Is Endgame Just a Cycle of "Static Killers?"

[Zumi]

This all begs the question: is a static required to catch up? If so, I have a bad feeling about picking Gilgamesh since I already get a bad vibe from this server and it appears downright hostile to anyone new. Also, the referrals to "casuals and bads," that kind of mindset is concerning to me in playing in a matured MMO (it's been out for a few years). That's what I mean by a top-heavy player base; the vast majority of people are already at the end-endgame and with that comes certain undesirable characteristics for anyone new (ex: the country club mentality).

You can solo and catch up to the current ilvl if you want to raid.

[Auteur]

You can solo and catch up to the current ilvl if you want to raid.

Care to elaborate/give specifics? As they say "you know it when you see it:" if you call it something else, but it smells and acts like a static, it's still a static. And I've read a ton of bad stuff saying mid core is practically dead due to AS. Honestly, Alexander Savage is horrific P.R. for SE on FF14, any potential new player seeing that stuff early on likely will be turned off real quick, so much bad stuff on there and it reflects really really bad on this game.

[Zomkei]

[...]And I've read a ton of bad stuff saying mid core is practically dead due to AS.

That honestly depends on your server. For example, most of statics forming on Balmung consider themselves midcore, I rarely see hardcore statics on ours (forming at least).

[PArcher]

Care to elaborate/give specifics? As they say "you know it when you see it:" if you call it something else, but it smells and acts like a static, it's still a static. And I've read a ton of bad stuff saying mid core is practically dead due to AS. Honestly, Alexander Savage is horrific P.R. for SE on FF14, any potential new player seeing that stuff early on likely will be turned off real quick, so much bad stuff on there and it reflects really really bad on this game.

Except most of Alex Savage isn't even really hard in the current tier if you're competent at your job and can pay attention to mechanics. If you are at least above average, and can deal with some multi-tasking, you can do Savage.

Too many players are lazy, and want things handed to them. And they complain and complain. Amdapor Keep and Pharos Sirius are two prime examples of casual content getting nerfed because people are just *bad* and refuse to get better.

[Auteur]

Except most of Alex Savage isn't even really hard in the current tier if you're competent at your job and can pay attention to mechanics. If you are at least above average, and can deal with some multi-tasking, you can do Savage.

Too many players are lazy, and want things handed to them. And they complain and complain. Amdapor Keep and Pharos Sirius are two prime examples of casual content getting nerfed because people are just *bad* and refuse to get better.

Outside material like begs to differ, ex: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/67805...eborn/73747720. Begs the question why does SE want to keep producing more AS raids that are going to further create horrendous P.R. and scare away new people from joining the game. Seems like a disastrous raid as a whole and should be scrapped entirely sooner rather than later.

[viewtyjoe]

Outside material like begs to differ, ex: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/67805...eborn/73747720. Begs the question why does SE want to keep producing more AS raids that are going to further create horrendous P.R. and scare away new people from joining the game. Seems like a disastrous raid as a whole and should be scrapped entirely sooner rather than later.

The FFXIV team made a commitment to the current split (Normal/Savage) for the 3.X raids because the most common complaint from the most hardcore raiders through 2.X was that Binding Coil was too easy and not a serious challenge. At the same time, the majority of players did not go through Binding Coil and many of them felt left out because of the story they were missing by not doing serious raiding.

When Gordias Savage was released, it was fairly clear early on that it required some serious coordination and skill (in the form of very intense DPS checks, mostly) from all players in a party, and players on a number of lower population servers migrated to Gilgamesh in the early days of Gordias (and throughout) because "that's where the raiders are." This, along with Gilgamesh's large population, leads to a lot of negativity regarding casual and low-skilled players.

The response from the FFXIV team was to make Midas Savage more forgiving on the DPS check front, but the mechanics were more complicated, and A6S was poorly done. The FFXIV team still received complaints about this, and have stated that the next tier of Savage will be more akin to Final Coil (aka the "easy" stuff that was complained about that led to Savage in the first place) with the expectation that it will be fully cleared by the best groups in a week, and most serious groups should be able to clear it reasonably quickly.

The overall story is one of players complaining about two things (raid not hard enough, raid too hard) and the FFXIV development team responding by offering Normal and Savage difficulties. Player reaction has generally indicated that the complaint about raids not being hard enough was generally overblown, considering the clear rates of Gordias and Midas Savage, and the FFXIV team has been adjusting as they learn to make it more viable.

Again, this is one facet of a fairly large amount of content available at max level, and I don't believe that Savage has generated anything resembling "horrendous PR" or otherwise scared players away. Player whining on the official forums and other venues greatly overstates the issues, as it is with most MMOs.

[KarstenS]

The FFXIV team still received complaints about this, and have stated that the next tier of Savage will be more akin to Final Coil.

Thats not fully correct. They are balancing the last tier of Alexander around the following issue:

Regarding Midas, Let's just say the level cap was still 50 and you could use the level 50 rotations. I think the clear rates would have been way way higher. After checking the data and logs, we noticed "Understanding the mechanics,judging,dodging and maintaining the level 60 rotations on top of that" is what created the enormous gap between players. There are a lot of buffs you need to manage and maintain and not only that, but the phase transitions or enemy mechanics disturb that rotation. This led to requiring players to flexibly judging in certain situations. Back in binding coil of Bahamut, there were some harsh mechanics, but the difference in rotations directly slashed the gap in difficulty. It's too late to change the rotations during the 3.x series so we'll lower the difficulty of the final tier of Alexander instead.

In a more recent interwiew Yoshida did state the same and he also clarified, that Savage is meant to be hardcore content and not to be for everyone. So the difficult for final Alexander is more like a workaround, which will get changed back in 4.0 with the next raid.

[Zumi]

Care to elaborate/give specifics? As they say "you know it when you see it:" if you call it something else, but it smells and acts like a static, it's still a static. And I've read a ton of bad stuff saying mid core is practically dead due to AS. Honestly, Alexander Savage is horrific P.R. for SE on FF14, any potential new player seeing that stuff early on likely will be turned off real quick, so much bad stuff on there and it reflects really really bad on this game.

I'll tell you how to do it in the upcoming patch. You aren't level 60 yet so you are 59. What you do is when you hit 60 there a couple routes you can take. Either you can buy crafted gear which would get you instantly to ilvl 250 but that would probably be expensive. The other route is you run level 60 dungeons once you hit lv 60 for tomestones of lore, this will get you a 230 gear set. At that point you will want to run the 2, 24 man raids to upgrade your gear from 230 to 240. Once you are at 240 which is the current ilvl cap you will have to run the first alex normal 1-8. This will unlock alex normal 9-12 which will get you at 250 set after a few weeks. In the mean time you should be capping lore. However once you hit 240 you are good to join a raid group for the current tier of savage.

[Auteur]

snip

Thanks. The silver lining appears to be that Savage is entirely skippable and this method means I wouldn't be gated from any future content. Still not buying into Savage due to enormous amount of negative reviews and comments on it, and getting ahead of the "get gud you bad" comments I think SE has no interest in having new players try content that has caused a significant amount of the player base to quit and spawned a ton of complaints. I'll take a wait-and-see approach on Savage.

[Nerisu]

There are lots of other "endgame" stuff to do outside of savage, specially for a fresh level 60. You can also get the same ilevel gear (except the weapon) as savage on odd catch-up patches, albeit not best in slot when it comes to stats.