Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[Nalien]

With CD reset, maybe we can expect trash for the last floors of Alexander Savage (even after wipe ^^)

What annoys me, is that they've kinda got it right with the 24 man raids? I guess Faust worked as a mini-boss (although he doesn't hold a flame to the original ADS IMO), but then A2 just had some goblins standing around to mow down... In Weeping City, even the trash tended to be an event itself... Crocs jumping out of the water, buildings falling down as you kill stuff, even some more mechanically interesting trash... Were it not for the fact that they're complete jokes, the 24 man raids would be pretty amazing... Instead, the difficulty of those instances is such that I sometimes go in just to see what I can get away with... Machinist using Split Shot and literally nothing else? Sad thing was, I wasn't even the worst person there, since I actually dodged mechanics/etc....

Like I said though, Coil did this a lot better than Alexander... Alexander is very claustrophobic with very little going on, and savage actively skips stuff IIRC... Coil didn't do a lot with its trash, but the levels did at least invoke a sense of grandeur which informed the story well... Fighting on Bahamuts hand was much more impactful than fighting in Alexanders... I expected Alexander to be more of an antagonist, instead he is solely a setting...I expected to be fighting my surroundings just as much as the bosses, given I'm meant to be inside a Primal... I think A4 was the only time I ever got a sense of that... Could have done a lot of that with the level design, but instead there's just none of that...

I guess ultimately it's a budget issue... Although I really don't think that works as an excuse when I not only see the crap they put in the cash shop, but see as many people in game buying that crap... I was never bothered by the loss of the third dungeon (because dungeons are crap) in favor of the developers trying new things (although Diadem was one of those new things... Jesus Christ...), but I guess I really should have been... Where is all the money this game must be making going? They should be hiring new staff to work on more stuff, not cutting corners... Oh right, our subscription fees are funding a Final Fantasy VII remake... yay...

[Bourne_Endeavor]

What annoys me, is that they've kinda got it right with the 24 man raids? I guess Faust worked as a mini-boss (although he doesn't hold a flame to the original ADS IMO), but then A2 just had some goblins standing around to mow down... In Weeping City, even the trash tended to be an event itself... Crocs jumping out of the water, buildings falling down as you kill stuff, even some more mechanically interesting trash... Were it not for the fact that they're complete jokes, the 24 man raids would be pretty amazing... Instead, the difficulty of those instances is such that I sometimes go in just to see what I can get away with... Machinist using Split Shot and literally nothing else? Sad thing was, I wasn't even the worst person there, since I actually dodged mechanics/etc....

You know, this is a rather good point. One of the main reasons I so thoroughly enjoyed Weeping City is it felt like a spectacle, whereas Alexander only really shows off at Brute Justice. I think they missed an opportunity to split up A6 a bit like Weeping make it feel like a raid instead of a glorified trial. Granted, it's far from the only issues with Alexander. Frankly, I feel the biggest problem plaguing it is the sheer amount of unforgiving mechanics. Both Gordias and Midas suffered by wiping the whole party for a single mistake. No matter how invested you may be initially, that does tend to wane on people's enthusiasm. Maybe it's a cultural thing; do it perfect or not at all versus be the underdog who rises up, but the former just isn't fun.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

No matter how invested you may be initially, that does tend to wane on people's enthusiasm. Maybe it's a cultural thing; do it perfect or not at all versus be the underdog who rises up, but the former just isn't fun.

Wasn't the Coil raids designed the same way? "Do this right or you die"

[Velhart]

Wasn't the Coil raids designed the same way? "Do this right or you die"

Yea but it was not as severe as Gordias.

SE now throws some cruddy things in to punish you more beyond dying. Like AS7 if one person dies, the boss gets a stack. Or if one person dies to AS3, it will make the already punishing DPS checks that more severe.

SE wanted to make a more difficult raid, but all they did was make a punishing raid. Midas is in a better place but still suffers from some poor design choices.

[Ceasaria]

Yea but it was not as severe as Gordias.

SE now throws some cruddy things in to punish you more beyond dying. Like AS7 if one person dies, the boss gets a stack. Or if one person dies to AS3, it will make the already punishing DPS checks that more severe.

SE wanted to make a more difficult raid, but all they did was make a punishing raid. Midas is in a better place but still suffers from some poor design choices.

T7 pre nerf :
- One person got petrified and watch his teamates --> wipe
- Bad kitter --> wipe
- healer miss the petrification of Renaud --> wipe
- If Renauds are stacked and one of them is hidden behind other, he will not be touched by Petrification --> wipe
- Depending of the moment, one Renaud killed accidentally --> wipe
- The player with Cursed Shriek took a bad position --> wipe
- The player with Cursed Shriek is petrified by the healer with Cursed Voice or any other player --> wipe
- Two people touched by Fireballs together --> nearly wipe
- Deal asap with Venomous Tail or --> wipe
- Add Lamia are not killed asap --> wipe

I have surely forgotten other ways to wipe on this fight.

The difference between a fight in Coil and a fight in Alexander :
- Coil fights are shorter than Alexander fights (except for the last of each tier where it's equal).
- Coil fights possess fewer phases than Alexander fights (just look at A8S, it's insane) or at least in its overall, Coil fights cumulate phases (or more specifically cumulate progressively mecanics) while Alexander fights change (totally) from one phase to one other.
- Coils fights possess less mecanics than Alexanders fights.
- Coils fights have a dps check less brutal than Alexanders fights.

Concerning the fights themselves (I skip T1-T4) :
- T5 : 3 different phases
- T6 : 2 different phases (2nd is dps and healer check)
- T7 : 1 phase (mecanics cumulated)
- T8 : 1 phase (mecanics cumulated)
- T9 : 4 different phases
- T10 : 3 different phases (with 1st similar to 3rd) (2nd dps check)
- T11 : 3 different phases (with 1st similar to 3rd) (2nd dps check)
- T12 : 3 different phases (2nd dps and healer check)
- T13 : 4 different phases (1st similar to 4th)
- A1S : 2 different phases (both similar)
- A2S : 7 different waves of add, I can't call that different phases but this not similar either (+ one player have to manage the Gobwalker)
- A3S : 4 different phases
- A4S : 5 different phases (with 1st-4th similar)
- A5S : A large number of events in a row...It's a big phase with many things (like T8, I think but it's less obvious)
- A6S : 4 differents phases with different phases inside them
- A7S : Many phases here (6 maybe) but some of them are similar
- A8S : 4 big phases (related to the encounters) with many phases inside them (which some mecanics come from A6S)

My analysis are maybe not totally correct but, I think we can see Alexander fights are designed to be at least as harder as the most difficult fights from Bahamut because of all these phases.
If they want to reduce the difficulty, SE will need to reduce the number of phases, and mostly, maybe stop to do too much different phases inside phases themselves.
But the things I welcome from Alexander are the introduce of the new gameplay : Gobwalker in A2S, a big phase run like A5S, the call of mecanics from precedent turns (A8S use A6S mecanics), fight against different boss (A6S).

[AstreaTrinity]

What i would like to see them do is go back to one tier again, but add at least 3 more bosses into the setup to sort of ease into the increasing difficulty of each fight

1st boss: Difficulty Equivalent to A4 / M4(normal) could be DF'd [Drops Jewelery and Belts]

2nd boss: Difficulty higher than A4 / M4 but lower than A1S / M1S [Drops Feet]

3rd boss: AS1 / MS1 difficulty [Drops Hands]

4th boss: Slightly Less difficult than MS2 (I hate trash pack bosses so gtfo AS2) [Drops Head]

5th boss: Difficulty mirroring or slightly below AS3 [Drops Legs]

- Might be too much of a jump between these 2

6th boss: M4S difficulty [Drops Chest]

7th boss: Above A4S and M4S difficulty, something only the truly determined can beat [Drops weapons and and item that can augment raid gear to an even higher ilevel considerably better than tome gear]

- The augment might be too much of a stretch due to them having to balance the next raid tier around who and who doesnt have it

In terms of story though in all honesty i dont think anything is going to come close to Coil, i would much rather work for it, but Alexander hasnt really given a story worth working for yet to me

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Wasn't the Coil raids designed the same way? "Do this right or you die"

I can't speak from direct experiences, but I've been told and seen through video is Coil wasn't nearly as unforgiving. One person dying to dive bombs could be managed and recovered from, for instance. The only more irksome mechanic I can recall is Bahamut having a relatively high DPS check. Granted, he was the final fight, and that was his end phase. Switch to Brute Justice and you have like five mechanics right from the onset where if a single person messes up, you start all over again. Given the absurdly low clear rates once again, I am beginning to wonder if FFXIV should abandon hardcore raiding entirely and focus all its attention on a midcore. A rough outline would be:

Two dungeons
One legitimately "hard" dungeon
Two EX Primals
Weeping City-esque 24 Mans (Perhaps scale the difficulty a bit higher)
Coil-esque difficulty for "Savage"

From there, add achievements, mounts or some other perks if levels clear it at say, below the recommended ilvl, with only six party members, solo and etc.

Yea but it was not as severe as Gordias.

SE now throws some cruddy things in to punish you more beyond dying. Like AS7 if one person dies, the boss gets a stack. Or if one person dies to AS3, it will make the already punishing DPS checks that more severe.

SE wanted to make a more difficult raid, but all they did was make a punishing raid. Midas is in a better place but still suffers from some poor design choices.

A3S exemplifies what I feel contributed largely to enormous decline in interest for Savage. Healers had a particularly brutal time given the substantial DPS checks forced them to deal a fair bit of damage yet still be on top of healing the raid. That degree of pressure isn't a whole lot of fun after the 10-20-40th wipe.

[Nalien]

You know, this is a rather good point. One of the main reasons I so thoroughly enjoyed Weeping City is it felt like a spectacle, whereas Alexander only really shows off at Brute Justice. I think they missed an opportunity to split up A6 a bit like Weeping make it feel like a raid instead of a glorified trial. Granted, it's far from the only issues with Alexander.

I think making each individual instance as expansive as Weeping City would be a bit difficult, but I've never liked how they split the 8 man raids into four (or five, with the original Coil)... I mean, technically you could end Weeping City after every boss, and have four instances of it, same as Alexander...

This was actually a fairly common suggestion back in 2.0, IIRC... People wanted them to make Binding Coil a single instance, so you would go from T1 to T2 without that awkward buffer zone... Should have been possible too, back before it got put in the Duty Finder, T1 saved your progress, if you beat ADS that week but not Caduceus you didn't have to redo ADS upon entering again... No reason that mechanism couldn't be applied to the actual bosses as well... It would have made Coil feel even grander, and if they'd applied that to Alexander, so we had Gordias and Midas, instead of A1 to A4 and A5 to A8... I'd probably have enjoyed it a bit more... It would still suffer most of my other complaints, but at least boss > queue > boss > queue would be gone... At the very least, adding that connectivity would enhance the level design somewhat...

The problem with that, I imagine, is the Duty Finder... The entire progression save mechanic doesn't really work in the Duty Finder... If you get up to the final boss in Weeping City and have to leave, you need to do the entire instance again... Clearing ADS and that being saved worked only because Binding Coil wasn't Duty Finder content at the time... In my opinion it never should have been made Duty Finder content, nor should Alexander... If SE wants to get more people into Savage level content, they need to ween people off the Duty Finder, because it just isn't an effective way to group up for challenging content... While it should be as effective as a random Party Finder group, there is no accountability with the Duty Finder... You're likely playing with people on other servers, who you'll likely never see again, and humanities natural scumbag nature shines through that... At least with the Party Finder, while you're still essentially getting an entirely random group, you're all on the same server... Any actions in that group are going to carry back to your server in some fashion... This is (partly) why the Raid Finder was a flop... Honestly, SE needs to start dropping the Duty Finder... It's an inherently anti-social tool, and MMOs are meant to be social games... It's great for casual players, but stuff like Savage is never going to be for casual players to begin with, so why does the Duty Finder end up creeping into such content?

I guess with Normal mode, we're stuck with the Duty Finder latching onto Alexander anyway, but I honestly still don't even get why we needed that... The only thing stopping anyone experiencing the story with it locked behind difficult content, is time... How hard is Binding Coil at Lv60, exactly? If people want to go do that story, but couldn't beat it when it was relevant, it's a joke these days... Anyone who complained about Coils story being gated of should have no trouble getting it done now, and had there been no Normal mode for Alexander, I imagine the same would have been true for it come 4.0... Is that wait really unbearable? Isn't that kinda more content for an expansion? It's not new content, but it is old content that the expansion potentially opens up for you... That seems great to me, I mean I sure as hell enjoyed the undersized party option more than most of the new content in Heavensward... I still haven't beaten Coil, but I'm not cheesing the fights, I'm seeing how much I can get away with... Duo Nael Desu Darnus? Sounds like fun to me!

[Velhart]

snip

It can just use WoW's raid structure. You go through a seamless raid, but saves after you beat a major boss. You can still queue in DF at a certain point and drop you off at the last check point. This felt the same way in Coil, you felt like you were going through four separate instances per raid. The only real issue with this idea is you are allowed to do the fight again but no chests drop. If this wasn't implemented it would be fine.

I can live with the instances though. We definitely need more unique content in raids. SE should look at Wrath of the Lich King expansion from WoW on how to make good raids. Naxxramas, Ulduar, and Icecrown Citadel in particular. I hate to keep pulling the WoW card, but they at least know how to make a good raid structure despite having their own controversial easy mode in there. They at least didn't add that in the expense of midcore/hardcore players. Really, copy/paste their structure would do wonders for their game.