Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

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Originally Posted by Zosia

do you actually look at the stats or do you just like to assume that since casuals are the majority that there is no need to be diligent?

You do know that even at level cap, you are a minority player? Does that mean that we should cater the game strictly to leveling? No, that would be a dumb way to design a game. I forget the stat off of the top of my head, but admittedly by SE own stats released about 30% of the player base makes up the end game community.

Coils had a 10% participation rate, with about 5% reaching a full clear before heavensward.

That's nearly a third of endgame players that participated in coils. This notion that we are talking about 1% of the player base is ridiculous. If Alex had not destroyed the raiding community, we would still see this similar pattern of participation.

In reality, when raiding was at it's healthiest in this game, close to a third of endgame players were trying coil and many of them were able to actually down some bosses.

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If only 30% of the playerbase encompasses the whole endgame playerbase. Then either the leveling curve is too large or players are not finding reasons to want to reach endgame.

10% participation rate is poor regardless if the base consisted of 24 players or 2 million.

The participation rate should read 50% plus or the content being designed is sub par. I didn't say 1% of the entire playebase raids. But if you look at raid metrics overall in almost every mmorpg, including this one. Raids are the usually the least popular option in endgame.

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Originally Posted by Zosia

It's not locked, you choose to lock yourself out of it, which is perfectly fine. It's your prerogative to choose what you spend your time on, but it does not mean that your choices have to be detrimental to others.

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I may or may not choose to lock myself by not participating. The problem is, that this isn't about me. This about the majority of people are not participating whether it is actually locked or just perceivable-ly locked behind is of no consequence.

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Originally Posted by Zosia

Sure it does, you don't need to solo anything. You could have gotten 3-4 people together right after hitting level 60 (just a few weeks after HW) and destroyed T1-13.

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Whether I can solo or not or choose to group is not applicable. If the content is going from needing 24 people to 2-4 people weeks later. Then that says something about sustainability.

Why do a raid if I can just wait 3 weeks and duo it? The content should be tuned to accommodate 24 players and stay relevant at least a patch or two. I get it, no one wants to raid the same raid for 3 years. That is cutting content sustainability a bit short don't we think?

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Originally Posted by Zosia

Again, this is just more of you wanting the entire game to cater to you. This game is full of casual content, you just want 100% of the game's content to cater to you, it's very greedy. Once you take Raiders and non-level capped charters into account, you and your ilk comprise about 25% of the player base, not such a hefty margin to warrant that 100% of the game cater to you. Thus, you should not have everything handed to you on the silver platter, you are not as large of a demographic as you think.

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I'm a midcore, thank you for trouncing around name-calling though.

I rather enjoy difficult content. But not to the point I have to depend on the same people 24-7 or dance an 80 piece samba to perfection or get scolded or booted if I step on my shoelace during one rotation of the samba.

There is difficult, then there is being difficult for the sake of it, regardless of player retention and sustainability.

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Originally Posted by zosia

do you actually look at the stats or do you just like to assume that since casuals are the majority that there is no need to be diligent?

You do know that even at level cap, you are a minority player? Does that mean that we should cater the game strictly to leveling? No, that would be a dumb way to design a game. I forget the stat off of the top of my head, but admittedly by SE own stats released about 30% of the player base makes up the end game community.

Coils had a 10% participation rate, with about 5% reaching a full clear before heavensward.

That's nearly a third of endgame players that participated in coils. This notion that we are talking about 1% of the player base is ridiculous. If Alex had not destroyed the raiding community, we would still see this similar pattern of participation.

In reality, when raiding was at it's healthiest in this game, close to a third of endgame players were trying coil and many of them were able to actually down some bosses.

Source:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ea-Census-2014
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...e8ff1bcf34c5ae



It's not locked, you choose to lock yourself out of it, which is perfectly fine. It's your prerogative to choose what you spend your time on, but it does not mean that your choices have to be detrimental to others.



Sure it does, you don't need to solo anything. You could have gotten 3-4 people together right after hitting level 60 (just a few weeks after HW) and destroyed T1-13.



Again, this is just more of you wanting the entire game to cater to you. This game is full of casual content, you just want 100% of the game's content to cater to you, it's very greedy. Once you take Raiders and non-level capped charters into account, you and your ilk comprise about 25% of the player base, not such a hefty margin to warrant that 100% of the game cater to you. Thus, you should not have everything handed to you on the silver platter, you are not as large of a demographic as you think.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

The main problem is the odd belief that people doing the bare minimum of the games content should get a similar level of rewards... Nowhere is this more true than with Relic weapons... I've no idea why anyone thinks the item level those quests provide is acceptable given the content involved... It makes no sense to me, item level doesn't even really matter that much unless you're doing Savage... Yet people feel entitled to that item level for doing some of the easiest content possible...

I really wish SE gave us either branching Relic quests, or multiple Relic quests... Take 2.0, we had the Relic Reborn weapons, then we had the Primal Focus weapons... Could have upgraded both IMO, Relic Reborn has you farming FATEs? Primal Focus has your farming Coil. Need a rare drop from Snowcloak to get Excalibur? Balmung needs a rare drop from Shiva (EX). That doesn't make the drops from raids any better, but it at least adds some additional value to the content... Such a shame that both Relics would need to be equal though... Such an absurdity... It's genuinely backwards; The more effort you put into this game, the less rewarding it becomes... Someone who rarely plays is likely going to be excited when they pick up some Lore gear for doing basically nothing. Meanwhile, someone who busts their ass off raiding gets to watch as other players rapidly get the same item levels for a fraction of the effort... By all means, reward casual players as well, but the notion that they need the same rewards as hardcore players? It's stupid... All it does is make the MMO less attractive for hardcore and casual alike...

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We need to request to SE to allow us to put two likes on a post, because that is what I would do to these two posts.

I wrote something but my 4G crapped out, and I am not rewriting it. Just know that this thread is getting no where. And i will suggest that is be closed. It's just turning into bashing casuals or raider which isnt fair to either.

If they keep 2 modes, it should be :

- Extreme mode for 4 players (difficulty level of trial Ex, but with 4 players it's easier than with 8 players);
- Savage mode for 8 players (difficulty level between final coil and midas)

IMO, the best course of action would be to release the normal and savage difficulties at the same time, without locking savage behind the normal mode. That way, hardcore raiders are not forced to go through the NM content to unlock savage. I also think that gear should not drop from NM, as it basically forces raid groups to spend time farming NM just to gear up. This way, story is the only benefit along with the obvious relevant tomestones (and perhaps glamour items, achievements to unlock titles, minions etc. to give people incentive to run through NM more than once). All players would be able to get the full story as they desire, with hardcore players not having to spam NM and burnout trying to get drops.

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Originally Posted by Sandpark

If only 30% of the playerbase encompasses the whole endgame playerbase. Then either the leveling curve is too large or players are not finding reasons to want to reach endgame.

10% participation rate is poor regardless if the base consisted of 24 players or 2 million.

The participation rate should read 50% plus or the content being designed is sub par. I didn't say 1% of the entire playebase raids. But if you look at raid metrics overall in almost every mmorpg, including this one. Raids are the usually the least popular option in endgame.

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I don't care about what what you feel or think. Out of endgame players (30%), 10% participated in the coil raids, That's a 33% participation rate among end game players. Even now with alex savage threads, we have countless ex raiders saying that they loved coil but don't bother with alex savage.

I have stats, you just keep speaking in unsupported generalities. As they say, put up or shut up. If Alex had not destroyed the raiding community, Those coil participation patterns would have likely carried over to HW.

When the story of the raid was exclusive, raiding had the highest participation rate of end game players (around 33%). Now that rate is around 3% (That 30% of end game players show about 1% participation rate for alex savage).

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Originally Posted by Sandpark

I may or may not choose to lock myself by not participating. The problem is, that this isn't about me. This about the majority of people are not participating whether it is actually locked or just perceivable-ly locked behind is of no consequence.

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You're not the majority. The majority of players never hit the level cap. And if its not a point to discuss, why did you bring up the notion of locking content? It was your point in the first place, not mine.

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Originally Posted by Sandpark

Whether I can solo or not or choose to group is not applicable. If the content is going from needing 24 people to 2-4 people weeks later. Then that says something about sustainability.

Why do a raid if I can just wait 3 weeks and duo it? The content should be tuned to accommodate 24 players and stay relevant at least a patch or two. I get it, no one wants to raid the same raid for 3 years. That is cutting content sustainability a bit short don't we think?

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You are being hyperbolic, my example was four people a few weeks after HW launch. Four people is half of what was needed prior to the expansion. Also, it says nothing about the content's sustainability. All content gets nerfed intrinsically by level cap increases. You would have to wait for the expansion or better gear.

Saying you just have to wait a few weeks shows you missed my point entirely. If we were using FCoB as an example and you wanted to wait for the story, you would have to have waited from FCoB launch to HW launch to be able to do an undersized party, which was about 8 months.

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Originally Posted by Sandpark

I'm a midcore, thank you for trouncing around name-calling though.

I rather enjoy difficult content. But not to the point I have to depend on the same people 24-7 or dance an 80 piece samba to perfection or get scolded or booted if I step on my shoelace during one rotation of the samba.

There is difficult, then there is being difficult for the sake of it, regardless of player retention and sustainability.

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I don't imply anything negative about casual players. if you take being called casual or non-raider as an insult, that is your own projections that you should deal with.

That's your choice and set or preferences on how you want raid content to be. That's why we have PF and RF, why content get's nerfed. and why better gear is added. There are already measures intriniscly built into most raiding systems to address your concerns. You just don't like to wait.

Eventually, you can do content anyway you like, you just want it now. You want to be current without putting in any work that it takes to be current. So, rather than accept the fact that you might be a few months behind people story wise, you rather have the entire bar of entry lowered to the point that you are personally comfortable with the amount of effort required to stay current.

It's INCREDIBLY selfish. Why even bother playing an MMO at all? Just play single player games and pick the medium difficulty. That way you can see all the story, get all the rewards and play all by yourself.

Edit: Out of time for now, I see that you were going to reply, I look forward to reading it later, Cheers!

I had hope that they wouldn't go with the same model as 2.0-present but they did SE is really out of touch with their raiding playerbase..there's no reward for raiders other then getting your gear a month faster then everyone else. Gordias was overtuned and crushed so many statics that people who wanted to get into/try Gordias couldn't participate that's why the raiding scene is dead. The more you put into raiding the less you get out of is really true if you cleared it all basically the game just says "good for you have a cookie" then throws everyone else cookies with upgrading their ilvl 230 weapons to 240 and so forth with the rest of the gear.

I was hoping SE would change it up and take a risk but I was wrong and we're back to square 1 yet again I honestly don't know what to say then what's already been said i'm not happy because I was hoping they'd do something to get out of this rut. For most people it was losing people and trying to bring numbers back that's why I never cleared A3S because we'd be doing it over and over and people would leave the static and by the time we found another one we'd lose another. I'm just honestly tired of this content there's nothing new that it brings and raiders are still getting the shaft because a person can be full ilvl 240 with a 240 weapon and the Midas gear will just not mean as much, for myself I don't know if I can continue to play after the next patch knowing that nothing is going to change.

Just to reiterate, I have no problem with changing the gear and rewards from savage. I agree that they are currently lame. If they had unique equipment models, a higher ilvl, or some other reward, Savage would be a lot more palatable. At the very least I'd like to see the previous Savage be the best equipment to start the newer savage at release. I also agree that Raiders should be allowed to skip Normal if they prefer, going straight into Savage. There are a lot of cool tweaks they could make to the gear for Savage Raids. I agree they should be BIS for the course of a patch cycle (i.e. until the next raid), aside from maybe the Relic Weapons, which use time expenditure instead of difficulty. The ratio of power between Tome and Savage gear is currently a bit too close, although I presume part of the reason tome gear is so strong is that it (indirectly) can make raids easier over time. Still, Savage Gear should likely be the clear BIS considering the difficutly to obtain it.

However, I still vehemently disagree with those suggesting the removal of normal. Raid content is too expensive, time consuming, and frankly "fun" to cater it to only a small, hardcore audience. While I agree Gordias was only okay, Midas was a blast, with a bevy of enjoyable mechanics (Gorilla/Bird etc), cool boss designs/music (Brute Justice), and some cool equipment. Plenty of players thoroughly enjoyed it. From the 2015 official census, over 230,000 people completed all of Gordias Normal, while only 58 completed Gordias Savage. The numbers are a lot better for Gordias 1 (251,158 compared to 58,873 for savage), but still over four times the number of players got to enjoy a piece of content that might have been inaccessible otherwise. I fail to see why it is "selfish" for more players to enjoy a piece of content. The allure of exclusivity is understandable, but there has to be a balance. I'd rather the high level gear rewards be exclusive than the enjoyable fights and the story.

We know for a fact they were disappointed with the clear and participation rates for Coils. Having a "Normal" version of the raids was the clear reaction to that. That said, I wouldn't have anything against adjusting the difficulty of the next Alexander (and inevitable 4.0) Raids a bit higher. Making it like Nidhogg normal, which is quite difficult for the average player, would be fine, especially for the last part of the raid. I just think it's wasteful to build expensive, enjoyable content and then leave it solely for the hardcore. Perhaps more difficulty levels would fix that as well, but I'm not sure.

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Originally Posted by Claymore65

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I would approach it with numbers grow overtime type of structure. Not jam pack as many numbers as you can. Normal mode does not last over a month for most. Having it at FCoB level and then gimped when a new tier comes out does cater to both midcore and casual, it makes the content last that cycle. Making a Savage on top of that with an always ilvl sync makes it relevant content till the game shuts down. Helps fill in those "theres nothing to do" end of patch cycles that we are experiencing right now.

I just don't like seeing a potentially great raid structure get tarnished just because some need their instant gratification story mode. Sorry, I can't agree to it, just so many better ways to approach this than SE is offering.

You present your case well even if I don't agree with it. So it is more like just agreeing to disagree thing with myself

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Originally Posted by Nalien

The main problem is the odd belief that people doing the bare minimum of the games content should get a similar level of rewards... Nowhere is this more true than with Relic weapons... I've no idea why anyone thinks the item level those quests provide is acceptable given the content involved... It makes no sense to me, item level doesn't even really matter that much unless you're doing Savage... Yet people feel entitled to that item level for doing some of the easiest content possible...

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First off, in any game, no matter how casual or hardcore, there's a desire to improve your character. Whether it be by leveling, acquiring gear, learning new skills, whatever - it doesn't matter AT ALL what you're using this character advancement for. When you're tough enough to beat the hardest boss in Diablo II, do you stop trying to acquire new legendaries or rares? Of course not - now that you can beat the boss, you want to beat the boss faster and more efficiently. You want to build your character into a monster that can curbstomp that boss. The same applies here, whether you're hardcore or casual - whatever it is you choose to do in game, you want to have access to better and better stuff so you can do the things you like to do BETTER.

Secondly, relics are in no way casual content - don't think for even a moment that they are. No casual player will go through the grind that it takes to make a relic weapon; if they're willing, they are by for that reason not someone you can consider casual. I would argue, in fact, that acquiring a relic takes MORE time and dedication than even the toughest raid currently in the game. A raid, as long as you're good at pattern memorization and have a similarly competent team with you, you can master in a matter of a couple weeks of practice. At that point, it's just a matter of farming, and waiting for RNGesus to bless you with the random drops you're after - and all the while, it's getting easier and easier as you acquire stronger gear simply by participating in the raid.

A relic, on the other hand, you will not be completing in a few weeks. It doesn't get any easier, either - if anything, it gets HARDER. Even if you factor in the nerfs SE introduces to make previous stages of the relic easier, there's still all those stages to get through, with the final "raid equivalent" stage typically being the most ridiculous grind. While it's true that all that grinding is content that's easily accomplished, it's still a test of patience and perseverance that no casual player (and, to be honest, not many hardcores either) would be able to stomach.

No, the most significant difference between raid weapons and relic weapons is not the difficulty in acquiring them, but the fact that one can be done solo while the other requires a team of eight. The difficulty in assembling a team is what makes raiding inaccessible to most, not the difficulty of the content. If SE were to introduce a "raid simulator" which involved a solo player having to complete a "dance" that simulates what a player would go through in a raid, I think you'd find that the number of players capable is much higher than the "has completed Midas 4" statistics would indicate. Given the option to practice at their own pace, and not be continually frustrated by one of the other party members screwing up a mechanic and returning everyone to square one, yeah, you'd be seeing much better rates of learning and success.

There are plenty of people capable of raiding who simply never get the chance, simply because each time they attempt it they get saddled with a new group of people stuck at the beginning.