Are the raid tiers "too hard?"

[Marxam]

/saltrant

I agree with most points but where the raiding community died is when they introduced a "story" mode to Alexander. There is literally no incentive for any casual to step up their game and at least attempt Savage. The sad part was that this was only implemented because they didn't want to tie an important side story to an endgame raid but guess what? Alexander has no ties to the main story outside of being a primal in the hinterlands.

The story in Alexander has no impact or relation to the main story quest like Coil was, so why would it matter? Honestly I hope they stop this story mode raid and just go back to regular Savage raids in 4.0. As an ex-raider the poor story and lack of originality really killed any incentive for me to raid again. That's why coil was so epic. You got to experience an engaging and exciting story for all your hard work.

Also, when compared to T9, T13 had no instant wipe mechanics. T9 had FOUR!!!, meteors, golems, fire dance, dive bombs (if not placed correctly). T9 imo is the pinnacle of a perfect final raid tier boss. High mechanics, party and self co-ordination and sheer amount of awareness and difficulty.

@OP: No the raids aren't too "hard", people have just become unmotivated and disenchanted with SE's game design for raids.

[Mugiawara]

Kinda offtopic but to be honest, I'm no hxc raider but I dipped into Coil.
All I can say is; At least Coil was fun, the whole Alexander thing is boring.
You're inside this big ol' machine thing but it feels so damn small, and the story sucks balls, and the gear isn't all that great looking.
No point.

[Millen1]

One of the things I found lame was lame of reward and reason to finish the prior raid tier to more on. I got in to a static late and was just making it to A3S when 3.2 came out with the new tier. I was all for finishing up A3S and A4S but we could jump straight to A5S and that more or less killed interest in A1S to A4S. The coil turns are really easy now and have no real reward beyond a story and yet it is easier to get a group to go in there and get a cool item they want than get players back into A1S to A4S.

A slight edit on loot, The biggest buzz kill in coil was seeing the same drops each week. This was fixed a bit in 3.0 Savage raiding with tokens. Having said that, it rained healer gear on the group I was in which worked for me. Our caster was miffed every week cause caster gear never dropped, he had to buy the few items he got with tokens over a long time. Token system is a good start though I think they should handle loot more like the 24 man raids, you get 1 item and one token per week. That would make the re run value better if you didn't get your loot in the run. Down side, That one person in the group that wants to run it 50 times until they get that one item they want burning everyone out.

[Kallera]

Gordias raid without normal mode would have been an outright disaster. Keep in mind, in coil people felt forced to do it, if they wanted to see the plot which was tied into 1.0. The achievement may have been amazing, but the journey there wasn't always a sunny experience. you had some people in the raid tier who did not want to be there, or would push themselves too far to do it. in addition, if they do pull out of raiding altogether, that is less content they have available to do at the endgame, which, in coil, slowly grew resentment of the raider mindset, instead of admiration.
I was taking a look at reddit thread that was discussing an interview about the raid tier. one comment I noticed was that endgame progression felt like a "bait and switch", where much of the game did not demand this sort of difficulty, then all the sudden there's this wall at endgame, with the only other choice(df dungeons) you'll run dry before 6 months is over.

If you are thinking of taking away normal mode altogether for one crazy hard difficulty, you are going back to the tightrope that gordias would have taken over a cliff. You had best have something for casuals other than "just wait 6/9/12/ spoil yourself on YouTube".

[Lambdafish]

Slightly offtopic from the original discussion, but I am really pleased by the amount of NON raiders who respect and approve of the coil model, you guys are the people that the devs will listen to most, because you are the people who they are catering to with story mode.

I completely agree with spooky ghost in that we should go back to the SCOB model. I feel like it should be staggered to be slightly easier than SCOB (more FCOB difficulty), so that in 3.5 (more likely 4.1) the natural progression would be for the hardcores (world firsts etc.) to be done with NM and move onto savage which will be released at the same time as the casual 24man. This should address the "problem" the devs were trying to fix with gordias, where someone somewhere was asking for harder content.

This model could also add lasting rewards such as very special glamours (glows and particle effects), mounts and titles (not obtainable via unsync - big mistake with SCOB), which would give the savage raids value beyond current content. Think of the exclusivity of these glamours with the same mentality as feast rank rewards in that they are designed for only the best to get them, and you can't get them through unsync or nerfs.

The 3 main rewards for maincore raiding (not the easy NM raid) should be story, top stat gear, and cool unique gear glamour at the minimum


Edit: Yoruichi4478's original idea D:

[Yoruichi4478]

I completely agree with spooky ghost in that we should go back to the SCOB model.

I feel like it should be staggered to be slightly easier than SCOB (more FCOB difficulty), so that in 3.5 (more likely 4.1) the natural progression would be for the hardcores (world firsts etc.) to be done with NM and move onto savage which will be released at the same time as the casual 24man. This should address the "problem" the devs were trying to fix with gordias, where someone somewhere was asking for harder content.
This model could also add lasting rewards such as very special glamours (glows and particle effects), mounts and titles (not obtainable via unsync - big mistake with SCOB), which would give the savage raids value beyond current content. Think of the exclusivity of these glamours with the same mentality as feast rank rewards in that they are designed for only the best to get them, and you can't get them through unsync or nerfs.

The 3 main rewards for maincore raiding (not the easy NM raid) should be story, top stat gear, and cool unique gear glamour at the minimum

I must've missed where he had brought up the scob model, otherwise I wouldn't have made my post using it as an example that he added onto, and his ideas that he added are good ideas imo. What's gone wrong with this model of raiding has been since they (the devs) listened to a very small part of the raiding community, the super hardcore, thereby alienating the rest of the raiding community who could clear all of the coil tiers before they got nerfed. They lost sight of what kept us playing and tried to cater to the super minority.

[thegreatonemal]

This has less to do with the model used for raiding and more the westerner over reliance on doing raids with a static and its attitudes towards new people in a fight and the duty finder.

[Lambdafish]

This has less to do with the model used for raiding and more the westerner over reliance on doing raids with a static and its attitudes towards new people in a fight and the duty finder.

This is not true. Raiding isn't less popular because of the way that western players play, we as a playerbase haven't changed since 2.0 in terms of mentality and coil was a big success for raiding and clear numbers.

Regardless, players will never change, and you can't force them to (look at the raid finder), all the devs can do is build a model that appeals to that attitude that is presented to them.

[Brannigan]

I think Midas was still a little overtuned. 5 and 6 are not - their numbers are fine, mechanics aside. In 7 and 8, I think the damage numbers are a little too high on stuff like the final J-kick, some raid AOEs, and the two stack lightning beams. Early on it basically makes it so you're required to bring an INT debuff (2/13 jobs), a warrior (1/13 jobs), and a scholar (1/13 jobs). My group has three (including myself) who prefer PLD/NIN/DRG, so we were a little screwed. I did DRK for Gordias because I really wanted to win, but I didn't really like it, so I really didn't want to do it again this time.

The bigger problem I have with Midas is how punishing every mistake is.

Messed up High/Low? The culprit dies, you get a high raid AOE damage, and you get a damage down debuff to screw over your DPS checks. Oh, by the way, on Brute Justice another raid AOE is immediately incoming so you just wiped.
One person got hit by a Chakram? GG, wipe it out. Can't live through the next phase with the permanent damage stack.
Someone was a little late to [anything] -> Instant kill/wipe.
One person died to anything on Quickthinx -> permanent damage stacks, snowballs out of control quickly.

Killing the person who made the mistake or even wiping the raid is fine, the problem is the sheer amount of insta wipes and unrecoverable situations in the Midas fights. If you can't balance around combat rezzing then throw someone off the battlefield or get rid of it, but at least let the survivors still try to win the fight. Instant wiping because one person made a mistake last phase sucks and it leads to a lot of frustration with your friends. In The Good Raids (AKA Coil) you could carry a couple of people who were maybe a little bit underperforming. Now, you can't. That's bad.

The cherry on top is that for all of this the rewards are complete crap. You get a minion and some bad looking dye-able gear (that you ALREADY HAD, but it wasn't dye-able) - half of which isn't even necessarily good - and it doesn't even have a set bonus or something to make it interesting. CRIT, SPEED, DET, ACC. Whoopdie doo. Oh, tanks also get screwed over with parry. Also, you THROW ALL OF THIS GEAR AWAY in patch 3.4 because crafted items and easy mode gear are better and practically free.

You don't even get a title and anyone can go back at item level 400 next expansion to farm out your stupid little minion you spent 150 hours getting.

SE failed to realize that when people asked for harder content they meant that nearly everything else in the game outside of raids/EX primals is stupidly easy to the point of being BORING.

[Eldevern]

...

I'm not that sure, I've seen many players who have left the game even before HW and have not coming back. Maybe IRL matters but a lot of mid-core have left because of behaviors of each sides : impatient ultra-hardcore and trolls (how could they be that bad and anyway clear main story?).

And the point many people forget : not all players are rushers and all those who wanted to take their time just gave up being left behind. "You want to really clear HL? Then rush." They end to reply "Thanks but no. I'm not interested." and left the game.

Now, was COIL too hard? No, the problem is to build the team with the good synergy (skills and availability). I remember people told echo came too soon. I think that's a real point.