Holy shit. Coerthas is single-handedly redeeming the last 5 hours of the game. Political intrigue, heresy, conspiracy, and DRAGONS. Mmmmmmmm. Soooo good. I think I cleared all the side quests in Camp Dragonhead too, lmao. Maybe I overdid it. In the Eyes Of Gods and Men is probably one of my favorite duty battles in a while.
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Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward |OT2| RIP Bowmage 2015-2017.
- Thread starter Ken
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the_sun_king
Member
Welcome to your sneak peek of Heavensward.
Depends on your level. If you're just starting out and need seals to get a chocobo mount your options are limited and I think you're pretty much stuck with doing fates for the seals they handout. If you're 60 and just need seals, you can do hunts then turn in the hunt seals for gear and then turn in the gear for fc seals.
Team Alucard
Banned
Just ran Dun Scaith, man Proto-Ultima is lame. Why was this thing so hyped up again?
Will participate in the GAF run tonight as well tho, as I still need 260 pants.
Will participate in the GAF run tonight as well tho, as I still need 260 pants.
Errr, it's just 200 seals for the Chocobo. You literally just need to turn in one provisional quest and do a single company guildleve quest iirc.
Dandy Crocodile
Member
You can get them from roulette as well. That and Fates that I do anyway are how I stockpile seals.
UtterlyPerplexed
Member
Though I joke about Proto Ultima, I did just see over half my entire raid group die to mechanics that by all measures aren't even new, so it's good to see other people have the initiative to make the fight a bit more challenging than it otherwise should be. :')
AuthenticM
Member
Don't forget about Grand Company hunting log!
I'm 60 i switched to the flames because I want that sick ass coat you get for being high level officer, I need to start leveling up but I need funny bucks to do it
Oh if you are 60 when you run dungeons or roulettes or whatever just roll on everything and turn it in for seals. Also clear out any old gear in your inventory for seals too.
Aaaand you've officially caught up to me in story mode in about a week. Goddamn.
UtterlyPerplexed
Member
In the Coil series, the default difficulty was more or less close to perhaps Alex Creator Savage, with much of the motivation for progression being to see how the story unfolds.
With Alexander, players would have already seen the story play out in its entirety just by clearing the normal difficulty, which by all accounts is easier content than Coil in its heyday. As such there is no longer a narrative motivation for groups to press on, and Gordias Savage back in the day was simply no laughing matter for the vast majority of players.
I still maintain calling Creator Savage Final Coil tier is an insult to Final Coil. Bahamut Prime wouldn't invite Alexander Prime to his birthday party, and A9S is just kind of a wasted fight (this bugs me an unreasonable amount because A1S and A5S were never the problem--I get yanking the difficulty of the back half down, but why lobotomize the opening fight too? WHY DO THESE INDIGNITIES TO FAUST HE WAS THE BEST.) It's the massive overcorrection we were expecting after Gordias, but then they took the players claiming they were fine with mechanics checks seriously and we had to detour through Midas before establishing that both strict DPS and strict mechanics checks are simply too hard.
The biggest disappointment of EU fanfest is still the lack of commitment to a third difficulty. While groups aren't walling and disbanding this tier, the lack of anything to do without a Savage SCoB equivalent is leading to a lot of planned 4-month+ breaks.
The biggest disappointment of EU fanfest is still the lack of commitment to a third difficulty. While groups aren't walling and disbanding this tier, the lack of anything to do without a Savage SCoB equivalent is leading to a lot of planned 4-month+ breaks.
Lunafreya Nox Fleuret
Member
I thought the thread title was always a joke......
UtterlyPerplexed
Member
Having not actually done Creator Savage myself (can't really be arsed to commit to raiding these days anyway), I presumed it was serious. ¯\_(ツ_/¯
_/¯I don't think we're getting a true third difficulty. At most, I could see them making one or two harder version of existing raid fights to keep us busy during odd patches since they're open to the idea of only doing some bosses (eg Ozma) that they find interesting. Which could be decent as long as it's really challenging. I'm certainly not getting my hopes up for a whole new tier.
Well to be honest no one but the most hardcore was doing savage then. At least in gaf, garf, science and fantasia bets where the thing to do in the four+ months wait
At this point Literally Anything would be a step up; they like to share stories about how overtuned everything is after the first pass, so if they just wanted to freeze off copies of fights at those levels like they did with Savage SCoB I'd take it, but I'd also probably be happy with just Savage Primals.
I just want something to go into and fail at again because I need to get better, not just because I need time to learn dance steps.
i130 Savage actually did have a decent revival at the end of Final Coil. It wasn't super common, and it wasn't what GAF was doing en masse, but there was a tier of groups that did go back to try it out for the challenge (wait--weren't you in one? oh my god coil was so long ago.) Even GAF's fairly midcore raid community had a couple of groups taking on various floors. It wasn't the most hardcore, because they took their runs at it at i110, but it existed as just something to do. The most important part was that it didn't get nerfed or echoed into irrelevance when FCoB hit, which is what Alex has done to everything, so it still maintained some vestiges of challenge. The hypothetical third difficulty could fill this slot go-forward, because right now we have n o t h i n g.
unless i decide to go back and try to two man t7s but that sounds like suffering
I will be honest. This entire post from beginning to end. Not a single sentence made a lick of sense to me. Lol!
At the fanfest Yoshida seemed pretty much done with listening to the community when it comes to difficulty.
IIRC his answer to the question of whether Creator was too hard was pretty much :
"First you said coil was too easy so we gave you Gordias.
Then you complained Gordias was too hard due the dps checks so we gave you Middas with more mechanical checks and less dps checks.
But you still complained it was too hard and clear numbers proved this.
Now we gave you Creator and the clear numbers where a massive improvement and more people started raiding again.
And now you ask if it isn't too easy?
I don't think you guys don't really know what you want
I don't trust anyone anymore."
IIRC his answer to the question of whether Creator was too hard was pretty much :
"First you said coil was too easy so we gave you Gordias.
Then you complained Gordias was too hard due the dps checks so we gave you Middas with more mechanical checks and less dps checks.
But you still complained it was too hard and clear numbers proved this.
Now we gave you Creator and the clear numbers where a massive improvement and more people started raiding again.
And now you ask if it isn't too easy?
I don't think you guys don't really know what you want
I don't trust anyone anymore."
I will forever be disappointed they don't use the Minstrel to just do wacky silly shit with fights. They have an in-game, lore explained way to just rehash fights with an over the top twist and not break continuinity what-so-ever. Why not fight a super Faust that eventually absorbs Alexander for his final phase? Complete with the Minstrel just able to go "I'm telling the story, dealwithit" to it.
Use your shit guys :| I want to see their fight creativity with a backbone to it.
Because the community is some singular entity with one collective opinion.
Who wants to be the one to point out to Yoshida that more than five people play this game and they have a range of things they want
is it me
I'll totally do it
I'm not asking that they redirect the difficulty of the main anything or invest resources creating new models to cater to me. I'm mostly just asking that instead of just telling us how hard this stuff used to be, they occasionally throw it out there so we can see and I can go back to trying to figure out when to blood4blood without exploding.
Does this help:
is it me
I'll totally do it
I'm not asking that they redirect the difficulty of the main anything or invest resources creating new models to cater to me. I'm mostly just asking that instead of just telling us how hard this stuff used to be, they occasionally throw it out there so we can see and I can go back to trying to figure out when to blood4blood without exploding.
Does this help:
It's almost like the community isn't a uniform blob.
That said I don't think every design choice in Heavensward can be handwaved away with "Well, they cater to majority".
They definitely had a sense of balance in ARR that was curiously lost on Heavensward.
I'm also surprised that despite long history of ilvl capping instances they still somehow seemed unprepared for stat scaling between the beginning and the end of the expansion. As evidence by nearly every fight since 3.4.
I don't have ready answers to this difficulty dilemma other than "design the game better, goddamn it" but here's some easy bandaids. Balance raid difficulty around coil, release story mode and savage mode on odd patches. Take a good hard look at Refurbisher and Zurvan and never do anything like that again. Stop handholding people, quests should be a challenge, dungeons should be a challenge. Or just admit defeat and never put anything remotely difficult in the game again, because when players spend 150 hours coming up to The Final Step of Faith and suddenly the game is hard, it is abnormal. If you can't fix people simply not pressing their buttons, stop letting encounters keel over from "too much" dps (aka dps that comes out when you press buttons). Maybe instead of putting a self-defeating debuff on the boss, don't design two stacking strikes back to back punctuated by three large aoe balls, but make the encounter differently. This entire tier may have jolted raiding a bit but it also made some think if ARR successes weren't a fluke.
That said I don't think every design choice in Heavensward can be handwaved away with "Well, they cater to majority".
They definitely had a sense of balance in ARR that was curiously lost on Heavensward.
I'm also surprised that despite long history of ilvl capping instances they still somehow seemed unprepared for stat scaling between the beginning and the end of the expansion. As evidence by nearly every fight since 3.4.
I don't have ready answers to this difficulty dilemma other than "design the game better, goddamn it" but here's some easy bandaids. Balance raid difficulty around coil, release story mode and savage mode on odd patches. Take a good hard look at Refurbisher and Zurvan and never do anything like that again. Stop handholding people, quests should be a challenge, dungeons should be a challenge. Or just admit defeat and never put anything remotely difficult in the game again, because when players spend 150 hours coming up to The Final Step of Faith and suddenly the game is hard, it is abnormal. If you can't fix people simply not pressing their buttons, stop letting encounters keel over from "too much" dps (aka dps that comes out when you press buttons). Maybe instead of putting a self-defeating debuff on the boss, don't design two stacking strikes back to back punctuated by three large aoe balls, but make the encounter differently. This entire tier may have jolted raiding a bit but it also made some think if ARR successes weren't a fluke.
Having not actually done Creator Savage myself (can't really be arsed to commit to raiding these days anyway), I presumed it was serious. ¯\_(ツ
Right - whereas Coil's story you'd experience over a few weeks with a static group, Alexander's story you can get through in an evening with a bunch of random people... on patch day. And then you unlock savage, which are canonically "what-if" fights that both never actually happened and don't add anything to the story.
By the time Creator rolled around, my static already broke up from Gordias/Midas's obnoxious difficulty, so I really no longer cared.
Yep, biggest factor for me and my wife in clearing coil in 2.x series was seeing the resolution with Bahamut's storyline. Also resulted in the only unpleasantness between actual people with elitist attitudes but that's always going to be par for the course with raiding, you can only try and cut those people out from having a voice as much as possible else you get Gordias.
After weeks on A1 and the static falling apart after A2 was a wall I haven't raided at all when some of my best experiences were from coil beating phoenix and Bahamut pre-3.0
A third tier fight or two with just some highly overtuned mechanics seems like the best compromise to throw to that very tiny but always annoying loud part of the player base because as the stats are behind Creator being highly more beneficial for the game as a whole. With the lessons learned I'm tentatively excited to try raiding again in 4.0. I went months without logging in in heavensward and that was never the case in ARR and my experience is definetly a common occurrence that the dev team will have to keep in mind going forward.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
I'm sure Yoshida is aware of that, but it sounds like he's decided that the group of people who want and will actually work on high-difficulty raid content, while vocal, is too insignificant to be worth devoting energy towards. Which I'm sure sucks if you happen to be one of those hardcore raiders, but might be the better decision for the overall health of the player base.
I always find the "casual" side of raiders seem to be the ones quickest to be insulting.
Honestly, I feel like Hollow Diabolos literally killing himself is the biggest slap in the face to the player base possible. We made this really cool and hype fight to cap off the entire tier of the 24 man raid series! But we don't trust you to be able to kill him so we'll make him do it for you instead.
It's more a remark to the people who seem to use that series of quotes to mean anything; I took it as Yoshi-P making a joke and not some keen insight into the development process.
Don't get me wrong though. I think Creator will hopefully prove to have done a good thing to the raid scene for more and more people. My issue, then, is giving more of the playerbase involved there a thing to aspire to working on instead of going "Well, good enough!" If for no other reason than to give the odd-numbered patches some kind of content expected to last until the next set of content resets. To take it beyond just getting them hooked in but keeping them there as long as possible, to be blunt I guess.
A lot of it will come down to how they want to raise the skill floor for the playerbase when it comes to their encounter design so time will tell. I just hope they're not satisfied with Creator getting more people through but still leaving a content gap.
Honestly, I feel like Hollow Diabolos literally killing himself is the biggest slap in the face to the player base possible. We made this really cool and hype fight to cap off the entire tier of the 24 man raid series! But we don't trust you to be able to kill him so we'll make him do it for you instead.
It's more a remark to the people who seem to use that series of quotes to mean anything; I took it as Yoshi-P making a joke and not some keen insight into the development process.
Don't get me wrong though. I think Creator will hopefully prove to have done a good thing to the raid scene for more and more people. My issue, then, is giving more of the playerbase involved there a thing to aspire to working on instead of going "Well, good enough!" If for no other reason than to give the odd-numbered patches some kind of content expected to last until the next set of content resets. To take it beyond just getting them hooked in but keeping them there as long as possible, to be blunt I guess.
A lot of it will come down to how they want to raise the skill floor for the playerbase when it comes to their encounter design so time will tell. I just hope they're not satisfied with Creator getting more people through but still leaving a content gap.
EndcatOmega
Unconfirmed Member
When he casts Double Edge he gets a buff that gives him a bit more damage but also very quickly drains his own health until the fight is over.
That's 100% bullshit though. The "hardcore" side have their insulting attitude baked into their view on the game just by default. Like to them a lot of jokes and attacks on dps and strategy don't register as 'insults' it's just obervable fact to them.
Then when the more casual player retaliate with namecalling and stuff back they can't fathom how their self perceived statements of fact would be insulting, so in their mind they were attacked first.
We need a better term I can use than "casual" since it has that whole negative connotation to it.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
I think I understand. You want more stuff to keep you occupied, as well as to hopefully keep more people occupied for longer to keep the game more active more consistently. I'm hooked on XIV right now, but I'm not the right person to consult about this kind of stuff since I don't have much interest at the moment in doing the whole static raiding thing. Personally rather than more extremely difficult content, I'm more interested in seeing more different kinds of content, along the lines of Palace of the Dead. Having that kind of variety available is what makes me want to keep playing.
What even is a casual in the context of an MMO? If you're already willing to pay a monthly fee to play a game, then you're pretty hardcore imo.
If you're demeaning someone for not spending as much time on the game or not knowing something, it doesn't mean you're hardcore and they're a casual. It just means you're an asshole.
davidpdong
Member
I'm reading everyones reactions and not understanding a damn word. I'm like "haha just happy to be here guys!"
Stone Ocean
Member
Didn't Yoshida mention a third raid difficulty again in the EU fanfest?
Content tuned for ilvl capped people on odd patches seems like the most obvious solution
Content tuned for ilvl capped people on odd patches seems like the most obvious solution
I've also come to accept this feeling.
Lunafreya Nox Fleuret
Member
No title for the relic is some lulz, honestly.
Stone Ocean
Member
As long as I still get to exchange these shitty fists to skip the first step in the next relic I'm gucci
you get funny bucks for rulletes?
What he said is that if they find a way to spare resources and manpower than maybe (though it's not set in stone yet) there will be an (one) extra difficult fight for people who've cleared Floor 4 savage. He made it sound like it's a completely original fight and not a difficulty level because... oh Lord Almighty, Yoshida moves in mysterious ways.
Stone Ocean
Member
Too busy using resources on Proto Ultima
Ho boy I'll never let this shitstain of a fight go even if I love going back to an extra set of accessories and hope this becomes the norm.
Hunting logs, forgot they existed! Also, about House of the Dead, its locked behind the expansion right? What exactly is it?
Facts aren't insults. If people are being dicks about things, they can be insulting with facts, but point-blank stating that a certain strategy is going to get you killed, or that a group literally is not putting up the damage required to beat enrage, or that somebody is making a few key rotation problems (or just flat-out not pushing buttons every GCD) that are holding them back aren't inherently insults and don't deserve outrage and name calling in return.
It gets awkward when statements of fact are treated like insults, because the game thusfar has been absolutely horrible at teaching people how to play or providing player feedback on its own, so you're either hearing it from other players or you're never being told there's room to grow. The latter isn't good.
Like, I'm happy to go in and wipe for six hours with a bunch of people who are underperforming, but trying. I'm also likely to point out if hard enrage is going to be an issue, because it would be disrespectful of their time to not let them know. I'm way more blunt to the people I actually raid with, because I know they'll take it in the spirit intended and not personally, but it sounds like even carefully worded factual observations are grounds for insult retaliation? Which can't be right.
I honestly find PotD post-180 more stressful than Savage if you're not in a full party. Part of what I like about PotD is that it's set up really well to let people approach it a bunch of different ways and define their own level of challenge; they got to serve multiple audiences with the same content. Getting a clean 180 Behemoth kill two man is still probably one of the most exciting moments I got out of the post-3.4 content cycle.
Which is ultimately where I'd like third difficulty to go--at first only people who want their teeth kicked in, 20 iLevels later people looking for a more moderate challenge, 20 more iLevels later it's fairly easy but can still kill you, etc. The vertical nature of content right now means things go from relevant to basically faceroll as soon as the next tier's out, without much middle ground (A8S still has some teeth to it, but at the same time overgear+echo was an immediate massive difficulty reduction.)
It gets awkward when statements of fact are treated like insults, because the game thusfar has been absolutely horrible at teaching people how to play or providing player feedback on its own, so you're either hearing it from other players or you're never being told there's room to grow. The latter isn't good.
Like, I'm happy to go in and wipe for six hours with a bunch of people who are underperforming, but trying. I'm also likely to point out if hard enrage is going to be an issue, because it would be disrespectful of their time to not let them know. I'm way more blunt to the people I actually raid with, because I know they'll take it in the spirit intended and not personally, but it sounds like even carefully worded factual observations are grounds for insult retaliation? Which can't be right.
I honestly find PotD post-180 more stressful than Savage if you're not in a full party. Part of what I like about PotD is that it's set up really well to let people approach it a bunch of different ways and define their own level of challenge; they got to serve multiple audiences with the same content. Getting a clean 180 Behemoth kill two man is still probably one of the most exciting moments I got out of the post-3.4 content cycle.
Which is ultimately where I'd like third difficulty to go--at first only people who want their teeth kicked in, 20 iLevels later people looking for a more moderate challenge, 20 more iLevels later it's fairly easy but can still kill you, etc. The vertical nature of content right now means things go from relevant to basically faceroll as soon as the next tier's out, without much middle ground (A8S still has some teeth to it, but at the same time overgear+echo was an immediate massive difficulty reduction.)
Stone Ocean
Member
Pretty sure PoTD isn't exclusive to HW
POTD (Deep Dungeon) is basically a roguelike mode where you go through randomly generated dungeons with a separate leveling and item system, with bosses every 10 floors.
the_sun_king
Member
In addition to this, a more bang for your buck method is to do Centurion Clan hunts, buy the old i200 gear and then turn those in for GC seals. It's how I got to First Lieutenant w/ Maelstrom in under a week after switching from Twin Adders.
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