How to make the 3rd raid difficulty work

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Like Second Coil Savage...which was not a success, and the reason why the dev team decided to put gear in savage. Again, challenge and titles alone is not a strong enough incentive. And it's not my opinion, it's the dev's conclusion when they looked at SC Savage population...

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Again, I'm not against any reward in it. I just don't trust the community for not whining when seeing all that stuff out of their reach, and the devs to not listen to their whining.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

and probaly the reason why they didn't bother to release Final Coil Savage.

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The other reason was because T9 savage was planned to originally be T9 normal but the difficulty was too high so they kept it while doing an easier version.

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Originally Posted by Arutan

Again, I'm not against any reward in it. I just don't trust the community for not whining when seeing all that stuff out of their reach, and the devs to not listen to their whining.

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Let them whine, if you don't do the content you should not be abble to get the rewards that's all.
And if they whine point the feast and the CS, IG stuff that not everyone can have.

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Originally Posted by Arutan

The other reason was because T9 savage was planned to originally be T9 normal but the difficulty was too high so they kept it while doing an easier version.

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To my understanding the reason they released T9 savage was essentially to give the hardcore part of the then current raiders a challenge up until Final was released right?

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Originally Posted by Arutan

I just don't trust the community for not whining when seeing all that stuff out of their reach, and the devs to not listen to their whining.

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That is called being selfish.

Here is what I suggest.
- Remove Normal raid difficulty and let Extreme drop things other than weapons, let it drop gear. You can exchange tokens to get gear just like weapons.

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Originally Posted by Arutan

Again, I'm not against any reward in it. I just don't trust the community for not whining when seeing all that stuff out of their reach, and the devs to not listen to their whining.

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Like I posted earlier, in an interview, Yoshi-P mentionned that he won't accept "It's too hard" on what they plan to release above Savage. Even saying that it won't simply be another difficulty but a totally different content.

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Originally Posted by Arutan

The other reason was because T9 savage was planned to originally be T9 normal but the difficulty was too high so they kept it while doing an easier version.

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I think this existed for basically every turn, even going back to Caduceus :p

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Originally Posted by Yeol

- Remove Normal raid difficulty and let Extreme drop things other than weapons, let it drop gear.

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People don't do normal mode for gear, they do it for the story :p

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

People don't do normal mode for gear, they do it for the story :p

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That is how it started but then people kept farming Normal mode for 250 gear and fight over the loot.
If it was really for the story then it shouldn't give relatively good gear with item level equal to the crafted gear no?

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Originally Posted by Yeol

If it was really for the story then it shouldn't give relatively good gear with item level equal to the crafter gear no?

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Yes, it shouldn't...in fact gear distribution should be changed a lot. And I hope it will, or I will greatly reduce my play time because mandatory tome farming is dumb and booooooooooooring.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Yes, it shouldn't...in fact gear distribution should be changed a lot. And I hope it will, or I will greatly reduce my play time because mandatory tome farming is dumb and booooooooooooring.

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Don't worry, nothing is gonna change.

Unfortunately.

Was there any explicit indication that SE is doing a third tier? There's a November interview where Yoshi specifically says what they were considering *was not* "a more difficult version" above savage, but rather a fight (or "content") that was really challenging. So presumably, a super-hard trial of some kind.

I think it'd be fine for such a thing to drop i280-equivalent weapons, as aside from show-off value it could spare those groups the need to detour from the next tier's progression to farm an EX primal; while not greatly impacting balance on the current tier.

But to elongate the content and stop cleared groups from just farming out all the things, I'd make the weapons an achievement award tied to the job you cleared it on - so you get your fists for clearing it on Monk, but if you want the Samurai weapon you'll need to learn, optimize and clear the fight on that. Would give groups a continuous something-to-do deep into the content cycle.

The 3rd tier, aka "special content" after completing O4S was mentioned in the Frankfurt fanfest live letter.

It's healthier for the end-game community to have another sort of challenge. Look at things now because once you clear A12S, there isn't anything to do for the week aside from doing optimization runs with your group. Plus if you been clearing Creator Savage for months, some groups just get tired of just clearing weekly once they have everything they need for their jobs. By having another layer of content for the mid-hardcore groups, that will keep more raid-tier players in-game longer. Instead of just dabbing in-and-out like it is today.

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Originally Posted by Arutan

Again, I'm not against any reward in it. I just don't trust the community for not whining when seeing all that stuff out of their reach, and the devs to not listen to their whining.

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It's nothing different than what it is today. You don't clear A12S, you don't have access to a i275 weapon, mount, possible Best-in-Slot gear, etc.. You aren't getting the top ilevel weapon handed to you on a silver platter, not even for free when they add/nerf the anima steps.

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Originally Posted by technole

It's nothing different than what it is today. You don't clear A12S, you don't have access to a i275 weapon, mount, possible Best-in-Slot gear, etc.. You aren't getting the top ilevel weapon handed to you on a silver platter, not even for free when they add/nerf the anima steps.

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But at some point you will just unsynch it and get what you want. Plus, the current difficulty is low, far more low than ever before, for more people to be able to get all of this. Because they whined to get it.

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Originally Posted by Arutan

But at some point you will just unsynch it and get what you want. Plus, the current difficulty is low, far more low than ever before, for more people to be able to get all of this. Because they whined to get it.

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That or the clear rates where so low that they wanted to make content the people would actually do?

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

That or the clear rates where so low that they wanted to make content the people would actually do?

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When the clear rate is low, it means it's good. It's raid, not a walk in the park. Raid were always mean to be harder than anything else in a MMO, dedicated to end-game player to spend their time on it. The story mode exist for casual player to do it and enjoy the bosses and the map design without having to face the hard difficulty of the savage mode. The more time passes, the less we can differenciate both. A9S is a joke, anyone can do it eyes closed. A10S can be done as long as you have at least a half of brain.
Lots of people have stopped playing the game for weeks now 'cause they already cleared all floor times and times again, and we have to wait 6 months before the next expansion, with nothing to entertain us. Dun Scaith? Mean to be casual. 1h a tuesday and done. Zurvan? Well nope, low difficulty too for casual to enjoy it because normal isn't enough for them. Clear within an evening then bye.

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Originally Posted by technole

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Finally someone understanding the raiding problems.

I would say just that casuals can get 275 weapons (last relic step) and the mount ain't that worth it since people will just unsynch it after StormBlood.

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Originally Posted by technole

The 3rd tier, aka "special content" after completing O4S was mentioned in the Frankfurt fanfest live letter.

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Right, but Yoshi never said specifically that it was a third tier above Bend of Time Savage - rather, when I look back to this: http://gamerescape.com/2016/11/15/fa...-fan-festival/

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F: Something above savage?

Y: Hmmm… Not a more difficult version but rather the content itself being challenging. Only parties that have fulfilled all of the requirements could take on the challenge.

F: Something like players who have cleared the last tier of savage can try it out?

Y: If I were to give an example, then yes. If we were to make it, we would go all out, so complaints like “It’s too hard” won’t be allowed. (laugh)

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There's a chance that changed of course, but no signs that it actually has, that I know of.

Even if the proposed challenging content YoshiP has suggested is not a third raid tier, I still feel it's important for the reward for this challenge content to be vanity-only. The idea is to have a strong challenge for people looking for this challenge - these players don't need any carrot-on-the-stick reward scheme though a vanity gear/title/minion to show off "We've done the content!" would be very nice.

I don't know much about it but I feel the master trial recently released in XI is a good example. Literally just a whole fight stupidly tough boss mob(s) for a level 1 glamour weapon.

INB4 "EEEEEEWWW FFXI"

Obviously there's always a huge disconnect/back and forth, with the politically correct 'don't offend the casual gamer by gating content' sentiment in these discussions.

I regularly hear the excuse that; 'People don't want to pay for other people to enjoy content they can't complete. Especially if they feel that content takes a lot of developer attention off of other things that they can'.

Yet we play a game together. One that lives and dies on interaction and community. Subsequently why wouldn't everyone want every demographic to be catered to - in order to preserve the game and help it grow? Everyone benefits from that.

I'd imagine the most effective way to deal with a challenge tier is to incorporate a separate progression system into it of some kind. A little like PoTD. In past games, developers have implemented mostly vanity rewards to, 'i achieved that, can show it off but - it doesnt physically make me more powerful'. It works. No reason that cant be built upon further.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

players don't need any carrot-on-the-stick reward scheme

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Yes they do. If they didn't, more people than virtually-nobody would be going back and trying to min-sync clear A4S and A8S, or do the former with Nisi since they probably didn't originally. Or heck, min syncing SCoB Savage. Challenge in and of itself doesn't drive people enough to put in dozens of hours of time on a fight.

Having a gear reward still matters, at the end of the day. An i280-equivalent weapon would be "vanity" for most intents and purposes, but would feel far bigger than that and would eventually have a real value of some time savings down the road. It wouldn't be any worse than i275 weapons are now, and nobody complains about those.

Also, the use of such a reward can increase the content's staying power, especially if it's locked to the class you cleared on as described before. Theoretically that could be done with level 1 weapons too, but you'd be relying a lot on people universally getting super hype over the looks of every piece, which is obviously impossible.

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

Yes they do. If they didn't, more people than virtually-nobody would be going back and trying to min-sync clear A4S and A8S, or do the former with Nisi since they probably didn't originally. Or heck, min syncing SCoB Savage. Challenge in and of itself doesn't drive people enough to put in dozens of hours of time on a fight.

Having a gear reward still matters, at the end of the day. An i280-equivalent weapon would be "vanity" for most intents and purposes, but would feel far bigger than that and would eventually have a real value of some time savings down the road. It wouldn't be any worse than i275 weapons are now, and nobody complains about those.

Also, the use of such a reward can increase the content's staying power, especially if it's locked to the class you cleared on as described before. Theoretically that could be done with level 1 weapons too, but you'd be relying a lot on people universally getting super hype over the looks of every piece, which is obviously impossible.

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Every single player looking to get on the leader board for FFLogs speed kills would like a word with you.

There's no reward for trying to beat the hardest content in the fastest time possible yet people still do it - for the challenge, for the prestige, for the ego - it doesn't matter but they're literally doing it for zero in-game reward.

SCH and WAR videos who solo EX Primals - no (worthwhile) reward
Low man Sophia EX clear - no (worthwhile) reward
PotD Solo Ranking does exist - no (worthwhile) reward

The players do exist for these kinds of challenge.

And yes a reward may help incentivize players to partake on the content but I would still prefer that to be showoff pieces that do not contribute to a player's stat progression in any meaningful way.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

There's no reward for trying to beat the hardest content in the fastest time possible yet people still do it - for the challenge, for the prestige, for the ego...

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For the fastest farm giving you plenty of time to do something else...

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

SCH and WAR videos who solo EX Primals - no (worthwhile) reward
Low man Sophia EX clear - no (worthwhile) reward
PotD Solo Ranking does exist - no (worthwhile) reward

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You're right, no (worthwile) reward...but also no weekly farm enforced so that people won't start complaining that there is nothing to do...which, by the way is also not enforced by neither a title reward nor the challenge to beat the content, giving your top-tier content absurdingly low lifetime.

Definitely not worth the cost.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

For the fastest farm giving you plenty of time to do something else...

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The speed kill groups have done the fights enough times to gear their mains, secondary, and tertiary jobs to the teeth. They have no use for "faster" kills.

Let alone the fact they'll wipe for a few hours in an attempt to shave five seconds off their final kill time.

Yeah, the people doing speed kills and killing things like Refurbisher 0 in 2 minutes and 36 seconds aren't doing it for efficient farming.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

You're right, no (worthwile) reward...but also no weekly farm enforced so that people won't start complaining that there is nothing to do...which, by the way is also not enforced by neither a title reward nor the challenge to beat the content, giving your top-tier content absurdingly low lifetime.

Definitely not worth the cost.

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If the content is challenging enough to keep world first players going at it for a month, then I think we've achieved the "WTH KINDA DIFFICULTY IS THIS?!" nail since it'll keep most progression raiders well beyond that (assuming they can even clear it) - something for them to strive for.

Keep it minimal ilvl even after the gear level increases and the content will stay around.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

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Anecdotes ignoring scale. The number of groups putting any serious amount of time into getting speedkill rankings is in the (low) double digits. Mayyybe two hundred players at best, probably less. Similarly miniscule numbers of players do the other things you linked. That's not worth making an entire piece of content for.

Several thousand people each put the time in to clear Gordias and Midas Savage. Thousands more spent a lot of time trying. Those offered unique, extra-powerful weapons at the end. Zero complaints about said weapon existing. I don't recall substantive complaints about Coil gear either. It was just the story issue.

The catch-up gear process is about fairness to people wanting to start raiding on the next tier, and about incentivizing odd patch casual content, not about responding to desperate cries over raid gear exclusivity.

If you're SE, why in the hell would you put a bunch of effort into a whole new piece of content, and then run the risk of people not caring by offering some pure vanity reward for it? When there's absolutely zero downside whatsoever to making the reward more enticing.

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Originally Posted by Arutan

But at some point you will just unsynch it and get what you want. Plus, the current difficulty is low, far more low than ever before, for more people to be able to get all of this. Because they whined to get it.

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Unsync? You mean when it's irrelevant like 6+ months down the line. I enjoy the rewards today while it's relevant, that is really all that matters. The fact that raiders get at-least a 3-month advantage on 270 ilvl is already good enough, and practically an entire cycle on the highest ilvl weapon that's okay too. If you don't raid, you don't need an i275 to do your roulettes or Dun Scaith weekly. Raids use the gear to make weekly savage clears easier. Or optimize, speed run, or try different things that lower ilvl or gear that has non-preferable stats doesn't allow you to do.


Even if the difficulty is lower than Gordias and Midas this tier, that is okay because it made YoshiP and the developers happy to see something obtainable. Yet the A12S clear rate was still pretty low compared to the overall population that had completed A9S. However this go around they don't have to worry about anything because anyone who wants the Alexander story can get that without difficulty. So they don't have to throw echo and all sorts of nerfs when the content is still relevant.

Still, the mid-hardcore want more to do. Even if it's a smaller part of the raiding community.

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

Anecdotes ignoring scale. The number of groups putting any serious amount of time into getting speedkill rankings is in the (low) double digits. Mayyybe two hundred players at best, probably less. Similarly miniscule numbers of players do the other things you linked. That's not worth making an entire piece of content for.

Several thousand people each put the time in to clear Gordias and Midas Savage. Thousands more spent a lot of time trying. Those offered unique, extra-powerful weapons at the end. Zero complaints about said weapon existing. I don't recall substantive complaints about Coil gear either. It was just the story issue.

The catch-up gear process is about fairness to people wanting to start raiding on the next tier, and about incentivizing odd patch casual content, not about responding to desperate cries over raid gear exclusivity.

If you're SE, why in the hell would you put a bunch of effort into a whole new piece of content, and then run the risk of people not caring by offering some pure vanity reward for it? When there's absolutely zero downside whatsoever to making the reward more enticing.

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I'm going to just have to agree to disagree. I do not believe an ilvl incentive is necessary.

I will openly admit that I am biased as well. I've always felt that my critical comment towards the "it's too easy!" crowd is the fact that the vast majority of those players haven't even attempted to try to challenge themselves. Like you've said in your previous post, min-sync A4S or A8S, doing A4S with Nisi, heck even do A8S and not sacrificing Water. Even A8S with current gear scores and echo presents a pretty stark challenge compared to A12S with the same gear.

I think for me the biggest issue with giving an ilvl incentive is that suddenly there will be a group of players who feel entitled to attain that boost, even if the intent of the content was to crush you over a million times before you can beat it. It'll lead to, for the lack of a better word, whining.

I do believe part of this issue is the fact that there isn't enough content. I feel we both agree that there needs to be more content overall that is appealing to both the midcore and to elite players alike (note not elitist players) and the fact that YoshiP is contemplating this "next level of challenge" is a good thing for the game's health. You can't have super hard content as it'll alienate the midcore and you can't have above average content as it'll alienate the elite players so it'll be good to have the two different levels of content available and should placate many of the "too easy!" or "too hard!" comments.

I'll also expand on my thoughts about why I do not believe ilvl reward is important as it stems from my own perception on how they should do this challenging content. The content should be designed with min ilvl forced on, thus it becomes a matter of player skill to clear the content and not player gear. ilvl rewards mean nothing to this content and thus no need to be rewarded either. However, rewarding ilvl boosts would encourage what I stated in my third paragraph of this post - more whining. Perhaps that won't happen, and perhaps I'm being too critical of the overall population, but that is my thoughts behind it.

Time will tell what will happen because in the end, all these posts are our personal opinions for the Dev team to read and for others to provide additional input or disagreements too.

Yeah, the people saying it's easier because they heard of clear rates or their friends clearing tend to be the ones who hadn't done the content themselves, today or when it was relevant.

Even Speed running is even a progression-style of raiding too. One mess-up you have wipe and start-over. You get the Lapis phase in A11S? That's not a speed kill. Heck a lot of groups still don't even skip that today.

I like how some people say unsync is going to make it like taking loot from a baby. If you mess up the enumeration circles in A6S/A8S today, everyone in it automatically takes 99,999 damage. This isn't like normal mode where you just get a measly damage stack.

A8S Gavel? You still have to perform those mechanic checks otherwise BJ just says you don't pass and wipes everyone. How unsync is going to change that?

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

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Beating super hard content for gear that's only 10 ilvls higher, that may or may not even be BiS(because of side stats), and that will also be made trash in the next patch where the average crafter has gear as strong as yours, is not a great incentive to me at all.

As long as you keep the difficulty synced, a mount will never be trashed. A hairstyle will never be trashed. A minion will never be trashed. A weapon glamour or armor glamour will never be trashed. Music will never be trashed. Furniture will never be trashed, unless you trash it.

However if the content only rewards i280 gear but we're at i380 and the content is still synced, people won't even bother. You're doing irrelevant content that's really hard. Because it's all outdated.

Vanity rewards are never outdated. People still farm ponies allllll the time. And people will still farm birds later.

a previous post:

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(Examples)
Glamour:
-Faust/Hummelfaust/Faust Z armors and weapons
-A10S Gobbiewhatshisname's gunblade or gear
-E.D.D Lance

Furniture:
-Alexander Statue
-Cruise Chaser statue
-Faust Z striking dummy

Minions:
-Wind-Up Steamroller
-Wind-Up Refurbisher

Mounts:
-Gobwidow
-Onslaughter

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These are the kinds of rewards I'd expect from the "end of the game when you beat everything" challenge.

When it comes to raiders, they always are showing off the stuff no matter how ugly it is because it's prestige stuff. So that's not even an issue.

Higher-ilvl weapons would also serve as glamour, you know. And there'd be nothing stopping SE from adding other vanity things, just like they do now. I'm taking it as assumed/obvious that some vanity will be included in whatever the rewards are. Why wouldn't it be?

Think of it this way - if there were five fights a tier, with the +5 ilvl weapon and a mount coming at the end as usual, would anyone complain? No, not at all. Even if the last fight were on another difficulty level compared to the rest (see: A8S).

All I'm saying is that SE should use a similar incentive set to what they do for the hardest fights now; the one that's always been successful at getting people interested in tackling such hard content. I don't see how this is crazy in any way.

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Originally Posted by Cetonis

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What they will complain about is their gear being useless when the patch comes out. Why put an ilvl that high on the gear that's meant to be glamour? Useless.

SE has only ever tried putting titles in a super hard mode. They never tried putting a bunch of different things in as rewards. They've never tried making a new hard mode that rewarded vanity only things like mounts, minions, furniture, glamour etc(Oh wait! They did. PotD 101-200 and it was successful because people do it).

I don't see how that is crazy in anyway. What is so cool about having gear that you worked soooo hard for that will be trash next patch? Thats what raiders are always complaining about. "My gear is made useless next tier". Okay, solution? Make it stuff that will last forever.

One of the problems Gordias had was the retention rate. People were quitting because they think "Why am I doing all this work, trying so hard.. for 10 ilvls that will be made pointless next tier? I quit. Not worth my time."

When you think about it +10ilvl rewards for super hard raids already failed with Gordias. It wasn't worth many peoples' time. And the later it got into the tier, the less amount of people who wanted to do it there were because "Why do so much work when NM Midas will drop gear stronger than this? I'll wait for nerfs" Key word there. That's why Creator is successful. It's more worth 10ilvls.

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"Why do so much work when NM Midas will drop gear stronger than this? I'll wait for nerfs"

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Wouldn't be able to say that with a mount, title, minion, furniture, music, glamour, or hairstyle. Because they have unlimited value whereas some i280 piece has limited value.

You keep the ilvl sync on super hard content that rewards i280 gear and it's value decreases when new stuff comes out.

You keep the ilvl sync on super hard content that rewards special vanity items and its value increases when new stuff comes out.

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Originally Posted by Magic-Mal

Make it stuff that will last forever.

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But I'm not saying that they shouldn't. And a weapon would count as glamour. "Why put an ilvl that high"? Because it makes the weapon more desirable than not doing that, obviously.

People aren't so bizarrely backwards that they'd rather have an ilvl 1 piece than an ilvl 280 piece. The ones who complain about vertical progression will always complain about that, no matter what you do. Their opinion is irrelevant here.

And SE has put weapons and mounts on a super hard mode. Gordias. It was fine. They did a weapon and a minion on Midas. It was fine. People would have given up on PotD 200 too, if it was as hard as those; comparing to that is absurd.

If you're arguing that a weapon alone wouldn't be sufficient, of course it wouldn't be. I'm not saying that it would. There can and should be more than that. But what I am saying is, that assuming there's a weapon in the package, making it a +5ilvl one is strictly beneficial.

Aside from making the reward sexier to some subset of people, it also allows for only giving the weapon of the job you cleared on, which nudges people to go back and do it on other jobs if they do clear. You're not making 15 mounts or minions or glamour sets, but you can certainly do 15 weapons.