Savage Clear rate being lower the Devs expected, good or a bad thing?

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Originally Posted by Mastanight

All I know is its always about more new content, I took a break from playing from September till now. Its almost seems as if I'm not item level 200, Duty Finder became like Final Fantasy XI where "Chirp" "Chirp" (crickets) is what I picture while waiting hours to begin anything that's before Heavensward. Any explanation to this, how the newest content is hyped only?

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If you try to do content before 3.0, it will be difficult without friends because the huge jump in ilvl kills content and desire to play it.

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Originally Posted by Alipoprocks

If you try to do content before 3.0, it will be difficult without friends because the huge jump in ilvl kills content and desire to play it.

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Ilvl should not matter because of the sync feature, final coil is a ghost town and I'm sure most haven't finished all of it. After the first months rush this is usually what occurs.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

It simply means they failed to properly balance the thing to match their expectations (or vice versa).

Balancing this kind of content thinking "we need X% of the player base to be able to do this" is very difficult to do, especially while testing internally. They probably only have one or two teams of test-players able to beat the bloody thing, so translating their feedback into the actual FFXIV playerbase is tricky.

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And that is why most games have a PTR.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

It's incredibly silly. Currently you have Raid Finder (story mode essentially), Normal, heroic, and Mythic. They even nerfed normal. In legion (the next expansion) they should remove normal mode.

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15 man Mythic. Imo.

On topic, Savage is too brutal and normal is entirely too easy.

We don't *need* three difficulties.

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Originally Posted by Mike555

This is pretty much the main problem. Add to that the fact that WoW has functional cross servers systems and it's easy to see why mythic raiding is infinitely more popular than savage. The bottom half of each datacenter have no raid scene to speak of. 2-3 groups isnt a scene. The top half has a couple servers where you have some chance of finding a competent group that can actually clear savage, but its gonna take months to actually get in.

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When the raids are relevant, you cannot cross realm Mythic.

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Originally Posted by Colorful

The best for the game would be to have 3 difficulties, but as they said SE isn't willing to increase their team size. Statistically the best option is to keep Normal and create a Hard mode while removing Savage as that caters to less than 5% of the player base. The vocal minority will cause a shitstorm on here, but after a bit everything would return to normal.

A 3rd option is having both Normal and Hard come out in 3.2, and then Savage in 3.25 or 3.3.

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3 difficulty is best.
Story mode for those who don't raid. drops are the same as they are now.
Hard mode(coil difficulty) for the bulk of raiders. drops will be what Alex savage have now except the mount.
Savage mode for the truly hardcore. Gives out titles and the mount, drops the same gear as hard mode like what Coil savage did. Basically for the bragging rights and challenge.

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Originally Posted by hagare

3 difficulty is best.
Story mode for those who don't raid. drops are the same as they are now.
Hard mode(coil difficulty) for the bulk of raiders. drops will be what Alex savage have now except the mount.
Savage mode for the truly hardcore. Gives out titles and the mount, drops the same gear as hard mode like what Coil savage did. Basically for the bragging rights and challenge.

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Yeah the original call on the forums was for a "Story Mode" Coil. SCoB/FCoB were good for mid-core raiding and it gave hard-core something to sell - casual players wanted a Story mode. Savage SCoB filled the "I want a challenge!" for anyone hard-core enough to go after it.


Flash forward to Alexander - they took the "SCoB/FCoB" level of content and ditched it - added a Story-"Normal" Mode and stuck highest rewards behind the Savage modes. So I think they missed their mark, don't have enough staff, and aren't sure what kind of content to implement.

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Originally Posted by hagare

3 difficulty is best.
Story mode for those who don't raid. drops are the same as they are now.
Hard mode(coil difficulty) for the bulk of raiders. drops will be what Alex savage have now except the mount.
Savage mode for the truly hardcore. Gives out titles and the mount, drops the same gear as hard mode like what Coil savage did. Basically for the bragging rights and challenge.

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I'm well aware 3 modes is best, but as they said, they don't have the manpower for such content. Now, the most likely option (and best) would be to take out Savage. The last reported numbers was something like 2000 players that have cleared A4S, around 50% of those being JP players, the last reported numbers for Alexander Normal was something like 300,000? Take that number and double it and that's the active amount of players, meaning less than 0.5% of the playerbase has cleared Savage after almost 5 months. No one can argue that keeping Savage at the loss of a Hard Mode or Normal would be best for the game without speaking about their sole interest, and not the game's overall health. But regardless, I think I was right on the mark with my suggestion, as confirmed by a recently translated interview.

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Yoshida: Since normal Alexander helps you get into Savage, let's talk about both. First, for normal, the number of players clearing is far more than we expected, which is really good.

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It could just be me, but it sounds like Normal is here to stay.

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Yoshida: The next update for Alexander will be in patch 3.2. Right now, we're working on the savage version and trying to decide whether to make it satisfying for the top players or whether to adjust it for a wider range of people. Given the cost of development, I'd lean towards a lower difficulty savage, but then some players may come back and say it isn't difficult enough...

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As for Savage, they're not so sure, but it's definitely likely they'll tune down the difficulty as that would please the majority.

Source if interested.

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Originally Posted by Colorful

I'm well aware 3 modes is best, but as they said, they don't have the manpower for such content. Now, the most likely option (and best) would be to take out Savage. The last reported numbers was something like 2000 players that have cleared A4S, around 50% of those being JP players, the last reported numbers for Alexander Normal was something like 300,000? Take that number and double it and that's the active amount of players, meaning less than 0.5% of the playerbase has cleared Savage after almost 5 months. No one can argue that keeping Savage at the loss of a Hard Mode or Normal would be best for the game without speaking about their sole interest, and not the game's overall health. But regardless, I think I was right on the mark with my suggestion, as confirmed by a recently translated interview.



It could just be me, but it sounds like Normal is here to stay.



As for Savage, they're not so sure, but it's definitely likely they'll tune down the difficulty as that would please the majority.

Source if interested.

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true. If they can't give 3 modes, the best option they have is removing savage and give a Coil difficulty raid instead as hard mode.
They can always add a savage mode later in the minstrel if they ever wanted too.
Though that still won't get rid of the complaints that there is nothing "new" in Hard mode because everything is already in NM :p
except if they make NM and HM have the same minimum iLvL requirement to clear.

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Originally Posted by Colorful

I'm well aware 3 modes is best, but as they said, they don't have the manpower for such content. Now, the most likely option (and best) would be to take out Savage. The last reported numbers was something like 2000 players that have cleared A4S, around 50% of those being JP players, the last reported numbers for Alexander Normal was something like 300,000? Take that number and double it and that's the active amount of players, meaning less than 0.5% of the playerbase has cleared Savage after almost 5 months. No one can argue that keeping Savage at the loss of a Hard Mode or Normal would be best for the game without speaking about their sole interest, and not the game's overall health. But regardless, I think I was right on the mark with my suggestion, as confirmed by a recently translated interview.

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That's not really fair. Normal was designed to be facerolled by every skill level on week 1. Savage was designed to be a long term goal. That'd be like saying more people played Hello Kitty Island Adventure than Dark Souls because there were more completions of HKIA. Maybe it would be true, maybe not, but that statistic wouldn't mean jack. Plus they aren't separate groups, everyone doing savage also did normal.

Clear rates just generally aren't a good way to judge the hard content, particularly if you're only looking at a4. Plenty of people are still stuck on a3, looking at only a4 clears exclusively to compare to normal is extremely one sided. Attempt rates would be better if they existed, but since they don't a1 clear numbers would be a lot better. A4 clears aren't indicative of how many people are interested in savage.

I assume you were referencing the census slide? http://imgur.com/a/XplYZ Unless you were going on some count from fflogs. The slides date all the way back to August and over 30k players had already cleared a1s. normal mode had about 200k clears.

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

That's not really fair. Normal was designed to be facerolled by every skill level on week 1. Savage was designed to be a long term goal. Plus they aren't separate groups, everyone doing savage also did normal.

Clear rates just generally aren't a good way to judge the hard content, particularly if you're only looking at a4. Plenty of people are still stuck on a3, looking at only a4 clears exclusively to compare to normal is extremely one sided. Attempt rates would be better if they existed, but since they don't a1 clear numbers would be a lot better. A4 clears aren't indicative of how many people are interested in savage.

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And what of it? 50% got to see content that they otherwise would have never seen, no? Is that not more value for their subscription money now that they've got a raid for both patches? It's also likely that they ran the content for 4-5 weeks to complete their set, that's what I consider to be a healthy long term goal, and gives people incentive to subscribe and keep logging in. Now the casuals won't unsub for the even number patches, because let's face it, what do they bring other than a raid usually? Tome farming, fun fun. I'll give you the second point as that's a legitimate point, 49.5% of players. Even with a hard mode being Final Coil, the numbers on that were something like 10%, so 40% of the entire playerbase got new value to their subscription, at very little extra development time. Can you honestly tell me that in the game's best interest it would be better to please 0.5% rather than 40%? I believe not. It's better to please the casuals and the midcore raiders, and then the extreme raiders when and if possible.

I'm also going to address people claiming that 95% of the content is for casuals. Do you not play that content? Do they have a check that looks into your profile that and blocks you from accessing that content? No, you enjoy Gold Saucer, MSQ, the 24 man raids, new dungeons, extreme trials, etc. just as much as anyone else does, and if you don't, you can't make the argument that the 0.5% is a valuable asset to have for SE and there are plenty of raid focused MMOs elsewhere, this isn't one of them.

Daily cap again, so edit:

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

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Exactly, it's losing players due to the extreme difficulty of Savage. I've heard many, many horror stories of the statics disbanding due to A3S. As for A1S having 30,000+ clears at this point, you're right, but A1S is on par with the difficulty of 2nd/3rd Coil, which brings me back to my main point that the raid should be balanced around that difficulty level as that's where the majority of the players are at. Having a Normal and Hard mode is far better than having Normal and Savage.

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Honestly I don't do much of the casual content, no. I haven't been to gold saucer in months, because why bother. New dungeons? Tome farming, fun fun. Ex trials are already irrelevant, one was irrelevant as soon as it was added. MSQ is a one and done. There hasn't been a 24 man for about 5 months now.

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Which is understandable as there's no reason to go the Gold Saucer, but you have to remember that this applies to all players and not just the elite. People claim that there's so much content for casuals to enjoy but in reality that isn't the case, GS hasn't been updated in so long, no one likes tome farming, EX trials are irrlevant for everyone and the MSQ is done for everyone, etc. I meant when they were released though, but as of now no one has content. This 95% of players people keep bringing up means absolutely nothing. As for raid centric games, WoW and WildStar are both very raid centric, with raids definitely being far more well built than FFXIV's raids for the most part.

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Gear for gear's own sake is not a healthy goal, even less so long term.

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Fair point, but smashing your head against the wall that is A3S for weeks on end progressing 1% more each time due to gear isn't very healthy either. It's demoralising to players and as I said, has made many statics disband altogether. Raiding at this level is not healthy for the game no matter how you spin it. As for where I got the clear numbers on A4S, I read it on Reddit but I can't seem to find a source. Asking about it on Reddit, will report back if I get a response.

Most of my initiative to beat Coil was the story since there was no other options. Here with Alexander I solved that problem by doing the easier option which gave me the story. (Not much of a story either so far which is disappointing.)

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Originally Posted by Colorful

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Gear for gear's own sake is not a healthy goal, even less so long term. If that's your only incentive you're gonna get burned out quick since this is a vertical mmo. I like how you followed that up with "Tome farming, fun fun." :P

It doesn't have to be a binary between casual and hardcore. An mmo needs both of those groups to be healthy, and right now it's hemorrhaging midcore+ players like crazy. If you had to choose, then sure, maybe focus midcore and casual first. But you don't have to. Also, they aren't. There isn't anything to really do as midcore. There's casual content and nothing else.

Honestly I don't do much of the casual content, no. I haven't been to gold saucer in months, because why bother. New dungeons? Tome farming, fun fun. Ex trials are already irrelevant, one was irrelevant as soon as it was added. MSQ is a one and done. There hasn't been a 24 man for about 5 months now.

There really aren't many raid focused mmo's out there right now. Pretty much everyone's going freemium or casual to cash in on games that don't have any plans for longevity.

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Originally Posted by Zenji

It's not the difficulty of it that's the problem. The problem is why would players be motivated to do it when the content was already completed in Alex normal. It doesn't make sense. For the weapon. For what? To be over powered in casual content for a couple months until the next raid? Not worth it. Not to mention animus weapons will probably be BIS anyway .

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Call me crazy but maybe people play the game for fun and challenging fights?

I don't think 3 difficulties would help. Honestly think a better method could be a "training" mode that allows you to take time with certain phases til you feel comfortable with them. Current issue is obvious but at same time I can see how for hardcore it's not really fun to play the trial and error game.

I see the issue as so in martial arts you learn forms, they could be 10-20 steps of combos like let's just say a 5 step combo:
Jab-Jab-Round kick
Side Kick-Back leg round kick-Hook punch
Roll-explosive jumping kick-Side Kick
Side Kick-Back leg round kick-Side Kick
Jab-Backhand-hook

Now when learning this logically you do one step at a time, as you learn part A, you practice part B and so on and so on, and then when you understand it all you execute it. However the design of Savage doesn't offer an opportunity to learn unless you do trial and error which does sadly offer an illusion of challenge because it's like you are doing your form a-b-c and then you get to a part you don't understand you mess it up but instead of the instructor going ok we practice d now, you start right back at a, and until you get d right you have to keep starting from the beginning instead of working on the part where you are having the issue. It turns into a huge time sink and I can understand why it's not fun, if players had the opportunity to test run during a phase they could then at least get a better hold of it instead of going "oh shit 493 slimes instead of 40 from Normal PANICCCCC!" which is I imagine what happens first time it occurs, you kinda gotta roll with the punches and adapt but you aren't really being given a fair challenge rather you are being forced to go through trial and error.


I think what would be best is the ability to unlock "Training Mode" for certain portions of a fight when you reach said phase. So say you are fighting Shiva EX and your group gets to the last phase but they mess it up. Instead of having to do the whole fight all over again, since you got to that phase you would have the option to go into "Training Mode" and select that phase to start from. The game would give the leader the option to remove all vulnerability from players once everyone is in position and then bam that phase starts. The players can then get a better feel of it without feeling frustrated with having to start from square one and in the long run it would help ease that frustration brought about from doing content that just turns into trial and error.

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Originally Posted by Airget

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isn't that what learning parties are for?

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Originally Posted by Ilitsa

I, unfortunately was the only person wanting to try savage in my fc/static, and then I had a bit of a crisis irl, and was out for a month ony to come back to everyone aside from my best friend and my fiance having left my fc entirely, so now I'm pretty well stuck in a way that I havee no a1s exp so I can't go into most pf's for it, and have no friends that want to do it lol

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While I am nowhere near Savage at the moment (still pushing through 2.1), it is something I hope to run. So if you're still looking for newbie groups by then, I'd love to hop aboard. ^^

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Originally Posted by Recaldy

Most of my initiative to beat Coil was the story since there was no other options. Here with Alexander I solved that problem by doing the easier option which gave me the story. (Not much of a story either so far which is disappointing.)

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... and it took a day to beat for the people that dived right into Alex NM on the fist day which was a large chunk of the player base at the time. Over 50% of active players have beaten alex NM vs. 5% for savage. That should tell you something is wrong with how SE is doing things. The endgame story should be tied to coil difficulty content because the difficulty helps increase the epic feel of it, but you gotta work for it. This is a MMO after all.

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Originally Posted by TheUltimate3

Personally, I found WoW's decision to have half a million difficulty levels for their raids to be hilariously unnecessary if you have any desire to actually raid, and not simply doing it because "oh well, nothing else to do". That said, adding more difficulties would solve the problem of Savage being to hard (still laughable imo) .

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A3S is laughable especially when you don't step foot in Alexander savage at all. And everyone can clear content on youtube : you search for A4S, you click play and at the end of the video you have cleared. See? It's laughable.

Low clear rate is a bad thing imho, lots of statics are going through pains because of that. A game should entertain and reward for your time, being stuck on a fight for more than a 2 months, leading people to stop showing up for raids and completely stop caring for progression, it's not fun. I know there's a lot of good statics that at least got through A3S, but if not all of your 8 players are that dedicated you're not going anywhere, and you can't even blame them if the fight is so stupid hard.
I can only welcome a multi difficulty raid, normal/hard mode should be the norm, with savage being the e-peen difficulty released months later for those that cleared everything quickly and feel better than the rest.

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Originally Posted by Rose-Wild

Call me crazy but maybe people play the game for fun and challenging fights?

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that's what they all say. Until they make the story accessible to everyone.
Then the crying and whining began.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/126...29#post6560729

Lot of stuff about savage in this translated interview.

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Do you have any plans to make adjustments to savage Alexander Gordias with patch 3.1? There should be a growing interest as players take advantage of the Diadem.

Yoshida: Because it is still the most difficult challenge, at least at the time of patch 3.1 we won't be making any adjustments. We'll be considering whether to make any changes starting from patch 3.15. Since you'll be able to obtain upgrade materials by completing Void Ark, we'll take a look at the number of people clearing savage at that time. If it's steadily increasing, we may not make any changes during the patch 3.1 series.

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Yoshida: The number of people who have cleared savage is about what we expected. As esoterics gear became more available, we expected more players to break through the third section little by little, but it looks like many run into a bad stretch there. We're looking to see whether groups stop trying there or whether less groups are trying in general.

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Yoshida: The next update for Alexander will be in patch 3.2. Right now, we're working on the savage version and trying to decide whether to make it satisfying for the top players or whether to adjust it for a wider range of people. Given the cost of development, I'd lean towards a lower difficulty savage, but then some players may come back and say it isn't difficult enough...

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Looks like the 3.2 savage alex may be easier.

Glad to know that if Yoshida had a bigger dev team he would waste the extra resources on rehashing content a third time instead of twice.

Yoshida: The next update for Alexander will be in patch 3.2. Right now, we're working on the savage version and trying to decide whether to make it satisfying for the top players or whether to adjust it for a wider range of people. Given the cost of development, I'd lean towards a lower difficulty savage, but then some players may come back and say it isn't difficult enough...

ｉ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　Ｙｏｓｈｉｄａ　ｄｉｄｎ’ｔ　ｋｎｏｗ　ｗｈｅｎ　ｐｌａｙｅｒｓ　ｑｕｉｔ　ａｎｄ　ｇｅｔ　ｉｎｔｏ　ｏｔｈｅｒ　ｇａｍｅｓ，　ｎｏ　ｍｏｒｅ　ｃｈａｎｃｅ　ｔｏ　ｍａｋｅ　ｔｈｅｍ　ｂａｃｋ　ｅｖｅｎ　ｈｏｗ　ｄｉｄ　ｙｏｕ　ｃｈａｎｇｅ　ｏｌｄ　ｔｈｉｎｇ　ｔｏ　ｅａｓy....it doesn't matter anymore to them...
the mmo rpg should be keep who stiil playing and get new players....not make too hard thing to let players want to quit and after this make it ez want them back.........

most of my friend already want to quit, coz we all have savage 1+2F gears and full il200 gears, still hard to pass 3F even 4F, and most of CF groups only have 30% or less to pass 3F .........

MR YOSHIDA.....you should change other mind to think other 60% players how they live in FFXIV ,not always care abt only 10% top players how to play end-game........


but if SE only want 10% top players play FFXIV, u can keep the savage setting in future ...........

There's less clear because less people interested of doing it because no point of doing it if it's just for gear.

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Originally Posted by WingPrince

MR YOSHIDA.....you should change other mind to think other 60% players how they live in FFXIV ,not always care abt only 10% top players how to play end-game........

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https://media.giphy.com/media/oSwqXYAHudeQo/giphy.gif

It's not like they added echo and nerfed bahamut for newbies. It's not like they made an alexander normal mode entirely for newbies so that they won't complain they can't go through the hard mode (but they actually did damn this community is stupid.)
It's not like they always give the possibility to newbies to get gear faster and faster, etc.
Actually, excepted giving the 10% top players (to my mind there's more like 40%) the hardmode of Alexander, what did they do? Well, nothing, because nothing else is hard, it's always a difficulty low enough so that the most people can do it. 24 raids, dungeons, even EX primal, those are just some content to entertain people because they feel like they have something to do, but real challenge? Just let me laught. Only Alexander savage is a challenge (and T12 T13 if you do them unsynced).

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Originally Posted by Velhart

May I ask why -one- raid/dungeon in this game has to cater specifically to the casual market? Why shouldn't there be content for the best of the best? The 1% excuse is not viable. With that logic, no MMO's should have really hard end game raids.

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i want to answer this in particular because i feel it show perfectly one of the major trouble of the mmorpg modern.
what is the endgame? do it's raid? or it's the activity people will do when they do have reach the end game.
End Game means simple the ultimate goal you will try to reach as player, and we don't talk only of the casual, midcore or hardcore gamer, but the whole playerbase.

MMORPG have never find a way to differenciate Endgame with raiding. that it major flaws (it can be pvp raiding or pve raiding), look at our situation, the end game, the most important point of why player stay ingame is cartering for a very very small part of the playerbase.

a tons of time, energy and money is invested into the developpement of content that will be seen only by a small part of the playerbase.... tell me why people must stay in the game if they don't do raiding?
for level up all jobs? for get the last glamour ? do it's really a decent endgame feature?

Endgame must'nt be only raiding... until they understand this we will see this trouble get out of the hand more and more. why do they care soo much about hardcore? because they are most vocal part of the community, by doing video, doing guide and such. but do they are reflecting the playerbase? no... they are not different than a waste of energy and money for a part of the advertissement. i don't say that raiding must'nt be in the game, i say it must'nt be the only ENDGAME. by create different type of Endgame, they will make the game healthier, some people will have trouble to gather 7 other people, simply because they have bad timing or simply because is not them thing...

why can't we see endgame content for group? i means give a challenge to group for give more utility to the gears you will fight to earn in raid. or simply get more better stuff for face raid. actually dungeon are... bad, no, i means they are boring and tedious. add a new type of group content that can be on par with raid as endgame is what they must strive to do... sadly with them team is impossible mission. they need more people, they need more cash.... or they need to stop to try to create a content that will be seen only by 2-3% of the playerbase and invest this time and money on developping a new endgame content that will be more open....

how? procedural generation... creation of randomized dungeon with hard challenge like we had in the V1 like, find the chest hidden in the place before it's too late... or beat all the monster of the place... or escort someone out of this place... they need to create a new type of content that will be hard and ask teamplay for call more casual, with this content they can do smaller test on what can be good to be added to the raid later, why not, a raid mode of this sort of content.

we are all agreeing that it's boring to redo over and over and over the same content. maybe time to work on some random content, what it's is asked for a long time.


sadly, SE HQ prefer invest tons of cash into Final Fantasy 15 how many million was taken from the benefit earn from FF14 and given to that game... and i think it will not even be a succes...

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Originally Posted by AltanRapsied

Only Alexander savage is a challenge (and T12 T13 if you do them unsynced).

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The "difficulty" gap between Alexander Savage and T12-T13 is pretty massive, though.

Nerf endgame content is not a good idea.

I met players who took a holiday for a week during alex savage. they were waiting to clear a1s-a4s during that week like they did in SCOB and FFCOB. Obviously they couldn't due dpscheck/gearcheck and they can't raid more than a few days or neither.

We have two communities, NA/EU and JP.
JP ffxiv community is healthy in raid terms. NA/EU is not.

Is our problem? In fact yes, we have the thought "who cares about time, we clear the content, we got the reward and i leave the dungeon". You could read everytime in FO or reddit about low dps, bad PF experiences. Players are not interested to improve or they haven't the opportunity to improve. I know players killed Bismark extreme, Ravana ext and alex normal doing low dps because their party was carrying him or they didn't know how is going in dps.

Now, SE released an endgame content where players do not need become good, they need be awesome. The reality slaped them in the face. I remember first 2 weeks about players unable to kill Faust in savage mode. Probably they killed others contents because some members did more damage to cover the lack of others one. Once you need 8 players at 100%, they failed and go frustrated.

We had others experience as Pharos Sirius and Steps of faith nerfed. We do not need remove "hardcore" content, we need players learn how to become good, with tools, guides ingame, numbers. And the community have to step up. Do you see a player spamming an ability in a dungeon? Give him advices, if he doesn't wanna be helped kick him. He must learn laziness is not a accepted behaviour.

As long as we read -"No matters the time to clear the content if we did"- we will fail as players. We need to be more competitives, more avid to new encounters and challenges. It's like a wheel, if you create "easy content" your players will be bored and doing the minimun to clear it. If you create challenges, players will have to improve to clear the content, some of them will give up and others will learn and become better players.

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Originally Posted by rappa

Nerf endgame content is not a good idea.

I met players who took a holiday for a week during alex savage. they were waiting to clear a1s-a4s during that week like they did in SCOB and FFCOB. Obviously they couldn't due dpscheck/gearcheck and they can't raid more than a few days or neither.

We have two communities, NA/EU and JP.
JP ffxiv community is healthy in raid terms. NA/EU is not.

Is our problem? In fact yes, we have the thought "who cares about time, we clear the content, we got the reward and i leave the dungeon". You could read everytime in FO or reddit about low dps, bad PF experiences. Players are not interested to improve or they haven't the opportunity to improve. I know players killed Bismark extreme, Ravana ext and alex normal doing low dps because their party was carrying him or they didn't know how is going in dps.

Now, SE released an endgame content where players do not need become good, they need be awesome. The reality slaped them in the face. I remember first 2 weeks about players unable to kill Faust in savage mode. Probably they killed others contents because some members did more damage to cover the lack of others one. Once you need 8 players at 100%, they failed and go frustrated.

We had others experience as Pharos Sirius and Steps of faith nerfed. We do not need remove "hardcore" content, we need players learn how to become good, with tools, guides ingame, numbers. And the community have to step up. Do you see a player spamming an ability in a dungeon? Give him advices, if he doesn't wanna be helped kick him. He must learn laziness is not a accepted behaviour.

As long as we read -"No matters the time to clear the content if we did"- we will fail as players. We need to be more competitives, more avid to new encounters and challenges. It's like a wheel, if you create "easy content" your players will be bored and doing the minimun to clear it. If you create challenges, players will have to improve to clear the content, some of them will give up and others will learn and become better players.

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What is the point of doing it when the reward is trash and going to be replaced in 3 months? Alexander Savage in 3.1 is already replaced gear wise. Its why nobody bought the jaguar, they knew the N64 and Playstation were on their way soon.

Gear in this game is bland, boring and its nothing special. So there really is no incentive to do anything hard, plus the expansion released with only 2 dungeons... eh... I mean, they are (or should be getting) a lot more money then what EQ2 ever made, and they produced 9-12 dungeons (all harder then the dungeons in FFXIV) and 3-4 raids per expansion? As well as 2-3 world zones and 300-400 quests? There team wasn't (and still isn't) much bigger either. You could say: Go play that then! However its so outdated now. Lol!

the trouble Rappa, it's we don't have other content for make us improve it's raid or raid, group content or world content are either too easy or simply faceroll.
it's nice to say that people need to be competitive, but the insentive reason to get gears is not good anymore a lot of people simply don't see the point to spend countless hour for get a gears that at the end help them only for get this said gears.

yes japanese community is healthier, yes NA/EU community is bad. but neglicted the trouble in the game design will not solve something, don't forget that japanese tend to appreciate game even without a lot of content everything in them life is a competition.... however in the rest of the world we don't only have this competition in mind... some want to have fun and challenge they can face without spend countless hours at farm the gears that will be used for farm this gears....

Farming is... not a competition is a tedious work.... is never fun. admit it, most of the fun of endgame content is the few first down of boss after this is become boring and uninteresting.

they need a challenge with a high replayability that will be adapted for force people to get better, by example a time attack mode of a randomized dungeon, that will ask people to strive for do it in short time if they want good reward. more important this gears will be usefull since it will allows them to reach this goal, but.... it must be a group content, before make them be good in raid, make them enjoy group. the trouble is all about the lack of true hard content in group.

Thats why soon there will be a way for casual people to obtain i210 gear :D. Let savage be there for the 1% community who want to face agaisnt a wall in order to break it. We enjoy challenges. This way everyone gets what they want.

In Alexander Savage

>Your tanks barely tank
>Your healers barely heal
>Your DPS checks are closer to gear checks

Alexander Savage is rotten right down to its core. BCoB served as an introduction to what hardcore playing at level 50 was suppose to be, and every iteration following it just built on-top of itself. Alexander Savage fails to provide the same introduction to level 60 raiding. It even goes as far as to shaft other classes the opportunity to learn the utility of their new abilities.

Both of your proper tank busters in Savage are magical, completely ruining any use for Shelltron for poor Paladin. Monks were getting turned down due to the need of burst optimization, and their two party wide utility abilities, Mantra and Dragon Kick are deemed unneeded thanks to everyone and their dog bring Dark Knights as their main tanks and the bosses hitting like a wet noodle that half the time your SCH is just DPSing anyway.

In order for most average groups to even clear A3S you have your tanks dressed in almost full STR gear and barely ever in Tank Stance, and even then you'll still probably look towards your SCH to help make sure you meet the overall DPS benchmarks between phases. This of course after Director and Producer himself claiming that they do not design encounters with Healer DPS in mind, letting it serve as "bonus DPS" when you lack the gear.

It's like the raid team decided to throw 2 years of experience out the window and had no actual idea what they really wanted to do. It completely soured the launch of the expansion and took the winds right out of the sails of the current series.

And they better hope to god that they don't make the same mistakes with the 2nd raid, because if they do this raiding community is as good as dead.




So no, I am not upset at the idea of adjusting bad fights.

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That'd be like saying more people played Hello Kitty Island Adventure than Dark Souls because there were more completions of HKIA.

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That's a game South Park made up, but Hello Kitty Online exists, and is a mostly social game. Last I tried there was no combat skills and combat was there to harvest items to craft or quest from monsters. So you can't really 'complete' HKO, like you can't "win" at The Sims.

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In order for most average groups to even clear A3S you have your tanks dressed in almost full STR gear and barely ever in Tank Stance, and even then you'll still probably look towards your SCH to help make sure you meet the overall DPS benchmarks between phases. This of course after Director and Producer himself claiming that they do not design encounters with Healer DPS in mind, letting it serve as "bonus DPS" when you lack the gear.

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First coil was designed for i70 gear (the tome kind, not the crafted with melds) in mind, yet lots of groups didn't clear before i85 average if not more. So it's like Savage was designed for i190 gear, yet lots of group pretty much need full i210 to clear without using tank or healer dps. Of course "designed for" implies everyone at that ilv should pass, but that means perfect rotations, no one dying, flawless mechanics. It's the world firster min ilv.

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Originally Posted by Enthy

I have given up on end-game since FCoB. Statics and strict lock-outs are too much trouble to me. I'm sure I'm not the only one, so I'm not surprised NA player base clear rates are not 90%-100%.

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This. I cba anymore with statics. I was raiding weekly for SCoB and FCoB but didn't even bother with alex savage. I've been playing casually since 3.0 now, and while it might be a bit boring, its a relief aswell. And most important part, I can get whatever eso piece for glamour I want instead of mandatory 1 class to raid :D

This is terrible because it has literaly killed majority of the raiding community in this game.

Personally i think the fault is entirely with the dev team. The raid is over tuned, seriously no more holy trinity because the dps are incapable of doing their jobs (not of fault of their own, it is literaly impossible to get through dps checks with dps classes alone). Now one healer is dpsing half the fight while the other solo heals while ALSO dpsing + the str tanks that cant even stay in tanking stance anymore or the team wipes due to dps checks. Then the devs have the gall to claim they dont take healer dps into consideration when designing the fights and yoshida on top saying how he didnt want hard dungeons this patch because it would "over burden healers". Give me a break.

Also raid is poorly designed in general. Just think about a4 for a second the only reason folks other then elysium are even clearing it is because of the borderline exploit of server latency ticks and ignoring nisi. I asure you the clears would be even less had this exploit not been found.

This whole ordeal sadens me because going by the interview they have learned absolutely nothing.

Its bad that fewer players cleared than expected in the sense that it severely damaged the raiding community, and it will probably take a long time for some of the smaller servers to recover. As a player, Savage was just horrible to try to progress through for a multitude of reasons which caused a lot of players to quit, and lead to a lot of statics having to deal with a revolving door of players making progressing even harder as you are constantly training up new players. My group went through 8 players in the bard/healer slot before we got 2 who enjoyed raiding enough to deal with the constant wipes in A3. As much as I enjoy raiding and love spending time with my group, even I was on the verge of cancelling my sub, and had the last bard/healer not stayed, I too would have quit.


However, its not all bad as it means the dev team now knows the upper limit for what the general raiding community is capable of. So, I think it has been a learning experience for the raid designers, and I doubt they will have a repeat of the A3S wall anytime soon. I just hope the next Alexander also addresses some of the other issues that Savage had that lead to it feeling uninteresting and not worthwhile.

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Originally Posted by HorseBoots

Alexander Savage is rotten right down to its core. BCoB served as an introduction to what hardcore playing at level 50 was suppose to be, and every iteration following it just built on-top of itself. Alexander Savage fails to provide the same introduction to level 60 raiding. It even goes as far as to shaft other classes the opportunity to learn the utility of their new abilities.

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Do you need an introduction to raids? do you not raid at lvl 50 in BCOB, SCOB or FCOB? The game didn't change, the core still here. You need avoid aoe, hit hard, heals and tank correctly the bosses. I could understand a new player could be overwhelmed, but a old-school ffxiv-raider?

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Originally Posted by HorseBoots

Both of your proper tank busters in Savage are magical, completely ruining any use for Shelltron for poor Paladin. Monks were getting turned down due to the need of burst optimization, and their two party wide utility abilities, Mantra and Dragon Kick are deemed unneeded thanks to everyone and their dog bring Dark Knights as their main tanks and the bosses hitting like a wet noodle that half the time your SCH is just DPSing anyway.

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I agree, paladin is behind drk and war. but monk? what is wrong with monks? mantra is not needed? Dragon kick is not needed? what kind of raid do you play? Mantra save a lot of life during a3s cascades and splash. During carnage zero and posterior aoe busters in a4s. Atm, monk provides a great dps, refuse to join with a monk because dragon kick is not necessary. Now i think why players are unable to kill Savage.

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Originally Posted by HorseBoots

In order for most average groups to even clear A3S you have your tanks dressed in almost full STR gear and barely ever in Tank Stance, and even then you'll still probably look towards your SCH to help make sure you meet the overall DPS benchmarks between phases. This of course after Director and Producer himself claiming that they do not design encounters with Healer DPS in mind, letting it serve as "bonus DPS" when you lack the gear.

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When your team lack of gear, you need healers and tank dps. It's obvious.
Developers have dps numbers, dps rotations and combinations (sometimes players exceed expectations). They now how many dps you are able to do with 190 ilvl, 195ilvl,...210ilvl. They have a computer program, establish a rotation sequence and run it. His program does the rotation correctly and perfect. And they know how many dps you are able to do if you play as a bot. Dev don't create a boss, add hp numbers, introduce a few mechanics and voila a endgame encounter. They tested and also they were surprised with Elysium and Lucrezia kills.

i'll take Oppresor and this chart
http://i.imgur.com/BnPx9Y6.jpg

It was the necessary dps to kill Oppresor.
With 190, you should do 1k dps after the first jump as dps and your final dps should be 800-930 (less or more).
Now, you enter the first day to oppresor, your max dps with '185' was 800 and your top is 900 without mistakes or dealing mechanics.
You need 4900 dps and your total is 4750. You lack of 150 dps avoiding you to kill the boss. You can improve your rotation and reduce downtime, but the boss is supposed to be killed with 190+ gear and you are gearing 185+. What do you do? Gid gud, improve and your tanks and your heals do the dps your damage dealers are unable to get due lack of gear.

Now you have A3S, was killed the second week and others players when they bought eso weapon. A3S was supposed to being killed with 195+ gear. But your team have 190+. What do yo dou? Git gud and improve. Healers and tanks help damage dealers to reach dps check.

A4s need 205. What do you do if you gear is 200+? check above.

What happen when you haven't got the necessary gear to kill the boss but your team don't reach the dps? You have to cap esoterics and loots from the dungeon until you break the dps check to kill the boss.

what happen when you surpass the average necessary ilvl to kill the boss and you are unable to kill it? You could pray for more gear or check what happen in your raid, who is underperforming, who is failing and try to improve his dps, his heals or CD management.

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Originally Posted by HorseBoots

It's like the raid team decided to throw 2 years of experience out the window and had no actual idea what they really wanted to do. It completely soured the launch of the expansion and took the winds right out of the sails of the current series.

And they better hope to god that they don't make the same mistakes with the 2nd raid, because if they do this raiding community is as good as dead.

So no, I am not upset at the idea of adjusting bad fights.

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The community demanded Hards fights. SCOB and FCOB were killed the first week after being released. And the next month, a part of the community endgame. I remember t13 kills numbers were 10%. This percent was increased when SE introduced "the famous echo". 10% healing, 10% hp and 10% damage.

And now, a lot of "echo raiders" thought they could kill Savage, but Devs increased the difficult and dpscheck. What do you get? Savage is to hard, my party is unable to kill faust, Oppresor 0.5 jumps down with 70%, what the hell!!! we can't pass from hands of pain!!!...

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And here is the difference between JP players and NA/EU. We are stubborn, we do not accept tips, advices or recommendations about dps/playstyle. we blame lag, we blame servers, we blame bad encounters design, we blame dpscheck, we blame gearchecks we blame elitists players, we blame others players who killed the boss before us and don't help me, and also we blame party members and friends. And what happen? we are going blind in our pride, our selfishness and we give up to play endgame thinking the rest of players are trash and we are the only good.

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Originally Posted by rappa

And now, a lot of "echo raiders" thought they could kill Savage, but Devs increased the difficult and dpscheck. What do you get? Savage is to hard, my party is unable to kill faust, Oppresor 0.5 jumps down with 70%, what the hell!!! we can't pass from hands of pain!!!...

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Thank you for showing us the exact type of player who is ruining the endgame community. Have fun with your parsers and stuff and your 'gid gud' attitude (no idea where that even came from.. WoW? GW2? idk.)

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Originally Posted by melisande

Thank you for showing us the exact type of player who is ruining the endgame community. Have fun with your parsers and stuff and your 'gid gud' attitude (no idea where that even came from.. WoW? GW2? idk.)

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My answer:

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Originally Posted by rappa

And here is the difference between JP players and NA/EU. We are stubborn, we do not accept tips, advices or recommendations about dps/playstyle. we blame lag, we blame servers, we blame bad encounters design, we blame dpscheck, we blame gearchecks we blame elitists players, we blame others players who killed the boss before us and don't help me, and also we blame party members and friends. And what happen? we are going blind in our pride, our selfishness and we give up to play endgame thinking the rest of players are trash and we are the only good.

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Originally Posted by rappa

My answer:

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And your argument is moot because I originate from a JP server, where i didn't play with NA/EU people with horrible attitudes like yourself.