To be honest, Alex Savage is a failure.

A1-4S was boring, but I think they stepped up their game in A5-8S. I was against two difficulties and I have still a hard time accepting it but things got better in this tier in my opinion.

A5-6S were extremely enjoyable. A7s was kinda fun, but as a ranged with no responsibilities I had problems not falling asleep. A8s looks fun but I need to spend more time in it to be able to say for sure.

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Originally Posted by Klamor

"fanservice" as you call it until the Gold Saucer .

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There's numerous references and throwbacks before then, the first dungeon you enter is a throwback to the pirate hideout from Final Fantasy V
The scions hideout is hidden behind a bar called seventh heaven, I could go on.
It's been fanservice from the very start of ARR.

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Originally Posted by Klamor

and I bet you can have your story handed to you elsewhere, like a book maybe.

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That have not worked well in FF XIII (reading ingame a book or data file for the story)
Players want to play the story, not to read about it

Midas is miles better than Gordias in terms of engagement, but overall I think the raid structure in Heavensward still has some problems. The difficulty gap between the two modes is still too wide, though it's better for Midas than it was for Gordias.

While the raid scene on my server did experience a bit of a rebirth following 3.2, it seems to be slowing down again. Diabolos is on the verge of experiencing yet another player exodus related to its raid scene, though it'll probably be a smaller one than the one that happened during Gordias.

Though Midas is generally better tuned than Gordias was for a more general raiding population, it's still more complex than the Coil raids were in some significant ways. AS6 in particular has about as much mechanical density (that is, the number of mechanics you need to learn and master) as T9 does (and arguably a little more, depending on how you define a significant mechanic), and significantly more than something like T7, which was considered one of the toughest encounters at the time.

The increased encounter complexity is compounded by the higher class complexity of level 60 rotations and priorities relative to level 50. With the raid content generally being more difficult, it means players need strong incentives to keep pushing through it if they are not the "challenge-seeking" type of player (those who cleared Gordias in its natural state, for instance). Since Alexander (Savage) largely lacks any and all incentive outside of its challenge, players aren't going to be motivated to keep going if they hit the wall, and that's going to shrink the raid scene over time.

While it is natural for raid encounters to become more complex over time as the playerbase becomes more mechanically savvy, it seems that Alexander is complex enough that it still has a strangehold on the overall raiding population. Gordias almost killed the raiding scene on many smaller servers, and Midas has allowed the scene some room to breathe. But I'm not sure that it's going to be enough. If the encounters continue to become more complex at this same rate, raiding may ultimately die off in FFXIV, except for one or two "raiding servers." That's not really a good thing, unless the developers can also start adding more challenging content for those who like a challenge but for whom Alexander (Savage) has proved to be too much.

Mind you, I don't think they should make further adjustments to Midas at this point—the content should be allowed to stand as it is, and Echo will take care of the rest for those that have given up on it (of which I'm one). But I suspect we'll see an easier raid for 3.4 yet again as the developers try to find the sweet spot between difficulty and accessibility. Their best solution, of course, is to have three difficulties, but they've shot that down so far due to resources/staffing. We can only hope that someday that will change.

I feel the big difference between Coil and Alexander is, you have to be perfect. In Coil, someone could make a mistake, and it doesn't mean wipe. Sure, there were some mechanics that did this, but a lot of mistakes were recoverable. Especially with higher gear.

Alexander seems to require perfection from all 8 players for 10+ minutes straight. Even with higher gear. And since so many mechanics are raid wide one shots, it takes much longer to progress because you can't even practice on later phases.

Even though I'm not burnt out and still love to raid, I get how that can get frustrating to a lot of ppl. Hopefully they can bring back the excitement of Coil in later patches.

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Originally Posted by Felis

Mainstory and raid were always separated.
You don't have to do Coil to finish the mainstory and don't have to do mainstory after Ultima Weapon (that just unlock most lv50 contents) to do Coil.

Coil is a side continuation of the 7th umbral era story from 1.0 (and that was also not 1.0 MSQ)

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Yes I realize you didn't have to do coil to complete the main story.

The story with Alexander doesn't have anything to do with anything or any characters we already knew. We just deus ex machina (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina) onto the scene and we inexplicably are the only ones who could have helped anyway. It's a side story that might as well be filler. It's completely designed to be skipped. While coil you had a reason to do it. Characters you already knew were involved. Alexander they created new characters so none of the character's you already know stories wouldn't be effected if it got skipped.... yada yada...

Not only that, they took it a step further where there IS a easy mode so they could have made the story more relevant. But they didn't.

The point I failed to make was Alexander from the start was never designed to change the "status quo" of the story... as coil orginally did. Which by definition makes it a skip-able side quest entirely. Which is why I think it's been a unsuccessful raid as far as participation numbers go.

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Originally Posted by Cherie

snip

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Cid isn't new D:

I don't understand why raiding is the only real form of progression endgame in XIV. Even during 2.x, not a whole lot of people regularly did coil. This game often gets criticized for carbon copying systems from other MMOs, yet the raid structure doesn't get that same criticism. I'm fine with having some kind of raid, but why are we well into 3.x without some other kind of endgame that appeals more to the game's average player?

I mean... if the game's raid community was so small to begin with that it could be decimated by one tier of raiding, then why is raiding such a big deal to begin with?

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Originally Posted by Thayos

I don't understand why raiding is the only real form of progression endgame in XIV. Even during 2.x, not a whole lot of people regularly did coil. This game often gets criticized for carbon copying systems from other MMOs, yet the raid structure doesn't get that same criticism. I'm fine with having some kind of raid, but why are we well into 3.x without some other kind of endgame that appeals more to the game's average player?

I mean... if the game's raid community was so small to begin with that it could be decimated by one tier of raiding, then why is raiding such a big deal to begin with?

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Ohh man...so much this. Lol and it seems like Yoshida doesnt understand that (I could be wrong) but he thinks nerfing savage will entice people to do it more. It is not that its too hard..its that there is no motivation, no point in doing it! We need more middle ground content...