Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[Sparktacus]

The fights are based on memorization from a design standpoint. the only thing it takes to learn a fight any fight in this game is to go in there and see it but our community basically gates seeing the fight behind "are you in a static you need to join a static" The biggest challenge to raiding as anyone will tell you is getting into a group if you weren't at gear lvl day one of a new raid cycle. the point I was making is that japan's clear rates are higher due to them being able to PUG them for the most part there is a cultural difference as they feel since its there they have to do it.
And lets leave the personal stuff out of this as you're just flat wrong I'm speaking as a raider. This is a community problem not saying the community is bad just that it needs to do better.

I will just put this here again...

the problems that raiding in this game faces is more community inflicted than design choice inflicted.

This is blaming the community, not subtly suggesting that it might be part of the problem but is in fact a majority of the problem, coming from a raider. I used to raid too until Gordian tore my 2 year team apart. People I came to consider dear friends. Oh wait, maybe I should blame the community for that too?

Because I suggested you might have had a few run in with bad eggs does not equate to a personal attack.

Next lets bring up the fact that its hard to get into a group after content has been out awhile. This has a lot more to do with the DEVELOPERS making their content obsolete at an alarming rate. Many people are stopping to even put in effort because they know within a few months they can show up and upgrade themselves without much hassle. If the DEVELOPERS made their content last, people would be running the same things still and taking people (non raiders) with them.

-May I englighten you with a system I loved that was out for years called Voidwatch in FF11 (Im sorry its my most played mmo so its the best example I have). In Voidwatch, which had already been out for two years when I started up again, and was incredibly popular still, it took 18 people to farm a triggered NM. After defeat everyone got their own coffer with a very small chance at super rare armor or relic weapon upgrade. Their was no skill ceiling involved, just job distribution as you needed specific attacks to Proc weakness on the mob. Anyone could join as long as their was a need for the job. This system was going strong years after its release.-

And I want to touch again about the clear rates since you wanted to bring them up again. Japan PF is also better because they tend to stick to one given strategy for a fight. There is no variation so everyone is on the same page. They don't go in with 4 or 5 different strategies. Someone made an excellent point about this earlier, saying that in the end while its awesome we have content creators like Xeno and MTQ, the NA scene could really do with a consolidated strategy for fights to help alleviate some of the issues you describe. These are differences in culture (not community) and it is not inherently good or bad as in I think most of use would rather have access to guides and such. In the end only around 6000 people have cleared M8S with a good portion of those being alts. Lets say for arguments sake , that 1.5k is NA/EU and 4.5k is JP since this falls in line with being 3x greater clears. Why on earth would any DEVELOPER continue to stick with the same tragic raid formula with those kind of numbers, and how can you expect the community not to react to some degree.

But again, blaming the community is incredibly short sighted. Is it perfect? No. Is any? No.

[thegreatonemal]

snip

Yes gordias was too highly tuned the devs already admitted that that is an example of a design problem when the content is so hard that they couldn't even clear it in testing so no that's not the community's problem. People can't get into groups half way through a tier because hardly anyone is willing to teach and statics for the most part are filled at that point. A symptom of a community to reliant on the whole static method of doing things these fights require that you get in to see them in order to learn the dance required to beat it its that simple but no static, good luck seeing the fight. Again community problem. This is an MMO no content last forever just a fact of life new primal gets released no one will do the older one anymore and with the design of HW fights being mechanically focused that you can't just dps your way through like 95% of ARR content at this point.

Oh look a system that isn't relying on a community driven static system I'm assuming they just que up or go shout in town or something in order to get a party to enter that right? There are probably some other things as well to go along with why that is still done after all this time but for this discussion it does not matter.

Again there really isn't a skill ceiling with the raids in this game its pure memorization the boss does this thing at this time all the time its handled by doing A B and C every single time. Optimizing your dps that's where some skill comes in but you don't need to be playing 90% of the classes limit in order to clear a fight.

Once again the over reliance on statics is a community problem is any community perfect? No but this issue can be fixed or at least made better There are plenty of people who want more challenging content to try out the raids but they can't get in the door why? I don't have a static.

[otarolgam]

Don't you think the "non-raiders" would actually spend that time doing things like the previous Savage raid, older extremes etc. instead of nothing? Since that content has been made easier and put in Duty Finder for accessibility and does not require a static or having studied the strategies perfectly to be able to complete the fights. What would be wrong in spending that time farming gear from that content (which already has a token system similar to Alexander normal except it's better since you get 1 token drop per win for sure every week) instead of just farming the two expert dungeons?

I actually do that... I'm not really interested in the Extreme Primals cause... they're literally on the same level as Savage for me.

[Velhart]

Once again the over reliance on statics is a community problem is any community perfect? No but this issue can be fixed or at least made better There are plenty of people who want more challenging content to try out the raids but they can't get in the door why? I don't have a static.

The only solution to prevent statics is to make raiding so easy that one is not required. I rather deal with 7 others I see each night where we all know what to do, no conflicting strategies with others. You rather I be in a raid group with Random Joe who may or may not be efficient at his job? Or may not agree with our strategy? Your viewpoint on this is extremely misguided and doesn't seem to be a community issue, it seems to be a you issue. Even in FFXI, with how it was built, we always had people on a dedicated job because we needed people who had a 100% understanding of the job and what they had to do with certain content.

Again, you cannot prevent a static mindset(which is a better mindset) unless you dumb down content enough that having a dedicated group is not required.

[thegreatonemal]

snip.

Not saying that the concept of statics needs to go it need not be the primary way of raiding as statics are not required what raiding requires of you is to know your rotation know the mechanics of the particular fight and know how to do your rotation. As long as you know the fight there should be no issue you just need 7 other people who also know the fight and do their rotation. That is it period. Statics have their uses but it should not be the only way to raid and right now it pretty much is that needs to change. we as raiders are not special snowflakes the only thing you have over a other people who want to raid is that you have 7 other people you can meet with for a few hours a night a few days a week

[Iromi]

^ Wait tho, how did Tera do it then? The fights were super challenging at end game and I did them with random people. But it would get to the point where I had to kite, reraise myself, and raise others over and over. They were long, difficult, butt clenching fights but we did it lol.

This games problem with raiding is it allows for no recovery. Sometimes that can be the most challenging aspect of a battle..and the most fun. Shame that they left that out of this game...

[Hyperia]

This games problem with raiding is it allows for no recovery. Sometimes that can be the most challenging aspect of a battle..and the most fun. Shame that they left that out of this game...

THIS... so much THIS.

Many of my fondest memories of raiding in other games are the amazing come from behind, save the day victories. We were able to use what resources we had remaining to hold the boss off, stop DPS so a phase wouldn't progress and bring everybody back. So much fun, was it hard, yea, was it rough, yea, would I do it again?

Yes.

What I believe players don't like most of all are unforgiving, harsh and penalizing mechanics with no hope of recovery if you or anybody makes the most minor of mistakes. Mechanics like that (Looking at you A3S) make people turn on each other and break apart groups, and we don't want that. That isn't hard level raiding, that's just plain mean.

[Brian_]

Late in a raid cycle, there is plenty of room for recovery. People are just bad at this game so they think otherwise. You can die a ton of times and mess up numerous mechanics in A5S and still clear. There is only one mechanic where a failure results in a wipe (gorilla failing a bomb though that's still not a guaranteed wipe if you have tank LB). With the nerfs to A6S you can now die numerous times and still clear before enrage. It's just the lightning and water on Vortexer that result in a wipe if mishandled. In A7S, outside of the heart, nothing will basically auto-wipe you. You're just given a 2-3 death budget. A8S is the only fight where the mechanics are actually punishing.

That's not even mentioning the other raiding content in this game like EX Trials, 24-mans and Alex normal that are plenty forgiving.

God forbid we're given a few mechanics every half a year that just can't be ignored, circumvented, or failed. God forbid we have standards for performance in our hardest content.

People clear up to A7S in RF on JP Data Centers. The content is clearly not stopping them from basically DFing the content.

Wipe mechanics are hardly the biggest problem with raiding or why statics are so important.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

^ Wait tho, how did Tera do it then? The fights were super challenging at end game and I did them with random people. But it would get to the point where I had to kite, reraise myself, and raise others over and over. They were long, difficult, butt clenching fights but we did it lol.

This games problem with raiding is it allows for no recovery. Sometimes that can be the most challenging aspect of a battle..and the most fun. Shame that they left that out of this game...

Mhm. I feel this is a big part of the issue. Even if you still ultimately lose, being able to almost turn around a wipe is both exhilarating and motivating because you have some assurance if you do make a mistake, it can be salvaged. One of my fondest memories is back in an old JRPG where I was vastly underleveled and assumed I couldn't beat the final boss only to win with just my last character alive. With Savage, you have to be borderline perfect or the whole party wipes. That's already at first, but once the wipes start to pile on, it becomes increasingly frustrating. At least in my opinion.

[Brian_]

Again, you cannot prevent a static mindset(which is a better mindset) unless you dumb down content enough that having a dedicated group is not required.

This is not true.

Content can still be incredibly difficult -- even harder than it is now. But, the strategy and execution must be less varied and open to interpretation.

A1S is a fight that shows the difference.

The timing of A1S's tank busters left tanks with very little variation in CD planning. The ~120s intervals meant WARs just used everything on each one. PLDs just used everything on the first, HG on the second, and everything on the last one. DRKs had a bit more flexibility due to DA DM but it wasn't that wildly different. As long as the tanks followed the standard CD rotation, their damage intake would be somewhat consistent across different groups.

On the other side of the spectrum, due to RNG and just how the mechanics worked, you had a lot of variations for how adds were handled and how Resin puddles were baited that led to inconsistency in execution.

A static can deal with that inconsistency through mutual familiarity, voice communication, and a unified strategy. PuGs will wipe.

Just take a quick look at Midas. As I detailed earlier, because of the shift away from the DPS checks of Gordias and the focus on mechanics, the mechanics leave a lot of room for interpretation. What that does is create confusion within the community, inconsistency within PuG practice and execution, and slowed progression.

So the problem is two sided. Part of it is how disorganized and individualistic the NA and EU communities are. The other part is how much variance exists in the fight strategies. If we saw a raid tier that was difficult but had fights with very clearly defined phases designed to restrict your potential solutions down to a singular strategy we'd see PF groups composed of good players progress much faster than a static composed of mediocre players.