To be honest, Alex Savage is a failure.

[bass9020]

Well, as it stands, the main point in doing Savage is the challenge. Sure, you also get the best gear currently available, but that's a side thing. This means that only people interested in challenging themselves will be inclined to do the content. If this is a failure, that means challenging content as such is a failure and the last thing you want to do is to incentivize a failure - ideally, you want to discontinue support to allocate ressources to something successful instead. So I'd be careful with calling it that. It's a niché appeal like chocobo racing or Lord of Verminion and should be treated as such - with semi regular, low cost updates that befit its appeal.

Seriously. From the point of view of a content designer, I'd seriously ask myself why I should even develop content that needs to be immensely incentivized to even be cleared once. Might as well not bother and create something fun instead.

Encounter design is a different thing of course - that might be lacking. I wouldn't know. But the system as such, yeah...most people just argue against what they likely intent without even realizing it.

And that's why Coil was by far the best option it gave you everything in one type of difficultly that over time got easier and easier.

[Jpec07]

I think it would be hard for any raid to beat the story of Binding Coils. Spoilers behind the block:

In Binding Coils, we dive into the depths of Hydaelyn to face off against a foe that was thought to have been defeated, who has demonstrated awesome power in breaking out of a moon-sized prison and basically obliterating the realm. The opening cutscene of ARR shows just how big--and how big a threat--Bahamut is. Binding Coils was the bow on the end of the story, and had fantastic tie-ins with everything that happened in the story itself, and even brought back some old characters who we'd thought dead from Bahamut's gigaflare. The threat is pronounced in the opening cinematic, expanded on in the raid, and dealt with at the end of the patch in pretty epic fashion.

The problem with the story in Alexander, by comparison, is that we are never shown how menacing the threat actually is. We have plenty of exposition about how horrible the elder primal is, and how he'll bleed the land dry, but we aren't shown this in any capacity, nor given reason to care. What characters there are also don't seem particularly important, and the entire raid is a sideshow to the story of Heavensward, and FFXIV in general.

In Heavensward, the opening cinematic shows us fighting Nidhogg (or what looks like Nidhogg, anyway). The most challenging raid content, then, if we're following the same pattern, would have us answering some threat associated with Nidhogg and his brood. Instead, we have Alexander, who hasn't demonstrated any real threat beyond draining the Hinterlands' aether (especially since the Hinterlands themselves are either unoccupied, or are only occupied by the Goblins who summoned Alexander in the first place.

[Hysterior]

I was raiding from the start of 2.0 until AS3... Alexander killed my wish to raid

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

I think Coil's difficulty definately increased the longevity of the content. I guess it's cool that Alexander is more accessable, but i think they went way too far. Now the entire raid can be beaten in a day... which means after a few weeks, you probably already beat the bosses like 10-20 times and it's not that fun anymore. We barely halfway into 3.2 and I don't even do Alexander anymore, and the next raid tier doesn't come out till 3.4 lol.

They prob should have made normal mode more like coil with echo, then slowly made it easier over time for people that are potentially stuck on it.

[bass9020]

I think Coil's difficulty definately increased the longevity of the content. I guess it's cool that Alexander is more accessable, but i think they went way too far. Now the entire raid can be beaten in a day... which means after a few weeks, you prob already beat the bosses like 10-20 times and it's not that fun anymore.

They prob should have made normal mode more like coil with echo, then slowly made it easier over time for people that are potentially stuck on it.

They did they went extreme easy and extreme hard(in a way) and didn't leave a middle ground. Alexander "normal" is no different than the 24 man raids now only difference is its 8 man and not 24.

[Klamor]

I feel like part of the issue is that they made the distinction between Normal-mode and Savage-mode as far as difficulties are concerned, but they (SE, and the Casual Playerbase) still consider it "raiding." Normal-mode isn't raiding by any stretch of the imagination. It's clearable with the Duty Finder (differences between NA and JP DFs aside) on the first day of release. That's not a raid. That's a glorified expert dungeon... using the term 'expert' very loosely here.

In my opinion, it was an utterly terrible decision to give the story to the dungeon-version of the raid. Some would even argue that Normal-mode is the stepping stone to get into savage. True, that's how it's been designed. But WTF is the actual point in having a casual-version of a raid being the stepping stone for the more difficult version? It should be the Extreme Mode Primals that are the stepping stones for the raids, and yet you've got all these people that are just loving the fact they can clear the easy version of Gordias or Midas and yet can't clear Sephirot Extreme.

Raiding is about ass-backwards here. There's no actual ladder to climb, because when it comes to first-week progression it's still either A) spend millions of gil on crafted and melded gear to get into the raid, or B) have the gear from the raid that you need to actually clear the raid. Take away all incentive to actually raid other than "But it's challenging, to prove how pro you are" and you take away the incentive to the majority of the minority that actually raids in the first place.

I feel like it's kind of on the same path as to why the Relic Weapon no longer requires Primal clears to obtain, because too many people had issues clearing Titan Hard Mode, and God-forbid we lock anything behind actual difficult content.

[CookieMonsta]

The elephant in the room, is that the Old SCOB Savage difficulty has now become the norm for progression. Very few cleared the old savage SCOB raids and those that did, did it for the challenge only. The old coils were tuned mostly perfect for the vast majority of raiders. Now, you are forcing a very large and dwindling pool of raiders attuned to coil difficulties to do savage and the net result is decimation.

But I feel expressing this opinion on this forum is futile, the community is pretty much split between those that have cleared savage and those that have not. The ones who cleared will argue that the difficulty is good and you should be rewarded, the uncleared ones will argue that they shouldn't be forced to do savage difficulty to progress with gear.

It ultimately boils down to Alex NM being a mistake, its too undertuned to be worthwile and Savage being too hard for the majority.

[Lone-wolfe-02]

While the story is lacking, the Midas fights are leagues more fun than Gordias ever was.

[Lithe]

Turn 3 was great.
A race to the finish, trying to counter-step friends into bouncing the wrong way on the pad. Oh the good times.
We need more Turn 3's.

YES YES YES XD I loved doing that! However, I didn't start raiding until we could queue whatever turn, so I missed out on doing that every week. My HC raider friend hates that turn b/c it was worthless, so I keep harrassing my him to sell me a t3 farm for lulz. I think he hates me at this point

I don't have a static atm because of work (boo.), but I did sub for a friend's group and we got to A6S. I must say, I enjoy midas so much more than gordas. However, I love mechanics...soooo ya c:. The story sucks this is true, but im OK with that for the time being.

[Thayos]

The big mistake with Coil wasn't locking the storyline behind hardcore progression raids that most people couldn't clear; rather, it was locking such an epic, integral part of the story behind that wall.

This game needs a diversified endgame scene, and each type of endgame should have its own form of lore. The raid system can have an exclusive storyline, but it really shouldn't be anything so epic that most of the game's playerbase is alienated.

The biggest issue now is endgame is stagnant. Most people don't have the scheduling flexibility to join or create raiding statics, and without a static, this content quickly becomes frustrating and not fun. This game needs some form of actual endgame -- perhaps something where a sheer grind replaces Alexander's extreme difficulty -- that casual and midcore players (and even FC groups of various sizes) can enjoy.

Until that glaring need is satisfied, SE will keep trying to make raiding a one-size-fits-all thing and nobody will be happy.