Dawntrail

[Tech614]

I mean, back in the day, Savage Raiding as a community didn't exist. It was dudes in a rowboat. RP on the other hand? Same as it is now. So I dunno, as someone who's played since 1.0, this raid stuff being 'popular' is comparatively new. RP got huge in the game when housing launched. Raiding in ARR and HW sucked dick and basically nobody bothered. Also RPers being "annoying" is hilarious. Do you know how much worse PvE sweatlords who can't cut savage but show up in literal roulette queue and play like jackasses makes the game?

RPers are not usually annoying, XIV RPers are usually annoying. Sorry you didn't get that quick clarification, or if you're just mad I don't want to see these cringe lords hogging up chat channels that have nothing to do with them or RP. It's the equivalent of reading anime fan fiction brain rot on twitter, if you don't like my opinion on that /shrug.

Also raiding in XIV still sucks dick for the record, this wasn't just an early thing. It's also still popular, so people like it I just personally don't. It's hilarious you took my post as someone who adores XIV raiding when I think it's the worst end game raiding in any MMO I have played, not the reason I play XIV at all. Still it's hilarious to act like raiding is some super niche thing, if it was they wouldn't continue to support it like they do you claim it was so unpopular in HW well apparently not cause they went in SB and expanded raiding with ultimates. lolz.

Meanwhile how much actual dev support do they give RPers? Pretty clear what is bringing the money in and it's MSQ and raiding, that's where the majority of the budget is. That's what people play FF games for in general, story and set piece fights. People are drastically out of touch and lost in their own bubbles they can't see the obvious sometimes.

[minteK917]

Meanwhile how much actual dev support do they give RPers? Pretty clear what is bringing the money in and it's MSQ and raiding, that's where the majority of the budget is. That's what people play FF games for in general, story and set piece fights. People are drastically out of touch and lost in their own bubbles they can't see the obvious sometimes.

Hmmm, RP is just hidden in the housing district, also who do you think all those items are for lol. All the song on the store, like freaking dubstep version of battle themes, they are there for people making clubs and shit, the housing items those new toys item, doubling the housing items, putting the glasses as a new slot lol. Like I said you just dont know unless you download the mods, but mare server in NA often hits 40k simultanous player on a week end (its a mod to sync your visual mods to other players). If I go to FFlogs savage last tier, theres a total of about 7000 logs saved since its release. I know for a fact I am correct because I do both those things kinda, mabye not as hardcore rp as some people lol. Theres venue discords I have been to that are 50x the size of the biggest raiding discord I been to, hell some that are easily x10 the freaking thebalance discord lol. Also those rper obviously consume the story, because they role play in that story at the back of finishing it.

Also no the rper complain by far the least lmao, might be why you think they dont exist. They dont complain because content drought have little effect on the masses of them. They are just glad when the game releases new emotes or some new housing items they can glitch to make something new. They are one of the silent group along with people that simply do msq or level jobs for fun and the like. They generally are just content with the game itself since they dont go toward the content exhaustion.

Mabye I use the word rper differently, Im talking about people that treat this game as second life type game. There end game is making outfits, glithcing their house into something neat and going to the different venues opened every day. Shit like that. These people out number savage raiders, its not even close, they general dont complain about the game either. They use a massive range of mods. not for performance, these mods being banned would be the one way to make them complain lol. Banning mods like Makeplace and burnthehousedown, oh boy.

Hell remember before endwalker, at first they said they would change the housing physic and people might have to redo their house, thats when these people rose up lol. They quickly ran it back and nothing was changed, all those mofo with their club that took 20 hours to glitch, used mods or they paid someone else 20-100+ million gils to do it for them.

[Grinning Serpent]

doubt.jpeg

They're just loud and annoying so it looks like they have large numbers. Not all are annoying for the record, but a significant portion of XIV RPers are this breed. If you where just saying the amount of people that clear ultimates in a timely manner then yea you might be close but savage raiders? Ain't no way broski. You don't even know the majority of savage raiders exist cause they just do their thing in the group finder or with their set groups and logout, they aren't the loud obnoxious player you know exists but they are huge in numbers.

https://ffxivcollect.com/achievements/types/1

An incredibly brief look at raid achievements shows that:

- Only 12% of recorded accounts have cleared Anabaseios (Savage) at least once. 18% have cleared Abyssos (Savage) at least once. 24% have cleared Asphodelos (Savage) at least once.

- 60% of recorded accounts have cleared Anabaseios (Normal) at least once.

- 55% of recorded accounts have cleared Thaleia at least once.

- 13% of recorded accounts have cleared UWU at least once. 9.6% for TEA, 8.4% for UCOB, 5.4% for DSR, 3.6% for TOP.

- 7.1% of recorded accounts have cleared Sildih Criterion at least once. 3.9% for Mount Rokkon, 3.6% for Alolalo Island.

- 1.6% of recorded accounts have cleared Sildih Savage at least once. 1.5% for Aloalo Savage, 1.0% for Rokkon Savage. 0.7% of accounts have cleared all three criterion savages at least once.

- 41% have killed the secret Sildih boss, 28% have killed the Rokkon secret boss, and 24% have killed the Aloalo secret boss.

- 35% have cleared Eureka Orthos 30th floor, 9.1% have cleared all 100 floors. It's 57% and 15% for Heaven on High, and 78% and 12% for Palace of the Dead (50th floor and 200th floor.)

In terms of more casual content...

- 53% have all three gatherers at level 90. 49% have all crafters at 90. 40% have the Amaro horn (all battle classes to 80), 32% have all battle classes to 90.

- 48% of accounts have reached Island rank 10, needed for the first glamour set and mount. 40% have reached Island rank 12, needed for the next set. 33% have Island rank 16, needed for the third set, and 26% have reached rank 20 for the final set.

- 64% of players have cleared CLL in Bozja at least once. 60% have cleared DR at least once, and 46% have cleared Dalriada at least once. 20% have cleared Baldesion Arsenal at least once, and 11% have cleared DRS at least once.

Now, ffxivcollect and luckybancho aren't 100% precise due to achievements needing to be manually made public. But it's pretty apparent that hardcore content is *not* something that most players engage in. Meanwhile, clear rates for casual content are quite high. Keep in mind, some of the most dedicated glamour players also do savage and even ultimate, because that's the only way to get dyeable armor or special mounts.


So in brief: you're full of it if you think the raiding scene is bigger than the glamour/RP scene.

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Meanwhile how much actual dev support do they give RPers?

Every single patch adds new housing items and glamour sets. You gonna tell me the sweaty raiders that only show up to raidlog every other patch (maybe every patch if an ultimate is released in between savage tiers) are champing at the bit for new items to decorate their venues or cafes with?

[Ghost of Cow]

This continues to be such an oddly aggressive conversation over such simple ideas like, "Some people would be mad if addons went away completely." and "Lots of people do casual content."

[Grinning Serpent]

This continues to be such an oddly aggressive conversation over such simple ideas like, "Some people would be mad if addons went away completely." and "Lots of people do casual content."

It's what happens when you have two posters who are just nonstop inflammatory behavior.

[Yarathir]

Anyway, turning away from this specific topic for the moment-

Dawntrail looks to be positively packed with content thus far, and I can't help but wonder if Endwalker was kind of dropped after 6.0 to work on Dawntrail instead.

It's not just forays back, but also getting new criterions, and getting a new deep dungeon, and also getting an Island Sanctuary/Ishgardian Restoration-esque lifestyle content feature, and so on. Personally, I don't really care for forays, and I've been happy in Endwalker without them, but seeing as they are additional content in Dawntrail and we lose nothing for them, I find it hard to protest their addition.

Of course we've yet to see how it turns out. On paper, all these features could indeed be there, but that doesn't mean that they have all the work and development put into them as their earlier iterations. Still, if it does pan out, that's pretty impressive. Personally, I'm hoping Cosmic Exploration turns out well. Island Sanctuary was kind of a dud for me, but I liked the concept. I like the Cosmic Exploration concept even more, and it seems as though YoshiP understands some of the flaws and weaknesses of Island Sanctuary, or at least is trying to mix some Ishgardian Restoration into it. Could be cool.

[Maljinwo]

Anyway, turning away from this specific topic for the moment-

Dawntrail looks to be positively packed with content thus far, and I can't help but wonder if Endwalker was kind of dropped after 6.0 to work on Dawntrail instead.

Yoshida working on FFXVI probably killed Endwalker's momentum after the base experience

[Arlette]

Yoshida working on FFXVI probably killed Endwalker's momentum after the base experience

Yoshida isn't usually the one like actively programming the features of an expansion, so I don't think it's fair to blame 16 for some people's opinions that Endwalker "had nothing to do."

- - - Updated - - -

Personally, I'm hoping Cosmic Exploration turns out well. Island Sanctuary was kind of a dud for me, but I liked the concept. I like the Cosmic Exploration concept even more, and it seems as though YoshiP understands some of the flaws and weaknesses of Island Sanctuary, or at least is trying to mix some Ishgardian Restoration into it. Could be cool.

If they can do the mechanics of the Island Sanctuary with the story of something like the Omicron storyline (Which I still contend is a necessary epilogue to Endwalker and everybody should make a gatherer and crafter just to see it AND the Loporrit storylines -- they're fantastic), that'll make Cosmic Exploration amazing.

[Tech614]

Yoshida working on FFXVI probably killed Endwalker's momentum after the base experience

Yoshida was just the boss of CBU3, which made XVI. Not sure why people are acting like he was a lead developer on the game. The game had 2 directors and neither was Yoshida, the game had 2 lead designers and neither was Yoshida, the game had 1 writer which wasn't Yoshida. He is the producer because he is the head of the dev studio- the same studio that also develops XIV. His impact on XVI is him just looking at the plans the devs put out for the game and either agreeing with them or telling them to change ___.

Also to further show how laughable this idea is, XVI started development after HW shipped. It's completely baseless to act like it had any impact on EW when that was just polishing and bug squashing phase for the entire part of it's development that overlapped with EW(The game was fully playable start to finish a few months after EW launched: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022...tart-to-finish). The real heavy lifting of it's development came during SB and ShB.

Also I hate to come to you with bad news if you think XVI negatively impacted XIV but uhhh... CBU1 is making KH4 and FF7 Remake part 3 and SquareEnix's other divisions just cover DQ and smaller AA games so guess who is making FFXVII? If you guessed CBU3 you guessed right... It's been a multi project studio since HW shipped and they began work on XVI and will remain one.

[minteK917]

I think its more likely that dawntrail could have had impact on endwalker, depending on how different the content may be. It could also be wrong, but they do so far have more stuff on the table then endwalker ever had planned. Endwalker promised nothing, I guess island sanctuary? We got less then sb and shb. Hard to tell how much work into dawntrail, plus it cant really be an excuse of why endwalker patches were such filler and we got way less content, brozja was more content then all we got in endwalker combined.

Anyway the future city stuff and the raid even being in there as well has me hopeful that the patches will be involving the story they set up there directly and all of it will come together better then endwalker patches did. Its a needed change in scenery if anything. We established space faring and stuff, its time to be phantasy star, no going back now. In space we still need magic, leather high heels and flamboyant hats all the same.

[Xilurm]

Also I hate to come to you with bad news if you think XVI negatively impacted XIV but uhhh... CBU1 is making KH4 and FF7 Remake part 3 and SquareEnix's other divisions just cover DQ and smaller AA games so guess who is making FFXVII? If you guessed CBU3 you guessed right... It's been a multi project studio since HW shipped and they began work on XVI and will remain one.

Doesn't Yoshida keep saying that he would like the team to work on something other than FF so they don't have so many restrictions?

[Grinning Serpent]

If they can do the mechanics of the Island Sanctuary with the story of something like the Omicron storyline (Which I still contend is a necessary epilogue to Endwalker and everybody should make a gatherer and crafter just to see it AND the Loporrit storylines -- they're fantastic), that'll make Cosmic Exploration amazing.

Both variant dungeons (and especially criterion) and island sanctuary were *so close* to being something amazing, and they failed to stick the landing both times. IS should have been a proper, expandable player house to finally put the caterwauling over houses to bed. Add to that, it has almost no integration with the existing gatherer and crafter systems, so all they had were the beast tribes added in later - it had nothing meaty to offer like Ishgard did.

Variant dungeons are cool and ought to have its own roulette. Have the NPC determine which path is taken, rather than the players, and just assign bonus actions based on role... tanks get dart+rez (because they can already heal with tank skills), melee DPS get rampart+rez (they will generally always have aggro if a tank isn't present simply because melee do the most DPS of any role), ranged and caster DPS get cure+rez, healers get dart+rampart.

Criterion dungeons just need rewards and gameplay worth pursuing. I'm in favor of them being a straight up addition or alternative to raids in terms of gear progression. Each boss drops coffers, you can get one coffer per week, and there are no limitations on grouping or clears - you can run it 20 times in one week until you get the coffer you want, if you're really focused. Gear ilvl equivalent to baseline tome gear, or it could even just *be* straight up tome gear. I'd favor having an extra set each patch, but obviously that's a lot of work. Maybe it could be tome gear with different dye channels? Final boss drops a gewgaw of some sort that can be exchanged for a weapon tomestone, I'd say 2 per tomestone - so getting the tome from 2nd floor savage is fastest, clearing criterion twice and taking the gewgaw instead of coffers is second fastest, clearing normal 7 times is slowest. Criterion savage has a neat thing going with the weapon skins, but I'd also add in savage-equivalent gear as well, using the same coffer system. Then just sprinkle in some mounts, pets, furniture components or pieces, the usual.

The issue with both systems in EW is that they tried to divorce them from the rest of the game, but that's a fool's errand. Better to integrate them with the existing systems so that players have something to use their items, character power, and player skills on.

[Tech614]

Doesn't Yoshida keep saying that he would like the team to work on something other than FF so they don't have so many restrictions?

After forspoken and selling off their entire western dev studios the chances of SquareEnix funding a AAA game not called FF, DQ or KH is extremely minimal. We do know CBU3 is working on another game and we know no other AAA studio at square is free right now to start XVII Yoshida is just covering his words to not leak the obvious. This is like when monolith software is like "we're not making another xenoblade" until Nintendo walks in the room and tells them yes they are.

[Ghost of Cow]

The issue with both systems in EW is that they tried to divorce them from the rest of the game, but that's a fool's errand. Better to integrate them with the existing systems so that players have something to use their items, character power, and player skills on.

XIV does this a lot and on one hand I get it - they don't want to "force" people to do things, and that's a good thing!

On the other hand, it also just results in a lot of content that people just don't do because there's not a big reason to do it.

It's a catch-22 in game design, really. It feels bad to make things "mandatory" but sometimes that's also the only way to get people into the content. Surprisingly, XIV does a good job of striking that balance sometimes, but not everything is a hit.

[Grinning Serpent]

XIV does this a lot and on one hand I get it - they don't want to "force" people to do things, and that's a good thing!

On the other hand, it also just results in a lot of content that people just don't do because there's not a big reason to do it.

It's a catch-22 in game design, really. It feels bad to make things "mandatory" but sometimes that's also the only way to get people into the content. Surprisingly, XIV does a good job of striking that balance sometimes, but not everything is a hit.

Divorcing things from the core gameplay loop is almost always a mistake. Instead of trying to make things separate, make them as spokes on a wheel. You have the core gatherer/crafter gameplay consisting of leveling and producing cosmetic gear and crafted raid gear, and then you add stuff like Ishgard restoration and relic steps as directions it can expand in.

You have your core battle system elements, and then you add a Bozja or Deep Dungeon as an extension of those concepts. New abilities and gimmicks, gameplay emphasis may be different, etc.

[Yarathir]

I think variant is just fine, but I would like it if they were added to a roulette.

Criterion is just too high difficulty in my opinion, and doesn't really provide a reason to do it more than once on top of that. I don't want it to be some m+ type system, but they could've made it both more entry-level challenging content and then give more things to get from it. I was hoping it'd be around extreme trial level. Accessible for casuals, but challenging. A step between normal and savage. Instead, it was savage level, and then criterion savage is even harder. Feels superfluous and kind of misguided? Like... did we really need two hardmode criterions?

[Grinning Serpent]

I think variant is just fine, but I would like it if they were added to a roulette.

Criterion is just too high difficulty in my opinion, and doesn't really provide a reason to do it more than once on top of that. I don't want it to be some m+ type system, but they could've made it both more entry-level challenging content and then give more things to get from it. I was hoping it'd be around extreme trial level. Accessible for casuals, but challenging. A step between normal and savage. Instead, it was savage level, and then criterion savage is even harder. Feels superfluous and kind of misguided? Like... did we really need two hardmode criterions?

Yeah. I think even angry bald man has said that he thinks criterion savage is too punishing (and clear rates support this, they're literally lower than ultimates.) Not that it's "too hard" but that it's so strict there's just no fun to be had.

Variant -> softened criterion -> current criterion (renamed criterion savage) would be what I'd do. Criterion should be as-is, just with more wiggle room on timing and numbers. More mistakes are permissible, cast times and cooldowns maybe a bit more generous. Equivalent to an Ex. Then criterion savage would tighten the numbers up (equal to current criterion or maybe slightly more strict) and IMO should add at least one new gimmick or thing to each boss's toolkit, since doing "criterion but it's harder!" feels a little flaccid to me - but that could be as simple as "there is no practice time in this fight, the boss begins doing their thing from the start."

Like imagine E11S with Cycles, except you don't have the first three fucking quarters of the fight being "here's each mechanic one at a time, I'm gonna do it real slow so you can watch and learn." He just goes right into it and the designers assume you already learned the basics in criterion. I think I'd give savage the same rez as criterion. I like limiting rez spamming, but savage having no rez at all just feels awful. Did your tank or healer die? Cool, wall it and start over. At least give people a chance to recover!

I think they may have underestimated the loss in flexibility that 4 player content brings. While you can't exactly carry dead weight in savage (especially not now when they focus so hard on body checks), one person dying generally doesn't utterly fuck you. One person dying in a dungeon means the boss is hitting the DPS, no healing at all, or your DPS just dropped by over a third. Isn't this kind of why they claimed they don't want healers to have to juggle a DPS rotation, or have more demanding healing? Because if they fuck up, it's perceived too clearly and is discouraging?


Looks like 6.58 is testing cross-regional DC travel. I'm pretty stoked and hope it works well. I have a lot of people in EU that I'd enjoy raiding with. Even if DT was just "more EW", I'd probably resub from time to time to raid with them.

[Wrecktangle]

I think variant is just fine, but I would like it if they were added to a roulette.

Criterion is just too high difficulty in my opinion, and doesn't really provide a reason to do it more than once on top of that. I don't want it to be some m+ type system, but they could've made it both more entry-level challenging content and then give more things to get from it. I was hoping it'd be around extreme trial level. Accessible for casuals, but challenging. A step between normal and savage. Instead, it was savage level, and then criterion savage is even harder. Feels superfluous and kind of misguided? Like... did we really need two hardmode criterions?

If you don't want it to become some m+ type of system, what do you want because one of your main gripes is that there's no reason to do it more than once. Your point here adjusts the difficulty sure, but still doesn't even remotely solve for the other piece, which I agree is an issue. Curious if you had a vision.

[Ghost of Cow]

As neat as M+ is, I don't know how it'd fit into XIVs design philosophy anyway.

"Stand in the right spot or perish" doesn't scale up all that well. Stat scaling could make trash pulls more interesting, but since dungeons are all straight lines there's not a lot of interesting things you can do with it. That and I think the XIV community would lose their minds if they had to CC something. It'd be like Cataclysm heroics all over again.

[zealo]

God forbid you happen to prefer classes that are DPS.

Nah, bigger problem than that is the damage cross DC travel has done on some data centres.

If you happen to play on the one in your region the overall community has designated as the place to be for pve content, queues aren’t anywhere near that long even for dps anywhere near prime time.

But the downside of that is that if you’re not, shit is far more dead than it would be if they hadn’t made that feature available.