4 Man Savage Content

What are your thoughts on a 4 player content similar to savage/extreme?

I think it would be nice to have other difficult content that isn't just 8 man.

Things i would like to see
Savage Dungeon
Extreme Trial
Savage Raid

Doesnt need to be alot, maybe just 1 of each released the same time the regular savage/extreme content is released (even patches, odd patches, etc)

This would be nice for smaller FC's, easier to work around 4 peoples schedules for statics instead of 8 people.

Im not sure what the rewards could be, obviously not the same rewards in the current 8 man content.

I would prefer content for a larger number of people, like alliance raid or Baldesion Arsenal, but I don't mind light party content either.

They kinda did that with Rathalos EX, and it was pretty fun.

I was just talking about this with someone a few days ago, I think it'd be a fantastic idea. They could definitely take some of the mechanics ideas they use in savage content and make those work with four players. I'd also enjoy seeing a boss rush mode added into this game. Perhaps after beating a raid tier you unlock boss rush where you go through all four fights of the tier back-to-back ultimate style. Could even turn off rezzing to make you do all four flawlessly with no breaks. There's so many ideas for things they can do, hopefully they continue to improve on their systems.

I beat myself in the French part of the lodestone for this feature !! Savage or extreme dungeon yes this game really need it ! I don’ understand why it seems difficult for SE to make that

Yoshida himself few years ago said that they are working on it and since there is no news

It can be the « real FC event ». I mean, in a lot of FC ive been, there is the same problem : 1/3 of players are not log since 6 months, 1/3 are casual and the last players (3 or 4 players) are not enough to go in a savage 8 man mode and are too « powerfull » for normal content, between this there is nothing except extremes primals

If it's not savage why they can’t do extremes dungeons linked to the trial? for exemple we take The next primal, it will give a 465 weapon, and you make a extreme/savage dungeon with no weeklies that give 465 ilevel stuff, or minions, or glamours i dont know there is a lot of things to do. Or they can take dungeons who already exist like aurum vale and make it savage (The minimum ilevel feature is not enough)

Sorry for my english but really i want this feature ive been waiting for this for so long, rathalos ex was a good beginning with the raid finder revival !

Sounds good, however I don't think it's possible to make them as hard as 8-man content since the difficulty of 8 man content usually involves doing a dance with 7 other people and fewer the people easier the dance is, like just think about the harder meachanics there is and now scale them to involve only 4 people, they are much easier that way. Think about tsunami from newest raid tier, if there is only 4 people with debuffs it's much easier since it requires much less coordination and fewer people can screw it up.

That being said there definitely could be much harder 4-people content as currently everything involving only 4 people is super easy, they could take the road of having everything hitting harder and bosses not being scripted and having you adapting to different attacks on the fly and bringing the difficulty up with that, rather than relying in team coordination bringing the difficulty like it does now in savage raids. I remember the only time in game's history when 4-people content felt difficult and it was when pharos sirius came out so it definitely can be done with high damage output and chaotic and fast mechanics rather than team coordination.

I like the idea of hard dungeon content like WoW is trying to do, and Guild Wars (in Fractals) and ESO have done...

But these other MMOs also show why Yoshi has said he won’t donit.

Balance.

What group size do you balance groups for?

GW2 currently balances for raids. So Fractals are either super easy or impossible until you figure out some way to gimp them...
ESO balances for... I am not sure, I need to progress more. But I think it may have WoW’s flaw.

WoW balances for... everything. And that means all it gets bland and homogenized...

FFXIV balances for 8 players. This means they can intentionally make sone jobs weaker or stronger but meant to be paired. And they could do that for 4 instead. But you cannot do it for both unless you remove even more job diversity than we lost with 5.0...

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Originally Posted by NessaWyvern

They kinda did that with Rathalos EX, and it was pretty fun.

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Yeah this pretty much came to mind when thinking of 4man savage. Honestly, game could use more of it. Not to mention more difficulty broadly.

The way 14 works, it would be hell to balance.

Having 4 person parties locked to Heal, Tank, 2 DPS instead of 5 or 6 people that can have a 2nd healer or 2nd tank, or both, or a dedicated CC, or someone who can tank or heal effectively as needed means you're heavily limited to the kinds of content you can use.

Rathalos worked (sort of) but you cant really get away with "heres something you cant tank and can only heal for half the fight" more than once.

The more you cut down player spots in a group, the less you can do mechanically.

We already see this in raids. Let me know when we get to a raid tier where multiple bosses arent fought on a platform in space who have at least one ability that can knock you off the platform, cause thats been a thing for the last couple expansions.


Harder 4 man content in 14, with the way current skill lineups work, would end up being more outgoing damage and bigger HP pools, which is exactly how NOT to handle that kind of content, because its a boring band-aid based around players not having the ability to use class mechanics to deal with challenges.

3rd Addon, 3rd time it looks like same formula regarding trials and raids. I don't think they care really, they have highest sub count than ever so that will stop any idea that proposes to change that "working system".
Introducing dungeon achievements like WoW did, to beat bosses under certain conditions or just to have a fast clear time, there are lots of opportunities for replay value and fun. They have to make dungeons like baldesion arsenal, perm death + cc actually useful and needed + interactive environment etc... I really dislike rushing through all the new dungeons and just doing big pulls, just because its the most efficient way nowadays.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

would end up being more outgoing damage and bigger HP pools, which is exactly how NOT to handle that kind of content

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Yeah they have to introduce mechanics that might deal more damage than the party dps on bosses. It would still be a benefit if you have high party dps, but at least you will kill the boss by playing the mechanics perfectly too. Similar to Unending Coil Ultimate, where you get the phoenix buff that makes it easier to clear if you don't die. But this is just one variant of many.
It could also be a dot that has to stack up on a boss, until it is stacked so high that he will die very fast. Or its a mechanic like in shinryu where you try to attack his tail to damage him for a set HP value, a boss could have more than 1 target area (his limbs or other structures etc.). There is just lots what they could do to reduce dependency on damage, which I think isn't an ultimately bad thing.

I don't know if I want four man content that's 'as' hard as savage raids, but it would be nice to have something harder than ex roulette for four man parties. But the game is balanced more around 8 man parties.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

The way 14 works, it would be hell to balance.

Having 4 person parties locked to Heal, Tank, 2 DPS instead of 5 or 6 people that can have a 2nd healer or 2nd tank, or both, or a dedicated CC, or someone who can tank or heal effectively as needed means you're heavily limited to the kinds of content you can use.

Rathalos worked (sort of) but you cant really get away with "heres something you cant tank and can only heal for half the fight" more than once.

The more you cut down player spots in a group, the less you can do mechanically.

We already see this in raids. Let me know when we get to a raid tier where multiple bosses arent fought on a platform in space who have at least one ability that can knock you off the platform, cause thats been a thing for the last couple expansions.


Harder 4 man content in 14, with the way current skill lineups work, would end up being more outgoing damage and bigger HP pools, which is exactly how NOT to handle that kind of content, because its a boring band-aid based around players not having the ability to use class mechanics to deal with challenges.

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Maybe, but i dont' see why they cant balance the 4 man content around the 4 players. The game really needs more broader difficulty, its either easy 4 man content, easy 8 man content, harder 8 man content, easy 24 man content. A harder 4 man content would be a nice addition.

I'd be down for this. Kind of like more stuff similar to Rathalos Ex? Sign me up cap'n.

Correct me if im wrong because I cant remember a source on this, but I believe yoshi was against hard 4 man content because he said it was too hard to balance around the fact if the healer died then it was basically run dead

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Correct me if im wrong because I cant remember a source on this, but I believe yoshi was against hard 4 man content because he said it was too hard to balance around the fact if the healer died then it was basically run dead

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He did, it was in one of the live letters. He said it put a lot more pressure on the healer, which would lead to RDM/smn comps for survivability, so wasn't something they were actively looking into implementing.

I would like there to be more difficult dungeons. Maybe not savage difficulty as it would force people to take certain "overpowered" jobs as I have zero trust in the developer to balance the classes. But something around extreme trials (maybe a bit easier) would be a nice addition to the game.

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Maybe, but i dont' see why they cant balance the 4 man content around the 4 players. The game really needs more broader difficulty, its either easy 4 man content, easy 8 man content, harder 8 man content, easy 24 man content. A harder 4 man content would be a nice addition.

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You can, but balance around 4 and balance around 5/6 is different, the same way balance around 8 and 10 and 12 is wildly different.

4 man balance cant have multiple miniboss mechanics that have to be tanked by a different person, or require significant burst healing checks that one healer alone couldnt handle, or a good number of things you can easily do with 5, because the lack of the 5th party slot is huge (similar to how WoW's 5 man hard modes in the first few expansions came nowhere near what EQ's single group trials could throw at you with 6 people, because it could assume things about your group that 5mans couldnt).

1 healer and 1 tank significantly limit the types of mechanics that can be thrown at you.

You're left with either the method of everything having more hp and more damage output, or you get into mechanics where the party gets split a lot. Or you'll end up with mechanics that try and push people off a stage in space.

One of my favotire things in raid design was figuring exactly what you could throw at a group of people and expect them to, by default, handle. 10 mans in WoW was one of the absolute best sweet spots, because you could count on 2.5 tanks, 2.5 healers and 6 dps at different stages of the fight.

14's 8 mans feel a lot worse in that regard.

Similarly, cutting down to 4 feels AWFUL for meaningful design.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

You can, but balance around 4 and balance around 5/6 is different, the same way balance around 8 and 10 and 12 is wildly different.

4 man balance cant have multiple miniboss mechanics that have to be tanked by a different person, or require significant burst healing checks that one healer alone couldnt handle, or a good number of things you can easily do with 5, because the lack of the 5th party slot is huge (similar to how WoW's 5 man hard modes in the first few expansions came nowhere near what EQ's single group trials could throw at you with 6 people, because it could assume things about your group that 5mans couldnt).

1 healer and 1 tank significantly limit the types of mechanics that can be thrown at you.

You're left with either the method of everything having more hp and more damage output, or you get into mechanics where the party gets split a lot. Or you'll end up with mechanics that try and push people off a stage in space.

One of my favotire things in raid design was figuring exactly what you could throw at a group of people and expect them to, by default, handle. 10 mans in WoW was one of the absolute best sweet spots, because you could count on 2.5 tanks, 2.5 healers and 6 dps at different stages of the fight.

14's 8 mans feel a lot worse in that regard.

Similarly, cutting down to 4 feels AWFUL for meaningful design.

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While a lot of this is correct, I feel you're being a bit unfair as to available unused design space.

You can't have multiple bosses being tanked at once, but you can have nasty adds that need to be CC'd and/or kited. FF14 currently doesn't do this except in a handful of old fights.

There are exceedingly few instances in the game which currently cannot be solo healed, so FF14 hasn't been keen on healing checks one healer cannot handle.

Design complexity can increase at a higher party size, but this doesn't mean interesting fights cannot be created for smaller parties. Game masters for tabletop games do it all the time.

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Originally Posted by IBLazORI

What are your thoughts on a 4 player content similar to savage/extreme?

I think it would be nice to have other difficult content that isn't just 8 man.

Things i would like to see
Savage Dungeon
Extreme Trial
Savage Raid

[...]

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I don't think it'd really work as it'd need to be balanced for any composition of 4 in a normal party to do this. Just from a healer stance, you'll never be hard pressed to heal nearly as hard as 8-man savage because of the various tools, resources and limitations shared by that role alone. Otherwise, SE would be forcing people to play specific roles, something that is not even required for the 8 man content.

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Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

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You can't have multiple bosses being tanked at once, but you can have nasty adds that need to be CC'd and/or kited. FF14 currently doesn't do this except in a handful of old fights.

There are exceedingly few instances in the game which currently cannot be solo healed, so FF14 hasn't been keen on healing checks one healer cannot handle.

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That requires certain jobs to be there as there's no guarantee you'll have those specific jobs. Anything that needs kiting immediately means you need a ranged or a healer to do it. If a healer is expected to kite (like Cutter's Cry), then the fight needs to be tuned so all the healers will be able to do the necessary healing while still kiting (meaning, in the end, it'd be very little threat). At least all of the tanks have an interrupt now.

There's few instances that can't be solo healed, true, but many of those instances cannot be solo healed by all of the healers. White mage has lacked any of the necessary tools to ultimately solo heal most things outside of extreme primals. The XIV team has gone on record to say they won't design an encounter where you have to take a specific job to complete it. As much as T7 was fun, requiring a BRD or SMN for easy Renauld kiting was a pain.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Kind of like more stuff similar to Rathalos Ex?

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Rathalos Extreme was designed in the spirit of Monster Hunter, not FFXIV. Any composition can beat the fight. I'd think 4 man savages would have to follow similar suit and provide duty actions for things that parties would lack; or provide something similar to logos that you'd pick before entering [a fight] to compensate for what you'd lack.

Everyone is talking about class balance, but what about resource balance? What current content are we going to lose in exchange? Didn't we already lose a dungeon every patch or something when they brought out Ultimate?

Where's the incentive for players to stay who won't use this content when their content keeps getting stripped away for it?