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

[Nomad-phx]

Well to be fair OP when 2.0 first launched the upgraded relic(i90) and the coil weapons (i90) were the same, til enough raiders complained getting +5ilvl. When the soldiery upgrades/unidentified tome became accessible to everyone, complained about casual s "ilvl welfare program". And when the zeta came out too. A lot of complaints were about ilvl

[TheUltimate3]

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.

And that is fine. That is a legit complaint.

But my rant was directed at those who see Savage as too difficult and demand something easier in it's place. They can suck it.

And no, I don't adhere to the idea of "midcore". I've heard enough people not agree to what it even means to come to my own conclusion that if you aren't good enough for what you believe is "hardcore" then you shouldn't be doing it at all.

[Duelle]

However, the implementation of savage was done all wrong. With zero changes between normal and savage's story or build-up, savage was stale before it even showed up to the dinner table. We had a stale story going into a mind numbingly hard raid. This was a huge blow for many of us. We expected and understood that our gear is a fleeting reward, at best. But so many of us, myself included, had such high hopes for the story only to find it hard turned to ash in our mouths upon tasting the savage version.

I'm going to disagree here. No, raiders shouldn't have an entire section of the storyline for themselves. Unless you're also okay with eventual nerfs to that raid content somewhere down the line (and the whole point of savage is to not have to nerf the content as they did with Coil).

This has caused many midcore raiders just to up and leave the game. Even high end raiders peppered throughout the raiding statics on any given server are leaving. It's infrequent for a team to be comprised of 8/8 top server players. its often more like a grab bag of skill levels. Statics are imploding right and left as some of these teams are unable to carry their weak link or two anymore. High end to mid core, people don't want to carry on when the raid is THIS challenging and when its EVEN MORE CHALLENGING to fill a roster after losing people week after week.

Sadly, this is as you have said, standard for raiding as a whole. You saw stuff like this in WoW too. Probably worse due to loot drama (which thankfully has a less chance of happening here between smaller raid sizes and the loot systems in place).

If you made it this far, thank you for taking the to humor my ramblings, We are almost done and I will soon wrap this up. Anyways, this is the situation us raiders are contending with now. Many teams are stuck and imploding on a3s. Teams on a4s are fighting to keep a roster full for content that will have 1/3 it's value, bis gear, taken away in 6 weeks. Another 1/3 of the content, the story, has been so underwhelming and unhyped that no one cares about it, and the last 1/3, the challenge, is not well designed for most raiders. This challenge was tailored for lucrezia and sever 1st groups, Alex savage, the only meaningful raid in the game, alienates, disparages, and disenfranchised a lion's share of ARR raiders. What they had is now gone, the four bosses they looked forward to every six month have been tuned so high, only the best of the best raiders will see full clears. The rest of the raiding population will be stuck with the first two floors until there are nerfs, another raid tier, or both.

This part echoes a sentiment I've seen floating around: the need for an intermediate tier or something that's not tuned to the harsh levels of Savage. This said, you haven't really touched on things to actually resolve the issue. Based on what I've been seeing floating around, the issues are the difficulty settings (which a developer may shoot down for one of several reasons) and raid design (why aren't you guys discussing this more?).

What I'd want to see the devs do is implement story mode raids (what we have right now with Alex 1-4), then a hard mode with more difficult mechanics. The savage stuff (AKA the versions of these fights tuned for world 1st FCs) would be triggerable mid-fight. An example would be A1 Hard Mode (maybe A1 mechanics plus only the 4 nukes instead of the 2 and the tank-busters?) having a gobbie in a Dr. Robotnik-style hover machine that sticks around for about 4 minutes into the fight then leaves. If the raid manages to damage both Oppressor and .5 down to a certain HP percentage within those 4 minutes, Savage Mode is triggered, causing the gobbie to repair both to full and then introduce the really difficult mechanics with high DPS requirements. So an average raiding group would still be able to clear it and gear up while also eventually becoming strong enough to trigger Savage Mode.

Better raid pacing and raid sizes (really, we need raids with more than just 4 bosses in one tier) would also help. Someone on reddit brought up the point that bigger raids allow for hard brick wall-type bosses as well as easier bosses that act as a sort of cool-off before going to another hard boss. In fact, the poor raid pacing seen in Alexander most likely has a hand in people getting burned out.

The one thing I will agree with you is BiS not coming from savage. If this is indeed the case then I agree that something is wrong.

[LaurelinKementari]

I'm going to disagree here. No, raiders shouldn't have an entire section of the storyline for themselves. Unless you're also okay with eventual nerfs to that raid content somewhere down the line (and the whole point of savage is to not have to nerf the content as they did with Coil).

Playing devil's advocate here, but why not, exactly? You don't see people who refuse to tank complain that they don't get to experience the WAR, PLD or DRK storyline, or people who don't wish to heal rage at how they're locked out of experiencing the WHM, SCH or AST storyline. And it's not like "That's different, those storylines are class based!" because, well, Binding Coil was raid based. Sure, it's easier to get those storylines than to get Coil's, no argument there, but it's still an example of storylines exclusive to a specific type of gameplay (class based gameplay, in this case) with no easy or all-access mode, just as Coil was (only there the gameplay was aimed at those who wished to challenge themselves).

"But Coil storyline was an important part of the Main Scenario, the job and class storylines are not!" Well, not so much an important part of ARR's Main Scenario as tying up loose ends of 1.x, but fair enough. Even so, one could still not see the Coil story and be perfectly able to follow the MSQ. It's not as if the Binding Coil storyline was mandatory to understanding ARR's overal plot. Same with the job and class storylines. Only those are fine being gated behind something (having to play other classes you may not like), while Coil, for some reason, isn't. That's starting to look like double standards to me.

You could argue that "the job and class storylines are accessible to everyone!" but, well, so was Coil's. There's nothing locking people out of Coil (besides having had to beat the original 3 HM primals), so the only thing keeping them out of it is themselves. I'm not saying they have to do Coil, I'm just saying they did have the option of doing it if they wanted the story. Which, again, I know wasn't always so easy in practice. Getting groups together or finding a static before Coil was added to the DF and echo'd wasn't always easy, I know that from experience. Even so, the option was there nonetheless.

Non-tanks don't get to experience the tank storylines. Non-healers don't get to see the healer storylines. DPSers, same thing. Story exclusivity does exist in this game, even outside of the raids. So why is it bad that raiders get their own piece of story content, again?

[Waeksyn]

Chiramu, Natashio, SevenHeavens, Waeksyn, and Kore_Hyperion have apparently opted to side with the rude, uninformed and caustic group on the forums. Keep it up folks. I'm sure you don't even realize that losing the raiders will have severe repercussions across the board and may even spell the beginning of the end for this game.

Not sure how I was rude and "caustic". Just some advice on how to effectively communicate. Forums are a very poor place for what is essentially a blog post. The key to good communication is to understand your audience and your medium and to speak to them.

In my profession, I've seen lots of extremely smart people that go overboard with text, content, unnecessary graphics, etc. which only serves to make most of the audience tune out. You may be successful at reaching some but overall, the result will not be good. Not relevant for this audience but this is especially true when you are communicating to decision makers.

[KarstenS]

I've read the original post (well, 85% of it at least). I'm getting the impression that you're drawing comparisons between players completing normal Binding Coil of Bahamut and savage Alexander. Is that correct? If so, may I ask why you're not comparing savage to savage?

Maybe because Alex Savage is meant for the players that did regular Coil and Alex normal is meant to be the easier mode for the people that complained they can't see the story of coil?

Comparing normal mode Alexander with regular Coil is like comparing Sastasha (Lvl 15) with Aurum Vale.

Alex Savage is meant to be the raid for raiders that did regular coil.

[Rin_Kuroi]

The story for alex is so far removed from the rest of the game that I don't think anyone would care much if there was only one alex raid similar to binding coil.

[Malevicton]

snip

Also you could always just watch it on youtube. I totally get that that's not the same and all, but people make it sound like you just had no option to ever understand the story. If you wanted to watch the story but not do the fights, that was always an option.

Also, as a raider, the coil story was amazing for me. Not because of epeen exclusivity, but because they gave the fights some really epic context. I don't really like when people shoehorn a raider's motivation into having to be one thing. Mostly I just enjoyed the fights, the gear was a nice bonus, and the story greatly enhanced the experience. Fighting Bahamut at Alex storymode level difficulty would've been really unfulfilling for me personally. And call it what you will, but farming an ezmode bahamut for 4 weeks before seeing the "real" fight would have taken a lot of the epicness out of it.

I'm not really sure what, if anything, I'm suggesting. Probably nothing. I don't know the solution. I like that people can experience the story first hand. But I feel like the way it was implemented cost the story some of its epic quality.

The story for alex is so far removed from the rest of the game that I don't think anyone would care much if there was only one alex raid similar to binding coil.

Honestly, this is also a pretty good point. People cared about missing out on the coil story because they were actually missing out on something. Say what you will about it not technically affecting the msq directly, but "so what's the deal with Bahamut?" was a very important question. Alex isn't really relevant to anything. And on top of that, most people don't seem to like the story. I've seen a lot of people complaining about it (myself included tbf), and the highest praise I've seen is either "give it a chance there are still 2 more installments" or "I didn't dislike it", neither of which are shining endorsements.

[Rin_Kuroi]

Maybe because Alex Savage is meant for the players that did regular Coil and Alex normal is meant to be the easier mode for the people that complained they can't see the story of coil?

Comparing normal mode Alexander with regular Coil is like comparing Sastasha (Lvl 15) with Aurum Vale.

Alex Savage is meant to be the raid for raiders that did regular coil.

I don't know if I completely agree with this. Alex normal is a new beast imo. It's on DF and is pretty damn easy. I feel the equivalent to regular coil is missing.

[Spellbinder]

Alex Savage is meant to be the raid for raiders that did regular coil.

I personally disagree with that, but I'm not here to change opinions on that. I do, however, think they tuned normal Alexander a little too low.

I don't know if I completely agree with this. Alex normal is a new beast imo. It's on DF and is pretty damn easy. I feel the equivalent to regular coil is missing.

Essentially this.