A3S nerfs incoming

[Kallera]

right, because there is no other content for casual players to do? There is a veritable drought of content aimed at the casual audience in this game? Yeah right.

Assuming they are up to date, they have the same amount of content raiders have minus whatever they cannot unlock, and they get burned out with wipe after wipe too.

That AS3 that broke a tank's patience was soneone else's experience with T4 sans echo, or another person's experience with t13.

[zosia]

Assuming they are up to date, they have the same amount of content raiders have minus whatever they cannot unlock, and they get burned out with wipe after wipe too.

That AS3 that broke a tank's patience was soneone else's experience with T4 sans echo, or another person's experience with t13.

Casual players also have the same amount of content to do as raiders, they just choose to not raid, the same way I choose not to do chocobo races. Your argument can be made about any person in the game regardless of what content they choose to do.

I'm starting to think you don't even pay attention to what Yoshida says and make it all up. He stated that he considers Normal very successful and that he was glad many people got to clear it, while Savage has unexpectedly low clear rates (don't know why he was surprised). From what, how did you manage to get "Normal is going and Savage is going to remain."? It seems to me that Savage is going to tuned lower, likely somewhere in between Second Coil and Savage, while Normal either remains, or is tuned to a higher level similar to that of EX primals (the originally advertised difficulty). Either way, you're misinformed.

In the end it just boils down to how much players they want to appeal to, and that's the majority. Assuming 300,000 have cleared normal, 80,000 have cleared A1S (which would be similar difficulty to a lower tuned savage I'd assume), and 5,000 have cleared A4S, removing Savage and opting in for Normal + Extreme mode would result in 375,000 appeased players. Now, if you remove Normal and Keep Extreme + Savage you get 80,000 happy players, resulting in just under 300,000 unhappy players. Seems like common sense to me as for what they'll do.

There is more to these equations than just "how many people will see it." Player retention, replayability, and longevity are also valid questions that devs ask themsevles when making this content. Alex normal retains very few players because it has a low replayability and most players spent about six weeks (crap longivity) in there to get a set of gear. Why make two modes when one will suffice? ARR raids probably now have similar clear rates to alex normal. Why bother spending development resources on two modes when they can just put a 40% echo in later and boost the clear rates into the hundreds of thousands?

[Kiara]

I think normal Coil had the perfect difficulty. Savage Alexander is really too much. When statics are disbanding left and right because they can't pass dps checks, you know there's a problem.

A good portion of the player base continue to play because they raid. If you make the raid too challenging, where 99% raiders (not players, raiders) can't clear it and end up disbanding then you're killing off your own player base.

This. Totally agree.

I never understood WHY Yoshi P and the Dev Team decided to *increase* the End Game difficulty that severely. When 2.0 ended, I still knew plenty of players (mainstream, casual and semi-hardcore) who still DIDN'T clear Final Coil of Bahamut T13 yet.

Yet for 3.0, they decide to UP the difficulty?

I get that they want to keep the top End Game Raiders happy (and seriously, mad props to the hardcore that clear Savage!), but we've seen in the Live Letter Presentations... only a TINY percent of the entire Player Base actually has stepped foot in Alexander Savage 4, let alone beat it.

It feels like the Combat Team / Yoshi P wanted to make the content JUST for the World's Top ~5 - 10 Raid Groups, 99% of the rest of the players be damned.

That's just not healthy for the long run of this game. I hope they fix this.

[Kallera]

Casual players also have the same amount of content to do as raiders, they just choose to not raid, the same way I choose not to do chocobo races. Your argument can be made about any person in the game regardless of what content they choose to do.

So why would inconvieniencing the audience that is clearing and partaking in normal difficulty help the raider crowd that is breaking on savage content? That's not an improvement. That's going back to shutting people out of the experience altogether.

[Colorful]

snip

And that 6 weeks is $15+ that they may not have seen otherwise had they not included the content, no? Even numbered patches have what, 2 dungeons and Esoteric grinding for the casual audience. You're out of your mind if you believe that's going to retain players, if we're talking longevity with content for the masses it would be best to do away with raid content altogether and create some absurd grind that no one enjoys. That's the thing, there's more to it then longevity or a grind, there's having fun. As difficult as it may be for you to imagine, people do have fun with Normal Mode Alexander and the Void Ark, the Void Ark is the most fun I've had in this game since I ran LoTA for the first time actually. If I've had fun and a good experience, I'll retain my subscription, if I'm forced to grind two dungeons for Esoteric gear that I may not like the appearance of I'll remain unsubscribed until the next part of the Sky Pirate series.

[zosia]

So why would inconvieniencing the audience that is clearing and partaking in normal difficulty help the raider crowd that is breaking on savage content? That's not an improvement. That's going back to shutting people out of the experience altogether.

Because it won't trivialize half of the raiding rewards from day one? Like the gear's appearance? Just raid normal and get the look. Like the story? Just raid normal and get that too.

There are sooooo little incentives for raiding right now that people have to server transfer to gilgamesh just to have a hope at getting a full savage clear. The only incentive for clearing raid content in this game is a titleless achievement

And that 6 weeks is $15+ that they may not have seen otherwise had they not included the content, no? Even numbered patches have what, 2 dungeons and Esoteric grinding for the casual audience. You're out of yourmind if you believe that's going to retain players, if we're talking longevity with content for the masses it would be best to do away with raid content altogether and create some absurd grind that no one enjoys. That's the thing, there's more to it then longevity or a grind, there's having fun. As difficult as it may be for you to imagine, people do have fun with Normal Mode Alexander and the Void Ark, the Void Ark is the most fun I've had in this game since I ran LoTA for the first time actually. If I've had fun and a good experience, I'll retain my subscription, if I'm forced to grind two dungeons for Esoteric gear that I may not like the appearance of I'll remain unsubscribed until the next part of the Sky Pirate series.

Only if people sub based on alex normal, which no one really does. Alex normal has been irrelevant for how many months now? Alex normal was invalidated months before 3.1 so I fail to see your point. These forums are littered with post from raider and non-raider alike stating how much they hate alex normal for one reason or another. Crap loot system, bad story, bad players, etc etc... you can pick which ever justification you like.

There is more to this game than eso grinding, just like you are making an argument that fun is some sort of aspect I don't consider. If casual players get bored of grinding esos, then they can do one of the many non-raiding activities available to them. Alex Normal was not the sole reason for sustaining ANYONE's sub past July, it had absolutely no staying power and you will not convince me otherwise. I don't believe for a single instance that alex normal stayed some large loss of casual players at the start of a brand new expansion.

[whiskeybravo]

I thought about transferring to Gilga before I canceled sub. But I don't want to raid Alex Savage anymore, even if they paid me xD

[Colorful]

snip

Neither of us know the sub numbers, but the developers are well aware of them. Why people were subscribed, in comparison to other patches, what content they regularly participated in, what content they didn't participate in, etc. They have all that data and will utilize it in making their decision, rather than base it off the emotions of a few hardcore posters on the forums ranting. Normal's difficulty had nothing to do with the story, if that were the case Void Ark would be universally dismissed as garbage which is not the case, just about everyone I've interacted with loved the story of Void Ark so I'm unsure why you feel the need to bring that up.

[Fynlar]

Well, is 3.2 there is a pretty high chance story mode will be gone.

Yeah, that's... extremely unlikely. They wouldn't start with a story mode and then not follow through.

[zosia]

Neither of us know the sub numbers, but the developers are well aware of them. Why people were subscribed, in comparison to other patches, what content they regularly participated in, what content they didn't participate in, etc. They have all that data and will utilize it in making their decision, rather than base it off the emotions of a few hardcore posters on the forums ranting. Normal's difficulty had nothing to do with the story, if that were the case Void Ark would be universally dismissed as garbage which is not the case, just about everyone I've interacted with loved the story of Void Ark so I'm unsure why you feel the need to bring that up.

because you're saying alex normal had staying power and I disagree. btw, nice job slipping in some personal attacks, you're acting no better than the people you accuse.