NO MORE ALEXANDER(NM)!

[Evtrai]

There are extreme people on both sides, and trying to argue reasonably is going to get you shouted at no matter what you say. Can't remember if it on Reddit or here, but I suggested a 3 tier difficulty raid: Normal, Extreme and Savage. Extreme would be the first to come out, after a month both Normal and Savage would be released so the casuals (including myself) have a place to go, and the best of the best have Savage. This would satisfy all groups at the cost of a little bit more development time. Want to know what I got in response? The same things you see in this thread, "normal was a mistake", "you should have to work for story", and "Alexander normal should have never happened" so I don't even bother anymore. I don't know why people feel so threatened about the majority seeing content they funded.

Yeah, they totally went wrong with this, I still think for once they should had released both savage and normal at the same time, but savage is extremely hard, the jump of difficulty from AS2 to AS3 is insane, the ammount of dedication you need to clear it is too much, it's not that it's not doable, but it's something that if you play 3 days at night on a static for 2 hours it's gonna take a while to acomplish fine tunning and literally making no mistakes, and to top it off, the tanks and healers have to do extra work and it's taxing on them because they have to also DPS besides doing their role, this is an horrible design choice. The perfect balance of dificulty was Second coil bahamut and his Savage dificulty, as you stated, Savage being the normal dificulty and the later implemented savage dificulty would be the extreme dificulty. Instead, they took it this opposite way they make normal mode, something that people literally cleared even normal players a few hours after it was released and then you have Savage which is something extremely dificult and in no way it compares to binding coil of bahamut.

It absolutely does not help the fact, that the story of Alexander, is the most bland and uninteresting story so far going on, if you compare Alexander on key Final Fantasy games 9 or 11 it's just plain unimpresive, it doesn't help that they literally slap these uninteresting and boring bosses designs, with bland looks, bland areas, the boss mechanics are horrendous since they are DPS checks FOR THE NON DPS, which is trully bizarre. On top of that, it can't be stressed enough that the mechanics are just really poorly made, when you compare at what they did with coils, the mechanics of alexander savage aren't challenging they are just DPS sponges, you could go back to binding coil of bahamut and notice the changes between normal mode and savage and notice that the dificulty lies with dealing with mechanics, small DPS checks here and there but not smashing your buttons until you get carpal tunnel, because otherwise you aren't really going to progress.

Overall, Alexander is the worst content we have seen since 2.0 and hence why people is unmotivated to clear it, even if they had raided before, they just don't care, I don't care anymore, what's the point on me clearing A4S? there's trully nothing, gear will get replaced soon, but it's mainly that it's bland and boring that it doesn't help at all, and thus why people feels that Normal ruined it, which isn't the reason at all.

[Colorful]

snip

Regarding the story part of your post... right? People claim that normal ruined the story, but in reality it was so bland, uninspired, filled with cliches and had comic relief characters as the main "villains" of the story. It was bad, not because of normal, but because it was just god-awful. And please, don't use that "Oh, it's only the 1st part, the 2nd and 3rd will be better" excuse I keep hearing, when we're waiting 7-8+ months for the next part that just doesn't fly with me. They completely butchered Alexander's potential of being a godlike being to a giant robot that will consume all the aether, but the areas around him are still lush with green and healthy grass for some reason. At the end of Turn 5 we were treated to a view of Bahamut's head, Floor 4? A battery core or whatever.

And another note for those suggesting the removal of Normal Alexander, do you honestly believe people are going to be happy with 2 dungeons because you want to keep a huge amount of content to yourself for seemingly no reason (this isn't targeted to those who want a larger difference in mechanics or normal being delayed, but outright removed)? No, and you aren't going to unsubscribe if they get that content, but surprise, they will be with running 2 dungeons for 4-5 months every patch cycle. If it wasn't for Alexander Normal I wouldn't even be subscribed right now and would have definitely regretted my purchase of Heavensward, Alexander is literally the only endgame we dirty casuals have besides Bismarck and Ravana.