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I don't know why you guys are arguing back and forth on what style the game is. It isn't hardcore, the extreme endgame would be called elite game type. It means it requires 100% attention with no mistakes or drama ensues. Hardcore would be a game that takes a ton of time to progress in with deep complex systems that cannot be played in short spurts to get any real progress.

Reflex/jump rope is a skill that can or can't be improved, sometimes you are just relegated that you can't physically do what others can. I can't dunk like Lebron James no matter how often I practice that. Thinking is a strategy and planning based skill.

The core truth underlying here is the endgame is too elite for anyone but the diehard reflex gifted players, not hardcore enough for players that want a time consuming or living breathing world, and too strict a ruleset in participating for casuals. Casual doesn't mean you suck or like easy games, it just means you like to your game to be very lenient and respectful to your time.

Can't we all just get along?

Edited, Apr 2nd 2016 12:05pm by sandpark

In my opinion raiding regardless of difficulty shouldn't be the center of endgame. It should exist and if it is the most difficult content, then that raider should be rewarded with the best of it's class. Just as PvP content should be rewarded the best of it's class and not be the center of endgame.

If Yoshi wants the casual fanbase that mmo hops and back and forth. I truly hope he is listening to players who complain about that going forward. Most content needs to have looser party requirements to get completion from now on. There needs to be tons of casual and mid-core content and a bit of hardcore/long lasting or elite/extreme difficulty content sprinkled here and there.

There also needs to be more variety in ways to level since this game might at some point have anywhere from 16-40 jobs or classes.

Edited, Apr 2nd 2016 12:35pm by sandpark

But jump rope isn't reflex. It's memorization. There are some reflex checks, but even those are heavily scripted, so they're more jump rope-ish in nature.

And about your Lebron comparison... that doesn't quite make sense. If you started training as a teenager to dunk -- and assuming you were a little taller than average -- then you'd be able to eventually dunk. Now, dunk like Lebron? No, probably not... but Lebron has insane physical qualities that make him a freak among freaks.

You don't need to be a freakishly good gamer to beat FFXIV's savage-mode fights. You just need time and a good, patient static. In all my years playing FFXI and FFXIV -- and I was in a hardcore raid static for around six months in XIV -- I only ever came across a few players who truly struggled with endgame mechanics. And, given enough repetition, those players always eventually earned their clears. These fights are easy enough that they can be cleared by the vast majority of gamers. But life gets in the way and makes that not possible.

I think this again goes back to the CONSISTENT time off for statics. Forget the Japanese puggable population, because it's almost non-existent in North America. I've pugged enough crap through PF/DF to know it's just not worth the effort. Could I play 20 hours a week? Easily. Could I say to 7 other people, sure I can make it Mon, Wed, Sat from 7-10pm every night, not even close.

The only time I would ever get wins on my own time is when I was replacing someone in their static. That's it. The full on pug parties were just CONSTANT complaining, switching people out and hours of frustration. It was 2-3 hours of accomplishing nothing. Much of this was back in Coil 1-9, I can only imagine how it's become since. Probably 10x worse.

This was largely what I was getting at, but let's look at it another way.

Player has 200 DPS. Buff happens, player now has 260 DPS. Being generous and carrying this across the other 3 DPS, total DPS goes up from 800 to 1040. Whatever tanks and healers contribute is its own wildcard, but they still get improved.

On the defensive end, tanks are now more survivable, giving healers more wiggle room to react even if there is a mistake. A mechanic that could cause a wipe before is suddenly recoverable.

Combine these two and total mastery of mechanics isn't required. It helps, most definitely, but instead of trying multiple runs with new people every time via PF where you wind up timing out or people get frustrated and quit, you can do just well enough to squeak out the win. If you are fortunate enough to wind up with people who've done it before, your odds of success also improve. Further so if they're over-geared.

When people say, "I don't have the time!" it's not because they don't want to try. It's because they don't want to have to try indefinitely or fall into the trap of endgame politics. Biggest downside of enforced partying is failure isn't always your fault. An individual's threshold for that is going to vary from person to person. And I'm more inclined to trust someone's self-description of their play style than that of one perched on Olympus declaring people don't just try hard enough because they did it (with their static) easy peasy. Seriously, when a game has walking away legitimately angry at your peers, something's not right.

Oh it's a lot worse based on me keeping my sarga and balmung alts up to date, but as said, it's simply just the difference in playerbase it seems, so it's honestly not even the game design at that point. I mean, if I knew I would accomplish nothing in 1-3+ hours due to the failures of others (a lot of the time, let's be real you can have it down and others can't grasp the simple mechanics) I certainly wouldn't want to even bother trying the content either. That's why I say things don't add up sometimes, simply because it's far easier to be honest and say: "I just don't want to do it/bother with it" than "I don't have time for it" because a lot of the people who say that..tend to be the first one you find in DF causing the wipes. That's why I even said it's not that I don't believe the "no time" excuse because my work keeps me busy sometimes full days at a time when I have to fly back and forth from Japan to the US, I just can't help but chuckle when I see the same people end up in the same DF as me and I do indeed ask: "So work load lightened up for ya?"

Since the reason you tend to get the..shall we say, "leftovers" in Duty Finder is because while the content is PF/Server only (like Midas Savage and Seph Ex atm) most people get it done then and there so by time it hits unrestricted and on the Duty Finder, you tend to be left with the people who "had no time" or simply couldn't do it. Look at Thordan Ex duty finder..the amount of people who can't get past the first dive bomb phase (basically almost barely into the fight) is staggering on Aether.




Quite the opposite, actually. I've read multiple times even from you the phrase "people like me." That is quite a bit more "projection" than what I've said because you're basically saying "people like me who work and have family obligations"...I do as well and I still get things done and manage to do the harder content. I explained it as clear as day, there's people who stated they don't have time for the content which is why they don't bother trying it. I was talking very specifically about the people who state that because they're also the same people who wait until the content is added to duty finder to even attempt it because by then, not only do you "not need a static (don't now but different cultures I guess)" but it's also a high chance they added echo to the encounter meaning it's also "easier" to do than prior to echo.

Like I say now echo will not help you at all with Seph Ex because all it takes a missed tank tower during the might/spirit phase and well..no amount of echo will cut 99k damage.

At this point I feel like we are all pointing at the same cloud but calling it different things.

I have too much on my plate to use my available free time in a way that won't result in anything positive. This should be a no-brainer to anyone who has a busy life.

If I had more time, I would join a raid static and actually maybe make progress.



We clearly don't have the same out-of-game obligations and/or priorities. Or, playing on a Japanese server really makes THAT MUCH of a difference.

Edited, Apr 3rd 2016 3:46pm by Thayos

This isn't what any of us have been saying.

Filth, I don't call you a hardcore player. You've said nothing to imply you're hardcore about gaming. In fact, you've said more to make me believe that we're actually a lot alike in how we play, other than I can only take small doses of PvP.

Myself and others call Hio a hardcore player not because of time spent in the game (I have no clue how much Hio plays), but based on what Hio considers to be "normal" and also what Hio says about other players. And also because of months of comments that paint a pretty clear picture of Hio being hardcore.

And Filth, you don't even play XIV. How can you be a hardcore XIV player?

Regardless, you and Hio are missing the point. Even Hio seems to agree that pickup parties on NA servers are wastes of time. A static is the way to go. And I don't have time -- the predictable consistency in my schedule -- for a static that runs several nights per week. Heck, this weekend I thought I'd have several hours to play both days, and instead I had about an hour per day.

Myself and many other players I know would love to do these fights, but even among ourselves so far we've been able to get everyone only at once (even trying just one night per week) to make any kidn of progress. And it's not because people are just flaking out. We're all busy and have more important things come up... like family obligations, extra work, recitals, emergency medical appointments (yes, all of these things have happened among our eight schedules within our first month).

I'm not going to use my valuable free time on these fights without either a static or help from my FC. Pickup parties are dead ends. I've learned my lesson from too many attempts in the past. And even statics among busy adults are hard to make work.

Hardcore raiding still has a place in MMOs, but its place at the table is shrinking. Developers need to think of new ways to get players involved in endgame -- or look backward and take some pages from older games' playbooks.


Edited, Apr 3rd 2016 10:49pm by Thayos

Yes, this.

It's why things like Dynamis, Limbus and Sky worked so well in XI. And it's why the Diadem in XIV has a ton of potential. Really, just about all the Diadem really needed were four things:

1) some kind of tiered pop system for special NMs;
2) for these NMs to spawn to the appliances that trigger it;
3) for the main NMs to have some unique mechanics that need to be dealt with; and
4) for the Diadem to have better lore worthy of an endgame event.

I'm sure there are other directions SE could have taken, but this would have been easy.

The biggest reason why the Diadem has such potential is that SE could easily update its NMs and loot pool with each expansion to keep it relevant throughout the life of the game. If SE introduced other endgame content types with each patch, then within the next two or three years the game's endgame scene would improve pretty dramatically.

And there will always be a reason in this game to farm multiple paths, and that is that most people have at least two primary jobs.


Edited, Apr 3rd 2016 10:56pm by Thayos

Everyone who plays this game plays the game's content. You're just part of the very small percentage of players that does the savage-mode content. Perhaps "hardcore" isn't the right word for that one characteristic. "Elite" may be a better word.

And the second half of that statement has a hardcore ring to it. The issue here isn't "X amount of total free time." It's "X amount of a person's free time he can spend in a video game on a predictable basis." If you really have time to do all the game's content on multiple characters (on different servers, too), then I highly doubt you have less time to spend in the game than most other players.



See, this is your problem (again). You try to explain why you're not hardcore, but then you say something like this, which strongly indicates your gameplay is shaped only by min/maxng -- one of the defining traits of hardcore players -- and not just progressing while having fun.

Sure, the thought has crossed my mind that I don't really need to do the relic weapon chain. But I like having goals to work toward, and the relic weapon is a good goal. It's like a free reward for logging in and doing things that don't require a static.

And Hio, being a hardcore player isn't a bad thing. Don't run from it. The unique perspective you bring to this community stems from your hardcoreness. You just need to realize that while you may be the tip of the spear, you're also the smallest part of the spear.

Edited, Apr 4th 2016 9:14am by Thayos

Seriously, minimal effort.

I'd love to ask Yoshi-P about what he or his developers were thinking when this content was commissioned. It was seriously nothing more than a loot pinata, designed for the most brainless gameplay imaginable. The game's leveling dungeons are far more interesting by comparison.

I think it's too late in this expansion cycle to expect the Diadem to be completely revamped, but hopefully whatever they make for the next expansion cycle is significantly better. Or, I hope they realize the Diadem could be improved and kept current to create/maintain some alternative forms of endgame.

Edited, Apr 4th 2016 3:36pm by Thayos