Thayos wrote:
That's the important distinction.
FFXIV players DO like raiding, as evidenced by the number of people who participate in the CT and Alex NM raids.
They just tend to not like the hardcore raids as designed in this game.
As well as Binding Coil and Second Coil. There's only 2 hardcore raids - Savage Coil 2 and Alexander Savage. Final Coil you only get achievements once you beat T13, which is why there's low rates because T13 was designed as a :"final boss" raid of 2.x series, even as Yoshi said himself, which is why it was designed to essentially give you "the feels" between T12-T13 and after you beat it to see what really happened.
So you are right - People don't like Savage Coil 2 or Savage Alexander due to the poor design.
Catwho wrote:
People want to do something that is a challenge, but not beating your head against a wall for two months because it requires 8 people to move in perfect synchronization for 15 minutes.
We've been hammering at T9 as a FC for the last month or so and it's just so frustrating to fail, over and over again. Some people enjoy that kind of challenge. I hate it. I hate that storyline got locked behind such content which is why I'm over a year behind on it. I hate that even if I do everything right, even if I yell YOU HAVE TWIST into Ventrilo, I can't control the actions of the other 3-4 people in the group. (Hey, we made it to divebombs finally.) But I want to clear it once and then never do it again.
Indeed - T9 however is probably the easiest compared to T5 and T13. Even at this point in time, failing it is more a cooridination problem than anything because the normal gameplay doesn't really test your skills. At all. Not even in Ex Primals. If you can beat Bismarck and Ravana, you can certainly beat T9 for example because Ravana Ex is definitely harder than T9, divebombs and Favor tend to be the only hard part that gets people stuck because it's a lot of mechanics to worry about. It's just..whenever people see actual mechanics in a fight, either the switch in their head turns off..or they're just too busy panicking - Much like in older FF games when people panic going into super bosses or certain bosses they forgot to swap a certain character into to handle it easier.
So yeah people want challenge, some don't - But the main problem is how you reward people who like either: It makes no sense to reward someone doing 10 minutes of work gear that is the same or surpasses the gear from harder content. XIV's content is just poorly designed, but you'll be hardpressed to state that without getting called a hater unless you have a history of praising the game.
This is why I feel they should have just followed and updated XI's layout - it was well organized no matter how much you liked or hated it. PSO2 even uses a similar format with the standard MMO format thrown in. Hell, PSO2 doesn't even limit your party if you're on a story mission that requires a story NPC there with you - It may seem weird seeing multiple parties with the same story NPC, but at the same time, it's nice that the game lets you do..basically whatever with whoever and how many others. Yeah some missions will be impossible to solo, like Very Hard Mining Defense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBwNNQtEpNY But in the long run, that's why I feel SE really need to re-evaluate the way they design the content and why HW, 2 years later, should have been -THE- time of change.
Thayos wrote:
Hio, you keep asking why other players deserve to have gear that's as good as the gear that drops from these hardcore raids...
My question to you is, "Why gimp everyone else's progression because of the rewards in FFXIV's crappy, not-at-all-fun hardcore raids?"
And my other question is, "Considering this isn't a hardcore game, who gives a crap if -- months after these rewards are available in hardcore raids -- these iLevels become available to the majority of players through things they'll actually enjoy doing?"
This is exactly why I wouldn't be sad if the developers just axed all future hardcore raids. This game doesn't need it, and every patch cycle we have to put up with hardcore players getting upset over everyone else catching up to their iLevels.
Why even deal with it? Most people don't play the hardcore content anyway (although at least story mode made the Alexander raid content something everyone could enjoy).
Edited, Nov 2nd 2015 10:55am by Thayos
Thing here is Thayos:
It doesn't matter if you catch up in ilvls, that means nothing other than strength of gear -- However, why do you need top ilvl gear if you're not touching content that justify the gear? It's not because of "bad design" like Hyrist says, it's because you don't need ilvl210 gear to do ilvl190 max content. You need only ilvl170-180s to properly it. However therein lies the situation: Savage Alexander, the only end-game raid, drops the max ilvl gear.
So again, this is why I say no one likes that you need to do the hard raid to get the gear to properly do the hard raid - That's a fail on Yoshi's part because Binding Coil and Second Coil were perfectly augmented through the fact your tome gear, crafted gear and prior gear you gained was enough to get you into most of the Coils and gear up even further. This is why Savage Alexander is such a misstep in design because Savage is supposed to be Optional.
The only people who complain about "casuals catching up" are the same people from ANY MMORPG that complains about "unworthy" people catching up to them - they don't define everyone, just like people say the casuals who can barley beat Chrysalis doesn't define the entire casual population.
it's just, if you use common sense:
I can kill this rabbit - Get ilvl220 gear. (5-10 minutes of work and the rabbit dies in 40 seconds.)
I can go through a set of content, battle hard bosses and working with other people and get ilvl220 gear that has skill speed on it. (30-40 minutes of work.)
What would anyone do? The path of least resistance, of course. So you trivialize anything in any game by offering an easier path to the max rewards. They don't need to axe raids, they simply need to stick with the design that work instead of this Alexander situation.
Edited, Nov 3rd 2015 6:36am by Theonehio