Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[BlitzAceRush]

Thank you for showing that I did not in fact compare it to Savage and was as I said saying that making things more recoverable not easier was what I said, as for the fact the post I agreed with was talking about Savage, again you've quoted for me showing that I was agreeing with the notion, not Savage in particular as I never said that, so yes my words and yes, still not implying what you claimed they were.

As for your second point, I did say that, but just because someone get's creative and finds a way to trivialise something doesn't mean what I suggested can't be done, there are many ways they could design fights to be harder without being as punishing as they can be currently without making them easy to exploit your way around. It's not an absolute situation where doing one will always lead to the other. In fact being overly punishing can often encourage what your claiming being less punishing would.
Make something painful and overly punishing and people will often seek to avoid/avert that pain, even if it means totally destroying the point, after all if it's causing that much grief they'll just want it to be done with. However make it hard, challenging without feeling so punishing and people might be more inclined to actually try and get by it.

To give an example (disclaimer: this is just an example of my point, I am in no way using, claiming or suggesting things should work like, be like or act like this example, it is purely an example to illustrate a point)
In Dark Souls 3 I was running my face into the Nameless King, my build was pretty bad as I was trying something new and my stats were all over the place. He'd been kicking my butt for the better part of 3 days, but I was enjoying trying to get my strat down and beat him as is, his attacks were punishing but fair and with my damage the fights were long, but I had room to make errors I could recover from a few mistakes and win. However on day 2 I found an odd glitch. (Was playing on the un-patched Japanese Xbox version) If I pulled him too far to one side, he would leash back towards the middle, during this time I could hit him several times, it pretty much broke the fight. I chose not to win with it as I wanted to beat him on my own, because I was having fun with the whole experience deaths and all.

Can only speak for myself, but if I find something fun and fair, no matter how hard it is, I don't mind sticking with it till I either beat it or call it quits and admit it beat me. Yes some people will look for the path of less resistance, yes some will always try and brake something to get it easier/faster but I just said that something doesn't have to be punishing and hard to do without dancing a perfect dance, to be hard, challenging and rewarding.

But hay, that's just an opinion.

[KarstenS]

As for your second point, I did say that, but just because someone get's creative and finds a way to trivialise something doesn't mean what I suggested can't be done

People will always go the easiest known route. T2 Enrage. Divebombs in T5. NISI in A4S. Water in A8S. All of them are proofs that most people don't want to do it regulary, when there is an easier way figured out. Even outside of savage people are ignoring many mechanics completely, when they don't hurt to much.

there are many ways they could design fights to be harder without being as punishing as they can be currently without making them easy to exploit your way around.

And how would you do it, if the aim is to check all kinds of skill?

The big problem in your examples is: only the handling of the encounter itself is part of you consideration.

But thats not the whole point of savage. Savage means also playing your class close to its best and be able to optimize your class for every encounter. If you would make fights more recoverable, you would have do decrease the damage checks, the healer checks (reasons: weakness after rezz and you need additional GCDs for the rezz, heal and protect) and the gear checks. This would make one important part of savage much easier. You would be able do finish this fights, without being close to the optimal class performance, when you don't need to given room for recovery. You can't make fights more recoverable without easing up the class skill checks alot. Its only the one or the other. The other we already do have in every content outside of savage.

One important statemant a developer of another game has stated some years ago: The difficulty is set by the amount of mistakes they allow you to do.