Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[thegreatonemal]

Best part you said is when everyone is treated special, then no one is special. This is absolutely true. If you are not willing to put the effort and time that more dedicated raiders do, then you don't deserve the same rewards. Even in SCoB and FCoB when I hadn't beaten T9 and T13, I saw the awesome gear and weapons that dropped from that turn and felt properly motivated to get it down. Felt really good beating Bahamut the first time and both my weapon and body piece dropped at the same time.

Gear might have been the factor for you but most of the gear out of those raids is ugly and is hardly used by anyone nowadays. so Cool unique looking gear might have been a factor for you and whats got you into raiding but its not like that for everyone.
the problems that raiding in this game faces is more community inflicted than design choice inflicted.

[Istaru]

This post is slightly off of the current topic about the rewards but is aimed at a different piece of the problem. Participation and getting it so that people feel comfortable with getting them down.

One thing that I think might help is a practice mode to Savage. No loot or clear credit is awarded. The difference is the enrage timer is removed.

A6S gives you 10 minutes to beat all 4 bosses. For a midcore or somewhat casual raiding group they are going to spend too much time on each boss and by the time they get to the last one, the raid period will be mostly over. That is a turnoff and another piece of "Why bother?".

In practice mode you keep going until you use up the 90 minutes or you clear. Then you can practice it until you can clear it under the enrage timer then go at it for real.

They could also add in something to set a difficulty level using echo, again, no rewards, but could get people to work themselves into it.

They could also make it so that you could pick a specific boss or phase to work on, there are many ways to do a practice mode.

We need more people to believe "I can do this!" to accompany "I want to do this".

[Istaru]

Gear might have been the factor for you but most of the gear out of those raids is ugly and is hardly used by anyone nowadays. so Cool unique looking gear might have been a factor for you and whats got you into raiding but its not like that for everyone.
the problems that raiding in this game faces is more community inflicted than design choice inflicted.

Why do you say that it is mostly community inflicted?

[Velhart]

Gear might have been the factor for you but most of the gear out of those raids is ugly and is hardly used by anyone nowadays. so Cool unique looking gear might have been a factor for you and whats got you into raiding but its not like that for everyone.
the problems that raiding in this game faces is more community inflicted than design choice inflicted.

My highest motivation is story and overcoming challenges offered to me. Gear is a secondary factor in motivation for me. The way SE thinks devalues the highest motivation tools for myself and likely many others. Story is already devalued by being handed to you for no effort in Story Mode and developers want to dumb down Savage till the lowest denominator of player skill is happy.

[thegreatonemal]

Why do you say that it is mostly community inflicted?

Clear rates are so low because of the heavy reliance on statics. the first thing we say to someone interested in raiding is not "hop in the raid finder for a phase one learning and go from there" but find a static. this cuts down the potential people who want to raid because having a static means you have 8 people who can all meet up a certain times a few times a week to even attempt the fights. So it becomes I want to raid but can't because i have limited time or no one else fits my time slot. Which is completely the community's fault because these fights are basically glorified synchronized swimming dances that don't require 7 other people to meet you three times a week but requires 7 other people who can memorize the dance and execute it. but the only way to learn the dance is to get in there and try to do it but we've basically blocked it off for people. our disdain of the duty finder because every once in a while you get someone whose watching netflix and randomly pressing buttons makes us not use the raid finder which should have been the boon needed to increase raiding but our community is too set in the ways of "you must have a static to raid" mentality. All I've seen in this thread and in others is "the carrot isn't tasty looking enough that's why people don't raid or why raiders quit". Raiding isn't the main focus of this game true and there should be some nice reward for doing it outside of i just wanna do really hard content just cuz. Its just not the main reason raiding is declining even more its a self inflicted wound that's the real issue.

[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.

[Archaell]

Its just not the main reason raiding is declining even more its a self inflicted wound that's the real issue.

It might be self inflicted wound but when the players are forced to walk through tight hallway filled with spikes it's hard to avoid wounding oneself.

Look at the Ex primals - casual content closest to the raiding. I still have the pain in my recent memory, you make a group to train part 7 of the dance and it's great success if you can even get to the part 4. Telling players to find a static group is the safe route, because most of the better players are in the static groups and these good players are also unlikely to do content with other players much. Statics provide you certain level of insurance that players are going to be responsible for their gameplay and of course they are showing better performance and attitude when they are afraid of being removed from the groups. On the other hand random groups, be it PF/DF or RF, are bound to have many yolo players who either think they are better than they really are or who want to be carried by the rest of the group - which simply does not work in content like savage. One person trying to cheat their way is enough to persuade the other 7 players to just give up so finding a static can save you a lot of frustration. And we haven't even got to the point that there are many possible strategies for clearing content which have to be trained for their correct execution.

And we can't entirely say that the wound is self inflicted only by the players themselves. Things like the casual content being such faceroll are helping plenty to create the community issues.

[thegreatonemal]

snip

Yea your right it is two sided people need to be more honest about which parts of a fight they have experience in just because you see fang and claw doesn't mean you're progression wise up to fang and claw if you keep dying to cauterize. I get that but stoics cant be the end all be all otherwise we stay where we are plenty of people raid capable but can't and if your static dies for whatever reason goodbye to your raiding progression for that tier. As for your other point given that this is a GCD style game there's not much they can do though weeping city and nidex are steps in the right direction

difficulty in this type of games goes like this:

normal mode: get hit by an aoe nothing happens some small damage and a meaningless debuff maybe.
EX primal: get hit with an aoe you die outright if not you're put into a position that will kill you with the very next mechanic (seph and nid take this a bit further where if you die you kill someone else as well).
Savage: get hit with an aoe you wipe the entire raid

Sadly there really can't be any middle ground there can only really be two the ex primal and the savage. if we want players to pay attention to the mechanics the game has been teaching you since the first dungeon.

[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!

[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).