Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

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Originally Posted by Vantol

Not true, it's a combat design change, from memorization skills to strategy skills, which actually can be much harder.

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Depending on how they do it, I agree.

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Originally Posted by Vantol

Not true, it's a combat design change, from memorization skills to strategy skills, which actually can be much harder.

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I really wish they took Diadem that route... But no, instead we just get bullet sponge enemies with no mechanics, and "world" boss style NMs similar to Odin where the only strategy is "Throw more people at it"... Christ SE, how did you get Diadem so damn wrong? It had (still has) so much potential, and you just slapped Hunts in an instance and called it quits... All you need to do, SE, is tune down the HP and give NM a solid XI ZNM style force pop system... That's all... Then the event is good... Not great, but at this point I'm willing to settle... Why am I instead stuck waiting on 3.5 for a replacement to Diadem that'll likely just be a repeat of the first? Christ... I'd even be somewhat more OK with the absurd HP levels of things if you didn't decide to lower our time limit in Diadem for no well explained reason...

The feeling I get when I read topics like this is that people don't do the content but feel some strange urge to comment about it.

Like this idea of "strategy skills" vs. "memorization skills."

Is the assumption that you only need to memorize something to clear A8S? Because you need something to memorize first and you arrive at that something through the formulation of strategies. It's about understanding what tools you have and how to apply them in relation to your group's tendencies, inefficiencies, and the content's overall structure. For early progression groups, you have to find that out yourself first hand. For slower groups, you have guides but still need to figure out what works best for your group. Often times, it's about balancing risk vs. consistency vs. reward. Before you have a solution to execute, you need to figure it out first. That's all strategy.

Or this assumption that somehow the hardest content in this game is approached in a predictive manner and that you aren't constantly reacting to what's happening. Unfortunately for this assumption, something called RNG exists. Read and react mechanics are plastered all over Midas. Preys / puddles / bombs in A5S, mines / attachments / enumeration / height / ice in A6S, jails / balls in A7S, discoid / preys / chakrams / gavel / water / etc. in A8S. You are constantly reacting to a shifting encounter and your ability to perform consistently depends on your ability to react.

But of course this is all based on the assumption that you can't recover from numerous mistakes in the hardest content -- a notion that was just false to begin with.

So really, I read these complaints and I have to wonder if we're playing the same game.

dont do or dont clear? hasnt stepped in or fill in for friends asking? Never done th imfamous SSS(hillarious high tune for roles like tanks)? I mean goodluck using tank stance in them, they should just have given us personal dps parsers instead of this convoluted system to see if you c"an: stay in CS or have no tank stance up, damage it enough. I mean come on, achievements have nothing to do with whether you entered it or not.

As for my reasons to not commit on how i play this game? I have a FC, linkshells, and friends i know irl that get on the game to play, i dont really have 3 hours to burn ignoring them to wipe incessantly, id much rather help those that arent at the top, you got a big fc of 50+ people and growing and with a static you cant really be inclusive to any of them when working full time,

I wonder about one thing - does the challenge have to come from the kill itself?

Because it seems that too many players are focused on the kill.

"We want challenge so the fight needs hard enrages or soft ones that make it impossible to finish..." etc.

Why? Challenge should come from doing something difficult. But the difficulty doesn't have to be tight to the clearing or not clearing the content.


For example:

A fight in which you have to kill the boss in 10 minutes or the hard enrage happens.

Now remove the enrage.

Fight gets easier.

Add in an achievement for clearing it in 10 minutes.

The challenge has exactly the same difficulty as before, but it gives players better chance to complete the content. This keeps the challenge intact while allowing more players to do the content and increasing the odds to complete the difficult achievement based challenge.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

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Yes you only need to memorize for any of these fights. You get the prey in A5s you go to point B you don't get it stand outa the way of point B that's it you either have to do the thing or your off the hook its executed in the same manner regardless of who has it memorization is all it takes to clear A8s you just need all 8 people to memorize it and execute it perfectly or you wipe there's no middle ground which what people have been trying to show you. the amount of reaction as you claim this calls for is look in the upper right hand corner of the screen for you debuff. Did you memorize what your supposed to do with said debuff. No? You wipe the raid or die which leads to a wipe because the team can't recover from the death. You do remember what to do with said debuff? Do the thing and hope the other 7 members of your group did there things they have to do as well or we're back to square one.

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Originally Posted by odintius

That my alternate game I play when I'm done with weeping city today that were I'll be most likely their end game is allot more to offer in that respect.

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Love ESO, my hubby and I are just starting out, but gives more challenges, open world danger and fun lately that we've been missing. We're only lvl 22ish and it gets pretty epic even at those levels haha.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

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Isn't video games ultimately about memorizing? Not only that, memorizing means nothing if you don't have the skills and efficiency in your job to pull it off.

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Isn't video games ultimately about memorizing?

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Some more than others.

Compare XIV to XI, though, and XIV's dependence on memorizing mechanics is obvious. The battles in XIV are really only meant to be tackled a certain way -- within that narrow path, there is some room for variation, but you're pretty much on rails. In some battles, the boss literally follows a script regardless what the party does.

In XI, the fights depended less on a script and more on your balancing of jobs, subjobs and abilities. Different party setups often required completely different approaches. That's just not the case in XIV.

I'm not one of those folks who wants XIV to become XI 2.0, but it is what it is.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

I really wish they took Diadem that route... But no, instead we just get bullet sponge enemies with no mechanics, and "world" boss style NMs similar to Odin where the only strategy is "Throw more people at it"... Christ SE, how did you get Diadem so damn wrong? It had (still has) so much potential, and you just slapped Hunts in an instance and called it quits... All you need to do, SE, is tune down the HP and give NM a solid XI ZNM style force pop system... That's all... Then the event is good... Not great, but at this point I'm willing to settle... Why am I instead stuck waiting on 3.5 for a replacement to Diadem that'll likely just be a repeat of the first? Christ... I'd even be somewhat more OK with the absurd HP levels of things if you didn't decide to lower our time limit in Diadem for no well explained reason...

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I honestly think they need to look at the idea of mechanics and strategy differently than they have been (and differently from how we perceive it). We always think that strategy is simply figuring out a mobs abilities and how to survive it, but it can honestly go through more than that. They tried difficult mechanics and precise timing needs, which we (mostly) failed miserably to show that we could reliably do or enjoy it. I think they need to start from the beginning.

Give us a reason to focus on the group we're in, rather than just the one mob we're attacking and watching out for AoE. Let us re-learn what it means to be a part of a group (teamwork). Let us (re)learn our abilities. Give us reason to use certain things, like BLM Sleep or WHM/BRD Binds. Make it simple at first, like a zerg of mobs that will wipe the group and need to be CC'd. In a raid setting, give us reason to need certain spells/abilities (or some alternative means to handle if none present) to save our parties. To be that MVP that isn't about being #1 DPS (i.e. shift away from a focus on personal output).

Things like the Dragonkiller in Steps is a good effort, but it took us out of the action to be that man behind the scenes. Keep us in it until we've gotten used to it. Then move out from there and give us those mandatory mechanics. Maybe at that point, fights won't be all about DPS'ing down a huge HP pool. If players want that meaningful experience in an MMORPG, they're not going to get it while the focus is all about themselves being better at their DPS "role" than everyone else.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

Isn't video games ultimately about memorizing? Not only that, memorizing means nothing if you don't have the skills and efficiency in your job to pull it off.

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Yeah but like a lot of us said, you literally need to memorize a part of a fight and you better have it done perfectly.
Unlike a single player game, you have control, but you don't have control to 7 other real life people so you're just hoping to God they got it.
It ain't got nothing to do with anyone skills unless it's memory skill lol.
We can all be blasting the hell out of the boss, but if SOMEONE misses a "Wipe-all" mechanic, then it's game over.
The same shxt be tiresome after 3 years all I gotta say.

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Originally Posted by Mugiawara

Yeah but like a lot of us said, you literally need to memorize a part of a fight and you better have it done perfectly.
Unlike a single player game, you have control, but you don't have control to 7 other real life people so you're just hoping to God they got it.
It ain't got nothing to do with anyone skills unless it's memory skill lol.
We can all be blasting the hell out of the boss, but if SOMEONE misses a "Wipe-all" mechanic, then it's game over.

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That raises the question of what you want to challenge you within the genre. This is a genre where you group with others to do things, so obviously single player endeavors don't fit the bill in those cases. If you don't want there to be a group consequence for a member failing their responsibility, then that's going to raise a flag of it being too easy on the player.

Memory is a difficult topic to really nitpick at. At its core, every single "skill" you acquire is based off of memory, specifically memorizing. Your ability (i.e. skill) to type is based on a collective of memories you use to know where keys are, where your hands are most comfortable being positioned, etc. Your reading skill is based on a collective of memories involving memorizing the alphabet, definitions, grammar, etc. Arguing about using a skill that isn't memory based is... questionable.

Going back to the wipe subject, that's what a group based goal involves. Some leniency is expected, but mess up too much or at a crucial time, then that's game right there. There is no meaningful group activity that is not without consequence for someone messing up. Group activities are about trust and... teamwork. The trust part going at least so far as to expect someone to handle mechanics that we are being given in the game, not so far as to trust them with your kids or anything lol. If they can't handle it, then that's it. MMORPGs breed failure just as much as they do success... if not moreso on failure lol. That's why group oriented achievements are celebrated so much, as the failure rate is much higher when additional variables are at play.

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Originally Posted by Mugiawara

Yeah but like a lot of us said, you literally need to memorize a part of a fight and you better have it done perfectly.
Unlike a single player game, you have control, but you don't have control to 7 other real life people so you're just hoping to God they got it.
It ain't got nothing to do with anyone skills unless it's memory skill lol.
We can all be blasting the hell out of the boss, but if SOMEONE misses a "Wipe-all" mechanic, then it's game over.
The same shxt be tiresome after 3 years all I gotta say.

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From what I hear in here, it sounds like people don't know what they want, only what they don't want.

I personally don't see what was wrong with the Coil format. I pugged it all the way through T13.
To be honest, I always found the idea of this 'baby raid' as a free trip through the high tier raid's story as pretty dumb, because finishing the story was always part of the accomplishment of completing it for me.
(Though I really don't care about Alexander's story because the story was garbage compared to Coil, this was half the reason why I was so unmotivated to do it).

To me the savage raid should be executed like it was in Second Coil- significantly higher difficulty with titles as rewards rather than gear.
The difficulty of Midas Savage was perfect for what the high tier raid should be, with Gordias Savage (pre-nerf) being the ideal "Savage" tier.

The problem with trying to cater to everybody is that you'll -always- be disappointing somebody.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Yes you only need to memorize for any of these fights. You get the prey in A5s you go to point B you don't get it stand outa the way of point B that's it you either have to do the thing or your off the hook its executed in the same manner regardless of who has it memorization is all it takes to clear A8s you just need all 8 people to memorize it and execute it perfectly or you wipe there's no middle ground which what people have been trying to show you. the amount of reaction as you claim this calls for is look in the upper right hand corner of the screen for you debuff. Did you memorize what your supposed to do with said debuff. No? You wipe the raid or die which leads to a wipe because the team can't recover from the death. You do remember what to do with said debuff? Do the thing and hope the other 7 members of your group did there things they have to do as well or we're back to square one.

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They don't need to show me anything. I've cleared the content first hand. I can show myself.

And, as I've said, based off reality, they are wrong and so are you. When point B is constantly changing based on other variables, it's no longer simple memorization. It's reacting to a situation and adjusting. If you run to a set point every time during bomberman bombs, you will die something like 92% of the time. Even if it's a set response, you are still reacting / responding to a changing fight.

In A8S, you don't need flawless execution. You can mess up mechanics and recover. Even in Elysium's world first clear, they messed up mechanics and had an arguably inefficient strategy. With 20 more ilevels of gear things only got easier. Things like understanding the variables with attachments and how they align with heights, chakram dodging, and P7's mechanic barf lean much more heavily towards the reactionary side of the spectrum.

And, to the people complaining about not being able to carry a group or getting upset about needing 7 people to clear content.

First off, welcome to multiplayer games. If you wanted a single-player experience, you chose the wrong type of content to challenge. The entire point of raiding is the team experience. If you don't want to deal with a team, that's a choice you can make. Just don't feel entitled to clearing the content, then.

Secondly, if you truly are a very skilled player and want to do the most you can to negate the mistakes of others, then lead. Call the mechanics, remind specific people what to do on the fly, tell people what adjustments need to be made on the spot, and do that all while still performing well enough to make up for a few under performing team mates. I see many people talking about 1 person's inability to influence 7 other people but anyone who has ever raided with a very good raid caller (or just DBM or ACT call-outs) knows that hand holding exists. Having an elite DPS player can easily enable a weaker player to focus less on their own DPS in favor of mechanical execution.

When my group recruited a new MNK who didn't have any experience with Savage, we fast tracked him to A8S in a week. How? By being in his ear and making sure to keep him calm, focused, and aware of what's happening and what could happen. When our SCH was being bad at the game and cost us 2-3 weeks of A8S progression, we didn't just abandon them. We did the research for them and worked out a plan for how to properly shield and mitigate the damage in P3-7.

Maybe if people did more than hope, worry, and blame and actually tried to be the difference they want to see, the problem with group execution would be better. This is exactly why people say NA and EU PuGs are doomed because of their selfishness and individualism.

Players have a lack of tools to assist when a fight goes wrong. Many tools that have been suggested either facilitate "calling people out" or filtering out people in pf, which hasn't taken off as well as hoped. That is not some standard of multiplayer games, and it is a source of frustration and suspicion among the party. One can only blame culture so much. Even the JP have made note of the "team jump rope" mechanics that have been in one fight after another, and have only gotten more complex with HW. So its "forgiving" if you are in the top percentage of world first players? How convienient for them, but the majority of us are not going to be in that percentile. Certainly not in the direction HW was going.
By closing the gap of performance, the devs can design content that more people will be able to partake and bring their buddies in, instead of having to choose between them and clears.

It's tricky, because SE is trying to please people who want a huge challenge, but then those people who want the huge challenge want to segregate other people out of a story. They want their cake and eat it to because they are demanding plot to be given to those who "deserve" it.

The problem with that though is by making a plot point that only a small handful can enjoy you make it's impact to the overall story less significant because it because harder to implement those plot points into the main story.

That's why with 3.4 the Coil plot point is just an afterthought/mention you will get if you had done it, compared to Alexander which may be a required completion later down the road but it's because of it's "Story mode" version that it makes it a bit easier to do.

I feel like if players want something unique in Savage content, then it shouldn't be based around them winning just because they finally got their IL high enough, it should be based around them conquering the content at the min IL.

Make an achievement/Title for completing all of X Savage content on min IL and add vanity gear to show off that ya you got a piece of untradeable armor that only people who were able to complete the Savage content at min IL can get.

The current loot that can be obtained for the most part can be gotten by anyone, minus the dyed weapons or the mount but the minion or furniture anyone is free to obtain so the flair of uniqueness is left to dyeing gear you hope you enjoy the design to and a mount. However if unique items like the kind you can obtain from Feast were added to Savage Content, like say Alexander's Coat or something to that extent. It would add more flair of rewards that players could show off and be like "Ya I got this from beating Savage content at min IL"

This is coming from XI, people didn't do the hardest content for story, they did it for the loot, to obtain a piece of gear that made themselves stronger and showed off that they took down the boss attached to that gear. You don't currently get that in XIV because of how content is done, it's mostly tied to Mounts, but you can't wear a bunch of mounts at once unlike gear that you can glamour and show off in dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

And, to the people complaining about not being able to carry a group or getting upset about needing 7 people to clear content.

First off, welcome to multiplayer games. If you wanted a single-player experience, you chose the wrong type of content to challenge. The entire point of raiding is the team experience. If you don't want to deal with a team, that's a choice you can make. Just don't feel entitled to clearing the content, then.

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This also ties in with it being hard to find replacement members for groups (or start groups) on small servers too.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

From what I hear in here, it sounds like people don't know what they want, only what they don't want.

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Perhaps a more apt comparison would be Bloodborne; a notoriously difficult game. Despite being touted for being brutally punishing, you can make mistakes during boss fights and still recover. From that point, it becomes a game of dodging and funneling a future need for Potions' Anonymous. Are you likely to bounce back? Probably not, but you can. Savage does not allow for those mistakes. You must play nearly perfect or you'll not only die, but wipe your entire group. The latter is what I suspect irks people far more.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

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It's fine to clamor around the "git gud" mentality, however we're looking at a 1.16% clear rate. That is utterly abysmal to the extent the devs are literally wasting their time with Savage. Demands for player improvement to this extreme is being met with "Nah. It's not fun. I'll do something else." No matter how you divvy it up, people rarely fancy instant death mechanics or being routinely punished due to a razor thin margins for error. Citing Elysium means little because they are a step above almost everyone else. You do not balance content around hardcore players, especially world progression types. They make up among the smallest percentage of your fanbase.

You can blame NA/EU individuality all you fancy, but there comes a point when you have to look at the content itself. If enough people aren't enjoying it, then it's failed to accomplish the intended goal. NA/EU tend to be far more picky regarding their content consumption hence why grinds are frequently vilified this side of the ocean yet more acceptable in JP. Square has to cater to both mindsets, lest they continue to see content ignored by a massive portion of their audience.

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Originally Posted by Kallera

Players have a lack of tools to assist when a fight goes wrong. Many tools that have been suggested either facilitate "calling people out" or filtering out people in pf, which hasn't taken off as well as hoped. That is not some standard of multiplayer games, and it is a source of frustration and suspicion among the party. One can only blame culture so much. Even the JP have made note of the "team jump rope" mechanics that have been in one fight after another, and have only gotten more complex with HW. So its "forgiving" if you are in the top percentage of world first players? How convienient for them, but the majority of us are not going to be in that percentile. Certainly not in the direction HW was going.
By closing the gap of performance, the devs can design content that more people will be able to partake and bring their buddies in, instead of having to choose between them and clears.

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well said.

I think a lot of the people clamoring for more difficult content in 2.x meant for things outside of the raids. EX Primals and raids aside, there's nearly nothing in the game where performance/gear actually gets you a clear. It just gets you a clear faster. The vast majority of content tends toward unfailable difficulty and it can be hard to feel like you're getting stronger (both as a player and as a character) when the game just keeps letting you win.

As for Alex savage I think in general they've layered on too many punishments for single mistakes. Failing a Height kills the player and does damage to the raid and puts a damage debuff on the raid and can put you down a guy for Enumeration. That, combined with more mechanics in each fight that require more people to participate has made these things a lot less fun to learn than previous raids because you get so many late phase wipes.

There are some easy fights in Alex S as well, but in general I think they overtuned the last two floors of each. Once you're winning the fights they feel fairly routine, but before that is a nightmare because your practice gets cut short so often.

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Originally Posted by Kallera

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

It's fine to clamor around the "git gud" mentality, however we're looking at a 1.16% clear rate. That is utterly abysmal to the extent the devs are literally wasting their time with Savage. Demands for player improvement to this extreme is being met with "Nah. It's not fun. I'll do something else." No matter how you divvy it up, people rarely fancy instant death mechanics or being routinely punished due to a razor thin margins for error. Citing Elysium means little because they are a step above almost everyone else. You do not balance content around hardcore players, especially world progression types. They make up among the smallest percentage of your fanbase.

You can blame NA/EU individuality all you fancy, but there comes a point when you have to look at the content itself. If enough people aren't enjoying it, then it's failed to accomplish the intended goal. NA/EU tend to be far more picky regarding their content consumption hence why grinds are frequently vilified this side of the ocean yet more acceptable in JP. Square has to cater to both mindsets, lest they continue to see content ignored by a massive portion of their audience.

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I never said the clear rates for Savage were fine.

I was saying that it's a fallacy that you can't recover from mistakes in Savage, that Savage is just a game of memorization that trivializes strategy, that you can't carry people through Savage, raid with who you want, or even PuG it.

And, my point about Elysium seems to have been misinterpreted multiple times. I thought my point was quite clear. Even during world-first progression with 20 less ilevels worth of gear, Elysium could afford to make mistakes and use an arguably inefficient strategy. Yes, they're world first players. But, you have 20 more ilevels worth of gear and significantly more optimized strategies.

For example, I'm a mid-core raider in a mid-core static. We use strategies to negate mechanical errors that Elysium's world-first team couldn't do for the lack of gear. We cheese P1 discoid orbs and wipe stacks with missile stacking. That's something you can only do with higher eHP from your left sides. We tank LB3 to trivialize the stacking mechanics in intermission 2 so you basically only need to worry about the enumeration positioning. That's a strategy Elysium couldn't do because they needed their LB3 to push DPS on Winged Justice. We sac our water in P7 because even with weakness, they have enough HP to live through J-waves until we kill. That's another strategy Elysium (arguably) couldn't do.

Yes, you have to look at the content. Unfortunately, very few in this topic actually are. The majority are just lying through their teeth about it or are horribly misinformed. If you want to actually fix Savage, you might want to start by understanding the truth about the content first. Most people here don't do the content, don't understand the content, and feel like they're qualified to talk about how it should change. They don't even know what they're changing.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

If you want to actually fix Savage, you might want to start by understanding the truth about the content first. Most people here don't do the content, don't understand the content, and feel like they're qualified to talk about how it should change. They don't even know what they're changing.

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"If you give a man a podium, he will naturally tell the world that he knows best"

This argument is true though, while savage does have many memorization mechanics, there are so many points where my group has said "How can we make this mechanic more manageable?" or "I need to have more spacial awareness to deal with X mechanic" there are many different strategies to a fight, and honestly... if all the fights were just perfectionist, muscle memory challenges, raiding would be so much easier than it is (coil was more memory based than alexander is, and that is why coil is easier, and also why T9 is the most difficult turn).

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Coil felt accessible to anyone willing to try and earn the story

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Until people rage quit at T9 because of the dozen different instant wipe mechanics. And if you dare question that brick wall in the middle of the story, the same kind that ruined Chains of Promathia in XI, the "hardcore" become very defensive.

That's what causes raiders to give off a toxic impression, especially when considering how that same general arrogant mindset made the end of the long grind in XI seem like a cruel letdown instead of any actual true feeling of reward.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Perhaps a more apt comparison would be Bloodborne; a notoriously difficult game. Despite being touted for being brutally punishing, you can make mistakes during boss fights and still recover. From that point, it becomes a game of dodging and funneling a future need for Potions' Anonymous. Are you likely to bounce back? Probably not, but you can. Savage does not allow for those mistakes. You must play nearly perfect or you'll not only die, but wipe your entire group.

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There is room for mistakes and recovery. Starting with really alot room in A5, getting lower and lower in the following turns. Our A5-7 kills in the last weeks were far away form playing close to perfect. They've looked awful. But they still were kills. If there would be no room for recovery, we would not get into A8 each week.

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Originally Posted by KarstenS

There is room for mistakes and recovery. Starting with really alot room in A5, getting lower and lower in the following turns. Our A5-7 kills in the last weeks were far away form playing close to perfect. They've looked awful. But they still were kills. If there would be no room for recovery, we would not get into A8 each week.

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"Team jump rope": It is possible to continue/recover when one falls, but that's very rare to happen!
Your Example doesn't hit the point because AS5-AS7 is not designed for a full iLvL240 party

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

"Team jump rope": It is possible to continue/recover when one falls, but that's very rare to happen!

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It's not rare at all. You are either lying or completely oblivious to the truth. You can mess up a lot and still clear.

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

Your Example doesn't hit the point because AS5-AS7 is not designed for a full iLvL240 party

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What point? The only point that's relevant is that Midas Savage is still our end-game raid and SE has given us access to i240 gear to help clear it. That's reality.

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

Your Example doesn't hit the point because AS5-AS7 is not designed for a full iLvL240 party

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This was not the question.

And: Currently everybody, who wants to raid, should be 240. Not 240 BiS, but 240. So what should be wrong with my opinion? I'm (nearly) in the same boat gear wise, like everybody else. Even before City of Mhach everybody could "overgear" A5 and A6 without doing them.

BTW2: At our first A5S kill we were beolow the minimum iLvl the (later introduced) raidfinder is showing and even then the kill wasn't without mistakes and recovery.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

It's not rare at all. You are either lying or completely oblivious to the truth. You can mess up a lot and still clear.

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wtf you are talking?
Have you never done team rope jumping?
Either the one who falls rolls out or gets trampled from the others, if not from the others the one gets hit from the rope!
One way is that the 2 who swing the rope doing an extra long swing to give more time for rolling out or to slow down the swing a bit if possible...
Well, that's not something you can do inexperienced, in most of the times you just stop to prevent hurting anyone!
Depending how far your team made it the others jumping will be interrupted from their timing (you sync by music) and mostly fall too then!

Its rare enough to recover that way, but look at competitions where you have the "real deal" with jumping in and out when using more than 4 ropes and 6 men...
Youtube-Video German Team Rope Skipping Tournament
Youtube-Video Chinese Circus


@Karsten:
I wonder where we talked about "your" static, i thought we were talking in general about the playerbase and content

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Originally Posted by Kallera

(..) So its "forgiving" if you are in the top percentage of world first players? How convienient for them, but the majority of us are not going to be in that percentile. (..)

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

Until people rage quit at T9 because of the dozen different instant wipe mechanics. And if you dare question that brick wall in the middle of the story, the same kind that ruined Chains of Promathia in XI, the "hardcore" become very defensive.

That's what causes raiders to give off a toxic impression, especially when considering how that same general arrogant mindset made the end of the long grind in XI seem like a cruel letdown instead of any actual true feeling of reward.

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But....Alexander is not a main scenario quest story. It is a side story that it ultimately not relevant in the grand scheme of things. Coils you can kind of argue since it was tied to 1.0's main scenario, but that was ultimately a side quest story also.

Not to mention, CoP missions were not actually that hard. FFXI's difficulty lied more in inaccessibility and hard time putting together groups. A lot of people were able to clear the content in a small amount of time, especially when the content first came out. Only fight I can think of that felt like a real wall was Ouryu.

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Also, in terms of clear rate in Savage. Isn't it being a low percentage...a good thing? I can understand if the content is unfairly balanced and not fair, but Midas despite being mechanic heavy, is still a fair tier. Most MMO's do not get over 10% of clears on their hardest content unless the game was built to be easy.

If you want higher percentage clear rate on Savage, then you need to have content that properly works you into it. Other MMO's pull this off easily, but SE has the hardest time doing this. It is either content that is so easy that you can get carried and not even need any relevant gear to win, or very difficult in Savage. There is little to nothing that gets you ready for it. Learning curves are needed, not adjustments to Savage raid.

If dungeons kept it's difficulty level similar to 2.0's Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace before their nerf (where not too difficult to overcome, but still have to think and perform mechanics and properly coordinate with your group), relic quests that have meaningful content, 24-man raids kept a difficulty similar to Weeping City, made Alex(Normal) at a maybe slightly less harder than FCoB mode(one that gear in time can make much easier), then Savage mode that really tests your skills.

Just because someone may be a casual player, doesn't mean they want it easy. They just want the content to be accessible. That is FFXIV's greatest strength and instead of trying to make things challenging despite having a nice accessibility structure, they decide to dumb down content each patch just so they can see numbers rise. I'm not saying everything needs to be difficult either, but they need to do a much better job at motivating players to get better. Because besides Primal EX and Savage raids, there is absolutely no reason to.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

But....Alexander is not a main scenario quest story. It is a side story that it ultimately not relevant in the grand scheme of things.

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Citation needed.

My biggest problem with Alex is how utterly ridiculous the setting is. You went from fighting dragons to trying to stop funny talking, cheese liking midgets with gas masks who try to control time. You just can't take that seriously. Not to mention robots are boring. A3S is my favourite fight out of the bunch for the sole reason it being something other than a goblin or a robot or a goblin riding a robot. I wonder how people would think about Alex with identical mechanics but different setting. I probably wouldn't have skipped the whole of 3.3 then.

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

Until people rage quit at T9 because of the dozen different instant wipe mechanics. And if you dare question that brick wall in the middle of the story, the same kind that ruined Chains of Promathia in XI, the "hardcore" become very defensive.

That's what causes raiders to give off a toxic impression, especially when considering how that same general arrogant mindset made the end of the long grind in XI seem like a cruel letdown instead of any actual true feeling of reward.

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idk I'm a raider and I think T9 was completely awful and a huge mistake.

I'd rather do any savage alexander fight a thousand times then ever touch that abomination again.

Just goes to show that even something as great as coil can have mistakes.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

My biggest problem with Alex is how utterly ridiculous the setting is. You went from fighting dragons to trying to stop funny talking, cheese liking midgets with gas masks who try to control time. You just can't take that seriously. Not to mention robots are boring. A3S is my favourite fight out of the bunch for the sole reason it being something other than a goblin or a robot or a goblin riding a robot. I wonder how people would think about Alex with identical mechanics but different setting. I probably wouldn't have skipped the whole of 3.3 then.

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Just wait for when he is fully awoken :)

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

idk I'm a raider and I think T9 was completely awful and a huge mistake.

I'd rather do any savage alexander fight a thousand times then ever touch that abomination again.

Just goes to show that even something as great as coil can have mistakes.

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Most would disagree. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to do A4S without the cheese strat, without echo and not being over geared.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

I never said the clear rates for Savage were fine.

I was saying that it's a fallacy that you can't recover from mistakes in Savage, that Savage is just a game of memorization that trivializes strategy, that you can't carry people through Savage, raid with who you want, or even PuG it.

And, my point about Elysium seems to have been misinterpreted multiple times. I thought my point was quite clear. Even during world-first progression with 20 less ilevels worth of gear, Elysium could afford to make mistakes and use an arguably inefficient strategy. Yes, they're world first players. But, you have 20 more ilevels worth of gear and significantly more optimized strategies.

For example, I'm a mid-core raider in a mid-core static. We use strategies to negate mechanical errors that Elysium's world-first team couldn't do for the lack of gear. We cheese P1 discoid orbs and wipe stacks with missile stacking. That's something you can only do with higher eHP from your left sides. We tank LB3 to trivialize the stacking mechanics in intermission 2 so you basically only need to worry about the enumeration positioning. That's a strategy Elysium couldn't do because they needed their LB3 to push DPS on Winged Justice. We sac our water in P7 because even with weakness, they have enough HP to live through J-waves until we kill. That's another strategy Elysium (arguably) couldn't do.

Yes, you have to look at the content. Unfortunately, very few in this topic actually are. The majority are just lying through their teeth about it or are horribly misinformed. If you want to actually fix Savage, you might want to start by understanding the truth about the content first. Most people here don't do the content, don't understand the content, and feel like they're qualified to talk about how it should change. They don't even know what they're changing.

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Nor did I say recovery was entirely impossible. Only that the margin for error is exceptionally low-- to the extent very few people can adjust.

Any mention of Elysium is wholly irrelevant. World Progression players are an anomaly. You cannot balance content around their skill level because the overwhelming majority will never come close to it, which is what we've seen throughout Alexander. These are players who dedicate absurdly long hours daily to clearing all of Savage. Furthermore, you are mistaken. Layla's group all had various bits of upgraded gear, most impossibly their weapons, before clearing Brute Justice. They weren't going in at ilvl 220. At least once they reached A7S. I believe they farmed Nidhogg some too.

Being able to execute a strategy and Savage having too narrow a margin are not mutually exclusive. If one person messes up what you've outlined, you'll likely wipe. None of this means people complaining over Savage's difficulty want to see it nerfed into the ground, but it does denote the aforementioned narrow room for error. People, on average, do not like content where slight mistakes force them to do it all over again, especially when it wasn't their mistake.

And here is your own fallacy. Don't presume because people haven't been in the fight themselves, they do not know of it or have not spoken to people who have cleared with similar opinions. That's like saying you need to finish an entire game to have an opinion on it. What we do know is Savage clear rates are abysmal. To insinuate difficulty is not a factor among its perceived flaws (rewards and etc), is a bit disingenuous.

For the record, I wouldn't actually fancy nerfs on Savage. In fact, I wish they would upscale dungeons or, at the very least, Weeping City became the base level standard. I'm coming at this more from a why people aren't going into Savage approach.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

Also, in terms of clear rate in Savage. Isn't it being a low percentage...a good thing? I can understand if the content is unfairly balanced and not fair, but Midas despite being mechanic heavy, is still a fair tier. Most MMO's do not get over 10% of clears on their hardest content unless the game was built to be easy.

If you want higher percentage clear rate on Savage, then you need to have content that properly works you into it. Other MMO's pull this off easily, but SE has the hardest time doing this. It is either content that is so easy that you can get carried and not even need any relevant gear to win, or very difficult in Savage. There is little to nothing that gets you ready for it. Learning curves are needed, not adjustments to Savage raid.

If dungeons kept it's difficulty level similar to 2.0's Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace before their nerf (where not too difficult to overcome, but still have to think and perform mechanics and properly coordinate with your group), relic quests that have meaningful content, 24-man raids kept a difficulty similar to Weeping City, made Alex(Normal) at a maybe slightly less harder than FCoB mode(one that gear in time can make much easier), then Savage mode that really tests your skills.

Just because someone may be a casual player, doesn't mean they want it easy. They just want the content to be accessible. That is FFXIV's greatest strength and instead of trying to make things challenging despite having a nice accessibility structure, they decide to dumb down content each patch just so they can see numbers rise. I'm not saying everything needs to be difficult either, but they need to do a much better job at motivating players to get better. Because besides Primal EX and Savage raids, there is absolutely no reason to.

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To an extent, yes. Unfortunately, Savage rates are too low. You cannot have content virtually no one touches, otherwise you've essentially wasted time and money developing it. Hence why the devs have openly acknowledged this precise problem. What that exact problem is, however, remains open to interpretation. I, personally, see it as a combination of difficulty and lackluster rewards. Although I also agree with your point further on. The overall ease of FFXIV in general doesn't cultivate much reason to actually improve unless you want to.

We desperately need a midcore to better ease people into Savage raiding. Frankly, Normal mode should also be harder. Not to any substantial degree, but enough you aren't able to faceroll it like we do now.

Square seems wholly afraid to motivate people. I can appreciate not wanting to gate story behind immensely difficult content due to how many people play only for that reason. But they certainly could offer better rewards and/or ilvl sync endgame content so you cannot just wait a patch cycle or two and cheese through the whole thing. I mean, Midas basically offered a challenge, dyeable gear and a minion.

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Originally Posted by Remus

Most would disagree. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to do A4S without the cheese strat, without echo and not being over geared.

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A4S and A8S are the only fights I haven't done in this game, and ironically these are the main two fights that have mechanic-skipping cheese in them from my understanding.

Personally I prefer to do mechanics properly and just knowing that there is a mechanic in those fights where it's more beneficial to die seriously bothers me...but I would still probably have more fun in it than I ever did in T9. >_>

What's so bad about Nael? Other than messing up meteors (and really screwing up the elements dance I guess), there's no instant wipes. Even messing up something like "move out of the party if you have lightning" doesn't necessarily kill anyone. Divebombs, garrotes, and the elemental dance can be entirely called out by one dude(tte) with a microphone and you have almost a full minute to prepare for divebombs (compared to a few seconds for Alex chakrams). Nael's fun.

Savage Nael can go suck a D though. First phase is wayyyyy too long and you have to do it a lot because of how cray cray the last phases are.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

To an extent, yes. Unfortunately, Savage rates are too low. You cannot have content virtually no one touches, otherwise you've essentially wasted time and money developing it. Hence why the devs have openly acknowledged this precise problem. What that exact problem is, however, remains open to interpretation. I, personally, see it as a combination of difficulty and lackluster rewards. Although I also agree with your point further on. The overall ease of FFXIV in general doesn't cultivate much reason to actually improve unless you want to.

We desperately need a midcore to better ease people into Savage raiding. Frankly, Normal mode should also be harder. Not to any substantial degree, but enough you aren't able to faceroll it like we do now.

Square seems wholly afraid to motivate people. I can appreciate not wanting to gate story behind immensely difficult content due to how many people play only for that reason. But they certainly could offer better rewards and/or ilvl sync endgame content so you cannot just wait a patch cycle or two and cheese through the whole thing. I mean, Midas basically offered a challenge, dyeable gear and a minion.

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We need higher activity in Savage, not more wins necessarily. Savage activity is much lower than I seen in MMO's because the learning curve is basically not there. Everything is ridiculously easy to beat in the game, then you go do Savage and then the game goes from Very Easy mode to the Very Hard setting. At least WoW in the WoTLK days had Heroic Dungeons and a proper normal mode raid that properly worked you into Heroic Raids. Its a huge unbalanced mess and I guarantee fixing the learning curve and finding ways to motivate people to challenge themselves will bring numbers up.

SE's philosophy: Make it easier till more people can do it. Numbers go higher!

Philosophy that should be taken: We need to adjust content where working towards Savage raiding feels more natural. Numbers go higher!

I am not even talking about anything real hard. Dungeons can be just difficult enough where people at least need to think and work with mechanics, coordinating with a group. I hate to keep comparing to WoW, but during the WoTLK days it did it's learning curve expertly. People wanted to do Normal Mode raiding and jumped right into Heroic once they beat Normal. Heroic Dungeons and trial fights were great learning tools jumping into raids.