Okay so it's not just my server then? Thought it was bizzare how quiet it got.
It just seems incredibly out of touch to me.
Instead of making content where 4 friends, who normally run roulettes together, could go in for a challenge you want to prioritize large scale content that probably less people are gonna step into than savage? What kind of logic is that?
You did notice that you're talking about FFXIV, right? The game where most people either feel like they don't have the time or simply can't be bothered to find 7 other people to raid with and now you want them to instead organize 23-47 people?
I mean...if you want the participation to be about the same amount as ultimate then go ahead...well, that's the best case scenario, worst case your content will just be dead after a month. That's gonna be a great return on the dev time invested /s
The OP mentioned that the difficulty is likely to be Extreme level, and people seem to run Extreme just fine.
They just need to make it easily unlockable (short story quests over contents like Eureka/Bozja), put it in duty finder/raid finder, and provide good incentives to run it multiple times or over a period of time.
A simple solution is making the instance scale off the amount of people enter it. You should be able to do it with a minimum of 4 people in a realistic time frame while still being able to have between 24 and 48 max players.
Think the gating of DRS behind other content is more of an issue. I’m not a hardcore raider by any means but I’ve cleared some Edens and EXs and the reason I’ve not even touched DRS is because it’s stuck behind all the grindy Bozja stuff.
Literally nowhere in the linked interview is there a statement that this is the direction things are going. At MOST, the only direct statement is "it's more likely for us to do larger scale stuff than smaller scale stuff". Really doesn't seem like this level of panic is justified, especially given we have no idea what the context of implementation will be if some new piece of larger scale content does arrive in the future.
It already does scale apparently, though the boss HP will not change if one is already spawned and present.
So basically if people DC'd or left during the trash before a major boss, their HP would go down, but if the same happened while they were already waiting at or fighting the boss it wouldn't change anything.
And this is why I decided not to do savage/extreme content when I started this game. I got tired of having my game "scheduled" when I played FFXI. Not that I don't enjoy a challenge, but if the words "static" or "schedule" come up for certain content in this game, count me out.
I think they're just trying to find different types of content to add. IMO this game needs more midcore content, with smaller groups. Perhaps something challenging for a solo player, but having a friend or two along helps. (and no, not more PotD) There's really very little duo-friendly content, for example, with a long term goal in FFXIV. It would be fun to do something long term with a close friend.