Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[Yukiko]

Players have a lack of tools to assist when a fight goes wrong. Many tools that have been suggested either facilitate "calling people out" or filtering out people in pf, which hasn't taken off as well as hoped. That is not some standard of multiplayer games, and it is a source of frustration and suspicion among the party. One can only blame culture so much. Even the JP have made note of the "team jump rope" mechanics that have been in one fight after another, and have only gotten more complex with HW. So its "forgiving" if you are in the top percentage of world first players? How convienient for them, but the majority of us are not going to be in that percentile. Certainly not in the direction HW was going.
By closing the gap of performance, the devs can design content that more people will be able to partake and bring their buddies in, instead of having to choose between them and clears.

well said.

[Brannigan]

I think a lot of the people clamoring for more difficult content in 2.x meant for things outside of the raids. EX Primals and raids aside, there's nearly nothing in the game where performance/gear actually gets you a clear. It just gets you a clear faster. The vast majority of content tends toward unfailable difficulty and it can be hard to feel like you're getting stronger (both as a player and as a character) when the game just keeps letting you win.

As for Alex savage I think in general they've layered on too many punishments for single mistakes. Failing a Height kills the player and does damage to the raid and puts a damage debuff on the raid and can put you down a guy for Enumeration. That, combined with more mechanics in each fight that require more people to participate has made these things a lot less fun to learn than previous raids because you get so many late phase wipes.

There are some easy fights in Alex S as well, but in general I think they overtuned the last two floors of each. Once you're winning the fights they feel fairly routine, but before that is a nightmare because your practice gets cut short so often.

[Brian_]

snip.

It's fine to clamor around the "git gud" mentality, however we're looking at a 1.16% clear rate. That is utterly abysmal to the extent the devs are literally wasting their time with Savage. Demands for player improvement to this extreme is being met with "Nah. It's not fun. I'll do something else." No matter how you divvy it up, people rarely fancy instant death mechanics or being routinely punished due to a razor thin margins for error. Citing Elysium means little because they are a step above almost everyone else. You do not balance content around hardcore players, especially world progression types. They make up among the smallest percentage of your fanbase.

You can blame NA/EU individuality all you fancy, but there comes a point when you have to look at the content itself. If enough people aren't enjoying it, then it's failed to accomplish the intended goal. NA/EU tend to be far more picky regarding their content consumption hence why grinds are frequently vilified this side of the ocean yet more acceptable in JP. Square has to cater to both mindsets, lest they continue to see content ignored by a massive portion of their audience.

I never said the clear rates for Savage were fine.

I was saying that it's a fallacy that you can't recover from mistakes in Savage, that Savage is just a game of memorization that trivializes strategy, that you can't carry people through Savage, raid with who you want, or even PuG it.

And, my point about Elysium seems to have been misinterpreted multiple times. I thought my point was quite clear. Even during world-first progression with 20 less ilevels worth of gear, Elysium could afford to make mistakes and use an arguably inefficient strategy. Yes, they're world first players. But, you have 20 more ilevels worth of gear and significantly more optimized strategies.

For example, I'm a mid-core raider in a mid-core static. We use strategies to negate mechanical errors that Elysium's world-first team couldn't do for the lack of gear. We cheese P1 discoid orbs and wipe stacks with missile stacking. That's something you can only do with higher eHP from your left sides. We tank LB3 to trivialize the stacking mechanics in intermission 2 so you basically only need to worry about the enumeration positioning. That's a strategy Elysium couldn't do because they needed their LB3 to push DPS on Winged Justice. We sac our water in P7 because even with weakness, they have enough HP to live through J-waves until we kill. That's another strategy Elysium (arguably) couldn't do.

Yes, you have to look at the content. Unfortunately, very few in this topic actually are. The majority are just lying through their teeth about it or are horribly misinformed. If you want to actually fix Savage, you might want to start by understanding the truth about the content first. Most people here don't do the content, don't understand the content, and feel like they're qualified to talk about how it should change. They don't even know what they're changing.

[Lambdafish]

If you want to actually fix Savage, you might want to start by understanding the truth about the content first. Most people here don't do the content, don't understand the content, and feel like they're qualified to talk about how it should change. They don't even know what they're changing.

"If you give a man a podium, he will naturally tell the world that he knows best"

This argument is true though, while savage does have many memorization mechanics, there are so many points where my group has said "How can we make this mechanic more manageable?" or "I need to have more spacial awareness to deal with X mechanic" there are many different strategies to a fight, and honestly... if all the fights were just perfectionist, muscle memory challenges, raiding would be so much easier than it is (coil was more memory based than alexander is, and that is why coil is easier, and also why T9 is the most difficult turn).

[Zohar_Lahar]

Coil felt accessible to anyone willing to try and earn the story

Until people rage quit at T9 because of the dozen different instant wipe mechanics. And if you dare question that brick wall in the middle of the story, the same kind that ruined Chains of Promathia in XI, the "hardcore" become very defensive.

That's what causes raiders to give off a toxic impression, especially when considering how that same general arrogant mindset made the end of the long grind in XI seem like a cruel letdown instead of any actual true feeling of reward.

[KarstenS]

Perhaps a more apt comparison would be Bloodborne; a notoriously difficult game. Despite being touted for being brutally punishing, you can make mistakes during boss fights and still recover. From that point, it becomes a game of dodging and funneling a future need for Potions' Anonymous. Are you likely to bounce back? Probably not, but you can. Savage does not allow for those mistakes. You must play nearly perfect or you'll not only die, but wipe your entire group.

There is room for mistakes and recovery. Starting with really alot room in A5, getting lower and lower in the following turns. Our A5-7 kills in the last weeks were far away form playing close to perfect. They've looked awful. But they still were kills. If there would be no room for recovery, we would not get into A8 each week.

[Yukiko]

There is room for mistakes and recovery. Starting with really alot room in A5, getting lower and lower in the following turns. Our A5-7 kills in the last weeks were far away form playing close to perfect. They've looked awful. But they still were kills. If there would be no room for recovery, we would not get into A8 each week.

"Team jump rope": It is possible to continue/recover when one falls, but that's very rare to happen!
Your Example doesn't hit the point because AS5-AS7 is not designed for a full iLvL240 party

[Brian_]

"Team jump rope": It is possible to continue/recover when one falls, but that's very rare to happen!

It's not rare at all. You are either lying or completely oblivious to the truth. You can mess up a lot and still clear.

Your Example doesn't hit the point because AS5-AS7 is not designed for a full iLvL240 party

What point? The only point that's relevant is that Midas Savage is still our end-game raid and SE has given us access to i240 gear to help clear it. That's reality.

[KarstenS]

Your Example doesn't hit the point because AS5-AS7 is not designed for a full iLvL240 party

This was not the question.

And: Currently everybody, who wants to raid, should be 240. Not 240 BiS, but 240. So what should be wrong with my opinion? I'm (nearly) in the same boat gear wise, like everybody else. Even before City of Mhach everybody could "overgear" A5 and A6 without doing them.

BTW2: At our first A5S kill we were beolow the minimum iLvl the (later introduced) raidfinder is showing and even then the kill wasn't without mistakes and recovery.

[Yukiko]

It's not rare at all. You are either lying or completely oblivious to the truth. You can mess up a lot and still clear.

wtf you are talking?
Have you never done team rope jumping?
Either the one who falls rolls out or gets trampled from the others, if not from the others the one gets hit from the rope!
One way is that the 2 who swing the rope doing an extra long swing to give more time for rolling out or to slow down the swing a bit if possible...
Well, that's not something you can do inexperienced, in most of the times you just stop to prevent hurting anyone!
Depending how far your team made it the others jumping will be interrupted from their timing (you sync by music) and mostly fall too then!

Its rare enough to recover that way, but look at competitions where you have the "real deal" with jumping in and out when using more than 4 ropes and 6 men...
Youtube-Video German Team Rope Skipping Tournament
Youtube-Video Chinese Circus


@Karsten:
I wonder where we talked about "your" static, i thought we were talking in general about the playerbase and content

(..) So its "forgiving" if you are in the top percentage of world first players? How convienient for them, but the majority of us are not going to be in that percentile. (..)