The disapointment that is Alexander

[RhazeCain]

Well, to put a different perspective in, I honestly care little to none about the aspects you listed: aesthetics, story. I skip almost every cut scene and quest dialogue and rarely more than glance at scenery.

For me it's about mechanics and challenge. Alex savage finally provided some challenge after a drought. Long time between Final Coil and Alex Savage with only things like Ravana EX and Alex Normal to hold the attention. Ravana EX was fun for a day or 2, farmed for another couple of days to get everyone in static a weapon, then mostly abandoned.

It could be improved though, without a doubt.
- A larger raid group would have been great, but pretty much given up on SE changing that (Alliances do NOT count and are crap so far).
- More variety in mechanics would be great. These are all small, locked arena fights. I can see why, but it could be better. Compare to coil t1 for example: all those hexagons at varying heights and position mattered. Or think of other games where bosses could be fought just about anywhere in open world. Picking your battlefield became a fun mechanic that way. Line of Sight, elevation, spacing, choke points, etc.
- Quantity. See above about the drought. Seems SE is in a pattern of 4-5 raid fights at a time with long periods with no challenging raid in between. That's really not enough to hold a raider's attention.
- Smoother progression of raid difficulty. My team has just beaten a2s and I was happy enough with a1s/a2s difficulty: it wasn't a pushover, nor impossible. Just starting on a3s, but considering that few have killed it, including none of the ~15 groups on our server who beat a2s before us, it's looking like a huge jump in difficulty. Smoothing out that curve would be good. Also no more stupidity like pre-nerf Twintania twisters please. (For those of you not around long enough to remember, in 2.0 the hardest raid boss had an essentially unbeatable mechanic. 1 group worldwide beat it after many weeks (months?) of trying and then SE nerfed it immediately after.) And a4s is beginning to sound like a repeat of that - not so much the 1 problem mechanic, but just sheer difficulty.


So a very different perspective. Interesting how SE tries to cater to both, and probably other, views as well.

[Almalexia]

Savage mode: (full disclosure: only have first hand experience in A1S and second hand knowledge of A2S & A3S) A1S is similar to A1 with very little difference in mechanics - the difficulty is artificial and made of only tight dps & healing checks.

What does this mean? Can you expand on "artificial difficulty?"

[AlphaSonic]

Why do people think that a work of creativity has to keep getting bigger and bigger in terms of scale? Did no one watch the Transformers movies? Quickly turned to pandering due to trying to be bigger than the previous one.

The only way Alexander would be bigger than coil is if the allagans built it. And to my knowledge, they didn't.

Well, Allagan might be the ones who designed the original Alexander. This alexander is just a primal summoned by goblins.

[HReincarnate]

^ VitalSuit: But it gave you a good indication of how big bahamut is. I remember being awed by the size of his hand and being excited as hell for the next installment in the raid. Can you honestly say that the arena of A4 is in anyway comparable?

What does this mean? Can you expand on "artificial difficulty?"

For A1S at least that the majority of the difficulty is the dps requirement - and while it is a legitimately difficult, the reason I call it artificial is because it doesn't have to do with the number of mechanics or their execution but just the raw numbers. You could nerf the mechanics to hell and back but most would struggle still to beat the fight because it's all about the dps. Meanwhile, for lack of a better word, more organic difficulty would be more akin to previous raids which had a nice mix of mechanics and dps checks to make them difficult.

[SDaemon]

Actually they did say seconds. Alex just moving enough to breach the water was enough to drain the hinterlands of nearly all it's aether in seconds and it stopped moving because it ran out of aether to use.

Where you find this at? I don't recall that in any of the dialogue while doing the quests and the journal just makes mention of Y'shtola's estimate of a few moons running the hinterlands dry.

Re-watching the cut-scenes in the inn didn't help as no mention of his draining are in those. Like-wise the youtube video I found of unlocking Alex just shows Y'shtola's comment on many moons. :/

[4gotmypassword]

I'll say that for me, having the miniboss of Faust is literally perfect. Having a miniboss- especially in savage- is the best warm up to a proper raid you can have, having a miniboss with trash is acceptable, having just trash is boring, and having nothing would be even worse if it didn't mean spawning inside the boss room. I have zero complaints about A1 in that sense, the short walk from Faust to boss and all that is just perfect for me.

I'll also say that, barring gear problems, A1S is almost the same as A1, and A2S is very similar to A2, but nothing like to the degree at which A1S mirrors A1. A3S, however, is very noticeably different and, for me, fully satisfying as a raid. It's as if A1S and A2S are akin to T4- whereby it was difficult, but not impossible, with lower gear, but mechanically it was simple enough (A2S a step above A1S for sure though), and A3S, alongside A4S of course, is more akin to T5, whereby it's actually a very difficult raid mechanically, PLUS the gear problems. It must royally suck for people unable to access A3S though, that's for sure. Extremely frustrating and not particularly interesting to be stuck on this, in particular because of their strong resemblance to story mode and somewhat lack of mechanical difficulty. Having said that, they DO require you to play your class absolutely optimally (or wait for gear), as the old Savages did, so it's not all bad. People who are raiding should be able to do this.

[FoxyAreku]

Binding Coil was the first raid of the game, we had lower expectations then. Alexander is following Second & Final Coil which set the bar very high. And moreso, T1 had a large environment and its well enough to say that the boss itself was underwhelming, but the mechanics were all brand new. Meanwhile the only think unique in A1 is the shrinking of the bombs - even the use of the 0.5 Oppressor is a variation of the split mechanic in T1. T4 may be a bunch of adds but isn't A2 just that also? Meanwhile T5 offered a challenge to the general player base for ages, had a large environment, used unique mechanics & so I'd hardly call it underwhelming.

It was underwhelming though. There was just so little to it.

I think we have different thought processes here. You're essentially comparing the climax of one story to the beginning of another. I expected from the start that the first turn of alexander would be slow with not much to it, it gets more intense later. Just like coil did.

Also on another point...I'm hard pressed to call the dps check in A1 difficult. It really isn't, most dps checks in this game aren't that hard. A1s is all about how good your healers are more than anything.

Healing double preys during a tank buster is insane.

[HReincarnate]

Where you find this at? I don't recall that in any of the dialogue while doing the quests and the journal just makes mention of Y'shtola's estimate of a few moons running the hinterlands dry.

Re-watching the cut-scenes in the inn didn't help as no mention of his draining are in those. Like-wise the youtube video I found of unlocking Alex just shows Y'shtola's comment on many moons. :/

I've done my own research too and it seems I may be mistaken. It would take a few moons to completely drain the area from what the journal says - but I do remember the use of the word 'seconds' so she must have just said the aether drain was massive considering he'd only been active for a few seconds. Regardless, my point is that despite the fact that this is the starting raid - there is little to seriously establish him as a threat.

[Destomius]

ITT people who aren't good enough to perform savage mechanics so they just play it off by calling it "artificial difficulty".

Dunning-Kreuger effect anyone?

[4gotmypassword]

What does this mean? Can you expand on "artificial difficulty?"

Time to spoonfeed:
From Pierce: the reason I call it artificial is because it doesn't have to do with the number of mechanics or their execution but just the raw numbers. You could nerf the mechanics to hell and back but most would struggle still to beat the fight because it's all about the dps.
From me: A1S's difficulty IS, actually artificial. It has next to no new mechanics- I can only think of one- and the difficulty comes pretty much 100% from the lack of gear people have from the fight.

ITT people who aren't good enough to perform savage mechanics so they just play it off by calling it "artificial difficulty".

Dunning-Kreuger effect anyone?

But I've done A1S and A2S on the first week of release and I would agree that A1S' difficulty is artificial.
Ad Hominem, anyone?