Can't make a full premade for Crystal Tower...

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

snip

1.
2. I see it from a new player perspective, I really do. Which is related to 4, more on that below.
3. Usually, again considering good MMO's (not utter failures) I'd say 6 months (best case scenario) to 12 (really really at most) for about 10 new bosses. We'll see how ARR fares, I guess we should wait until 2.3 (about a year) to draw conclusions.
(Again, see below on how to make all of it relevant to pretty much any player.)

4. My take on "hardcore" versus "casual" in terms of raiding is that these shouldn't be different instances but rather the same content tuned differently. I really like the WoW model for that because it works brilliantly (liking the game or not is another debate). You just don't have to mix players with difficulty levels, and that's smarter than trying to idealistically hope that everyone gets along. Raid Finder is a proof that it just doesn't happen, because people have different 'goals', some like to focus on 'skill' whereas others see that as a chore; some like it to be fun and cool while others see that as a useless and untimely distraction, borderline trolling. This thread is just a perfect exemplification of these different mindsets, and the fact that they're just not compatible on a regular basis. Which prompts my saying that you can't force the challenge of dealing with different gamers psychology on players, it's a recipe for ugly stories. Those that like it, may PUG on their server, and/or choose the adequate difficulty level, the others just wish to do their 'thing'—whatever that is.

So with difficulty levels, hardcores get their "hard mode" bosses, usually take about 3 months to clear the last boss; casuals clear the "normal mode" in about the same time (obviously hardcores do normal in a few weeks at most, before moving to hard mode; obviously you can't do both during a week). And very recently Blizzard implemented flexible raiding which is a scalable mode from 10 to 25 players without any gear requirement (thus allowing groups of friends to play together without any restriction whatsoever so long as they're more than 10 and less than 25), with a difficulty level a bit under normal mode. I think it's brilliant in theory, and since ARR was built with scalability from scratch, I'm pretty sure it would do wonders here.

For instance, I'd love to have Coil "normal" accessible for casuals thus a bit easier than it is currently to allow AK-geared people to have a shot at it without full DL (no DF, we agree), Coil "hard mode" for hardcores (a bit more difficult than it is currently); same for CT, including a hard more that would make it quite relevant for hardcore raiders. You'd get something like:
• CT normal at iLv80,
• CT hard at iLv90,
• Coil normal at iLv85
• Coil hard at iLv95.
I would LOVE to see that. Twice the content for everyone, no one left behind. CT on DF (eventually allowing pre-mades of up to 24 of course), Coil out of DF. And if there were a flexible Coil (say, scaled for all groups from 6 to 12 people) at iLv80 and flexible CT (scaled for all groups from 8 to 24 people) at iLv75, that would just be icing on the cake.

With such an endgame content, both extensive and catering to all crowds, I'm pretty sure ARR would soon become a reference. And I like the idea of 5 bosses every 3 months rather than 10 every 6, it makes for a more stable retention, it's better for the community I think.

So, in the case of ARR, we'd have about 5 new bosses every patch (which make a best case scenario of ~10 per 6months), as planned currently (Coil then CT then Coil etc; numbers counting Primal fights). But you'd have to get the 2 difficulty levels (normal/hard or hard/extreme) on day 1 of these bosses release.

Sorry that was long. I just wanted to expose my full opinion, since I think we actually agreed on the basics.

[Yshnal]

(Snip)

But that would require a lot of balancing to keep up each difficulty, and that would draw resources from other things being updated in patches (unrelated to raiding). As I said, they don't have infinite time or an unlimited budget, and they're switching between CT and BC in each big patch for a reason, instead of updating both at once. WoW, and others, can do it because they focus just on that, but I don't think that that's viable here.

In a perfect world we agree that that would be the best way to do it, and I'm sure that SE would like to do it too. But they simply can't without having some trade-offs. That's what I was trying to explain. Maybe they'll do it over time (see primals and hard dungeons as an example), though, but not now.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

But that would require a lot of balancing to keep up each difficulty, and that would draw resources from other things being updated in patches (unrelated to raiding). As I said, they don't have infinite time or an unlimited budget, and they're switching between CT and BC in each big patch for a reason, instead of updating both at once. WoW, and others, can do it because they focus just on that, but I don't think that that's viable here.

In a perfect world we agree that that would be the best way to do it, and I'm sure that SE would like to do it too. But they simply can't without having some trade-offs. That's what I was trying to explain.

You're probably right, this design is a bit idealistic. But even if it's just 4 bosses ever 3 months, even 3, to make it possible, that would still be really interesting because overall everybody gets content (not just 4 for the hardcore forever, or 4 for the casuals forever, making many encounters quite irrelevant for too many players—that costs way too much in the long run, it's just not sustainable, or the amount of content will suffer, as it's easier/cheaper to make the same boss at two difficulty levels than 2 different bosses…). Also WoW doesn't focus just on raiding, far from it. There's PvP, many daily quests, class balancing, pets, scenarios+dungeons (would be 2-4 player content in ARR), etc etc (for every patch, and they make raids only every other patch). I will also say that, if they wish to have the best tuning at the lowest cost possible, they really really need to implement a test server. Otherwise we'll keep seeing adjustments way too long after bosses are released, and errors in loot tables etc. Crowdsourcing your game is the smart way to go, in my humble opinion.

So a multi-difficulty content is really doable I think, if you have the subs obviously but before that the right development model (seems to me they do, just need a test server now). And right now, ARR benefits from a bit too many devs for its real revenue, given the reboot, massive effort etc. (I've never seen a MMO developed by so many people as far as 2.0 is concerned, it's just insane, and it's great), and granted that might change in time to a more reasonable team size (should the wish to actually profit at some point when boxes sales will go down, until the first expansion). But for now, during their first year, I'm pretty sure they can pull it off—much, much content.

And they don't need to do everything at once, as long as they keep the endgame crowd (hardcores but above all casuals) interested and not too grindy, I trust them to have a very decent amount of content a year from now.

Just one thing though, I got a bit confused. Normal modes should be in DF, and hard modes (for CT/Coil) shouldn't. That would be more logical.