I'll agree to the idea of a mid-level raiding tier, but only if they stop with the idea that "huge hits" and "DPS checks" is a brutal tactic. Seriously, get more creative.
If I wanted to take huge hits, I'd go to a Marijuana Shop.
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I'll agree to the idea of a mid-level raiding tier, but only if they stop with the idea that "huge hits" and "DPS checks" is a brutal tactic. Seriously, get more creative.
If I wanted to take huge hits, I'd go to a Marijuana Shop.
One of the major problems I've seen with raiding is the emphasis on each person having to do things exactly right, and so much as one screw up causes the whole group to wipe. This is what discourages many raiders from integrating players newer to the fight. Adding someone who doesn't know the fight yet is pretty much asking for the whole group to wipe multiple times before they reach the point they were at again.
Its hard for slower learners too. When one person is consistently screwing up, and not picking it up within a few tries, the rest of the party starts to side-eye them. I've seen many cases where a person is trying their hardest, and *will* eventually get it, given enough time, but the rest of the raid just doesn't have the patience. They'd rather find someone who can either pick it up faster, or better, knows the fight already, so they can finally move on.
Its not a case of 8-man parties, because one look of World of Warcraft tells you parties much larger can work. No, I think the problem is a combination of how one person's mistakes can cause the whole group to wipe, and a very justified lack of patience in veteran raiders.
The best things the devs could do, I think, is to tweak the raid design so that one person screwing up accidentally doesn't equal an auto-wipe for the whole group. A raid should be very salvageable if one DPS, or even one healer or tank, dies. Normally death=Yeah we aren't going any farther. It shouldn't be that harsh. Yes, there should be SOME consequences if a person dies, but right now the punishment levied on the group for a minor screw from one is far too harsh, IMO.
This so much. I've noticed this a lot. One person dies and the whole fight is nigh salvageable unless the team can really bounce back from having one person mess up. It's too punishable which I find funny considering Japan has top hardcore players but hate things too difficulty (if the survey of Nioh is anything to go by).
Some middle ground would be nice or a different take on the raid fights. I like to try the Savage content, but I dislike how it's handle at the moment.
I would love to see a midas(extreme), not as hard as savage. slightly watered down mechanics, still difficult. only drops one chest. no manifesto pages. shares a restriction with savage. good stepping stone and more accessible to those of us that can't dedicate 3/4 nights a week to raiding
Omg people asking again about mid-core raid... The point you don't get is.. Alexander Midas Savage is a midcore raid!!!! ( only a8s is between midcore and hardcore but for sure not full hardcore) people who find it too difficult is just cuz... Man u are not good for raid that's all try to do something else. My experience tonight we did a6s for a friend with bonus , we had dead people on each boss raised when killed and man we did it 20 sec before enrage and i was like.. How the hell people can't clear this if we do it troll mode o.o. The real hardcore thing is to build a party of 8 man with some skills and some time to spend for this game that's all.
Too many gear sets implemented during 3.2 also dilluted the reward and most people didn't bothered with the risk after the whole living liquid fiasco.
With crafted sets being roughly as good as tome gear, midas normal sets being 90% useless and midas savage gear being relatively unnecessary for 90% of the game content and even the last 10% being clearable without it, people just measured the risk and reward and settled with i220-i230 instead of burning their faces through savage.
As a old raider who did all coils but unfortunately had their friends murdered by comcast and living liquid, i have to say that storyline alexander was a huge mistake. It should've never been that easy, raiding isn't and shouldn't have been meant for casuals regardless having a storyline, it should've been a type of content at the same tier of at least >some< of the extreme primals where they can be DF'd but not hard enough that require a major plan to clear.
This place has a gutter-tier reputation for a reason, I guess. I think it does a pretty good job of representing exactly what is wrong with the NA community.
I think people need to educate themselves, understand some basic facts, and take a good long look in the mirror before sharing their opinion.
As a JP based developer that resides within that echo-chamber, what do you think SE sees? Given that we don't have access to their internal data, we can only look at guesstimates. But, lets take a look at the main JP raiding server, Chocobo.
As of 4/20/2016, 8064 people cleared the 3.2 MSQ. Even if you assume that a lot of active 60s merely cleared the requisite quests to unlock the Anti-tower and have left the rest of their MSQ incomplete, you're still looking at 9017 people who cleared the 3.1 MSQ. To me, meeting the basic standards to do the latest EX-primal and EX-roulette is a fair qualification of an end-game participant.
Of the same player-pool, 1410 people are in possession of the Gobwalker mount. Yes, this is an imperfect means of quantifying how many people cleared A4S since it can't account for alts or cleared players who don't have the mount. Yes, a portion of the people with Gobwalker mounts might not've cleared the 3.1 MSQ due to quitting the game. Yes, a potion of these people might've gone and gotten their mount after 3.2. But, it's the best we can do.
Even as a portion of the 3.1 MSQ clearing populace, it's still nearly 16%.
Given the same conditions, Gilgamesh, NA's top raiding server, has 9277 people who've cleared the 3.1 MSQ, 7770 people who've cleared the 3.2 MSQ, and yet only 475 people who are in possession of the Gobwalker mount. That's 5%.
So if I'm in SE's position, what do I see?
Do I see a raiding community that is in desperate need of repair? No. Do I conclude that the content is way too hard? No. The raiding community seems to be pretty healthy on Chocobo and the content probably just needs some slightly more lenient tuning (which explains Midas).
So, in SE's eyes, while the content might still be over-tuned, they probably aren't that concerned with it. They probably see it more as a server-to-server issue and that's why they're prioritizing cross-server RF for 3.3.
As for the NA side, at what point do you just have to accept the reality that the NA player base is horrible? At what point do you just leave the NA community behind in terms of raid balance because the NA community clearly is just not a raiding community? How many consecutive raid tiers of embarrassing under-performance do you need to see before you just consider it a lost cause?
As a player base, at what point do you actually git gud so that the developers can actually take you seriously rather than as some petulant, self-entitled children?
I don't think I can stand another face roll Alex NM style raid tier. The current Savage is the only difficult content left.
I'd see the entire google sheet census, and realize that it confirms previous comments about raiders transferring to other servers to raid, after the addition of Gordias (Savage). That JP raiders are congregating on Chocobo, causing it to be an outlier with a way higher clear rate compared to other servers.
Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...=2&pli=1#gid=0
The same fights on multiple difficulties is perfectly fine if it's designed in such a way that different levels of difficulty have different mechanics you have to do. A2S and M4S both have extra mechanics in savage difficulty (extra waves and an extra transformation respectively), adding 1-3 more mechanics to do on normal mode and maybe 3-5 on savage on top of higher numbers being required would actually serve to make the fights feel unique and interesting enough to justify it.
Well obviously it's my opinion, I don't see why you felt the need to point that out, but anyway.
The difference in this case is that the intention isn't for everyone to do all three difficulties nor has it ever been, SE stated that Savage mode is NOT for everyone and that is perfectly fine. The OP's suggestion is similar to WoW's model of having three raid difficulties and each one has it's own audience that use it, having a raid more difficult than the standard story mode but not as brutally difficult as Savage is a perfectly reasonable request. Using the WoW example again, there are plenty of guilds in that game that only group up and do LFR casually, then there are the midcore guilds that only do the normal mode and maybe try the occasional Mythic difficulty raid to see how they do, then you have the more devoted raiders that spend tons of time doing the most difficult content until they beat it.
There is nothing wrong with more options. Keeping in mind again, the intention is NOT for everyone to do Savage but whatever difficulty they are most comfortable in. If they added a middling difficulty tier, it wouldn't suddenly cause more people to do Savage mode, it could, it's a possibility of course, but it's not a guarantee.
But you miss one fact of this game we had with every primal and also Alexander: you must do the lower difficulties before you can do the higher one. In case of Alexander its the worst of all: you have to farm the lower ones if you don't want spend millions in crafted gear.
When you want to do the highest one, you have not the choice to select the one you want. You have to do them all.
These examples are laughable, considering most of these various fight modes were vastly different from one another.
Ifrit, Titan and Garuda story modes were all pre-50 introductions to trial like fights, introducing newer players to various mechanics while telling an overall story.
HM modes of these were more difficult, had different mechanics, didn't play the same as the story mode.
EX modes was another increase in difficulty, with added mechanics, and HM mechanics working differently
While you were fighting the same primal in each mode, you weren't doing the exact same fight with the exact same tactics.
There'd be nothing wrong with having, say, Midas (Story), Midas (Normal), Midas (Savage). They could even make it so only Normal is required to enter Savage, allowing players to ignore the Story mode if they want to.
Having to gear up is a part of every MMO yes, but a good part of the issue with this game is SE's own design. Imagine if they removed the weekly limit on getting lore tomestones and added the normal mode difficulty with an ilevel higher than the tomestone gear and removed that stupid arbitrary limit of only having one tomestone ring. If that were the case, you would maybe do midas story for the story/quest completion but you wouldn't need it for gear unless you didn't want to farm tomestones that hard or wanted to try gearing up another Job.
The end result being that you could farm your tomestone set at your pace without needing to do midas story mode (more than maybe the one time through) then once you had enough enough 230 gear to meet whatever dps/heal check the medium difficulty raid has, you could begin gearing up that way. Then once you've spent a few weeks farming the medium difficulty you could either move on to something more difficult or try gearing up other classes. In this model, you only really need to farm one difficulty mode raid with the option of moving to something more difficult if you want. This solution adds midcore content, leaves Savage and Story mode as is, and doesn't make you feel forced to farm the lower difficulty raid to gear up the class you want to raid on.
You noticed that A8S is the last encounter in the i240 gear era? So its not a surprise, that this one is designed close to the end of the i240 gear progression.
Inbetween steps are A5, A6 and A7.
If the weekly limit of tomes would not exist, they all would have to been desinged for i240 and not i220, i225, i230 and the last maybe i235, maybe higher, as you can get everything except the i245 weapon in A5-7.
The calculation for A5 is based on the gear you can get on day one. Its not based on what you could get before day one.
With the release of Midas the gear you could get on day one was a full i220 Set (crafted+Midas normal+Primal weapon).
If there would be no weekly lockout on the latest tomes, the gear you could get on day one would be i230.
If the upgrade items would be available without lockout, the gear you could get on day one would be i240.
The gear progression is like a roadmap and the calculation of this has been done with a fixed timeline in mind, how the average raid player should progress. Based on this, they balanced the steps. This is also the reason for the lockouts.
If it would be possible to get the maximum item level within one day, they would have to change this design and would balance all fights around this item level. This would also make it harder for many groups, as they can't outgear "easier" steps anymore.
With crafted HQ i220 blowing i230 lore gear out of the water in some cases and being comparable / better than i240 gear in some rare cases, how exactly was content tuned specifically for gear of that level?
So they'd need to re-tune content because you now have day-1 access to worse gear? That makes no sense.
And your reply to my comment about A8S also makes no sense. There are no inbetween steps. It's A5S-A7S, then you're waiting for i240 weapons to clear A8S. There is one step. That's how the world-first race broke down.
I just think it's stupid to imply you know how SE tunes their content when their own statements about it are all over the place.
Math = stat weight breakdowns > misinformed forum posting.
HQ 220 gear is really only better because the amount of melds they can have verse 230 and 240 gear. If you go by base stats alone 230 and 240 outclass the 220. But regardless of what gear they want the raids to be built around requiring the highest gear for them has never been a requirement.
The raid scene needs just as much fixing as everything else in this game, it needs to be elevated like I stated earlier in the post. The game needs to be fundamentally changed throughout its various gametypes, and new gametypes need to be able to be maintained and grow, rather released and left as is, like example Diadem, LoV, Chocobo races, TT.
Khalithar is essentially repeating the setup I created with the raids. I said in caps, Raid(Normal) should NOT be locked by story mode. It should also be doable without touching story at all gear-wise.
Easy Raid: For casual play. Drops gear weaker than time gear. Not required for Raid(Normal)
Normal Raid: Drops the raid level gear like i240. NOT locked by easy mode. Unlocks Savage when complete.
Savage Raid: Raid for pure challenge. Drops things that last forever. These things cannot include gear items because gear is immediately replaceable. A haircut, song, exclusive glamour or whatever is not.
Chocobo may be an outlier, but overall for the 32 JP servers at the time of that survey:For the 24 NA servers:
- 3.96% of active players have a Gobwalker mount
- 5.67% of players who cleared the 3.0 story have a Gobwalker mount
- 6.34% of players who cleared the 3.1 story have a Gobwalker mount
- 7.20% of players who cleared the 3.2 story have a Gobwalker mount
The disparity between JP and NA content clear rates is not limited to just the servers on which raiders have congregated.
- 0.73% of active players have a Gobwalker mount
- 1.46% of players who cleared the 3.0 story have a Gobwalker mount
- 1.78% of players who cleared the 3.1 story have a Gobwalker mount
- 2.18% of players who cleared the 3.2 story have a Gobwalker mount
That said, JP servers also have a considerably higher portion of their active players clearing the story than NA servers:Which suggests that the two player bases consume the game in very different ways in general.
- 69.83% of active JP players have cleared the 3.0 story, compared to 49.72% of NA players
- 62.47% of active JP players have cleared the 3.1 story, compared to 40.79% of NA players
- 55.03% of active JP players have cleared the 3.2 story, compared to 33.41% of NA players
Truth be told, it would take a whole lot of changes for me to actually want to get back into Raiding on this game.
1) I just don't like Alexander as a premise. The story isn't compelling at all and the gear I can get out of Alexander is outclassed by me going and doing my weekly lore cap and buying the 230 gear. Could I get to 240 faster doing Alexander? Yep. Do I honestly care? No. I'll have it unlocked in 3.3 most likely with some sort of drop at the end of the Alliance raid that'll let me upgrade to 240, without having to step into it. The only reason I did Alexander was for the story.
2) I don't like how the loot is distributed. Getting items and requiring a set amount is fine, but when it's randomized between four different items that 'can' drop, you're essentially locking yourself out at some point to ONLY focus on one of the four sections in Alexander and competing against 7 others. (This is normal mode, anyway. I believe Savage is similar but you have a better shot of Midan gear dropping in Savage so you can also get lucky like that...). This means you could be stuck being defeated by the RNG bosses in order to get the 4 items required for Chest/Legs. This was the same for Gordias and now Midas. I don't feel like doing the same thing 20 times for an item drop that I get screwed out of because of RNG hating me that day. While I can understand I could get it on the first shot, the probability of that is low anyway. Either way. I personally did not like it and I would have rather liked them to just have a system where you get a token for finishing the level, and you need x amount for an item. That would keep it that you need to keep doing Alexander but you don't have to deal with the pain in the rear which is doing the same instance for one 'particular drop'.
For example, I never understood why they did what they did. Say that you have all four levels, and they drop one item per week you get for clearing it.
So you have 4 tokens. Let's say they kept the same number they currently have for their 'gears' as tokens.
Head: 2
Chest: 4
Pants: 4
Hands: 2
Belt: 2
Feet: 2
Acc: 1
In essence, you need 17 tokens to finish an entire set. That would take you 5 weeks to complete your gearset for your character. To me, that's acceptable for that gearset. It's also not the best gearset available (the lore one is in terms of ilvl) which means this would make it easier to gear up your alts and whatnot. Five weeks. Then, you leave the weapon to be a weekly end drop that requires you at least 7 weeks like they did as it's the biggest upgrade for all classes. And I only have to do the damn instance once a week and not spam it for a drop. I get the whole "get people to play the place to keep content relevant" but no, I don't like repeating the content over and over just because RNG is an arse. Sorry. Just doesn't work. Seven weeks of spamming the instance is more than enough for me to move on afterwards, or I can continue in order to gear my alt classes.
That would have been a bit better, in my opinion, as a loot system, than they have now.
3) The rewards to do Savage Mode are just..not there. I get Midan looking gear that is a whole whopping 10 ilvls higher. Whooptie do. Nothing interesting in the gear, just more stats. But that's a deeper problem that I have with not only Final Fantasy but with MMOs in general nowadays: I am so sick and tired of the vertical grind. And FF actually worsens it because they're so good in putting out content.
That's not a bad thing, but it definitely shows the flaws of vertical progression. Why should I bother getting the 'best' gear in the game when in 4 months, it will be on par with someone who takes a simpler, less stressful route? I get that some people love the challenge, and kudos to you guys, I envy you to have the patience to do so: But I honestly don't. And if I don't have the patience to do it and I see that I just have to wait a couple of months before I get gear that is on par with the raiding gear, then as a human being, I'll take the path of least resistance. And that's just how most people will do it. Especially in the N/A area.
The numbers don't lie: we don't clear Savage Mode all that much.
Personally, I agree that raids should have the best of gear. That's definitely not what I'm arguing against. For that matter, I feel like the raiding and the time put into the game in accordance to the work put towards should matter. That's why Relics and Raiding, to me, should be the best avenues, and not Lore tome gathering. In fact, the Lore tomes should not be any higher than 230, in my opinion, because it would effectively give you a reason to want to go into Midas if you wanted to further progress your character's power.
And the crux of the matter is: Midan gear doesn't matter. At all. All because of Vertical Progression.
Apologies for the long post but this has always been an issue for me since 2.0 and one of the core reasons why I never bothered raiding in this game. Until they realize that the way they have implemented the ilvl climb per patch is flawed for any sort of motivation, and the fact that Alexander's story is, simply put, boring as hell for most players, they won't really feed their raiding scene that much. A lot of us are just simply happy waiting on the next patch to upgrade.
The whole philosophy they have needs to change. Or they need to start offering different paths for progression. Raiding is NOT the end all, be all of endgame. It shouldn't be. Hell, we've had other MMOs that have constantly moved in other directions before WoW came in and pretty much took the crown on making Raiding the 'absolute' way to grind. There is more story that can be done besides always being thrown in a dungeon to wipe to mechanics in a game. It's a great mechanic but I'm tired of it. I want more. I want something different, more innovating, and also has the ability to show a story.
I'm all for group play but stop thinking that raiding is the ONLY group play that works.
Done ranting.
IMO encounters are spread to thin. If we compare WoW to FFXIV over the past year (I do this, because I feel raiding is the thing WoW does best) - WoW has added Hellfire Citadel and FFXIV has added Gordias, Midas, Bis, Rav, Thor, Seph, Void Ark.
In that, it sounds like FFXIV has added way more, but then let's break it down some more.
Hellfire Citadel 13 encounters
WoW: 13
Gordias 4
Midas 4
Void Ark 3
Bis 1
Rav 1
Thor 1
Seph 1
FFXIV: 15
Again, it looks like FFXIV is in the lead. However, then if we consider all the difficulties:
In WoW, there are 13 in LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic difficutly - (all of which are currently relevant.)
In FFXIV, there are 3 in 24 person DF, 8 in Normal, 4 in Trial and 8 in Savage - (3 in 24, 4 in normal, 1 in trial, 4 in savage which are currently relevant)
So, while FFXIV has more encounters (takes more time to design graphics, story etc.) WoW has more encounters per difficulty tier. This provides more encounters for each type of player to enjoy. If you are like me, who fit most well into the Trial level of difficulty, all you have to look forward to is 1 fight every few months that drops 1 weapon.
It comes down to three major issues from my perspective.
1. Uninteresting and very restrictive loot tables (i.e. in LFR you can get 1 item per boss so 13 items per week, where in 24 person DF you get 1 item per week - or in trials all you can get are weapons, etc.)
2. Massive dilution to appease a mass audience, resulting in very little content for each market
3. Rapid updates which make previous content irrelevant, rather than adding onto previous content
Then, there are some more personal issues:
1. Uninteresting story
2. Bland colour palette
3. Boring direct-to-arena queues
4. Frustrating fights that seem like they are designed more to be difficult than they are to be fun
Raiders in this game often talk about coil like it was "the good old days." But really, coil had a very small completion rate back when it was current, too.Quote:
The whole philosophy they have needs to change. Or they need to start offering different paths for progression.
I don't understand why such an unpopular form of content is this game's only progression endgame. There's so much wrong with it. The hyper jump rope mechanics, the requirement to have groups of ONLY EIGHT PEOPLE, the need to have a static (and exclude others) to have a realistic shot at progress... it's such a waste.
The primary issue I have with adding more difficulties is that it's not adding more content. The same thing "but harder!' is not new content. It's just an excuse to get you to do the same thing yet again "but harder!". I'd personally rather new content be added than just taking a shortcut by bumping up the numbers (maybe add another mechanic) and calling it new content. I criticize WoW for doing that very same thing.
You can't say that the "current hardest content" is meant to be completed by grab and go pugs. It's there as a trophy piece for dedicated raiders...
Do you need the i245 weapon and i240 gear to complete pre-savage content, no, do you need it to complete current savage content, if you answered yes to this than we need some kind of intelligence evaluation lol.
To be honest, I don't see a problem with the current raiding scene.
I really like to raid though hard to find a group. I only have an A5S clear cause my friends were missing their whm that week. It would be nice if Savage dropped loot like the EX primals, more reason to do them. Sure the best of the best would have all the gear they want in a short amount of time but many others would still be working on the first few items. Loot motivates me, no loot, not a lot of motivation. I like savage as hard as it is, I would just like to be able to get more loot out of it for the amount of work that goes into clearing it. In A1S it rained healer loot. Took a month for our cast to get the pages for his first item while I was well geared out as a healer. 1 month effort for one ring on the first floor if you have bad luck really sucks. The second month was just as bad if I recall for him.
That's all RNG based when it comes to chest drops. Can't fault anything but a casino-like system, some people or groups just hit the jackpot more often than others. In this regard, if the roles were switched and it took you a month to get your healer gear and it rained caster gear, it all fell on the shoulders of RNG-sus.
To expand on what you said, raising is fun, no doubt, but if you have glanced at the current hot topic of parsers on the forum, people here are afraid of accountability. Having a hard time clearing this portion of the raid? Let's calculate a solution using these hard numbers from the parse...oh wait...lols jk ya'll.
I mean, real-time numbers provide so much more detail than just beating a stationary dummy but no one wants to step forward and be like, "it's me that's holding us back, but give me a moment and I will make the adjustments to push us over this bump!"
Raiding in general isn't unpopular, just the hardcore level. People who are asking for more content typically don't mean more Savage styled fights but trial level difficulty. From patch 3.1 to 3.3, we will have seen Thordan, Sephirot and Nidhogg EX. That's simply not enough long term to sate midcore players over nearly a year.