Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[zosia]

I do. I raided and cleared all of Coil before echo. The difference is Coil bosses were better tuned for the majority of raiders, the fights and bosses were more interesting, the music was better, and the story was leagues better. Alex Savage isn't awful because normal exists, it's awful because it's awful.

Normal took away 2/4 primary raiding rewards. Drive to uncover the story behind the raid and the look of raid gear is not unique. Furthermore, raiding providing the best gear in the game is also not part of the picture. So really, the mountain top of FFXIV's end game, alex savage, is only 1/4th as rewarding as mythic raiding in wow.

You don't think that is a problem?

This is a prime example of why no one wants to play this game. There is no reason to do content while it's relevant. You can take as many months off as you like, come back for a month, sweep up a bunch of now easy to obtain rewards and then unsub.

[Thayos]

This game won't have a midcore, ever. You can hope for it, you can pray for it, but it's never happening. Yoshida killed midcore raiding when he left the coil model behind for gordias savage.

This game CAN still have a midcore endgame community, though. We just need more to do besides typical raiding.

The desire is there. It's why so many of us were so frustrated with Diadem, and why Deep Dungeons generated so much buzz (even though it wasn't made to be endgame). This game has scores of players who want to dive in, but they don't want to swim in the raiding pool.

[Moomba33]

I'm glad we got Alex normal. Never got past t9 during ARR and it sucked watching the scenes on youtube instead of with my character. Also glad we got unsync in Heavensward so I could finally go back and get those scenes in my journal.

To me the weakness of Alex was that it didn't have the buildup of Coil. Coil had the 1.0 finale/ARR opening building up Bahamut and the mystery of why he disappeared. Even unsync Final Coil was epic for me with those fights and that music.

Alex suddenly introduced a bunch of new characters and an enemy not shown to do anything (yes we're told he drains aether but we never see any impact).
The Goblins make it hard to take seriously but Gordias also didn't do much to play up their comedy with the fights just being robots.

Midas was a huge improvement in my opinion by playing up the comedy more. I had a lot of fun in all four Midas normal fights especially A5 and A8.

I don't care if SE gives Savage better loot or holds back story mode for a patch to give raiders more incentive but I sincerely hope we keep story mode moving forward.

More endgame content in general would be welcome. I'm all for adding relevant gear to PVP, revamped Diadem, future Palace of the Dead floors ect so everyone can choose a progression path they're interested in.

[zosia]

This game CAN still have a midcore endgame community, those. We just need more to do besides typical raiding.

what? more diadem? more palace of the dead? more aquapolis? Sure, this game COULD have a midcore community, but it won't because the dev team only services the lowest common denominator of this game. Content will continue to be vanilla paste flops that fail at retaining players for more than a month.

[Alym]

Normal took away 2/4 primary raiding rewards.... ...You don't think that is a problem?

No, because, as a raider, the only thing I feel like I lost was a well-designed raid. I didn't lose that to Normal mode.

As for Mythic in WoW, roughly the same percentage of of people that do savage do Mythic in WoW. Ultra hard content is not popular and when you try and make it the main portion of endgame progression, Alex happens. Normal was a great thing with excellent participation. Savage has low participation and killed raiding. Which was bad again?

[Jynx]

I didn't lose that to Normal mode.

Look I'm not even a raider and I know how normal mode effected savage mode.

You can't just make mechanics and "Tone them down" or "Tune them up" for the savage/ normal encounters. They litteraly made the normal mode fights and then sat around the board room and said "How do we make this harder?" To allow for both to exist they need to cater to each as well that's how we seen in normal mode mechanics that meant next to nothing to the fight and then in Savage mode have the same thing with more stuff happening.

We get a nuetered experience in normal mode and a sub-par design for savage. I'd rather them focus like how it was with coil, story and all. I hate to say that everything should not be handed to players on a plater and we should need to work for some things. Coil was hard but fair, Alex Savage was...well it was Alex Savage.

Normal mode was the only mode hurt by the existence of the other, then.

Whatever helps you sleep at night. Just because they made the fights more complex by adding more types of puddles does not mean the entire design was not also effected by them considering how to make sure they could tone the mechanics/remove enough stuff to make the fights viable for normal mode in the first place.

[Alym]

You can't just make mechanics and "Tone them down" or "Tune them up" for the savage/ normal encounters.

Normal mode was the only mode hurt by the existence of the other, then. The fights were clearly designed as Savage and tuned down. You can especially tell in A1 normal where the green puddles that are only a mechanic in Savage are visible for just a moment in Normal mode before disappearing.

So, once again, Normal took nothing away from Savage.

Whatever helps you sleep at night. Just because they made the fights more complex by adding more types of puddles does not mean the entire design was not also effected by them considering how to make sure they could tone the mechanics/remove enough stuff to make the fights viable for normal mode in the first place.

How passive aggressive. If you had read the entire post, you would've noticed that I was saying Savage fights are designed and then tuned down to be the appropriate difficulty for Normal mode. This means that the only chopped up version is normal which indicates that Savage was not hurt by normal in this way. Thank you for allowing me to believe "whatever helps me sleep" though, I guess.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

Normal
So, once again, Normal took nothing away from Savage.

your right, it just took away all of what coil normal was.... coil normal was sacrificed for alexander story mode.... so now theres faceroll and savage with the "heroic" version not in the game anymore... the whole heavensward endgame is garbage and hopefully the devs are looking at their metrics and their censuses and adjusts fire for 4.0. This unofficial census probably isn't super accurate but I'm sure someone at SE is noticing all the players that aren't playing anymore.

The developers have the skill to make this a great game. They just need to balance out difficulty / reward scaling and actually reward people for playing the game. Instead of rewarding people for taking 6 months off and abusing shitty catchup mechanics.

[Alym]

your right, it just took away all of what coil normal was....

I actually agree with this. I just believe that, if we can't have three difficulties of the raids or a more diverse endgame with BiS-tier rewards, Savage should now be sacrificed to give us a normal and an extreme mode. If normal and Coil-difficulty have much higher participation rates than Savage and Savage destroyed Heavensward endgame, it's obvious which one should be cut.

[Cakekizyy]

I think they have said they design it as uber difficult and tune it doen for normal and savage.