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

[Colorful]

That's not really fair. Normal was designed to be facerolled by every skill level on week 1. Savage was designed to be a long term goal. Plus they aren't separate groups, everyone doing savage also did normal.

Clear rates just generally aren't a good way to judge the hard content, particularly if you're only looking at a4. Plenty of people are still stuck on a3, looking at only a4 clears exclusively to compare to normal is extremely one sided. Attempt rates would be better if they existed, but since they don't a1 clear numbers would be a lot better. A4 clears aren't indicative of how many people are interested in savage.

And what of it? 50% got to see content that they otherwise would have never seen, no? Is that not more value for their subscription money now that they've got a raid for both patches? It's also likely that they ran the content for 4-5 weeks to complete their set, that's what I consider to be a healthy long term goal, and gives people incentive to subscribe and keep logging in. Now the casuals won't unsub for the even number patches, because let's face it, what do they bring other than a raid usually? Tome farming, fun fun. I'll give you the second point as that's a legitimate point, 49.5% of players. Even with a hard mode being Final Coil, the numbers on that were something like 10%, so 40% of the entire playerbase got new value to their subscription, at very little extra development time. Can you honestly tell me that in the game's best interest it would be better to please 0.5% rather than 40%? I believe not. It's better to please the casuals and the midcore raiders, and then the extreme raiders when and if possible.

I'm also going to address people claiming that 95% of the content is for casuals. Do you not play that content? Do they have a check that looks into your profile that and blocks you from accessing that content? No, you enjoy Gold Saucer, MSQ, the 24 man raids, new dungeons, extreme trials, etc. just as much as anyone else does, and if you don't, you can't make the argument that the 0.5% is a valuable asset to have for SE and there are plenty of raid focused MMOs elsewhere, this isn't one of them.

Daily cap again, so edit:

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Exactly, it's losing players due to the extreme difficulty of Savage. I've heard many, many horror stories of the statics disbanding due to A3S. As for A1S having 30,000+ clears at this point, you're right, but A1S is on par with the difficulty of 2nd/3rd Coil, which brings me back to my main point that the raid should be balanced around that difficulty level as that's where the majority of the players are at. Having a Normal and Hard mode is far better than having Normal and Savage.

Honestly I don't do much of the casual content, no. I haven't been to gold saucer in months, because why bother. New dungeons? Tome farming, fun fun. Ex trials are already irrelevant, one was irrelevant as soon as it was added. MSQ is a one and done. There hasn't been a 24 man for about 5 months now.

Which is understandable as there's no reason to go the Gold Saucer, but you have to remember that this applies to all players and not just the elite. People claim that there's so much content for casuals to enjoy but in reality that isn't the case, GS hasn't been updated in so long, no one likes tome farming, EX trials are irrlevant for everyone and the MSQ is done for everyone, etc. I meant when they were released though, but as of now no one has content. This 95% of players people keep bringing up means absolutely nothing. As for raid centric games, WoW and WildStar are both very raid centric, with raids definitely being far more well built than FFXIV's raids for the most part.

Gear for gear's own sake is not a healthy goal, even less so long term.

Fair point, but smashing your head against the wall that is A3S for weeks on end progressing 1% more each time due to gear isn't very healthy either. It's demoralising to players and as I said, has made many statics disband altogether. Raiding at this level is not healthy for the game no matter how you spin it. As for where I got the clear numbers on A4S, I read it on Reddit but I can't seem to find a source. Asking about it on Reddit, will report back if I get a response.

[Recaldy]

Most of my initiative to beat Coil was the story since there was no other options. Here with Alexander I solved that problem by doing the easier option which gave me the story. (Not much of a story either so far which is disappointing.)

[Malevicton]

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Gear for gear's own sake is not a healthy goal, even less so long term. If that's your only incentive you're gonna get burned out quick since this is a vertical mmo. I like how you followed that up with "Tome farming, fun fun." :P

It doesn't have to be a binary between casual and hardcore. An mmo needs both of those groups to be healthy, and right now it's hemorrhaging midcore+ players like crazy. If you had to choose, then sure, maybe focus midcore and casual first. But you don't have to. Also, they aren't. There isn't anything to really do as midcore. There's casual content and nothing else.

Honestly I don't do much of the casual content, no. I haven't been to gold saucer in months, because why bother. New dungeons? Tome farming, fun fun. Ex trials are already irrelevant, one was irrelevant as soon as it was added. MSQ is a one and done. There hasn't been a 24 man for about 5 months now.

There really aren't many raid focused mmo's out there right now. Pretty much everyone's going freemium or casual to cash in on games that don't have any plans for longevity.

[Rose-Wild]

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 .

Call me crazy but maybe people play the game for fun and challenging fights?

[Airget]

I don't think 3 difficulties would help. Honestly think a better method could be a "training" mode that allows you to take time with certain phases til you feel comfortable with them. Current issue is obvious but at same time I can see how for hardcore it's not really fun to play the trial and error game.

I see the issue as so in martial arts you learn forms, they could be 10-20 steps of combos like let's just say a 5 step combo:
Jab-Jab-Round kick
Side Kick-Back leg round kick-Hook punch
Roll-explosive jumping kick-Side Kick
Side Kick-Back leg round kick-Side Kick
Jab-Backhand-hook

Now when learning this logically you do one step at a time, as you learn part A, you practice part B and so on and so on, and then when you understand it all you execute it. However the design of Savage doesn't offer an opportunity to learn unless you do trial and error which does sadly offer an illusion of challenge because it's like you are doing your form a-b-c and then you get to a part you don't understand you mess it up but instead of the instructor going ok we practice d now, you start right back at a, and until you get d right you have to keep starting from the beginning instead of working on the part where you are having the issue. It turns into a huge time sink and I can understand why it's not fun, if players had the opportunity to test run during a phase they could then at least get a better hold of it instead of going "oh shit 493 slimes instead of 40 from Normal PANICCCCC!" which is I imagine what happens first time it occurs, you kinda gotta roll with the punches and adapt but you aren't really being given a fair challenge rather you are being forced to go through trial and error.


I think what would be best is the ability to unlock "Training Mode" for certain portions of a fight when you reach said phase. So say you are fighting Shiva EX and your group gets to the last phase but they mess it up. Instead of having to do the whole fight all over again, since you got to that phase you would have the option to go into "Training Mode" and select that phase to start from. The game would give the leader the option to remove all vulnerability from players once everyone is in position and then bam that phase starts. The players can then get a better feel of it without feeling frustrated with having to start from square one and in the long run it would help ease that frustration brought about from doing content that just turns into trial and error.

[hagare]

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isn't that what learning parties are for?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I, unfortunately was the only person wanting to try savage in my fc/static, and then I had a bit of a crisis irl, and was out for a month ony to come back to everyone aside from my best friend and my fiance having left my fc entirely, so now I'm pretty well stuck in a way that I havee no a1s exp so I can't go into most pf's for it, and have no friends that want to do it lol

While I am nowhere near Savage at the moment (still pushing through 2.1), it is something I hope to run. So if you're still looking for newbie groups by then, I'd love to hop aboard. ^^

[Starbirth]

Most of my initiative to beat Coil was the story since there was no other options. Here with Alexander I solved that problem by doing the easier option which gave me the story. (Not much of a story either so far which is disappointing.)

... and it took a day to beat for the people that dived right into Alex NM on the fist day which was a large chunk of the player base at the time. Over 50% of active players have beaten alex NM vs. 5% for savage. That should tell you something is wrong with how SE is doing things. The endgame story should be tied to coil difficulty content because the difficulty helps increase the epic feel of it, but you gotta work for it. This is a MMO after all.

[Melch]

Personally, I found WoW's decision to have half a million difficulty levels for their raids to be hilariously unnecessary if you have any desire to actually raid, and not simply doing it because "oh well, nothing else to do". That said, adding more difficulties would solve the problem of Savage being to hard (still laughable imo) .

A3S is laughable especially when you don't step foot in Alexander savage at all. And everyone can clear content on youtube : you search for A4S, you click play and at the end of the video you have cleared. See? It's laughable.

[bL4Ck]

Low clear rate is a bad thing imho, lots of statics are going through pains because of that. A game should entertain and reward for your time, being stuck on a fight for more than a 2 months, leading people to stop showing up for raids and completely stop caring for progression, it's not fun. I know there's a lot of good statics that at least got through A3S, but if not all of your 8 players are that dedicated you're not going anywhere, and you can't even blame them if the fight is so stupid hard.
I can only welcome a multi difficulty raid, normal/hard mode should be the norm, with savage being the e-peen difficulty released months later for those that cleared everything quickly and feel better than the rest.