Are the raid tiers "too hard?"

[Anzaman]

I thought people just didn't care due to the rewards.

Pretty much yeah, I've been satisfied with my slightly lower item item level gear. Only recently I started working on Midas Savage since Free Company wanted to give it a try.

[Lovescake]

as a raider i can agree with alot of what you guys say, even the non raiders seem to think in a similar way about how the content is meant to be challenging, the rewards i will agree though have been a bit.. underpar, the gear is available from normal mode, except its a dyable version (which alot of people also complained about since they said the normal gear sets should be dyable?!?) as well as the catch up patch basically kills the raid scenes by offering raid equivelant gear (despite it not being a "best in slot piece, it is still on par with raid gear) which basically makes all the work done pretty pointless.

[Reinha]

Are the raid tiers "too hard?"

I think the answer depends on what the purpose of savage raids is in this game.

Is it supposed to be a challenging mode of game play available to most players at the end of the progression chain? In that case, it's too hard because not all players can meet the scheduling and composition requirements while it's still current content. What I mean by that is, compare it to the difficulty of extreme trials. They are challenging but still quite possible to do without a static and with less optimal comps like WHM / AST.

Or is savage rather supposed to be a mode of game play that is challenging even to the best players in the world, requires a carefully thought out comp made of FoTM jobs, puts immense pressure on statics to the point where some of them break apart, is virtually impossible to do with a PuG until months of gear growth has nerfed it and even then remains so hard that the majority of people don't even care to try it? In that case it is just the right difficulty.

I don't think the rewards have much to do with how many people give it a try. When content is fun to do people will do it regardless, and when content is not fun or accessible people won't do it even if it dropped everything they've ever wanted. That's not to say the rewards shouldn't be improved for completing the most difficult mode in the game. I'm saying it won't have an effect on how many raiders there are.

[Moomba33]

I thought people just didn't care due to the rewards.

That's very possible as well.
It'd be interesting to see the number of players attempting the content in addition to the clears.

[Lovescake]

I think the answer depends on what the purpose of savage raids is in this game.

Is it supposed to be a challenging mode of game play available to most players at the end of the progression chain? In that case, it's too hard because not all players canmeet the scheduling and composition requirements while it's still current content. What I mean by that is, compare it to the difficulty of extreme trials. They are challenging but still quite possible to do without a static and with less optimal comps like WHM / AST.

Or is savage rather supposed to be a mode of game play that is challenging even to the best players in the world, requires a carefully thought out comp made of FoTM jobs, puts immense pressure on statics to point where some of them break apart, is virtually impossible to do with a PuG until months of gear growth has nerfed it and even then remains so hard that the majority of people don't even care to try it? In that case it is just the right difficulty.

that is mainly issued by player competence though, party finder groups can kill content in savage, it's been proven. (albeit, its mainly in JP) but even on odin ive seen pug groups for a5-7s as well as a few for people wanting to practice a8s. it just requires people to know their job, of which then it becomes less of an issue to kill the fights.. also we can't compare an end game raid to an extreme trial under any circumstance, and if we were going to, people complain about them just as much for difficulty. (remember the thordan fiasco despite it being extremely well received in terms of difficulty?) and as for your second point, you've severely over-exaggerated the raid contents push, the content is usually designed around the lowest ilvl available given in at a patch cycle. e.g: 220 for midas. the content is relatively challenging, but it doesnt exactly require a "well thought out composition" and it certainly isnt needed for "Months of gear growth" to down these either for pugs, because ability in raid is down to an individual mindset, if you can pull your own then you can do the content. its just mainly execution as a unit rather than an individual from most cases.

[KorenA]

I don't think it's hard but what's the incentive? People did coil for awesome looking gear for bragging rights and story and to see the next part in the story line. Alexander is a copy of each floor with no love. The fights are boring looking with the environment. I actually enjoyed fighting trash in coil, it gave me a sense of immediate action upon entering a vast multi colored map, vs being inside a plain robot who is supposed to have a city inside. I think SE needs to step up the design and story. Give a actual incentive to raid. Don't make it hard where people cannot enjoy it, but at least give it passion. Just my 2 cents...

[DGladius]

Here's my opinion on what I would like raids to be.
- 5-7 bosses per set (even though I know the team probably wouldn't be able to design more than 4 per set for some reason.) and have other bosses to kill on the side (eg extreme primal/trial fights) with relevant gear.
- The savage mode and story mode to be released either at the same time or savage 1-2 weeks earlier. You don't have to clear normal to unlock savage.
- Gear from story should not be good enough to grind for to help with gearing up for savage. Story is for ppl who don't want to do hard raids. There isn't a need for them to have savage raid level gear. There's already gear from dungeons, tomestones and 24 man raids etc to get aside from story mode raid.
- Raid gear should be obtained from beating actual hard bosses, crafting and the highest tomestone currency. Extreme/trials should drop weapons, tokens and currency to buy different armor and accessories at appropriate level for savage.
- savage mode should have gear look very different from story mode gear, be more relevant in terms of how strong it is to prepare for the next set, have titles/mount granted. The people who put in the time to get better as a player and work hard as a team to defeat difficult bosses deserve good rewards.

I know most of these is only possible if the dev team can put out more hard raid bosses than just 4 bosses per set so there is actually more to do for raids. But this is what I would like to see.

- to get players and new players to know how to play their jobs, I would've liked job quests to actually teach you the new skills you learned and how to incorporate them with skills you have learned already into the jobs general rotation and have them practice their rotation to complete the job quests.

[FeliAiko]

Gordias was just bad fight design, and boring to boot. A3S was okay from the experiences I had of it (in fact that should've been the last fight instead of Manipulator), yet let down by the typical server BS shenanigans that plagues this game. Thanks to Gordias, PLD became the new 2.0 WAR in terms of popularity, two of the expansion's flagship Jobs (AST, MCH) were just as undesired, while SE had little faith in the third (DRK) to the point they catered a specific fight to them, making them practically mandatory in statics.

Another issue with Gordias is how it was clear SE didn't like how fast Final Coil was cleared, and let those sentiments influence their decision-making. Damaging the majority of an already minority group just to road block the 1% as much as possible was completely dumb.

Midas, on the other hand, was a step in a better direction, easing up the DPS checks in exchange for more mechanic-driven encounters. A5S was a nice fight to begin the tier (although having the gatekeeper being the bigger challenge is odd to me), A6S nerf was needed at the time (I didn't agree with the full extent of the changes, but nonetheless), A7S is too long for my liking, and A8S is a good example of combining mechanics with required DPS checks to create an overall awesome fight.

[Crushnight]

Personally i feel savage does need more incentive to really go into it because atm it only has the challenge factor when compared to rest of the game's content.
A few ways SE could improve this (and this is my opinion) are:
- have savage be every even patch(raid patch) and story mode every odd patch(catch up patch) this to give incentive for raiders being only ones to get the story for the 1st 3 months but still not isolate people who want the story themselves they just have to wait longer if not willing to put the effort for savage content.
-with the above change also bump up gear recieved from dungeons and story mode to go with the fact it is gear to help you not just glamour
-remove all colour(life) from story mode gear you wear grey blank armour/cloth with barely any detail this is to give the gear reward from savage more purpose to glam fans (myself included )
- give titles/mounts to those that clear each floor make every floor feel more worthwhile to clear.

[LalafellDown]

Raiding is easy once you learn the mechanics. It's also pointless because what are you going to do with that weapon? Stand around Idyllshire and pretend to be AFK?