Raid Dificulty levles - request to SE

[Nestama]

Savage mode should be extra story that fleshes each area out. It should give the same rewards it currently does.

But then we'll just go back to the Coil days of people begging SE to "nerf content plz" because they can't experience the story.

SE should just make it so that Story Mode raids come out on the odd numbered patches (so Mhachi and Alexander Story, as an example) and the midcore and hardcore raids come out on even numbers. The midcore and hardcore raids being unrelated to the 'Normal' and each other.

Downside to this idea is that it may delay patches because of the amount of work it would require.

[Eidolon]

But then we'll just go back to the Coil days of people begging SE to "nerf content plz" because they can't experience the story.

SE should just make it so that Story Mode raids come out on the odd numbered patches (so Mhachi and Alexander Story, as an example) and the midcore and hardcore raids come out on even numbers. The midcore and hardcore raids being unrelated to the 'Normal' and each other.

Downside to this idea is that it may delay patches because of the amount of work it would require.

Why would they ask for nerfs anymore than they ask for it now? While I like your idea, I don't quite see how you connect the dots. They also only nerfed when the content became irrelevent - and even then, they kept the final turn (Turn 5/9) pretty unchanged every time, at that. The only nerfs we really got for those were frequently Echo, at best. And that just made it easier to reach dps/hps/tank checks.



However, as far as making it so it comes out in the Odd number instead of Even number, I dont' find this to be a bad idea. It serves to help in a catchup-patch. The only issue is you create a gap during the start of every patch that would need filling, which isn't currently being addressed (Except by crafted gear - and trust me : I definitely don't want to give crafters a one-up as the only way to progress gear-wise every other patch.)

A way to handle this may to be just reduce the gear by 10 ilevels (See in our current situation: Midan would be i210 instead of i220, and the Lore would be i220, and the Savage would be i230) which helps out all around in keeping all jobs relevent, keeping the gear itself relevant longer, and helps combat the power keep.

The problem if you remove the gear and weekly stuff, will result in people never run it again. Run it 1 time for story and never return, making impossible for new people complete it because the lack of players.

I think Alexader is good as is it.

For me, the current system presents 3 major problems:

1) it makes your alt jobs harder to keep relevant. Because every other patch sees a 30 ilevel raise, the old alt jobs we brought up become irrelevant extremely fast. The baseline becomes Alexamder story gear.

2) it worstens the power creep we saw in the 2.x series. Heck we're currently 3-4x stronger than 2.x. If this happens every expansion we're gonna see absurd numbers - just like wow did.

3) the content becomes irrelevant the moment the next major raid patch comes out. They tried to fight this with anima but let's face it - no one runs Alexander Gordias like they were running coil in the later patches (Especially the most major of 'gatekeeper' turns, because they were trying to catch up to raiders and join the pool - which also served as a great skill-check and kept the community pretty healthy.)

The solution? Make story mode just that - a STORY mode. You don't need gear for it. As a matter of fact, you could actually conceivably give each turn a daily or weekly quest that would give you the previous Savage items (max ilevel) as a reward. This would help people optimize alts, get glamor, keep it relevant, AND mitigate the power creep to its previous levels.

Even if you don't give the previous savage raid rewards, you can add a set of armor there in some way to help. The point is: STORY mode should be a STORY mode; NOT a part of the raid cycle for savage raiders.

Leave trying to force people into outdated content to the Anima grind, which even then imo fails pretty badly to draw people back to the Alexander line because of how long it takes to grind out the items.

[Noxifer]

2) it worstens the power creep we saw in the 2.x series. Heck we're currently 3-4x stronger than 2.x. If this happens every expansion we're gonna see absurd numbers - just like wow did.

And not only do we get ilvl upgrades of 30 ilvls instead of 20, but the stat increases are twice that. Made comparison between gear pieces from level 50 gear, i think i120 and i130 or something, and then between i190 and i200, and the difference was close to the double. Meaning that ilvl-wise, 3.0-3.4 (last ilvl upgrade) could be compared to getting patch 2.0-2.6, but statwise it's more comparable to getting 2.0-2.12 (if there were 12 major patches instead of said 12 being counted as a subpatch to 2.1). Math might be off, but I hope what I mean is clear enough ^^;

I get that people (in general) like to feel powerful, and a difference of 2-4 def/mdef and 4-6 points of your main stat on one piece makes little difference when you look at the numbers we're currently sporting (even if said number would be a lot smaller if we didn't have all this gear bloat to begin with), but... it does mean that the power creep is very real. What will it be during 4.0? An increase of 40 ilvls every other patch, with 3x the stat increase we had at 50? It just... doesn't bode well ^^;
(And don't even let me get started on the whole "hey, you get a new gearset every level between 50 and 60!" -_- Sure, the levels take exponentially longer than they did before 50, but still... it makes it close to impossible to gear up, because unless you're really lucky, by the time you've gotten together the entire lvl51 dungeon gear set, you've most likely dinged 52 or even 53 already and don't need it anymore. ;_; )

Sorry for the off-topic ramble. It just bugs me ^^;

As for the raid itself... I don't know if it needs that much adjustment. Though I do think the idea of "don't give loot from normal, but give it a repeatable quest to gain previous raid tier's loot" is an interesting one. You just need to figure out what to do with the first normal tier, or people's motivation to run it will only last until they've gone through it once (for story and to unlock the next one).

I also agree that there needs to be a lot more diversity in the things to do at max level, to keep people interested for at least two out of those three months until next patch.