Raider to Non-Raider: an exhibition on thoughts and misconceptions

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

I did. I don't necessarily agree with all of it. Like I said, I agree more with the post he quoted rather than his post itself.

Unless you're really just trying to say "don't post if you don't agree with the OP" to which I will kindly say, ahahahaha, no.

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Then, what don't you agree with? Why don't we start there instead of your initial vitriolic response. You came in, insinuated some raiders == all raiders then asserted we have no idea what we want. You said raiders wanted harder fights, I certainly did not. I was very very happy with all three tiers in ARR. So, unless someone came onto my account to post for me, your statement is fallacious from the start. Not all raiders, not even a majority, had a problem with the tiers in ARR. Only world first groups and Yoshida had a problem with the raiding difficulty in ARR.

SE balanced the only raid in the game for less than 1% of the player base. If you think that is a great idea, then perhaps we don't have much to talk about since that is just a crazy position to hold. Alex N is not a raid, it provides no progression, and was completely cleared the first day it was on df. You don't even need a static for normal mode, you can just solo queue and call yourself a "raider".

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Even in the case of WoW, the same thing happened. Until the end of WotLK, the devs rarely listened to the extremities with players when it came to combat difficulty. All they did was listen to positive feedback and worked with what players were doing to have fun, mechanics wise, at the time during TBC (which was the beginning of no CC parties with the emergence of AoE tanking thanks to Paladin tanks). Players complained about it being too easy for a long time... Bliz delivers difficulty in Cata instances when it launched, people start complaining it's too hard.

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Its tough to find a middle ground, and nigh impossible to please everyone.

I do think Blizzard over corrected with Cata Heroic difficulties (they were a lot worse in the beta too, which was hilarious to play through) and then over corrected back in the other direction when it came back to bite them. It was unfortunate all around.

@OP I'm too new to this game to have gone too deep into raiding. I haven't even cleared Faust yet (though we did get him to 8% once :p). But some of the things I've been reading on here have me a bit hesitant to seriously try to go much further.

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Originally Posted by Avidria

Its tough to find a middle ground, and nigh impossible to please everyone.

I do think Blizzard over corrected with Cata Heroic difficulties (they were a lot worse in the beta too, which was hilarious to play through) and then over corrected back in the other direction when it came back to bite them. It was unfortunate all around.

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It certainly is. It's largely a psychological thing and no one really cares because of that lol. Grass is always greener mentality without any foresight. Vanilla was very straight-arrow and we, the player base, didn't have a whole lot of things to compare and contrast to. What content introductions and changes happened during that initial mainstream era of MMORPGs was essentially new. We were accustomed to the idea of coordination and strategy with teamwork to get things done. Speed runs, for example, did not exist because of this... with certain specific exceptions. Like instead of spending 1.5hrs or more doing undead Stratholme like the average person, you needed to do it in 45min to accomplish a certain optional quest before an NPC is killed off. Now THAT is what would be called a speed run, not this save 5min bull we have here in most SR cases. I still remember the Deathcharger dropping the one and only time (out of hundreds of clears) back then, and it going to a guildmate that quit that very week... but I digress.

When people complained for more difficult content, they were basing that off of their own experiences of what was current and how much easier it became from what was before. That being things like a need for CC because mobs or mechanics about these mobs were deadly if allowed to continue uninterrupted. What they didn't think about in their complaints was how much of a change would be required to do this. Everyone went from being careful about aggroing even a single extra mob to PULL ALL TEH REDZ! once late TBC hit, which then became the norm in WotLK. Everything became faceroll outside of the newly introduced Hard/Heroic Mode raids, particularly ICC. Players were lead to believe they were essentially the one-man army type of player, mentally. So they wanted a challenge... they got one come Cata, but everyone was still stuck in god-mode playstyle. Even when faced with the realization that it no longer worked, people still tried to force themselves to do it that way, and thus... they complained. It's like when a tank overpulls mobs to do a speed run, grabs too many and wonders why the dirt became their friend so quickly, then tries it again with the same results... then yet again... and again. We, the playerbase, are very stupid in many moronic ways. While not always the case, we tend to blame devs that try to give us what we want, then when we get it, we complain again because we're looking at it in hindsight.

Coil raid begins: "Coil is too easy, give us something harder. People are clearing it in a week! Game is too easy and people are quitting!"
Savage Coil is released: "There's no point to even attempting this because the rewards just aren't worth it. Give us better loot for doing something that much harder! Nothing to do so people are quitting!"
Alexander Savage is released with highest tier loot: "I wanted something difficult, but this is too difficult. You can't expect me to know how the people I play with are, you (the devs) should figure out how they are and what would make them quit." - translation: "Give us Coil level difficulty and read between the lines of people saying something is too easy"... *cough*...

Obviously there are other variables involved, but strictly from the difficulty stance, it's pretty much laid out there.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

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The thing is, a lot of the people that complained that coil was too easy because it got cleared in one week had never stepped foot in coil. The fact that it was cleared in one week was just used as a way to try to discredit raiders.

I was perfectly happy with the way the Coil series worked, and thought the difficulty was just right, although already more challenging on a personal level than every other MMO I have played. Even now, I'm not really upset about the difficulty, just that the fights have been deflated by normal, making people burn out incredibly fast.

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SE balanced the only raid in the game for less than 1% of the player base. If you think that is a great idea, then perhaps we don't have much to talk about since that is just a crazy position to hold.

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As far as I'm concerned, coil was no different back when its tiers were still relevant content.

I think there should always be something that's balls-bustingly difficult, because otherwise, people complain DIS GAEM IZ 2 EZ. The people that can't handle the balls-bustingly difficult content don't have to do the content. Pretty simple to me.

The argument from before was that coil actually had a pretty important storyline that tied into the transfer of 1.x to 2.x, that a whole ton of people did not get to experience because they don't have the skills necessary. They rectified it this time around by making an easier version of the coil-equivalent raid. Again, pretty simple to me.

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Alex N is not a raid, it provides no progression, and was completely cleared the first day it was on df. You don't even need a static for normal mode, you can just solo queue and call yourself a "raider".

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If difficulty is what is required to have a raid, then what are you even complaining about when you've got what's apparently a difficult raid in the form of Alex Savage? It's too difficult, you say? Maybe that whole "git gud" line everyone is fond of throwing around here is applicable?

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

As far as I'm concerned, coil was no different back when its tiers were still relevant content.

I think there should always be something that's balls-bustingly difficult, because otherwise, people complain DIS GAEM IZ 2 EZ. The people that can't handle the balls-bustingly difficult content don't have to do the content. Pretty simple to me.

The argument from before was that coil actually had a pretty important storyline that tied into the transfer of 1.x to 2.x, that a whole ton of people did not get to experience because they don't have the skills necessary. They rectified it this time around by making an easier version of the coil-equivalent raid. Again, pretty simple to me.

If difficulty is what is required to have a raid, then what are you even complaining about when you've got what's apparently a difficult raid in the form of Alex Savage? It's too difficult, you say? Maybe that whole "git gud" line everyone is fond of throwing around here is applicable?

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Ignorance at it's finest.

Link to the interview with Elysium, the world first a4s kill

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Even for the hardcore players most of us feel that Alexander Savage was tuned a little too high,” Gouka admitted. “Maybe something that takes two to three weeks is fine, but when you’re spending an entire month essentially on the same fight it gets a little bit ridiculous.

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The best group in the world says that the content was over tuned. They are in a position of authority to say that, being the best group in the world. There are REAL problems with the current raid tier and we are losing players over it.

Do you think it is healthy for a game to bleed subs? Because that's exactly whats happening.

ARR raids had about a 12% participation rate from the player base. The alex savage rates will be much much lower once the final tally is made. The difference between ARR and heavensward is that a large portion of that 12% of ARR raiders have absolutely no content catered to them right now. So, unless you think it is wise to please the top 1% over that 12% from ARR, we need to come up with viable solutions!

I used to raid a lot with BCoB. I spent a lot of time with my static and stayed up until ridiculous times progressing through the content, my reason being purely because I enjoyed it and it was fun, and felt rewarding to down a turn we'd spent weeks trying to learn. The story and fights were also really interesting to me. We weren't hardcore in the slightest, but we still took the raids seriously.

Now, I don't really have any motivation to do Alexander Savage. I haven't actually tried it yet and that's because it feels like there was absolutely no transition and it will just be the same content, just 100x harder. This kind of takes the fun out of it for a 'midcore' raider. Coil had a nice progression to it, each fight being different from the last, whereas I feel Alex Savage is just a pumped up version of Normal mode. Of course as I said, I haven't actually tried it yet so I could be completely wrong. That's just my opinion right now.

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Originally Posted by Ibi

More accurately:

Top few percent of raiders: "OMG SE give us some actual difficult endgame content in Heavensward plz"
Vast majority of raiders: Not saying anything, because they're fine with the difficulty where it is.
SE: "Here you go"
Top few percent of raiders: Not saying anything, because they're fine with the difficulty where it is.
Vast majority of raiders: "OMG SE this is too hard, all our statics are breaking WTF"



Coil requires seven people of suitably aptitude with convenient availability. Leveling every class to 60 and experiencing their individual stories can be done without ever talking to another person.

Coil requires some level of aptitude, reaction speed, and ability to function under pressure that is, quite frankly, beyond some of the players of this game, and no amount of time or effort is going to get them to the point where they can perform as the necessary level. Leveling every class to 60 and experiencing their story lines can be done, by design, by players at any level of aptitude.

Are you really incapable of seeing that these two things are night and day?

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People aren't only quitting Savage because it's too hard. They're also quitting Savage because there is not enough incentive to grind through progression. No new story, no new fights -- just new mechanics, no new gear -- just recolored NM gear. If there were more rewards, then more people would be willing to tough it out.

If you think that the top raiders didn't complain about the difficulty of the content during progression, you weren't paying attention. Their twitters were littered with complaints. The difference is for top-progression raiders, the pursuit and the clear is enough to motivate them. For mid-core raiders, there needs to be more since they don't care about being top 10 in the world, server 1st, or part of the 1%.


As for the two being night and day, they're obviously different in ways. But, you are getting caught up on details rather than understanding the actual point. To experience anything in this game, you need to invest something.

To experience the entirety of the classes / jobs, you need to invest a lot of time and possibly a lot of gil to grind it out.

To experience the entirely of the raiding content, you need to invest a lot of time and possibly a lot of gil but in different ways. That time goes into research, learning and grinding of a different sort. That time also goes into networking.

Some people are okay with the grind required for classes / jobs. Personally, I would rather quit this game than grind fates / dungeons for weeks upon weeks. I don't complain that they need to make the leveling experience better because I personally can't deal with it.

Some people are okay with really learning how to play their role and learning the content. They're okay with the networking required to find raiding mates. Coil with echo + over gearing was not that hard to clear through PF and I knew plenty of very mediocre players that still cleared T13 with some effort.

You can make the argument that one requires more effort than the other. That doesn't matter. Should everything in this game be low effort? Should people be entitled to experience everything with no significant investment?

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Originally Posted by dejavutwo

The thing is, a lot of the people that complained that coil was too easy because it got cleared in one week had never stepped foot in coil. The fact that it was cleared in one week was just used as a way to try to discredit raiders.

I was perfectly happy with the way the Coil series worked, and thought the difficulty was just right, although already more challenging on a personal level than every other MMO I have played. Even now, I'm not really upset about the difficulty, just that the fights have been deflated by normal, making people burn out incredibly fast.

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Yeah, that sort of thing is perfectly understandable. These are some of the solid points that the OP has on the matter. I completely agree that it, among other things, can definitely hinder the lifespan or replayability of something. I just SMH with the difficulty bit whenever that comes up, about AS being too hard lol. While I do not doubt in the slightest about what you said regarding those who didn't even try coil being a lot of the complainers, they're also the more vocal. Come later in the games life, when Coil difficulties have been nerfed by mechanics or gear upgrades, and these same folks have been clearing it... just not when it was intended. Still, SE hears their crying and delivers. These same people are trying to compete with players who accomplish world firsts in the SAME TIMEFRAME. That's not even including the demand for a storymode version of said raids. Of course, that's pretty much just the devs who decide how that all comes together. AS, as it is, is definitely a mess. The difficulty is there, despite lots of hindsight by the players wanting it, but it's not quite polished.

The first turn of Coil was cleared during the first few days of Early Access lol, but it was generally accepted as perfect for what it was. T5 was far from polished though, and that alone took the world first well over a month to do legitimately, though the temporary exploit made it possible almost immediately lol. The thing people seem to be forgetting is exactly that. It required STRICT timing and very high player skill to do properly. Players were complaining it was bugged, unpolished, and literally impossible to beat. They, however, were proven wrong on the impossible bit at least. People were expected to gear up with tome equips and Coil drops for this fight. To the folks that complain about the difficulty and timeframe, how exactly is it an unreasonable expectation to the devs if people were actually okay with this before (more or less)? This is a repeat of what is normally expected. For one reason or another though, everyone thought you should be able to clear every bit of the hardest content in the same gear you had the first week Savage went live with Eso gear. Just like how Mythology gear was also up to ilvl par with BCoB. Funny how that worked out. Something doesn't seem to add up here about player expectations regarding AS difficulty and their angst towards what the devs expect out of people to clear it...

I just find it's a shame the game doesn't really have enough content that spans a difficulty scale there is at most 3 tiers and pretty much 3 things to do.

Casual - Your daily dungeon, crystal tower that lot where you face-roll yourt way through the content.
Mid-semi casual - Primals or whatever mid-tier content is giving people a bit of trouble. Cognitive thought may actually be required.
Beast Mode - Your current endgame top tier content such as Coil or now Savage Alex.

I'd just like to see content span a bit more of a difficulty curve without going from braindead to soul crushingly hard in 60 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

If you think that the top raiders didn't complain about the difficulty of the content during progression, you weren't paying attention.

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I was quoting a post that was trying to suggest that SE should never listen to "raiders", on the basis that "they" both complained that Coil was too easy and that Alexander Savage is too hard, and so they clearly have no idea what they want.

It was an intentional oversimplification to indicate that perhaps "raiders" aren't a single group with a single opinion, and perhaps the people who were complaining that Coil was too easy aren't the same people who are now complaining that their statics are falling apart because Alexander Savage is too hard.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

As for the two being night and day, they're obviously different in ways. But, you are getting caught up on details rather than understanding the actual point.

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Your exact words were "it's no different", which was the crux of what I was objecting to.

I don't think you can just dismiss needing seven other people as just another detail. Reducing it to "That time also goes into networking" is a huge oversimplification.

Time and effort invested in leveling jobs is time and effort spent playing the game. Time and effort spent networking is time and effort spent doing additional work on top of playing the game.

It has absolutely nothing to do with how much effort it is, it's a completely different kind of activity, only tangentially related to someone's ability to actually play the game.

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Originally Posted by Ibi

I was quoting a post that was trying to suggest that SE should never listen to "raiders", on the basis that "they" both complained that Coil was too easy and that Alexander Savage is too hard, and so they clearly have no idea what they want.

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We do know what we want, a BALANCED raid. As stated many times in this thread, A4S (and maybe A3S) were tuned numbers wise with top-tier players in mind. The majority of raiders are good, but not EXCEPTIONAL, which is what you need to be to even have a chance at clearing Alex Savage right now. There is such a thing as something being "too hot" and then "too cold". SE needs to get it just right (which I thought coil was IMO), so we shouldn't stop giving them our well constructed feedback.

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Originally Posted by Renault

The majority of raiders are good...

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Gonna leave this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._to_be_a_good/

It also talks specifically about the last 2 floors.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

Gonna leave this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._to_be_a_good/

It also talks specifically about the last 2 floors.

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The thread specifically targets people who think they're good and why they can't clear A3S+. It's not exactly related to this thread that's mostly targetted to the mid-core people (IE, those that cleared FCoB but not SCoB savage)

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

The thread specifically targets people who think they're good and why they can't clear A3S+. It's not exactly related to this thread that's mostly targetted to the mid-core people (IE, those that cleared FCoB but not SCoB savage)

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It's actually targeted at people who think they are good players because the clears FCOB without nerfs. Then complain that there is something wrong with the last floors because they are apparently good players.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

It's actually targeted at people who think they are good players because the clears FCOB without nerfs. Then complain that there is something wrong with the last floors because they are apparently good players.

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I've never really seen that argument made. I have seen people who have cleared FCOB state that they wish there was content closer in difficulty to it though, as they know they aren't cut out for Savage.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

It's actually targeted at people who think they are good players because the clears FCOB without nerfs. Then complain that there is something wrong with the last floors because they are apparently good players.

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It'd be the first time I've heard of this perspective then. Whatever's "wrong" with the last set of floors is a matter of perspective (whether it's the wrong difficulty tuning, or the mechanics are wrongly accommodated for latency).

On my end, I feel that it' wrong that there's hardly any content catered to people who felt that FCoB was the right range of difficulty, and now all we have for those individuals is A1S and A2S (which the developers even admitted that they had tuned these floors to be comparable to FCoB, while 3 and 4 were comparable to SCoB savage) for the 4+ months of content desert, longer if 3.1 doesn't add anything for those players. It's the general census that A3S and A4S are way over tuned (even for the hardcore of players according to Elysyum IIRC) regardless of who the target audience was.

Either case though, the link still doesn't hold much relevance to who the primary focus group is being discussed within the topic. On top of that, the OP there has a rather high standard of "good" which again, is pretty subjective. The matter of fact is that it's just way overtuned and the majority census can agree upon that.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

It's actually targeted at people who think they are good players because the clears FCOB without nerfs. Then complain that there is something wrong with the last floors because they are apparently good players.

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There is a difference. a3s and a4s are clearable by exceptional players. The players who cleared FCoB are good players, especially by comparision to the rest of the player base.

I am on a4s now and I would like raids that are tuned better. a4s seems like a crapola fest the encounter team pooped out. That's why people cheese the fight. The best fight in the game, the top of the content mountain, a4s is cheesable.

Get out of here with this good/bad player point, it's a semantics based argument that adds absolutely no depth to the conversation.

Does it really matter if players are technically good or bad? There is still a major content gap that the binding coil series previously filled.

Also, just to lay that entire reddit thread to rest, I will quote a previous post of mine.

Link to the interview with Elysium, the world first a4s kill

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Even for the hardcore players most of us feel that Alexander Savage was tuned a little too high,” Gouka admitted. “Maybe something that takes two to three weeks is fine, but when you’re spending an entire month essentially on the same fight it gets a little bit ridiculous.

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The absolute best players in the world, the people who downed a4s before any other team, feel that these fights are not tuned properly. There is no debate to be had by "good" or "bad" raiders and being able to complete content in ARR v.s Heavensward.

The best players, without any room for contention, feel the same way we do.

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Originally Posted by zosia

...a3s and a4s are clearable by exceptional players.
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The players who cleared FCoB are good players...
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...I will quote a previous post of mine.

Link to the interview with Elysium, the world first a4s kill

The absolute best players in the world...
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... the people who downed a4s before any other team...
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... feel that these fights are not tuned properly. There is no debate to be had by "good" or "bad" raiders and being able to complete content in ARR v.s Heavensward.

The best players...
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feel the same way...
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...we do.

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There are also players who play less, also completed the fourth floor and did not share the same opinion. Just to let you know, they cleared before other played because they practiced the fight for a lot more time. Some people choose to only raid 20 hours a week. Clearing quickly because you have the time to put in practice does not make you the best, nor does it mean your opinion is the same as other players. Of course, I do think that they are the best players in the game. But not for the reasoning you just gave. You are a good example of why people do not directly vote for president in the US. Apparently, just a small group of people's opinion is equivalent to millions of people. BTW, some people are working adults and don't take weeks off from work every time a patch drops. Don't use clear time to determine whose opinion matters.

The thread I linked had clearly laid the issue and this was that people over estimate their own achievement and think that clearing some particular fight means that they are good players. Sure, it takes some skill to do (let's a pick a random fight) moggle mog ex. But clearing the fight didn't mean you were good. Which is why the poster explained that the people clearing FCOB weren't as a good of players that they thought they were. It doesn't take much to do a lot of the coil fights (let's pick on T5):

T5 required that you look over your head and moved to a spot. Later it required you to look at a cast bar and keep moving. That was the whole fight. DPS check is not a mechanic. People who can dps well can play their class. That's expected before you get into fights. This fight had some random elements (who got chosen for the mechanic) but either these were controllable (conflags and fireballs) or it didn't matter that it was random because every one did the same thing regardless of whether the mechanic chose you (divebombs and twisters). The last element of the fight you can even ignore completely (hatches). The skill level required to clear this fight was not high. So clearing this fight did not automatically mean you were a skilled player.

Let's a look at another fight, a fight apparently so difficult that it no longer exists in the game, T7:

In T7, the main feature was that there were many instant kill mechanics, in which your teammates kill you. As everyone knows, if you get petrified, then any additional damage instantly kills you. Cool so far right? We can just avoid being petrified. But only one mechanic can you even save yourself from being petrified (petrifaction). Cursed voice and shriek petrified everyone but the user. You also have someone else petrify a renaud before it mauls your face in. First fight in the game where you actually have to trust your teammates to not fall asleep in the fight. Sure there were other stuff in the fight (renauds, dps checks, etc.) but nothing like trying to avoid death every 20 seconds from your own teammates. However in the end, all of these were handled simply (everyone face the edge, designate a ranged to stand far from boss, build The Great Wall of Renaud, shrieked person always run to the same location, etc) and the randomness seemed kind of a non issue. Once again this fight did not require vast amount of skill to complete (and now boss gives you a rope to hang her since none of the above even kills you).

We can fast forward to A3S, but there's no point. People are already convinced that good players cannot clear the fight and it was only meant for professional gamers with no life to clear and any stories of regular groups clearing it are made up lies. But the fact is that there are many who do clear the fight. And the misconception that clearing some other content would mean that you are able to clear unrelated content is clearly false. Clearing coil did not give you the skills to clear alex, nor did it even adequately prepare you. Half the problem is that the difficulty when down from second coil to final coil (didn't see any nerfs to final coil before adding to DF). If the difficulty trend had went up from second coil and final coil was on the level of savage second coil, then maybe we would have a smoother transition to alex. But in no way can you say that you are good based on what you cleared in the past when these fights are vastly different and test players in different ways (well you can say that all of the difficulty in coil is a subset of alex, but I digress). Of course, clearing savage alex doesn't mean you are good either. It means that your skills as a player were adequate to complete the challenge, nothing more.

You also like linking to an interview which people with different opinions than other people share their thoughts. Should I link to Donald Trump when people complain about unemployment? Apparently he's doing something right and everyone shares the same opinion and since he's the best player in the economy, his opinion is fact. Wonder why that guy isn't president (hmm...)?

Semantic debate over whether Elysium's raid group are "the best" or "some of the best" players aside, it's still notable when a group of such caliber feels the fights may have been tuned a bit too tightly. Debating over whether an individual player or raid group is "good" kind of misses the point of the thread entirely.

In ARR, many players were "good enough" to participate in and clear the game's primary endgame raid content. In HW, a significant number of those players are no longer "good enough," and that means fewer players are able to partake in the primary endgame content. Overall, that's not really a good thing, unless suitable content is brought in to satisfy those players that are now alienated by this new, higher level of difficulty. It also means developer resources are being spent on content that an even smaller percentage of the playerbase will partake in than did so in ARR, which is ultimately not an efficient way to develop and run the game. Finding the right balance is tricky (it took WoW something like 10 years, from what I understand), but it's still important to find it.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

In ARR, many players were "good enough" to participate in and clear the game's primary endgame raid content. In HW, a significant number of those players are no longer "good enough," and that means fewer players are able to partake in the primary endgame content.

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You say many, but only the developers have the numbers to make that decision. In the end, they made Alexander (the regular one) easier, to make sure more people could clear the primary raid.

In the 2.x series, Binding Coil of Bahamut, Second Coil of Bahamut, and Final Coil of Bahamut was the primary raid. Savage was icing on the cake.

This is just my opinion, but Alexander: Gordias (the regular one) is still the primary raid. Savage is the icing on the cake. The only difference this time is they added rewards. But because they chose to add rewards, and because the normal Alexander: Gordias is easier, players are glossing over it. The only thing we care about now are the shinies in Savage, even though I don't believe the players who were "good enough" for normal Coil were intended to clear all four floors of Alexander savage.

I mentioned it in one of the other myriad threads on this subject, but the level of difficulty of Savage should not have been a surprise...if you can read Japanese. But there was a translation of the information on Reddit, and yet it was still ignored, and the Western audience is suddenly blindsided by the fact that Savage is still Savage just like in 2.x.

I see all these fingers pointing at Savage as the problem, when I think the normal Alexander: Gordias is where we should be looking. If players weren't able to gloss over it so easily, if it offered even a modicum of the difficulty that 2.x raids had, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

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Originally Posted by Spellbinder

I see all these fingers pointing at Savage as the problem, when I think the normal Alexander: Gordias is where we should be looking. If players weren't able to gloss over it so easily. If it offered even a modicum of the difficulty that 2.x raids had, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

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I actually think we still would be, if the reward structure wasn't changed. In ARR, the group of players (whatever size they are) that were sidelined by Savage were able to get top, optimized gear from B/S/FCOB. Even if Alex NM were closer to the old ARR raids in difficulty, if the i210 Gordias gear was still Savage only, I have a feeling a lot of the dissatisfaction would still be there. It's the fact that Savage gives the other i210 gear that makes people view it as the "primary" raid content more than anything. Normal mode is very clearly aimed at allowing everyone to see the story and it happens to have some rewards (which I think has more to do with the fact that it was released at a time when there was very little content than anything else).

As for the Western audience being blindsided, I think that's a bit unfair. I hadn't seen that translation until you posted it in the other thread because I try to avoid visiting Reddit. I do what I can to keep up with the Live Letters and the like, but I don't think it's really fair to discredit people's disappointment with the current state of things because they happened to miss one thread that translated a pertinent interview several months ago.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

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And this again, boils down to semantics on who you think are good players and which are not, which has no relevance to the topic at hand. The bottom line, regardless of the reasoning or the players, current content is pretty abyssmal with the incredibly low clear rates, while being the general census that normal mode is an utter joke. There's nothing in between within the same lines of A1S and A2S to appeal to the middle ground for until the next content update (which may or may not have said said content fulfilling the middle ground)

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Originally Posted by Spellbinder

I see all these fingers pointing at Savage as the problem, when I think the normal Alexander: Gordias is where we should be looking. If players weren't able to gloss over it so easily, if it offered even a modicum of the difficulty that 2.x raids had, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

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Regardless of which one it is (and I personally think it's normal being incredibly undertuned, there's absolutely no reason to make it DF-able difficulty from the start when you have CT-raids to fill that niche), this is what we're given).

As for the liveletter, they had mentioned something of normal being "Similiar to FCoB +Echo" (which imo is the understatement of the year) While savage would be "FCoB Savage difficulty", this one not existing for reference and numerous translations leading to either FCoB or SCoB Savage. If it was the latter combined with how undertuned normal was, they're far off the mark.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

I actually think we still would be, if the reward structure wasn't changed. In ARR, the group of players (whatever size they are) that were sidelined by Savage were able to get top, optimized gear from B/S/FCOB. Even if Alex NM were closer to the old ARR raids in difficulty, if the i210 Gordias gear was still Savage only, I have a feeling a lot of the dissatisfaction would still be there. It's the fact that Savage gives the other i210 gear that makes people view it as the "primary" raid content more than anything. Normal mode is very clearly aimed at allowing everyone to see the story and it happens to have some rewards (which I think has more to do with the fact that it was released at a time when there was very little content than anything else).

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It'd certainly be the lesser of the two. The way it is right now, a good handful of the non-hardcore raiders (and even some hardcore ones, I can say this for a fact on my server) have disbanded or transferred off to greg for a better raiding environment/static. Aiming for the same range of FCoB difficulty (instead of FCoB+echo or even CT, because this can eventually be added over time anyway as well as overgearing) would have sufficed.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

As for the Western audience being blindsided, I think that's a bit unfair. I hadn't seen that translation until you posted it in the other thread because I try to avoid visiting Reddit. I do what I can to keep up with the Live Letters and the like, but I don't think it's really fair to discredit people's disappointment with the current state of things because they happened to miss one thread that translated a pertinent interview several months ago.

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There were multiple Japanese interviews, and a player addressing Yoshi-P directly at another Japanese event. I just supplied a few examples of what the JP community has been well aware of since last year at Tokyo Fanfest. But I digress.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

I actually think we still would be, if the reward structure wasn't changed. In ARR, the group of players (whatever size they are) that were sidelined by Savage were able to get top, optimized gear from B/S/FCOB. Even if Alex NM were closer to the old ARR raids in difficulty, if the i210 Gordias gear was still Savage only, I have a feeling a lot of the dissatisfaction would still be there.

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This is going to sound rude of me, but the problem we face essentially boils down to an impeded race for the shinies, then? (impeded by the debated artificial difficulty of Savage)

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Originally Posted by Spellbinder

There were multiple Japanese interviews, and a player addressing Yoshi-P directly at another Japanese event. I just supplied a few examples of what the JP community has been well aware of since last year at Tokyo Fanfest. But I digress.

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I may have misread the tone of your initial post that I responded to, honestly. It read to me like it was intended to dismiss the grievances, but looking back at it I don't think you meant it that way now.

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Originally Posted by Spellbinder

This is going to sound rude of me, but the problem we face essentially boils down to an impeded race for the shinies, then? (impeded by the debated artificial difficulty of Savage)

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Not entirely, as there are other issues with Savage, many of which are well outlined in the original post. But I do think that, yes, the gear plays a part in it. If there were challenging midcore raid content, along the lines of FCOB in difficulty, but the rewards weren't up to snuff, I imagine people would still be bothered by it. For those players that aren't quite up to par, they've always been able to get the gear, and can't now--it feels as though they've lost something. They've also lost the ability to tackle that level of challenging content, incentive to build a static, etc. It's not *all* about gear, but gear certainly plays a part.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

There are also players who play less, also completed the fourth floor and did not share the same opinion. Just to let you know, they cleared before other played because they practiced the fight for a lot more time. Some people choose to only raid 20 hours a week. Clearing quickly because you have the time to put in practice does not make you the best, nor does it mean your opinion is the same as other players. Of course, I do think that they are the best players in the game. But not for the reasoning you just gave. You are a good example of why people do not directly vote for president in the US. Apparently, just a small group of people's opinion is equivalent to millions of people. BTW, some people are working adults and don't take weeks off from work every time a patch drops. Don't use clear time to determine whose opinion matters.

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There still is a content gap that catered to a larger portion of players than what alex savage caters to now. How is anything you said there relevant to the content gap we now have? Regardless if a player is "good" or good, there is no version of a raid tier similar to FCoB. We only have a snooze fest that is DF-able and hyper mode.

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The thread I linked had clearly laid the issue and this was that people over estimate their own achievement and think that clearing some particular fight means that they are good players. Sure, it takes some skill to do (let's a pick a random fight) moggle mog ex. But clearing the fight didn't mean you were good. Which is why the poster explained that the people clearing FCOB weren't as a good of players that they thought they were. It doesn't take much to do a lot of the coil fights (let's pick on T5):

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That's why I linked the interview. They were not the only hardcore top tier group that felt that way about alex savage. Do you want me to start linking tweets from the other world 1st groups? People who like alex savage a3s and a4s as is are definitely a minority. ARR raiders might have not been as good as they thought, but they still have much less content than they did in ARR and that's the problem we are having. I don't care if ARR raiders thought they were the best in the world, alex savage is still considered over tuned by both good and "good" players. There is still a content gap for the midcore raiders. Balancing raids around less than 1% of the player base is just as silly as only having one mode of raiding.

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T5 required that you look over your head and moved to a spot. Later it required you to look at a cast bar and keep moving. That was the whole fight. DPS check is not a mechanic. People who can dps well can play their class. That's expected before you get into fights. This fight had some random elements (who got chosen for the mechanic) but either these were controllable (conflags and fireballs) or it didn't matter that it was random because every one did the same thing regardless of whether the mechanic chose you (divebombs and twisters). The last element of the fight you can even ignore completely (hatches). The skill level required to clear this fight was not high. So clearing this fight did not automatically mean you were a skilled player.

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a4s has a total of what, seven mechanics the raid has to worry about? One of which is ignored. We can reduce a4s to the same minimalist points you have made. It's just stunning, moving into tethers, moving into exploding balls, etc etc. There is no amazing or revolutionary mechanics in a4s. It's just the same crap, the only thing different is the DPS required is through the roof. The mechanics are not hard, beating the enrage timer is. That's all a4s really is, just more team jump rope and beating the dps check. The only difference between t9 and a4s is that a4s was tuned higher, that's really it. I would even argue that t9 was more mechanics heavy than a4s.

But again, that is irrelevant to the content gap we have now. That roughly 12% of ARR raiders had their raid taken away and they were given a snooze fest and an over tuned version instead. What people did in ARR has absolutely no relevance to the content gap. Which is why this "good" vs actually being good point is so shallow. It does nothing to address the problems people are having. It's the dressed up version of "git gud"

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Let's a look at another fight, a fight apparently so difficult that it no longer exists in the game, T7:

In T7, the main feature was that there were many instant kill mechanics, in which your teammates kill you. As everyone knows, if you get petrified, then any additional damage instantly kills you. Cool so far right? We can just avoid being petrified. But only one mechanic can you even save yourself from being petrified (petrifaction). Cursed voice and shriek petrified everyone but the user. You also have someone else petrify a renaud before it mauls your face in. First fight in the game where you actually have to trust your teammates to not fall asleep in the fight. Sure there were other stuff in the fight (renauds, dps checks, etc.) but nothing like trying to avoid death every 20 seconds from your own teammates. However in the end, all of these were handled simply (everyone face the edge, designate a ranged to stand far from boss, build The Great Wall of Renaud, shrieked person always run to the same location, etc) and the randomness seemed kind of a non issue. Once again this fight did not require vast amount of skill to complete (and now boss gives you a rope to hang her since none of the above even kills you).

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See my point about T5, a4s, and T9 above.

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We can fast forward to A3S, but there's no point. People are already convinced that good players cannot clear the fight and it was only meant for professional gamers with no life to clear and any stories of regular groups clearing it are made up lies. But the fact is that there are many who do clear the fight. And the misconception that clearing some other content would mean that you are able to clear unrelated content is clearly false. Clearing coil did not give you the skills to clear alex, nor did it even adequately prepare you. Half the problem is that the difficulty when down from second coil to final coil (didn't see any nerfs to final coil before adding to DF). If the difficulty trend had went up from second coil and final coil was on the level of savage second coil, then maybe we would have a smoother transition to alex. But in no way can you say that you are good based on what you cleared in the past when these fights are vastly different and test players in different ways (well you can say that all of the difficulty in coil is a subset of alex, but I digress). Of course, clearing savage alex doesn't mean you are good either. It means that your skills as a player were adequate to complete the challenge, nothing more.

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I never called myself "good." I don't think it has even been a point of contention in this thread at all. This thread was never about good vs "good" players. This thread was meant to exhibit the fact that raiders are different and come in many different varieties holding many different convictions. Also, why does it matter if people think of themselves as good or not, we have a content gap that is causing statics to drop like flies, the happy raiding minority is far less important than the dissatisfied raiding majority. Again, this is why the point is a shallow one, you can say that the majority of raiders thought too highly of their skills, it does not change the fact that they are bored or unable to overcome the content they are working on.

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You also like linking to an interview which people with different opinions than other people share their thoughts. Should I link to Donald Trump when people complain about unemployment? Apparently he's doing something right and everyone shares the same opinion and since he's the best player in the economy, his opinion is fact. Wonder why that guy isn't president (hmm...)?

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I linked that article because they have a place of authority to speak from. This is not just some random raid group x, y, or z. They are the best group in the world, totally top notch, better than both of our statics. They are the ones that smashed their faces against the wall and prevailed 1st. That gives them a bit of credibility. Their opinion carries more weight than yours or mine. You can act obtuse if you like, but linking a random talking head to some subject he is not an expert on is leagues different from linking an expert's opinion on a topic they know a lot about.

I knew HW would be a re-skinned 2.0. But like any fare driven individual I thought I would give FFXIV HW a chance to see if the devs and content creator team would learn some lessons of what to do and not to do from 2.0. Sadly they haven't and all FFXIV is nothing but grind grind grind with too many weekly caps. I have played many rpgs, sub mmos and full blown mmos and by far FFXIV is one of the saddest mmo's I have encountered. Sure FFXIV has its moments but at its core its a snooze fest. This game out grows content way to fast. Even worse gear gets thrown away faster than we can actually fully gear 2 jobs with esos. I know that mmos and rpg's are a grind fest but at least they throw in more horizontal progression and allow you to enjoy the gear you grind for a little a while. Many other mmos also add in special traits that you can bind to gear for that extra push or something different in the job you are in.

Speaking of jobs they basically threw brd under the bus then put it back together by a No.Ob dev that honestly couldn't have cared less about BRD.

BLM was made more complicated for no reason at all. Granted the nukes are awesome to look at but its not fun to play anymore. If you lose enochium your screwed and having to worry about something as retarded as timers is just plain dumb which forces you to watch a stupid icon on a screen instead of enjoying the content you are running... bad form in any mmo. I know mnk has a timer but every 3rd move resets it and with all the new skills it has makes it quite easy to keep greace up and maintain it. But with BLM you have to worry about astral fire timer and enochium timer + how much time you have left to reset enochium with Bliz 3 + 4... its stupid and not needed. BLM already had to worry about mechanics and everything else like cast times to keep it's rotations smooth why couldn't they just left it at that?

DRG has it pretty good except for that stupid RNG procs... why do dis? Why not just make a 4th positional hit in each rotation? Sometimes I wonder if the devs were drunk that day and thought it would be a good idea to throw in more crappy rng in the game.

Speaking of rng mch is heavily depended on rng.... nothing like popping the same skill over and over till ogcd's and force proc skills come off cd. But other than that MCH is pretty good but wish it was more of a gunslinger job that another stupid hybrid wannabe support dps job.

DRK is damn good for a tank but honestly it would have been a better as a dps class.

War is just way to OP for its own good nothing like hitting a 5k to 9k crit.

PLD is ummm kinda sitting in the back waiting for some love by the devs....

AST had a bad start but its now standing toe to toe with all the other healer jobs out there.

SMN is well I don't know what the heck it is... The pets now just kind pew pew and nothing much else. No new skills for pets or new pets for smn. IT would have been nice to at least get a few glamour primal skins but no the devs just shrugged it off and just made SMN OP in the AOE department. Basically the devs said meh "here's a few new skills and a few QoL changes to bane now go play and leave us alone"...o.O?

The only jobs that really kept its core game play from 2.0 was mnk (QoL changes for Greece), drg, pld, war (with a huge buff), smn (huge aoe buff), nin and all healers... all the other jobs got a shiny new turd to play with....

So basically after weighing all the stuff FFXIV has to offer is basically nothing but big shiny alligan turds that get thrown at us by big alligan monkeys.

There are 3 things that keep me hooked on a game... Horzontal Progression meaning making gear last longer with really enhance traits to farm for to bind to gear, battle classes... I go by how fun they are to play and how deep the battle ground is... meaning you have to know elemental weaknesses for every mob and boss, allowing you to manipulated mechanics and turning the tides against the bosses you face by using there own mechanics to destroy them... ect. The last thing I look at is how rich the content is. Horizontal Progression falls in line with this as well and of course if can you make decisions that could alter the story somewhat.

FFXIV has some of this but overall its nothing more than a theme park mmo that honestly has no direction at all. The battle classes are a snooze and the battles we are in are boring... its the same ol bs mechanics with no real depth or strategy.

DPS checks are not real mechanics and 1 shot mechanics are not real mechanics.... What makes fights more interesting is learning what the bosses weaknesses are then planning an attack to destroy them. Elemental weakness shine on things like this and adds to the depth of what a mmo should be. BLM could have a lot more than what is now... seriously throwing fire bombs at ifrit is kinda dumb and made zero sense at all. I understand this is fantasy but a blend of reality and fantasy can make things a little more interesting.

Well sorry for the rant but over all FFXIV HW ranks about 3 out of 10 as far as creativity, battle classes, depth of battle play and strategy is concerned. Graphics are 8 out of 10 but that is all it really has going for it. Story is at best a 5 out of 10. It was too predictable and it had no real originality it was basically a rip off of other games and stories out there.

Anyways best of luck to you all out there.:cool:... I'll be dropping sub this month because I refuse to pay SE another dime till they get there business straight. They do not offer us a real Pay to Play mmo :confused: .

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Originally Posted by Astral145

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DPS checks are not real mechanics and 1 shot mechanics are not real mechanics.... What makes fights more interesting is learning what the bosses weaknesses are then planning an attack to destroy them. Elemental weakness shine on things like this and adds to the depth of what a mmo should be. BLM could have a lot more than what is now... seriously throwing fire bombs at ifrit is kinda dumb and made zero sense at all.
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Aside from the mountain of incorrect information about class you've never played, let's give some context here. Everyone know that if the player base finds an exploit, they will exploit said exploit (see A4S). Also if mechanics don't kill you, they will be ignored (see T2). This is why mechanics are the way they are now. Also fire doesn't "absorb" fire in real life, which is why the proverb (fight fire with fire) exists.

I think a lot of people preferred coil because it was easier to prep positioning/movement in order to make up for the server ticks. I would have thought feedback on Savage Second Coil, and clear rate on it, would have acted as a sort of "beta test" to see how the community responded to it. Instead, it seems SE has discounted the results because not enough players participated. I think it would have been better to make Savage 2nd coil a limited time event and then, before passing out any title, the player would be required to fill out a feedback form with simple yes/no answers to questions. And one of those questions should have been "Did you feel like your struggle was hindered in any way by the game interface" and "Did you feel like your struggle was hindered by server latency". There would have been a LOT of yes for t8's ballistic missiles/allagan field and maybe we could have avoided this Alexander Savage disaster, which learned absolutely nothing from Savage Second Coil.

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Originally Posted by zosia

There still is a content gap that catered to a larger portion of players than what alex savage caters to now. How is anything you said there relevant to the content gap we now have? Regardless if a player is "good" or good, there is no version of a raid tier similar to FCoB. We only have a snooze fest that is DF-able and hyper mode.

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There is no raid of the tier of FCoB because that's not the intention of the development team. They want to make raids last the entire content cycle. Also, why do people want FCoB difficulty raids? SCoB was far more challenging.

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Originally Posted by zosia

That's why I linked the interview. They were not the only hardcore top tier group that felt that way about alex savage. Do you want me to start linking tweets from the other world 1st groups? People who like alex savage a3s and a4s as is are definitely a minority. ARR raiders might have not been as good as they thought, but they still have much less content than they did in ARR and that's the problem we are having. I don't care if ARR raiders thought they were the best in the world, alex savage is still considered over tuned by both good and "good" players. There is still a content gap for the midcore raiders. Balancing raids around less than 1% of the player base is just as silly as only having one mode of raiding.

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Not that it matters, but there are millions of people in the game. A group of 30 or so players's opinions, all of which who are raiding 20+ hours a week in attempt to get the content on farm as soon as possible do not give the same opinions as other players. Some players who cleared Alex do not that it was over tuned. They come from other games and were prepared for the difficulty the game presented. But we can ignore those opinions because it's convenient. And there are a lot more of those people than server first people (obviously, there can only be so many).

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Originally Posted by zosia

a4s has a total of what, seven mechanics the raid has to worry about? One of which is ignored. We can reduce a4s to the same minimalist points you have made. It's just stunning, moving into tethers, moving into exploding balls, etc etc. There is no amazing or revolutionary mechanics in a4s. It's just the same crap, the only thing different is the DPS required is through the roof. The mechanics are not hard, beating the enrage timer is. That's all a4s really is, just more team jump rope and beating the dps check. The only difference between t9 and a4s is that a4s was tuned higher, that's really it. I would even argue that t9 was more mechanics heavy than a4s.

But again, that is irrelevant to the content gap we have now. That roughly 12% of ARR raiders had their raid taken away and they were given a snooze fest and an over tuned version instead. What people did in ARR has absolutely no relevance to the content gap. Which is why this "good" vs actually being good point is so shallow. It does nothing to address the problems people are having. It's the dressed up version of "git gud"

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You misunderstand the point of normal mode. Normal mode was not meant for people who cleared FCoB. It was meant for people who cannot clear FCoB. You have no say in what the difficulty of normal should be because you where not the target audience. SE realized the mistake of decreasing coil's difficulty when the released FCoB and needed to make something more difficult than SCoB. They also released that to reach their goal (content lasts until the next cycle), it was safer to tune upwards than downwards when they created the fight. If A4S is just a large dps check with no new mechanics, then people should have cleared it the first time they entered right? Nothing to learn.

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Originally Posted by zosia

See my point about T5, a4s, and T9 above.

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Design choice, as to ensure the fight cannot be done with a few weeks of gear. Sounds logical from a developer's standpoint considering the last raid they released.

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Originally Posted by zosia

I never called myself "good." I don't think it has even been a point of contention in this thread at all. This thread was never about good vs "good" players. This thread was meant to exhibit the fact that raiders are different and come in many different varieties holding many different convictions. Also, why does it matter if people think of themselves as good or not, we have a content gap that is causing statics to drop like flies, the happy raiding minority is far less important than the dissatisfied raiding majority. Again, this is why the point is a shallow one, you can say that the majority of raiders thought too highly of their skills, it does not change the fact that they are bored or unable to overcome the content they are working on.

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I didn't say you called yourself good. But you did (as I quoted) call a few other players good solely based on the fact of their completion of (by MMO standards and compared to the previous tier even) a relatively easy raid. You also are making quite a lot of assumptions on numbers and seem to like saying your opinion is the opinion of others. I would avoid using words like "majority" because now you are claiming to speak for other people.

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Originally Posted by zosia

I linked that article because they have a place of authority to speak from. This is not just some random raid group x, y, or z. They are the best group in the world, totally top notch, better than both of our statics. They are the ones that smashed their faces against the wall and prevailed 1st. That gives them a bit of credibility. Their opinion carries more weight than yours or mine. You can act obtuse if you like, but linking a random talking head to some subject he is not an expert on is leagues different from linking an expert's opinion on a topic they know a lot about.

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For all intents and purposes, they are a random group. Just like the guy I linked was a random guy, who also cleared. Still waiting for you to complain about Donald Trumps' policies since he's an expert and his opinion matters more than the random guy in new york, which had different living conditions. I don't disagree with Donald Trump btw, nor do I think there is a better group than Elysium. I do believe there is a conflict of interest though. The developer's goal is the make the fight possible to clear, but to take as long as possible to clear it. The players have a different interest than the developers, which is why you see a disconnect here.


That being said, They did not make all 4 floor difficult and even though with just enough skill to complete FCoB and easily clear half of the raid tier. In the nest raid tier (3.2 I presume) they will look at the amount of time spent to clear alex and will determine whether to do a BCoB->SCoB transition (moving up) or a SCoB->FCoB transition (moving down). Let's not forget that they are a game company and will make a decision that is most logical from a business stand point. They could of BTW made the first too floors as difficult as the last two. Would that have been better for you? To realize up front that you weren't prepared?

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Originally Posted by zosia

Also, just to lay that entire reddit thread to rest, I will quote a previous post of mine.

Link to the interview with Elysium, the world first a4s kill

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“Maybe something that takes two to three weeks is fine, but when you’re spending an entire month essentially on the same fight it gets a little bit ridiculous.

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Its a point of view how they really meant it.

You can also read it like:

"Oh shit. Our vacation is running out and then we are not able to fight any longer for the world first, because we have to go back to work!"

With my group, we do just raid around 3 hrs a week since the release of AS. Maybe its getting better. Maybe not. So we are not that far like others. But I really enjoy the fight in A3S and the day of finishing A3S will come and we step forward into A4S. Just later than others. Its all about patience and "never give up".

What I'm not lucky about? That there will be nothing new to see after that fight, because everything already got spoiled in the normal version.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

There is no raid of the tier of FCoB because that's not the intention of the development team. They want to make raids last the entire content cycle. Also, why do people want FCoB difficulty raids? SCoB was far more challenging.

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If they really want that, why are they going to shower everyone in ilvl 210 three months before the next major raid patch? If the major hang-up is dps checks, giving everone 210 gear and relics is a really crappy way to prolong alex savage until Febuary. I think you are assuming what the dev team wants because 3.1 seems to directly contradict your statement. Also, look what happened to wow when they tried to artificially prolong content with SoO and DS. How well did that work out for them again? How about we encourage game development that does not inherently cause burnout?

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Not that it matters, but there are millions of people in the game. A group of 30 or so players's opinions, all of which who are raiding 20+ hours a week in attempt to get the content on farm as soon as possible do not give the same opinions as other players. Some players who cleared Alex do not that it was over tuned. They come from other games and were prepared for the difficulty the game presented. But we can ignore those opinions because it's convenient. And there are a lot more of those people than server first people (obviously, there can only be so many).

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Yup, like 50% of my OP talks just about that. I have seen far more negative feedback about alex savage than positive feedback, it's not a far reach of the imagination that those people who are happy with alex savage are the minority.

Minority < Majority, that's why we have such an easy normal version now.

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You misunderstand the point of normal mode. Normal mode was not meant for people who cleared FCoB. It was meant for people who cannot clear FCoB. You have no say in what the difficulty of normal should be because you where not the target audience. SE realized the mistake of decreasing coil's difficulty when the released FCoB and needed to make something more difficult than SCoB. They also released that to reach their goal (content lasts until the next cycle), it was safer to tune upwards than downwards when they created the fight. If A4S is just a large dps check with no new mechanics, then people should have cleared it the first time they entered right? Nothing to learn.

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Again, why are you being obtuse? You know what I mean, the aggregate dps needed for the entire fight is the dps check I am referring to. You can perform all the mechanics perfectly, which is the easy part, and still come up short in the dps department.

Nope, I get that. You're missing my point. Since Normal mode has been tuned for the lowest common denominator, there is nothing left for the midcore raiders of ARR who were capable of dealing with BCoB, SCoB, and FCoB. Not everyone wants to do savage and normal has no teeth.

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Design choice, as to ensure the fight cannot be done with a few weeks of gear. Sounds logical from a developer's standpoint considering the last raid they released.

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Yup, glad you it skated past the notion that the mechanics in a4s are not anymore complicated than t9. I agree that asinine levels of a dps check were implemented to prolong a4s. Hope it was worth it SE.

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I didn't say you called yourself good. But you did (as I quoted) call a few other players good solely based on the fact of their completion of (by MMO standards and compared to the previous tier even) a relatively easy raid. You also are making quite a lot of assumptions on numbers and seem to like saying your opinion is the opinion of others. I would avoid using words like "majority" because now you are claiming to speak for other people.

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I see far more negative replies about alex savage than positive ones. Allow me to reformat my statement to avoid your pedantic point. Of all the feedback I have seen, the majority of it has been critical of alex savage. There has been a smaller margin of positive feedback.

Also, my friends, the end game community I am a part of on my server, my static, and the statics I know on a personal basis have bad things to say about alex. The statics I know that have broken up did so over the difficulty of a4s. I have not heard the same volume of positive chitchat about alex savage.

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For all intents and purposes, they are a random group. Just like the guy I linked was a random guy, who also cleared. Still waiting for you to complain about Donald Trumps' policies since he's an expert and his opinion matters more than the random guy in new york, which had different living conditions. I don't disagree with Donald Trump btw, nor do I think there is a better group than Elysium. I do believe there is a conflict of interest though. The developer's goal is the make the fight possible to clear, but to take as long as possible to clear it. The players have a different interest than the developers, which is why you see a disconnect here.


That being said, They did not make all 4 floor difficult and even though with just enough skill to complete FCoB and easily clear half of the raid tier. In the nest raid tier (3.2 I presume) they will look at the amount of time spent to clear alex and will determine whether to do a BCoB->SCoB transition (moving up) or a SCoB->FCoB transition (moving down). Let's not forget that they are a game company and will make a decision that is most logical from a business stand point. They could of BTW made the first too floors as difficult as the last two. Would that have been better for you? To realize up front that you weren't prepared?

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Nope, they are not. They are not a random group, they are the world 1st group. Stop trying to discredit an opinion from authority with your bad donald trump analogy. Donald trump is not an expert on immigration, your comparison was bad from the start. You just want to discredit the fact that many of the best groups in the world felt this tier was tuned too high. Who do you think SE listen too when people complained FCoB was too easy? Guess who SE will listen to this time? Either the upset midcore crowd or the world 1st groups. Either way, things are looking good.

Either Savage will change, normal will change, or their will be a midcore exodus. Just look through this thread and see how many people are posting their statics are falling apart. Let's see what SE does when those players start to unsub ^_^

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Originally Posted by KarstenS

Its a point of view how they really meant it.

You can also read it like:

"Oh shit. Our vacation is running out and then we are not able to fight any longer for the world first, because we have to go back to work!"

With my group, we do just raid around 3 hrs a week since the release of AS. Maybe its getting better. Maybe not. So we are not that far like others. But I really enjoy the fight in A3S and the day of finishing A3S will come and we step forward into A4S. Just later than others. Its all about patience and "never give up".

What I'm not lucky about? That there will be nothing new to see after that fight, because everything got spoiled in the normal version already.

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You left out the part where they explicitly state that it might have been tuned too high. There are also loads of complaints on twitter if you want to take a gander.

Vacation or not, it's something they don't really want the next time around.

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Originally Posted by zosia

You left out the part where they explicitly state that it might have been tuned too high.

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Makes no difference to my view.

Yes. They said "tuned to high".

But in the next sentence they explain their issue with that.

They do not complain it is to hard or unbeatable.

They complain "spending an entire month" was to much for them.

Reading between the lines their issue more looks like, they were close to give up the race and let the others win, because they would have not the time any longer to participate on the battlefield.

Aah the complains. a1 and a2 savages are coil difficulty. a3s+ is wakeup for those who thought clearing final coil with echo and clearing savage coil with unsync was good. Either surpass it or accept the fact you aint good enough to meet that goal and stick with a1 and a2s. Bring out the flames!!!

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Originally Posted by kalasnikov

Aah the complains. a1 and a2 savages are coil difficulty. a3s+ is wakeup for those who thought clearing final coil with echo and clearing savage coil with unsync was good. Either surpass it or accept the fact you aint good enough to meet that goal and stick with a1 and a2s. Bring out the flames!!!

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I have no opinion either way in this matter I raid hardcore in wow if I have to I'll hardcore raid here but most of the statics that are having trouble with a3s and a4s aren't the ones who cleared final coil with echo or people going in to savage second coil undersized. They're the ones that cleared final coil a month or 2 or even a few weeks right before echo was added. That's where most of the raiding population sits in this game.

At least have a discussion about it don't just derp it up and say Git gud and enjoy your 2 bosses as your static falls apart from people getting sick of throwing themselves against a wall and not having anything else to do in the game. Something has to be done to fix the issue that doesn't necessarily mean nerf savage or make normal harder but something has to be done to prevent a large loss of subs.

Wow went all Raid or die and look how its doing right now with it bleeding subs.

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Originally Posted by Pluvia

I have no opinion either way in this matter I raid hardcore in wow if I have to I'll hardcore raid here but most of the statics that are having trouble with a3s and a4s aren't the ones who cleared final coil with echo or people going in to savage second coil undersized. They're the ones that cleared final coil a month or 2 or even a few weeks right before echo was added. That's where most of the raiding population sits in this game.

At least have a discussion about it don't just derp it up and say Git gud and enjoy your 2 bosses as your static falls apart from people getting sick of throwing themselves against a wall and not having anything else to do in the game. Something has to be done to fix the issue that doesn't necessarily mean nerf savage or make normal harder but something has to be done to prevent a large loss of subs.

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Those who cleared within 1 month or less before echo had 135 relic weapons and world of darkness with more gear and coats to use, and we havent even reached that stage on this raid yet.

And those not having anything else to do is their own fault. I dont just raid, i also craft and gather. Ffxiv has option to do everything in 1 character for a reason. Dont just tunnel vision it to raid alone.

Let me link you a discussion from reddit. Here is the OP

Is the difficulty of Alexander Savage perfect, too low or too high? Judging by completion rates and personally I think it is too high. Heck, if the A4S sacrifice strat was not doable there would be even less completions.

I much preferred the Final coil difficulty, though I might be skewed since it had an overall great story to go with it. Whereas Alexander savage is only a harder mode of a pre-existing fights. It feels less rewarding because of that.

What do you think? Is it too hard? Should the next step be even harder, remain the same, or become easier? (Savage)

Dervy a person who is probably the most respected on these forums for doing a boatload for the community sums it up well in these posts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...iculty/cvqfdwp

A3s is a stupid and poorly designed fight that is a cluster of hope the servers work right. hell look at a4 if you could cheese the debuffs in a3 you sure as hell know people would.
This is coming from someone who's played over 10 years in wow and has seen plenty of poorly designed fights.

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Originally Posted by kalasnikov

Snip.!

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Well that's an egregious jump in logic there. The problem with Alexander Savage goes far deeper than "Wah wah its too hard!!!!1". I could write a small essay over all the poor design decisions littered through out the entire raid. The over tuning and difficulty jump in the latter half is just the straw that breaks the camel's back for so many mid-core raiders.

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Originally Posted by HorseBoots

Well that's an egregious jump in logic there. The problem with Alexander Savage goes far deeper than "Wah wah its too hard!!!!1". I could write a small essay over all the poor design decisions littered through out the entire raid. The over tuning and difficulty jump in the latter half is just the straw that breaks the camel's back for so many mid-core raiders.

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LoL you don't even need to write it your self OP has already done that.

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Originally Posted by kalasnikov

And those not having anything else to do is their own fault. I dont just raid, i also craft and gather. Ffxiv has option to do everything in 1 character for a reason. Dont just tunnel vision it to raid alone.

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It may shock you to know this but there exsist people who only like doing battle related content its shocking isn't it? Sky island is going to hopefully add a much needed thing to endgame content.

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Originally Posted by HorseBoots

Well that's an egregious jump in logic there. The problem with Alexander Savage goes far deeper than "Wah wah its too hard!!!!1". I could write a small essay over all the poor design decisions littered through out the entire raid. The over tuning and difficulty jump in the latter half is just the straw that breaks the camel's back for so many mid-core raiders.

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Thats just 1 point of view. I still find t7 much more horrid than a3s. No need to use fancy words or making lengthy posts about it. Alexander savage is half coil difficulty half savage difficulty.