Exploratory Islands should be the leading Endgame content NOT Alex Savage

[Wolf_Gang]

I think SE is making a mistake by having Exploration be "catch up" content.
Binding coil proved to be a terrible format for progression.

Having to wait 6 months for just 4 bosses gives little payoff for a long period of time. And its very exclusive, 90% of community can't find a group. And the small percentage that do, trivializes the content to a weekly hour run.
It serves more as an item level bottle neck than a fun experience.

Exploratory Islands has all the makings of leading endgame content.
+ FC inclusive (up to 24 players)
+ Items with random stats (near-infinite progression)
+ Lots of room for expansion (they can add uber versions of S-ranked mobs)
+ varying difficulty (they can range anywhere as easy a hunt or hard as a savage boss)
+ No weekly lockouts.

SE had it right with T6-9s. Savage was just an extra challenge for the small community of hardcore players and Alex savage should follow in the same footsteps. 3.2 should release both modes at the same time, normal for story, savage for challengers (titles/achievements/glamour) but no extra gear.

Meanwhile, Exploratory islands should have the high item level gear.

[Alahra]

I'm pretty hopeful for this content. I have a lot of patience for grind and I like having optimal gear sets (which is the main reason I did Coil in ARR), so I'm hoping this lets me bypass Savage entirely, as it's far too punishing for my taste.

I do think Savage made more sense as a special bonus mode, and I'd be totally fine with it if it hadn't taken the place of our normal raiding tiers from ARR in terms of progression.

[Dante_V]

I'm going to hold my opinion off until it actually drops. If this ends up just being hunts in the sky it will be no where needed in depth to hold the hardcore players attention. The highest ilvl gear should come from the hardest content in the game and also be rare.

[melisande]

uhhh.. wth is an exploratory island? Doesn't sound like Final Fantasy... wrong game?

[Wolf_Gang]

uhhh.. wth is an exploratory island? Doesn't sound like Final Fantasy... wrong game?

Its new content in 3.1 where you take FC airships to randomly generated islands and battle notorious monsters (NMs/HNM). They could drop aetherial gear with random secondary stats up to i210.

[Nihility]

uhhh.. wth is an exploratory island? Doesn't sound like Final Fantasy... wrong game?

They're for the next big patch.
From the sounds of how they described it...

You fly your company airship off to a treasure hunt that sounds a lot like a 24 man version of the treasure maps
and it rewards item level 210 aetherial gear meaning if your patient enough for RNG it will give best in slot for every single slot

[StrejdaTom]

I don't think it is wise or needed to give highest iLvl gear ONLY from the most facerollable content in game (which exploration will be, no matter what you say, it is 24man content and such content always was faceroll in FFXIV).

Also considering that the looks and stats will be random, it wouldn't be wise to give the best gear ONLY from content with so much RNG, it would only make people burned out even more.

I can live with exploration giving the same ilvl gear as savage. But I see no reason to take gear away from savage, especially when it takes so long to clear it.

Also Alexander Savage =/= Coil Savage
Coil Normal was a bit easier than Alexander, but was still hard raid. Alex Normal came as an answer for people who wanted to see the story of raids, but Alex Savage is what Coil Normal used to be in 2.X. Coil Savage came only as an experiment from developers.

Please don't compare Alex Normal to Coil Normal, that is like comparing Story Titan and Extreme Titan.

[Kenji1134]

Mmm, dunno, Coil Normal never had dps checks so steep that you had tanks stacking STR to tanking parts of the fight in a DPS stance to meet the enrage.

In Yoshi-P's words, Alex Savage is the difficulty of what FCoB Savage would have been. Its basically a way to see how long they could keep the World First guilds occupied.
I think a fair comparison would be going into T13 in full i100 and no Echo, and see how well you do.

As far as the exploratory islands, perhaps the best thing that could come of that would be a "randomly selected" landscape, with 3-4 packs of "randomly selected" trash mobs, and a "randomly selected/generated boss".

Imagine for a moment, that SE makes a set of say 50 small zone maps, 10 of which are entrance, and 10 are exit, and you can combine 3 or 4 to make a complete zone.

For trash packs we can pick from any of the available trash mobs in the game, at random, and raise their stats to a generic "raid level", pick 3-4 mobs to form 3-4 packs. Maybe make the selection process iterative and give trash mobs "value", so a pack would have a total value of 10, meaning it could have say 5 2-point mobs, or a 6-point plus 2 2-point. Make trash mildly interesting but not overwhelming.

Now the fun part, the bosses.

For bosses, start with a database of similar elemental/structural types.
Fill the database with the skeleton graphics, and associated abilities for each boss.
When the zone is created, a "Boss Structure" is chosen at random. So you could get a primal type, mechanical, humanoid, animal, etc. Once the type is set, randomly take lets say 4-5 bosses from the database for that type.
First we choose the boss's phase structure and primary gimmicks for the phases, so it could be Nael, Bahamut, Titan... basically pick the phase structure from the major bosses, including MSQ major bosses like Singularity Reactor.
Now that the phase structure and major gimmicks are set, add 3-4 abilities from random bosses in the same type. Since they come from the same type database, they will kinda make sense, no animal bosses using Primal abilities, or Humanoids howling at the moon, and so forth.
The harder part will be combining parts of the graphical skeletons to make a modified boss appearance. The core skeleton should resemble the primary boss, but details from the other bosses should be used to augment it, and give an overall hint on what to expect.

And there you have it, you can go into a pseudo-randomly generated dungeon (made from 5 parts chosen from 50 options), fight some randomly selected trash (chosen in a way to be challenging but not unfair), and then fight a boss which feels like an "old boss", but with mechanics thrown in from similar bosses to spice things up and keep everyone in their toes.
It'll be like fighting EVERYTHING all over again, at random, AT ONCE!!!

- Of course there will need to be some kind of lockout and reroll, because as with all rng based systems, it is possible to "randomly" create a boss who's mechanics are just soooo skewed in one direction that you cannot deal with them... Like a boss that cycles through 4 aoes and your healers simply run out of mana, or a boss with 3 tank busters... Hello VIT tanks!

[Gilthas]

I'll wait and see how these exploratory islands work before I make conclusions.

After all, I hate how they implemented hunts.

[Alahra]

Mmm, dunno, Coil Normal never had dps checks so steep that you had tanks stacking STR to tanking parts of the fight in a DPS stance to meet the enrage.

Yes, the DPS checks in Alex (Savage) are definitely tighter than they ever were in FCOB. Those going for server firsts and the like have always pressed this hard, but the difference with Savage compared to old Coil is that even with significant gear upgrades, a heavy focus on tank and healer DPS still seems to be required.