Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

"Make 95% of the game super easy or people will stop playing"

"Make 95% of the game super easy and people will stop playing"

One of the above statements is true. We will find out which one it is soon, because Yoshida apparently thinks the first statement is true. I do not agree though.

[Lorielle]

Just a small-ish..Thing..

What i don't understand is why people are hung up on "needing a static". This is what PUGs are for. Wanna know something? When I was in Tonberry, I cleared Final Coil in a PUG. My friend in DF. There was no need for a static. Just people that knew what they were doing and willing to stick it out. The problem is the community here is too impatient. Self-centered because of how the dev is very much treating us. Spoiled. This doesn't apply to -everyone-, but that's pretty much how things turning out for the most part.

Raiding requires motivation as you are aware. Challenge isn't enough. Especially when I can do something of lower quality and get the same reward. It's human nature. Why do the struggle for one thing when you can choose the path of least resistance and get the same thing? Story. Unique gear. These two things will literally help Savage and the Raid community do a lot better. People will complain. No doubt. But if they really want it. Really cared. They'll do what they can to get it themselves. Whether it is going in right away or waiting to out gear it and see the story later or gear for glamour purposes.

We'll get those Party Finders saying "You must have X gear or no join!"...? We get that already. So how is the getting gear out of raids going to change that save set a standard higher? Back to the first paragraph, the same concept applies...Just make your own party without such restrictions. I know it's a hard concept to get 7 other random people, but gosh...That is what the party finder is for.

[Nalien]

I entirely reject this line of thinking. This is the mentality that made Chains of Promathia and later expansions in XI much less impactful than they should have been. Locking people out of expansion story content through "challenging" (read: static-only) content is the absolute last thing the devs should even ponder.

Chains locked the entire expansions story behind such challenges, including much of the new content in the expansion... We're talking about one piece of content here, and it's entirely side-story content...

If I was unable to clear Alexander, and I certainly would be unable to without Normal mode, I am not missing out on the expansions story, I'd still finish the Dragonsong War stuff, still clear Weeping City, and so on... The only thing I'd be missing out on is Alexanders story, and I'd only be missing out on that for a year or two... 4.0 would roll on in, and suddenly Alexanders challenge becomes as trivial as I want, presumably being a Lv70 in i300 gear... Christ, if we go back to Coil, Binding Coil didn't even wait for 3.0 to become fairly trivial...

I'm perfectly fine with that wait, as I said, it adds depth to the world... A sense that there is more in the game yet to discover... There is no story content released in this game that can't be cleared within a week or two of its release, and I find that terribly problematic... Arguably I could just not do the content and save it for later, but that treads a very fine line... I'm ultimately not playing the game then, at which point why subscribe? Even the story I can ultimately watch on YouTube... I want to play this game, that doesn't mean I need SE to instantly gratify my desire for content though, all that achieves is giving me less content to play in the long run...

[Hayward]

"Make 95% of the game super easy or people will stop playing"

"Make 95% of the game super easy and people will stop playing"

One of the above statements is true. We will find out which one it is soon, because Yoshida has already set the stage.

Why does it have to be one extreme or the other? That assertion doesn't contribute to the discussion at all. No one has even come close to asking for the game to be "super easy". I'd dare to say more threads have been made asking for SE, for reasons that cannot benefit the populace, to to make content more difficult than necessary.

[Sparktacus]

Most of them are community inflicted they are the primary reason why people don't raid.

Based on what exactly? And please don't use the forums as we are but a very vocal few compared to the however many hundreds of thousands of players there are.

[Velhart]

I entirely reject this line of thinking. This is the mentality that made Chains of Promathia and later expansions in XI much less impactful than they should have been. Locking people out of expansion story content through "challenging" (read: static-only) content is the absolute last thing the devs should even ponder. That 95% of players in your example are more likely to wait for content they can do and for SE to eventually dial back the difficulty of said story content. The clear rate of CoP was abysmal for years and many players simply abandoned all hope of finishing the story, if they even bothered with Promyvion. There's no way in the world Team Yoshi should even consider making 4.0 content as difficult as that just so a small number of people can strut around like peafowl.

Weeping City was challenging without being cheap (i.e. one-hit KO mechanics that can't be stopped or mitigated, AoE attacks that take up 90% of the field and go off in <1.5 seconds) or unforgiving to the point of frustration. If certain posters had their way, this raid would be nigh-on unplayable by anyone who doesn't have cat-like reflexes and a DARPA-grade internet connection. If SE takes Weeping City as a template for future endgame content, I'd be more than satisfied.

Wait I thought video games were suppose to challenge your abilities as a player. Did this change? I didn't get the memo.

Why does it have to be one extreme or the other? That assertion doesn't contribute to the discussion at all. No one has even come close to asking for the game to be "super easy". I'd dare to say more threads have been made asking for SE, for reasons that cannot benefit the populace, to to make content more difficult than necessary.

It doesn't. Content in the game shouldn't have to be that difficult outside of raids either. It should still be challenging, but easy to understand. 2.0 is a great example. It had Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace which at the time were pretty challenging dungeons but not too hard to overcome. Relic quest had Chimera and Hydra, which were challenging but a casual group could take it down in time. This is good challenge but not stepping over it's boundaries that casual/midcore can't handle. The development team instead of finding ways to motivate people to get better at the game, decides to just dumb everything down to a stupid one-button hitting grind and way too easy roulette dungeons. Its such backwards thinking that I can't believe they do this with a straight face.

Raids are the only content in this game we can rely on to be challenging or hard at this point. Developers even feel the need to dumb that down for the masses instead of making proper learning curves to be motivated to raid. They don't, their philosophy is to hand things out for no effort and instant gratification so the "masses" are happy and their numbers on clears are high. It is absolute backwards thinking. Casuals can be challenged without feeling like they are being punished. Weeping City is a good example, it is content that is actually challenging, but not too bad on punishing. More content needs to be like that.

[thegreatonemal]

Based on what exactly? And please don't use the forums as we are but a very vocal few compared to the however many hundreds of thousands of players there are.

The low clear raids compared to japan and the fact that joining a static is pretty much the only way you'll complete a raid fight.

[Ceasaria]

Just release the two difficulties at the same time and don't force players to go through one difficulty to access the second.
Normal and Savage will have the same story mode, different gears.
Just Normal mode would give gear 10 ilvl below compare to now or reduce the ilvl requirement for Savage.
There is no more simple solution.

[Lambdafish]

Just Normal mode would give gear 10 ilvl below compare to now or reduce the ilvl requirement for Savage.

Normal mode shouldn't really give gear at all, the problem right now is that NM has more incentive than savage and people become burned out on NM before they get into savage. Sure, put the story in NM so everyone can experience it, but don't make it part of the gear progression because this will make splitting them redundant by putting it on the gear ladder before savage. NM primals don't give anything, and that system seems to have worked, plus there are ways to keep people running content without putting it on the gear progression ladder (such as relic grind)

[BlitzAceRush]

Normal mode shouldn't really give gear at all, the problem right now is that NM has more incentive than savage and people become burned out on NM before they get into savage. Sure, put the story in NM so everyone can experience it, but don't make it part of the gear progression because this will make splitting them redundant by putting it on the gear ladder before savage. NM primals don't give anything, and that system seems to have worked, plus there are ways to keep people running content without putting it on the gear progression ladder (such as relic grind)

I think it's fine that they give gear for glamour and item level, but I think Normal mode should give gear equal to tome gear, that way it's a choice and not you have to. That way people have options, they then don't feel forced to burn out on normal mode, they can get gear another way. Though another solution would be my idea I posted above to allow Savage raiders to go in with an edge for the next raid which would also give them less intensive to burn out on Normal mode without taking away glamour or a different means of gearing from others.