Normal/Savage Alexander complaint

[Miscreant]

That sounds good until we consider that all the bosses are spoiled by the online guides used by everyone prior to jumping into the instance. People are just doing too much of the same boss fights in a given week for the purpose of getting loot at an optimal pace. People don't consider it a legit run unless you run it four times in a row. That's four times the number of boss encounters required by raid groups for any previous raid content. Without any variance on the bosses or some way to keep people from running it so much, people burn themselves out on it.

Speak for your self, there are no guides in the first couple of weeks, even then I haven't used a single guide in Alexander Savage, maybe adopted a couple of individual tricks that were posted on reddit, like going back and changing the way we handled the jumps in A1S, but that was already after I was a good portion into the fight or had my clear. In Coil I purposely ignored all videos, guides and information about the Turns ahead, and we did a good period of time in the fights blind before watching a guide. I love the hard fights, I like figuring them out for my self with my team and I like the wow factor of seeing a boss and room for a first time.

Well, the problem for Savage Alexander isn't the existence of normal Alexander. It's that all they did was create something with boosted stat requirements.

What is it with players who haven't been into Savage saying this? The fights are different, the first floors is meant to be a push over, the last two are far more complex, no ones complaining about the fight mechanics.

[Fricca]

It's somehow disgusting to be required to farm gear on *technically* the same instance, the difference being savage mode having more mechanics and tighter dps checks... Now before you guys say its not really required to farm normal alex, it was-- because esoterics was released along with savage content. A lot of people were looking forward to savage, but soon got really bummed out. It felt like they recycled the old content and called it an 'update', even though i know thats not the case cos they did things as they intended them to be (having normal, then savage mode later on) but I feel like they could've done things better.

The hard mode versions of dungeons like Halatali or Copperbell Mines somehow justifies the concept of having a harder version of an instance. These dungeons are only slightly identical and have different boss fights and such. With that being said, I think the main thing I enjoyed about coil aside from it being completely fresh content when it came out is the thrill of reaching a new, unseen phase. Like how you first see past Megaflare, Terraflare, etc. The excitement is there after all the hard work put into learning the mechanics, and seeing a whole new different stage, different ambiance, new mechanics and such.

While Alex Savage offered new mechanics and tighter dps checks, it didn't really bring anything new to the table. There was no new phase, no real ambiance change, only more of the same thing like more tornadoes, more lasers, more tethers, more legs, etc.

[Dererk]

They could change the layout and bosses Fricca but then the people who don't want to do savage would complain because they want to see the changes.

There was already a post day one of savage relies person complained that they wanted to be able to dye the eso gear without having to get the drops in savage.

What's worse is we have no real raids just short dungeons with 1 boss in 4 different instances if they made more than one and had gear drops on all bosses I wonder would people run these hard content. Also we need at lest 2 full party hard raids.

So long as SE intends to keep putting raids in duty finder we won't have good and fun hard content because duty finder has to be able to be cleared by any set up of 2 tanks 2 heals 4 dps.

[Ducky]

If you imagine the content as a pyramid with Alex Savage as the capstone at the top. Think about how little of the pyramid Alex Savage mode represents.

Even in WoW, which has progressively developed ever more of a "raid or die" mentality and now rather notoriously focuses on its raids to the detriment of almost everything else in the game (and recently lost almost half of its playerbase in the space of six months, with many citing this as the reason they left), approximately only 2% of the population is raiding at the highest difficulty level in the current expansion. The percentage of players doing the same in FFXIV — which doesn't focus solely on raids as "the" endgame — is likely closer to 1%, if that.

Choosing to cater to and design around an absolutely tiny minority demanding special treatment and exclusive content/story at the expense of the rest of the playerbase was an incredibly poor decision that came back to bite Blizzard squarely on the posterior the better part of a decade ago. Despite the developers subsequently acknowledging and addressing the folly of spending so many resources creating content the vast majority would never experience when relevant, it has slowly started to creep in again over there, and it isn't paying off. SE would be foolish to follow in those footsteps.

The ideas being floated by some here — e.g. that normal modes of raids in FFXIV should be delayed by months or drop no loot solely to make the minuscule handful of savage snowflakes feel better — are so mindbogglingly awful and poorly thought out that actually implementing such things would send the current incarnation of FFXIV racing straight back towards 1.0 territory, and the intense criticism that ensued would be rightly deserved.

This "excitement of unknown progression" a portion of this 1% is demanding takes a firm back seat to the enjoyment of the 99% of the rest of the playerbase, and that's exactly how it should be. FFXIV trumps WoW's current format specifically because it isn't designed around raiding as the be-all and end-all of content, and it would be a massive misstep on SE's part to abandon their current vision and start chasing that failed path now.

Bear in mind that the actual world-first mythic/savage raiders (who are frequently the same groups of players across many different games) actually do run these raids for their own challenge, and couldn't care less what other players are doing or getting. In fact, the world-first teams frequently put out videos and guides specifically intended to help other players do what they're doing or have done.

It's the B-through-Z-team hangers-on riding the coattails and standing on the shoulders of these world-first raiders who cause the problems, the ones who know they're not going to be recognised for being the first, so instead they memorise and parrot back strategies established by more skilled players, finally beat one boss on hard mode, and then turn around and start trying to stop other people having the things they just got. They're not much different to the people who demand ways to earn minions/mounts/outfits be removed from the game to make those items rarer and more exclusive, but who naturally only start making these demands once they've gotten their own paws on whatever it is they don't want other people to have.

Savage mode already provides a different, more challenging experience, higher level gear that can be dyed, and a new mount. That's more than enough of a concession.

If there's one thing that would not be in the best interests of FFXIV as a whole, it'd be SE allowing themselves to be held hostage by an insanely tiny and disproportionately vocal portion of the playerbase. Fortunately, they've shown no sign of being so inclined, and the 1% need to free themselves from this delusion of self-importance and understand that they're just not that critical to the success of the game in the grand scheme of things.

Every savage-focused raider could claim "burnout" and unsubscribe, and it'd barely make a dent in the population; all the mythic raiders in WoW combined didn't add value enough of their own to warrant that game being neutered or butchered for their benefit, and the notably fewer savage raiders in FFXIV most certainly don't add enough value to this game to warrant the same happening here.

Expect to see content for everyone continue to take precedence over content for a tiny minority, expect to see raiding continue to just be another thing for players to do at the level cap instead of the only thing to do, and expect to see this game continue to be all the better for it.

That's not to say that savage raiders shouldn't discuss things they'd like to see in the game, but it really is quite crucial that some of them gain the perspective they seem to be lacking, and understand that they're by far one of the smallest and least-important demographics as far as the long-term well-being of the game is concerned.

[Fricca]

They could change the layout and bosses Fricca but then the people who don't want to do savage would complain because they want to see the changes.

There was already a post day one of savage relies person complained that they wanted to be able to dye the eso gear without having to get the drops in savage.

Lets be honest... they are bound to do savage at some point. There's echo and nerfs on top of higher ilvl gear from 24-man raids for that. It doesn't justify such bland content. If SE will follow their usual trend, the 24-man raid should drop the upgrade items too, whenever that comes out.... >____>

[Itachi]

Imho, old Fcob difficulty was fine. Savage mode is basically pants in the head "how do thou kill which has no life"-mode, which is unnecessary and burns people out with its super tight tuning that is based around gear you dont have when you start raiding it.

[hagare]

Lets be honest... they are bound to do savage at some point. There's echo and nerfs on top of higher ilvl gear from 24-man raids for that. It doesn't justify such bland content. If SE will follow their usual trend, the 24-man raid should drop the upgrade items too, whenever that comes out.... >____>

They shouldn't even consider nerfing or adding echo to savage.
The reason they put it in was for the challenge after all.

I'll accept them letting us solo queue for it in DF though

[dejavutwo]

...

Asking for content that isn't bland isn't about being a "special snowflake." Raiders are a demographic SE tries to cater to as well as casuals. We get 4 fights every 6ish months, it is not too much to ask that these 4 fights be interesting. The whole point of my suggestion was to try to come up with a way where everybody still gets all the same content they would, but not force raiders to farm fights that have such a similar feel to ones they will be spending a lot of time on trying to clear.

If the new upcoming expert dungeon was Neverreap II where each boss only had 1 mechanic tweaked, would you be excited about it?

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

Choosing to cater to and design around an absolutely tiny minority demanding special treatment

They do this EVERYTIME they nerf something. Most people are capable of beating content on their own. The people that give up super easily are the minority and shouldn't be catered to. Also the number for savage that they released would indicate roughly 20% are attempting savage, it's not such a small number as you would think. The reason the number of people that haven't beaten it is higher, is it's actually content that isn't designed to be completed or finished in 5 hours. That's a good thing.

[Colorful]

They do this EVERYTIME they nerf something. Most people are capable of beating content on their own. Also the number for savage that they released would indicate roughly 20% are attempting savage, it's not such a small number as you would think. The reason the number of people that haven't beaten it is higher, is it's actually content that isn't designed to be completed or finished in 5 hours. That's a good thing.

20%? Weren't the numbers 30,000 for the first floor? Assuming FFXIV has around 600,000 subscribers, that's only 5%... and apparently that's a very low amount of subscribers every time I suggest the game may only have that amount.