Please increase incentive for helping new players to Savage raids

Hello,

I play as a healer in a JP server, and have decided to try Sigmascape 4 Savage (s4s) since 2 weeks ago. Due to my FC and my own RL situation, we cannot have a static, as we live in various different timezones and we have a busy working life. I'm a pretty casual player, and this is basically my first attempt at higher tier raid.

I have yet to pass even after 2 weeks and too many hours, although I've seen enrage many times. My experience has been:

* There are too many healers in the practice PF/DF, so I have to wait 30 min to two hours to get a party.
* Parties last around 30 min to two hours.
* It is impossible to get into a "Duty Completed" party, because no one likes 'Duty Incomplete' players (bonus minus points for being EN).
* I cannot go as any other class, because only my healer is iLevel high enough. I can't get my dps class iLevel high enough, because token restrictions. I don't have gil to buy pentameld equipment, because as casual player I have no gil.

There is absolutely nothing else to do while trying to find a practice party. I cannot join Eureka, can't do Duty Roulettes, can't even work/study in RL, or watch TV, read a book, whatever, because I have to constantly scout the PF for that rare healer position in a 'enrage practice party'. Hunting for a practice party spot is a horrible full time job and the waiting game has burned me out.

As such, I have concluded that it may be impossible to graduate from 'Duty Incomplete' tag this late since raids' release, without help from some kind 'Duty Completed' players.

But the game system does not support this. For example, the rewards for the 'Duty Completed' to help 'Duty Incomplete' for Savage raids are so meaningless that it may as well be non-existent. System also divides 'weekly cleared' from 'weekly yet to clear', reducing number of players to help each other out freely.

Who does these policies benefit exactly?

FFXIV has restrictions to reduce hardcore/casual players' gear gap. However, I think you have to accompany such preventive measures with proactive ones, to motivate the hardcore players to help casual players to breach the wall surrounding harder content. Unless if you assist the people on the 'lower playing curve' reach the harder content, the range/gap between hardcore/casual players will remain, like it has for me.

Some people may read this post and say, 'go make your own pt' -- JP don't like joining an EN party. Or 'switch servers' -- I live in Australia, NA servers will make the content unplayable by the virtue of latency and my friends are on this server.

These may be just excuses. But, it doesn't change the fact that at this point in time, I regret putting in so many hours trying to play a part of this game that seemed fun before I started. Nearly every FFXIV experience in the past 2 weeks I've ended up exhausted trying to finish s4s. It's depressing. It's also sad that I'm writing this kind of post for almost 2 hours.

I don't understand why the developers are making this game so inaccessible and frustrating. I don't think games are supposed to be like that.

TLDR; Your game system seems needlessly punishing, does not encourage cooperation/community coherence, and makes casual players experience miserable if they want to 'play' harder content. Please reconsider upgrading incentives for the community to help latecomers clear Savage, and graduate from 'Duty Incomplete' stigma. I.e. give them a savage token or something.

One more note, can you please make fairy come back automatically after Dissipation? SMN has their pet automatically after Bahamut; why different treatment for fairy?

I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. The odd numbered patches are there to help people like yourself - handing out the upgrade items via the 24 man alliance raid and hunt tokens to help raise item levels to hopefully raise dps to clear. In your case I wouldn't try anymore until 4.3 drops, you'll just make yourself bitter. The raid loot system exists the way it does to challenge the players to clear content first - they get the rewards for doing so. The odd patches help others catch up and hopefully clear the difficult content. I don't think extra rewards should be introduced because people can and will find a way to abuse the system to further themselves instead of genuinely helping others.

Raiding is just punishing to players in general. It forces people to stick to one party for essentially months for ultimately a chance at something good (you'll get trash most of the time). Any loss of a single person completely messes up everything for everyone, especially now that Ultimate content is basically going to be tied to clears of Savage content.

The reason this is done is to force people to play for essentially two months so that they have time to work on the next content rather than allowing hardcore players to burn their way through all the content in the first week. While they always say that they want people to jump in and out of the game and it is not something you should have to stay subscribed to and playing all the time, in practice, FF14 is the complete opposite of this. If you are not up to date on the content, you are going to be heavily punished. The players shift to new content and it makes it even harder to clear existing content. Unless you start playing at the exact time a tomestone/raid is introduced, you will not be able to gear up for that stage of content unless they delay their updates like they did with Deltascape.

I'm a casual player (in terms of raid content) myself. I can tell you that wanting a savage raid gear to just glamour (casual player don't care about ilvl, at least that's me) is the worst situation that you might ever have.

What I do is I usually wait for the new tier of raid to be introduced but by that time these things happened,
1. No one, I mean "No one" will queue for the old tier in DF. The queue will litereally goes for 90min++ for tank on weekend and not a sigle party can be formed
2. No one will help people with "incomplete tag", as OP refers to, to pass the content. Because it's essentially a "free carry". now anyone want to carry some random stranger for free?
3. "JP Only" in PF is the rudest thing in the world. Since finding party willing to do "free carry" is not hard enough already.
4. You can't solo the content either, even with one expansion passed. I still can't solo a2s (there is no mech, just kill adds), which is stupid (WoW player can do this after one exp. Yes, not all fight can but at least they can)

I hate it when the game force you to pass high difficualty content which you don't care about accomplishment, ilvl and being on FFLog record at all just to get my glamour look cool.

I am a casual raider that crafts, gathers, hunts, tribes does collectibles and completes MSQ/ raids within that spectrum. I would like to try the sigma savage but have no static group so no one to teach me. I just don't bother trying them at all now.

you could always start a learning party in PF.

OP, you said you had friends in your server.

How come you and your friends don't just make a static? I'm sure via reddit/forums you could fill out the rest of the position with other English speaking players on your data center (don't even have to advertise for just your server, cross world party = you can have static across anyone in your data center).

Instead of scouring for existing parties, make your own and let your friends/FC/Linkshells know.

And you should be able to get your dps to meet requirements even without buying crafted gear.
Do Eureka for the 350 left side,
Byakko for 355,
do o5-o6 for right side.
It's not BiS, but it'll get you through and I'd imagine you don't really need many o5/o6 stuff for your healer anymore so using those on your dps would be fine.