Love the Creator Savage Tier Difficulty Tuning

Just wanted to comment on how much this savage raid tier has really seemed to benefit the raiding community on my server. I've seen many new players try out savage raids, make progression, and have fun.

Previous tiers, particularly Gordias, felt frustrating, but so far Creator savage has been great.

Hope the devs keep up the good work!

I like the current tuning (especially after the mechanics dancing mess that was A8S), but it shouldn't have been given the Savage label. It feels more like a natural extension of the difficulty found in Final Coil.

That is cool for you but most people who enjoyed previous savage tiers currently hate it. Plowing through an entire raid tier in less that 2 weeks on a relaxed raid schedule is simply not okay. The content drought for people who don't like mindlessly easy content is going to be really bad this time around. I understand that people there is a decent amount of people who found savage too hard and normal too easy, but the correct solution simply wasn't to delete savage difficulty in its entirety. The new tier doesn't deserve to be called savage. In my honest opinion that is what normal mode should have been from the start. But since they made a mindlessly easy version of normal mode to begin with, they can't remove it without that crowd complaining. The correct thing to do is not make everything mind numbingly easy so that people aren't so afraid to jump into raids. There needs to be a smoother difficulty curve than what we currently have.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana_Sovari

That is cool for you but most people who enjoyed previous savage tiers currently hate it. Plowing through an entire raid tier in less that 2 weeks on a relaxed raid schedule is simply not okay. The content drought for people who don't like mindlessly easy content is going to be really bad this time around. I understand that people there is a decent amount of people who found savage too hard and normal too easy, but the correct solution simply wasn't to delete savage difficulty in its entirety. The new tier doesn't deserve to be called savage. In my honest opinion that is what normal mode should have been from the start. But since they made a mindlessly easy version of normal mode to begin with, they can't remove it without that crowd complaining. The correct thing to do is not make everything mind numbingly easy so that people aren't so afraid to jump into raids. There needs to be a smoother difficulty curve than what we currently have.

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Well it is always the case of to easy for some to hard for others. there is no middle you can't win either way. So what do you do? make it "x" and if the majority are fine then its a win i guess,

I'm hoping A11s-A12s are a level up in difficulty. I think A9s-A10s as fairly easy "foot in the door" type content is fine, because that easier stuff means that more is doable with subs and PUGs or new players.

At least the EX difficulty is perfect. Have said it already, but I'm glad Sophia is nothing like NidEx. I learned never to touch a NidEx learning party as it would only be a lockout of wiping on Fang and Claw over and over. Many Sophia Ex parties I've been in get a clear or substantial progress.

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Originally Posted by Faeon

Well it is always the case of to easy for some to hard for others. there is no middle you can't win either way. So what do you do? make it "x" and if the majority are fine then its a win i guess,

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Not really. The people who feel the way I do and the communities we have built are a larger population of the max level player base then most people want to admit. If we don't have anything to do, we'll straight up leave. Rather people want to admit it or not that will have a huge impact on the games revenue which will affect how much casual content is released as well. There are plenty ways they could have added content at this difficulty level while leaving savage alone. Their approach this tier was simply wrong and moronic. If they continue this the game will lose a large portion of its max level player base that are subbed year round. I know people who are talking about quitting already, and a lot who are giving it until next raid tier at most.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana_Sovari

Not really. The people who feel the way I do and the communities we have built are a larger population of the max level player base then most people want to admit. If we don't have anything to do, we'll straight up leave. Rather people want to admit it or not that will have a huge impact on the games revenue which will affect how much casual content is released as well. There are plenty ways they could have added content at this difficulty level while leaving savage alone. Their approach this tier was simply wrong and moronic. If they continue this the game will lose a large portion of its max level player base that are subbed year round. I know people who are talking about quitting already, and a lot who are giving it until next raid tier at most.

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Whilst I understand where you are coming from, one could argue that those highly skilled players you speak of represent a very tiny portion of the player base (I would be surprised if it was more than 0.5%), and that extremely difficult content (Gordias, and to a lesser extent Midas) was tuned so hard, ~5% of the player base who were better than the Extreme primals and normal alexander, but not as good as the savage content (and never will be) were getting fed up with banging their heads against the difficulty wall and unsubbing.

SE made a decision which was the lesser of the two evils. Better to lose 0.5% of the playerbase than 5% of it.

You say that your communities have a large population of "max level player base". It's good that you have got on a server that has communities like that. The server I'm on, however don't have that luxury, and I suspect there are many other servers that are like that.

I think the current tuning is fine. IMO they could make it very slightly easier still.

Although participation has increased somewhat, it is still very low numbers even on the JP data center where I am on. The failure rate for parties doing A10S in PF or RF is still extremely high. (Did 3 lockouts with a PF party to try help them clear yesterday, but still failed, even though they knew the mechanics). Alot of players still struggle with the mechanics.

If SE wants to increase participation, better rewards are one way, but it also has to make it more manageable to play for the playerbase at large (ie. not just the extremely elite raiders). SE could make a time attack mode or some other conditions such as don't take more than X% of damage from mechanics for example for the really hardcore along with associated rewards for achieving it.

Making content that only the 0.5% or so can do and clear is a huge waste of resources from a business standpoint. Definitely, the hardcore raiders are going to be unhappy, but SE is a business and it will not continue to make content that only 0.5% can play or clear.

SE really only has 2 choices, cater to the 0.5% that doesn't justify the huge amount of resources put into development or the larger playerbase. The choice is fairly clear. For all the hooha about threatening to leave, this and that cause the tuning is too easy, this 0.5% subscription base is worth much less than retaining the 99.5% subscription base and even hopefully attracting new players. This a P2P game and maintaining a large sub base as well as attracting new players make better sense from a revenue perspective.

If you're in a F2P game, then it would make sense, attracting the whales to spend as much as possible to clear absurdly difficult content with cash items that would assist the clear.

SE has to balance these 2, and it has chosen to make it easier and more accessible to the larger community and (less skilled population - derogatory term according to these so called elite raiders) considering how the earlier savages broke up and raiding communities.

I for one welcome this change and hope the RF will actually be much more active, so parties can form more easily and readily. As of now, the queues in RF and PF still take hours to form.

They could always have a third difficulty. Normal, Hard, and then Savage. But then they'd need even more gear tiers, and that was cause even more trouble for people reaching endgame mid-expansion.

well see what they do, for what its worth Yoshi P did sound a bit bummed about the decrease in difficulty and seems to be trying to find a way to amp it up for 4.0. Still its hard to justify the development time when participation is abysmally low. Could see them adding the current hard as the midcore prolly though then maybe go back to a cosmetic :hard" akin to how the 2.0 savages were? idk well have to see XD As someone else pointed out though could just be a matter of easing ppl into difficulties better, and the first step should really be at the bottom, there is such a thing as too easy.

I think the difficulty is fine. As people have already mentioned a lot of development time goes into making savage content and when a tiny minority of players are the only ones who enjoy it it's a little pointless. At this difficulty mst mid-core players can clear and enjoy the content which is a good thing.

I can however understand the top-end players' frustrations because FFXIV is famous for its extreme difficulty raids. My main gripe with this though is that some of the best gear is locked behind an incredibly difficult trial. You get better gear to help you challenge the hardest content, but if you can already clear said content, why do you need better gear?

I think they should add a third tier that matched the difficulty of savage gordias and Midas every odd patch, but instead of rewarding you with top-tier equipment you get unique glamours, mounts, titles etc. I think this would be the best option since it satisfies the top percentile's need for a challenge, while also giving mid-core players and above something to actually use their hard-earned BiS on.

I think the good balance was with Weeping City. They found a good balance around that from what was said on the forums by people.

Yeah I really enjoyed this raid, I got my life back after clearing in 4days. Now I can focus on real life again. Thanks SE.

I also like the current tuning, it's finally accessible at my level. Being a midcore player in this game hasn't all that fun in HW, stuck between "stare hard enough at the screen" and wipe-istanian gulag.

Honestly, the more I play, the more I like it, but the more I hate the raid structure itself. I really like the direction they seem to be going in stormblood, where the rewards that you get from regular raiding (BiS weapons) will be used in savage raiding (unique rewards and epeen?). Having the actual raid be easier is a bad thing if the rewards do not lead into harder content (especially with such a low barrier of entry), but having the rewards lead into an actual savage mode makes this easier (but still challenging) raid seem like a better design.

I know we don't know anything yet, but I am optimistically excited about 4.0 raiding

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Originally Posted by Viridiana_Sovari

Not really. The people who feel the way I do and the communities we have built are a larger population of the max level player base then most people want to admit. If we don't have anything to do, we'll straight up leave. Rather people want to admit it or not that will have a huge impact on the games revenue which will affect how much casual content is released as well. There are plenty ways they could have added content at this difficulty level while leaving savage alone. Their approach this tier was simply wrong and moronic. If they continue this the game will lose a large portion of its max level player base that are subbed year round. I know people who are talking about quitting already, and a lot who are giving it until next raid tier at most.

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Well, as far as I see it...

First world Progression Groups are happy (Elysium complained about to less competition @ the end of midas Progression).
Most People who couldn't raid while Gordias/Midas, because their groups got destroyed or they didn't find a group to join in time, are happy, since A9/A10 and even A11 are way better pugable than every single gordias/midas tier.
The raid groups I know are very happy with Creator so far. Two of them cleared Sunday, another one is at A12 prog and another two are on A11 prog. None of those had more fun in Midas just because they needed 3 months or more to clear it.
No one prolonged his sub out of joy, because he felt happy about doing another month of progression on A6S/A7S/A8S after failing 1,5 months.

So you want to talk about people leaving this game? Because that was one reason to leave associated with gordias/midas specifically.
Gordias/Midas led to server migration and/or player loss. Alexander has done the exact opposite so far (i.e. friends who changed server for midas/gordias prog regret now to have left many friends for something which you don't have to do anymore to be able to find a raid group).

Also: So far 2-3(?) groups on Phoenix cleared that content while 10x, 100x or even 1000x of that are currently progressing.
So you want to make that first number a big 0 again and make the pool of currently attempting groups half, a third or even a quarter of which it is right now.
Sounds totally reasonable.

If you look at what Yoshi P said during fanfest, I don't think a lot of people understand what he meant. He basically said he is axing normal mode as it is today. They aren't going to only do 1 difficulty mode and make it what normal is today. Normal mode will basically be somewhat where Creator savage / coil was and he is considering something for the Hardcore crowd on odd patches. So basically it is going to be more akin to the normal/savage version of 2nd coil was if he goes through with it which is exactly what a lot of people wanted. People will cry about not having story mode, but as long as they don't link it to the main story like they did in coil it won't be an issue. Not having brain dead mode will actually motivate more people to get into challenging content if the story and experience is what they are after. I think that model is much better for the games health overall. They just need to make it worth trying for more people by making it something more than just a title.

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Originally Posted by Neophyte

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Ask them how they feel in a couple months. It would be fine if we had more raid content around the corner. We don't. Its not like we get 4 man raid tiers every 2 or 3 months. We get 4 bosses to last 6 or 7. The tier is over for any decent groups and literally on farm mode for the next 7 months minimum given the early 2017 release date of Stormblood. I'm completely fine with having "midcore" content. But the answer isn't to take away content from the hardcore community. I have friends from my old server on Malboro who never beat a8s who are completely depressed by how easy this tier is. There is simply no longevity to it for anyone except people who approach it at an extremely casual level. Creator savage is what alex normal should have been the entire time. We didn't need more brain dead content. Everything else in the game is already there.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana_Sovari

If you look at what Yoshi P said during fanfest, I don't think a lot of people understand what he meant.

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You must've been watching a different fan fest stream, or perhaps it's you who didn't understand what Yoshi-P said. It was never said that they're planning to scrap the current normal/story mode for the raid.

An idea they're playing around with is having the difficult content (as in, the 8-man raid) still in the even numbered patches, with the possibility of an even higher difficulty thing in the odd numbered patches.

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

You must've been watching a different fan fest stream, or perhaps it's you who didn't understand what Yoshi-P said..

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He literally said that he is going back to having one difficulty on release during the keynote. Go back and watch it. He said during please look forward to it and the live letter that they are looking at doing something for HC raiders in odd patches. Guarantee you they are not going to launch 4.0 and then only give you what the current normal/story mode is until 4.1. They would lose anyone who cares about raiding at all.

Normal mode is going to go back to the coil days. Just wait and see.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana_Sovari

He literally said that he is going back to having one difficulty on release during the keynote. Go back and watch it. He said during please look forward to it and the live letter that they are looking at doing something for HC raiders in odd patches. Guarantee you they are not going to launch 4.0 and then only give you what the current normal/story mode is until 4.1. They would lose anyone who cares about raiding at all.

Normal mode is going to go back to the coil days. Just wait and see.

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I did go back to watch the high end raids segment in the keynote before I posted my comment.

Perhaps you should be the one going back to watch it again, because you must've heard something that wasn't actually mentioned.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana_Sovari

He literally said that he is going back to having one difficulty on release during the keynote. Go back and watch it. He said during please look forward to it and the live letter that they are looking at doing something for HC raiders in odd patches. Guarantee you they are not going to launch 4.0 and then only give you what the current normal/story mode is until 4.1. They would lose anyone who cares about raiding at all.

Normal mode is going to go back to the coil days. Just wait and see.

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Just wait and see it being a fiasco again. Just wait and see.
Anyway, they even said the new Raid difficult is hard to explain because they're making changes to lessen the skill gap between "hardcore" players and "casual" players, so yeah, if you want exclusivity, you won't have it. By putting so much work into something a low percent of players actually play/enjoy, they would be just losing money, like they did in Coil days, hence the change in the 3.0 series.

Balmung player and I have to agree, while part of my hardcore side laments the loss of the difficulty ultimately I think its for the best. Gordias and Midas to a lesser extent did alot of damage to the raiding community fracturing fc's and entire raiding populations overnight hitting walls like a1s, the insane a3s and a6s disappeared or server transferred to more populated raiding servers. That wasn't helpful to anybody. Plain and simple its absolute nonsense that we have to server transfer just to acomplish raiding that used to be accessible on most servers. Really I don't think the devs had much of a choice here.

Thanks to the tunning I can say the raiding community is slowly comming back.

Hope I'm proven wrong, but I think by Christmas the most capable raiders will be on hiatus, having cleared everything and with nothing left to do, waiting for 4.0, and the rest will still not be able to clear raid.

I know the difficulty has been lowered to try and encourage more people into raid, but unfortunately some of the new people just aren't ready for it. It's largely the fault of all other content being so faceroll you can just ham about doing whatever you like and it doesn't matter, then suddenly that no longer flies in raid

I also think The diffuculty level between all the content is huge, we have faceroll content, extreme primal, current raiding difficulty but not so hard, and the savage one we got with gordias who was very hard.
And about the faceroll dgn it's me ? or it's even easier than a solo jrpg the casual players is often playing ? it won't prepare anybody to the raid.
But when we have something harder like the big dragon boss at end of a realm reborn, it got nerfed.