Patch 3.1 Information

[Kenji1134]

I think part of the inherent difficulty with implementing a "middle ground" version after Story and Savage is the rewards.

Most people "try" Savage because it offers the best gear in the game. We've seen this before, once Tomestone upgrade tokens are available from the 24 man, the number of Savage runs will sharply drop, or at least Savage progression.
In general, if the hardest difficulty does not also provide the best gear, then most people wont bother with it at all, aside from the "Super Elites" who will clear it once during the World First races and be done with it.

The question becomes, what can we offer to the hardcore players to make them want to repeatedly clear the most difficult version?
- If we make the ilvl of Savage 10 higher than that of Normal (Normal being tougher than Story), then a lot of people will opt to skip Normal if they can kinda clear the earlier parts of Savage, or will farm Normal and ignore Savage entirely due to excessive difficulty.
- Suppose we make the ilvl the same? Then we need to somehow reward the Savage clears, say Savage drop 3x as many chests? Or each clear of Savage gives you 4 tokens instead of 1, so every clear you can be rewarded for your efforts. Or simply tack on the "Augmented Glowing" effect to Savage drops, so when someone who's rocking Savage gear walks into Idyllshire, all da gobbies be like: "Damn, we got a badass over here!"

Personally I would lean more towards offering a greater volume of rewards for clearing Savage, and apply a similar methodology to tuning Normal based on Savage.

For example, suppose we design Savage with a set of mechanics, which have a frequency, damage, and execution duration (how long you have to deal with the mechanic before you fail).
For Normal, cut the health of bosses down to 75%, mechanics frequency to 66%, damage to 75%, and increase execution duration by 50%.
So if a Savage boss has 4M hp, its Normal equivalent would have 3M. A tank buster that comes every 100s would come every 150s. Said tank buster in Savage would have a base damage of 30k, in Normal it'd be 22k. And if in Savage you get targeted for a mechanic and have 10 seconds to execute it, in Normal you'd have 15.

Same general fight, just easier. And in being a toned down version of the Savage fight, it will better prepare people to deal with the "real" mechanics in Savage.

[zosia]

Funny how they do that while nerfing every other piece of content that's already incredibly easy. I'm 99% sure it wasn't them expecting people to git gud, but rather to make it so world first players don't clear it in a week or two, which is still in poor design as it was a locked behind gear and not mechanics for them.

Pretty much this. It's like the dev team were not happy that the absolute best players in the game could beat their raiding content a few weeks after it came out. It's something that is hard to stop. It happens in every MMO. The only way the WoW dev team has been able to slow down mythic raiders is by having four difficulties.

3.0 raiding felt like a wild ride with captain Ahab trying to lance his white whale. It makes me happy that they are going to step away from the 3.0 model and try something else.

[Velhart]

snip

Gear distribution is easy enough to handle and balance. Get the armor through normal mode, then get the tokens from Savage to upgrade them. Letting you dye the gear is more than enough to show you have higher tier content to other players if we are talking about showing off.

[RiceisNice]

I think part of the inherent difficulty with implementing a "middle ground" version after Story and Savage is the rewards.

Most people "try" Savage because it offers the best gear in the game. We've seen this before, once Tomestone upgrade tokens are available from the 24 man, the number of Savage runs will sharply drop, or at least Savage progression.
"

Except the problem we have now is that player interest, clear rate, and possibly overall subscription has dropped sharply because of how easy normal is in contrast to how hard savage is.

[Kenji1134]

Except the problem we have now is that player interest, clear rate, and possibly overall subscription has dropped sharply because of how easy normal is in contrast to how hard savage is.

Doesnt that in and of itself provide an infallible basis for the need for a "Normal" mode that is between Story and Savage?
What we call Alex Normal really is just Story Mode, it has trash, it is longer, and its meant to tell a story.
Savage Mode has no trash, its just you and a boss ready to put you 6...hundred... feet under.
All we need is a good middle ground, which Yoshida said he considered, but the question is time and resources... Maybe if the XI team would help?

[RiceisNice]

Doesnt that in and of itself provide an infallible basis for the need for a "Normal" mode that is between Story and Savage?
What we call Alex Normal really is just Story Mode, it has trash, it is longer, and its meant to tell a story.
Savage Mode has no trash, its just you and a boss ready to put you 6...hundred... feet under.
All we need is a good middle ground, which Yoshida said he considered, but the question is time and resources... Maybe if the XI team would help?

It does, but I meant it as in response to you saying "if there's no meaningful reward, people won't do savage". It's not nessescarly true; speaking for my group, we did SCoB savage after we had finished FCoB as something to do. The rewards are secondary, the content is primary.

[Airget]

Same general fight, just easier. And in being a toned down version of the Savage fight, it will better prepare people to deal with the "real" mechanics in Savage.

If anything perhaps what's missing from Savage is the lack of ability to choose. I think for all the effort it takes to complete Savage 4, on a first run of beating it all players should be able to pick which weapon they want, at least. I think that would work nice instead of turning it into a grind of getting through difficult content hoping you might get better gear all players from the raid the first time they beat it and turn in quest can obtain 1 weapon of their choice and the unique mount.

Though that is currently what's lacking in this game, you reach the top, but honestly there isn't much to do with the best battle gear or best crafted/gathering gear. Gathering in itself feels a tad redundant to upgrade gear for because in the end you don't have much influence over how many items you can gain or increase node opportunities based on gather/perception. The GP is limited so much and there isn't really away to increase it to a point to make gathering more engaging that it does become a tad dull. And of course in the case of crafting some of the higher tier furniture are gated through savage content and even then they are just slight alterations to what you gain in normal mode. It's a bit discouraging to take a step back and think, oh boy by getting carpenter fully geared I can make a savage mode furniture which rarely drops and even if it does no one will want ti cause they could just use the cheaper option.

Options, a lot are lacking in that case it will be interesting to see what they do with the next stage of Alexander, it will be a bit disappointing if they do away with the story mode, but maybe they want to decrease the difficulty of savage? I think when it comes to that it's a case of people wanting difficulty they can be, not actual difficult content. They want something that says "hard" and for it to be beatable instead of something that is actually hard and they of course become discouraged when they can't be it because they blame the game instead of learning and becoming better to overcome the situation.

[Kaze3434]

Honestly, these patch notes are nothing but a disappointment.
I pretty much lost all interest in 3.1

could be because these arent patch notes.

[TlainaToha]

I just hope the removal of the same story/savage diffculity doesn't mean those of us who can't / don't want to do savage get locked out of the story. I don't mind if story mode gets bumped up in difficulty a bit but it will feel pretty bait and switch if they jack it all the way up to savage diffculity and remove our option to get a proper easier story mode.

[RiceisNice]

I just hope the removal of the same story/savage diffculity doesn't mean those of us who can't / don't want to do savage get locked out of the story. I don't mind if story mode gets bumped up in difficulty a bit but it will feel pretty bait and switch if they jack it all the way up to savage diffculity and remove our option to get a proper easier story mode.

A normal mode becomes more accessible over time through overgearing and echo, as well as the eventual DF introduction. This ultimately becomes unnessescary with how easy the intial normal mode Alexander is now (considering it;s tuned to even be DFable and be do-able with slackers) Nerfing Savage to become easier defeats the whole point of it's premise (which is literally, a harder version of Alexander with better rewards). The model they had previously with coil was fine imo, except for the period of time in SCob where the fights were designed in such a way that you can't make it easier without changing the mechanics.