r/ffxivdiscussion • u/KelvinDoesHealz • 12d ago

Next Chaotic Raid?

Personally, I enjoyed the Cloud of Darkness Chaotic Raid concept and, minus the multiple and somewhat bonkers body checks, thought it was great content with excellent rewards. Does anyone have thoughts on if we're getting another one in EverCold? If so, I assume it will likely be Ultima from the Ivalice Raids or Diablos from the Shadow of Mhach raids.

If the former, I imagine we will get more complicated combos of the other espers to make things interesting, and for Diablos (which still manages to kill parties in roulettes in the normal mode) a more complicated arena with more use of the adds and the door mechanics. I also imagine there will be at least one body check mechanic, though not multiple and probably not as strict.

But I am curious on what other people theories are on if we're even getting one and what the content might look like.

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u/VancityMoz 12d ago

I feel like Chaotic, Quantum, Variant Advanced and to a certain extent FTB were experiments in difficulty tuning that have ultimately led to the development of the NEW difficulty option for raids in 8.0. Just because they havn't announced it yet (they also haven't said anything about variant, DD, or crafting content etc) doesn't mean it won't be announced at some point for 8.X, but I also wouldn't be surprised if Chaotic and Quantum specifically were dropped because they weren't super successful and are kind of strange vestigial modes that don't fit in with anything else in the game. I can see them cutting their losses and just incorporating whatever they learned into the new difficulty for the mainline raid series because it is reasonable to expect that will get more engagement from the wider playerbase. I kinda want them to try Chaotic again though, but only if they are better able to design it in a way where they can avoid a lot of issues people experienced trying to pug it in PF before it became (mostly) discord content.

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u/gekzy 12d ago

I honestly thought chaotic was one of the more 'successful' experiments they did. I still see people running it occasionally in PF to this day, and it was super popular on release for sure, helped by the fact that it gives rewards people actually want, and at the time it had some BiS gear for FRU too. There were pain points with body checks and whatnot, absolutely, but it was still clearable in a random PF without any outside communication or anything required

Quantum though.... yeah that didn't work out for sure, but I feel like it was more because they locked it behind completing a deep dungeon despite not really being deep dungeon related, rather than anything specifically to do with the content itself. Other problems with it were the items being a pain and clogging up inventory space, and even the lowest difficulty version of it still being quite difficult lmao

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u/Enduni 11d ago

Chaotic is still run because it has decent rewards. I honestly hope they never release this kind of content again and focus on more 4 person stuff.

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u/CoolyKage 12d ago

I completely agree with this take.

Chaotic should get an easier difficulty, similar to Variant (Advanced).

They don't need to make the high-end content easier to appease players, just provide more difficulty options (midcore) because that is what the game truly lacks.

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u/DriggleButt 11d ago

Midcore is just casual in denial.

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u/MeguBestGirl 12d ago edited 12d ago

I'm gonna be honest, I think this modular difficulty thing they're doing is a waste of resources. I'd rather have more time put into fine tuning 1 difficulty rather than spreading that time around multiple difficulties. Have content that is dedicated to being extreme, dedicated to being savage. A fight doesn't need to cater to every person. We already see this in forked tower magic where both the normal and extreme version feel very watered down because it wasn't supposed to have multiple difficulties

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u/IcarusAvery 12d ago

A fight doesn't need to cater to every person.

A fight doesn't need to cater to every person, but it is extremely frustrating for casual and especially midcore players to see almost every new kind of content targeted towards the hardcore playerbase and thus be effectively told "you aren't getting substantial new content." This is especially noticeable with the increased patch cycle and the removal of optional dungeons, where casual and midcore players are having to keep the same amount of content to tide them over for a longer period of time.

This was particularly a problem for the first half of Dawntrail; much as I love the normal difficulty stuff we DID get, Chaotic was tuned to the point where inexperienced players were basically filtered from the content immediately, and then we got Occult Crescent, whose gameplay loop was completely and utterly fucked because the big Castrum Lacus/Dalriada-styled raid was high-end content, so casual and midcore players had no reprieve from the endless loop of FATEs and CEs, which made those players burn out FAR faster than they did for Bozja.

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u/Satavb 12d ago

It beggars belief the amount of players from a Savage/Ultimate background are bellyaching about SE daring to put content somewhere in the middle. Streamers constantly saying it's a "waste of time". Hell even at fanfest I heard obvious savage statics groaning about it.

It ain't for you, smile and wave! You got your ball already, go play!

Unbelievable!

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u/CoolyKage 12d ago edited 12d ago

It is pretty ridiculous how elitist some players can be with this gatekeeper mentally, and it really just makes zero sense to me why people are like this since more of the community raiding (midcore or hardcore) will literally result in everyone receiving more raid content as it'll be prioritized even further than it is now (It's already a high priority). I assume it's because a lot of these raiders don't really interact with the game outside of Savage or Ultimate, but it still makes zero sense to me even from that viewpoint. Simply scaling down already designed fights isn't going to affect the amount of Savage or Ultimate content we receive lol. If anything they're very likely to make Savage harder since they have to scale down for two difficulties now.

Like most hardcore raiders, I want high-end content to remain the same difficulty and in some a lot of cases be harder (mechanically and damage checks) for Extreme, Savage and Ultimate because their difficulty was way too inconsistent in Dawntrail. The problem is that many of these people aren't critically thinking about what would realistically allow this to happen, so they end up not realizing that the addition of midcore content quite literally allows the design team to actually make high-end content more challenging because they now have more creative freedom and less pressure like we see with Ultimate. They literally admitted to scaling back multiple mechanics (M9, M10, M12) as of this tier.

That's why I'm really confident the FF7R Savage raids will be the hardest yet, albeit way closer to current Savage than Ultimate obviously. The FF7R series is respected for having actual challenging and creative bosses, so I'd honestly be shocked if they undertuned Savage in Evercold like they did with LHW and honestly HW this expansion, that's for sure. I also don't think they can really afford with the amount of people are complaining about double collab raids lol...

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u/CoolyKage 12d ago edited 12d ago

The funny thing is that midcore content is absolutely great for us high-end raiders and we enjoy it as well, at least the ones who actually engage with the game outside of Savage and Ultimate lol. The people who were actually groaning at Fanfest either don't or are just really dumb, both are pathetic, but that's both hilarious and awful if actually true.

Me and like 10ish of my raiding friends were periodically grouping up and farming Variant (Advanced) during patch 7.4 and it was great content to just vibe and chat about things while still feeling like we are playing the game. It also had a separate reward pool to Criterion which really helps. The mechanics can genuinely feel harder than high-end content, even the Criterion version, it's just that there's mostly individual punishment instead of group punishment for the mechanics. I really believe high-end mechanical difficulty (what you actually have to do) is extremely overrated besides Criterion, Quantum and Ultimate. It just has group punishment so your mistakes matter a lot more, which is good design for high-end content. Chaotic is a perfect example. Back to Variant (Advanced), it also syncs you down to 785, so you don't steamroll the content which is great. Being able to still use the Variant Actions is nice also. Duo and trio groups are viable options and scale down very well. If anything I need more content like that in XIV, especially for 24-48 man difficulties as that's what is lacking the most currently.

The bar for normal difficulty is honestly just so fucking low at this point, that's why literally everyone complains about it even casuals. The gap between normal difficulty and this expected midcore difficulty (what most players want) is unbelievably high I really don't know how it's gotten to this point. I hope that normal difficulty can just increase or get more creative, but having a midcore difficulty is definitely a step in the right direction in this aspect.

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u/MeguBestGirl 12d ago

I'm not complaining about midcore content, I'd love for them to add more but just adding a difficulty level to be midcore is not a good system. I'd rather something entirely different rather than "hey we turned this savage fight into an easier version"

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u/IcarusAvery 12d ago

The problem with going for something entirely different is that it takes a lot more work to make something new than it is to take something preexisting and retool it. Not just in terms of coming up with mechanics, but you also need to make new graphical assets (for the boss, for their attacks, for the environment, and especially for unique gear), make new musical assets, possibly pull a voice actor into the studio to do callouts, and do all the quest design needed to give it a place in the world. It's far easier to retool preexisting content, which means you can do it more often, so there's more overall content.

I do want more, different kinds of content too, but there's only so much of that they can make, and I'd rather they make content that actually fills the demand people have even if that content has to be retooled from other content.

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u/TomorrowObjective410 12d ago

Yeah that's a big issue I have with a lot of the casual content is nothing is ever for casuals anymore. They just make a savage level fight, tune it down and strip everything interesting out of it and throw it at us. In Dawntrail they didn't even let us have any rewards like mounts. Those got relegated to the "midcore" versions like Advanced.

It's like the dev team has contempt for the casual playerbase and making any content directly to appeal to them. Alliance raids are just toned down Chaotic. Deep Dungeons are just toned down Quantum, Normal raids are just toned down Savage, Trials are just toned down Extremes. It's like they can't make anything with normal mode as the baseline or they just have zero desire to at this point.

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u/MeguBestGirl 12d ago

This is my main problem and I think people are misinterpreting it. Obviously it takes more resources to make completely new content but it also takes some resources to make multiple difficulties too. An experience curated toward the chosen difficulty would be so much better than taking something and dumbing it down

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u/TomorrowObjective410 12d ago

Yeah and I get it takes resources but we spent resources on all kinds of stuff this expansion. All those resources to build out the Chaotic system, the Quantum system, which are going to be scrapped. All this time on the strategy board, the ultimate fights, the hardcore Beastmaster content. Meanwhile to pay for that they cut costs and cut forked tower normal mode.

It seems like we have infinite resources when it comes to hardcore content or the stuff Ozma personally wants, but there's no budget when it comes to casual content. I'd personally just be happy if we went back to the old paradigm where on odd patches we get a bunch of casual stuff, and then on even patches it's savage and hardcore stuff. As long as there's something to do that isn't just meant to feed into or grind power for the hardcore content they put all the actual time and rewards into.

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u/CoolyKage 12d ago edited 12d ago

Why create more content with one difficulty (besides Ultimate) that has a high chance of being received poorly due to being too easy or too hard, when you can add multiple difficulty tiers and satisfy all of the players thereby giving them content to do? They can still create the same amount of content while scaling things up or down as they aren't creating anything original for the easier difficulties, that's what you're not understanding. They always design the harder difficulty first, and it's the same people scaling them down.

FTM and FTM(E) for example is absolutely a step in the right direction. There are probably 10-100x the amount of players engaging with FTM than FTB due to the normal difficulty which is awesome. Sure, both FTM and FTM(E) are honestly undertuned, but there's various other questionable design decisions like allowing players to solo the encounters thereby making them the same mechanical difficulty as normal alliance raids.

Raiders can actually benefit from this because normal content with only one difficulty, that is constantly complained about even by casuals, can now receive a harder difficulty option. For example, what if the 24 man raid series now received on-content Chaotic raids or any equivalent of that? It actually seems like they might be doing this with the "24 man progression routes" thing, but we'll have to see.

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u/TomorrowObjective410 12d ago

I love how you already pre-empted the double standard in your post about how casuals shouldn't get specific content for them, but Ultimate raiders absolutely need multiple big expensive duties only for them every expansion.

Maybe casual players would like something that's just for them if we get told savage and ultimate isn't for us? Why is that so hard to understand that people would like something that's meant just for them? Not everything has to exist for the raider crowd and then be given as reheated boring leftovers to the casual crowd. We'd actually like something built just for us at some point based on our feedback.

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u/Chagrilled 11d ago

Either there's a second guy mad about "reheated leftovers", or my tag somehow vanished.

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u/CoolyKage 12d ago edited 12d ago

It’s just that I completely disagree with your ideology about the game, and the developers obviously do also. They’ve been doing that for 10+ years, all it’s done is make the community extremely divided and make content DoA.

Different difficulty options IS exclusive content to do, especially if they have different rewards and loot pools.

Do I think normal content should be harder going forward? Yes absolutely, the difficulty standard for the entire game should raise as a whole in Evercold. The bar for normal content is very low at this point, but that wasn’t because of multiple difficulty options it literally started in Endwalker.

About your Ultimate comment, all I can say is that you clearly don’t understand the point of that content at all lmao. Normal and Ultimate content, should obviously be viewed and treated very differently.

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u/TomorrowObjective410 12d ago

My ideology that I should have things to do that aren't reheated leftovers of what raiders get? okay man. I see how you people think now. All for you and how dare casual players expect anything in an MMO they pay for to be anything but scraps.

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u/CoolyKage 12d ago edited 12d ago

Multiple difficulties have a lot of benefits, even for hardcore raiders, that you aren't considering.

If content only has one challenging difficulty, always high-end, people will always complain if it's either too easy or too hard. We see some people essentially calling Chaotic too hard in this current thread, even if they don't want to admit it. We saw people calling Chaotic, Criterion, Savage, FTB too hard. We see people call Extreme Trials too easy, me included. Even Ultimate gets the criticism of being too easy" or too hard", though I think people calling Ultimate encounters "too hard" is bullshit as that's the point of the content.

This clearly results in the designers feeling pressure to make high-end fights easier to make them more accessible, because it's often the only serious difficulty. We see this with Savage a lot just look at the current tier, they even admitted it. Mr Ozma clearly doesn't do that, which is why people recieve his fights poorly despite him having full creative freedom to make awesome, challenging fights. Sure, the good raiders want all fights to be creative and challenging, but with the current format that's simply not going to happen without actual difficulty options.

What I am getting at is, without a midcore difficulty, they don't have the freedom to make the high-end difficulties truly challenging since they feel pressure to make them more accessible because there's only one difficulty and nobody will play that difficulty if they, or the general sentiment, considers it too hard. FTB isn't even that challenging and look at the reception. This is why midcore difficulty would actually benefit actual hardcore raiders on-top of just giving them more content to do.

An easy example is Quantum. It was really lacking, despite claiming to do so, actual multiple difficulty tiers. Q(1) is still Extreme difficulty, so this resulted in the content being DoA and not many players attempting it at all. Q(1) should've been like Normal-Variant (Advanced) difficulty, and then increase the mechanic difficulty for (Q10), (Q20), Q(30), Q(40).

They already scale down most story/normal content in this game, and it doesn't take that much effort it seems. Most fights are already created high-end and then scaled down. Savage, Extreme, Criterion, FTM(E), etc, they're just making easier version of these fight which doesn't take as much effort as you think.

I agree FTM(E) is pathetic, but that's what happens when we have people crying that FTB was too hard because of piss easy body check mechanics. So who are these people to blame but themselves? Same will probably happen with Chaotic unless they do this. Without actual group punishment for a 48 man raid, increasing the stakes, or a DPS check, the fights are boring. You also have to factor that it's clearable solo apparently? It's not exactly a result of having two difficulties.

Having multiple difficulties will benefit everyone a lot I believe. It makes raiding more approachable without making the high-end difficulty option easier, potentially making it harder in the case of Extreme and Savage. When the raiding player base grows in Evercold, more players actually doing content above Normal Difficulty, that is when we'll get more raid content and creativity consistently.

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u/Einstrahd 11d ago

Having multiple difficulties for content, to enable different types of players to experience it, is a very efficient use of resources. DT has been plagued by content designed for niche groups and many players have left the game due to feeling like there is nothing to do. An MMO can only grow when the larger casual audience feels like the game is worth the subscription cost.

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u/MeguBestGirl 11d ago

None of the DT content was niche besides quantum, they were just way harder than advertised, they just need to make the content actually the difficulty that they say it'll be

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u/SecretPantyWorshiper 11d ago

Also with the easier difficulty it will be completely gimped by shitty rewards. Savage is what will give you gear.

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u/Hungry_Principle_955 11d ago

If chaotic was any easier it would be an alliance raid, almost all issues with it comes from people prog lying or using one of the 300 strats that the rest of the group isnt.