Is it possible to enjoy FFXIV if I only like endgame content?

[NineSpine]

You have a low bar I swear and this is the problem I have with FF14 players.

LFR is meh, and the gear it drops is not an upgrade actually, its below current tier that releases before it so stop lieing there.

It's a good thing that FF14 doesn't have LFR.

Trial bosses come out once every 3 month and are done in a single day without trying and actually drop catch up gear again.

Don't care. The fights are fun and that's what I care about.

Only the savages are really relevant but thats 4 bosses EVERY 6-8 months, not 3, ITS 6-8 months, this is what so many FF14 players never admit to or tell people.

That has been stated multiple times in this thread already. Whatever is fun is relevant to me, but I play video games to have fun not to indulge a mental disorder where I wrap my entire ego around my gear score in a video game.

Ultimate's, we have 1 so far in Endwalker but guess what, SHB was meant to have 2 but only had 1 so we can only hope they actually add the 2nd one this expansion.

They already told us what patch the next one is coming in.

[Ghost of Cow]

Could ya maybe dial it back a bit on the "mental illness" labels?

[NineSpine]

Could ya maybe dial it back a bit on the "mental illness" labels?

I will, apologies.

[Thoriangun]

[QUOTE]

It's a good thing that FF14 doesn't have LFR.

Alliance raids are LFR, don't kid your self

Don't care. The fights are fun and that's what I care about.

And you are the problem

That has been stated multiple times in this thread already. Whatever is fun is relevant to me, but I play video games to have fun not to indulge a mental disorder where I wrap my entire ego around my gear score in a video game.

Apparently calling out SE and players like you is a mental disorder, well done with that coping.

4 bosses in 6-8 months is a negative and especially as a lot of FF players bitch about Wow having long patch cycles to which it does but so does the relevant content in FF14 but the ratio is loads worse.

They already told us what patch the next one is coming in.

They did that before and look how that turned out, you need to stop being in denial.

[NineSpine]

Alliance raids are LFR, don't kid your self

They're not. LFR is a difficulty setting. Alliance raids are a type of content. But I don't expect coordination with reality to be a strong point for folks like you.

And you are the problem

Yes, it is a "problem" to concern myself with fun... in a video game.

Apparently calling out SE and players like you is a mental disorder, well done with that coping.

4 bosses in 6-8 months is a negative and especially as a lot of FF players bitch about Wow having long patch cycles to which it does but so does the relevant content in FF14 but the ratio is loads worse.

It's not four bosses. It's four savage/normal bosses, 4-5 alliance raid bosses, 2-3 trial bosses, and potentially an ultimate boss.

They did that before and look how that turned out, you need to stop being in denial.

They never gave a patch number for the second ultimate raid in Shadowbringers.

[Ghost of Cow]

Alliance raids are LFR, don't kid your self

I suppose there's a healthy "it depends" to be had here.

Crystal Tower is 100% LFR tier or worse now, but Ivalice will straight up bop groups who don't do mechanics. (Sorry, Ivalice is actually my most recent Alliance raid reference point, believe it or not!)

Then again, some LFR fights have been that way, too.

Of course none of it is exactly a big deal, so arguing over which content is more serious seems pointless.

They did that before and look how that turned out, you need to stop being in denial.

Eh, lets not declare the next ultimate to be vaporware before we have a reason to.

[Yarathir]

Backseat ultimate players see Square not release one ultimate in time and proclaim the sky is falling and Square is all liars and swindlers forever.

[NineSpine]

I suppose there's a healthy "it depends" to be had here.

Crystal Tower is 100% LFR tier or worse now, but Ivalice will straight up bop groups who don't do mechanics. (Sorry, Ivalice is actually my most recent Alliance raid reference point, believe it or not!)

Then again, some LFR fights have been that way, too.

Of course none of it is exactly a big deal, so arguing over which content is more serious seems pointless.



Eh, lets not declare the next ultimate to be vaporware before we have a reason to.

The Nier raids are amazing and the new one is amazing as wel.

[Yarathir]

The Nier raids are amazing and the new one is amazing as wel.

Also let's not ignore that it's all content separate from the savage raids. It would only be remotely similar to LFR if it was Pandaemonium N but easier and for more players.

[NineSpine]

Also let's not ignore that it's all content separate from the savage raids. It would only be remotely similar to LFR if it was Pandaemonium N but easier and for more players.

All that is happening is we are having fun and that fact is getting under the skin of pathetic people who build their whole identity around doing hard content in a cartoon Video game about cow ladies in it. It drives them absolutely insane that we are having fun, because they aren’t so they are relying on their sense of superiority to make up for it (and it doesn’t).

[Vakna]

It is objectively false that the average raider goes into the raid day 1 with the gear needed to clear a mythic raid.

That's not what I said though, I said that you get what you need by clearing the raid. If you get to boss 13 then you already have loot from bosses 1 through 12. My entire point here was to disprove the post I quoted where the person said that you had to grind for weeks in World of Warcraft to overcome an imaginary gear wall in order to clear a raid. No such wall exists. Skill walls exist, time spent walls exist, gear walls do not. Play the game like a normal person, and that is all you need.

Also, just so we're clear, a player going into a mythic raid in WoW is expected to have already cleared the previous difficulties of said raid, you don't just go straight into mythic naked, and with that assumption, they are already geared enough from clearing the previous difficulties even disregarding the gear the raid will collect by defeating bosses on mythic - which is a lot.

[NineSpine]

That's not what I said though, I said that you get what you need by clearing the raid. If you get to boss 13 then you already have loot from bosses 1 through 12. My entire point here was to disprove the post I quoted where the person said that you had to grind for weeks in World of Warcraft to overcome an imaginary gear wall in order to clear a raid. No such wall exists. Skill walls exist, time spent walls exist, gear walls do not. Play the game like a normal person, and that is all you need.

The idea that heroic or mythic are tuned for a week one clear by the average raider is just deluded and deranged. It is not in touch with reality. Mythic in particular is clearly, obviously tuned with repeated clears and the gear rewards from that in mind. This is why wow has such an absurd level of gear inflation and ff14 does not.

You can prefer wows model without engaging in dishonesty about how it works. It is fine to prefer how wow does it. It is not fine to just make shit up.

[eschatological]

I raided in a world 500 guild that cleared heroic week 1 every tier. Heroic in WoW isn't hard. Neither is Savage.

And we always got 2-4 bosses down in mythic in week 1 of mythic.

[NineSpine]

I raided in a world 500 guild that cleared heroic week 1 every tier. Heroic in WoW isn't hard. Neither is Savage.

And we always got 2-4 bosses down in mythic in week 1 of mythic.

That's wonderful for you. I can play Jaco Pastorius solos on bass. The fact that I can do that doesn't mean it magically becomes easy for everyone else or mean Jaco bass lines become a joke. This is a stupid argument.

[Wrecktangle]

Basically the title. I don't care about the story, and the more casual content like housing, RP, and glamour really doesn't interest me. I literally only want to Raid. Is this really possible or am I going to have a bad time?

I'm a pretty habitual raid logger in both games so let me offer my POV. I love FF14's raiding content. It's fun, its flashy, and it's just challenging enough to be a good time. I love learning and clearing the fights and then taking a break or playing another game. I have a few other major hobbies so it's nice that it doesn't eat my time. I wish it was a little more dynamic and less scripted and sometimes a bit less obtuse on the mechanics.

The alliance raids are for max level characters and they drop progression gear. They are endgame.

They don't drop progression gear. They drop catch up gear for non raiders to equalize the ilvl gap in between raid tiers.

I find FF14s encounters far more imaginative and immersive than WoW, which often ends up as a battle of picking the right weakauras and paying almost no attention to the actual battlefield.

Subjective.

Yeah I super love when someone else makes a mistake so I die and spend 8 minutes staring at the ground waiting for this epic "war of attrition" to end in the same failure it does 99.9% of the time. What an epic experience.

Yeah I super love when someone else makes a mistake so the entire party just wasted 12 minutes because one person died. What an epic experience.

Being a bit hypocritical here. Out of curiosity though, what fight does someone else in WoW make a mistake where it kills you (and not anyone else), and you sit on the floor for 8 minutes and wipe because of that single death? I tried thinking of examples but I couldn't come up with any.

I can give you about 2 dozen+ examples in FF14 of my actual example though.

In a nine month period, FF14 can get 8 normal/savage bosses, 3 extreme trials, and a 4 boss alliance raid. That's 15 bosses.

Slightly misleading. Assuming T = 0 right, you could probably get double that in WoW since you have a raid at T = 0 and then another comes about 9 months later right?

Almost everyone I play FF14 with is a former WoW raider. All of them love alliance raids, in particular the newest one. Given the way you post this may be shocking, but you don't speak for everyone else.

Why say you don't speak for everyone else lol immediately after citing your own anecdote as if you do. That's fucking comical and hypocritical.

Fun fact, I hate alliance raids.

Yes, really, and that opinion is shared by all the former wow raiders I play FF14 with. All of us were very exhausted with playing the UI rather than playing the fight. We were all exhausted with weakauaras being more important than playing the game well. We were all exhausted with needless gear walls that prevent us from completing content. We were all exhausted with a raid model that expected us to run the same raid 50 times on multiple difficulties.

Meh, sounds like you're probably trying to leverage your "friends" to bolster your argument, but it comes off super spurious.

It's a good thing I never said that then.

If someone asks the difference between wow and ff14 raiding, the function of addons is incredibly important to the difference.

Disagree. I find that the raid size, hyper-scripted timeline, and it's all DPS to be the major differences and the ones more frequently discussed.

Endgame means “things you do at max level”. I don’t know where this definition of “only the most hardcore CE content” comes from. I’m not pointing fingers at you for this goalpost shift, but it seems to be becoming common here.

I'd argue if anything that the goalposts were moved by you lol. It's fairly common knowledge that alliance raids aren't considered traditional raiding by the raiding community; which was the actual topic of the discussion based on the OPs ask. You'll find some support for Extreme trials, and overwhelming support for savage/ultimates, but little to none for alliance raids.

Also too bad Alliance raids are infinitely more complex than LFR. Sure, that might not mean much, but the LFR-comparison has always been silly. WoW's LFR is difficult only because you have to deal with half a raid that doesn't want to be there and another half that literally isn't even there. Alliance raids are less punishing because it's easier to recover, but they are inherently more complex.

"Infinitely more complex?" Come on now, that straight hyperbole. They're absolutely MORE complex than LFR, but they're considerably less than normal mode raids in WoW and if we're being honest much more closely resemble LFR than normal so they're the best fit for an LFR equivalent. This is support by the fact that they're mostly mindless, half the players are AFK, and hardly useful for any progression oriented player.

Sounds like you don’t believe Blizzard is capable of coherent encounter design.

Blizzards encounter design has issues for sure, but I'm not sure coherent would be one of their issues. If anything it's one of their stronger points. FF14 could honestly learn to be a little less obtuse in just what the debuffs say and do and some consistency in how they handle certain mechanics.

Alliance Raids are mindless AFK bosses?

Yes. It's why ACT shows me on average 20-25% of the people in the instance are not putting any effort in and yet we have no wipes and still clear.

1. A new 4 boss raid every 6 months. These bosses will, in general, be somewhere in the ballpark of wow's heroic difficulty. The fights will be a bit longer than wow on average and are more likely to have very distinct multi-phase designs, so you can get more packaged into one fight on average than you may be used to. This is how you get BiS gear. These raids are 8-man with two tanks and two healers.

Minor correction. It was almost 8 months between 5.0-5.2, 10 months between 5.2-5.4, and 12 months between 5.4 and 6.0, putting the average at almost 10 months per tier.

You aren't completely wrong, but Ultimates definitely can be as hard as Mythic end-boss. Dragonsong is proof of that.

Anyone who says that Ultimates aren't equivalent to end game mythic bosses is being an idiot. It's hard to compare them in the sense that they are very different experiences and their difficulty stems from completely different design paradigms (and why I prefer Mythic end bosses over ultimates), but they're absolutely both very challenging.

The fabled master baiter strikes again. You always bring a smile to my face.

The poster was guilty of saying some dumb shit, but the piece you quoted I don't see anything bad about that take mind clarifying?

Best take, honestly. And if someone -wants- to do it, there are discords dedicated to it.

A relatively small portion of the player base does Baldesian Arsenal and Delubrum Reginae Savage, but there are discords dedicated to it with very dedicated players. If you WANT to do something, if you WANT to raid old content, or content people don't often do, there are tools for finding like minded people.

It took me longer to find a group to do BA than it did the clear the savage tier lol despite pouring over every instance, LS, FC, static, and discord I could find.

The Nier raids are amazing and the new one is amazing as wel.

Bleh, I hated them and I even like the Nier games, but mostly because they take so much longer than all the other 24 mans to complete especially when a quarter of the team is AFK.

[NineSpine]

They don't drop progression gear. They drop catch up gear for non raiders to equalize the ilvl gap in between raid tiers.

I run it every week to gear up alt jobs.

Subjective.

Which are more enjoyable is subjective. The fact that wow has become an add-on fest is not.

Yeah I super love when someone else makes a mistake so the entire party just wasted 12 minutes because one person died. What an epic experience.

Being a bit hypocritical here. Out of curiosity though, what fight does someone else in WoW make a mistake where it kills you (and not anyone else), and you sit on the floor for 8 minutes and wipe because of that single death? I tried thinking of examples but I couldn't come up with any.

I can give you about 2 dozen+ examples in FF14 of my actual example though.

You need me to explain how healers can fail you and you end up dead in WoW?

Slightly misleading. Assuming T = 0 right, you could probably get double that in WoW since you have a raid at T = 0 and then another comes about 9 months later right?

I stated facts.

Why say you don't speak for everyone else lol immediately after citing your own anecdote as if you do. That's fucking comical and hypocritical.

Fun fact, I hate alliance raids.

Then it's rad that they are optional, isn't it?

Meh, sounds like you're probably trying to leverage your "friends" to bolster your argument, but it comes off super spurious.

Why should I care about your experience if you declare mine is spurious?

Disagree. I find that the raid size, hyper-scripted timeline, and it's all DPS to be the major differences and the ones more frequently discussed.

I didn't say there weren't other difference. The role of addons is a major one. This isnt debatable.

I'd argue if anything that the goalposts were moved by you lol. It's fairly common knowledge that alliance raids aren't considered traditional raiding by the raiding community; which was the actual topic of the discussion based on the OPs ask. You'll find some support for Extreme trials, and overwhelming support for savage/ultimates, but little to none for alliance raids.

Making up a "community" that agrees with you isn't an argument. Alliance raids are raids by any definition. If you dislike them, that's great, but they are raids. I don't know where this weird impulse to redefine simple terms to make your arguments sound better comes from. I don't like arena in wow, but it would be really really weird for me to start constructing arguments that arena isn't pvp just to make myself feel better about disliking it.

"Infinitely more complex?" Come on now, that straight hyperbole. They're absolutely MORE complex than LFR, but they're considerably less than normal mode raids in WoW and if we're being honest much more closely resemble LFR than normal so they're the best fit for an LFR equivalent. This is support by the fact that they're mostly mindless, half the players are AFK, and hardly useful for any progression oriented player.

Putting aside crystal tower, if you AFK in alliance raids, you inspect the floor for the rest of the fight. Some people do this, sure, but most LFR encounters as a DPS you can stand still and do your rotation and suffer no consequences.

Blizzards encounter design has issues for sure, but I'm not sure coherent would be one of their issues. If anything it's one of their stronger points. FF14 could honestly learn to be a little less obtuse in just what the debuffs say and do and some consistency in how they handle certain mechanics.

Sure, FF14 could improve, but wow is comically worse at this. The encounters are mostly completely inconceivable without addons above LFR difficulty.

Minor correction. It was almost 8 months between 5.0-5.2, 10 months between 5.2-5.4, and 12 months between 5.4 and 6.0, putting the average at almost 10 months per tier.

Yes, covid slowed production down for most games and caused delays. Destiny 2 had to insert a false season. WoW has been really bad on release schedule. I don't think that's the reasonable schedule to gauge things by.

[Yarathir]

Just because Alliance Raids are forgiving doesn't mean they're not complex in design. Again, put an actual enrage/damage requirement on them and they would probably be harder than most normal raid content in that other game.

[Thoriangun]

Just because Alliance Raids are forgiving doesn't mean they're not complex in design. Again, put an actual enrage/damage requirement on them and they would probably be harder than most normal raid content in that other game.

Humour me, which Alliance raid boss is complex? I have been playing since 1.0 and since their inception in 2.0, not one was ever complex considering they were all cleared within the first hour or so entering the raids.

[NineSpine]

Humour me, which Alliance raid boss is complex? I have been playing since 1.0 and since their inception in 2.0, not one was ever complex considering they were all cleared within the first hour or so entering the raids.

You are still conflating complexity with chance of completion, which is inaccurate, and until you can demonstrate that you understand the difference between those things than any example provided will be misinterpreted. You are talking past everyone.

[Thoriangun]

You are still conflating complexity with chance of completion, which is inaccurate, and until you can demonstrate that you understand the difference between those things than any example provided will be misinterpreted. You are talking past everyone.

All alliance raid bosses is a very consistent dance that repeats it self over and over and getting hit once by something is easy to understand since its so visible.

There is no overlapping mechanics, I have done virtually all of the alliance raids on launch and every time on launch, the group has cleared it around an hour for first timers.

This is virtually most peoples experiences, an hour to down something new blind is not complex considering there is 23 other players.