Unpopular suggestion: Make raiding (great) rewarding again.

[FeliAiko]

OBJECTION!

YoshiP when you introduced Savage mode, you said it is a challenge for the sake of challenge.
Therefore no gears upgrade form it.

Please remember what you said, and now savage just becoming a "Hard mode".
if you keep this approach, later you will need to add an "Extreme Savage" mode.

Second Coil Savage was nice, but only a small minority of people did it on release. Arguably you could say it was because of it sharing the same lockout as normal Second Coil, but even with the lockout removed not many people went back to it anyway. With that said, I wouldn't mind them bringing the concept back. Have the normal and hard mode raids come out as it is now, find out the common strats people used to clear the HM version, then during the 'catch up patch' you release a third version with the same core mechanics but tweaked around so that you can't just use the same strats you did in hard mode to clear it. Throw in titles, exclusive mounts/minions, yada yada.

[SaitoHikari]

I came from another MMO which decided to split 'midcore' content into three difficulties at one point. A year later, they reversed course and merged difficulty into one again.

What happened is that people care that they're able to clear content at all. But most people don't care which difficulty it is. People also blamed the devs for designing the system in such a way that the hardest difficulty was made deliberately bull[censored], to the point where even the top tier raiders considered the middle difficulty to be the proper one. The yearly 'normal' raid that year was released with only one difficulty, and people saw it as easier than the 'midcore' content at the hardest difficulty. It also happened during a time when the game suffered a massive content drought that resulted in a 40% population drop worldwide, so people put two and two together and slammed the devs for coming up with that system.

(The game's raids do use a normal/savage system, but the savage version is released months later and deliberately tweaked to the point where only ultra geared people would be able to clear it before a cap raise. Maybe only about 3 raid groups in each service region get to clear it before a level cap raise.)

I think normal/savage raids are now suffering from the same problem. I imagine if such statistics are made available, it'd show that far less people overall are even engaging in Alex Savage compared to the Coils.

[Animarelic]

Raid Gear should have a longer lifespan than any gear set in this game. This is the only MMO where Raiders are equal to Casual Players. Yoshi tries too hard at trying to make new players feel " Welcome" when he should be focused on making the veterans want to keep subbed constantly.

Raid Gear should only be obtained through raiding, Entry Level Raiding gear should be gained through casual/daily play and crafting. There is no incentive for someone to play this game for hours on end at the highest difficulty for a drop that isn't even BiS.

MMO'S have a hierarchy; Casual, Mid-core/PvP and Hard-core. The current system removes our Identities and our Incentives which is why your sub-count and statistics aren't improving by much if at all.

If Dev reads this here is a tip, You can manage Item levels much better as well and stop wasting development time on new gear if you just make Raid Gear Superior. The current design is lazy and we have needlessly inflated Item Levels. You could have ended this Expansion at 250 easy and no one would have complained if you just made the Raiding and Entry-Level-Raiding gear correctly.

-Make Raid Gear superior, give it a longer lifespan (More invested players should have higher item levels)
-Stop Giving Casual players Raid equivalent gear (You're telling Raiders their efforts don't matter)
-Stop mixing BiS Gear with Tomes and Savage so you can force us to play content we don't want like EX-Roulettes & 24-mans (you're not slick)

[Sparktacus]

I am a bit concerned that Yoshi's philosophy on the matter is that in Japan they tackle the challenge because it's there and not for the gear. While I am no expert on the region, something tells me that is not the whole truth. Also, I hate to eschew his patriotism but the NA/EU market is over twice as big, a fact that his neglect will cause big ripple effects. 11 was so heavily influenced by the Japanese population and I can not think of one challenge that existed "just for the challenge" and not offering an amazing carrot at the end of the stick. You reward people for their time and effort in tackling your hardest designed content. I think him saying this, in fact, goes against our very nature as human beings, as probably only the most noble of us, as well as the philanthropists of the world do something because the reward is the feels you got on the inside.

I still cross my fingers that this last raid tier will be 10 item levels above the new tome gear for the rest of HW, but I know I set myself up for disappointment. The only thing that will drive the point home to the development team is if the last tier of Alexander fails to show anything but a marginal increase to the raiding community. However, I have a feeling they will skew the statistics and say something like; while less people are raiding more people are using the Raid Finder to raid and try to put a positive spin on it.

Participation is what will teach these guys ultimately, a big reason I stopped participating in any content I don't find appealing. Mainly all seasonal events that keep clogging even more inventory that I don't have with and unending sea of useless vanity items, and also not stepping one foot in Midas ever.

[Atoli]

Mainly all seasonal events that keep clogging even more inventory that I don't have with and unending sea of useless vanity items

You do realize that you have the Armoire which has unlimited storage space for ALL the event vanity gear?

On topic:
As I said in several other threads before, I wholeheartedly agree with the OP.
Maybe the whole "the others did the content, so I'll do it too, no matter what I get out of it"- and "it's there, so I'll do it"-mentality might work for Japan,
but I think the rest of the world is a bit more selfish and does content because it gives them something they want and if there is nothing they get out of it, they won't do it.

90% of the people I know who did Second Coil Savage back before HW did it for one thing only: the Avatar title.
Second and Final Coil are STILL being farmed today just because so many people are deeply in love with those glamours.
So those rewards don't even have to be BIG - they just need to be desirable and lasting.

Be it story, titles, glamours or mounts - something other than item level (which is irrelevant outside of Alex Savage even DURING the patch it gets introduced in, and outdated even IN Alex as soon as the next big patch is released!).
I can see Alex story in NM, I can enjoy most of the fight's mechanics in NM, I can get the gear in NM, only undyable, but still. Why should I do Savage Mode then?

(Actually, the answer is: because of the JP mentality, so far. I just went along because FC/friends asked me to, not because I actually wanted to)

[Brannigan]

I expected it, but I'm still very disappointed that they're releasing crafted weapons/armor that are higher ilvl than Midan weapons. What the fuck is the point of putting materia in a Midan weapon if I don't get to use it on the next raid? I seriously hope they don't continue this into 4.0 because it is a garbage system compared to what they had in 2.0 (which still handed out gear like candy, but at least raiders got to use some of their gear in the next raid).

[Sparktacus]

You do realize that you have the Armoire which has unlimited storage space for ALL the event vanity gear?

Last time I used it was not unlimited, it was in fact very limited, at that point I stopped caring.

[Welsper59]

Raid Gear should have a longer lifespan than any gear set in this game. This is the only MMO where Raiders are equal to Casual Players. Yoshi tries too hard at trying to make new players feel " Welcome" when he should be focused on making the veterans want to keep subbed constantly.

Raid Gear should only be obtained through raiding, Entry Level Raiding gear should be gained through casual/daily play and crafting. There is no incentive for someone to play this game for hours on end at the highest difficulty for a drop that isn't even BiS.

MMO'S have a hierarchy; Casual, Mid-core/PvP and Hard-core. The current system removes our Identities and our Incentives which is why your sub-count and statistics aren't improving by much if at all.

If Dev reads this here is a tip, You can manage Item levels much better as well and stop wasting development time on new gear if you just make Raid Gear Superior. The current design is lazy and we have needlessly inflated Item Levels. You could have ended this Expansion at 250 easy and no one would have complained if you just made the Raiding and Entry-Level-Raiding gear correctly.

-Make Raid Gear superior, give it a longer lifespan (More invested players should have higher item levels)
-Stop Giving Casual players Raid equivalent gear (You're telling Raiders their efforts don't matter)
-Stop mixing BiS Gear with Tomes and Savage so you can force us to play content we don't want like EX-Roulettes & 24-mans (you're not slick)

The first two points at the end are actually dangerous grounds to wish for. Having old school dungeon/raid crawling experience with MMOs, you REALLY don't want that these days. From what I gather, you're asking for a system that requires you to progress step by step through the raid scene without alternatives even as new content is introduced. When people complain that it takes too long to get gear or that things aren't done fast enough, do you really think people will have the patience to run old raids in order to gear up? Keep in mind that this does mean that raid groups are essentially locked to their party members or others like them if they want to avoid doing the old raids to gear new members... which will take weeks upon weeks without things like tomes or crafted items, since those will be locked at entry level raid (below the first tier of raid content). If people think finding qualified raid members, or even just members in general, is too hard now, it'll be far worse with a strict crawling system.

[FoxyAreku]

Raiding is about the social experience of clearing something difficult with friends, not the rewards.

(Though if you wanna give me more stuff for beating these fights, I won't complain.)

[Brannigan]

Raiding is about the social experience of clearing something difficult with friends, not the rewards.

Easy to say until you sink 300 hours into learning fights. At a certain point, it's about actually feeling like your character is getting stronger. The problem is all of your progress gets thrown in the toilet the second the next raid patch drops because of ~*easily obtainable crafted gear*~ being higher item level.

I want to use my gear that we fought for on the next raid. It's stupid that I could have just as easily not played 3.0 or 3.2 and be MUCH BETTER OFF THAN IF I HAD RAIDED because a small amount of gil will leapfrog me past progression entirely. In 2.x it was fine because even though crafted gear did come out, it was the same item level as the previous raid, which meant it didn't necessarily entirely outclass what you had earned. Crafted accessories came out on odd patches and were only outright better for tanks. Raid weapons were also still good and their primal equivalents weren't outright better (though Leviathan did have a super rare upgrade item).

I said this a couple of pages ago, but people went back and did post-nerf, post-echo Nael in 3.4 for catchup or alt weapons pretty regularly. How many people have gone back and cleared Gordias 4?