To be honest, Alex Savage is a failure.

[Nalien]

You know how we lost a dungeon per update for more content like Diadem and Palace of the Dead? I wish they'd do that with Savage... It isn't popular content, so work on something different instead...

Now, don't go taking that as me suggesting we should drop "challenging" content entirely, I'm simply saying do something different with those resources... I'd say the biggest issue with Savage is one of accessibility, you need seven other people on the same page as you, and most can't be bothered with that... So scale it back, give us 4-man Savage encounters instead, that would be much more accessible to everyone, and challenging 4-man content has been something requested for a long time now...

Unless the 8-man requirement is somehow core to the raiding experience, I don't see much problem with that... We'd still get similarly challenging pieces of content, but it would be much more accessible, which means more people will attempt it and justifying gated story/etc. becomes much easier...

Alternatively, I'll default to an old suggestion;

Basically flip the current way Normal/Savage work, and implement the Normal mode after the Savage mode has been cleared...

New Alexander gets released, both Normal and Savage difficulty.
The first quest everyone does is for the Savage difficulty, Normal cannot be accessed.
This quest automatically fails the moment one group on your server finishes it.
Upon a group finishing this quest, the Wandering Minstrel now grants access to the Normal mode.
Since one can imagine some servers may never clear Savage, a date would be set upon World First for Normal to be unlocked.
Savage can still be challenged, and the current reward dynamic remains the same.

You can do some interesting things with this... For starters, it has a built in Server First acknowledger... If your group clears Savage for your server, not only can the Wandering Minstrel acknowledge that in the Normal mode quest, but that Savage quest which only one group can clear? You can attached something special to that... Essentially treat the cutting edge raiding community in a similar way to how PvP and Feast are being handled... Got Server First? Here's a piece of vanity armor/mount/minion/furniture/title/etc. that nobody else on your server will ever have... Other than the other seven people you cleared with, that is...

An exclusive reward like that might drum up some initial hype behind Savage, get more people interested in trying it out... I mean... Is there even a reward for even getting World First at this point? I mean yeah, Yoshida might say congratulations on the forums, but who cares? Mounts and Minions, on the other hand, a lot of people care about those... If everyone knew one was locked behind World/Server First... Well, if it doesn't generate interest in it, it will at the very least create some entertaining drama from entitled crybabies - Can't have enough of that these days...

Right now the only reward I see for Savage at all, is an item level boost which is both not required for any other content in the game, and entirely irrelevant in a game that burns through item levels at the rate XIV does... I have no interest in Savage for pretty much that exact reason... I don't care about the rewards at all, those rewards exist to make Savage easier, and I'm not going to follow the cyclical logic of "I raid to get better gear to raid!"... Even the story doesn't strike me as a good reward... I still haven't done T13, know why? Same reason I'm only just getting Kirin, I don't enjoy finding seven other people to jump rope with, meanwhile I have an absolute blast duoing content... That said, I have no problem with them locking such stuff behind Savage, pretty much for that reason... Not a lot of people cleared Coil when it was relevant, so what? A level cap came in and made clearing it trivial... Those resources weren't wasted on a 1% that cleared Coil, those cutscenes are still there and still available for people to go do...

[Kaurie]

You know how we lost a dungeon per update for more content like Diadem

Are you saying this was a good idea?

[Nalien]

Are you saying this was a good idea?

Yes? Diadem kinda sucks, but the developers should never stick to repeating the same sorry template over and over... Just repeating the same stale thing over and over is going to stagnate the game, they need to take risks making new types of content, rather than hoping their linear dungeon template can carry the game for a few more years...

That third dungeon really amounted to nothing more than the same corridor with a different paint job... I'll admit, I'm kind of lost when people complain about the state of Expert Roulette, two dungeons is repetitive? Really? Three wasn't? Christ... SE could produce ten dungeons for the Expert Roulette, but if they're all the same cookie cutter dungeons we currently get, I'd be bored of them pretty quickly anyway... I'd much rather take a chance on something like Diadem (which actually has plenty of potential, SE is just ignoring it, sadly) than stick to the same tired system...

When they do that, subs will begin dropping en masse.

I think you're vastly overestimating the number of people that care about Savage, and also entirely ignoring the rest of my post...

Like I said, unless 8-man requirements are the key defining point for raid content, I see no reason why we can't scale down challenging content from 8 to 4-man. We'd still have a similar sort of thing going on, we'd still have the challenging content for best rewards, but it would be far more accessible, and arguably easier to balance and fine tune...

[Kaurie]

Yes? Diadem kinda sucks, but the developers should never stick to repeating the same sorry template over and over... Just repeating the same stale thing over and over is going to stagnate the game, they need to take risks making new types of content, rather than hoping their linear dungeon template can carry the game for a few more years...

That third dungeon really amounted to nothing more than the same corridor with a different paint job... I'll admit, I'm kind of lost when people complain about the state of Expert Roulette, two dungeons is repetitive? Really? Three weren't? Christ... SE could produce ten dungeons for the Expert Roulette, but if they're all the same cookie cutter dungeons we currently get, I'd be bored of them pretty quickly anyway... I'd much rather take a chance on something like Diadem (which actually has plenty of potential, SE is just ignoring it, sadly) than stick to the same tired system...

I agree they shouldn't stick to repeating the same stale thing over and over, but in addition to dropping the 3rd dungeon - the other 2 have become increasingly uninspired. Dungeons are a big thing in MMO's and they don't all have to be the same thing. So I don't agree with taking resources away from dungeons, I'd agree with putting resources in it to make each one more unique in style, substance and flow. The last time I enjoyed a dungeon on release was Keeper of the Lake, Amdapor Hard and Wanderers Hard. I enjoyed all 3 of these. I've really, really, really hated Dusk Vigil, The Aery, Sohm Al, The Vault, Gubal Library, Fractals, Arboretum. I dislike Neverreap, Aetherochemical, Antitower and Lost City hard.

That said, I want dungeons that are like none of the above that add some mix to how it works. The devs have, for whatever reason, so few resources. They keep spreading them so thin that instead of making a few pieces of quality content, they are making loads of really bad content. Quality over quantity.

As for sticking to the same template. I agree, they need to branch out. However, the design team has showed that they are incapable of designing interesting content outside of their core. So, maybe they need to stick to their strengths.

[Mindy_Macready]

I think you're vastly overestimating the number of people that care about Savage, and also entirely ignoring the rest of my post...

That line of arguing is hyperbole. I can just as easily say "you're vastly underestimating the number of people that care about Savage" and we've accomplished nothing.

Also, please don't assume I haven't read your post, or I wouldn't have replied to it, thanks.

[Nalien]

That line of arguing is hyperbole. I can just as easily say "you're vastly underestimating the number of people that care about Savage" and we've accomplished nothing.

Yeah... Except SE provided census data on this;

That isn't clears, that's just people who entered... Less than 20% of the people who did Normal went on to enter A1S, there is quite clearly an issue here... Either people aren't interested, or it is inaccessible to them for whatever reason. I assume the former, while suggesting a fix for the later. Feel free to, you know, actually weigh in on that... It's old data for A1~4, but I really doubt much has changed since then... I imagine the Midas is much the same, while Gordias will have more numbers now (certainly with that Anima step), but that ~200k isn't even half this games estimated playerbase (last I checked that was 600k~700k).

Also, please don't assume I haven't read your post, or I wouldn't have replied to it, thanks.

How about actually responding to the suggestion then... Removing hardcore content from the game was not my suggestion, doing something different with it, and hopefully making it more accessible, was... Do you actually think people would quit en-mass if SE provided content that was just as rewarding and challenging, but easier to get into?

If you don't want me to assume, post more than a few bleedin' sentences...

[Ghishlain]

That isn't clears, that's just people who entered...

I wanted to correct this and say that the data you provided most likely are clear rates and that they probably incorrectly translated that text for the slide.

The reason I say this is because Elysium's A3S World First is dated July 28th, 2015. Since the data is taken between July 7th to August 21st, I'm pretty certain there were a handful of people who did walk into A4S by then. This difference in information should have you at least reconsider your stance a little.

16% clear rate for the first tier of the toughest content in the game sounds about right given the overall skill level of the player base (when comparing those who cleared normal versus cleared Savage). I imagine the amount of people who actually tried the content is at least double the clear rate. So, if you assume 70K people entered A1S, that's a 10% general population interest rate (based on your 700K player base total) and a 5% clear rate of the total population.

That isn't that bad in my mind for content designed for a much higher level of play. It would be interesting to see how many players in contrast attend / cleared / compete in things like Triple Triad, PvP, Chocobo Rising / Racing, and LoV.

*Has nothing else to add to the discussion and poofs away*

[Mindy_Macready]

Yeah... Except SE provided census data on this;

That isn't clears, that's just people who entered... Less than 20% of the people who did Normal went on to enter A1S, there is quite clearly an issue here... Either people aren't interested, or it is inaccessible to them for whatever reason. I assume the former, while suggesting a fix for the later. Feel free to, you know, actually weigh in on that...

Well, for one thing, you said yourself that you're making an assumption, so...you're not really actually providing evidence of anything besides "20% of people who did normal went on to enter A1S." How's that for a response? Just because you post an image with numbers doesn't make it evidence to your argument. It's an opinion based on an assumption.

Removing hardcore content from the game was not my suggestion, doing something different with it, and hopefully making it more accessible, was... Do you actually think people would quit en-mass if SE provided content that was just as rewarding and challenging, but easier to get into?

Don't put words in people's mouths if you want an actual response. I never said people would quit if SE "provided content that was just as rewarding and challenging, but easier to get into". I said people would quit if they "scaled back" and replaced the Savage 8-man encounters with 4-man encounters.

Think of the groups of friends that already exist and raid together. That'll go over well! Suddenly they're forced to cut their group in half, and aren't raiding together.

We already have LotA, Void Ark, etc because people wanted encounters with even more players per run.

If they cut their premier raid to 4-per, it'd be a disaster.

[Nalien]

Don't put words in people's mouths if you want an actual response. I never said people would quit if SE "provided content that was just as rewarding and challenging, but easier to get into". I said people would quit if they "scaled back" and replaced the Savage 8-man encounters with 4-man encounters.

If that was your intent, you should have quoted the part of my suggestion and actually said that... Quoting the opening line and just saying "lawl people will quit" gives me virtually nothing to go off... Had you replied more like this;

Think of the groups of friends that already exist and raid together. That'll go over well! Suddenly they're forced to cut their group in half, and aren't raiding together.

Initially, the past several posts could have entirely been avoided...

I really doubt current raiders would quit just because they have to cut their group in half, though... Heck, what exactly would be stopping a group of 8 from just switching around people? Sure, you're not doing the encounters as 8, but you can still work through the content and communicate as a group... I can perhaps see people being annoyed by downsizing groups, but I really can't imagine it's anything to quit over, and even if it was... It makes the content far more accessible, forming a static and getting everyone on at the same time and on the same page is one of the main barriers to entry on Savage... Easing that up is something even existing groups benefit from...

The only group I can really see as being totally screwed over by such a change would be the merc groups... 4-man provides a much tighter window to balance, could potentially make carrying someone all but impossible... Though I can only see that as a good thing...

Can always just twist the idea around, too... Drop Normal instead... Rather than having an easy mode to make the story/etc. accessible, we have a 4-man mode to do just that, while retaining similar difficulty... No more easy mode, but then I never got why we really needed that... The 24-man raid was the "Babies First Raid", now we have two of those and item level is further inflated because of it...

[Mindy_Macready]

You know how we lost a dungeon per update for more content like Diadem and Palace of the Dead? I wish they'd do that with Savage... It isn't popular content, so work on something different instead...

When they do that, subs will begin dropping en masse.