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

[Azazua_azura]

Ok i read the full post Editing to include more

My two cents on everything, is we need to drop the WoW lables. Before WoW i never heard the tearms of hardcore, casual, raider, and non-raider. (regardless if these terms started in WoW or not thats, when i first heard them). We are all players of different backgrounds, time frames, gaming skill, and we all play this game for different reasons and enjoy different content. Why seperate players into segragated groups? I think thats the first mistake we mmo players make. If anything seperate the "elitist" from everyone else. Elistist being the jerk players who become pig headed because they think their are good, and berate and belittle everyone else who they think/assume are not at their level.

I also think those who do savage shouldn't have expected bonus stuff from it. SE was pretty detailed in what to expect, it simply a harder version that is all it was going to be. Similar to how savage version of coil is just a harder version of coil. And the reason behind the Normal mode is to let more people see the story. Which is a good idea and wish they did a normal version of coil. Having bonus story for savage modes would be a kick in the teeth to the players who are not able to do savage mode for one reason or another. These raids are infact interwoven into the over all story/lore of FF14, infact you see Alex rise out after the story, much like you hear bahamuts roar after 2.0 story.

example of this being: Coil explains what happen during the calamity, and what happen in the 5 years.This would be considered part of the main story for player from 1.0, as the story lead up to the calamity.

As for alex, anyone who paid attention to brayflox saw this coming. She has been fighting the illuminati since the Company of heros disbanded trying to stop them from hording gobbie knowledge and the art of fine cheese making. And she shows up again during heavensward continueing said fight, and you learn alot more of that sect of goblins.

In both cases, coil and alex, we are scions. Our role as a scion is to fight primals which was the reasoning behind both coil and Alex.

Also to note, not everyone is familur with how ff14 is set up, I personally come from ff11. i tried WoW and didn't like it and never raided in WoW so im not familur with the set up. I'm also not to familur with how the ilvl system work, and how post cap gearing really works as its completely different to what I'm personally used to. Things like normal version of raids help with this, and wish SE did this sooner, I'm also glad they did put Alex normal in DF (i'm not a fan of DF btw) as i'm not too familur with the concept of statics, as I'm more used to having an endgame linkshell and doing scedualed events with them, which isn't done here.

Edit: my thoughts on your personal feelings, first off thanks for sharing I hope venting helps you enjoy the game more, as it sucks when people stop enjoying a game they like. What i noticed is you think on the lines of segragating the community, and having a "what about me?" moment in SE sudden change in direction of raiding. What i think is you need to take a step back, take a deep breath and really think hard on what raiding means to you. Like why do you raid? Why do you find raiding fun? Also think why raiding exists in MMO.

I think you may need to re-adjust to the new direction SE is taking on raiding in ff14 and find away to enjoy it. I think overall this change was a good thing, as it gets this type of content out to more players to try. I think all mmo should have done steping stone endgame content, as it gets people unfamilur with it to try the content out, and build up to do the harder version of the content. I think it is a bit of a shame that such a small poplulation of MMO communities do this spectrum
of content. I wish that number was bigger because that will not only give the game room to grow, it will build a larger pool of players making it much more easier to build up LS's and groups for said content.

My final thoughts are kicking members should be a last restort, and only if they have a bad attitude. Kicking a member for "not meeting numbers" is a big reason alot of people think said spectrum of players are rude, as to me it is rude to do so. Take time to prepare your team, take time to help your team improve. Doing so builds team bonding which inturn builds the teams skill level. Rather saying "my static" say "my raiding friends". Alot of the reasons people don't like the raiding enviroment is, its treated like a work place, or at worst the military. You are treated like a underpaid bottum feeder or a yellow bellied grunt by the leaders. There is also alot of favoritism, between leaders and their irl friend to fresh members of said raid group. I have personally experienced alot of this in ff11, WoW, and AION. Which is why I enjoy the added "story mode" alex as those bad experiences made me miss out on coil as I was shy to even find a group when I was max level. Also to add, I'm a ps3 ONLY player, this also made it hard to look for a group cuz alot of raid groups require some form of voice chat which i have 0 access too. Which in the past I was looked down on by people.

My worst experience was playing WoW and trying to find a guild, alot of them require addons and a voip as they also was raiding or was considering it. I had told guilds, that my pc was shared with 6 ppl so downloading addons or a voip wasn't an option for me. I was then heavily insulted by said guilds for being lazy (im far from it)

Inshort, we need to drop the segratation lables, we need to learn to word things better when making suggestions, and lastly we need to consider players other then ourselves and what their gaming experience is when making said suggestions, as well as maybe retihink our attitudes on raiding.
Thanks for reading

[Kedo]

Snip.

Are you kidding me? You're one of the worst posters on these forums. Constant straw-man arguments, excessive use of anecdotes, and the delusions that this game is "fine" and "I don't know what people are complaining about. So yes, unless you're going to add something constructive to the conversation, do us a favor and GTFO!@

[Dererk]

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).

the problem that people have is mostly having to grind normal to start gearing up. They put gear in the normal story mode that was meant to be so all could enjoy the story. And when you make such a gap in gear levels of 180 (enhanced doma gear) to about 200(af2eso gear) people are going to burn themselves out farming normal because of the weekly lock on eso tomes. I don't think it helps that the fights in normal are very easy.

Only thing that makes normal slightly harder than an expert dungeon in duty finder is because you need an extra 4 people and we all know duty finder can be an awful place at times.

[Miscreant]

So many really long posts O_O would be nice if people cut out the fluff and got to the point

People that actually care about being a "raider" or a "casual" are idiots...you're either good or your bad and there are plenty of goods and bads in both groups, I've seen some casuals who kick ass, I've seen some raiders that are down right bad. Play the game how you want, stop comparing your self to other players and stop projecting your personal views onto other players too.

[MerleSirlos]

I'll be honest i read a good bit but skimed the rest as its hard for me to read cuz of text size.

My two cents on the stuff i did read, is we need to drop the WoW lables. Before WoW i never heard the tearms of hardcore, casual, raider, and non-raider. (regardless if these terms started in WoW or not thats, when i first heard them). We are all players of different backgrounds, time frames, gaming skill, and we all play this game for different reasons and enjoy different content. Why seperate players into segragated groups? I think thats the first mistake we mmo players make. If anything seperate the "elitist" from everyone else. Elistist being the jerk players who become pig headed because they think their are good, and berate and belittle everyone else who thewy think/assume are not at their level.

Something important that should never be forgotten. Also, if a game doesn't look good for you, it can be good for someone else.

I understand that some people are unhappy with how things are, but there are also people that like how things are. I for example are happy with the situation right now. could it be better? Of course, nothing is perfect and it can always be better. But whatever SE does, there will always be someone to complain.
In my current static, more than half of us work and we are from different time zones. We raid about 2 hours a day, 3 days a week. And that's enough for us to enjoy and have fun together. We still need to clear A2S but we can see evident progress every time we go in. It might look slow for most of you, but for us it's fine and works well. Are we going to get destroyed once we reach A3S? Most likely. But I totally look forward to it, having fun wiping with my friends in a challenging fight.

I read a lot of complaints about the current Alex Savage. The one that surprise me the most is how it is a gear check and without that minimum gear you cannot clear it and blame it on SE. What nonsense. The community decides this. The ones getting world first clear set up the bar on the maximum skill. Every piece of gear you need is to compensate the difference in skill with those teams. and it varies greatly from person to person. And it's not bad! We are not machines, we are all different and play slightly differently (difference can be very small but can have big impact). To each one is own pace.
Same goes for the fending accessories. Best tanks will not need them and label them as useless. I see them as options to compensate mistakes from my part (since I am the tank) or from my healers. I'm not perfect and I can make mistakes (and I will usually blame myself for doing them), same goes for my healers. If I need a cushion to compensate for that, I don't mind. If the price to pay is delaying our clear for a few weeks, that's also fine. what matters is that in the end we get better, we progress, we will clear it when the time comes.

Back in time when coil was the only raid, people complained it was too hard and they couldn't see the story. So SE gave them what they wanted, an easy version for the story....

[FallenArisen0990]

That was a well thoughout post OP. I think part of the problem in getting new blood to join in on the raid is in part the DPS checks. I know many regard high DPS and some look down on those who don't "perform" this way. This is one issue that shy me away from doing high end raids because I know full well I can't deal that high damage. To me that's a chore and makes the game unfun for me because I have to worry about my DPS over enjoying the game. I don't think of myself a bad player but at the same time I'm not the bestest. It's also why I tend to avoid parties with 2 strike rules or will replace if DPS is low. It creates this mindset to me that I shouldn't attempt this raid because I don't have very high DPS levels. So I end up tackling a raid after it becomes laughable. While I don't mind challenge, (cleared SoF pre-nerf) but at the same thing I don't want to spend hours and hours just to down one boss and then having to do it over and over to farm the loot. But I do understand where the high end raiders are coming from. Back when the bane T5, the joy of finally bring down Twintania and moving on to SCoB. Indeed story is a great reward in itself but at the same time, it shouldn't be gated as well. When I see posts that want to get rid off Alex NM, it puts me to fly because it's like the hardcore are blaming the casuals for their stale Savage. I do agree SE should've handle Savage better. I haven't even step foot in Savage and I hear the horror stories. Other stigma SE has inadvertently created is this idea of BiS. Because they really simplified stats and attributes, there's only like 2 stats worth having on because anything else "hinders" your performance. Tho this is a personal complaint I have with the game, I think it does have some effect.

Anywho, just my take on how some might feel, as I do understand both sides of the fences.

[StrejdaTom]

There is still one thing people don't seem to understand. Normal Coil =/= Normal Alexander

Normal Coil was a bit easier than Savage Alexander, but much much much much much harder than any extreme primal or normal Alexander.
Savage Coil came only as a fun experiment from devs. Savage Alexander doesn't come as a fun addition or as a side content, it is main content for raiders.

You cannot really compare Savage Coil and Savage Alexander only because they have the same name, these 2 pieces of content serve completely different purpose.
Savage Alexander is the same what Normal coil was in 2.X. It even offers the same equipment rewards compared to the rest of 3.0.

Please don't act like adding Savage Alexander was some kind of favor from developers, thanks.

[Sapphic]

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,

It's not tho. Biggest complaint is that normal Alex was a mandatory part of the progression path and that players burnt out on it before Savage was released. That there is nothing different in Savage, that there is no story to discover, no new mobs to beat. It's rehashed, plus the difficulty is more gearcentric than SCoB for example which was heavily mechanics based in difficulty.

The heavy gear check difficulty of Savage Alex was in response to a very small part of the raiding community being able to circumvent the planned gearing progression through FCoB by the use of penta-melded gear. The majority of the raiding community still progressed at the expected rate. SE took it way to the extreme in Savage.

For me the best Raid tier that was balanced between mechanics and gear progression was SCoB.

Also doesn't help that one of the most popular tanks, PLD, is a detriment in comparison to WAR and DRK in savage so long term PLD raiders where forced to change.

[Mercutial]

Most raiders would still do the raids with 0 story.

Most raiders I've come across raid for one main reason: kicking a boss's ass with friends is awesome.

Or... you know.. the simple joy of playing a video game. I've always called BS on story (and to a lesser extent gear) being the major motivating factors for raiding. Don't get me wrong - the gear is nice, but it's the cherry on top the ass kicking sundae of FINALLY downing content that you and your friends have been working on for weeks (or even months).

Ask most groups one raiding session away from a kill if they mind giving up one of the chests if it finally means downing a given turn. I think you'll find the vast majority will opt for the kill.

[Myleus]

That's why we need to distribute all the endgame in several raids,not only Alexander. For example, 2 sets of 4 raids each one with 8man and other with 16 ppl to use actual and future jobs more effectly.

Rewards between them should be suitable to beam the ohers raids but we will need more customizable gear, with set bonus and new sockets for materia, not only in pvp.