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

[Ophie-Mio]

Our group just stopped raiding when the lack of new content dried up. We just got tired of it. We had been raiding since the first Coils and most of us just agreed to take a break. We had already seen the story involved with Alexander and the gear was the exact same in terms of looks to its easy counterpart.

Why go through the effort at that point? Mandze knows what's up.

[Alahra]

It's a bad thing.

One of the most problematic consequences of the high difficulty level of Savage is the smaller pool of players capable of and/or interested in clearing it. That causes a lot of problem for recruiting, as there aren't enough available players to support a large number of groups. This can kind of snowball, too, in that if there aren't a lot of groups, it's harder for folks to learn the fights and get engaged with raiding, causing more players to step away from the raiding scene over time.

The smaller the raiding community gets, the harder it is to justify the manpower and time spent creating content for that community. There has to be some kind of middle ground--enough players need to be engaging with (and coming back to) the content for long enough that the development time is actually worth it.

Savage modes in and of themselves are not bad. Anecdotally, though, my server had about the same number of groups that cleared SCOB (Savage) that have been clearing Alexander (Savage), which was a rather small fraction of those that were clearing SCOB itself. The raiding community's shrunk substantially here, and some longtime groups left the server entirely.

[CGMidlander]

There's nothing wrong with savage being savage.
What is wrong is the lack of other things to do.

[zosia]

1% being able to clear != 1% attempting it.

How many games do you play and don't finish .

Also if if was too easy people would simply do it and be done and never repeat it after gearing up. Instead this forces people to become better players.

Go run a raid group and try replacing someone like a tank or healer once you're on a4s. Let me know how it works out for you. You are skimming the surface of the issues here. Even with SREX weapons next week, only a handful of groups will be getting clears. This whole "git gud" argument has destroyed raiding communities across a majority of the servers. There is no content tier out there for the average joe raider.

Most of the people I knew who ran Coil have stopped raiding now, and many of them have left the game entirely. Normal Alex is a face-roll. Savage is boring up until A3S, and then A3S is a months-long face bashing to get absolutely nothing worthwhile-- the gear all looks the same, we've already seen the cutscenes on day one in Alex Normal, and fights aren't even fun. I guess that's a good thing if SE wanted to kill raiding for the majority of people who ran and enjoyed Coil.

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[RiceisNice]

So, then what is a better solution? The current meta will destroy this game's raiding community so something has to change. It really does not matter, they said they will not be using the same difficulty division for 3.2. We are probably going to get normal coil difficulty level back. So, you're right, our conversation is done.



I don't understand the distinction you are making, if you agree, disagree or are just commenting. I think coil without the echo was geared towards the general raiding population. I agree coil with echo was more for the casual crowd and that nerfing savage alex or SCOB seems to directly contradict the idea of savage.

Mostly on the commenting since I'm not too caught up on whose on what side of the argument. My stance on the matter is that they should have content that appeals to the general raiding population (going by your description) is utmost importance since they make up for a good chunk of the community. The casual crowd would still be able to attempt said content and might take a step up, but the alternative of waiting until it gets nerfed is also there (not to mention this is also retroactive by the time content comes out due to eso gear and the like). On top of that, you usally have content like airship exploration and the 24-mans to fill that casual niche anyway on top of the inevitable nerfs to normal mode. Savage should still cater to the high-end, and like you agree, nerfing this would contradict the whole point of it.

From what I'm seeing, velhart wants the the two difficulties to initially appeal to the hardcores and the general raiders, while the casuals would eventually seep into the older content (which was formerly for the general raiders) and savage would stay as is. It's the model that they had used for coils (minus savage on FCoB, but SCoB was still there), and for the most part it worked (at least, better than the mess we have now). It might just be misinterpretation or different impressions, but I think he's taking your comment in the wrong context.

[Saccharin]

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.

That was a long time ago and most the MMO audience just don't want to do that now. back then you'd probably find that most of those players were what people would call hardcore back then, able to spend a significant amount of time in the game.

MMO player base in general is going to be alot older sure to past games like Everquest. Younger gamers are more likely to be attracted to thing like MOBAs and shooters.

The older players are likely to have less time to spend in an MMO with full time jobs, family etc. 8 man raids and casual content is likely going to be more suited to the majority of them.

[zosia]

Mostly on the commenting since I'm not too caught up on whose on what side of the argument. My stance on the matter is that they should have content that appeals to the general raiding population (going by your description) is utmost importance since they make up for a good chunk of the community. The casual crowd would still be able to attempt said content and might take a step up, but the alternative of waiting until it gets nerfed is also there (not to mention this is also retroactive by the time content comes out due to eso gear and the like). On top of that, you usally have content like airship exploration and the 24-mans to fill that casual niche anyway on top of the inevitable nerfs to normal mode. Savage should still cater to the high-end, and like you agree, nerfing this would contradict the whole point of it.From what I'm seeing, velhart wants the the two difficulties to initially appeal to the hardcores and the general raiders, while the casuals would eventually seep into the older content (which was formerly for the general raiders) and savage would stay as is. It's the model that they had used for coils (minus savage on FCoB, but SCoB was still there), and for the most part it worked (at least, better than the mess we have now). It might just be misinterpretation or different impressions, but I think he's taking your comment in the wrong context.

yeah, I think we all agree on that. It would be perfect if we had normal alex = coil 'without echo' difficulty and savage alex as it stands now. I just don't think that is a move SE will make since they always favor the more casual player. That's why I am being pragmatic about this.

We can keep the current meta and see interest in raiding die off over time (excluding the elite raiders) or we can shift to something SE is more likely to do, which is have the easy and normal version. I rather have a robust midcore raiding community comprising roughly 10% of a server population than a petite elite community that comprises less than 1% of a server population.

[Velhart]

From what I'm seeing, velhart wants the the two difficulties to initially appeal to the hardcores and the general raiders, while the casuals would eventually seep into the older content (which was formerly for the general raiders) and savage would stay as is. It's the model that they had used for coils (minus savage on FCoB, but SCoB was still there), and for the most part it worked (at least, better than the mess we have now). It might just be misinterpretation or different impressions, but I think he's taking your comment in the wrong context.

What I am getting from him is they should cater to the largest audience possible for content that is meant to be hard and in Savage mode's case, brutally difficult. The content is not meant for a large audience, but the said people having difficulties can wait till echo buff. It is the best balance in the content. It appeals to normal raiders and hardcore raiders. People might condemn me for comparing to WoW, but they used that structure for years successfully. I don't agree with the easy mode they put in either, but it doesn't truly affect the raiding experience in the long run. The reality of FFXIV is unless the raid team wants to step up their game, is to only have two difficulty settings. I would rather cater to people wanting more long term raid content than one real easy raid and one challenging raid.

Again, this content is not meant for the large audience, never meant to be, the numbers argument does not hold much water. It does however need to be properly balanced for normal and hardcore raiders, and the set up similar to SCoB is the way to go, just done better. That balance 3.0 raids are lacking is why people are quitting raiding.

[Mike555]

The problem isnt even the difficulty. Even if it was massively easier and saw clear rates comparable to BCoB it would be remembered as the most lackluster raid to date. Expecting players to spend months in it, 90% of that time being spent progressing on _2_ encounters, one of which is the single worst designed fight I have long since seen in an MMO is laughable
Gordias has:
awful story
awful environments
awful enemy design (the only saving grace being living liquid but even then it's no nael or bahamut, not by a long shot)
awful metagame
awful mechanics
awful loot distribution
Good music
Personally I've just given up on this entirely. I'm sick of watching SE throw darts at a board, hoping to hit something. Call me back when they can make a raid that has more than 4 bosses, maybe then I'll actually care.

[Gaddes]

Probably been mentioned already, but the extreme vertical progression of this game is hurting Savage as well. It's bad enough that the story and fights aren't up to snuff with Coil, but what's really the point in making something that you'll smash your head against trying to beat when within a month or two it'll already be out-geared? I hesitate to mention old-FFXI here, but it's on the other side of the spectrum with how it used to be so deep in horizontal progression, where the grind and push to clear and repeatedly farm tough content was worth it because at least the gear remained BiS for years, not weeks.