To be honest, Alex Savage is a failure.

My stance on the issue changed with the second tier, actually.
During the first tier, I would have 100% agreed with the OP. A1-4 were boring both in fight mechanics as well as story design.
There was no incentive to play Savage, as you could experience the lackluster story through normal mode already, the mechanics weren't fun or interesting even in normal mode, and the gear was ugly and forgettable and therefore not worth getting either.

But I think that greatly changed with the second tier - gear is a lot nicer in general, the story is finally picking up (the whole time control thing is intriguing) and mechanics are fun and creative and something we didn't have before :)
Well, I guess there is still no real reason to do it except for the challenge though xD

I think the main problem Alex has in comparison to Coil is that a normal mode exists. If you can experience the story and get pretty gear from normal mode, why bother doing savage mode that gives you nothing but a harder fight and gear you don't need for anything BUT savage mode?

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Yeah... Except SE provided census data on this;

http://i.imgur.com/6ax1Wyr.png

That isn't clears, that's just people who entered... Less than 20% of the people who did Normal went on to enter A1S, there is quite clearly an issue here... Either people aren't interested, or it is inaccessible to them for whatever reason. I assume the former, while suggesting a fix for the later. Feel free to, you know, actually weigh in on that...

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Well, for one thing, you said yourself that you're making an assumption, so...you're not really actually providing evidence of anything besides "20% of people who did normal went on to enter A1S." How's that for a response? Just because you post an image with numbers doesn't make it evidence to your argument. It's an opinion based on an assumption.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Removing hardcore content from the game was not my suggestion, doing something different with it, and hopefully making it more accessible, was... Do you actually think people would quit en-mass if SE provided content that was just as rewarding and challenging, but easier to get into?

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Don't put words in people's mouths if you want an actual response. I never said people would quit if SE "provided content that was just as rewarding and challenging, but easier to get into". I said people would quit if they "scaled back" and replaced the Savage 8-man encounters with 4-man encounters.

Think of the groups of friends that already exist and raid together. That'll go over well! Suddenly they're forced to cut their group in half, and aren't raiding together.

We already have LotA, Void Ark, etc because people wanted encounters with even more players per run.

If they cut their premier raid to 4-per, it'd be a disaster.

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Originally Posted by Mindy_Macready

Don't put words in people's mouths if you want an actual response. I never said people would quit if SE "provided content that was just as rewarding and challenging, but easier to get into". I said people would quit if they "scaled back" and replaced the Savage 8-man encounters with 4-man encounters.

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If that was your intent, you should have quoted the part of my suggestion and actually said that... Quoting the opening line and just saying "lawl people will quit" gives me virtually nothing to go off... Had you replied more like this;

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Originally Posted by Mindy_Macready

Think of the groups of friends that already exist and raid together. That'll go over well! Suddenly they're forced to cut their group in half, and aren't raiding together.

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Initially, the past several posts could have entirely been avoided...

I really doubt current raiders would quit just because they have to cut their group in half, though... Heck, what exactly would be stopping a group of 8 from just switching around people? Sure, you're not doing the encounters as 8, but you can still work through the content and communicate as a group... I can perhaps see people being annoyed by downsizing groups, but I really can't imagine it's anything to quit over, and even if it was... It makes the content far more accessible, forming a static and getting everyone on at the same time and on the same page is one of the main barriers to entry on Savage... Easing that up is something even existing groups benefit from...

The only group I can really see as being totally screwed over by such a change would be the merc groups... 4-man provides a much tighter window to balance, could potentially make carrying someone all but impossible... Though I can only see that as a good thing...

Can always just twist the idea around, too... Drop Normal instead... Rather than having an easy mode to make the story/etc. accessible, we have a 4-man mode to do just that, while retaining similar difficulty... No more easy mode, but then I never got why we really needed that... The 24-man raid was the "Babies First Raid", now we have two of those and item level is further inflated because of it...

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Originally Posted by Nalien

I really doubt current raiders would quit just because they have to cut their group in half, though...
...
It makes the content far more accessible

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Or it makes it less accessible because groups that already exist would have to split themselves. They already exist as a group of 8, so going into the next 8-man raids is pretty accessible for them already, wouldn't you say?

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The only group I can really see as being totally screwed over by such a change would be the merc groups

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The 8-man statics that already exist would be the ones totally screwed over.

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The 24-man raid was the "Babies First Raid", now we have two of those and item level is further inflated because of it...

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The difficulty of the currently-existing 24-man raids is mutually exclusive to the idea that people want larger raids. If they made tougher 24-man raids I'd personally love it.

Why do you always use story as an excuse, most people who play this game skip all cutscenes anyway, see for yourself next time when new content is out and people run next to npc and they skip all text/ cutscenes away.

Wait, there's a story to Alex? Whaaaaaaaaa

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Originally Posted by Marcellus_Cassius

Wait, there's a story to Alex? Whaaaaaaaaa

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Yeah, didn't you know??

It's, umm... something-something Goblin... Something... Au Ra touching her scar... something... cat.

As one of the many players who cannot, due to RL, join the demands of a static, I have learnt to have no interest in savage at all. Its not an issue of perceived difficulty if you've never zoned into savage. The possibility to get extra gear or quicker upgrades just does not even register to me as a consequence. I just completely forget savage exists in game. I am willing to consider savage, but just not in way it is currently accessible to the playerbase.


I also find the concept of savage a bit pointless. As others have said theres nothing extra other than gear to unlock. Given the really low numbers from that savage data, perhaps SE should get rid of both Normal and Savage and just have a Middle instead.

Also, having played version 1, there was quite a bit of prologue to Coil in the form of venturing the overworld in the old Mor Dhonan Castrum, the Castrum fight, as well as the Nael fight at Rivenroad. Coil sort of mimicked the adventuring aspect (to a very limited extent), but Alex just feels like Trials. I would have liked some additional zones and quests to give some meat to the Alex plotline.

For example, completing Alex trials 1-4 should have unlocked a field zone for farming and questing in. Diadem should have been an Alex zone in this regard rather than a sea of clouds type zone. That would encourage more players to go clear it. Doing content to open up more zones is the ultimate carrot on the stick and worked fantastic in FF11.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

Yeah, didn't you know??

It's, umm... something-something Goblin... Something... Au Ra touching her scar... something... cat.

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So, it's like Harry Potter?

Instead of the Voldemort, it's the Goblins. Scar touching should be obvious and instead of Headwig we have a cat?

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Originally Posted by RyuSaarva

Why do you always use story as an excuse, most people who play this game skip all cutscenes anyway, see for yourself next time when new content is out and people run next to npc and they skip all text/ cutscenes away.

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The only people I know who skip all cutscenes are raiders. I don't see why they need to have exclusive story in any of the raiding content.