Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[Velhart]

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.

But....Alexander is not a main scenario quest story. It is a side story that it ultimately not relevant in the grand scheme of things. Coils you can kind of argue since it was tied to 1.0's main scenario, but that was ultimately a side quest story also.

Not to mention, CoP missions were not actually that hard. FFXI's difficulty lied more in inaccessibility and hard time putting together groups. A lot of people were able to clear the content in a small amount of time, especially when the content first came out. Only fight I can think of that felt like a real wall was Ouryu.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also, in terms of clear rate in Savage. Isn't it being a low percentage...a good thing? I can understand if the content is unfairly balanced and not fair, but Midas despite being mechanic heavy, is still a fair tier. Most MMO's do not get over 10% of clears on their hardest content unless the game was built to be easy.

If you want higher percentage clear rate on Savage, then you need to have content that properly works you into it. Other MMO's pull this off easily, but SE has the hardest time doing this. It is either content that is so easy that you can get carried and not even need any relevant gear to win, or very difficult in Savage. There is little to nothing that gets you ready for it. Learning curves are needed, not adjustments to Savage raid.

If dungeons kept it's difficulty level similar to 2.0's Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace before their nerf (where not too difficult to overcome, but still have to think and perform mechanics and properly coordinate with your group), relic quests that have meaningful content, 24-man raids kept a difficulty similar to Weeping City, made Alex(Normal) at a maybe slightly less harder than FCoB mode(one that gear in time can make much easier), then Savage mode that really tests your skills.

Just because someone may be a casual player, doesn't mean they want it easy. They just want the content to be accessible. That is FFXIV's greatest strength and instead of trying to make things challenging despite having a nice accessibility structure, they decide to dumb down content each patch just so they can see numbers rise. I'm not saying everything needs to be difficult either, but they need to do a much better job at motivating players to get better. Because besides Primal EX and Savage raids, there is absolutely no reason to.

[Zohar_Lahar]

But....Alexander is not a main scenario quest story. It is a side story that it ultimately not relevant in the grand scheme of things.

Citation needed.

[Waliel]

My biggest problem with Alex is how utterly ridiculous the setting is. You went from fighting dragons to trying to stop funny talking, cheese liking midgets with gas masks who try to control time. You just can't take that seriously. Not to mention robots are boring. A3S is my favourite fight out of the bunch for the sole reason it being something other than a goblin or a robot or a goblin riding a robot. I wonder how people would think about Alex with identical mechanics but different setting. I probably wouldn't have skipped the whole of 3.3 then.

[FoxyAreku]

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.

idk I'm a raider and I think T9 was completely awful and a huge mistake.

I'd rather do any savage alexander fight a thousand times then ever touch that abomination again.

Just goes to show that even something as great as coil can have mistakes.

[Yukiko]

My biggest problem with Alex is how utterly ridiculous the setting is. You went from fighting dragons to trying to stop funny talking, cheese liking midgets with gas masks who try to control time. You just can't take that seriously. Not to mention robots are boring. A3S is my favourite fight out of the bunch for the sole reason it being something other than a goblin or a robot or a goblin riding a robot. I wonder how people would think about Alex with identical mechanics but different setting. I probably wouldn't have skipped the whole of 3.3 then.

Just wait for when he is fully awoken

[Remus]

idk I'm a raider and I think T9 was completely awful and a huge mistake.

I'd rather do any savage alexander fight a thousand times then ever touch that abomination again.

Just goes to show that even something as great as coil can have mistakes.

Most would disagree. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to do A4S without the cheese strat, without echo and not being over geared.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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.

Nor did I say recovery was entirely impossible. Only that the margin for error is exceptionally low-- to the extent very few people can adjust.

Any mention of Elysium is wholly irrelevant. World Progression players are an anomaly. You cannot balance content around their skill level because the overwhelming majority will never come close to it, which is what we've seen throughout Alexander. These are players who dedicate absurdly long hours daily to clearing all of Savage. Furthermore, you are mistaken. Layla's group all had various bits of upgraded gear, most impossibly their weapons, before clearing Brute Justice. They weren't going in at ilvl 220. At least once they reached A7S. I believe they farmed Nidhogg some too.

Being able to execute a strategy and Savage having too narrow a margin are not mutually exclusive. If one person messes up what you've outlined, you'll likely wipe. None of this means people complaining over Savage's difficulty want to see it nerfed into the ground, but it does denote the aforementioned narrow room for error. People, on average, do not like content where slight mistakes force them to do it all over again, especially when it wasn't their mistake.

And here is your own fallacy. Don't presume because people haven't been in the fight themselves, they do not know of it or have not spoken to people who have cleared with similar opinions. That's like saying you need to finish an entire game to have an opinion on it. What we do know is Savage clear rates are abysmal. To insinuate difficulty is not a factor among its perceived flaws (rewards and etc), is a bit disingenuous.

For the record, I wouldn't actually fancy nerfs on Savage. In fact, I wish they would upscale dungeons or, at the very least, Weeping City became the base level standard. I'm coming at this more from a why people aren't going into Savage approach.

Also, in terms of clear rate in Savage. Isn't it being a low percentage...a good thing? I can understand if the content is unfairly balanced and not fair, but Midas despite being mechanic heavy, is still a fair tier. Most MMO's do not get over 10% of clears on their hardest content unless the game was built to be easy.

If you want higher percentage clear rate on Savage, then you need to have content that properly works you into it. Other MMO's pull this off easily, but SE has the hardest time doing this. It is either content that is so easy that you can get carried and not even need any relevant gear to win, or very difficult in Savage. There is little to nothing that gets you ready for it. Learning curves are needed, not adjustments to Savage raid.

If dungeons kept it's difficulty level similar to 2.0's Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace before their nerf (where not too difficult to overcome, but still have to think and perform mechanics and properly coordinate with your group), relic quests that have meaningful content, 24-man raids kept a difficulty similar to Weeping City, made Alex(Normal) at a maybe slightly less harder than FCoB mode(one that gear in time can make much easier), then Savage mode that really tests your skills.

Just because someone may be a casual player, doesn't mean they want it easy. They just want the content to be accessible. That is FFXIV's greatest strength and instead of trying to make things challenging despite having a nice accessibility structure, they decide to dumb down content each patch just so they can see numbers rise. I'm not saying everything needs to be difficult either, but they need to do a much better job at motivating players to get better. Because besides Primal EX and Savage raids, there is absolutely no reason to.

To an extent, yes. Unfortunately, Savage rates are too low. You cannot have content virtually no one touches, otherwise you've essentially wasted time and money developing it. Hence why the devs have openly acknowledged this precise problem. What that exact problem is, however, remains open to interpretation. I, personally, see it as a combination of difficulty and lackluster rewards. Although I also agree with your point further on. The overall ease of FFXIV in general doesn't cultivate much reason to actually improve unless you want to.

We desperately need a midcore to better ease people into Savage raiding. Frankly, Normal mode should also be harder. Not to any substantial degree, but enough you aren't able to faceroll it like we do now.

Square seems wholly afraid to motivate people. I can appreciate not wanting to gate story behind immensely difficult content due to how many people play only for that reason. But they certainly could offer better rewards and/or ilvl sync endgame content so you cannot just wait a patch cycle or two and cheese through the whole thing. I mean, Midas basically offered a challenge, dyeable gear and a minion.

[FoxyAreku]

Most would disagree. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to do A4S without the cheese strat, without echo and not being over geared.

A4S and A8S are the only fights I haven't done in this game, and ironically these are the main two fights that have mechanic-skipping cheese in them from my understanding.

Personally I prefer to do mechanics properly and just knowing that there is a mechanic in those fights where it's more beneficial to die seriously bothers me...but I would still probably have more fun in it than I ever did in T9. >_>

[Brannigan]

What's so bad about Nael? Other than messing up meteors (and really screwing up the elements dance I guess), there's no instant wipes. Even messing up something like "move out of the party if you have lightning" doesn't necessarily kill anyone. Divebombs, garrotes, and the elemental dance can be entirely called out by one dude(tte) with a microphone and you have almost a full minute to prepare for divebombs (compared to a few seconds for Alex chakrams). Nael's fun.

Savage Nael can go suck a D though. First phase is wayyyyy too long and you have to do it a lot because of how cray cray the last phases are.

[Velhart]

To an extent, yes. Unfortunately, Savage rates are too low. You cannot have content virtually no one touches, otherwise you've essentially wasted time and money developing it. Hence why the devs have openly acknowledged this precise problem. What that exact problem is, however, remains open to interpretation. I, personally, see it as a combination of difficulty and lackluster rewards. Although I also agree with your point further on. The overall ease of FFXIV in general doesn't cultivate much reason to actually improve unless you want to.

We desperately need a midcore to better ease people into Savage raiding. Frankly, Normal mode should also be harder. Not to any substantial degree, but enough you aren't able to faceroll it like we do now.

Square seems wholly afraid to motivate people. I can appreciate not wanting to gate story behind immensely difficult content due to how many people play only for that reason. But they certainly could offer better rewards and/or ilvl sync endgame content so you cannot just wait a patch cycle or two and cheese through the whole thing. I mean, Midas basically offered a challenge, dyeable gear and a minion.

We need higher activity in Savage, not more wins necessarily. Savage activity is much lower than I seen in MMO's because the learning curve is basically not there. Everything is ridiculously easy to beat in the game, then you go do Savage and then the game goes from Very Easy mode to the Very Hard setting. At least WoW in the WoTLK days had Heroic Dungeons and a proper normal mode raid that properly worked you into Heroic Raids. Its a huge unbalanced mess and I guarantee fixing the learning curve and finding ways to motivate people to challenge themselves will bring numbers up.

SE's philosophy: Make it easier till more people can do it. Numbers go higher!

Philosophy that should be taken: We need to adjust content where working towards Savage raiding feels more natural. Numbers go higher!

I am not even talking about anything real hard. Dungeons can be just difficult enough where people at least need to think and work with mechanics, coordinating with a group. I hate to keep comparing to WoW, but during the WoTLK days it did it's learning curve expertly. People wanted to do Normal Mode raiding and jumped right into Heroic once they beat Normal. Heroic Dungeons and trial fights were great learning tools jumping into raids.