Eorzean Evening Post: Looking for Alexander .

Having a good Heavensturn? Personally I haven’t had time to do the quests and I’m sitting here writing and slightly panicking. I need to get that sheep before it disappears! With only a few hours left I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it. I’m currently playing Catherine on my 360 as well, so there are sheeps everywhere right now and I want my own! Better finish up this column quick…

Last week I talked a bit about what I’m hoping to accomplish during 2015. That list included the Alexander raid that’s coming in Heavensward. As a long time Final Fantasy-fan, that’s a raid you don’t want to miss out on and I’m no exception.

 As I look at my schedule, I’m not sure how much time I’d actually have to dedicate to a static. More than once a week would be difficult as it stands right now, which would mean finding a super casual group to run with. That might change, but it’s something I have to consider. So how to fix this?

One option would simply be a Looking for Raid-feature, similar to the one in World of Warcraft. It would allow me to experience Alexander without having to worry about finding a static. If it followed Blizzard’s model, it would also offer up a less difficult version of the same raid. That’d be great! But as I stop to consider it, I’m not sure I want a LFR-feature, despite being one of the players that would benefit from it. Why?

Azeroth calling!

If you played World of Warcraft “back in the day” of Vanilla, you probably remember a time when epic gear was… Well, epic. Raiders, and on my RP server there were quite few of them, would stand around posing on the bridge of Ironforge and I remember gaping in awe at the people clad in full purples. At a time when many of us were happy to get full blue gear, it was incredibly exciting to see them, despite their ego posing. They lived in another world, filled with even greater – and more challenging – adventure than I had ever personally seen.

These days, epics are everywhere in World of Warcraft. Having anything below that means that the gear is practically worthless and it grates to not have a full purple set. Timeless Isle drops epics like candy.All the challenging raid content, is simply a click and a short queue away.

For that, LFR has its uses. While I did start raiding towards the end of Vanilla, running Molten Core and Blackwing Lair, and raided my way through The Burning Crusade, I know that without LFR I’d never get to fight Garrosh in Mists of Pandaria. It allows us casual players to see (more or less) all the content the game has to offer. We get to have at least similar adventures to the raiders on the Ironforge bridge. No longer are we locked out, totally left behind by the people with more time and/or dedication than us.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s great in so many ways. A lot of people are able to enjoy World of Warcraft much more these days. They might just have a few hours to play every week and still get to save the world.

CHALLENGE OR NO

In some ways, Final Fantasy XIV already has its own LFR – the duty finder. If you want to do the Coil of Bahamut, you can sign up and wait for a group to pop. A big difference between the two games is difficulty level. In World of Warcraft, the raids you find through LFR are easier versions, while the Coils in the DF are the same as the ones you’d enter with an organized group. The first few turns are fairly easy by now, especially when you add in the gear we’re wearing these days, but as you climb the ladder towards T5 and beyond, things start to get tricky. Same goes for the extreme modes of the trials – no quarter is given only because you signed up with a random group.

So if we want a “proper” LFR in Final Fantasy XIV, we’d need three difficulty levels. We know we’ll already get two difficulty levels in Heavensward, just like the savage mode of Coil. World of Warcraft uses a similar system, with a Heroic version of the raids. But we’d need a LFR-version, a normal version and the savage version.

Again, that’s great! You get to see the content, experience Alexander, and you won’t have to worry about gear very much. In a casual world, that’s an amazing deal. And who doesn’t want to see Alexander? I’ve been 100% sold on him since he fought Bahamut in Final Fantasy IX, in one of the most dramatic scenes in a FF-game ever.

So why am I still sceptical?

DIVERSITY

I don’t mind “welfare epics” at all. They are so ingrained in World of Warcraft now that taking them out would shock people. The purple color might have been utterly and completely devalued, but it doesn’t really matter as such. I’m happy with having a LFR in that game and I don’t care about anything being “dumbed down” for us casuals/scrubs/etc. That kind of elitism is only annoying.

No, my argument boils down to a pure emotional one – I liked having those raiders stand around posing. I like seeing people wearing armor and weapons I have zero chance in hell to ever get. I like to know that there’s a whole dangerous world out there that I will probably never see. Something to dream about, something to aspire to. And once I’m there and get my first drop, the sense of victory will be so much greater.

I also think that it creates a diversity in the community. “Back in the day” (I feel old every time I write that) I didn’t mind. I still had things to do, my own projects to take care of. I knew Nefarian was out there, that Kel’thuzad was waiting in Naxxramas. When I finally got to down him in Wrath of the Lich King I actually quit the game in disgust, since the experience felt cheap. Yes, there was some form of elitism at play there – but I didn’t like what the game had become at that point. That the community would never be the same.

It’s about variation. That there are different communities, doing different things. Of course, that means that content not aimed at raiders needs to be added – but that’s something that I feel Yoshi P and his gang of developers have been really good at producing. The Zodiac weapons are great for this, it gives us casuals a project to work towards while others are off fighting Phoenix or Bahamut. Granted, it might be a stupid grind at times, but at least it’s there. And there’s always a lot of good content added every patch to keep us occupied.

I never felt cheated out of content in World of Warcraft, just because I didn’t have the time/energy to access it. While I understand people that did, to me another added raid still enriched the game as a whole.

THE ALTERNATIVE ROUTE

And, of course, in Final Fantasy XIV there’s the Crystal Tower – separate from the harder Coils of Bahamut. It comes with an exciting storyline of itself, including some of the most important characters from the main story, and gives us at least a taste of a raiding environment. It might be nothing more than a glorified dungeon, considering how relatively easy it is (as I noted a while ago, I’ve never seen a single wipe in there). But it’s big, it’s epic and – so far – fun. Running it to grab Sands and Oils of Time is yet another project for us casuals to keep us occupied without having to dedicate the time to static Coil groups.

That’s absolutely a system I can get behind – two different types of raids (including the amount of players needed) with different difficulty levels. I want to experience huge bosses with cool mechanics in such an environment, while knowing that there are even greater challenges out there. Crystal Tower works as a compromise for me and I can’t wait for World of Darkness to drop.

MISSING OUT?

I’d never use this to argue against a LFR feature as such. A proper one, with a third difficulty level, could actually benefit the game as a whole – there’s probably a lot of FFXIV players who would be very happy about it. And of course I’d use the hell out of it. As I noted earlier, this is more of an emotional argument than anything practical. It’s ultimately quite selfish.

Now it doesn’t look like Square will be adding anything like this to the game in the near future, unless the lower difficulty of Alexander is tuned much lower than the Coils. Considering that the harder difficulty is said to be even more difficult than what we have today, I doubt that’s going to happen. So my feelings are saved for the time being.

Then I start thinking about potentially missing out… But I guess that’s a sacrifice I’m actually willing to make. If nothing else, I can always stand around whatever new hub we’ll get, inspect people with cool gear and dream about that other world, filled with even greater – and more challenging – adventure than I have ever personally seen.