Just unlock the Raid Tier already!

I know that this has been a long-standing practice, but that doesn't mean it is a good one.

The (savage) raid tiers last about 8 months, starting in an even patch, with the half-way point being an odd patch. Why are we still waiting till the 6th or 7th month to unlock a tier?!

Especially, now we have Ultimates it seems to make less and less sense. Do they not consider that we may want to gear alt jobs? Or maybe we want to engage with the most current raid content (new Ultimate)? Or maybe we want to change jobs/roles for said Ultimate? Or, for those of us with tight schedules, maybe want to engage/invest in other content?

Just doing the math it takes 8 weeks (2 months) to fully gear a static once you clear the tier (possibly a little less so for individuals in PF). That means, if you are in a static, you have to clear the tier in 2 months to participate in the next Ultimate on release (X.1 & X.3 patches). Which seems to be pretty unrealistic for most statics. The more likely scenario is you're clearing the tier in 4-6 months and being time-gated from finishing the tier until the literal last month or so (counting re-clears).

Just unlock the tier on the next major patch drop (X.1, X.3, X.5)

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Originally Posted by maric193

I know that this has been a long-standing practice, but that doesn't mean it is a good one.

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Sums up most of the normalized bad practices this game has going for it. A lot of things people would've wanted to just see now, so they could have things to do between now and summer, are simply "not in the schedule" until 2~4 months from now. Maybe more. And people ask "well why don't they change it?" and they get hit with "well that's just how it's always been."
It would be amazing if they unlocked all this weekly stuff, doubled the tome weekly cap, gave us a new unreal (or just unlocked all the old ones), added a moogle tomestone event, etc. but tHaTs nOt iN tHe sChEdULe so people can just do 6.55 and then log off until Dawntrail comes I guess. I wonder who is forcing the lead developer to stick to a schedule that everyone despises? Is someone threatening Yoshi P? Is he okay?

Likely saving it for some random patch they can do next month to try and make it looks like we're not in a content drought.

I shan't hand the keys and you shall wait until it's not relevant enough to farm it:mad:

Im guessing they are saving it for the same time that they double the weekly limit from 450 tomes to 900.

Has savage ever been unlocked on the X.X5 patch before? I thought it was always the X.X7 or X.X8 patch, when they unlock. Usually the same time they make the tome weapon upgrade available via 24-man raid coins.

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Originally Posted by DrForester

Has savage ever been unlocked on the X.X5 patch before? I thought it was always the X.X7 or X.X8 patch, when they unlock. Usually the same time they make the tome weapon upgrade available via 24-man raid coins.

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In Heavensward and Stormblood, Savage unlocked when the 2nd installment of the final patch MSQ released, in 3.56 and 4.56 respectively.

When you look at the raw number of extra weeks this tier has had without unlocking, it's even worse. By this time in every previous expansion, Savage would have already unlocked.

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Originally Posted by DrForester

Has savage ever been unlocked on the X.X5 patch before? I thought it was always the X.X7 or X.X8 patch, when they unlock. Usually the same time they make the tome weapon upgrade available via 24-man raid coins.

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The main issue is that the patches being longer they didn’t make any adjustments when to when they should be unlocked. It’s kind of even more egregious now with the final step of the relic being out now too and they still haven’t given the token for the tome weapon so that you can unlock the new skin from aloalo savage.

I really hope this is something they look at more fully in Dawntrail alongside changes to Variant dungeon loot. Something along the lines of this would be my ideal, I think:

Savage content release patch - situation remains as-is, with one quality of life change: once you've cleared a fight they don't relock the following week. So if your group wants to skip to floor 3 (still abandoning loot for that week from floors 1 and 2) you can do so without someone having to sort a taxi in advance.

.x5 patch - roughly 12 weeks / 3 months post tier launch. Hardcore statics have already cleared and farmed the tier on their mains, so I think you could open up a bit at this point. Loot remains locked (i.e. one drop per floor per week), but you can now do the floors in any order. A more casual static like mine often skips floors when done with loot for mains. This change would mean I could do those skipped floors in PF towards the end of the week and help other groups on earlier fights, without interfering with their loot drops or having to work around my raid group's schedule. At the same time a new Variant dungeon should be dropping here, with additional gearing options. Maybe once per week loot equivalent to the first three floors, or something. So boss 1 drops a floor 1 chest, boss 2 drops a floor 2 chest, and boss 3 drops a floor 3 chest. Savage Variant could drop floor 4 loot as well, or something, plus the glowy tome weapon.

Next main patch - The tier has been out for 6 months at this point, so remove weekly loot restriction and unlock the tier. It's been long enough.

Next .x5 patch - This is 9 months or so post-launch of the tier - add echo.

I found this amusing when I read the patch notes and noticed it wasn't unlocked. Since the relic is out and having a 665 item level there's no reason to complete P12 for the weapon if you haven't already. Seems like doing the alliance raids/ grinding tomes will be a thing until they decide to unlock it..maybe 3 months later.

They will unlock it when Dawntrail launches...making most of the gear obsolete anyway. It's what they do.

Shadowbringers: Savage weekly restrictions removed in patch 5.57, 4 weeks after patch 5.55 was released.
Stormblood: Savage weekly restrictions removed in patch 4.56, 6 weeks after patch 4.55 was released.
Heavensward: Savage weekly restrictions removed in patch 3.56 (there was no 3.55, 3.55a and 3.55b were system adjustments to other content)

Doesn't seem like there's really a clear pattern here. My guess is the restrictions will lift with whatever patch starts the Xbox beta in February.

Considering gear stops being relevant as soon as you clear the raid tier that drops it (unless an Ultimate is scheduled to be released shortly after), I don't get the urgency. There should be at least 5 months to farm between the restrictions lifting and Dawntrail being released. I get it's something to do to fill time on your hands but do it now and you'll be complaining you need more things to do that much sooner. You can still get alt gear even with the weekly lockout in place, you just can't get it as fast.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Shadowbringers: Savage weekly restrictions removed in patch 5.57, 4 weeks after patch 5.55 was released.
Stormblood: Savage weekly restrictions removed in patch 4.56, 6 weeks after patch 4.55 was released.
Heavensward: Savage weekly restrictions removed in patch 3.56 (there was no 3.55, 3.55a and 3.55b were system adjustments to other content)

Doesn't seem like there's really a clear pattern here. My guess is the restrictions will lift with whatever patch starts the Xbox beta in February.

Considering gear stops being relevant as soon as you clear the raid tier that drops it (unless an Ultimate is scheduled to be released shortly after), I don't get the urgency. There should be at least 5 months to farm between the restrictions lifting and Dawntrail being released. I get it's something to do to fill time on your hands but do it now and you'll be complaining you need more things to do that much sooner. You can still get alt gear even with the weekly lockout in place, you just can't get it as fast.

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If you look at the actual time between Savage release and unlock, you'll see that there's definitely a pattern. Stormblood and Shadowbringers both show that each first tier unlocked after 4,5-5 months, while each second & third tier unlocked after 6-6,5 months. The third tier of Heavensward also shows a similar timeframe.
Endwalker's increased time between major patches is also reflected in the unlock times, as both Asphodelos, and Abyssos unlocked roughly 1-1,5 months later than the previously mentioned pattern.

• Asphodelos unlocked after 6 months, Abyssos after 7 months/11 days.
• Eden's Gate unlocked after 4 months/24 days, Eden's Verse after 6 months/21 days, and Eden's Promise after 6 months/15 days.
• Deltascape unlocked after 4 months/24 days, Sigmascape after 6 months/9 days, and Alphascape after 6 months/8 days.
• Alexander - The Creator unlocked after 6 months/2 days (no clear info on Gordias or Midas).

You're correct in that there's no urgency in gearing up alts, but that doesn't mean people should be forced to still be gearing at a snail's pace. Especially considering that Anabaseios has been the current tier for 7 months and 20 days. By HW/SB/ShB standards, it's already 1 month past its unlock date. By EW standards, the unlock coming with patch 6.55 would fall in line with the Abyssos unlock time. So really, there's absolutely no reason for Anabaseios to still have its weekly lockout.

They need to unlock savage when ultimate gets released.

The problem isn't the unlock, the problem is the design of savage is archaic. 1v1 savage trials are needed to help prep people for the group savage trials so people are not getting trapped on the 8 man due to someone not understanding how a mechanic works. That and 4 man savage is perfectly fine, just the way they implemented 4 man savage with savage criterion was just... why? Why make the 4 man require gear from the 8 man savage?

The other reason I'm saying savage is archaic is that it is a bit too tied to the pillars of group jump rope and damage checks in an MMO where random people who we've barely met are stacking together in PF to beat the trial. It's really a miracle anyone clears it and usually at the end everyone admits the reward isn't worth the effort. That's a metric that they can't get from just measuring clear rates.

This game is in desperate need of rewards that aren't just thrown away in the next patch. Make items that scale up with level increases, similarly to how FF11 Rajas ring or other rewards worked. I want algear that gives ability augments, goddammit. Not just ilvl increases.

This game is in desperate need of rewards that aren't just thrown away in the next patch. Make items that scale up with level increases, similarly to how FF11 Rajas ring or other rewards worked. I want gear that gives ability augments, goddammit. Not just ilvl increases.

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Originally Posted by Sensui

This game is in desperate need of rewards that aren't just thrown away in the next patch. Make items that scale up with level increases, similarly to how FF11 Rajas ring or other rewards worked. I want gear that gives ability augments, goddammit. Not just ilvl increases.

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Well, it's more than just that. Savage has some problems that are hard to ignore and this is coming from doing this now since edens second tier.

Player disengagement happens quite frequently due to boredom. Savage is fun when someone is learning something new so it always starts out with everyone being super happy and diving in. However, later steps of the fight have an increasing weight to reach and even one or two people failing earlier mechanics can cost others their chance to continue the learning process. This causes the following issues...

1) People begin to dislike one another, especially those who are holding them back, so statics will usually discard the person and people in PF break groups, costing everyone more time.
2) It makes savage incredibly unpredictable as to how long it will take to get the rewards from it. If someone rides the early wave of people and dances between the flames of purgatory they can come out unscathed, or if they just book a huge amount of time off and smash it down. But even so much as just having ones static break up or having a schedule shift can render what should be a one to two month venture into a six month or more nightmare.
3) It diminishes the value of the rewards to the point that no one feels they are worth it. Even people who clear just don't care about the items anymore, they just care that it is over with since they endured the nightmare and want to salvage or find meaning in all of it.

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Originally Posted by DrForester

Has savage ever been unlocked on the X.X5 patch before? I thought it was always the X.X7 or X.X8 patch, when they unlock. Usually the same time they make the tome weapon upgrade available via 24-man raid coins.

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No but then again I don't think we've had this long of an expected content drought in a while.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Well, it's more than just that. Savage has some problems that are hard to ignore and this is coming from doing this now since edens second tier.

Player disengagement happens quite frequently due to boredom. Savage is fun when someone is learning something new so it always starts out with everyone being super happy and diving in. However, later steps of the fight have an increasing weight to reach and even one or two people failing earlier mechanics can cost others their chance to continue the learning process. This causes the following issues...

1) People begin to dislike one another, especially those who are holding them back, so statics will usually discard the person and people in PF break groups, costing everyone more time.
2) It makes savage incredibly unpredictable as to how long it will take to get the rewards from it. If someone rides the early wave of people and dances between the flames of purgatory they can come out unscathed, or if they just book a huge amount of time off and smash it down. But even so much as just having ones static break up or having a schedule shift can render what should be a one to two month venture into a six month or more nightmare.
3) It diminishes the value of the rewards to the point that no one feels they are worth it. Even people who clear just don't care about the items anymore, they just care that it is over with since they endured the nightmare and want to salvage or find meaning in all of it.

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Part of it is game design but part of it is also a player problem.

Game design - Instead of making the next set of crafted gear a higher item level than the previous Savage, it should be the same item level. That way the previous Savage gear remains relevant into the next tier instead of getting discarded for the new crafted. The new crafted will still be useful for those who don't do Savage and who missed out on a couple of upgrades from the last tier. This would have the added benefit of slowing down power creep, which is extremely noticeable when using latest gear to clear level cap content released at the start of an expansion.

Players - Raid with those you know and like. Having fun together tackling the challenge should outweigh how long it takes to clear and any rewards. The experience just isn't the same when you're raiding with mostly random players you don't know, likely won't see again and only care about getting what they want without concern for others in the party.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Players - Raid with those you know and like. Having fun together tackling the challenge should outweigh how long it takes to clear and any rewards. The experience just isn't the same when you're raiding with mostly random players you don't know, likely won't see again and only care about getting what they want without concern for others in the party.

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I've raided in statics and I've raided via PUGs. To be honest, I cleared fights in this last tier faster in PUGs because I could spend all day/week doing a fight until I clear vs the 6 hrs a week or so in a static. No schedule conflicts or people canceling last minute.. no growing animosity towards your raid team.. I actually enjoy it more, which surprised myself. The worst part is just fighting over your clock spot. :P

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Originally Posted by Sensui

I've raided in statics and I've raided via PUGs. To be honest, I cleared fights in this last tier faster in PUGs because I could spend all day/week doing a fight until I clear vs the 6 hrs a week or so in a static. No schedule conflicts or people canceling last minute.. no growing animosity towards your raid team.. I actually enjoy it more, which surprised myself. The worst part is just fighting over your clock spot. :P

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I've raided in both settings, and while what you say is true, this is also true about PF, you get hostile people, you get people dropping after two wipes, if there is one person not pulling their weight the whole group disbands normally instead of just kicking them, sometimes you have wait a long time for a PF to fill. Late in the tier the quality of players drops quite a bit and things take longer. You can't reliably BIS or count on gear because everyone is going to need everything every fight. You may genuinely be stuck waiting 8 weeks for your weapon to buy it with books and you may never get the mount. Once the fight is down by a static you can usually clear quickly every week whereas in PF you're going to have to grind it out and hope you get good people. By the time a static can do all 4 raids in under 2-3 hours every week you still might spend 5+ in PF.

So there's a lot of cons to PF raiding as well. I would say you may be able to clear the tier faster pugging hard core, but in the end you waste a lot more time gearing up and getting your reclears done.

Most definitely. PF is a hellscape.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Part of it is game design but part of it is also a player problem.

Game design - Instead of making the next set of crafted gear a higher item level than the previous Savage, it should be the same item level. That way the previous Savage gear remains relevant into the next tier instead of getting discarded for the new crafted. The new crafted will still be useful for those who don't do Savage and who missed out on a couple of upgrades from the last tier. This would have the added benefit of slowing down power creep, which is extremely noticeable when using latest gear to clear level cap content released at the start of an expansion.

Players - Raid with those you know and like. Having fun together tackling the challenge should outweigh how long it takes to clear and any rewards. The experience just isn't the same when you're raiding with mostly random players you don't know, likely won't see again and only care about getting what they want without concern for others in the party.

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Power creep isn't as much of the problem as is the way the fights are built. There is no way to manage a fight in PF or even in statics where a single person or two people can cause everyone else to zone out of the content because of being unable to reach the next point in the puzzle they are trying to solve, which means there is a hard cap on how difficult content can be made in this game due to the audience it is primarily targeting. Also it is pretty clear from this tier that they didn't have the capability to test and understand the issues with the current tier of savage. Just dropping the statistics down so the dev team can do the fight and say that these numbers look right, can't account for the much lower level of coordination there is among the community at large.

In essence, the mistake they made was thinking that by simplifying the jobs they could make the savage fights more strict, when in reality the only thing that simplifying the jobs can do is make the savage fights less difficult. And honestly, that is what most people wanted: Less difficult savage that is more predictable in clear rate. Not all the people want that, but the vast majority want it and simply aren't saying it or are oblivious to it, given they actively say they want a challenge yet regret ever spending the time to complete it. The praise and scorn completely fall on how fast people clear, not on the difficulty of the content.

Gearing in the short term matters. Gearing in the long term is pointless. In this game, at the current moment, the smartest thing to do is cap your poetics and wait for Dawntrail to launch. Then, you can buy a full set of 660 gear with the weapon fully upgraded for peanuts. It's a giant flaw in this game that gear only matters in the short term. If you restrict the player, it's more of a waiting game until the player either powers through it or gives up entirely. Either way this late in a tier timegating the gear serves SE in Time Played Metric. That's the amount of subscription they can milk out of you for a given activity. It benefits SE to keep moving your goal post because that milks the most amount of money out of you.

But instead of complaining about something you can not change, I would offer an alternative. Don't feed the monkey. Show them with your wallet. And get off the hamster wheel, so to speak.

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Originally Posted by Sensui

I've raided in statics and I've raided via PUGs. To be honest, I cleared fights in this last tier faster in PUGs because I could spend all day/week doing a fight until I clear vs the 6 hrs a week or so in a static. No schedule conflicts or people canceling last minute.. no growing animosity towards your raid team.. I actually enjoy it more, which surprised myself. The worst part is just fighting over your clock spot. :P

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It depends on what people want out of savage. There's basically the WoW mindset and the FFXIV mindset. The WoW mindset people want to grind this thing and clear it as fast as possible. The FFXIV mindset usually just wants to do this as a chill thing and clear it going at a steady pace. I can tell you that my experience with Aether was effectively discovering that the WoW mindset is quite alive in this game and just as damaging to ones psyche as it was back in WoW proper.

Big issue with the mercenary behavior that WoW encouraged is that FFXIV fights are not setup the same way. WoWs fights did have mechanics to learn, but put more emphasis on the gear people had equipped so a few deaths were never as big of a deal in that game in terms of learning progress. People would be wiping to a boss they already got all the mechanics down for sometimes as people were catching up. Savage in this game just walls people until they learn the step and the strategy to go along with it, so someone being behind just murders everyone in the PF group.

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Originally Posted by Sensui

This game is in desperate need of rewards that aren't just thrown away in the next patch. Make items that scale up with level increases, similarly to how FF11 Rajas ring or other rewards worked. I want algear that gives ability augments, goddammit. Not just ilvl increases.

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Not happening, the dev team is absolutely **terrified** of loot. Especially gear. Gear gives them night terrors. The idea of giving the player any meaningful form of progression to their character in an MMO, the genre of game known for the long-lasting character progression, is just abhorrent to this dev team. You get an orchestrion roll for the house you'll never get, or a minion for the game mode that hasn't had an update in 3,685 days. Now be a good FFXIV player and go play other games while you pay your sub.

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Originally Posted by Orinori

Not happening, the dev team is absolutely **terrified** of loot. Especially gear. Gear gives them night terrors. The idea of giving the player any meaningful form of progression to their character in an MMO, the genre of game known for the long-lasting character progression, is just abhorrent to this dev team. You get an orchestrion roll for the house you'll never get, or a minion for the game mode that hasn't had an update in 3,685 days. Now be a good FFXIV player and go play other games while you pay your sub.

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The story behind the disaster that was Endwalker savage is that in the devs minds, they intended the savage and ultimate to be more niche, but a huge amount of people got into savage in shadowbringers and then were encouraged to try out savage at the start of end walker, resulting in a huge influx of people that have less time than say, people who can clear savage in a month, do an EX blind, and then go do ultimate to wait for the next tier. So the difficulty of the content was ramped up too much for the actual people doing it. And on top of it all, people all gathered together in one place due to the DC travel so you had people saying "folks from Crystal are bad" or "People from Aether are toxic WoW refugees", with drama popping all over. The lucky people were those who had statics and got to ignore the garbage fire caused by this. What I personally found surprising is that SEs reaction to this was to make the final tier a literal body check hell while also reducing the tomes needed for loot. I guess they wanted to scare off the audience that ended up jumping into savage from Shadowbringers? I got no idea. If people like something, you don't normally decide to throw ghost pepper hot sauce on it and start going at them with pepper spray as a business strategy so I doubt they did any of this on purpose.