Criterion could an easier alternative to Savage raiding between raid tiers.

I had this idea after discussing criterion rewards with some people and wanted to see what people think.

So the last criterions have been savage or semi savage level difficulty, but the main issue is that the rewards aren't worth the difficulty. There is also another another issue of EW lacking midcore content that has been discussed to death. I think what we can agree on is that there's not enough content in between easy mode normal stuff and high end content that requires a huge time commitment.

Many have suggested that criterion could drop savage gear tokens/etc to mix up gear progression and also fix the rewards issue. I'll do you one better though, what if criterion had it's own gear sets and weapons that drop from chests like savage? These could be identical to savage gear in stats but have their own unique glamour. This would fix rewards as there is almost no better type of reward in this game than flashy armor and weapons. Even if you don't care about BiS, the glamour will be enough for people to run it. Savage raiders could use this content to easily gear up alt jobs late into the tier as well, which is another common issue raiders mention.

Since criterion is between patches, this could be a way for players who don't have the time to commit savage to still get into higher end content. You could even consider it the elusive "mid-core content" at that point or just "high-mid-core". Criterion is way shorter and easier to clear than a whole savage tier so it's fine if it's between patches imo, especially with how long it is between new raid tiers. You also don't need 8 players which further lowers the entry barrier. Maybe dropping a BiS weapon is too much, but you could always lock that behind criterion savage or just have the criterion weapon be 5 ilvels below the raid weapons. There would still be gear lockouts and what not because otherwise they'd be too fast to obtain compared to tome/savage gear, and you'd get people coming back for reclears in PF each week.

(1/2)

Speaking of criterion savage, I want to clarify that I'd want these rewards for criterion normal not savage since the whole idea is an easier alternative to savage raiding and to fill in the gaps between normal and savage. Criterion savage could drop something like a mount or BiS weapons like I mentioned. I also heard an idea to make a criterion mount series where if you get all the mounts in an expansion you get a master mount just like expert. If that doesn't sound good though you could do the normal/savage gear split with criterion gear. This could let players double up on gearing alt jobs/glam farming too since criterion would comes well after the raid tier and I think even the normal gear lockouts are kinda overkill for how long they last. Overall I think criterion normal should be prioritized though for the reasons I've mentioned. Also Variant is already "normal mode" in a way.

Thoughts? I have to admit that this type of content would appeal to me personally. Abyssos burnt me out and and my job schedule made sticking to a static schedule for the current tier really hard to do. The idea of a "baby savage tier" that I could clear once a week in PF sounds amazing to me.

(2/2)

The game lacks midcore content overall, SE seems to only know two extremes either braindead dungeons where the healers don't even have to use 10% of their healing actions and tanks feel like they are hit by wet poolnoodles or Savage/Ultimate etc.

I have no clue at all why they are so against any form of difficult casual content but they seem to even hate it. Telling people that if they want to do difficult stuff to do savage or to play other games while completely ignoring what players actually ask for. Like a simple healer rotation or some hardmode dungeons we could do daily maybe even i a roulette so we have actually some engaging content.

For all the flaws WoW has/had, i wish SE would adapt WoW dungeon difficulty system for content like criterion or dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

The game lacks midcore content overall, SE seems to only know two extremes either braindead dungeons where the healers don't even have to use 10% of their healing actions and tanks feel like they are hit by wet poolnoodles or Savage/Ultimate etc.

I have no clue at all why they are so against any form of difficult casual content but they seem to even hate it. Telling people that if they want to do difficult stuff to do savage or to play other games while completely ignoring what players actually ask for. Like a simple healer rotation or some hardmode dungeons we could do daily maybe even i a roulette so we have actually some engaging content.

For all the flaws WoW has/had, i wish SE would adapt WoW dungeon difficulty system for content like criterion or dungeons.

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Yes, the true normal content has disappeared.

For me, there are only the difficulty levels: easy, extreme, savage, and ultimate.
The normal mode no longer exists, which, in my opinion, could be represented by the difficulty of the Holminster dungeon at its release,
or even the Ivalice raids before the nerf, the Baldesion Arsenal, or the boss battles in Bozja.

In any case, for me, a normal mode is something that's neither too easy nor too difficult and doesn't require joining a party finder to clear or farm.

"And unfortunately, almost all instances, even the Endwalker 24-man raids, have such a low difficulty that it's fun to discover them but not at all rewarding to replay them.

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Originally Posted by remiff

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The problem i have is that savage, ex, ultimates are not even close to viable for daily grind or farming tomestones. The most viable options are either braindead roulettes or stuff like hunt trains etc. which is just sad and just makes content droughts so much more extreme.

People want something that is mildly engaging and they can do everyday, like roulette. It is insane that the only place where you actually need your full kit as a healer or tank is literally just the latest endgame content for raiders.

And with each new expansion it gets worse and worse as healers and tanks get stuffed with more and more panic buttons and mitigation options they will never have to even use. It has gotten so bad that nowadays if you have a warrior in a dungeon you don't even need to heal the tank anymore at all.

Kind of with MrHappy (just respecting the guy's idea, not gonna pretend that I came up with it) in thinking Criterion Savage should've offered upgrade materials at the very least.

If Criterion had its own gear progression, it could even be in the odd patches (with the 1 week delay for Criterion that they use in Savage raids).

Odd patches are the most dry of them all, since we don't really have anything other than the EX and Unreal to sink our teeth in. Maybe an Ultimate, but that's not exactly everyone's cup of tea.