Bigger helps with the epic feels of a raid a bit, but I really do think that the raid size is good where it is at now. It's a struggle as it is trying to find eight people that can do this content in a reasonable amount of man hours. If raids went up to say, sixteen, I think we would undoubtedly have to see the content diminish in difficulty.

Larger raids groups make it so the dps checks and healing checks really can't be as as right. And you could potentially lose people and it is still just fine. It's harder to control that many people so the mechanics simply just have to be more forgiving. I don't like the notion of "oh we can carry this person" easier to down the hardest content. I guess the flip side is you could raid with people you enjoy a lot easier.

Plus I just think that FF14's player base is older than WoW's player base for the most part. Most of us have jobs and everything and a lot going on. I think it would be too difficult to coordinate schedules for most groups.

I am all for making FC's have things to do together. They could make something like CT but have it be a bit more difficult. Most games also have a specialization system, so more people can bring different tools to the game. They are more about using the right tools at the right time. In FF, everyone is the exact same as the person next to you, if iLevels are about equal. The idea of having many duplicate classes seems odd.

I don't like the notion of "oh we can carry this person" easier to down the hardest content.Edwin Fade

This is has been happening since the beginning of coil and why it takes other groups longer to clear content. You have to wait until the better players acquire the better gear to help push through the instances of dps checks, tanks mistiming their cooldowns, or healers mistiming heals.

Yes, if you make the raid larger, you will need to reduce the difficulty. Because it is harder to find 24 highly skilled players than it is to find 8 highly skilled players.

Though, CT they went overboard nerfing the difficulty. I always assumed that since you can't go in with full pre-made groups and if the content is too hard to PUG, the instance will be dead. If you are able to enter with a full 24, on a regular basis, you can significantly up the difficulty.

But also keep in mind, this allows SE more flexibility with mechanics (you can only do so many tethering 2 players / all stack and spread / limited boss arena / swap between 2 tanks / dive bombs).

Edit: If they up the raid size, I suspect it will be to 16. Going to 12 will break up some current 8-man groups.

Edwin >> There is nothing wrong with some duplicate classes because there is space in the raid. But, if one class is way broken compared to the rest (think BRD in early coil) where some groups ran 3 BRDs…. that sucks!

Well I would say that having duplicates in a raid is bad in the context of this game. Having multiple warlocks in a raid in WoW was ok because hypothetically you could have been destruction/affliction/demonology; …in this game though everyone is the same.

Which brings me to the thing I am hoping most for in heavensward : Player Agency. Having no control how your character performs its role is somewhat grating. The cross class system is a joke, there are no interesting decisions to be made there. Stats points are also a no brainer for most classes…and there are no decisions to be made in endgame gear since the secondary stats are not equal to each other in terms of value

Doesn't mean I would welcome talent trees; but something that gives just a little spice to my character would be welcome

Well I would say that having duplicates in a raid is bad in the context of this game. Having multiple warlocks in a raid in WoW was ok because hypothetically you could have been destruction/affliction/demonology; …in this game though everyone is the same.Cerak

I don't think your hypothetical example works. Just because you have 3 possible trees, there was only 1 that dominated for that class. Suppose you had pallies in the original. They were not viable DPS or tanks, but you would see groups run a few holy (given you had 8-10 healers, so there was a lot of space).

Even for a pure DPS class like Mage. You would only see Fire/Ice mages in original & BC. Once WotLK came out, arcane spec dominated the scene in for mage raiding.

During original/BC, I don't recall people SPECIFICALLY looking for ice mages b/c they already had fire mages.

The only reason duplicates doesn't work in FF14 is the raid size. For tanks/healers you would be severely hurting yourself if you don't have Pally/War + Sch/WHM. Pally for overall tanking survivability & additional CDs, Warrior for the godly damage debuff on the boss.

On the DPS it is slightly more flexible, but each class brings something unique to the group.
- BRD for Songs
- BLM for the best Aoe, Caster DPS
- SMN for Solid AoE, Caster DPS, 3rd Rez
- DRG for piercing debuff, Melee LB
- MNK for best single target dps, Melee LB
- NIN for damage buff, Melee LB, goad

Any raid group that is worth a damn, will have 1 BRD, 1 Caster, 1 Melee (with the 4th spot flexible).

I don't like the notion of "oh we can carry this person" easier to down the hardest content.Edwin Fade

This is has been happening since the beginning of coil and why it takes other groups longer to clear content. You have to wait until the better players acquire the better gear to help push through the instances of dps checks, tanks mistiming their cooldowns, or healers mistiming heals.Jade

I am looking at content in the game as in terms of when it is really relevant. Which is the first months after it comes out. With added time for each turn. Carry

Also, I don't think "carrying" is really going on in the game any more with the final coil for right now. At least to the degree we say. You will not down a new turn in any good amount of time unless all members are pulling their weight. It's not a carry so much anymore as people are just waiting for others to catch on to the fight. Everyone learns different and the people who are getting "carried" just simply are taking longer time to really learn their role in the fight and execute it. In fact when progressing I think carrying is a ridiculously hard thing to do in an eight man. You can only carry someone if they NEVER learn the fight and you now out gear it so much you can take it down practically without them. Which, by then, I personally think the content is now out of date. That's why server firsts, seconds, thirds, etc are so relevant. They are the people who are downing the content when it is at it's MOST difficult point.

Now if there are 16 people in a raid group…1 bad dps for example is much easier to hide, or accept. If you need to make 1600 dps from your dps classes for example. It hurts if one dies..because three people now need to make up that 400 for the time being.. If you now have eight people trying to make 3200. That 400 becomes a lot easier to make up because you know have 7 people trying to make up that 400.
So all in all it's just a preference that I prefer to raid with 7 other people who learn at the same pace, then 15 other people, and a good portion of those people don't. It just feels like less of a "team" to me and more of a crowd. I want to NOTICE them epic things my raid group does in pinches and get used to their play style. Much harder to do with more people.

The only reason duplicates doesn't work in FF14 is the raid size.Cain Fact

I think that the raid size doesn't really have much to do with it, and it's much for the same reason that you listed in your answer comparing each classes role. If each class brings a specific thing to the table, you certainly DO NOT want duplicates, because you simply want as much variety as you can. Same classes in this game are not designed at all to have variation.

I also think that WoW worked with multiple classes because of the specs. Yeah you had the cookie cutter ones, but other specs gave other benefits. I went against the grain and was demonology to start.This made me much more survivable if the fight called for it (hound gave me bonus resistances), and I could sacrifice pets to gain benefits, for things like my shadow bolt and shadow dps.

With final fantasy…there is no customization and thus no reason to bring two of the same class. It's built into the game. NO buffs stack. (mantras, etc) The LB gauge fills in a bit slower if you have duplicate classes. Even the damage types or different from all the dps. You have BLM for AOE for example. Why run two BLM if the fight doesn't call for AOE? This is also why they designed the system of being able to switch classes on one character. Because they recognized that the way they are building the game demands that you can switch classes from time to time if you don't have a very versatile group that brings many different utilities to the table.

If they do keep the Raid size at 8, how is raid comp going to be impacted? I wonder if there is going to be a lot more class switching for fights for the tanks and healers. Since their gear is highly transferrable it might make sense to say "oh SCH isn't as good as the new healer on this turn, I will switch for this one"

This is assuming of course that all 3 healers will wear the same gear. I don't see DPS getting hit too much with this since of how limited the transference of our gear is to other classes.