The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

[Alahra]

Look at the other perspective, the people that want to do things like raid only have savage mode to look toward. It's tune up so high that even ilvl supplementation doesn't help, and you don't nessescarly want to nerf savage mode if it's intent is that it's supposed to be hard. They're seeking a challenge, but it's not nessescarly the challenge they want, but this only became evident (and in large strides no less) with Alexander Savage in comparison to FCoB.

Don't get me wrong, I think Savage is stupid, and I think the gap between NM and Savage is FAR too wide, and I also think they've done a poor job over the last year or two of developing mid-core content. I think a lot of the issue, though, is that SE has (at least up until this point) not really considered "mid-core content" a thing they should actually be concerned with.

Their error has largely been in assuming that there are two player types when it comes to player engagement with difficult content (non-raider vs. raider), but there are actually three, with "raiders" being split into raider and hardcore raider as you mentioned.

From their comments regarding Titan EX and EX primals in general, I think they were actually very disappointed with the clear rates for that content. They seem to have actually expected a lot more of the playerbase to use them as a gateway into Coil (which is how they worked for me, actually—I was never a raider before this game), but they took the lesson from them that a majority of the playerbase doesn't want content that hard. That has always greatly disappointed me and I've pretty much ignored EX primals ever since Leviathan because the reward to effort ratio just doesn't feel satisfying to me—they're just hard enough that getting stop-gap gear just doesn't feel rewarding for them.