Savage Clear rate being lower the Devs expected, good or a bad thing?

[Martin_Arcainess]

Hey all as some of you may know but the Clear Rate for Alexander Savage was lower than what the devs expected. Got my info from here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t....1-Information

But does this mean it's a bad or a good thing? I'd say depends on what type of person you are, for the good side of things it's nice to have something to work on for a good few months but the bad thing is that some people/statics have given up on it due to various reasons etc mainly just how hard the fight could be.

Maybe Make A1-3 kinda difficult but always make the Final Fight something hard to do.

Also they wanted to add a Easy medium and Hard version but really I think they should take out easy a.ka. Normal and give us a Medium and Hard version.
So just make normal a bit more harder to do.
Your thoughts?

[Colorful]

The best for the game would be to have 3 difficulties, but as they said SE isn't willing to increase their team size. Statistically the best option is to keep Normal and create a Hard mode while removing Savage as that caters to less than 5% of the player base. The vocal minority will cause a shitstorm on here, but after a bit everything would return to normal.

A 3rd option is having both Normal and Hard come out in 3.2, and then Savage in 3.25 or 3.3.

[zosia]

The best for the game would be to have 3 difficulties, but as they said SE isn't willing to increase their team size. Statistically the best option is to keep Normal and create a Hard mode while removing Savage as that caters to less than 5% of the player base. The vocal minority will cause a shitstorm on here, but after a bit everything would return to normal.

A 3rd option is having both Normal and Hard come out in 3.2, and then Savage in 3.25 or 3.3.

I agree, I think the clear rates for savage is lower than 5%, I think it's sub 2k players. They should just return to the difficulty of coils with a story mode where all the story mode bosses are as hard as a4n and the last boss of hard mode would be a little easier than a3s.

[TheUltimate3]

Personally, I found WoW's decision to have half a million difficulty levels for their raids to be hilariously unnecessary if you have any desire to actually raid, and not simply doing it because "oh well, nothing else to do". That said, adding more difficulties would solve the problem of Savage being to hard (still laughable imo) but Normal being to easy, if they feel that is the reason the clear rate for Savage has been lower than expected.

Alexander 2 Hard - I guess the same difficulty as Coil was. Assuming it was easier/more interesting than Alexander 1. Provides gear needed to do Git Gud Mode without getting facerolled. Releases Patch 3.2

Alexander 2 Savage - Git Gud Mode. Best gear ever, using it you will could potentially faceroll Alexander 3 Hard. Releases Patch 3.2

Alexander 2 Normal - The Story Mode. Provides Void Ark level gear. (I guess?) Releases Patch 3.2.5 or 3.3.

[RiceisNice]

Bad thing. If they even have to mention that, it becomes apparent to me that the developers do not know what they intend savage to be. They wanted savage to be something so hard and reminiscent of a previous difficulty tier (SCoB savage) that was only meant to appeal to the high-end 1% players, and and they then say that the current clear rates (which are reflective of that 1%) is lower than they expected? I don't know what to make of that or what they wanted the content to appeal to.

Between this, job performance/balance and what counts as the "dps tax" on MCH/BRD, I have the grasping idea that even the developers themselves aren't too sure of what they are saying versus their intentions.

[Fyce]

It simply means they failed to properly balance the thing to match their expectations (or vice versa).

Balancing this kind of content thinking "we need X% of the player base to be able to do this" is very difficult to do, especially while testing internally. They probably only have one or two teams of test-players able to beat the bloody thing, so translating their feedback into the actual FFXIV playerbase is tricky.

It doesn't really mean that the playerbase is bad or worse than it was when FCoB came out, it just means that either their balancing or their expectation was wrong (might also be both).
They aren't disappointed by the skill level of their playerbase, they just failed to gauge it properly.

The answer isn't "it's a good thing" or "it's a bad thing". It's just irrelevant for us. It's SE's job to make content according to the playerbase, not the other way around.
So, from a player perspective, the correct answer to the title of this thread is just... "whatever".

[Xairos]

I think that many who would try savage in the binding coil days don't want to for Alex because of the pressure of having to perform perfectly before they enter the instance. Many have said "screw it" and "I'll wait to out gear it" and (probably more likely) "I've seen normal and I'm not interested".

[Drako]

Really part of the issue is the lack of available people to join statics imho. I always see a large number of PFs statics looking for various jobs. And I'm actually in one of those that have struggled to literally get a solid 8th member sense really the beginning of Savage. We'll have someone for a couple weeks, and they'll be gone.I can't really say its due to their experience with our group. We do pretty good, but for the most part we are always retraining a 8th member. They aren't that good on their own, and we take the time to bring them in and teach them the ropes. Once we get them up to speed we are rocking through A1S easily, and A2S we keep making progress. But its very stressful when you are getting farther along, and your member either decides alex isn't for them, or they just do a no call no show forever. It just seems the amount of people in this game is so low, its very difficult to get someone interested. I wouldn't say its too difficult, at least not where we are. But I know A3S and A4S are a lot harder. But just like any content you can gradually get better at it, so long as you can keep learning. And not do what we do, and keep having to back track and retrain someone. Again it just seems its connected more with the overall population of the game. The content gap, seems to have created a huge void of players.

[Maikeru]

The problem also, it's A3S and A4S being (almost) on par with SCOB savage difficulty. That alone pretty much kills the mid-core groups. The hardcore are a minority. The 3 tiers difficulty is nnecessary, they should have Normal and Savage, but Savage should be like Coil-difficulty, instead. People complaining about Coil being too easy back in the day, are also a minority.

[Acyd]

Maybe the medium tier difficulty could be savage mechanics with a lower DPS check. Once you get the mechanics down, then move onto Savage with the harsh DPS checks. Seems like a more natural flow.