NO MORE ALEXANDER(NM)!

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Originally Posted by zosia

Raiders have no time to appreciate the gear gap between savage gear and antiquated gear with void ark coming in 3.1
Recruitment has become an absolute nightmare because this content is not designed for midcore raiders.
In six weeks, alex will lose it's appeal of gear rewards.

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Those are the keypoints that people on this forum don't understand.

But then the reverse is also true. If NM Alex came out after Savage, casual raiders would have little time to enjoy the gear when Void Ark is just around the corner and are better off just grinding Esoterics.

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Originally Posted by zosia

Alex normal should have come out one month after savage just like wow does it's LFR and Normal. Also, it should have been designed with the general raiding population in mind.

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Small correction, but Normal & Heroic raiding modes come out first and then a week later Mythic, the hardest difficulty comes out. The first wing of LFR (4 bosses, comparable to the entirety of Alexander) comes out alongside it, not the other way around.

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Originally Posted by StrejdaTom

Thanks for this reply OP. I hope you don't mind if I save it and quote it in future in threads like this.
You managed to express my opinion really well.

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np =)
I don't mind at all.

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Originally Posted by Colorful

Small correction, but Normal & Heroic raiding modes come out first and then a week later Mythic, the hardest difficulty comes out. The first wing of LFR (4 bosses, comparable to the entirety of Alexander) comes out alongside it, not the other way around.

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Well, thing changed a bit since I played in cata, but they should still do a staggered release to give people a chance to at least be curious about the story. It helps build the hype.

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Originally Posted by zosia

Alex normal should have come out one month after savage just like wow does it's LFR and Normal. Also, it should have been designed with the general raiding population in mind.

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While I see and agree with some of your points I still think removing Normal mode or releasing Normal mode a month after Savage would've exacerbated the "raiding die off" problem.

Asuran gear is i180 - and crafted gear is exorbitantly expensive to fully meld. I consider myself mid-core; I cleared SCoB & FCoB before any nerfs but I have no interest in Savage SCoB. We started on Alexander Savage the day it came out. Faust smacked use down hard. My group was between i180-i185 due to having Normal mode available and we still took about two weeks to clear Alexander Savage F1 - but if we'd been stuck in i180 gear with no route to grow I doubt we would have made it past Faust.

My only point; if you make the barriers to entry too high or delay the tools too long you stonewall people getting into content while it's current. If you want people to stay interested you can but not without giving them a clear pathway to overcome their deficiencies; it kills any interest in your raid just as quickly.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

But then the reverse is also true. If NM Alex came out after Savage, casual raiders would have little time to enjoy the gear when Void Ark is just around the corner and are better off just grinding Esoterics.

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How so? It took about a month to get a full set of alex normal gear. It' takes about a month of progression to get an a3s clear. Then you actually have to save pages or pray to RNGesus to get a drop.

The time scales are far from being the same. Yes, eso sort of invalidate alex normal gear. They should have made alex normal gear ilvl 200 and then staggered the alex normal realse release by a month.

The eso gear would still have more value than the alex normal gear, because it's up-gradable. Also, this would provide a much larger range of side grades and allow people to play with their stats more freely. I believe this is the 7th mode of conflict resolution called the win win win? jk =p Seriously though, everyone woudl get gear, raiders and non-raider. The side grades would make the accuracy caps less annoying (too much or too little accuracy). There would still be a reason to do both alex normal and farm eso since they both have weekly limits/caps. Then alex savage would have much more mystery about it for the 1st month.

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Originally Posted by Dhex

While I see and agree with some of your points I still think removing Normal mode or releasing Normal mode a month after Savage would've exacerbated the "raiding die off" problem.

Asuran gear is i180 - and crafted gear is exorbitantly expensive to fully meld. I consider myself mid-core; I cleared SCoB & FCoB before any nerfs but I have no interest in Savage SCoB. We started on Alexander Savage the day it came out. Faust smacked use down hard. My group was between i180-i185 due to having Normal mode available and we still took about two weeks to clear Alexander Savage F1 - but if we'd been stuck in i180 gear with no route to grow I doubt we would have made it past Faust.

My only point; if you make the barriers to entry too high or delay the tools too long you stonewall people getting into content while it's current. If you want people to stay interested you can but not without giving them a clear pathway to overcome their deficiencies; it kills any interest in your raid just as quickly.

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That just goes back to my point of of alex savage not being designed for the general raiding population, I think that was a mistake on the dev teams part. a1s should have been a bit more accessible on day one. Faust was a neat idea. In execution, Faust worked out poorly. People should be stuck progressing on the boss, not trash.

Maybe instead of a hard dps check with faust, it should have been a more mild coordination check since that's what a1s emphasizes more.

You make a good point, but I think if faust would have been more approachable by most groups, then alex normal would have been fine being off set by a month.

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Originally Posted by Taei

Sorry to ruin your perception, but most statics are not groups of friends, you should pay attention to your PF more often. Getting rid of statics and unlocking content actually would allow you to play with more than 7 other friends

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yea..... no this sounds terrible consdiering half the people you would end up partying with will ether do no dmg or be shit in general as has been seen in most of the game and will end up with very high tension 95% of the time and more drama will happen. with 7 friends you can be sure there going to dmg and beable to do the content and you can also turst your 7 friends, 7 randoms might as will be treated like they have aids that can be caughty just by being near them.

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Originally Posted by zosia

Well, thing changed a bit since I played in cata, but they should still do a staggered release to give people a chance to at least be curious about the story. It helps build the hype.

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I don't think anything has changed since Cata, in fact, I'm pretty sure LFR came out at the same time as DS normal, and LFR only started from DS and onward. Flex was introduced in Mists, and is nw called normal with their needless nomenclature change. Prior to that and starting with Ulduar did you start seeing hardmode encounters, and then heroic raids came to be with ToGC. From then on people progressed with either 10/25 normal then on to 10/25 heroic being the norm until they introduced LFR and then Flex.

Sounds to me like most raiders only raid so they can show off their e-peen. And now that most of that has been taken away leaving just the challenge itself most raiders dont want to challenge themselves if they dont have ways to show off while most other players are locked out of the content.

MMO devs have realized there is no sense in catering to the hardcore raiding community, especially in this game. At the end of ARR only about 3% of the NA/EU playerbase had completed FCOB. Whats the point in locking out the other 97% of players. If you want a challenge then go ahead and do Savage, its there for you. If you just want to stroke your e-peen and show off then you're not going to find that here anymore.

Completely agree with OP. Normal mode was a huge mistake and I seriously hope they rethink the implementation of it in the future.

Can't speak for others. Can speak for myself. In ARR, you got something you couldn't get elsewhere from doing coil: the lore/story. You also got gear, but this game has a straightforward progression so you know it will be replaced. There is now no reason to do savage, because you don't get anything from it that wont be replaced soon and there is no special prize unavailable elswhere (the story) to motivate you. So people are demotivated. If you want people to raid, give them a reason that isn't revolving door gear.

As an aside, the bloat of grindy gated content in this game is way out of control. ARR had some nice content that was doled out in nice digestible chunks but didn't force you to grind for weeks and weeks on end to make any progress. And you know that progress will just be erased at the next patch. The team seems to have forgotten that people actually enjoy a game when they can be successful at it without having to do repetitive boring tasks for weeks/months. TT for example, you could go play at your own pace, the drop rates weren't too terrible for most of the cards, and you could get a card here or there almost every day when the content was new. Now , they made the system so that it is punishingly stacked against the player from a rules perspective, farming cards is so difficult as to not be worth it, and so now nobody (i know at least) wants to bother with it. Why are the devs so afraid of letting people succeed without a weeks long grind for a marginal upgrade?

TLDR: devs, you are messing up what you were successful at before.

The whole Savage and Normal thing was a terrible idea in the first place. Mid core players like myself are stuck in a limbo of Normal being too easy and savage being too hard it's hard not to feel left out when casual and minority hardcore get their raids. Final coil was perfect difficulty for me it wasn't easy but not stupidly over the top hard.

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Originally Posted by Ulathskullsplitter

words

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I was wondering when the "screw all raiders" post would show up. Also, you're hilariously wrong and don't even understand what the problem is.

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Originally Posted by Ulathskullsplitter

Sounds to me like most raiders only raid so they can show off their e-peen. And now that most of that has been taken away leaving just the challenge itself most raiders dont want to challenge themselves if they dont have ways to show off while most other players are locked out of the content.

MMO devs have realized there is no sense in catering to the hardcore raiding community, especially in this game. At the end of ARR only about 3% of the NA/EU playerbase had completed FCOB. Whats the point in locking out the other 97% of players. If you want a challenge then go ahead and do Savage, its there for you. If you just want to stroke your e-peen and show off then you're not going to find that here anymore.

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Who hurt you =( TELL ME! tell me where they hurt you!!!! Those condescending evil raiders! It's like they are not even people paying an honest subscription!

On a serious note, have they ever catered to the hardcore raiding community in this game? I don't think so. All the content in this game is casual accessible with the exception of 4 raid instances, three of which got nerfed and/or echo.

Also, midcore raiders don't deserve compelling and interesting content? Are they just supposed to be satisfied with alex normal and a1s for six months while their talents go unused?

The vast majority of the content in this game is sooooo easy that EX primals could be sold a few weeks after heavenward release. The causal audience already is catered to, in almost every facet of the game. Your point is moot.

Just to state again, removing Alexander NM won't all of a sudden make Savage worth doing. Making Savage better should be the goal to strive for. Making the rewards from Savage should be the goal.

All removing Alexander NM will do is just leave the same people who can't do savage now with nothing to do in it's place, except spam run Void Ark and look like a dark raven.

And really, was midcore every used before this game?

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Originally Posted by Bernelli

I was wondering when the "screw all raiders" post would show up. Also, you're hilariously wrong and don't even understand what the problem is.

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He clearly didn't manage to get past Faust ->Screw raiders. E-peen, bla bla bla, and so on.

Just preparing my umbrella to shield me from the tears when the ilv210 aetherial equips drops and casual players start rolling around with full ilv210 sets with optmized stats while some complain about the lack of utility of the new raid gear.

Yeah!!! All the filthy casuals who'd rather play a game to enjoy a story instead of bashing their skulls in with amazeballz hard content!! Get rid of them! While we're at it, what the hell's with leveling up!? You should be able to kill bosses 1000 levels above you without taking a single point of damage! And what's with all this crafting and gathering!? We just smack our old weapons together until they fuse into one giant massive weapon of extraordinary death!! And towns? There should be no towns, only massive hordes of monsters drooling to gnaw on your bones!! And the planet?? What the... we need another Calamity! Wipe it all out again and make it all Lords of Verminion! Blaaaaargh!!!!

/sarcasm

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Originally Posted by Malzian

Yeah!!! All the filthy casuals who'd rather play a game to enjoy a story instead of bashing their skulls in with amazeballz hard content!! Get rid of them! While we're at it, what the hell's with leveling up!? You should be able to kill bosses 1000 levels above you without taking a single point of damage! And what's with all this crafting and gathering!? We just smack our old weapons together until they fuse into one giant massive weapon of extraordinary death!! And towns? There should be no towns, only massive hordes of monsters drooling to gnaw on your bones!! And the planet?? What the... we need another Calamity! Wipe it all out again and make it all Lords of Verminion! Blaaaaargh!!!!

/sarcasm

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Rather than posting a hyperbolic reply to the thread title, why don't you actually read through some of the post and actually help come up with a better solution.

Aww I thought this thread was about being dead tired of running Alex for another month

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Originally Posted by Lone-wolfe-02

The whole Savage and Normal thing was a terrible idea in the first place. Mid core players like myself are stuck in a limbo of Normal being too easy and savage being too hard it's hard not to feel left out when casual and minority hardcore get their raids. Final coil was perfect difficulty for me it wasn't easy but not stupidly over the top hard.

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Savage is the same as final coil pertty much

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Originally Posted by zosia

Rather than posting a hyperbolic reply to the thread title, why don't you actually read through some of the post and actually help come up with a better solution.

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Yeah, I read through the posts. Honestly, I don't think there's a problem.... I think it's fine, I think NM is there for the right reason, I think Savage is there for the right reason. Are they missing some of the mid-core stuff? Yes, and that's been noted before and maybe they'll do something about it. But I can't help but pour out the sarcasm on a thread that's based off of someone going on saying that everyone should be viewing the game by their standards.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Savage is the same as final coil pertty much

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Erm what?...

I'm more disappointed in bland/lack of story than the fact there is a savage/NM. Next part of alex I sure hope the story gets better because wow its lacking something exciting in my opinion.
Was also disappointed in how easy Alexander Normal was. But I understand why they did it, let's be honest people would just complain and make 100 new threads to nerf it :)

I liked how there was a NM and Savage personally.

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Originally Posted by zosia

snp

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There are extreme people on both sides, and trying to argue reasonably is going to get you shouted at no matter what you say. Can't remember if it on Reddit or here, but I suggested a 3 tier difficulty raid: Normal, Extreme and Savage. Extreme would be the first to come out, after a month both Normal and Savage would be released so the casuals (including myself) have a place to go, and the best of the best have Savage. This would satisfy all groups at the cost of a little bit more development time. Want to know what I got in response? The same things you see in this thread, "normal was a mistake", "you should have to work for story", and "Alexander normal should have never happened" so I don't even bother anymore. I don't know why people feel so threatened about the majority seeing content they funded.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Savage is the same as final coil pertty much

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Wut.... /10char

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Originally Posted by Jamillion

Wait, what? How does the existence of normal mode in any way sway anyone from running savage (that planned to run it anyway)? Sounds like a lot of QQing over nothing.

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Apparently they want story to be exclusive to them.

Seriously. Who cares? Using story exclusivity for a motivation to do savage is stupid.

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Originally Posted by Malzian

Yeah, I read through the posts. Honestly, I don't think there's a problem.... I think it's fine, I think NM is there for the right reason, I think Savage is there for the right reason. Are they missing some of the mid-core stuff? Yes, and that's been noted before and maybe they'll do something about it. But I can't help but pour out the sarcasm on a thread that's based off of someone going on saying that everyone should be viewing the game by their standards.

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Yeah, they talked about midcore content back in ARR. It was supposed to come with heavensward, but it didn't. A matter of fact, they got rid of the only thing close to midcore content, a raid with a difficulty level comparable to coils.

So, you think it's fine that a portion of the player base, much larger than the hardcore crowd, has no content designed for them? That's a big problem my friend. Without a Goldilocks zone of content, people will be left of the unpleasant taste of ice cold porridge (alex NM) or the burning sting of porridge that is too hot (alex SV).

The people who want the "just right" level of difficulty are a much larger portion of the player base than the hardcore raiders and they are getting super bored super fast. I don't think the game wants to lose 10-20% of the players who comprise the midcore crowd.

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Originally Posted by Lone-wolfe-02

Erm what?...

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Go compare final coil, in 2.4 before all the nerfs and easy upgrade items came out to alex savage now. 2.5 which made final coil much easy, tons of upgrade items from CT quest line, 135 reilcs you could get before even beating bahamut and 20% echo. You see we are at the 2.4 stage back then not many groups were beating final coil per all nerfs.

When 3.1 comes out and we get tons of upgrade items, relics a lot more people will find savage alex a lot easier. DPS checks will be a joke again you can have full vit tanks cause everyone will have full 210 and probably a relic if they haven't beat a4s.

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Originally Posted by Colorful

There are extreme people on both sides, and trying to argue reasonably is going to get you shouted at no matter what you say. Can't remember if it on Reddit or here, but I suggested a 3 tier difficulty raid: Normal, Extreme and Savage. Extreme would be the first to come out, after a month both Normal and Savage would be released so the casuals (including myself) have a place to go, and the best of the best have Savage. This would satisfy all groups at the cost of a little bit more development time. Want to know what I got in response? The same things you see in this thread, "normal was a mistake", "you should have to work for story", and "Alexander normal should have never happened" so I don't even bother anymore. I don't know why people feel so threatened about the majority seeing content they funded.

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You and me both...

This is exactly why I avoid any discussions about endgame raiding as much as possible. Granted, I find myself posting in these discussions anyway though. Despite that, something bothers me about endgame raiding discussions... and I can't quite put my finger on it... Perhaps I should just go back to never posting in endgame raiding discussions. Because from my own personal experiences on forums, these types of discussions never end well.

This raid tier has been incredibly disappointing. SE has taken away almost everything that made raiding fun with the exception of difficulty.

No more unique gear.
No more unique fights.
No more story.
No more awe the first time you step in and see the boss yourself.
No more suspense in the first time killing a boss - after all, you've killed him n times already.

I hope the next raid tier is more fun, because this one has been a complete bust.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Go compare final coil, in 2.4 before all he nerfs and easy upgrade items came out. 2.5 which made final coil much easy, tons of upgrade items in WoD, 135 reilcs you could get before even beating bahamut and 20% echo. You see we are at the 2.4 stage back then not many groups were beating final coil per all nerfs.

When 3.1 comes out and we get tons of upgrade items, relics a lot more people will find savage alex a lot easier.

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You must not raid because alex savage is an entirely different beast than final coils.

Full ilvl 210 is not going to bail groups out of the coordination checks and performing under pressure.

The clear rates for t13 were at least around 3% before the nerfs. The clear rates for a4s are sub 1%. Full 210 is not going to bring the same level of clears to a4s that full ilvl130 brought to final coil.

Also, t13 had an significant gear checks, so more gear made that easier. A4s is not difficult by virtue of gear checks, it's difficult by virtue of mechanics.

"No more unique gear.
No more unique fights.
No more story."

There's no point creating exclusive content for 5-10% of the playerbase. No point at all.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Go compare final coil, in 2.4 before all the nerfs and easy upgrade items came out to alex savage now. 2.5 which made final coil much easy, tons of upgrade items from CT quest line, 135 reilcs you could get before even beating bahamut and 20% echo. You see we are at the 2.4 stage back then not many groups were beating final coil per all nerfs.

When 3.1 comes out and we get tons of upgrade items, relics a lot more people will find savage alex a lot easier. DPS checks will be a joke again you can have full vit tanks cause everyone will have full 210 and probably a relic if they haven't beat a4s.

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Sorry i'm still in a state of shock that you compared final coil to savage alex... I don't remember taking acid today.

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Originally Posted by zosia

You must not raid because alex savage is an entirely different beast than final coils.

Full ilvl 210 is not going to bail groups out of the coordination checks and performing under pressure.

The clear rates for t13 were at least around 3% before the nerfs. The clear rates for a4s are sub 1%. Full 210 is not going to bring the same level of clears to a4s that full ilvl130 brought to final coil.

Also, t13 had an significant gear checks, so more gear made that easier. A4s is not difficult by virtue of gear checks, it's difficult by virtue of mechanics.

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No i do raid check my profile you can see i have 210 gear.

The mechaincs aren't that hard its the dps checks, like hand of pain, having enough dps to kill the adds, beating the enrage timers on the boss in general. We have the most problems with dps checks and not mechancis, our set up is pld war mnk nin bard smn whm sch. No drg lost lot of dps and I don't play dark and no blm so thats a lack of burst dps when we need to bust stuff down like hand of pain.

We have no problems with mechanics its always been the dps checks for us. We did beat T13 pre nerfs.

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Originally Posted by Colorful

There are extreme people on both sides, and trying to argue reasonably is going to get you shouted at no matter what you say. Can't remember if it on Reddit or here, but I suggested a 3 tier difficulty raid: Normal, Extreme and Savage. Extreme would be the first to come out, after a month both Normal and Savage would be released so the casuals (including myself) have a place to go, and the best of the best have Savage. This would satisfy all groups at the cost of a little bit more development time. Want to know what I got in response? The same things you see in this thread, "normal was a mistake", "you should have to work for story", and "Alexander normal should have never happened" so I don't even bother anymore. I don't know why people feel so threatened about the majority seeing content they funded.

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Yeah, they totally went wrong with this, I still think for once they should had released both savage and normal at the same time, but savage is extremely hard, the jump of difficulty from AS2 to AS3 is insane, the ammount of dedication you need to clear it is too much, it's not that it's not doable, but it's something that if you play 3 days at night on a static for 2 hours it's gonna take a while to acomplish fine tunning and literally making no mistakes, and to top it off, the tanks and healers have to do extra work and it's taxing on them because they have to also DPS besides doing their role, this is an horrible design choice. The perfect balance of dificulty was Second coil bahamut and his Savage dificulty, as you stated, Savage being the normal dificulty and the later implemented savage dificulty would be the extreme dificulty. Instead, they took it this opposite way they make normal mode, something that people literally cleared even normal players a few hours after it was released and then you have Savage which is something extremely dificult and in no way it compares to binding coil of bahamut.

It absolutely does not help the fact, that the story of Alexander, is the most bland and uninteresting story so far going on, if you compare Alexander on key Final Fantasy games 9 or 11 it's just plain unimpresive, it doesn't help that they literally slap these uninteresting and boring bosses designs, with bland looks, bland areas, the boss mechanics are horrendous since they are DPS checks FOR THE NON DPS, which is trully bizarre. On top of that, it can't be stressed enough that the mechanics are just really poorly made, when you compare at what they did with coils, the mechanics of alexander savage aren't challenging they are just DPS sponges, you could go back to binding coil of bahamut and notice the changes between normal mode and savage and notice that the dificulty lies with dealing with mechanics, small DPS checks here and there but not smashing your buttons until you get carpal tunnel, because otherwise you aren't really going to progress.

Overall, Alexander is the worst content we have seen since 2.0 and hence why people is unmotivated to clear it, even if they had raided before, they just don't care, I don't care anymore, what's the point on me clearing A4S? there's trully nothing, gear will get replaced soon, but it's mainly that it's bland and boring that it doesn't help at all, and thus why people feels that Normal ruined it, which isn't the reason at all.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

No i do raid check my profile you can see i have 210 gear.

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Just by comparing world 1st groups and their completion of FCoB and Savage alex, you would know that these raid tiers are far from the same. It did not take nearly as long for t13 to go down the 1st time as it did a4s.

Ideally you'd make Normal mode only unlock after the world first clears occur.
It's the hardcore raiders gift to the community they did all the hard work so you don't have too <3

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

"No more unique gear.
No more unique fights.
No more story."

There's no point creating exclusive content for 5-10% of the playerbase. No point at all.

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Except it isn't exclusive. Everyone has access to it. It just comes down to the fact whether you want to do it or not.