Revenge of the Horde brings the Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ugly - Opinion

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Since it's re-release in 2013, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (now Heavensward) has managed to keep players engaged with consistently updated and new content. It's been having an amazing run, garnering with rave reviews across the board and a strong and rising subscription base. The latest patch, titled 'Revenge of the Horde' was released just last month the game and has given the game yet another shake up with new content to be cleared. Some of the content has forced strong opinions from me. Not all of them are good...

I want to get the bad out of the way first, and believe me, it's the ugly kind of bad. The Weeping City of Mhach is the latest 24-man raid in the game and features bosses such as Calofisteri and Final Fantasy legend, Ozma. The actual raid itself is incredibly fun and well designed. It has probably the most difficult mechanics yet to get to grips with (outside of Savage Alex and Bahamut trials!) which adds a challenge to a game that some have said had begun to feel stale and easy. My problem is not with the raid itself and I actually believe that the overall design of the raid is the best one in the game yet.

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Gross but beautiful

My problem is with the fact that The Weeping City of Mhach has quickly become a cesspool for negativity and toxicity. Something that is only detrimental to what should be a strong gaming community. With the difficulty level and newness of the content, there are bound to be players who can't quite get it yet, and boy, are those players going to be punished for not being able to keep up.

In games like this, there are many types of players, and something I hear a lot about in Final Fantasy XIV are 'Elitists' and 'Casuals'. Both tend to be negative about the other and my only response to this whole fiasco is...

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And why can't both sides just be nice?

I've been through Weeping City only twice now, and my current thoughts on it are to avoid it like I would avoid the plague or a zombie apocalypse. It's not because I'm 'scared' of being on the receiving end of an angry dogpile, but because I just don't want to put myself through the negativity. Nobody wins when a raid starts to go sour because people can't deal with wipes. Nobody. You might not be the one causing a wipe, but you're still going to have to put up with the troutstorm that happens in chat. You still have to deal with the trolls causing early pulls, or people dropping out, or people not pulling their weight, or people who keep slipping up on mechanics. Everybody loses when people in a raid start to throw their toys out of the pram. Everybody.

Please don't try and excuse this behaviour to me, either. I have been in instances with pre-formed parties of people that I know - and maybe some of their friends join in to. I always expect that these instances will be civil. That if we go in together, we can have fun no matter what happens. How naive of me to think that people will behave themselves in a game with an 'anonymous' chat function. I get that it gets frustrating when you have to carry people - or they aren't great players, or that they can't keep up with everyone else. However, I never start to hurl insults out or get passive aggressive about it. I stay focused and help, and try to keep it fun. The minute it stops being fun I quit. I don't give a mean word on my way out of the door, I just leave.

Like I said, new raids - especially the difficult ones, can be ugly.

Now though, it's time for the good! - The Aquapolis! Damn, is this content amazing or what? Sure, it's repetitive but it is SO. MUCH. FUN. So much fun in fact, that if my guild starts a map run we are pretty much guaranteed to be on this for around 3 hours grinding Aquapolis.

The Aquapolis is basically a luck-based dungeon that can be unlocked by completing Dragonskin Maps. When you finish the map, you have a chance to open a portal to the Aquapolis. It's all RNG based too, it's not dependent on your level, your gear, your party size - it's just RNG. If you're lucky enough to get into the Aquapolis, you must clear floors filled with mobs to loot the treasure. Occasionally a Goblin Treasure Hunter will appear and if you kill him quick enough you get his loot bag. Sometimes Agres will drop - he's an Ogre type monster who again, if you down him he will offer extra rewards for your party! At the end of each floor you have to choose between 2 doors - so there's a 50% chance each time that you will make it to the next floor.

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Thank you RNGesus!

In total, the Aquapolis has 7 floors, each one offering better rewards with a clear of floor 7 dropping a whopping 100,000 Gil for each person. It drops minions, glamour gear, crafting material, and materia so runs of this dungeon can be very, very profitable if you're lucky enough!

The reason I think the Aquapolis is one of the best bits of content to drop in Final Fantasy XIV is for the very opposite reason that I think Weeping City can be the worst - it offers just a really fun time! It can be a team building exercise, there's no toxicity, it's all random and everybody gets gil and loot. I cannot contain myself for Palace of the Dead - which is pretty much going to be the Aquapolis on crack.

So, what are your thoughts on the new content? Have you been in a Weeping City run that went sour? Did you reach floor 7 of The Aquapolis?

I was doing Aqua runs with my guild maybe 2 days after patch when we hit floor 7. It was my map, so I carried us down there - I was choosing the doors. The rush was amazing! We scored about 170k each after Goblins and Agres drops too so we were stoked! :)

:up: to this review of the content, it matches up my opinion. The only time I do any 24 man content is when it's with the FC, because it's always a positive atmosphere that way.

I've honestly had very few bad Weeping City runs beyond the first week. The past 2 weeks I've gone in and cleared it without a single wipe happening.

Sadly, I agree with the general sentiment though. This discussion comes up every time a new 24-man gets added, because it seems that some players with loads of free time on their hands don't understand that over the course of the first few weeks, many people will be doing the raid for the first time. These people somehow expect the new-comers to be fully familiar with the raid already, but really, there's only so much watching a video or reading a guide can convey - a large part of the learning is actually trying the content. Then sadly these players with more time freak out after one mishap.

It's not all doom and gloom though, I've been in groups where someone has said they're new, and the raid has been very helpful and explained what to do. Honestly I've noticed that the times someone says in Alliance "I'm new, any advice appreciate" most of the time people will help. A lot of the salt seems to come when no-one says anything, and then wipes happen. Although the two situations aren't exclusive - I've seen the opposites in each case too.

I do wish the default behaviour was to be helpful. It's sad that there are players too afraid to queue for this type of content because they're worried about toxicity, even though it's not overly commonplace. I guess emotions just run high because people want their shiny new items now and forget that it's a team effort. It happened with Labyrinth of the Ancients, it happened with Sycrus Tower, it happened with World of Darkness, it happened with Void Ark and it's happening with Weeping City of Mhach.

Come 3.4 when the weekly lock has gone and people are farming it blindfolded, much like Void Ark today, I imagine (or at least hope) some people will probably wonder why they got so angry at people when the content was new.

Aquapolis is da best though. I am so hyped for Palace of the Dead. So glad they're adding more fun small group content. Now if only they'd make Diadem relevant again...

The stuff you mentioned with the Weeping City is the main reason I stopped playing last time. I just couldn't my schedule when I could log on and do dungeons match up with the Fat Chocobos very often, and I'm not very good at doing dungeons I've found.

I've not been able to level up and do all of the high level dungeons/raids/etc, but I kept having really poor experiences once the dungeons started getting a little difficult because it was my first time and people were very mean and rude to me on my first time there. It made me not want to run it again, and that was required to continue the story. It stopped being fun. Whenever I can afford a computer that can run the game again, I might give it a try again though and hope that I can get on more with the Fat Chocobos... if I even remember how to play!