24 man savage content

I don't know about you guys, but I would love to see savage versions of the future alliance raids or even new content similar to Delubrum Reginae (Savage) where you can face harder bosses and more difficult mechanics with an entire alliance of people. It doesn't need to be as hard as savage, but maybe a little bit more challenging than what we get with the alliance raids?

Just overlap the mechanics, add a few new ones, and make it punishing + enrage.

For example on Byregot, add side hammers that hit vertically on top of the current horizontal hammers. Add another floor hammer that puts a horizontal danger zone. On top of this put 3 stacks on the alliance so they can't all just follow one person to a safe spot and have to find multiple safe spots. Voila.

Another example: for Nald'thal, during the adds phase, make the adds draggable. Adds do the frontal cone AoEs periodically just like in normal. Nald'thal spawns with 4 Nald'thal clones on each cardinal with a limit cut number and start casting the scale balance mechanic. 3 meteor markers will appear on top of players that have to be dropped without overlapping. These meteors have the same weight as the adds. 5 seconds after they drop, the first Nald'thal clone casts the scale balance mechanic. The meteors then explode with proximity damage and you repeat this 3 more times.

Shouldn't take that much time to make minor additions like these because you don't need new assets. This is the kind of difficulty I think they should target for.

As for rewards I think they should give you Savage pages, flat out, weekly capped at 2 per week, of your choice. I don't think anyone should be pissed about this. This allows raiders to gear up more alts and allow people who don't classically raid Savage to get Savage gear in a catch-up patch. (Presumably you would be able to carry these alliance raids much like how you can carry a Baldesion). Because of this I think they should be 48-man and encourage Discord groups with a shotcaller, much like BA/Delubrum runs. Doing so allows people to get carried which I don't think is a big deal. It's a catch-up patch who cares if they get Savage gear.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

Just overlap the mechanics, add a few new ones, and make it punishing + enrage.

For example on Byregot, add side hammers that hit vertically on top of the current horizontal hammers. Add another floor hammer that puts a horizontal danger zone. On top of this put 3 stacks on the alliance so they can't all just follow one person to a safe spot and have to find multiple safe spots. Voila.

Another example: for Nald'thal, during the adds phase, make the adds draggable. Adds do the frontal cone AoEs periodically just like in normal. Nald'thal spawns with 4 Nald'thal clones on each cardinal with a limit cut number and start casting the scale balance mechanic. 3 meteor markers will appear on top of players that have to be dropped without overlapping. These meteors have the same weight as the adds. 5 seconds after they drop, the first Nald'thal clone casts the scale balance mechanic. The meteors then explode with proximity damage and you repeat this 3 more times.

Shouldn't take that much time to make minor additions like these because you don't need new assets. This is the kind of difficulty I think they should target for.

As for rewards I think they should give you Savage pages, flat out, weekly capped at 2 per week, of your choice. I don't think anyone should be pissed about this. This allows raiders to gear up more alts and allow people who don't classically raid Savage to get Savage gear in a catch-up patch. (Presumably you would be able to carry these alliance raids much like how you can carry a Baldesion). Because of this I think they should be 48-man and encourage Discord groups with a shotcaller, much like BA/Delubrum runs. Doing so allows people to get carried which I don't think is a big deal. It's a catch-up patch who cares if they get Savage gear.

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It's also a good bridge between Normal difficulty raids / alliance raids and Savage raids. You encounter Savage difficulty mechanics that aren't punishing enough so that when you fuck up people can cover for you. Having 48-man also means that your individual responsibility is far lower so you should be able to have less stress and focus on learning instead of worrying about disappointing others.

Alliance Raid (Hard Mode)

Dun Scaith Savage would be quite a sight to behold.

I'd like some version of a scaling Savage Flex raid. So for example Algaia Savage would still be 3 alliances, but each would be between 4-8 players, 1 tank, 1 heal, x dps (12-24 man total). Boss health would scale to the number of players in the raid.

This would finally give FC's a form of manageable raiding and also be comfy in statics, if you're missing a few one night it's all good and you don't need to fill with randoms or cancel. Maybe even give a small bonus for clearing it in a FC group. I do miss guild raid nights.

I ran the Crystal Tower minilvl and that could be a solution too. I can't remember how many wipes we had and saw the platform phase in the 2nd raid, which I'd never even seen before. I think it took us about 6 hours, but we cleared and ironically WoD was the easiest as we knew the mechanics already and didn't really see new ones.

No thanks. 8 man groups are perfect. I never understood the appeal of raids with 24-48 people as its just pure chaos and forget ever having a consistent static group.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

No thanks. 8 man groups are perfect. I never understood the appeal of raids with 24-48 people as its just pure chaos and forget ever having a consistent static group.

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I hope someone says "no thanks" to everything you enjoy in life.

If they ever invest ressources in this type of content, well, I'm happy for the minority who like and will partake in it. I personally would prefer the devs to make content suitable for the bulk of the playerbase. But well, I'm just a dumb casual bunbun, but it is my honest opinion on that.

I'd enjoy this.

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Originally Posted by Shriv

If they ever invest ressources in this type of content, well, I'm happy for the minority who like and will partake in it. I personally would prefer the devs to make content suitable for the bulk of the playerbase. But well, I'm just a dumb casual bunbun, but it is my honest opinion on that.

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I don't think they need much on that, they could do like unreal trials and scale old alliance to current level, would be fun.

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Originally Posted by Shriv

If they ever invest ressources in this type of content, well, I'm happy for the minority who like and will partake in it. I personally would prefer the devs to make content suitable for the bulk of the playerbase. But well, I'm just a dumb casual bunbun, but it is my honest opinion on that.

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That's a bulk of the content already. I think they need more content for different minority groups in the game. Also raid content is only largely a minority on NE/EU.

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Originally Posted by Skiros

As for rewards I think they should give you Savage pages, flat out, weekly capped at 2 per week, of your choice. I don't think anyone should be pissed about this. This allows raiders to gear up more alts and allow people who don't classically raid Savage to get Savage gear in a catch-up patch. (Presumably you would be able to carry these alliance raids much like how you can carry a Baldesion). Because of this I think they should be 48-man and encourage Discord groups with a shotcaller, much like BA/Delubrum runs. Doing so allows people to get carried which I don't think is a big deal. It's a catch-up patch who cares if they get Savage gear.

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I was going to ask about rewards but that sounds great. Something challenging that still gives a reason to do it.

Orbonne was nerfed. Twice iirc, and not even the raid. Just one boss. This team will never make alliance raids that punishing ever again.

Delibrum Reginae doesn't count in even the slightest. That instance allows for lost actions, and other bonuses that grant the players massive advantages

We're not getting alliance raids savage.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Orbonne was nerfed. Twice iirc, and not even the raid. Just one boss. This team will never make alliance raids that punishing ever again.

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*looks at nier* uhm yea sure.

Would be cool to see happen. My main problem with DRS is you need to farm essences to even attempt it, and BA had a similar problem. I would like to see a 24 man savage fight that doesn't require a lot of grinding outside to be able to go in and attempt. I'm not sure how successful it'd be as it might be difficult to get 24 people together. Such a small % of the player base even does savage so I'm not sure how it'd go over. But I loved BA so I wouldn't be against harder content for larger groups.

For a savage version, I would have a reverse echo. Boss hits harder, has more HP, your weaker, take more damage and have a hard enrage.

That’s all you really need for a savage version of a 24. You don’t really need new mechanics, 24 people on basic harder content will create all the new mechanics on their own.

Adding new mechanic on top of all of that with 24 people? Now your approaching Ultimate territory.

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Originally Posted by RemiRose

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This is an idea I can get behind. It adds some more variation to 24-man content.

It's already pretty hard to get players for DR, DRS, and BA as it is, most of those are incredibly dead content. It sounds great to have more variety but there hasn't been a good track record in the past of keeping this type of content alive and possible for people to do.
A static of 24 players needed to prog the content is going to be a real hassle to prog on, especially given how hard it is already to get 8 schedules synced up for raids times on Savages and Ultimates as it is.

It also seems like it would be pretty bad for new players or latecomers to the content, which most of the PvE content in this game is pretty good about futureproofing against.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

No thanks. 8 man groups are perfect. I never understood the appeal of raids with 24-48 people as its just pure chaos and forget ever having a consistent static group.

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At least for Delubrum savage, the appeal to me was that it was something different. And not just kind of different; with the Lost Actions and the harsh mechanical restrictions on rez it was very different. (Though there were definitely "optimal load-outs" of Lost Actions for specific roles, and I know I at least needed to swap my active Lost Actions twice during the run to handle the strategy my group was running with. Lost Perception + Lost Arise during the golems.)

Even the experience of having six light parties need to coordinate with each other was interesting, though I will concede that getting 48 people organized and consistently showing up on time was demonstrably something of a challenge for our raid leader.

I don't think that they need lots of content like that, but I do know I really enjoyed working through those fights with people and absolutely am glad I had the experience, especially before Zadnor landed and the Rays mechanic made it possible to skip mechanics in there. And if we get another Exploratory Zone and another big complicated instance like the Baldesion Arsenal or Delubrum Savage, you can 100% bet that I'm going to be there.

I wouldn't mind "Savage" versions of Alliance Raids, but I dunno if they would do it...

As for how hard, maybe more in-line with Extreme trials when it comes to difficulty would be more reasonable.
Boosting the bosses damage output, adding in enrage timers and hiding most AoE markers when you can see from the boss, or something else, what the attack it's going to be.

I don't know, I'm not interested in more DR savage at all. Give us 4 players savage content instead. Easier to pug, faster to prog. Savage alliance will be a real nightmare on PF. I'm not willing to waste hours waiting for a full party just to see it disband after 4 attempts.
Nope, nope, nope.

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Originally Posted by Novae

I don't know, I'm not interested in more DR savage at all. Give us 4 players savage content instead. Easier to pug, faster to prog. Savage alliance will be a real nightmare on PF. I'm not willing to waste hours waiting for a full party just to see it disband after 4 attempts.
Nope, nope, nope.

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There's a reason MMO's have moved away from larger group content. Games that tried to focus on it died pretty quickly despite being decent games (wildstar)

Good in principle, probably not going to work out too fantastic, it'll require far too many players to understand to exactly to do, at least unless your baseline is essentially a more accessible DRS.

I could get behind more difficult 4 man, or even 3x light party raids (12 players), that I think would be more interesting.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

There's a reason MMO's have moved away from larger group content. Games that tried to focus on it died pretty quickly despite being decent games (wildstar)

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I would argue that the issue was less that WildStar had large group content, and more that it focused on it.

I think there is a place for all sorts of content in games, as long as it remains an optional side thing. Many folks (me included) love deep dungeons in FFXIV, but it's hardly the game's focus.

WildStar's issue wasn't that it had large-scale raiding, but that originally the only thing really available to do at endgame was large-scale raiding; if you weren't doing that, you had nothing left to do. (Well, other than continue to fiddle with housing. Which, to be fair, was super-engaging.)

Which is not what I'd call an ideal formula for player retention.

I think there is a place for large-scale high-end content in FFXIV, a'la Delubrum Reginae's savage variant. I just think that place is as optional side content, not the endgame focus.