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Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward |OT| Raiders of the Void Ark

Valor

Member
They basically fixed up the loot system to work super great for statics. It's still bizarrely causal unfriendly for the causal raid.

The only way any loot system would be casual friendly would be if you cleared it and got to pick your desired item deposited into your bag. I think it's as casual friendly as you're gonna get.
 

Sorian

Banned
The only way any loot system would be casual friendly would be if you cleared it and got to pick your desired item deposited into your bag. I think it's as casual friendly as you're gonna get.

Let me put this through the SE transformer and see how it can be corrupted and made terrible.

*beep* *beep* *boop*

*ding*

Alright, let's see here:

Upon clearing a floor of the normal version of Alexander, a random item will be place into everyone's inventory. The same rule applies that restricts each character to one item per floor per week.

\o/
 

iammeiam

Member
The only way any loot system would be casual friendly would be if you cleared it and got to pick your desired item deposited into your bag. I think it's as casual friendly as you're gonna get.

No? You are guaranteed one weapon per ten Ravana EX kills. You are guaranteed an i210 accessory per four A1S clears. Etc. they have a system in place for most other content that allows you guaranteed loot eventually, regardless of RNG and other party members (A1S admittedly won't matter until like... 3.2, but they've set it up.) It was one of the big philosophy changes of HW.

You're fighting RNG and up to 7 other people forever for Alex Normal loot unless you roll premade (and joining a farm PF essentially prohibits you from just doing a couple runs here and there.) If you don't see how the former loot system is considerably more casual friendly then the latter, I can't help you, and it's extremely confusing that they did the guaranteed loot for everything but normal.
 
So if I'm reading this right they accomplish this without even having Normal Alexander Gear? I got to say that's impressive.

Without going in this morning to clear A1-4 normal for any more 190 gear they might be missing. They have two week's worth. They basically just went in with what they had yesterday unless they got good 210 drops from A1-2S.
 

scy

Member
The only way any loot system would be casual friendly would be if you cleared it and got to pick your desired item deposited into your bag. I think it's as casual friendly as you're gonna get.

It's fairly unfriendly to those forced into DF while simultaneously being the best way to keep more people in the DF. That's about the only logical reason I can see for it not having a weekly reset token currency or something: To keep more people running longer.

It's an at-a-glance friendly sort of thing but kind of misses the mark entirely for a system meant to be an introduction to the raid content.

Edit: Alternatively, it's not that bad if you literally couldn't care less about what drop you got. If you're after a targeted piece, it gets pretty bad to deal with up to 7 people competing and then RNG. Every option dropping as a minimum helps curb the drop RNG but it's still an up-to-7 person competition every time.

Yeah doing Savage A3 would be impossible with absolutely 0 alex normal gear.

I think people are just misreading the course of events. They went into A1S, A2S, and then one-shot A3S this week. No Esoterics farmed, no Alex Normal farmed for this week but they definitely had previous weeks of Alex stuff.
 

Tabris

Member
Honestly, the new system is perfect for static or PFer runs. The issue there would be the times when you would need to run 4+ times for that last item someone needed but wouldn't drop.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
I don't really think the system being PF-friendly is a problem.
MMOs are easier when you cooperate with others. Who knew?
 

Valor

Member
I guess I just don't agree with the design philosophy of everything gives tokens. What will happen when the new CT comes out and they just have the one piece of loot per boss structure? Should they add tokens to that as well so you can eventually buy that gear from a vendor? Where is the line drawn? That's the part I'm not quite understanding. Primal weapons I can understand, and Savage Alex I get. I just don't really see the necessity of giving everyone eventual guaranteed loot. At that point why even have loot drop when you can just get a participation badge and eventually turn it into pieces you want?

Edit:
I don't really think the system being PF-friendly is a problem.
MMOs are easier when you cooperate with others. Who knew?
Maybe I'm on the wrong side of the argument when I'm in agreement with Tabris and Frumix. Have I lived long enough to see myself become the villain?
 

iammeiam

Member
Because people bitched about non-token systems to the point it was deemed worthwhile to add them?

Realistically, people DFing Alex are already in for a rougher time. Each of their runs will be more annoying and likely to fail. Rewarding perserverence there, specifically, in the form of "look, keep beating your head against it and we'll throw you a bone." makes sense to me?

Alex normal, despite hypothetically being casual oriented, is pretty heavily tilted towards favoring premades if you want rewards. The patch basically made it a guaranteed loot piñata for statics which, hurray? It's better than it was, but it's the minimum effort fix and kind of does the least for the people this was supposed to be for.
 

Sorian

Banned
Alex normal, despite hypothetically being casual oriented, is pretty heavily tilted towards favoring premades if you want rewards. The patch basically made it a guaranteed loot piñata for statics which, hurray? It's better than it was, but it's the minimum effort fix and kind of does the least for the people this was supposed to be for.

I'd argue that people only doing Alex normal were fine before and still fine now and this change was only meant for statics because they do need it. The casual player not doing Savage can dick around in normal all week having bad luck on drops and whatever. They'll probably get their drop eventually. The group that needs to run savage shouldn't need to waste even more time from progressing in savage just to play with RNG in normal.
 

scy

Member
I guess I just don't agree with the design philosophy of everything gives tokens. What will happen when the new CT comes out and they just have the one piece of loot per boss structure? Should they add tokens to that as well so you can eventually buy that gear from a vendor? Where is the line drawn? That's the part I'm not quite understanding. Primal weapons I can understand, and Savage Alex I get. I just don't really see the necessity of giving everyone eventual guaranteed loot. At that point why even have loot drop when you can just get a participation badge and eventually turn it into pieces you want?

It depends? It's primarily a weird design choice since Alexander Normal is meant to be this DFable content for people to do as their introduction to the raid content (+ to experience as a piece of actual story content). You then have a loot system that is the least rewarding to them. It's not really a surprise that it's better for PF/static setups but it's more about that it's the least friendly to the intended consumers of the content.

I don't think it's a bad thing at all for content meant for the people who can't for whatever reason do a dedicated farm sort of thing to eventually get their loot. I think removing the RNG factor of seeing the thing they want is a good step forward but I still sort of wish there was an upper limit to the amount of time spent specifically for them. Right now, it alleviates some of the "bad loot luck" angle but it's still a change that doesn't necessarily favor them all that much.

Don't get me wrong, I'm personally happy with the change. It essentially just halved the amount of time it'll take to get all the loot in a premade farm party. That doesn't make me think any better of the loot system, though.
 
Just saw this post on the JPN side of the official forums. It says that they have heard all the feedback regarding how difficult/time consuming it is to get red scrips and they plan to adjust this in a hot fix next week.

Please be excited.
I know I am, still haven't touched that stuff

Good, very good. I haven't even bothered with red scrips, I still have to get my master crafter books first and the easy/cheap turn ins don't like to show up.
 

Kenai

Member
I guess I just don't agree with the design philosophy of everything gives tokens. What will happen when the new CT comes out and they just have the one piece of loot per boss structure? Should they add tokens to that as well so you can eventually buy that gear from a vendor? Where is the line drawn? That's the part I'm not quite understanding. Primal weapons I can understand, and Savage Alex I get. I just don't really see the necessity of giving everyone eventual guaranteed loot. At that point why even have loot drop when you can just get a participation badge and eventually turn it into pieces you want?

If they added one extra piece of gear per boss, removed belts from CT loot, and maybe upped the drop rate of the card at the end, it would be good enough for me. Still have only seen one Puff of Darkness and I have run WoD quite a few times. And especially after Alex NM gives loot now, a lot of that is going to (hopefully) be worthwhile vanity. Belts you can't see? Get that sh*t outta here.
 

Jayhawk

Member
Yeah, I mean there's a reason they beat it after reset and not before.

They might have found a way to push that 20k damage they needed from their best wipe before the reset without the gear, but the extra gear certainly helped.

Hurray for whatever makes me do fewer runs of Alexander normal. After two bolts this week, I am going to start gearing alts and take whatever drops.
 

Valor

Member
You've lived long enough to be everything.
You always know how to say the right thing.

Alex normal, despite hypothetically being casual oriented, is pretty heavily tilted towards favoring premades if you want rewards. The patch basically made it a guaranteed loot piñata for statics which, hurray? It's better than it was, but it's the minimum effort fix and kind of does the least for the people this was supposed to be for.

I could get behind a system that awards tokens based on weekly lockouts, I suppose. It could run into a major issue of inventory space, however. Suddenly I have Gordian Manifestos 1-4, then Alex Normal tokens 1-4, Ravana tokens, Bismarck tokens, and CT3.0 tokens which could amount to 11 inventory slots.

I'm not against token systems, really, but when everything is accessible with minimum effort then nothing has value. That's currently an issue within the game where all of these high level things are accessible to so many people that none of it is very valuable or impressive and it's just a giant landscape of grey. Maybe that's the elitist in me speaking, but I'm not much of a fan of everyone having access to everything if they put in the minimum amounts of effort.

I don't disagree that Story Mode was made for the non-raiders and it's still rather casual unfriendly I suppose but... I dunno. I just don't think the answer to the loot system is tokens. That being said, I don't have a better solution at this time, so maybe I shouldn't whinge about it.
 

Jayhawk

Member
Were the people complaining about crafting even capable of crafting the best things when 3-star items came out, or when 4-star items came out? There has always been separation between the few who could do the highest tier of crafting when stuff is released, and when the rest of the scrubs can do it. I know there are crafters who only have like 2-3 million gil and are still able to get master recipe books and cap out on red scrips. Please continue to not actually craft, it makes things easier for me. When retainers can get the materials required for a lot of different turn-in items, getting scrips is pretty easy.
 

Sorian

Banned
I could get behind a system that awards tokens based on weekly lockouts, I suppose. It could run into a major issue of inventory space, however. Suddenly I have Gordian Manifestos 1-4, then Alex Normal tokens 1-4, Ravana tokens, Bismarck tokens, and CT3.0 tokens which could amount to 11 inventory slots.

Them being inventory items is a whole other issue that they will need to fix.
 

scy

Member
Maybe that's the elitist in me speaking, but I'm not much of a fan of everyone having access to everything if they put in the minimum amounts of effort.

I need a reaction gif for this.

And I mean, the current system is basically exactly that you get what you want with the minimum effort. You're just part of the "you" there. It's a fairly sliding scale of where to draw the line at for "everyone" I suppose.

I don't disagree that Story Mode was made for the non-raiders and it's still rather casual unfriendly I suppose but... I dunno. I just don't think the answer to the loot system is tokens. That being said, I don't have a better solution at this time, so maybe I shouldn't whinge about it.

It could very well be something else entirely, tokens are just the easy way out since it's not hard to design a system. I mean, there's a good argument to be made that flooding it with drops will eventually take care of it (currently, up to 50% of the people can win per clear). I'd say the biggest problem for this is there's probably too many tokens in general. They could've gotten away with maybe 4 total tokens (Accessories+Belt, Hat Gloves Boots, Chest, Pants) and it simplifies the situation significantly.
 

iammeiam

Member
I could get behind a system that awards tokens based on weekly lockouts, I suppose. It could run into a major issue of inventory space, however. Suddenly I have Gordian Manifestos 1-4, then Alex Normal tokens 1-4, Ravana tokens, Bismarck tokens, and CT3.0 tokens which could amount to 11 inventory slots.

Tokens not being key items is dumb as hell; I have tokens from both brands of Alex and both Primals in my inventory right now and am petrified of accidentally junking one. Just make them key items or something!

I'm not against token systems, really, but when everything is accessible with minimum effort then nothing has value. That's currently an issue within the game where all of these high level things are accessible to so many people that none of it is very valuable or impressive and it's just a giant landscape of grey. Maybe that's the elitist in me speaking, but I'm not much of a fan of everyone having access to everything if they put in the minimum amounts of effort.

Two things:

- I have to work a hell of a lot harder in DF Alex than I do in premade Alex. Rewarding that isn't rewarding nothing.

- Alex Normal gear isn't high-end gear; it doesn't share an ilevel or overlap with any of the actual endgame stuff. It's disposable interim gear, there to bridge between Law and Eso but never to really be a destination for anyone. Even casuals will just get Eso gear eventually. Preserving the specialness of Alex normal gear is assigning it value it never really had; it's some of the most obvious treadmill gear in the game.
 

Jayhawk

Member
Fun fact for quarantine mechanic in A4: If you're doing the Manderville dance or another persistent dance when being booted out of quarantine, you continue to do the dance instead of being flipped around in the tunnel. When you finally land, your character does the fall animation and then goes back to dancing. Maybe this tidbit of information will be useful for those groups trying A4S this week.
 

Sorian

Banned
Fun fact for quarantine mechanic in A4: If you're doing the Manderville dance or another persistent dance when being booted out of quarantine, you continue to do the dance instead of being flipped around in the tunnel. When you finally land, your character does the fall animation and then goes back to dancing. Maybe this tidbit of information will be useful for those groups trying A4S this week.

They'll find that this allows them to use an ability one frame earlier leading to an overall dps gain of 400.
 

Valor

Member
I need a reaction gif for this.

And I mean, the current system is basically exactly that you get what you want with the minimum effort. You're just part of the "you" there. It's a fairly sliding scale of where to draw the line at for "everyone" I suppose.
I'm honestly not sure how to take this. Not sure if it's a shot at me or a discussion piece, but I'm going to assume it's the latter. Like I prefaced, though, I realize my assessment may be skewed a bit. It doesn't make the annoyance any more or less real. I'm afraid going any further down this rabbit hole is going to come back and bite me in the ass, so I'm just gonna leave it there.

Agreed on the less tokens/inventory stuff, obviously. It's a fucking joke that there's a token for a belt. At least they didn't make each accessory slot its own token. How did they get that so wrong and yet got the Alex Savage token system so much more right in comparison? Baffling, really.

Tokens not being key items is dumb as hell; I have tokens from both brands of Alex and both Primals in my inventory right now and am petrified of accidentally junking one. Just make them key items or something!
Especially when they share icons with crafting materials. Where did I get these Bronze Rings oh wait that was my Tarnished Spring why did I just junk it.

- I have to work a hell of a lot harder in DF Alex than I do in premade Alex. Rewarding that isn't rewarding nothing.

- Alex Normal gear isn't high-end gear; it doesn't share an ilevel or overlap with any of the actual endgame stuff. It's disposable interim gear, there to bridge between Law and Eso but never to really be a destination for anyone. Even casuals will just get Eso gear eventually. Preserving the specialness of Alex normal gear is assigning it value it never really had; it's some of the most obvious treadmill gear in the game.
My issue isn't really with Alexander gear particularly, moreso with the burgeoning mindset that tokens should be everywhere. My argument is definitely a Slippery Slope one, and I am exceedingly aware of it.

Truth is, I don't care enough about Alexander normal, Ravana weapons, or any of that to really want a change. I'm looking down the road at what this game will look like at the end of 3.x and I dunno if I'd like the current feeling of progression to exist then. That goes for beyond battle classes to gathering/crafting/etc. I know we aren't all geared to the end of 3.0 and waiting for 3.1 because we're out of stuff to do, but... hmm. Maybe I'm just not into change. I'm old and set in my ways.
 

scy

Member
I'm honestly not sure how to take this. Not sure if it's a shot at me or a discussion piece, but I'm going to assume it's the latter. Like I prefaced, though, I realize my assessment may be skewed a bit. It doesn't make the annoyance any more or less real. I'm afraid going any further down this rabbit hole is going to come back and bite me in the ass, so I'm just gonna leave it there.

Agreed on the less tokens/inventory stuff, obviously. It's a fucking joke that there's a token for a belt. At least they didn't make each accessory slot its own token. How did they get that so wrong and yet got the Alex Savage token system so much more right in comparison? Baffling, really.

Re-reading I realize the entirely lack of clarity on the point I was making. I think the people currently reaping the "everyone gets items with minimal effort" part of Alexander Normal are those of us with statics or whatever connections to just farm everything in a single go. We're the ones approaching the "get items with minimal effort" point, not the general playerbase. So to me it seems like it's merely an argument of where you're drawing the line at "everyone" should get items.

And, yeah, I really think the Normal system being the same as the Savage system except with the tokens as a weekly reset thing would have been closer to ideal. Mirroring the loot system for the two modes but making it more obvious one is intended as stopgap gear and the other is meant for longer durations.

Truth is, I don't care enough about Alexander normal, Ravana weapons, or any of that to really want a change. I'm looking down the road at what this game will look like at the end of 3.x and I dunno if I'd like the current feeling of progression to exist then. That goes for beyond battle classes to gathering/crafting/etc. I know we aren't all geared to the end of 3.0 and waiting for 3.1 because we're out of stuff to do, but... hmm. Maybe I'm just not into change. I'm old and set in my ways.

Ultimately, my point is more I feel the Savage loot system does what raiders wanted: You get items to drop and you eventually just buy the items you want. You gear "faster" but it's in month cycles so, honestly, it's at best an RNG tempering mechanism and nothing that greatly impacts progression. I just think that same feel for "this loot system makes sense" was completely missed for Normal.

I do agree that getting closer and closer to having a checklist of quotas to reach per week is not a good thing.
 

iammeiam

Member
My issue isn't really with Alexander gear particularly, moreso with the burgeoning mindset that tokens should be everywhere. My argument is definitely a Slippery Slope one, and I am exceedingly aware of it.

See, I feel like 7/1 clears of Savage guaranteeing page drops means the slope is slippery at its peak, and people are just objecting to making it easier for the common folk to play in the mud pit at the bottom. Savage gear exclusivity is going to go out the window relatively fast, since you'll be able to sell/carry people to guaranteed eventual loot without hurting your own chances (I mean, I'd like to say the idea of planning to get carried or buy runs weekly for a month or two is crazy, but I fully expect to see it happen.)

Token systems steal some of the mystery/fun from opening the chest, and I get that, but I still think Alex normal is a really really weird place to try to draw the line.
 

Sorian

Banned
It's times like this that I remember how much you like to hurt me.

don't worry though, it'll drop the week after I turn in my lootstamps

Lootstamps, oh, is it welfare gear if we don't get it from the chest itself? I could see the community backing that.
 

iammeiam

Member
At least it's the pointy half of the weapon.

It's times like this that I remember how much you like to hurt me.

don't worry though, it'll drop the week after I turn in my lootstamps

What? It doesn't even have spellspeed on it. Garbage.

you're not special, I like hurting everyone.
 
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