Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[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.