ..? Raiders were the ones who asked to see what the "harder coil" was like because actual progression raiders were already working on Turn 9 by that point and wanted additional challenge, not the playerbase that actually complained because the only people who were openly complaining were the ones going:

"I WANT TO EXPERIENCE THE COIL STORY. GIVE US A STORY MODE VERSION OF COIL."

So...maybe it's a cultural thing, but I just don't see how a group of people complain about something being too hard gets met with "here have an even harder version for no rewards other than a title!" by the director. I know Yoshida is weird about his decisions..but he's played DAoC..he knows that makes no sense lol.

Turn 4 was the make or break of Coil 1. Turn 5 had actual designs problems, so it's hard to comment on its difficulty, but Twintania was actually the easiest of all final bosses in Coil since it was just mechanics. Much like Titan Ex is extremely easy but was the hardest for so many people because..mechanics.

Turn 8 was the make or break of Coil 2 because it was a tight DPS check with a lot of interesting mechanics. Turn 7 was impossible for the casual crowd because it had 2 very specific mechanics people seem to just not comprehend:

Voice/Shriek and Renauld staggering.

Not necessarily hard, but definitely content that requires players on their game. Something XI really did prepare you for quite well.

Turn 11 was the make or break of coil 3 despite being on the easier side because again, it had very specific mechanics people just couldn't comprehend for some reason. (Tethers.)

You do realize:



Pure mechanic based fights were requested overall because even the "Filthy Casuals" IN YOUR WORDS (stop saying I've ever said this) were tired of the song & dance battles purely based on DPS checks and instant wipe mechanics and wanted things to be more based on thoughtful mechanics rather than scripted to the point if you're TOO good at the game you can actually wipe yourself ala Ifrit, Leviathan and Ramuh Ex or if your DPS is too terrible you'll enrage (Shiva Ex) as we're talking about coil era. Hey here's a fun fact:

Coil was supposed to be the stepping stone into entering alliance based content as Crystal Tower was supposed to be the actual hard raid but they chose to swap their positions due to delaying Crystal Tower and ever since the difficulties of Raid/Alliance content has been thrown off. So realistically, difficulty of this game has been in a weird position ever since 2.1.

You just hate raiders, that's fine, but stop blaming them because of the decisions you make with no gun to your head. If raiders are such a small part of the community, it is virtually impossible for them to shape anything yoshida decides when overall the game is on the easy side because of not listening to them. Were raiders the reason they released ilvl235 weapon in content accessible as early as level 17? Are raiders the reason in patch 3.38 you can get the item to upgrade your lore weapon to 240 without having to enter Midas Savage? Were raiders the reason they released Diadem which incidentally offered BiS pieces thus completely negating all raid content in a half patch? I mean..surely raiders complained so much that they obsoleted raid content for casual content........I mean, it's either/or. It can't be "yoshida listens to raiders which is why ex primals is designed for hardcore groups now" then suddenly "yoshida doesn't listen to raiders or else we wouldn't have such and such content at all if so"..like what is it? Lol. Ex primals are not hardcore, just because your hand won't be held through it and you have to actually ..dare I say be good at the game to get through it doesn't make it hardcore, this is kind of why other MMO communities usually mock the XIV playerbase when you bring the game up because the first thing they tend to comment on is how it's so glamour focused because players are scared to do content.

Then again...you're probably talking about people who actually do raid content and not "RAIDERS" specifically, as in progression raiders, but just tagging them as raiders because they set foot in raids, because if you were to say that in any raid community..honestly, THEN you'd get the behavior and attitude people talk about with "elitism", because that's akin to saying Dark Knight in XI makes viable healers when subbing WHM.

You do realize Thordan Ex dropped ilvl215 weapons, right? Why would you ever think that fight should have been a cake walk for just anyone to go through? That was basically stepping on the toes of raiders at the time because in terms of how this game is designed, there was no point in clearing A4S once Thordan came out since in yoshida's own words he said the weapons would help greatly in getting people through A3S, which as you probably don't know or have forgotten, even casual players were able to get through A1S and A2S and A3S is what was stonewalling everyone but the absolute best progression groups (world first runners.)





When the guy in charge says the formula won't change, why would that be? If something isn't working, you change it. "If it ain't broke don't fix it", the fact he says it's too risky to change the formula means people find XIV perfectly fine as is or else he would be far more willing to change it.

So..I ask again, which group of players complained? I spent last night looking through a lot of 2014 early 2015 posts and the most I see are people wanting a story mode for coil so they can experience the story and people actually upset over the nerf to Turn 7. However when you look at the forums and groups where actual progression raiders post, you'll see that people were largely upset over Coil 3 being extremely easy and that people found Coil 2's difficulty somewhere in the middle of being good and bad for raiding since it was a mix of DPS check and Mechanics, but you also see a lot of people upset over Turn 2's enrage method to the point yoshida had to make a post saying it can be seen as a strategy instead of exploit. Are you really going to tell me raiders are the ones that created that strategy and largely used it during first coil spams..? The way you constantly blame raiders makes it seem it's not that they're a 'small part of the community' but the biggest and most important part since, i mean you even went as far to say thordan ex came about because of it.

Which again, fyi, is the actual fight and he's stated openly Thordan Story/Ex was pre-nerfed before launch.

You say raiders were complaining to the high heavens..you're definitely talking about the group of people who actually bothered to attempt the content, rather than sit around and say "ew raiding content get that out of my game, get rid of that content and those players make XIV great again."

I mean reading NA/EU OF side you see people complain about the difficulty of even leveling dungeons and people who constantly leave Steps/Final Steps/Seph (normal)/Chrysalis, are you really trying to get me to believe that they're the raiders you're talking about? Everyone complains about XIV, there's no denying that, but it's extremely hard to believe progression raiders have ever taken to the forums where you get can banned at the drop of a hat if you so much as post a screenshot with someone's name in it to complain about a game people so lovingly defend. You read the OFs, don't even try to deny that. I seen literally one person from a progression group I know of on Excal post about the game's state and he got torn apart to the point the topic got deleted because, well, the "filthy casuals" as you call them doesn't take too kindly to questioning the game's direction.

While it doesn't bother me, I find it hilarious some of the first things people say when SE posts new pictures "I hope it's in the mog station" "they should add this to mog station"..like, when you have so many players willing to toss money at your cash shop instead of doing content..can you really sit around and blame anyone for feeling a certain way about the state of the game? Instead of just calling them hardcore/raider and saying they don't belong in the game?

I've never bought into this "Savage Coil is the original version" statement.

So the original version just happens to fix all the cheeses, such as killing bulbs and feeding three blobs to a single slug? Sorry, it's hard to believe.



Thordan was 205.



They didn't have Final Sting. You didn't even have to kill them if you thought that DPS would be an issue.

I think you're taking the statement a little too literally. The idea is that devs initial aim is to create content that is difficult for players with near perfect execution. From that point they scale it back for lower difficulties and/or nerf the content as needed to allow players to clear it more comfortably.

I think I am generally happy that basic content of FFXIV is not hard. Some basic content for FFXI can be quite hard (COP mission), and I think that is a fair assessment.

I really do not want to get in this raider vs causal debate (it seems we now have "political parties" here). I think we should just get along. Really, you do your really hard stuff, and I do my (easier) stuff, is a reasonable approach. I can carry on my business without an "ideological" enemy; things are not broken, let's not create fights to break things. Also I want to add - finding people to look down upon or finding people to be envy of is bad for your mental health.

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 11:31am by scchan

Here lies the problem:

What is "midcore"?

Especially when what is midcore, as per design, still gets considered "hardcore" or "requires a static"? EX Primals and Coil were designed to be more midcore than anything because you simply just had to improve yourself in order to get through Coil, you couldn't just go in and bash your head for 20 minutes and come out with a clear like people (seemingly) expect.



So..what's the target audience? Because I'm looking at OF (NA) and Reddit and I see plenty of people complaining about players not really trying even in DF and that's just ignoring the topics about glamour glamour glamour. So from what I'm seeing, is they focus on the target audience this game won't last that long no matter how you slice it. Plenty of people may like to play dress up and may love throwing money at the mog station, but there was a point even they too got bored as hell due to the 5 month gap between HW and 3.1, so if the only content update is glamour related..do you honestly believe that's what will keep everyone happy?

What they should do, is stop spreading their limited resources thin and create content that if people can't do it, they simply can't do it, if they want to do it, they will. Coil had the higher participation rate, key word, PARTICIPATION rate. Whereas Alexander Savage, many don't even want to bother. That alone should say they should go back to the Coil design.

In your words:



There is absolutely nothing preventing people from engaging in the current content base. So that circles back around to:

What is the content that will be 'engaging' for everyone that is not only balanced reward wise but won't completely negate doing other content? This is why you'll hear people say it sounds like people just want handouts.

Also:



You literally said you'd kick them out of the game if you had your say so. That's...kind of being against it and said players.

That's what WoW does. But then, WoW has a real dev team.

First, endgame.

A textbook definition of endgame is probably what you do beyond the level cap. But when I think of endgame -- and when most gamers I know think of endgame -- what we're really focusing on is post-cap content that requires some kind of investment.

That's why I don't consider things like leveling dungeons or 24-man raids to be part of endgame. This content isn't designed to require any kind of investment beyond simply repeating it. There's no real need to organize. There's no room for strategy. There aren't any branching paths or different objectives for different people who play different jobs. There's no kind of preparation required. It really feels no different than the standard 0-60 leveling process.

Raids and extreme primals are XIV's endgame, but both are essentially the same kind of content where your eight-man party is in a heavily scripted fight that requires hours to learn even with a static group. While this is a valid form of endgame, it's simply not going to be for everyone. In fact, the data shows that most people don't want to raid.

Especially on the OFs, I keep seeing posts that more people would raid if the rewards were better, and I couldn't disagree more. People would already be raiding if they either 1) wanted to raid and/or 2) had the time for it. I think you could make raid gear 20 iLevels better than anything else in the game and people still wouldn't do it, because people don't like raiding. And outside of the raids, there's really no other viable form of true endgame to put that gear to use.

Next, raiding.

When I talk about "raiding," I'm talking about it in the context of what we have in FFXIV -- rigid content for a set number of people that requires a ton of repetition before you can start winning.

When I talk about "raiders," I'm talking about people who regularly dedicate enough time toward raiding to actually be successful. Even though I do the extreme primals, I don't consider myself a raider because my static only has time to play for one hour per week (and we haven't had any time the past three weeks when our schedules all match up).



This would only be the case if XIV's endgame remains chained to the eight-man party requirements while leaning heavily on scripted, punishing mechanics.

FFXI had an amazingly diverse endgame, and I never struggled to find groups to do different things with. That's because XI's endgame wasn't chained down to strict membership requirements, and fights didn't lean on artificial difficulty from heavily scripted mechanics. The freshest level 75 players could jump in with the most experienced dynamis linkshells and not doom their runs to failure, thus the endgame community was far more inviting and accessible. It's the opposite in XIV, where a single new person can be the difference between care-free farming and a few hours of head-bashing frustration.

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 1:59pm by Thayos

No, the problem is people don't want to do heavily punishing raids. It's not fun for a lot of people. It's insane to expect people to want to do things they don't find fun.



Or maybe -- just maybe -- all those people who don't enjoy raiding find Palace of the Dead to be more fun? :O I know that I sure do, to the point that I hope Yoshi-P eventually expands on this system to be a stronger form of endgame.

Don't fool yourself into thinking Palace of the Dead is taking people away from raiding. It's just giving people who don't want to raid something to do.



No, Hio, glamor is not all that gets added to the game. For many casual and midcore players, the various pieces of gear that get added are great for gearing up our other jobs.



This might be the weakest argument you keep on making.



Ah, but you keep forgetting that many people don't find hardcore raiding to be fun. And this dovetails into the weak argument you keep making (which I pointed out above). Why do you consistently blame players for not wanting to play content they don't enjoy?

If players would rather use their limited free time to grind the same dungeon for the thousandth time versus trying to join a raid group, then that's a pretty crystal-clear sign that raiding just isn't attractive for a multitude of reasons. The problem is raiding, not the player.



Nope, you don't get to take me out of context or put words into my mouth. I've been extremely clear on what I mean, and I express my thoughts much better than you do. Quote me correctly or don't do it at all. Seriously, consider this your first warning. This tactic will not become acceptable.



No, Hio, that's not what separates XI's diverse endgame from XIV's narrow raid scene.