My thinking about Alex normal/savage. Issue IMHO inside

[Martin_Arcainess]

You're a fool if you seriously believe that the large amount of statics falling apart once they hit A3S isn't related to the raid itself.

lol dood it was you who said that it destroys most static and I'm asking why. :P

Wrong. The most common complaints is that A3S is both poorly designed and is also a brick wall that destroys statics. Including groups that did SCOB savage.

If a Static can't beat a raid due to it's difficulty then quits then it's not the raid fault, people wanted a harder raid they got it.

[Velhart]

snip

I'm not saying that AS3 should not be difficult. It is still poorly designed and it is only frustrating, not challenging. Challenging is not just stacking a mechanic on top of a mechanic that is stacked on top of another mechanic while you have to look out for another mechanic while meeting the brutal DPS checks. I hate to keep comparing to WoW, but they knew how to make Heroic boss fights right in most occasion. Knew how to spice up the mechanics and make it much harder without over complicating itself.

AS3 is definitely one of the most poorly designed fights I have ever seen produced in this game. This is coming from someone who dealt with animation lock on IfritEX in 1.xx.

Can't say much on AS4 yet since I haven't been there, but I have not heard much complaints on it's mechanics.

[Rin_Kuroi]

I'm pretty happy with alex nm. A lot of people in my fc who never raided are now doing it. I like the idea of having an easy raid that introduces people to the idea. Raider brain drain is a thing and having a raid that's welcoming to new comers helps replenish the raider population. My real problem is the massive difficulty jump for a3s/a4s. There's basically two raids instances for midcore players (ie the largest population of raiders).

[Hito-Shura]

I don't know how to op managed to keep his cool while replying to some of these replies... Some just makes me cringe at how bad they are...

Is opposing a valid thread with bad arguments in an attempt to sound intelligent and experienced a new fad on this forum?

[Ibi]

If a Static can't beat a raid due to it's difficulty then quits then it's not the raid fault, people wanted a harder raid they got it.

Presumably you wouldn't call a raid that no one could beat it a successful raid. So where is the threshold between it being the raid's fault, and a specific group's fault? Is the raid fine as long as there's a single group that can beat it? What about if 1% of the groups that attempt it can beat it? 10%? 50%? At what point does it cease being the raid's fault?

And that's ignoring that the overlap between the people who asked for a harder raid (which was a small fraction of the raiding player base, let alone the player base as a whole) and the people whose statics are breaking on A3S is likely minuscule.

The statics breaking on A3S were probably quite happy with the difficulty of Final Coil, either pre- or post-echo.

[Alahra]

If a Static can't beat a raid due to it's difficulty then quits then it's not the raid fault, people wanted a harder raid they got it.

Not everyone wanted harder raids, though. I was quite happy with FCOB's difficulty, and we weren't really informed prior to release that Savage was going to be a level of difficulty beyond that. The information we got in general suggested that Savage was just the new name for the standard raid difficulty to differentiate it from the "Normal" mode. Instead, we learned after release that Savage leaned more toward the difficulty of SCOB (Savage).

[KarstenS]

Last I recall, Turn 2 is a gauntlet of goblins you have to fight. WoW is basically set up like this except not separated by instances. Go in, kill trash mobs, kill mini-boss sometimes, fight big boss, rinse and repeat.

CT1 was in my eyes the best designed instance in FF14 to show how fights between the bosses can be interesting. In CT2 they destroyed that line, but got a little bit back to it in CT3.

[Velhart]

CT1 was in my eyes the best designed instance in FF14 to show how fights between the bosses can be interesting. In CT2 they destroyed that line, but got a little bit back to it in CT3.

Difference is CT is built to be done in one sitting. Each turn takes days to weeks to complete. As much as it is not seamless, it is organized keeping it the way it is, instanced per turn. Maybe at best they can make it seem like you are naturally transiting via zoning and let you re-enter at that point.

Not everyone wanted harder raids, though. I was quite happy with FCOB's difficulty, and we weren't really informed prior to release that Savage was going to be a level of difficulty beyond that. The information we got in general suggested that Savage was just the new name for the standard raid difficulty to differentiate it from the "Normal" mode. Instead, we learned after release that Savage leaned more toward the difficulty of SCOB (Savage).

I was actually giving SE credit at first because I thought at first that Normal would be Coil level difficulty, and Savage being SCOB(Savage) hard. Then I saw Yoshi-P said that people will complete Normal in under a few hours. Such awful design the raids are right now.

[Alahra]

CT1 was in my eyes the best designed instance in FF14 to show how fights between the bosses can be interesting. In CT2 they destroyed that line, but got a little bit back to it in CT3.

LoTA was great content for its time--it was the only one of the three that kept me interested long enough to farm a piece every week while it was still on lockout. I got hardly any pieces from ST, and while I usually got something from WoD, I did skip a number of weeks.

I was actually giving SE credit at first because I thought at first that Normal would be Coil level difficulty, and Savage being SCOB(Savage) hard. Then I saw Yoshi-P said that people will complete Normal in under a few hours. Such awful design the raids are right now.

They were pretty clear from the beginning that the normal mode was going to be a "story" mode, so I wasn't expecting it to be anywhere near Coil difficulty. However, it's probably easier than Ravana and Bismarck HMs, which is really silly. I just can't believe they made the gulf between both difficulty modes so large.

[Brannigan]

What is your experience with this? Is this an issue with any of you raiders out there? Thank you for your time.

I finally cleared AS4 last night. I think the current raid tier shows the extreme weakness of making only 4 bosses. The vast majority of my play time for the past couple of months has been on this one boss alone. I think the major problems with the Alexander raid so far are:


1) Extreme difficulty jump between 2 and 3 means that if your group has a hard time grasping something, you're stuck getting victories on two bosses a week before either throwing countless hours at 3/4 or not logging in except for tomestones.

2) Small number of bosses makes the difficulty jump seem worse. If there were four bosses before living liquid it wouldn't be quite as bad to be stuck on him, for example. I know this would increase development time, but I don't think anyone would mind if they re-used models and mechanics in order to provide a few filler bosses. They can drop items that re-skin models and aren't part of a set (something this game seems to lack almost entirely) and stuff like that.

3) The removal of trash entirely indicates an inability to design interesting trash packs and rewards. Trash is an important part of dungeons. It can be made to be fun and provide the player with small victories. It can even drop stuff like materia or whatever.

4) The wide difficulty gap between normal and savage means that normal basically creates no new savage raiders. It's a chore for people who are capable of savage and doesn't improve the skills of anyone who isn't.

Overall I think AS1 is the worst set of bosses we've gotten in FFXIV by a good margin, while Second Coil (with some of its savage equivalents, if the numbers were toned down a little) is the best by far. The three original extreme primals and Leviathan extreme are also still really good. They should take boss design cues from those bosses while just making MORE of them. Or, if not more bosses in Alexander itself, more stuff to do on that level of difficulty and rewards every week. I don't think people would mind if difficulty progression went something like AS1->AS2->Lost City of Amdapor Extreme->Zahar'ak Extreme->AS3->Blitzball Arena Extreme->AS4 as long as there was a smooth progression of difficulty and rewards.

Right now you do AS1->AS2->wait for tomestones for weeks while hoping for good AS2 drops->AS3->Start hating members of your static because you spend so much time with them->AS4. Everything else (""""expert"""" dungeons, Alex normal) is a chore if you're even remotely capable of clearing AS1.

CT1 was in my eyes the best designed instance in FF14 to show how fights between the bosses can be interesting. In CT2 they destroyed that line, but got a little bit back to it in CT3.

I also agree with this. Labyrinth of the Ancients and World of Darkness, if they were tuned to be like Second Coil level difficulty and for 8 players, would pretty much be perfect raids. Maybe have encounters like Atomos drop items as well, though.