The Heavensward raid: Alexander

The new raid is Alexander. Has normal mode and hard mode. Normal mode is like playing with echo/nerfs accessible to more players. Hard mode is like coil is now.

Who wants to bet people will be begging for echo for normal mode?!

Astrologist Job CONFIRMED!

I always wanted to play T.G. Cid's son in FFT (Orran or Olan).

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Originally Posted by Gardes

Who wants to bet people will be begging for echo for normal mode?!

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It'll be needed if normal mode is like coil with buffs and nerfs. There's still alot of people who can't even get past turn 5. So unless there is an even easier story mode then normal mode won't be enough and there will be lots of threads about how normal mode is too hard.

I'm so ready for this you don't even know

I was kinda hoping they would reveal how rewards would differ from Normal and Hard Mode.

I feel like if they plan to make them the same then they run into two issues.
Raid groups can easily build their gear up through normal mode and then tackle hard mode once they are properly geared rather than spending time challenging hard mode

However they can easily prevent that through two means

Either
-Normal mode won't drop gear and can be done freely much like the 8 man story mode dungeons
-Hard mode offers double the reward drops but this can be exploited in terms of people paying gil to have a larger loot pool from hard mode

I do just hope they consider the idea of making Normal mode a "Story mode" for those to enjoy since if they don't decide how to properly differ the rewards from both options even though people want a challenge, they will just do the easier one to gear up quicker.

Now that there are normal and hard modes I just hope that hard mode has actually unique (or exclusive) rewards and that it won't be subject to nerfs. Otherwise what's the point.

for the challenge? people really play a game with a weekly lockout just for the gear?

The way it came off to me is their making entry for raiding easier then it is now, Alexander coming out day 1 is already at the nerf stage for more people to have access, while HM is like the current brutal. I wouldn't be suprised if they share drops just with HM giving titles, extra difficulty for people who want it

I think they would have either better drops higher ilvl ect, or more drops in hard mode over normal otherwise everyone will just do normal because it is easier. SE wouldn't make that mistake again. Because very few did savage second coil because it was the same drops.

Do we have an image of Alexander? I hope they did this summon justice.

Alexander ♥

very few people did savage because very few people can do savage...savage t7-8 are still the hardest fights in the game...I see someone with the avatar title and I know they are both a masochist and a hell of a player

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Originally Posted by Da_Hero

for the challenge? people really play a game with a weekly lockout just for the gear?

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There's no point in undertaking a more difficult challenge if the reward is the same for most people, look at how many people care about Savage Coil vs. Final Coil. Something as trivial as bragging rights only motivates so much, especially in a game like this where the community hardly ever even interacts. Savage Coil is like any other fight in this game - if you dedicate enough time to it you will eventually settle into the pattern and clear it regardless of how strict or complex it is. The difference is few people actually care enough to invest the time into Savage when all they get is a title.

Loot is the motivating factor for almost everybody who raids, unless you're someone who is actually in a group with the potential for a world/server first clear I'm willing to bet most people don't care about the challenge as an isolated motivator for raiding.

gotta have your precious right? It is just pixels that will be outdated in a few months, the excitement of actually clearing savage and t13 the first time are enough for me, gear just makes that accomplishment easier

I think it'll be similar to the current set of primals. HM is for story and "practice" xm offers weapons. Wouldn't make sense for the normal Alexander to drop anything

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Originally Posted by Da_Hero

for the challenge? people really play a game with a weekly lockout just for the gear?

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I wish harder stuff would give per cosmetic gear, titles, mounts etc stuff that doesn't effect game play but can be shown off for how awesome someone is.

I like that idea jomoru...cosmetic stuff that won't become outdated in 6 months

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Originally Posted by Airget

I was kinda hoping they would reveal how rewards would differ from Normal and Hard Mode.

I feel like if they plan to make them the same then they run into two issues.
Raid groups can easily build their gear up through normal mode and then tackle hard mode once they are properly geared rather than spending time challenging hard mode

However they can easily prevent that through two means

Either
-Normal mode won't drop gear and can be done freely much like the 8 man story mode dungeons
-Hard mode offers double the reward drops but this can be exploited in terms of people paying gil to have a larger loot pool from hard mode

I do just hope they consider the idea of making Normal mode a "Story mode" for those to enjoy since if they don't decide how to properly differ the rewards from both options even though people want a challenge, they will just do the easier one to gear up quicker.

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It'll probably be the first option, which is also the better way to go. It means people can run the place for story if they only want the story, and people who actually want the gear can run the harder mode and get the gear, while simultaneously completing a difficult challenge.

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Originally Posted by Da_Hero

very few people did savage because very few people can do savage...savage t7-8 are still the hardest fights in the game...I see someone with the avatar title and I know they are both a masochist and a hell of a player

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I disagree for the majority of endgame it was a "Why would I waste that much time for a title" as the response to enter savage. For the majority it was because there was no reward. Alot of people could do savage, but very few cared enough about it to do it.

Those of you that hate XI will most likely hate the fact that Alexander will more than likely share very similar mechanics as Salvage and Nyzul from XI.

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Originally Posted by Da_Hero

gotta have your precious right? It is just pixels that will be outdated in a few months, the excitement of actually clearing savage and t13 the first time are enough for me, gear just makes that accomplishment easier

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A lot of people are motivated by better gear, not by titles or achievements which is why it was hard to convince your whole guild group to do savage. Had savage dropped say higher ilvl gear my group would of done it. But because it didn't pretty much I was the only one in my whole group that even wanted to try it and we didn't cause nobody but me wanted to do it.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

A lot of people are motivated by better gear, not by titles or achievements which is why it was hard to convince your whole guild group to do savage. Had savage dropped say higher ilvl gear my group would of done it. But because it didn't pretty much I was the only one in my whole group that even wanted to try it and we didn't cause nobody but me wanted to do it.

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can I quote this everytime people ask for "real challenge"?

I have said months ago on how it be cool if Alexander wasn't a true primal fight but instead a raid where you had to go in side him to fight him. I'm so happy that this is really happening

It be intresting if at the very end of the whole raid that we would have to fight on top of him while he goes on a rampage that be awesome. I'm wondering since he's the goblins primal if Mutamix Bubblypots will be involved cause if you ask me.... Doesn't his furnace look I don't know ALIVE DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNN

I take no credit in coming up with the idea as I was just rambling on fun things that could go into the game with my FC LS yatayata way to go Square Enix.

Gonna have to say the same. My current group formed around vegas NA fanfest and beat t9 1 week before echo got implemented. We're now working on t12, trying to get into phase 4 on our 2nd day of t12. Pretty confident that we could tackle savage scob if we tried but the group doesn't want to. Nobody even cared enough to suggest it seriously, including me. I mean, we meet only for 2 hours a day for half the week, why waste time on savage coil when we could just progress faster on something that gives the same thing or better. I don't remember seeing any of my fc caring enough about titles and personally I turn off strangers' nameplates so I don't even see their titles unless I target them.

If the normal gear and hard gear has to look the same (too much effort for SE's tastes or something), I wouldn't mind if it goes the same route as tome gear. Same ilvl as tome gear drops from normal, Same ilvl as tome gear drops from normal PLUS upgrade mats for BOTH tome and alexander gear drops from hard mode. Both upgraded tome and alexander gear and dyable. If that's too many alexander gear chances for people who can do hard, they can do a lockout system either like ct/st or the current fcob lockout (though considering they said alexander hard will be even harder than our current standard, it's fair imo). But the general idea is that hard moders get higher ilevel dyable gear than people who only do normal modes.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Those of you that hate XI will most likely hate the fact that Alexander will more than likely share very similar mechanics as Salvage and Nyzul from XI.

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If that's true I'm hating it already. I was never a fan of the time sink you had to put into the RME. I just started Alex farming, relic here seems a whole lot less maddening. But does this mean we can farm Alexandrite in Alexander?

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Originally Posted by Dererk

I have said months ago on how it be cool if Alexander wasn't a true primal fight but instead a raid where you had to go in side him to fight him. I'm so happy that this is really happening

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Given that Alexander is mostly described as a city sized giant automaton whom we only see the upper torso, arms and head. It kind of makes sense. I'm wondering if this is the 3.0's version of coil?

On the FFXI's thing, the original Alexander was also huge and we also were running around parts of his original man made body. (Nyzule mostly). But it was more or less a vessel to some entity from the astral plane that over saturated the construct, became independent and demanding to be worshiped. Almost sounds like some of the primals in FFXIV. Although I'm wondering if this Alexander is a real primal or an anchient relic made as an artificial primal to control things like Omega and Ultima weapon. But was never recognized since it was to big to comprehend as anything but a series of ruins.

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Alexander: I...am...Alexander. Tremble...before me... Worship...my greatness... I shall ascend to the heavens... You do not tremble enough! Those...who fail to worship...will be judged... "ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ"

One would think in their minds "Alexander...I'm going to up I you when Heavensward comes out o3o"

Guessing normal will be for the story. You won't win loot.

If so then I can't see it being popular. Not many particularly care about XIV's story.

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Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

Guessing normal will be for the story. You won't win loot.

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Well I can't see it NOT having loot, because...

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Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

If so then I can't see it being popular. Not many particularly care about XIV's story.

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Yep. I mean, I wouldn't go as far as saying that many do not care about the story at all but when people claim they only care about the story and wouldn't mind not getting loot as long as they get to see the story?

Well, call me a heathen cause I'm an unbeliever!

Unofficial translation states that hardmode will be 'even harder than current coil', which is a significantly different meaning than 'like coil is now'.

NM will likely drop loot better than what you will find in dungeons, and worse than what you will find in HM. It is almost certainly WoW's raid content structure, just concatenated into two difficulties instead of four.

Remember that loot is essential to content lastability. Without at least passingly good loot, NM Alex will be a graveyard within 2-3 weeks and people will unsub because they can't go to HM Alex.

I think the more important question should be "is Alexander all of endgame raiding the way Coil has been for 2.0?". If everything gets funneled to Alex, that means we'll be exactly where we are now. Was hoping for something along the lines of "Alexander will be one of several high level raids".

This is nice!

honestly i dont see myself doing hard modes if the reward is just titles again.
the time you need to invest to down this content is just not worth it without exclusive loot.

i hope they dont have any high end loot drops in normal modes as this will just homogenize the game even more.

of course the non-raiders are still gonna complain even tho most of them screamed they just wanted to experience the story. we can already see it in this thread


it never ends.

Maybe they can make HM loot dyeable?

I think this is a great idea. You can get the normal mode mastered and at least become familiar with some of the mechanics before going into hard mode. I think like maybe vanity loot drops in story mode and best gear in hard mode.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I think the more important question should be "is Alexander all of endgame raiding the way Coil has been for 2.0?". If everything gets funneled to Alex, that means we'll be exactly where we are now. Was hoping for something along the lines of "Alexander will be one of several high level raids".

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You shouldn't be surprised if it's the same design as now because they're going for the minimalistic approach with XIV compared to XI's more broader approach. Which is why I said it'll probably share similar setup as XI's Alexander raids, where you may still be inside of Alexander, but you have multiple content relating to it, not in the same sense as "Coil", but completely separate systems that just happens to share a similar location.

Otherwise..yeah, no surprises if it ends up as another funnel.

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Originally Posted by Ceodore

Do we have an image of Alexander? I hope they did this summon justice.

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http://www.playmassive.de/uploads/inline/pic-19763.jpg

http://oi59.tinypic.com/15wlcsy.jpg

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Originally Posted by Duelle

I think the more important question should be "is Alexander all of endgame raiding the way Coil has been for 2.0?". If everything gets funneled to Alex, that means we'll be exactly where we are now. Was hoping for something along the lines of "Alexander will be one of several high level raids".

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Yeah, I was sort've hoping the same. If it just ends up being another 1 set of instances to look forward to every 6 months I'll probably just unsub since if all they're doing is moving the dial on the current system back to 0 and letting it restart rather than making a new system then it's just going to get old again after enough time.

Since they said nothing about what will come after the Crystal Tower, I'm thinking they might make normal mode the raid that replaces CT. You would get loot ~10-20 ilvls below the one from hard mode, with a separate lockout.

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Originally Posted by Felis

http://www.playmassive.de/uploads/inline/pic-19763.jpg

http://www.4gamer.net/games/199/G019...001/SS/050.jpg

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looks like magitek.