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

[Mercutial]

Agree, when ran into Alex Savage, it killed statics

To be honest, I think a lot of the statics that were "killed" were never really raid-ready anyway. Savage was not gated behind the previous top-tier raid, so everyone and their mother decided to group up just because they could. Faust was a rude awakening and a pretty funny troll move by SE.

Not that most of the players were bad per se, but there was certainly more of an opportunity for a bad apple to get into a group for content where a single person cannot be carried (at least out the gate). As a result, turnover ensues. Bonds which may have been fresh to begin with are made even newer - making it easier to abandon groups having less invested in them personally.

[Dante_V]

I also want to add that while the raiding community is the minority from a subscriber standpoint. It is the glue which binds this game together, without it the sub base would slowly dwindle. This is true of almost any MMO and it is ultimately what Blizzard fails to realize and in turn is losing their sub base over. Without raiders understandings of the intricacies of the game such as stat weights and mechanics would be lost or never realized. Almost all of your YouTube and twitch commentators and personalities are hardcore raiders (or crafters, which are in the same realm albeit a different form.) The majority of the passion and interest pushed on the forums (except this one) comes from the hardcore community. Like it or not without the hardcore and even mid core raiders and players this game would die very quickly because while casual subs may bring in the bulk of money, they dont sustain the life of the game or the passion and interests that allow it to be as large as it is.

[Kedo]

Without raiders understandings of the intricacies of the game such as stat weights and mechanics would be lost or never realized. .

Good points sir

[Dante_V]

To be honest, I think a lot of the statics that were "killed" were never really raid-ready anyway. Savage was not gated behind the previous top-tier raid, so everyone and their mother decided to group up just because they could. Faust was a rude awakening and a pretty funny troll move by SE

I think this is disengenious. Its like saying that all of the statics that cleared second coil but didnt raid savage werent raid ready and that simply isnt true. The bottom line is that most raiders arent world first material but still want challenging content. SCOB and savage did this well. Now said middle of the road raiders have literally no content to do at all. They either face roll and overly easy Alex normal or smash their face against a wall in a3s. A1S and A2S arent really the issue here. A3S and A4S are what the raiding community is addressing. No one is talking about people who cant beat Faust. They would have never stood a chance unnerfed t6 or t10.

[Rin_Kuroi]

I think this is disengenious. Its like saying that all of the statics that cleared second coil but didnt raid savage werent raid ready and that simply isnt true. The bottom line is that most raiders arent world first material but still want challenging content. SCOB and savage did this well. Now said middle of the road raiders have literally no content to do at all. They either face roll and overly easy Alex normal or smash their face against a wall in a3s. A1S and A2S arent really the issue here. A3S and A4S are what the raiding community is addressing. No one is talking about people who cant beat Faust. They would have never stood a chance unnerfed t6 or t10.

I may be wrong but middle of the road raiders probably make up the majority of raiders. It's too bad they are being left out in the cold.

[zosia]

To be honest, I think a lot of the statics that were "killed" were never really raid-ready anyway. Savage was not gated behind the previous top-tier raid, so everyone and their mother decided to group up just because they could. Faust was a rude awakening and a pretty funny troll move by SE.

Not that most of the players were bad per se, but there was certainly more of an opportunity for a bad apple to get into a group for content where a single person cannot be carried (at least out the gate). As a result, turnover ensues. Bonds which may have been fresh to begin with are made even newer - making it easier to abandon groups having less invested in them personally.

I partly disagree. There were usually about six groups ahead of ours on my server progression wise. These groups typically killed bosses before and were some of our server's best players. That number has been reduced to three. Those other statics got burnt out and disbanded because it's not fun to progress on the same fight for a month.

People take a break, like it is so often recommended and that player leaving usually is the strand that unravels the whole sweater since it is extremely hard now to replace people if you're progressing on a4s.

Many new HW statics did just run straight into the faust wall, but we have seen other groups that were long standing in ARR just evaporate under the pressure of savage.

I may be wrong but middle of the road raiders probably make up the majority of raiders. It's too bad they are being left out in the cold.

Exactly! Even Elysium in an interview said that this raid might have been tuned too high. They were the world 1st a4s clear, the quote can be seen below. I don't want to link the website directly since it's to playboy, but the article is very easy to find with the google machine.

“Even for the hardcore players most of us feel that Alexander Savage was tuned a little too high,” Gouka admitted. “Maybe something that takes two to three weeks is fine, but when you’re spending an entire month essentially on the same fight it gets a little bit ridiculous.”

edit: I found the tweet that linked the article, so here is a link to elysium's tweet about the article. https://twitter.com/elysiumffxiv/sta...55604715024385

[Felis]

I think this is disengenious. Its like saying that all of the statics that cleared second coil but didnt raid savage werent raid ready and that simply isnt true. The bottom line is that most raiders arent world first material but still want challenging content.

I think it is more like the people who cleared ex primals during 2.0 but not first Coil before 2.2 (and only 1 group cleared it before 2.1)
I can imagine that many people, who tried Alex S at the beginning, haven't expected that it will be so much harder than the normal mode.

[raelgun]

I also want to add that while the raiding community is the minority from a subscriber standpoint. It is the glue which binds this game together

Hardcore players may not be the blood for mmos but they are the backbone of any mmo, it breaks, the game breaks with little recovery, new players are drawn to PVE mmos because of the stuff they hear about the hardcore players have done, you can be sure that people heard about the so called WoW nerds raiding hardcore until the middle of the night with people around the region and the harrowing experience they supposedly go through in raids, this fuels people to want to go play it.

[Dante_V]

I may be wrong but middle of the road raiders probably make up the majority of raiders. It's too bad they are being left out in the cold.

I would most definitely agree with you. That's why I think Alex NM need to be that content. That coil. Then they can also go thru the motions of gradually adding echo and nerfs as people clear to allow more and more players in while those who really want a hardcore challenge move onto savage. There is no shortage of casual directed content in this game and having Alex NM faceroll (beat it in the df in 3 hours on the first day) easy was a serious mistake. It will also serve to invalidate the content completely once void ark drops. The 24 mans are the "casual raids" and give a means for the players who don't have the time to drop on a static to still get gear and raid level upgrades. If alex NM were of the mid tier difficulty, it wouldn't die out so quickly and you better believe that Alex normal will be a ghost town once 3.1 hits as there will be absolutely no incentive to run it when you can gear your alts and mains thru void ark aside from maybe a few pieces of filler gear. The only thing making it easier right off the bat did was shorten the life span and alienate a very passionate part of the community who now have nothing to do until 3.2 hits and I can promise you that if they take the same route that they did this time you will see a very core part of this community drop off and the "casuals" will soon follow with that.

[siverstorm]

Up until the release of the content I was genuinely surprised at Alex Normal. I was expecting it to be content harder than EX primals, not content easier than HM primals :/

Savage I figured would've been difficult but again I was expecting it to be more inline with SCoB savage difficulty (in terms of having lots of hard mechanics) than it actually is (in terms of being more gear/healer check than anything else).