A3S nerfs incoming

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

But then is the solution "nerf A3 Savage" or "Establish a midcore level for players who want a challenge, just not one as brutal as A3?" Thordan EX is a prime example of developing a good fight that fits the latter paradigm, though supposedly the devs have said they won't make another quite that difficult, which I find disappointing.

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I personally think they should leave savage alone, especially if it's premise is that it's meant to be hard. The problem with this is that the "normal mode" is a DF-joke that requires no progression, and savage ends up becoming the to-go to raid difficulty for any and all static groups. It leads to the mess we have now, and honestly it's a bit of a deep hole for smaller servers that's lost their raiding population to transfers.

Even if they were to nerf A3S and bring the next tier to be just as difficult as pre-nerfed A3s, you'll inevitabily run into the same problem; the novelty of A3s being a "new encounter" because of the nerfs is entirely lost on those who've been slamming their faces onto it for the past few months, versus the non-static raiders DFing into Coil for the first time.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

I personally think they should leave savage alone, especially if it's premise is that it's meant to be hard. The problem with this is that the "normal mode" is a DF-joke that requires no progression, and savage ends up becoming the to-go to raid difficulty for any and all static groups. It leads to the mess we have now, and honestly it's a bit of a deep hole for smaller servers that's lost their raiding population to transfers.

Even if they were to nerf A3S and bring the next tier to be just as difficult as pre-nerfed A3s, you'll inevitabily run into the same problem; the novelty of A3s being a "new encounter" because of the nerfs is entirely lost on those who've been slamming their faces onto it for the past few months, versus the non-static raiders DFing into Coil for the first time.

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That I agree on. The devs overshot by making the gap between A3 and any other content so abruptly large. At this point, I think the best way to mitigate that is either by introducing a trio tier like the primals have or releasing more midcore level content. It also brings into question whether servers should be merged. Consider the frequency I hear people transferring, it does seem like they made far too many and smaller ones would benefit from a merge. Of course, housing would be a mess, not to mention the horrible PR.

eh even if they do as3 as4 has been out for awile now, hope they nerf it with reasonable way so it keeps abit of challange.
the nerf will be unavoidable content is old now anyway.

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

That's what you would assume with a static. Of the 5 times I attempted it on Exodus, 3 times I had to deal with people dying to Meteorain at 20 seconds into fight and all the 5 with people who could not dodge the lance dives (not to mention tanks failing on Blade Dance and eating it with 0 CDs). On all times, I had to raise at least 4 times BEFORE meteor phase, and that's with a co-healer also helping. If SQEX wants PUG-able content, it needs to be undertuned just like AN, or to a maximum of VA difficult.

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Square Enix just havnt learned anything from history and continues to add insta kill mechanics (special field wide AoE too), no: they added more of them!
Even statics having problems with lagspikes (sometimes) - try to play with ameriacans who struggle now on EU servers with 300+ ping on primetime... (or Australians)

I miss Coil, I really do.

The fact that even now, T9 - T13 still provides a fair challenge is a good, it's just a pity that there's little reason to do it outside of glamours. Honestly I feel like Alexander Savage was rushed, maybe due to complaints of normal being too easy for the games hardcore (and very vocal) minority.

I hope in the future that Alex Savage can be seen as a lesson for why sometimes it's better to let the apple pie cool down before you dig into it.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

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It seems to me that Yoshida is trying to replicate successful ideas from other MMOs, but his team just doesn't have the man power to do it properly. FATEs would be Guild Wars 2 dynamic event system, which is great in its own right but FATEs seem like a shoddy and unfun replica, whereas it worked nicely in Guild Wars 2 due to the game being designed with them in mind. The normal mode raiding would be a replica of WoW's LFR, but that's different in that they have large scale raids and as such can stagger the release of each wing in LFR by 2 weeks, LFR also has their own armour set, the mid tier have their own, and Mythic has its own improved armour set based off the design of the mid tier sets, but usually far nicer as they're significantly harder to obtain. I'd guess FFXIV's Diadem was meant to be Dynamis? I don't grindy concepts work in today's MMOs though, not to that extent anymore. No one wants to stay in an enclosed area farming a set of mobs for 90 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

I think they could really settle this debate on the next raid tier with 3 difficulties.

The normal one, tuned exactly like Alexander Normal: a DF story version, spammable for low level raid gear (no materia slots, no dye option, 20 ilvs lower than Hard/Savage)
The hard one, tuned like SCoB: a midcore raid go-to with high tier level gear (materia slots, still no dye option)
Savage, tuned exactly like today's AS3/AS4: drops augmentation items to make Hard version equips dyeable, with no ilv change. Totally superfluos, still something that the 1% super hardcore raiders can brag about and show out.

I'd be happy with this.

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I'd love this.

It will be a shame if thordan gets nerfed. For me, this fight was exactly on point, not faceroll easy, and not super hard, just on point. Doesn't have an extremely strict dps check (which is how SE seems to have been measuring difficulty recently)

We didn't manage to get a3s down yet, and if it's being nerfed that too is a shame, as I think we'd get there initially. I don't know if it would really be considered a nerf or not, but the only thing that might've needed some attention is that sometimes it felt like the mechanics didn't actually work even when done correctly. Like passing the debuffs and tethers about, sometimes even when we were in place they didn't pass off. Maybe it was just us being too slow. If it is properly nerfed though, that is a shame, as I know we would've got there in the end, even as it currently stands (others have, so why can't we! :D)

I just hope SE seriously consider the long term effect constantly nerfing things has. It is all well and good to keep the casual crowd, who represent the majority, happy, by constantly nerfing things, but there will come a point where the harder-core people lose interest and move on. Despite the fact the casual vs elitist war forever rages on, with each side apparently despising the other, you really do need both to have a successful game

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Originally Posted by randysquirrel

It will be a shame if thordan gets nerfed. For me, this fight was exactly on point, not faceroll easy, and not super hard, just on point. (..)

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The same was said about "The Steps of Faith" but be honest to yourself: No one who said something about how faceroll easy it was or that it would be a shame did that content often! They were complaining because random dutty and they were aiming just for the bonus stones... As if you would "farm" outdated content... We all know how "The Steps of Faith" ended and no one ever cared about it... same will be with thordan, as it was back with ultima!

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Originally Posted by Colorful

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There's nothing wrong with taking things from other mmo, especially if it works. But they need to understand the how and why behind it, as well as actually making it work. If I think back, most everything I can say about their game features are lacking in innovation or dynamics, but could've done much more if they had put the time and/or resources into it.

-FATEs? Dynamic events are great. Hell, WoW even does this now for WoD; I'm only in the first area and it's a hell lot more diversive than what we have in FFXIV. The former has you doing various objectives at once which gives considerable amount of EXP and currency, but in return they're a lot more scarce. The latter has them in such numerous numbers, but they're all essentially "kill X" "kill boss", and 'gather item" and give relatively low exp compared to everything else that is available. It's so easy to burn out and see the repetitive nature of it when you slam your head at it when you run out of quests. And don't even get me started on FATEs being required for CT, animus and atma.

-Raid, I don't mind the fact they tried to make more than one difficulty mode, but again they seemed to have misplaced what the players actually want. They overshot who the appeal was supposed to hit, and I feel that some servers have taken an unrecoverable hit as a result because of the mass transfers. Their raiding formula seemed to have worked for coil during 2.0; midcores were able to clear, hardcores cleared within a week, casuals would eventually get in as the content gets nerfed and still has the novelty of new content, at the same time, savage mode savage was still there. Come 3.0 they skipped stepped 1 completely and right into step 2 and 3.

-Diadem. Again the concept was great, execution leaves a lot to be desired. I'm damn sure they did not want this to be a 90 minute grind fest because the other aspects of it become under utilized (caves, open-world spawn triggers) or does not necessitate an actual party cooperation (gathering/fishing).

To me, 3.0 in general has been pretty disappointing once you get past the novelty of it being an "expansion"...if you can call it that after you get through the level cap. Other people have said it and I'm starsting to lean toward it, it feels like a patch we paid for rather than a honest-to-good expansion; there isn't much of new gameplay changes, the new jobs (esp AST on release and MCH compared ot BRD) feels really meh, especially when you consider that they added ninja in a content patch, not an expansion and pulled it off fairly well with it's own identity. While it had problems with numbers, those can be easily tuned with hotfixes, at least compared to trying to dehomogenize BRD and MCH's gameplay (unless they intended for that, which I don't feel is the right decision when it comes to adding jobs)

Combine that with the fact they, by their own admission, is adding less content from what we have now (dungeons, trials, story) to implement more new content (LoV, diadem) and flunking the former, it just leads to a very, very broad game with no focus. Once get past the novelty of it being "new", you utlimately go back to doing the same thing. I've honestly felt like I've exhausted what 3.1 has to offer after a week, sans farming thordan weapon for my other jobs that I probably will level out of boredom (which I did in 2.5 before 3.0...so welp)

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

The same was said about "The Steps of Faith" but be honest to yourself: No one who said something about how faceroll easy it was or that it would be a shame did that content often! They were complaining because random dutty and they were aiming just for the bonus stones... As if you would "farm" outdated content... We all know how "The Steps of Faith" ended and no one ever cared about it... same will be with thordan, as it was back with ultima!

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The circumstances behind the two content are entirely different though. SoF was DF content that needed to be completed to progress. People were not willing ot invest into the time (and still won't) if they got it in their trial roulette because of the liability of the fight when you have to wait 10 minutes for a reset on an unrecoverable fight. Heck, farming SoF wasn't even a thing. Same with ultima dropping I80 rings when Myth rings were available since the patch before ultima's bane.

Thordan on the other hand, is not DF content and drops i205 weapons. People would still be farming it the same way they'd farm Ravana (even when eso weapons were out, some would like to gear their alts). This would still be the case if Eso is still weekly locked and they added gobdips...espesically for MCH who has a rather garbage eso weapon that is honestly not a good upgrade (if not a downgrade for some people) to heavensfire.