Are the raid tiers "too hard?"

Not a raider but I think I should mention my thoughts.

If its too hard or simply too demanding then people will get frustrated and because raiding is a team effort that frustration will most likely be ejected to party members so it causes drama and people just give up they don't want to deal with it. This breaks statics and ruins friendships, not good for anybody and certainly not good for SE. Case in point for Gordias.

If its not too difficult but the fight is a cluster of never-ending mechanics, then its bad because too many jobs can only perform their duties while sedentary. So mechanics will be botched due to the need to stay still to do anything and the sheer amount of mechanics promotes failure when party consists of 8 people. Given the fact that in hard content 1 slip-up = wipe = "too hard", this is not good either.

What can we do to fix it? Find the middle ground from Coil and Alexander and apply it to next raid (not final Alexander, the damage has been made). Give said raid a cool theme and a sense of urgency. Have you go at it solo or with a light party for story but with no loot or rewards aside from something for clearing, that's it. If you want those rewards and equips, you do the actual raid with its full on difficulty and mechanics. Give raids an actual dungeon feel. Big place with something nasty waiting for you that can be either roaming the halls or you have to go look for while the place tries to stop you.

Yoshi P made some comments about Alex at gamescom. Not only will Falex(?) be easier than Midas, but it will also be focused much more on alexander (and his use of time magic) than the goblins, which might make for a more serious and epic raid.

i don't think the savage raid is too hard. i think the normal mode is too easy. normal mode is tuned for people who are missing one arm. okay, it's nice that SE thinks about handicapped people, but everyone else steamrolls through it, even the bad players, and then all what is left is the savage mode, wich is way too hard for most people.

This theory is great and all, but objectively Gordias destroyed the raid scene and it still hasn't recovered. Something was seriously wrong and I don't think we should go back to that level of difficulty.

When you dont have time, efford, dedication, skill what so ever to do end game raiding => dont do end game raiding => dont get frustrated by lack of your own skill or efford to actually learn job or fight.
The thing is that some people clear A6S AFTER they get full 240 and it should be enough alarming for them to know that they WONT ever finish raiding tier like this.
Improve yourself or stop crying on forums how hard it is cuz it is not THAT hard, people are just lazy f***s.
Long story short....learn your role -> go raid.... Seems like for some people would be ideal to raid once per week 1 hour session and like in 1 month clear A12
+ I dont really get why non-raiders are actually commenting on content that they never did. Are you usually like giving advices to people that are doing completly different jobs or something ? Just go for some rullets or Weeping City should be challenging (oh wait, no...already over geared for that so its boring, right ?)

As a Mid-core raider, I feel the game is too action oriented with one shot mechanics, we have to hold hands or entire parties get punished, this forces the community to ostracize players of differing skill levels.

Stats are useless because of Insta-kill mechanics. Yes, we should have them but they shouldn't make up the core of our fights. Our fights should be based on a mixture of stats, to survive mistakes and reflexes.

Make the Raid Gear Viable to jump into the next Raid Tier. It should not be reset because you want to bait in "new players" and make them feel caught up. Bringing in new players is a collaboration between the Devs making content worth playing and the player base giving it exposure. If we like the content we'll invite others to play for you.

-Raid Tier Gear should be better and have a longer life-span
-Stats should play a bigger role in raid survival
-Ease up on the Insta-Kill Mechanics or at least allow us to recover from them
-Stop worrying about trying to get new players all the time take care of the players you have

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Originally Posted by Animarelic

Make the Raid Gear Viable to jump into the next Raid Tier. It should not be reset because you want to bait in "new players" and make them feel caught up. Bringing in new players is a collaboration between the Devs making content worth playing and the player base giving it exposure. If we like the content we'll invite others to play for you.

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IMO the weapons should go:

Lore: i230,
3.3 ex primal: i235,
Augmented lore: i240,
Relic: i245,
Midan: 250,

3.4 ex primal: 250,
3.4 tomestone: i260,
3.5 ex primal: i265,
Upgraded tomestone: i270,
Max relic: i275,
Alex 3: i280

Both relic and Midan weapon should feel relevant when 3.4 comes out, with the latter being even better, and a player with only a lore weapon can get their upgrade by working for it in the next tier.

I'll post my point of view.
First of all my static story so far. FF14 it's my first MMO, playing since Beta 3, started raiding in late 2.0, cleared BCoB 1-2 on first 2.1 weekend due to our WAR became a viable choice to tackle inside Coil.
We are(were?) a very friendly group, a little casual maybe, raiding 2 fixed days + some extra time if possible, to do clears: we cleared T5 before echo but already in 2.2, T9 the very first day 2.4 kicked in, and T13 before the i135 relic kicked in (so early 2.5). We changed only one member in all the 2.x, because he leaved the game.
Coils fight were awesome, some were literally a mess as some gordias (T7 for example), but they were somewhat ok; story was amazing, I remember muting TS to listen to cutscene like T12.
Maybe we had some unoptimal performing members but it was fine. It was about friendship and fun.

Then expansion kicked in: the unoptimal member emerged with the day one Faust. He said hello, since he felt he cannot improve more. After summer (nice time to release Raid, a lot of ppl away for summer), we cleared A1S-A2S, and started A3S: literally NO progress for three months. Stupid latency for debuff / links in Hands/Adds phase screwed up every time. I changed from PLD to DRK even if i was UNHAPPY with that. We took the Thordan Weapons fairly easy, but we were somewere between adds and start of last phase. Half of the group quit in time, the unoptimal DPS had 5-6 substitutes... We gave up on Gordias.

Midas kicked in: A5S was fun and relatively fast clear. Vanilla A6S was a pain, with me killing ppl with the first mine because "sorry I have to act fast". We introduced a third day of fixed raid, wich someway is still a pain for my life schedule. Another couple of members changes and we cleared it (after six-seven weeks around and one nerf). We were stuck 5 weeks without progressing A7S just because member changes/kicks and need every week to re-teach A6S/Vortexer (at least we had 5 weeks of 100 esoterics...).

A7S was fairly easy, i went away for 3 weeks but came back and cleared in 3 evenings (they trained before). Still a very stupid fight due to permament stacks, one mess or EVEN A DISCONNECTION and it's more damage for the rest of the fight. A8S seems a very long and mechanical, we are up to adds, but due to patch schedule I'm not so confident we can clear before 3.4.

In terms of fun, dedication needed, visuals, rewards Alexander is a real FAIL. I know only for being in A8S we are in the top 5% playerbase, but this is our only "achievement".
The rewards are not worth the time (I'll evetually get my BiS pant at worst in 2 weeks to trash them after other 3-4 weeks), the story is meh (uplander bla bla bla *goblin talk* oh look a scarface au ra). Gear glamour is also meh (Gordias was UGLY). The only result of Alexander, compared to Coil, is breaking friendship. Not the static, but two years friendhsip (or presumed friendships).

Replacing member is the other problem: Weekly limitation introduce the priority to search for a at least the same or little under progression people, compared to the refilling group. New ppl that can maybe work fine are said "sorry, we need experience", and raid scene does't renew itself.

I thin SCoB model is the best: ana average/high difficult raid AND a SAVAGE difficult raid (maybe with no share locks) with SAME rewards but with something like titles and bragging rights for ppl that tackles Savage.

Sorry for the wall of text XD

P.S: Raid finder is nice (i did a 1 shot A5S clear also when out of the group) but there are some stupid limitations, like the sharing penalty with duty finder.... Also due to locks it only helps spare ppl with clears to catch some weekly. Never heard on my server of more than A5S RF clears anyway...

OH and another stupid thing: % fights. Bosses pahsing too fast / skipping and messing fight just because you were too good. But this was a case also in T7...

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Originally Posted by Sphinx12

... I dont really get why non-raiders are actually commenting on content that they never did. Are you usually like giving advices to people that are doing completly different jobs or something ? Just go for some rullets or Weeping City should be challenging (oh wait, no...already over geared for that so its boring, right ?)

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Pretty sure the term non raider can also refer to people that have either tried raid tier content but have not cleared or people that are not a fan of raid tier content despite prior success with it. That boredom is a problem for everyone in the endgame. Making two extremes of content over and over with this boredom in place makes the game feel frustrating and unfair as people sacrifice friends for progression, only to be starting the grind over again when their trinket turns useless. Meanwhile, those left behind have to deal with content already run into the ground due to gearing or relics, and some of those runs have not the most patient of players.