4 Man Savage Content

I don't know if I want four man content that's 'as' hard as savage raids, but it would be nice to have something harder than ex roulette for four man parties. But the game is balanced more around 8 man parties.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

The way 14 works, it would be hell to balance.

Having 4 person parties locked to Heal, Tank, 2 DPS instead of 5 or 6 people that can have a 2nd healer or 2nd tank, or both, or a dedicated CC, or someone who can tank or heal effectively as needed means you're heavily limited to the kinds of content you can use.

Rathalos worked (sort of) but you cant really get away with "heres something you cant tank and can only heal for half the fight" more than once.

The more you cut down player spots in a group, the less you can do mechanically.

We already see this in raids. Let me know when we get to a raid tier where multiple bosses arent fought on a platform in space who have at least one ability that can knock you off the platform, cause thats been a thing for the last couple expansions.


Harder 4 man content in 14, with the way current skill lineups work, would end up being more outgoing damage and bigger HP pools, which is exactly how NOT to handle that kind of content, because its a boring band-aid based around players not having the ability to use class mechanics to deal with challenges.

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Maybe, but i dont' see why they cant balance the 4 man content around the 4 players. The game really needs more broader difficulty, its either easy 4 man content, easy 8 man content, harder 8 man content, easy 24 man content. A harder 4 man content would be a nice addition.

I'd be down for this. Kind of like more stuff similar to Rathalos Ex? Sign me up cap'n.

Correct me if im wrong because I cant remember a source on this, but I believe yoshi was against hard 4 man content because he said it was too hard to balance around the fact if the healer died then it was basically run dead

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Correct me if im wrong because I cant remember a source on this, but I believe yoshi was against hard 4 man content because he said it was too hard to balance around the fact if the healer died then it was basically run dead

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He did, it was in one of the live letters. He said it put a lot more pressure on the healer, which would lead to RDM/smn comps for survivability, so wasn't something they were actively looking into implementing.

I would like there to be more difficult dungeons. Maybe not savage difficulty as it would force people to take certain "overpowered" jobs as I have zero trust in the developer to balance the classes. But something around extreme trials (maybe a bit easier) would be a nice addition to the game.

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Maybe, but i dont' see why they cant balance the 4 man content around the 4 players. The game really needs more broader difficulty, its either easy 4 man content, easy 8 man content, harder 8 man content, easy 24 man content. A harder 4 man content would be a nice addition.

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You can, but balance around 4 and balance around 5/6 is different, the same way balance around 8 and 10 and 12 is wildly different.

4 man balance cant have multiple miniboss mechanics that have to be tanked by a different person, or require significant burst healing checks that one healer alone couldnt handle, or a good number of things you can easily do with 5, because the lack of the 5th party slot is huge (similar to how WoW's 5 man hard modes in the first few expansions came nowhere near what EQ's single group trials could throw at you with 6 people, because it could assume things about your group that 5mans couldnt).

1 healer and 1 tank significantly limit the types of mechanics that can be thrown at you.

You're left with either the method of everything having more hp and more damage output, or you get into mechanics where the party gets split a lot. Or you'll end up with mechanics that try and push people off a stage in space.

One of my favotire things in raid design was figuring exactly what you could throw at a group of people and expect them to, by default, handle. 10 mans in WoW was one of the absolute best sweet spots, because you could count on 2.5 tanks, 2.5 healers and 6 dps at different stages of the fight.

14's 8 mans feel a lot worse in that regard.

Similarly, cutting down to 4 feels AWFUL for meaningful design.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

You can, but balance around 4 and balance around 5/6 is different, the same way balance around 8 and 10 and 12 is wildly different.

4 man balance cant have multiple miniboss mechanics that have to be tanked by a different person, or require significant burst healing checks that one healer alone couldnt handle, or a good number of things you can easily do with 5, because the lack of the 5th party slot is huge (similar to how WoW's 5 man hard modes in the first few expansions came nowhere near what EQ's single group trials could throw at you with 6 people, because it could assume things about your group that 5mans couldnt).

1 healer and 1 tank significantly limit the types of mechanics that can be thrown at you.

You're left with either the method of everything having more hp and more damage output, or you get into mechanics where the party gets split a lot. Or you'll end up with mechanics that try and push people off a stage in space.

One of my favotire things in raid design was figuring exactly what you could throw at a group of people and expect them to, by default, handle. 10 mans in WoW was one of the absolute best sweet spots, because you could count on 2.5 tanks, 2.5 healers and 6 dps at different stages of the fight.

14's 8 mans feel a lot worse in that regard.

Similarly, cutting down to 4 feels AWFUL for meaningful design.

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While a lot of this is correct, I feel you're being a bit unfair as to available unused design space.

You can't have multiple bosses being tanked at once, but you can have nasty adds that need to be CC'd and/or kited. FF14 currently doesn't do this except in a handful of old fights.

There are exceedingly few instances in the game which currently cannot be solo healed, so FF14 hasn't been keen on healing checks one healer cannot handle.

Design complexity can increase at a higher party size, but this doesn't mean interesting fights cannot be created for smaller parties. Game masters for tabletop games do it all the time.

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Originally Posted by IBLazORI

What are your thoughts on a 4 player content similar to savage/extreme?

I think it would be nice to have other difficult content that isn't just 8 man.

Things i would like to see
Savage Dungeon
Extreme Trial
Savage Raid

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I don't think it'd really work as it'd need to be balanced for any composition of 4 in a normal party to do this. Just from a healer stance, you'll never be hard pressed to heal nearly as hard as 8-man savage because of the various tools, resources and limitations shared by that role alone. Otherwise, SE would be forcing people to play specific roles, something that is not even required for the 8 man content.

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Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

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You can't have multiple bosses being tanked at once, but you can have nasty adds that need to be CC'd and/or kited. FF14 currently doesn't do this except in a handful of old fights.

There are exceedingly few instances in the game which currently cannot be solo healed, so FF14 hasn't been keen on healing checks one healer cannot handle.

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That requires certain jobs to be there as there's no guarantee you'll have those specific jobs. Anything that needs kiting immediately means you need a ranged or a healer to do it. If a healer is expected to kite (like Cutter's Cry), then the fight needs to be tuned so all the healers will be able to do the necessary healing while still kiting (meaning, in the end, it'd be very little threat). At least all of the tanks have an interrupt now.

There's few instances that can't be solo healed, true, but many of those instances cannot be solo healed by all of the healers. White mage has lacked any of the necessary tools to ultimately solo heal most things outside of extreme primals. The XIV team has gone on record to say they won't design an encounter where you have to take a specific job to complete it. As much as T7 was fun, requiring a BRD or SMN for easy Renauld kiting was a pain.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Kind of like more stuff similar to Rathalos Ex?

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Rathalos Extreme was designed in the spirit of Monster Hunter, not FFXIV. Any composition can beat the fight. I'd think 4 man savages would have to follow similar suit and provide duty actions for things that parties would lack; or provide something similar to logos that you'd pick before entering [a fight] to compensate for what you'd lack.

Everyone is talking about class balance, but what about resource balance? What current content are we going to lose in exchange? Didn't we already lose a dungeon every patch or something when they brought out Ultimate?

Where's the incentive for players to stay who won't use this content when their content keeps getting stripped away for it?