A12 savage World first 3 days after patch

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

Normal is endgame too , you have the endgame for casual/mid . Now there is another 1 not normal , should be for another target.. Am i wrong?

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There are 2 levels right now, just the more difficult part isn't hardcore, it's moderate core which caters to a larger percentage of the population. So yes, you are wrong are you not?

The problem--not just with this game but society in general--is that this generation has become "the entitled generation" where they think they shouldn't have to work hard at something to get a reward. It's based on jealousy and envy. Some people in this thread are proof of that culture.

I, for one, don't believe we should be handing out "participation ribbons" to every child just because we fear that losing might harm their self-esteem. Participation ribbons only lead to the mess of the "entitlement culture" in which we find ourselves today. But SE is now handing out free participation ribbons to everyone who fancies themselves an end-game "raider". This will surely backfire, as it will in our society.

The only compromise I can see is the addition of a 3rd tier of raiding. Normal and Savage aren't enough to satisfy the vast interests of this player base.

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

Normal is endgame too , you have the endgame for casual/mid . Now there is another 1 not normal , should be for another target.. Am i wrong?

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No, normal is not endgame. Endgame is something there to help extend the lifespan of current content. As I mentioned in my post above, there would need to be 3 difficulties for any of your arguments to mean anything.

Just a question for those who haven't beat the new raids yet. Can you call them easiler if you yourself have not done them yet? What is easy to some isn't easy for everyone. It's all subjective, Like I have no issues with playing Street fighter or the not nerfed version of Devil May Cry 3, YET that doesn't mean it'll be the same for other people. I feel like calling something easy when you haven't done said thing is a bit odd.

I'm not going to call the raids easy since I have yet to do them, as they might be just as hard for me as the last one were. Just an example. - And before anyone asks I used to have a 240 maxed monk but it was lost. So I'm releveling.-

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

That's the point ..why every1 must be able to clear everything? Is this an inner rule? If something is too hard for u , u have a lot of things to do , people also have normal where they can see the story , the istance , the music , the boss . THE only means for the endgame to exist is that it must be something really hard.. Or it won't be and endgame content.

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Think of it a different way. If only the 1% can actually clear/see the content, why should the devs even bother with it? Surely it would be better in that case to just axe it altogether. Of course that's the worst case scenario and I don't think anyone really wants that, but you get the idea.

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Originally Posted by KopeAcetic

There are 2 levels right now, just the more difficult part isn't hardcore, it's moderate core which caters to a larger percentage of the population. So yes, you are wrong are you not?

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No im not cuz normal is considered for midcore players , savage can't be for the same target

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

No im not cuz normal is considered for midcore players , savage can't be for the same target

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I'm just gonna tell you you're wrong here. No one in the entire world is forming a static to take on normal mode. Savage is the target, and targeted to, midcore-hardcore players.

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Originally Posted by KopeAcetic

If all you care about is raiding create a raiding group where you hop from game to game to game figuring out and beating all raid content without any guides or assistance.

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While a vast number of players hate this sentiment just as much as they do "take a break from the game" replies, I have to agree with this. People want a challenge, but they actually think they'll get the full challenge experience by finding out as much as they can about something before actually doing it. Logically, that's one of the dumbest perspectives for anyone to have if they're going to cry about any ease of difficulty. While a select few are the exception to that rule, and unless you were the one to figure out the mechanics in a world first candidate group (not your other group members figuring it out for you), there's really no room for argument.

The sky is always falling when the best of the best perform as expected. If they manage to beat something quickly, it means the end for the game because things are too easy (even though majority of groups following will never be capable of even coming close to such completion time spent). If they fail to beat something quickly, it means the end for the game because things are overtuned, groups are hating the game, they're gating raiders by having gear expectations to complete content (LOL!), etc.

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Originally Posted by Olympus

The problem--not just with this game but society in general--is that this generation has become "the entitled generation" where they think they shouldn't have to work hard at something to get a reward. It's based on jealousy and envy. Some people in this thread are proof of that culture.

I, for one, don't believe we should be handing out "participation ribbons" to every child just because we fear that losing might harm their self-esteem. Participation ribbons only lead to the mess of the "entitlement culture" in which we find ourselves today. But SE is now handing out free participation ribbons to everyone who fancies themselves an end-game "raider". This will surely backfire, as it will in our society.

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Oh, it's the "this generation" argument. Look at you go, you certainly castrated the opposition with that one!

It's a raid tier discussion buddy, not a metaphor for societies failings.

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

Normal is endgame too , you have the endgame for casual/mid . Now there is another 1 not normal , should be for another target.. Am i wrong?

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You seem to be forgetting the business part of an MMO. No company is going to cater to just the 1%, 5% (insert ridiculously low amount here) that is currently the *hardcore* raid scene. If SE catered to just those people, then 95% of it's current playerbase is going to cancel their sub, this game won't be making anymore money, which means this game is eventually going to get shut down.

If you are playing this game solely for just hardcore raiding and for no other reason, then good luck to you. The rest of us will be over here enjoying other parts of this game.

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

Normal is endgame too , you have the endgame for casual/mid . Now there is another 1 not normal , should be for another target.. Am i wrong?

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You are wrong, yes!
Endgame is the end of the game, which means after you saved the world: you live peacefully in a world with no danger...
So, what to do with "soldiers" when there is no war in the world? That is endgame!
What you claim to be endgame and describe as "hard content" or "endgame raiding" is an illusion because thats non existent...
If you cut it into normal mid and hard then you argue as if you always were hardcore and you never were beginner and thats what is so wrong in your thinking!

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

No im not cuz normal is considered for midcore players , savage can't be for the same target

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I wouldn't say normal mode is for midcore, I'd argue that normal mode is for the casual story experience, not midcore.

Everyone that is at max level is expected to beat the normal storymode, even if you can't do the mechanics the rest of the group can beat it for you. That can't really be said about Savage. I agree that "savage" content should be hardcore and therefore it should be renamed hard and they should add another "savage" mode for hardcore people to get their achievements/mounts (was was argued and listed a few pages up to great detail).

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Originally Posted by Centershock

You seem to be forgetting the business part of an MMO. No company is going to cater to just the 1%, 5% (insert ridiculously low amount here) that is currently the *hardcore* raid scene. If SE catered to just those people, then 95% of it's current playerbase is going to cancel their sub, this game won't be making anymore money, which means this game is eventually going to get shut down.

If you are playing this game solely for just hardcore raiding and for no other reason, then good luck to you. The rest of us will be over here enjoying other parts of this game.

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WildStar is a great example of what happens to a game that only caters to the hardcore endgame demographic.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

Difference is, WoW makes a structure for midcore and hardcore. Also makes content around it (like Heroic Dungeons) that give a nice balance of challenging but fair content for people learning. So while true their Heroic/Mythic activity is not as high, that is mostly because Normal mode itself is a process for casual/midcore players. Unless things have changed, my knowledge is more towards WoTLK days. I encountered many raid groups who jumped right into Heroics after beating the Normal mode.

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The low end and high end of raiding between the two games is, by and large, quite comparable.

At the low end, you have Normal mode in FFXIV and Raid Finder and WoW.

• Both see clear rates somewhere around 50% of the player base (Sources: FFXIV, WoW).
• Both award gear that's inferior to other items that players can get from other non-raiding sources* over the content's life span (tomestones and crafted gear in FFXIV, world quests, crafted gear, and mythic dungeons in WoW).
• Both provide gear that's a recolor of the raid gear from higher difficulties*, but generally restrict some or all of the other cosmetic rewards (titles, companion pets/minions, mounts).
• Both offer much easier versions of the fight that most players can expect to clear with a relatively small number of attempts, although some groups may struggle on some of the encounters when they're first released, due to a lack of player familiarity with the encounters.

*this has not always been the case, but is applicable for the Legion iteration of Raid Finder

The same is true of the top end difficulties: Savage in FFXIV and Mythic in WoW.

• Both see clear rates of ~0.4% (Sources: FFXIV and WoW).
• Both are at a level of difficulty where it's primarily organized groups with fixed membership that are attempting and clearing the content.
• Both usually see their world first clears with a couple of weeks at the longest, even though the eventual overall clear rate remains very low.
• Both award gear that is the highest item level available (although in Mythic that's previously been the only source of gear of that item level, unlike FFXIV).
• Both have some form of exclusive non-gear rewards (titles, companion pets/minions, mounts), that's not available elsewhere in the game.

But there are some major differences in the raid scene between the two games.

Most obviously, WoW has two additional difficulty setting in between Raid Finder and Mythic:

• Normal, which is referred to by the developers as a "Friends and Family" difficulty. It's primarily intended for groups of friends, where you're never going to consider kicking someone just because they're under performing, which also makes it a pretty good difficulty for PuGs.
• Heroic, which is intended to be challenging while still maintaining a level of group flexibility (in terms of jobs, specs, etc.) that isn't present in Mythic.

Although the clear rates for the entire instance on either setting aren't that high (12.5% and 9.8% respectively), a substantial portion of the player base cleared at least one boss on a given difficulty (32.5% and 24.4% respectively).

Additionally, there's a lot more raid content in WoW. The first raid of Legion, Emerald Nightmare, has seven bosses. There's an 11-boss raid coming in early 2017, The Nighthold, but there's also a three boss mini-raid, Trial of Valor, coming sometime before that.

The increased number of bosses makes it much easier to have a smooth difficulty curve (no jumps like we saw going from A2S to A3S or A5S to A6S) and also to provide more places where a raid branches off, allowing a group to pick and choose between different encounters.

The next major difference would be that WoW has flexible raid sizes. On the normal and heroic difficulties, you're able to have anywhere between 10 and 30 people in the instance, and all the encounters will scale accordingly. My guild had 35 sign ups last night, so we just split into two groups of 17 and 18 and ran two concurrent instances. No need to bench anyone, no need to stress, and when someone else logged on part way through the raid, we could seamlessly bring them into the group and continue as if nothing had changed. By the same token, as long as you have enough players for each role it's not a cancelled raid night or trying to find a PuG replacement if someone can't make it to a raid they've signed up for.

Finally, WoW (at least in Legion, this is another thing that hasn't always been the case) offers considerably more paths by which to improve your gear. World quests (various open world objectives that show up on the world map), world bosses (11 different bosses, a different one of which is available each week), and mythic+ dungeons (timed versions of the dungeons, which scale up in difficulty as you beat the current difficulty) all have the potential to award raid-level gear without requiring the larger-scale coordination that's necessary for a raid group.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

In terms of reward, there is a lot you can do. There is not much that will make casual players jump for it but you can properly motivate midcore. For starters, don't put the same aesthetics for gear in the Normal. Put acheivements, mounts, minions, titles, high ilvl gear.

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The second sentence here is worth highlighting. There's are significant sections of the player base who, no matter what rewards are available, are either never going to be interested in any kind of raiding or never going to be interested in any kind of raiding that isn't accessed simply by using a queue system that assembles a random group.

Personally, I'm of the belief that that concept extends (in a less granular way) into difficulty as well; no matter the rewards, once the difficult on the content exceeds a certain threshold (which is going to vary from person to person), it doesn't matter what rewards you put on that content, some people are going to have no interest in engaging in it.

At that point, the developers usually* have to make a choice as to whether they're okay with those players never advancing beyond whatever the previous tier of content is or whether they want to lower the difficulty to entice some of those players to engage in it. SE's gone the latter route with The Creator.

*What I'd like to see more of, and what WoW is dipping their toes into with Mythic+ is more content that scales dynamically (rather than in discrete steps) in both difficulty and rewards. A group can essentially choose their own difficulty (or continue challenging content until they reach their ceiling) and get rewards commensurate with that difficulty. I can, however, see that that would obviously require even more resources to create than non-scaling content, and it's no secret that FFXIV's development team are already stretched in that regard.

As long as the fights are fun - and so far, for me, they are - I greatly prefer this difficulty over Gordias/Midas. I don't want to grind hard on only four bosses for a month+ of progression. Rather than raising the difficulty for the savage raid (I think Creator is probably just about right), they should raise the difficulty of a lot of the other content in the game to match normal mode.

So the Dance begins again.

There are new performers, and there are some returning ones in new outfits, but the Dance is still the same.

"It's too Hard, It's too Easy." Back and forth.

It is a most tedious dance.

I find it a bit weird when people who have yet to actually do the content themselves are saying things like "oh its too easy" or "oh its too hard." I mean those teams that beat savage or close to were basically born and bred for raiding, they were more than ready for it, definitely does not mean its going to be easy for you or your party... so yeah...

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Originally Posted by Hanayumi

I find it a bit weird when people who have yet to actually do the content themselves are saying things like "oh its too easy" or "oh its too hard." I mean those teams that beat savage or close to were basically born and bred for raiding, they were more than ready for it, definitely does not mean its going to be easy for you or your party... so yeah...

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Close to clearing a11s have done 5 hours each night so took total 15 hours for 3 turns

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

Close to clearing a11s have done 5 hours each night so took total 15 hours for 3 turns

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Exactly! Sounds like you were ready for it, bet you even have a majority of the 250 crafted full melded as well, but yeah the second someone said a12s was already beat people in my server started throwing out complaints... >.<

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

Close to clearing a11s have done 5 hours each night so took total 15 hours for 3 turns

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How many of you using the new crafted iLvL250 gear?

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

How many of you using the new crafted iLvL250 gear?

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Some with half set some with no pieces , our mt isnt even 240

People definitely have the right to be sad or disappointed/worried about this given that SE gave us a whole new set of tomes to grind. Player skill > gear, yes but the fact lore was uncapped for a new tomestone when people already cleared a12s is worrying. Listen for a sec..... this means no savage raids until 4.0. The community will not be ok with this.

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Originally Posted by Lunafreya

People definitely have the right to be sad or disappointed/worried about this given that SE gave us a whole new set of tomes to grind. Player skill > gear, yes but the fact lore was uncapped for a new tomestone when people already cleared a12s is worrying. Listen for a sec..... this means no savage raids until 4.0. The community will not be ok with this.

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That's another fact.. 270 gears have no sense .. If the " hardest " contemt can be cleared with the previous patch equip i really can't see any sense on this

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Originally Posted by Pasquale

Some with half set some with no pieces , our mt isnt even 240

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Yet you're capped off.

For those that are doomsaying this, remember the opposite happened for Gordius and we've still not recovered the raid scene.

I'm not going to explain my perspective on this at length, like I usually would. This is mainly due to the fact that my feelings largely mirror that of Yoshi-p's. When you get bored, more on, come back. The thought that highest tier combat should be your sole provider of content ... is fairly indignant of the majority base.

It's not that this is the ONLY thing hardcore players have. The have the rest of the game, with the rest of the players. If they're not interested, that's on them. It's the opposite that's folly - that there be a segment of the game so inaccessible that only the elite need apply themselves after weeks or even months of grinding. That's the fast track to getting the majority to quit. Meanwhile, many hardcore players, if they clear it quickly, means they're just going to gear from it more - not having to lose weekly lockouts each time because they failed a gearcheck. This means multiple jobs for them to gear, this means accessibility for them to help others if they so choose. This gives them more freedom to play more content or other games.

And ,no, this will not be the end of challenge content until 4.0. That's floors 100-200 of Palace of the Dead. Granted, that will be for bragging rights mainly, however, your challenge seekers will likely find it there.

I like how you chime in Pasquale, but only when its someone who shares opinions close to yours :^).

@ Lunafreya

The community not being happy as appose to what exactly? Only 1-5% of the raiding player base clearing it? Hate to break it to you hunny- but the more people clearing the content, getting loot and having fun = happier people. The community will be PERFECTLY fine with it. Will some of the 1-5% that cleared Gordias and Midas? Maybe not, but guess what? They are the absolute smallest % of the player base.

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Originally Posted by IllyriaKnotfred

I like how you chime in Pasquale, but only when its someone who shares opinions close to yours :^).

@ Lunafreya

The community not being happy as appose to what exactly? Only 1-5% of the raiding player base clearing it? Hate to break it to you hunny- but the more people clearing the content, getting loot and having fun = happier people. The community will be PERFECTLY fine with it. Will some of the 1-5% that cleared Gordias and Midas? Maybe not, but guess what? They are the absolute smallest % of the player base.

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1) every1 putting these numbers forget something , that 5%is refered to the global population ( most of them are not raiders because they have different goal ) that 5% is not the numbers of the global raiders who cleared.2) Let's be honest now that u can see EVERYTHING from normal version people are still crying cuz the thing they really want is the MAX lv weapon so they can sayy woooo im op!

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

And ,no, this will not be the end of challenge content until 4.0. That's floors 100-200 of Palace of the Dead. Granted, that will be for bragging rights mainly, however, your challenge seekers will likely find it there.

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Palace is not savage content though?

Well I don't mind if the savage is easier to clear, because it will encourage casual-tier to do savage and that could increase the clear rate statistics :)

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Originally Posted by Lunafreya

Palace is not savage content though?

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Well, according to this thread. Alexandrian isnt savage either....

It seems that this comunity doesnt even know what it wants

Midas savage: "too dificult, gives something less hard"

Creator savage: "too blunt easy, this is not raid hardcore at all"

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Originally Posted by Frederick22

It seems that this comunity doesnt even know what it wants

Midas savage: "too dificult, gives something less hard"

Creator savage: "too blunt easy, this is not raid hardcore at all"

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It's almost like the community isn't a hive mind, and different people have different opinions!

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Originally Posted by Lunafreya

Palace is not savage content though?

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This would be incorrect.

The 'Story' portion ends at floor 100. So you may consider the following 100 floors to be 'Savage' content, as it will provide no new story.

Which is the same format as Savage, when you think about it. But, like Creator, it also features no true gearcheck and is mainly skill based - so the best players are likely to push through it quite well. Except we do know that Palace of the Dead has more random elements in it, so those complaining about 'too easy' will have some true difficulty and outright denials to contend with - answering a lot of requests we had earlier on content.

I quit the concept of being hardcore endgame long before FFXIV 1.0 came into play - so take what I say with a grain of salt. But from previous game experiences, the OP's views are not reflected by the majority of even his niche, let alone the wider player base at large.

While challenge is always appreciated, it is not when it comes at the cost of fair gameplay and the inclusions of literal time-gates. The fact that this match was primarily a skillcheck will have likely come at the relief of most endgame players, and an affirmation of their feelings that a lot of the problems suffering raiding in the last couple cycles was due to bad tuning.

Yes, this will bring questions as to the longevity of content, questions that should be asked - but not at the cost of reintroducing the same innate flaws that have plagued raiding for generations - where clearing has nothing to do with good skill and everything to do with not grinding content to the point of becoming stale.

Many will view this as a step in the right direction, however - let us be clear, this is only a step. There are many more challenges that yet need to be addressed to make the game truly healthy.

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Originally Posted by Ibi

It's almost like the community isn't a hive mind, and different people have different opinions!

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In that case I took it upon myself to make a poll to see if the community what the community really wants
http://www.strawpoll.me/11331408

I would also appreciate it if people explain their reasoning for their choice (and also post the poll on r/ffxiv so that we can get a clear picture)

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

In that case I took it upon myself to make a poll to see if the community what the community really wants
http://www.strawpoll.me/11331408

I would also appreciate it if people explain their reasoning for their choice (and also post the poll on r/ffxiv so that we can get a clear picture)

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I voted for Final Coil, but having 2 options was fairly limiting.

Personally, I'd like to have a system like WoW - where there is 4 levels of difficulty. My preference is challenging, but forgiving. Something that requires coordination and practice, but doesn't require you to wipe for months.

In previous tiers, my team only made it to 15% of A7S, and had just cleared A2S before Midas dropped. We did start Gordias late, but Midas we started right away. Obviously, my team is not top tier - but we're not horrible players. I have a feeling that the difficulty of Creator will be more our speed, but we haven't been in yet.

As an aside, the current vote results are 85% Final Coil and 15% Gordias (Savage)

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Originally Posted by Astral145

Awesome i think i will actually look for a static this time around.... I've had no desire to run savage content in a long time.... looking forward to it....

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This post is a good thing. If Gordias was too hard and Statics were breaking, then yea...I'm all in for hard content for raiders but when static's
are breaking left and right, hows that fun for anyone? Trying to rotate and find replacements all day?
Also, the nerf in Savage difficulty should bring a lot more raiders into the mix so it'll build the community back.

OP, those people pretty much live for this stuff, so what was 'easy' for them won't be for everyone else.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

I voted for Final Coil, but having 2 options was fairly limiting.

Personally, I'd like to have a system like WoW - where there is 4 levels of difficulty. My preference is challenging, but forgiving. Something that requires coordination and practice, but doesn't require you to wipe for months.

In previous tiers, my team only made it to 15% of A7S, and had just cleared A2S before Midas dropped. We did start Gordias late, but Midas we started right away. Obviously, my team is not top tier - but we're not horrible players. I have a feeling that the difficulty of Creator will be more our speed, but we haven't been in yet.

As an aside, the current vote results are 85% Final Coil and 15% Gordias (Savage)

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Early in HW life cycle there was an interview with Yoshi P where he was asked about the two difficulties and he said he would prefer 3 but doesn't have the manpower to do more than two. As a result he does one tier for everyone and one for proper raiding.

From a purely metric perspective the ultra hard teir of content would not be the highest priority as the number of players who would truly engage and invest a lot of time on it is relatively small. Case in point, a rough census using Loadstone data indicated that roughly only 1%, if that, of the NA player base actually finished Gordias Savage before Midas came out and while its likely higher, I suspect even Midas Savage wouldn't top 10% before Creator.

From that perspective Normal mode is a much better investment. The number of players actually completing and even regularly doing the Normal mode almost certainly massively exceeds those actually in the higher level progression.

Please Please Please

Yosh-p and dev team please don't listen to the vocal 1% hardcore community that is saying the creator is to easy like you did when they were saying the same about final coil.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

Personally, I'd like to have a system like WoW - where there is 4 levels of difficulty. My preference is challenging, but forgiving. Something that requires coordination and practice, but doesn't require you to wipe for months.

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I'm in agreement here. I'm sad that the dev team feels that they are unable to deliver a 3 or more tier system which would help mitigate a good chunk of the "Is it hard enough?" debate that goes on every new raid cycle. Something like current normal (for people who just want the story and such, introduce mechanics), something like Creator (Savage) (easy enough to build statics and let more casual or less skilled groups build confidence), and something more like Midas or Gordias (Savage) that is mechanically similar but with challenging DPS and healing checks that is built to stretch the limits of available gear.

The issue is always what rewards to give, because I feel that the current 30 item level spread within a raid tier is already to broad. Maybe drop it to 20 item level spread?

Normal Gear -> Tomestone Gear (+5) -> Upgraded Tome Gear/Mid Gear (+15) -> Savage Gear (+20)

This would also potentially allow for some interesting optimization choices between three gear sets, as 5 item level isn't as bad from a weight perspective usually.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

As long as the fights are fun - and so far, for me, they are - I greatly prefer this difficulty over Gordias/Midas. I don't want to grind hard on only four bosses for a month+ of progression. Rather than raising the difficulty for the savage raid (I think Creator is probably just about right), they should raise the difficulty of a lot of the other content in the game to match normal mode.

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Agreed. I haven't gone into Savage yet, so I'll omit it from the equation, but what I want for the expansion is as followed.

- Increased dungeon difficulty; not to any substantial degree. Just enough to warrant paying attention. Instead of artificial gates forcing tanks to pull in small groups, make the mobs hit hard enough they simply can't mass pull without having a solid knowledge of cooldown usage and a healer who can handle it all. Essentially, big pulls becomes an individual accomplishment everyone can theoretically obtain. Not just something we eventually do because the dungeons are so laughably easy.

- Add a third, legitimately "expert" dungeon. This is the dungeon that hurts. Perhaps experiment a little by make boss encounters dynamic moments. PotD may actually attempt this at some point. Regardless, I would love to see not only a challenging third option, but one where the boss fight could happen anywhere. Like of it like the tonberry who chases you.

- Bump up Normal mode's difficulty. I have long felt the massive gap between Normal and Savage this raid tier is what contributed to the sharp decline of Savage participation. With only two difficulties, normal suffers the same way dungeons do. It's just too easy outside of the first week when people are figuring out the mechanics.

- Lastly, expand the raid tier to six fights. Simply put, we need more content here. By adding an additional four fights to the raid, you can steadily build up the difficulty between all of them.

Afterwards, they need to overhaul the reward structure for Savage. There just isn't enough incentive to farm it.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

Early in HW life cycle there was an interview with Yoshi P where he was asked about the two difficulties and he said he would prefer 3 but doesn't have the manpower to do more than two. As a result he does one tier for everyone and one for proper raiding.

From a purely metric perspective the ultra hard teir of content would not be the highest priority as the number of players who would truly engage and invest a lot of time on it is relatively small. Case in point, a rough census using Loadstone data indicated that roughly only 1%, if that, of the NA player base actually finished Gordias Savage before Midas came out and while its likely higher, I suspect even Midas Savage wouldn't top 10% before Creator.

From that perspective Normal mode is a much better investment. The number of players actually completing and even regularly doing the Normal mode almost certainly massively exceeds those actually in the higher level progression.

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Yeah, I remember that interview. I disagree that he doesn't have the manpower to provide 3+ difficulties though. They already have a lot of the work done (setting, animations, graphics etc.). Then, they also spend a lot of resources on content which feels less important (at least to me). For example, Aquariums seem entirely too complex for what should be a simple housing item. Things like LoV, PotD and Diadem are convoluted, unloved and likely took a lot of dev resources. Take those resources and re-allocate. Finally, I'd say that they waste a lot of resources re-inventing the wheel so-to-speak every patch. Each patch the difficulty is off, people complain, the analyze and re-design and put out something new - this is likely resulting in a lot of wasted time.

They also could probably implement a middle tier pretty easily. Design a hard gordias-style savage and then just lower some outgoing damage, lower dps checks and maybe remove a mechanic or two. You don't need to design anything new, just trim some of the stuff that makes it as hard as it is.