Normal/Savage Alexander complaint

I to agree that it sucks doing basically the same fight but harder. But I still think it was the best way to go, for allowing everyone to see all content. The solution is to make the savage mechanics more interesting. WoW hit a gold mine with Uldah, then ignored it. They had gates within the normal fight itself, it you did X than the fight would get harder with different mechanics. This it what I'd like to see.

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Originally Posted by Miscreant

You've missed the point, they want to experience the story through progression, not on these watered down fights that provide no real challenge or reward outside of bits of gear. We're forced to run Normal mode before Savage, it ruins the story, it ruins the wow factor when you first see a new boss and their room. You plough through all of the floors so fast that theirs no time to speculate about whats next in-between.

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I don't think that the story needs to be altered significantly, nor limited in one vs the other. What is required though is some form of change-up in the Bosses, trash and mechanics used so that even though the story is largely unchanged, the actual experience and fights are different.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

No, it turns out now that actually it's exclusive story content that they get access to and others do not. Excuse me? If raid gear was not dropping in Savage mode, no one would run it except the really dedicated teams like BG. exclusive story content or otherwise, the first thing raiders in general will say is that if there is not better gear dropping in Savage, they won't run it because it's not worth their time.

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it's not exclusivity, it's priority and awe. seeing Twintania, Nael, Phoenix, Bahamut for the first time in Coil after completing the difficult fight before them is rewarding.

high skill players should be rewarded for their skill. they should earn that storyline and earn that final fight with the big boss.

everybody else can wait to the next patch for the story mode.

Several things are going on with savage/normal Alexander that hopefully SE is learning from.

First and foremost the drop system for normal Alexander, while certainly better than previous loot mechanics, is still pretty terrible in implementation. SE needs to really work on humane design. Unnecessary item bloat paired with unnecessary loot restrictions make normal mode loot just about the least engaging system yet. These days, if you join a group farming Alex Four be prepared for every single person to need/want a shaft. Who wants to do Alexander gordias 8 times a week? Time to phase out the seven superfluous items that normal mode drops and replace them with one item. Trade in one item for a belt/accessory, two for hands, hats or boots, and four items for pants or body. This lets us effectively use normal mode to gear up secondary classes without completely burning out and it still has the same total time required to gear a class in full i190 gear.

The second thing going on here is that square enix is using terrible boss design in an effort to "win." It is very clear with this savage mode that Square Enix is letting it's ego get in the way of developing fun content. Rather than making encounters that are interesting they are straight up making encounters with brutal dps/hps requirements because we keep exceeding their projected metrics. If you develop a game as if your players need to be beaten you can't win. Either we will consistently be better than you expect or you will eventually make something so punishing we just a don't enjoy trying anymore. An ancillary effect of this ego contest is that they also completely neutered crafting to prevent people from gaining a slight edge through melded gear. Butchering side content to prevent a fraction of your playerbase from being marginally better is not good design.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

I don't think that the story needs to be altered significantly, nor limited in one vs the other. What is required though is some form of change-up in the Bosses, trash and mechanics used so that even though the story is largely unchanged, the actual experience and fights are different.

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The fights do feel different in savage, obviously A1 & 2 are basically the same as they are the starter floors but A3 is a massive step up from the normal mode in terms of mechanics.

And it's not a matter of exclusivity, it's just that clearing one should not a requirement to do the other.

To me the best way would have been to make Law gear I190, clearing Alexander Normal not being a requirement for Alexander Savage and releasing them at the same time. But this has already been and gone now, we will have to see how they handle the next raid.

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Originally Posted by Miscreant

The fights do feel different in savage, obviously A1 & 2 are basically the same as they are the starter floors but A3 is a massive step up from the normal mode in terms of mechanics.

And it's not a matter of exclusivity, it's just that clearing one should not a requirement to do the other.

To me the best way would have been to make Law gear I190, clearing Alexander Normal not being a requirement for Alexander Savage and releasing them at the same time. But this has already been and gone now, we will have to see how they handle the next raid.

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Perhaps they will allow those who have cleared Alex Savage as it stands to continue to the next part in Savage mode, that would make sense to me, and it would appear to resolve the issue completely by creating literally two separate paths that have the same starting point. If the second part of Alexander requires to be cleared in normal mode before undertaking Savage, even if you have already cleared the first part in Savage mode, that would be a problem in my opinion. I really hope that they maintain the two paths through Alexander separately to provide the raid experience for raiders and the less demanding experience for everyone else.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

high skill players should be rewarded for their skill.

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That's what the top tier gear drops are for, unless I am mistaken.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

they should earn that storyline and earn that final fight with the big boss.

everybody else can wait to the next patch for the story mode.

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Why? So you can be a special snowflake (to quote the usual Forum response)? Seriously though, why do you think you should get some special story elements all to yourself, even on a timed exclusivity, when you are already being rewarded with gear that those other players will likely never see, except on someone else.

Saying "everybody else can wait to the next patch for the story mode" about some content in a story driven game sounds pretty entitled, especially as you are clearly rewarded with the raid gear and additional achievement/titles in game. If the story is completely optional and has no bearing on the main story, then it's less of an issue to me, but if the story ties into the main story line, it should never be gated by real raid content.

Here we go again...
Keep things as is... It's perfectly normal to require a normal mode to be cleared before going for a harder mode of the same thing.

Avoid burning out by simply doing things in a pace that suit you rather than force yourself to do everything as fast as possible.
What do you gain by rushing? Bragging rights?

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Originally Posted by Miscreant

You've missed the point, they want to experience the story through progression, not on these watered down fights that provide no real challenge or reward outside of bits of gear. We're forced to run Normal mode before Savage, it ruins the story, it ruins the wow factor when you first see a new boss and their room. You plough through all of the floors so fast that theirs no time to speculate about whats next in-between.

For me personally I have no problem with normal mode being in the game or it dropping gear, I think its a good thing for the casual fan base. But for the next round of Alexander raids I would like for Savage and Normal to be separate entities, with neither being a requirement for the other.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

it's not exclusivity, it's priority and awe. seeing Twintania, Nael, Phoenix, Bahamut for the first time in Coil after completing the difficult fight before them is rewarding.

high skill players should be rewarded for their skill. they should earn that storyline and earn that final fight with the big boss.

everybody else can wait to the next patch for the story mode.

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While I'm completely on this side of the fence, it's a tough compromise.
I think difficulty modes diminish the novelty of the encounter.

Facing an easy mode version of Bahamut would've been dumb.
The echo was fine to make content more accessible.
But the new content is designed such that Savage is faced with catch up gear from Esoterics and Normal Alexander.
I don't like facing the same boss I face rolled quite a lot already.

Now a lot of bosses go on farm and that might seem the same.
But the first time you experience fighting the boss is important.
Learning the mechanics, seeing the place and seeing the boss really affects how you perceive it later on.
But Normal previews a lot of Savage and even just having the same boss really diminishes the weight of their presence.

You can gimp yourself and not go to normal, but that's a BS solution when it's clearly designed to be used while you work on Savage.
Your first encounter with the bosses has to be on normal too since it's a requirement.

Even if it wasn't, I just don't like difficulty modes.
They break the story. It's not like you'd write a book where the hero faces a ton of challenges and another where it's a walk in the park.
The bard was a clever way to incorporate it. I've liked it since Ultima Extreme to the old Savage.
But those made more sense because it didn't affect how you felt about the story.

I get why these difficulties exist though, because otherwise you exclude players.
It was nice with CT, because the easier raid was completely different.
But that's an issue because people want to experience the story of Coil and Alexander but the difficulty and time commitment doesn't allow them to even step in.
I was fine with the Echo, but that's not enough for a lot of people.

There's no good solution there. I can't see a compromise that makes everyone happy.
If it's the same boss in two difficulties, I'm just not going to feel the same way about it.
The name, image and room of some of the old Coil encounters evoked a certain feeling because it carried the weight of the encounter's difficulty.
But difficulties are also the only way fit everyone into the raid progression, where it's exclusive content otherwise.

Anyway, I don't hate normal. I'm not burnt out by it.
It's not going to break the game and it's good for a lot of people.
It will just diminish the weight of the bosses, encounters and story, and that can't be helped.
It's easier to stomach because it's a goblin raid so it's more upbeat that Coil was.

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Originally Posted by KarstenS

At the Release of Realm Reborn we had:

Instances
- Wanderer Palace
- Amdapor Keep

Primals
- Ifrit HM
- Garuda HM
- Titan HM

Raid
Coil Turn 1-5

No dailys or weekly PvE stuff (except tome cap). No roulettes. No ex primals. No gold saucer (I know alot of ppl that are still farming for TT cards). No FC stuff. No crafter or gatherer stuff (daily or weekly). No hunts. And some stuf I did forget.

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Not talking about ARR launch content. Still waiting.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Perhaps they will allow those who have cleared Alex Savage as it stands to continue to the next part in Savage mode, that would make sense to me, and it would appear to resolve the issue completely by creating literally two separate paths that have the same starting point. If the second part of Alexander requires to be cleared in normal mode before undertaking Savage, even if you have already cleared the first part in Savage mode, that would be a problem in my opinion. I really hope that they maintain the two paths through Alexander separately to provide the raid experience for raiders and the less demanding experience for everyone else.

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I completely agree with you on this :)

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

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If they had just made Law gear i190 and us not needing an Alexander Normal clear to do Savage we wouldn't have had the choice over whether we spoil Savage's fights with normal or not, but that's retrospect for you.