Savage Clear rate being lower the Devs expected, good or a bad thing?

[DragonSlayer45]

Yoshi-P said they do not have the man power currently to do three modes, so the obvious choice needs to be what I just said.

Even though I do not wish for 3 modes, the "lack of man power" excuse is getting kind of old at this point, especially when you're a big company like Square Enix. A part of me is still hopeful with XI ending soon that they will grab the remaining developmental staff on that game and put them to work in XIV.

I can understand when ARR first launched since Square was taking a risk in reviving a game that received a widespread negative reception when many other companies would have just let it die out. However, two years later and with the game as big as it is now, there is no excuse for the small dev team anymore.

[Kallera]

Could the (over)usage of instakills and hard enrages be part of the issue?

I haven't exactly touched savage, been mostly doing normal because my static is still looking for that elusive 8th. But there does seem to be an issue with how many times people are willing to go through the raiding process repeatedly. Going through the same fight over and over, some members start losing morale.

[Miscreant]

I think Miscreant has the right of it, casual raiders (note the lack of 's there) are getting there, but given the lack of people willing to help them nail down strategies, it's taking a while. "But they can just watch a video, what's the hold up?" Because watching a video isn't learning the fight. It's just watching a video.

Sorry I didn't mean to give that impression, but I was more referring to the groups who can't raid frequently enough to be hardcore, which is the larger portion of the raiders. Quite a few groups groups have cleared A3 recently on my server and are working on A4 now, I imagine quite a lot of them will probably get it before the year is over which is well before 3.2. I don't understand the being taught aspect of Savage though you teach your self by observing what is going on, reading up and discussing mechanics with your party. This raid is harder than the Coils were, but all that really matters is clearing it before 3.2 so that you can move onto the next.

Umm... No. The last stats we saw for a4s clears was under 2,000 characters. Things might be getting better locally on your server, but most servers only have 1-2 groups clearing a4s. The only way people are going to get a full savage clear at this point is either by getting better gear or the content is nerfed.

The SREX weapons will help a few groups per server, but we are not going to see clear rates reach above 1% of the player base until there are major nerfs or the content is majorly out geared.

I'm not from a hc raiding server and we have at least 5 groups who have cleared it and quite a few working on the last floor, plenty of groups will clear it eventually, still another 3-5 months until 3.2

[zosia]

Even though I do not wish for 3 modes, the "lack of man power" excuse is getting kind of old at this point, especially when you're a big company like Square Enix. A part of me is still hopeful with XI ending soon that they will grab the remaining developmental staff on that game and put them to work in XIV.
I can understand when ARR first launched since Square was taking a risk in reviving a game that received a widespread negative reception when many other companies would have just let it die out. However, two years later and with the game as big as it is now, there is no excuse for the small dev team anymore.

I still get extremely frustrated with the dev team at times. I feel like they make some really weird choices (Lets make alex savage really hard.... we are surprised it ha such low clear rates), but I have gained a greater appreciation for the Dev teams budget.

SE, the company, is siphoning money this game, which is par for the course with any game company. However, SE the company is not pouring resources back into this game as much as they should be. I think the dev team is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They know that the players want and expect more and the dev team wants to deliver (I hope), but the CEO and who ever holds the purse strings is not giving Yoshida and his team the funding that is warranted.

I am still frustrated with design choices the team makes, but they have gained my sympathy to any budget or manpower excuse. If you want to be angry about server limits or them being understaffed, that anger is best directed at who ever calls the shots at SE HQ.

[Saccharin]

It's not the difficulty of it that's the problem. The problem is why would players be motivated to do it when the content was already completed in Alex normal. It doesn't make sense. For the weapon. For what? To be over powered in casual content for a couple months until the next raid? Not worth it. Not to mention animus weapons will probably be BIS anyway .

Those people weren't the target audience for Savage.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

95% of the game is catered to casuals. Why can't raids just be hard and then an even harder mode than that? You are basically saying there should be no hardcore content.

The game is 95% faceroll. If they made it start off faceroll then get slowly harder as you play progressively it wouldn't be such an issue. However when you have almost an entire game that is casual then throw ONE part that is SUPER HARDCORE! =O You understand what kind of issues that may bring?

NA Players are all about consistancy.

Those people weren't the target audience for Savage.

Everquest II got through this by making content and raids where the first bosses started off easier then got progressively harder as you get through the zone. This allowed people to gear up a bit on the easier parts of the zone and still see it all and get the story. It also meant that they only needed to design one zone instead of 10.

If they were truley aiming for the 5%, then .. well the development was kind of a waste of time. The 5% already cleared it and are bored now because there is so little to do.

Shard of Hate is a good example of this. It was still a hard zone and groups still wiped on the first few bosses because of how unique their mechanics were. Enemies inside the zone also respawned so if you didn't kill a boss fast enough you had to deal with adds.

The last boss in Shard of Hate, only a few guilds could kill him. However, the items he dropped were astounding.

[zosia]

I'm not from a hc raiding server and we have at least 5 groups who have cleared it and quite a few working on the last floor, plenty of groups will clear it eventually, still another 3-5 months until 3.2

http://xivsoul.com/

Your server is 7th population wise. It has over 200,000 (rounded down from 225,000 players to account for alts) players on it. If what you are saying is true, and you have 5 groups clearing a4s, that's 40 people. Right now, your server population shows a 0.02% clear rate for savage.

You are playing on one of the best servers and even if we take this argument to extreme lengths, such as assuming out of 225,000 players, only 50,000 have ever played at the level cap, thats still a meager 0.08% of your server population has cleared savage.

I am even willing to take this to an extreme saying that out of those 225,000 characters, only 30k play at the level cap. That's still only 0.13% of your server population has cleared savage and you play on one of the highest populated served.

Even if only 20k characters on your server played at the max level, that's still a 0.2% clear rate. If that number quintupled over the next three months, you would be at a whopping 1% clear rate for your server population.

On one of the best servers, with the most conservative estimates and assuming that clear rates will increase by multiplicative factor of 5, you will see a 1% clear rate among the population by 3.2. The numbers simply don't reflect well on alex savage's sustainability,

The reality is that you are seeing the best of the situation being on such a highly populated server, and even the best situation still leaves you with clear rates well under 1%

[Miscreant]

snip

Even though my server is big it's not the most raid orientated, both Ragnarok and Odin are the raiding servers for the EU and I'm sure both have quite a few more teams who have cleared Savage.

[zosia]

Even though my server is big it's not the most raid orientated, both Ragnarok and Odin are the raiding servers for the EU and I'm sure both have quite a few more teams who have cleared Savage.

I doubt that they are seeing triple digit clear rates, You could take that 40 men on your server, adjust it for a "raiding" server, and you would still see sub 1% clear rates.

The only real raid content in the game should have never been catered to such a small minority. Coil was fine and it looks like we ill be going back to something similar, something that appeals to a much larger raiding audience.

[Velhart]

I doubt that they are seeing triple digit clear rates, You could take that 40 men on your server, adjust it for a "raiding" server, and you would still see sub 1% clear rates.

The only real raid content in the game should have never been catered to such a small minority. Coil was fine and it looks like we ill be going back to something similar, something that appeals to a much larger raiding audience.

May I ask why -one- raid/dungeon in this game has to cater specifically to the casual market? Why shouldn't there be content for the best of the best? The 1% excuse is not viable. With that logic, no MMO's should have really hard end game raids.