Diadem and Savage - I can't deal with it anymore

[Zazriel]

You are very lucky, also I cannot disagree with your opinion has my opinion was a generalization.

[Zephanoa]

I respectfully disagree with the op, but am glad you are voicing your opinion. I am a casual and I value everyone's perspective.

I think everything is good as intended. It's looking like the term BIS is going the wayside and I for one am happy for it. I have to PUG things. I don't have the ability to run a static because of my job. Everyone should probably come to terms with the fact that the linear gear model is probably going away. I am pro-diadem and hope that it continues to evolve. I can bash my face in this content for an hour while reading a news article, or even working on something else. Not all content is going to make everyone happy, and that's the way it goes. Verminion, I am looking at you.

While I haven't done any Savage I will say that it's not properly incentivized. Picking up A1S right now would be purely for sport at this point. There is nothing that makes me want to clear any of that content. I don't think locking out story is the way to do it. I am not sold on BIS being the way to do it either. I think that if there were exclusive types of gear with special attributes/functions, along with titles and mounts it would be worth it. I mean after all I did run EX primals for ponies. Regarding the story, it's only the beginning. We are in uncharted territory and we don't understand Alexander and what the total goal is for it.

Yes 2.0 was recycled content because... it was. 1.0 happened, they had assets to use and needed to turn this thing around. 3.0 has been completely new with familiar elements. I hope that you can find a game that meets your expectations, but; I also wish you to keep an open mind. Best of luck!

[Miscreant]

You are very lucky, also I cannot disagree with your opinion has my opinion was a generalization.

Thank you, obviously I can't speak for all servers, NA servers might approach the game differently to us in the EU.

[Yasuhiro]

All of OP's points are why I'm picking up Final Fantasy XI the only FF game I've not played and trying that out because I honestly don't feel like my rewards amount to anything.
At the moment I'm just going to casually log in to talk to friends but I think once FFXV hit and this game has not improved on the raiding scene then I'll give it a pass until I hear about 4.0, 5.0 whatever.0 turning the game around and making it feel rewarding to earn the best gear in the game and the bosses have interesting mechanics.
A1S, the boss now drops poop on the ground? That's Dante Must Die difficulty right there.

Vertical gear progression is boring, it becomes outdated and all it's good for is just to glamour.
I'm not to sure if this is a modern MMO trend, vertical gear that becomes obsolete only ever played this game, runescape and FFXI just recently
on a more postitive note, Alexander is my favorite Final Fantasy eidolon/summon/primal and he looks pretty cool in this game, I guess?

Only ever done A1S and A2S, can't say I'm as hardcore as OP, no way, but still I don't feel like I have anything to really look forward to.
Got a 210 piece from savage after hours of practice learning a fight? congrats to me, I could have spent 90 minutes in Diadem and got an even better piece!

[RiceisNice]

Even if you were to compare Alexander to BCoB's story in a vaccum, it still comparably sucks. The environments are repetitive, there's no sense of mystery or tension when exploring it, the new characters have flat personalities, and the fact we go in and out of alexander inbetween floors in storyline wise makes a complete pacebreaker in the actual "raid" of Alexander.

The problem that the raiding community runs into IMO is that there's a huge discrepancy of difficulty between normal and savage, where the middleground (usually your typical static, like the ones that formed during 2.4 and onward for FCoB) have very little fights that are tuned for them. Alexander normal is so undertuned so that it can be cleared for DF, while Savage 3 and onward is comparable to that of savage (something that usually does not the very high-end of people unless they have nothing else to raid but to go onward, but at the time they had FCoB, not a DF-difficulty raid). There's no gradual increase of difficulty and there's no connection or a bridge between the two.

Diadem, I honestly got tired of it after the first week. It became a grindfest not only because it was the quickest way to get drops in there, but it was also practically the only thing going for it. I've mentioned it in other diadem topics, there's no sense of exploration (no treasure maps or actually tracking footprints) or cooperation of the combat and gathering classes due to some node locations being completely safe. They had a good concept with caves that bottleneck players because it prevents flying, but the caves have no high ranked mobs, unique treasures, or unique nodes. It has no payoff while being a higher time sink than exploring the open world.

There's so many things I feel they dropped the ball on with 3.0 (which includes the initial state of some combat jobs, their concepts, crafting in general, etc, and it's only gotten worse with 3.1 content and the long pause inbetween.

[Evtrai]

We shoudl rename Diadem the land of Diablo III where a swarm of zombie players brainlessly grind mobs and pray RNG they get good pieces. Like in Diablo III! Isn't it fun? No.

You are giving too much discredit to Diablo III, at least in Diablo III the point of it is getting legendary/Set armor with unique stats, with the point of building a character on your desired custom build with weapons/armor with unique effects, to more efficiently run even harder dificulty tiers and escalate on leaderboards.

Here in FFXIV you are just grinding gear with boring numeric values randomly hitting buttons while your group screams that they aren't getting credit, while you stare at some members be afk then get the gear you want to do absolutely nothing with it other than wait for 3.2 so the gear is replaced and get a new skin with new numeric values.

[Dante_V]

I agree that Savage is lackluster over all.

Disagree aboutr the loot stuff, the patch after the raid patch has ALWAYS been the "catch up" patch and has ALWAYS allowed for player to get raid level gear (but not all bis) so this really isn't anything different then what has been going on.

[RiceisNice]

I agree that Savage is lackluster over all.

Disagree aboutr the loot stuff, the patch after the raid patch has ALWAYS been the "catch up" patch and has ALWAYS allowed for player to get raid level gear (but not all bis) so this really isn't anything different then what has been going on.

For some people (including me), it's less about the catch up gear, but more about the content that gives the catch up. If Diadem required things like using notorious treasure maps gained from gathering, or exclusive cave/thick forest nodes (where you can't fly) that needed a party of combat to protect their gatherers, they'd be onto something here. But instead, you get combat gear from combat (IE: grinding and farming mobs) and gathering items from gathering. There's no relationship between the two unless the players themselves enforce it (and you'd have to go extremely out of your way for that because it's not required)

[zosia]

I agree that Savage is lackluster over all.

Disagree aboutr the loot stuff, the patch after the raid patch has ALWAYS been the "catch up" patch and has ALWAYS allowed for player to get raid level gear (but not all bis) so this really isn't anything different then what has been going on.

That's what has changed and this is the last straw for many people. Who wants to even bother stepping foot into a raid when you can do sky hunts for BiS by large margins? You only need to look at the other DF queue times to know that BiS in diadem was a HUGE mistake.

[Dante_V]

I think the saddest part is that zerging diadem is more interesting than the Alexander raid. I personally have no issue with casual players rocking BiS. I do find that when equalization among ilvl occurs from the player base it really shows which people are actually skilled and which people were getting carried along by their team and gear. But as far as other player getting BiS i could care less. They are slowly removing the only aspects that made gearing fun (decently weighted secondaries, penta-melding main stats, str/vit balancing for tanks) to the point where it is becoming even more elementary than it was at the beginning.