Raider to Non-Raider: an exhibition on thoughts and misconceptions

[Maikeru]

I do feel the raiding community is dying.

I'm a raider and I enjoyed BCOB, SCOB, SCOB Savage and FCOB back in the day. Cleared them without nerfs of any sorts, except for T5 since I didn't have a static back in the day. (This is not my main). Hyperion was full of competitive FCs, committed players, statics that worked as a team. Bunch of LS where you could pick up players that can manage and do the content without major issues. People enjoyed raiding because these 3 factors you mentioned. I feel that everything is gone now. Most raiders migrated to one single server, which is Gilgamesh. So the raider community got cluttered there, whereas other servers its group is slowly dying. Less and less people put PFs up to clear content together with pugs. It's all about statics missing members, trying to fill spots for weeks (Myself included, still looking for an MT).

People lost the motivation for raiding, and that hurts me, because it's a kind of content that I truly enjoy but almost no one is down for it. I wish I could move to Gilgamesh too, but I appreciate the company of my friends, even though they are all non-raiders.

Attitude wise, I try to reinforce the idea that not all raiders are bad. That they're helpful, that they are patient, that they aren't that one quiet player that rushes through the dungeon using all his party members as a mere object. Humilliating you if you did 300 DPS less as a DPS class while he was in a tanking class. After all, that's the first lesson you learn from raiding: Patience, followed by: people have different learning curves. It's not matter of life or dead if you wipe. Mistakes happen, learn from them. Try to give advice if needed and/or asked. Be polite to your fellow party members, after all you're part of the team and you all work as a whole. Help people. You, as a raider, experienced and somewhat skilled, have the power to help these guys. Don't be cocky, because you're leaving anything but a good impression.

In the end, both sides will attack to each other, since there're rotten eggs lying in every community nest. We can't change some people, we'll find them, that's for sure, but they don't represent the group as a whole. You, as an individual, have the power to understand this simple concept and just avoid generalizations like "all raiders are special snowflakes, elitist and toxic players that want their content away from the casual players" or "non-raiders are casuals that suck at the game and they feel entitled to everything the raiders have without any effort". Such is the magic of the internet, where your face is covered but your mouth, so you can be mean all you want and get away with it. When people fall into dehumanization, we know we have failed as a society.

[Felis]

I will admit that I have not tried Alexander savage and I have no intention to. I know I do not have the time nor the desire to aspire to that level of play. With that said, I do have a question that has been burning in my mind since the release of Heavensward.

What has changed that made savage so desirable in 3.0, when you couldn't pay your average player to attempt savage during the 2.x series? Why has savage become the new standard, when it was ignored before?

In Coil Savage there was no better reward than in normal Coil.
In Alexander Savage you get gear with the highest ilevel, that is also dyeable, and upgrade items for the esotheric gear.

[KaijinRhada]

A little bit of prefacing: first, a good post from the OP. Second, a few good posts here, but Malzian's post stands out quite well to me. Third, I used to be a raider, and pretty hardcore at that with WoW raiding Heroic before they changed it to Mythic, but I can't currently commit to any organized runs in this game. The whole vitriol between raider and non-raider on these boards is rather reminiscent, but feels like it's on a different level of friction than what I'm used to. Given how I started, how I progressed, and how I currently am as an MMO gamer, I feel like I can see both sides of this. If I may delve deeper into the current situation from my perspective.

The reasons for me to raid is to experience great encounters, the challenge of beating them, the camaraderie that comes with it, and gear. Even at current, I strive to perform as best as possible and gear as much as I can, because that's how I like to play. Story, despite my love for good narrative, plays zero part in raids. The only thing I can really comment on it is that the story for Alexander, in my eyes, is bland at best, but given this game is story driven, it is a good move to make it more accessible, and I don't think it should be so out of reach here. With that said, I've never taken part in Savage or any raiding here, so this is the view of an outsider with a heavy raiding background that is currently, what others would call, casual.

From my limited perspective and with a bit of projection of how I would feel about the current situation, it sounds like the encounters aren't quite different enough to add some zing to the bosses. If I were presently doing said content, I may find myself wishing there were more substance. While not all heroic bosses in WoW had added terribly new stuff, there was just enough that were different to make it a more interesting raid, be it entirely new mechanics, new phases, or tweaking mechanics to make you think differently about how you do it. If it were Fight A with more sparkles, then I can see myself being bored.

Another thing I can only observe is that having only one raid (if you don't include trials) to do over an over can be a pain. Bolding for emphasis before I start my giant ass comparison, I get that SE's strength isn't raid design and raiding isn't their breadwinner here, but not having a good menu to choose from can stifle growth in it and leave people languishing. My raiding started in BC, but up to me quitting after Cata, I've had a number of raids to do, plus a lot more than two heroic instances to run. Perhaps as far as raid types go currently here VS what I did in WoW, I can best compare a two trial-one raid setting to WotLK (didn't raid Vanilla, so no applicable views there) since on release, it did only have one multiple-boss raid, but here's what was on the table: Naxxramas (10/25 man multiple boss), Eye of Eternity (10/25 single boss), Obsidian Sanctum (10/25 single boss with token trash packs, and with the option of making it harder by leaving mini bosses alive), and Vault of Archavon (10/25 initially single boss, more were added later, though note that it was in a PvP zone, which affected what faction got to do it at any given time). All of that, plus heroic instances, at end game. The only time this has failed me really is WoD, where there was only one raid to do, and that didn't keep me entertained for long.

Would having more than one raid alleviate the problem? Perhaps, but maybe it would only delay or prolong the problem. What about difficulty levels? Without repeating my first thought, hypothetically speaking, if I had a lot more free time, I would do Savage and possibly find the difficulty fine, because I'm strange and love beating my head against a wall. What if I had only a little more time than I do now, or if I wasn't busying myself with other aspects of the game? I wouldn't have the ability to commit to Savage, but I find "Normal" to not be normal at all, I find it easy, but considering the nomenclature in the game, it seems to go Normal, Hard, Extreme, Savage. How about adding a third difficulty in between? Not a cakewalk, but not putting yourself through a meatgrinder. The suggestion has come up before (and I think I saw it here too). I've also seen suggestions for more fluff (items, mounts, glamour, titles) to be added to Savage, but that feels more like a band-aid.

Now tying in my first point, a third difficulty with differences in encounters at the different difficulties could be a good solution. I still think more than one raid on top of those two points could help, but raids to take time and resources. So easily said, maybe not so easily done with the latter, but the first two, I would say is more feasible.

That's my view of the whole situation and what my opinions are on what to do with it. Varied content, possibly only at the price of slightly longer development times.

[Tyrn]

In Coil Savage there was no better reward than in normal Coil.
In Alexander Savage you get gear with the highest ilevel, that is also dyeable, and upgrade items for the esotheric gear.

In Coil Savage most groups were still logging in to complete the normal version long after savage was released with fcob being on the horizon, leaving little time to make meaningful progress in savage after you managed to clear T9 the first time.
In Coil Savage you were on the same lockout as the normal version so if your group beat it early enough that you could make progress on savage before fcob came out and one friend in your group didn't want to do it you had to either be a dbag and kick your friend or wait until you had cleared fcob.
In Alexander savage everyone cleared story version in less than a day with nothing for your static to do other than savage for 8 months because everything else in the game can be done without one.

[Ketra]

I cleared a4s last week. I am more of a "combat" player than "gatherer", "crafter", "leveler" kind of player.

I feel that there are also casual gamers who just want to play combat stuffs. Just killing mobs and not doing the rest of the content for example crafting.
I really don't think its a problem between casuals, mid core, hardcore issue. A lot of people just wants to kill stuffs and be rewarded.


When I first played this game, I just simply keep killing stuffs. Cos I really like the combat system. So I killed mobs till level50, I did fates and dungeons.
So I continued by farming tomes to get armor, kill primals, get my relic and proceeded to get people to challenge FCOB. It was fun until I cleared FCOB.
There was nothing else besides FCOB.

Sorry but I have to bring up on FFXI. When I played FFXI, I could go Sky if not dynamis or even BCNM. There are a lot of stuffs to do in parallel. Sky is really hard so it took a while. When I got burned out from doing Sky, I went and do dynamis, BCNM, etc. There were always stuffs for me to kill and challenge.

FFXIV has this problem that players need to clear stuffs in sequence.

Heavensward sequence
1) Level60
2) Grind dungeon for law
3) Bismark EX
4) Ravana EX for weapon
5) Alexander Normal
6) Farm Eso
7) Alexander Savage


Once I finished gearing in 1-5, I stopped doing them. Cos its pointless. So I end up with 6 and 7. And there is NO combat alternatives. Nothing to kill.
If anyone gets stuck at A3S, they got nothing else to do. They get burned out eventually and quit.

Some of my static players are so fond of killing stuffs, they went back to help people clear A3. Or even join them for practice sessions. I even did A3S P2 practice the other day.
Cos right now there is nothing else that is challenging nor fun imo in terms of combat besides savage.

I really hope SE can expand on the combat content of the game. Having a good combat system is useless when there is nothing to kill.

[Dree-Elle]

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about savage second coil. Yes, gear was part of the problem, maybe even the progenitor of the problems surrounding raiding in general, but I think the absolute biggest issue with second coil savage was finding 8/8 people who strictly wanted to raid for the glory of bragging rights.

Which says that yes, it really is largely about the gear, or lack thereof. Therefore, it is hardly a "misconception".

[Sapphic]

Gear, pure and simple. Savage Coil gave no upgrade whatsoever over the gear one could get in Normal SCoB, whereas the gear in Savage Alex is a 20 iLvl boost (210 vs. 190).

I disagree, it was more, imo, that they shared the same lock out. Even if they had removed the gear drops from Savage coil and put it on a seperate lockout then there would have been more players attempting savage coil when it was released. As an optional side challenge Savage would have worked better.

On topic:

On Odin I've seen quite a few statics break up because of members quiting due to the present raid tier. My static is going through the same also. A tank and a healer have already cancelled this month and in Oct we will be losing 2 more. With coil we all looked forwards to doing Coil, to pushing progression to unlock the next part of the story, to seeing the next turn for the first time. Whereas with Alex, as you have stated, there is no sense of mystery, no wow factor when you finally progress because we have seen it all before with the mandatory gear progression through Alex normal. Normal, imo, should have been optional content for those who want to experience the, albeit lackluster in comparison to coils, story rather than a mandatory section of the gear progression. Or Normal held back until they normally nerf the current raid tier and instead implement normal to allow non-raiders to "catch-up" on the story.

Also raiders v casuals, I see less raiders rage when wipes occur because we are used to wiping over and over. Whereas those who rage the most, usually fail the most and try to misdirect their mistakes onto others.

[zlol365]

Now tying in my first point, a third difficulty with differences in encounters at the different difficulties could be a good solution. I still think more than one raid on top of those two points could help, but raids to take time and resources. So easily said, maybe not so easily done with the latter, but the first two, I would say is more feasible.

Third Difficulty could be possible. In fact, it could resolve a lot of things on the ground. More so fulfills time sink, enabling the developers to have slightly more time/breathing space to develop content rather then being stressed out...

Though the cons would be the amount of resources that would be required for future updates to then fulfill that content requirement.

Not dissing the idea, I think its good, yet there's some cons we got to be aware of as what you mentioned.

[TheUltimate3]

Honestly, I'm almost at the conclusion that the largest part of the raiding community in this game is just bad. As I've said earlier, if the complaint about Savage is that is actually hard, and that SE should make a slightly less hard Alexander (or equivalent) is disgraceful and one shouldn't even call themselves a raider at that point. Criticism about the mechanics, the loot drops, that is fine. But if the issue is Savage is actually difficult for the majority and they should make something easier? Get out of here. And again, this is coming from a scrub who has in order of raiding history never progressed out of Karazhan due to guild poaching, made it to the Amphitheater of Uldar all of once maybe two times, and never made it past the Crimson Halls before it was nerfed to oblivion.

I can only hope SE has heard the cries of the anguished though, and proceed with the next tier of raiding appropriately;

1) Alex NM2 only dropping tomes. Having gear in it makes Savage Alexander gear is not worth having. So as an intensive to have people actually do it, it will just drop tomes. Slightly more than the expert roulette.

2) Alexander Savage be equivalent in difficulty/mechanics to 2nd/3rd Coil. From what I understand, going exclusively by the complaints lobbied about it, Savage Alexander is harder than Coil or at least more gear dependent than the last bindings of Coil. As such, make them more equivalent to the last two Coil, which again unless I'm mistaken, brings the difficulty down to more..."reasonable levels".

3) Beating the last floor of Savage will give each party member a upgrade item for whatever set is available at the time. No rolling for it, you just get it, for the incentive to run it.

For bonuses, I'd bump up the levels of all the Trials and raids to 60 and remove the lvl 50 versions in general.

[Fricca]

I love most of the points OP discussed, that was probably the first long post i've ever read.

As a raider who's in it for the challenge I personally don't believe the current difficulty of Alex Savage is the problem right now. People are getting burnt out because things were poorly planned and laid out.

Lets take a moment and compare normal SCoB to normal Alex:

-Many people considered normal SCoB as major content whereas you will need a static to try it out and beat it. Normal Alex didn't as it was easy enough to do with randoms and people who are new or just came back to the game.
-Normal SCoB had lockouts that made it feel special. Normal Alex don't.
-Normal SCoB offered the best gear at the time. Normal Alex was just a stepping stone for Savage Alex.

What caused the burn out? Savage isn't all that different from normal mode... It's the same boss, same stage, same music with a few new mechanics. To top it all off the story is just very bland... I'm sorry, I just can't take a cutscene full of goblins very seriously. I love this game, but this is just not the best update for me. I would personally suggest for them to get rid of the overly easy normal mode and bring back the difficulty normal scob had. They can implement Savage afterwards with special rewards such as dyeable versions of the gear that dropped from the normal 'normal mode' aside from the titles. That would make it very interesting for me as I could get dyeable HA coat of healing or something aside from the good challenge I got from clearing savage.