The disapointment that is Alexander

[Lone-wolfe-02]

I think the goblins need to be replaced entirely or have less attention focused on them, it ruins any hope that Alexander could be taken seriously and maybe show the impact of his presence on the enviroment.

[HReincarnate]

Honestly, and I don't mean this as offensively as it's going to sound, but I very highly doubt your group would be good enough to be competing for any firsts if they can't handle doing proper dps while also doing mechanics. A1 was doable without esoteric gear, and it's almost trivial with it.

Haha, no offense taken. I was making a point more than anything. My group has competent players that can put out above average dps and learn mechanics quickly - an ability that served us well - and if the real difficulty was doing the mechanics & not the dps check - we'd have been through with no problem. But fair enough, you do need to do proper dps while doing mechanics - but as I see it the balance has shifted far more to the "proper dps" side of the scale than in previous raids which we found more satisfying in difficulty.

[MisterLucie]

They should have released Alexander story and Savage at the same time, because a lot of the boredom is coming from the fact that most of the mechanics were figured out weeks before and the fights themselves have been farmed to death. Making story mode be a stepping stone in progression was a mistake.

I don't agree with this. WoW has used the normal before hard system for a very long time and their hard mode encounters never suffered from it. It's purely a flaw in A1's fight design.

[4gotmypassword]

I don't agree with this. WoW has used the normal before hard system for a very long time and their hard mode encounters never suffered from it. It's purely a flaw in A1's fight design.

You're right there. The prerelease of story isn't a problem (for me) for floors 3S and 4S, but is a humongous problem for A1S and to some degree A2S. Having said that, many people would find the aesthetics and such very boring because of the timing, so it's still a problem for some.

[FoxyAreku]

Haha, no offense taken. I was making a point more than anything. My group has competent players that can put out above average dps and learn mechanics quickly - an ability that served us well - and if the real difficulty was doing the mechanics & not the dps check - we'd have been through with no problem. But fair enough, you do need to do proper dps while doing mechanics - but as I see it the balance has shifted far more to the "proper dps" side of the scale than in previous raids which we found more satisfying in difficulty.

That's just part of raiding though. It's not just a game of simon says, you have to do the mechanics while playing your class in the most optimal way possible. If you can't do both, then you shouldn't clear. A1S just leans more on the side of knowing your class more than the fight, I think.

[HReincarnate]

That's just part of raiding though. It's not just a game of simon says, you have to do the mechanics while playing your class in the most optimal way possible. If you can't do both, then you shouldn't clear. A1S just leans more on the side of knowing your class more than the fight, I think.

You're very much right - I just think that they've taken that to the extreme. You could get by before by getting 80% or 90% of your max dps - but now you have to reach that max to progress. I guess they wanted groups like mine to wait for gear - but wtf are we supposed to do in the meantime?

I think they got the balance wrong, and while a high dps check isn't a mistake in and of itself - it can make fights more interesting - I think the extent of the checks is a mistake. Imo they had a good balance between execution of mechanics & your expected dps while doing so in Coil. I make no excuses, we aren't good enough dps wise to get past savage with our current gear, but we were good enough to get past T6 and T10 a few weeks after they came out and we were happy with the balance of those fights. Some people may be happy with savage's difficulty as it is, and I accept that, but people like me aren't and we want to express that.

[Arkune]

I am not going to talk about the difficult, because Alexander Savage doesnt interest me at all. If seen alexander normal, while the atmosphere is great couze of the steams and stuff, all the mechanic items, it still doesnt fit the role of a "Raid" not even Close to a "Dungeon".

Every floor is his own instance, and every floor feels just like a Primal Battle, but the Encounters not even feel that scary like Ravana or Bismark, atleast for me.

Raids doesnt automatical mean "lots of Players" for me, they just could have splittet alexander more like the first part of the Crystal Tower. Where i may also just go 1 way like in the dungeons, but atleast i feel like i would "exploring" a new whole zones.

i probably enjoy the medicore Content even more, if they going to release another "Crystal Tower" like Raid, which acutally feels like a raid.

[FoxyAreku]

You're very much right - I just think that they've taken that to the extreme. You could get by before by getting 80% or 90% of your max dps - but now you have to reach that max to progress. I guess they wanted groups like mine to wait for gear - but wtf are we supposed to do in the meantime?

I think they got the balance wrong, and while a high dps check isn't a mistake in and of itself - it can make fights more interesting - I think the extent of the checks is a mistake. Imo they had a good balance between execution of mechanics & your expected dps while doing so in Coil. I make no excuses, we aren't good enough dps wise to get past savage with our current gear, but we were good enough to get past T6 and T10 a few weeks after they came out and we were happy with the balance of those fights. Some people may be happy with savage's difficulty as it is, and I accept that, but people like me aren't and we want to express that.

Just gotta keep trying and give it time. I think it's kinda interesting how they released it before it was possible to be at the 'intended' item level, but still at a doable stage.

I know your frustration though, I would have cleared it myself by now if my static didn't keep falling apart and people having life issues...my MT even quit the game randomly. Just gotta keep at it and not get discouraged.

[Almalexia]

Ah I was waiting for this response. Trust me, if mechanics were the real difficulty of savage I'd be on A3S competing for server first by now. Instead it's the tight dps checks that lock groups out & leave them either beating their heads at a boss with no result, or waiting for gear, despite their ability to execute mechanics and the fact that they cleared Coil without too much trouble.

Even if you can do every mechanic blindfolded, it doesn't excuse you from doing your job's duties. All gear does is offer relief, whether room for mechanical error or accounting for a less effective rotation.

FFXIV endgame has always been about maintaining job expectations in spite of a barrage of battle mechanics hell-bent on tripping you up. If it were just mechanics, it would be Simon Says. If it were just rotations, it would be a training dummy. Battle content is a synthesis of both. It's like spinning plates while someone throws knives at you--which I guess is also artificially difficult, because there's no emergent or naturally-occurring system of knife-throwing-while-spinning-plates that I'm aware of.

[Kazama]

Dead on in nearly every aspect. Compared to Coils, Alexander's Aesthetics are terrible. But, good graphics and pretty art an MMO does not make. I think the OP nailed a lot of the issues, especially the fact that adding some difficulty mechanics to make it raid progression content and changing nothing else was very poorly planned. If you're going to create duplicate content for the casual and hardcore crowd, you need to do it simultaneously and find another method besides gear/dps checks to do it. Otherwise it's just a blatant repetition of content not dissimilar to what already happens with dungeon recycling. It's really the only way they can sustain it in the current model however. Creating truly new content and assets in a vertical MMO is self defeating effort when nobody will touch it 3 months later.

That's not even including the fact that Alex is nearly identical to Coils. Generally speaking, when an expansion adds new endgame content it adds something different to the pool along with more dungeons and raids similar to the previous. At least that's how it has gone in my experience. When XI added expansions it vastly changed the mechanics of it's "Raid" as well. Dynamis, Limbus and Salvage were 10x the size and scope of XIVs raids and they made up only about 10% of the endgame content for their respective expansions as opposed to XIV where the raid is nearly 100% of it.

End of the day, FFXIV is not designed for endgame players nor do I think it ever will be. They have taken vertical progression and made it as linear as can possibly be done and taken content recycling to the extreme. It's one of those MMOs you will play for maybe a year or two at most and then realize you're doing the same thing over and over to no end. I know this is standard for vertical progression MMOs but even in that there can easily be more unique and original content than we have seen.