Is Endgame Just a Cycle of "Static Killers?"

[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.

[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.

[Ametrine]

Alexander in general is 100% optional. You can completely avoid the raids and still be able to keep current with the requirements for the main story and other extra content.

Unless you're hellbent on getting your main job to BiS, you simply don't need to ever enter the raids.

There are multible paths to get your gear to the needed iLVL to enter content. New crafted sets are about to drop, the more recent dungeons and 24 mans, and we're getting new tomestone gear, so you don't need to fear the game past 60.

Weapon wise, you can try the EX raids, Palace of the Dead, or the Anima quests, so you have options there, too.

[Taika]

Savage is the highest level of endgame, and even though it's mainly limited to statics because of the difficulty level (it makes the most sense to progress in each fight with the same group one phase at a time towards clear and then farm), there are also some party finder groups available for learning and clearing the fights. If you want to do Savage at level 60, the new one is coming out on Tuesday and there are probably many groups recruiting members for that. If you don't want to do it, there's other endgame content available at level 60, such as the normal Alexander (fully completable and farmable in Duty Finder), extreme primals (more challenging, will require party finder practice and then clear groups), and the new 24 person raid (will be coming out around 3 months after 3.4).

Alexander Gordias Savage (the first Alexander raid) was tuned to be very high difficulty because of high DPS checks and punishing mechanics, and since it was significantly more difficult than Coil, many previously successful Coil groups weren't able to progress through it as easily and broke apart. Alexander Midas Savage (the current one) didn't have as high DPS checks but instead had many more mechanics. The development team is aware of the issues related to both and Yoshi has said in an interview that the upcoming, last Alexander Savage will be easier, so that might encourage more people into raiding again. I guess we'll see in a few weeks after more groups have started trying.

[RyuSaarva]

no, that leve gil achievement is the highest level of endgame.

[Kurogaea]

...

If your worried about endgame I'm assuming your close by now. Here's how raiding near end game goes. Find 7 friends who YOU think are people you'd hang out with, make sure they're ok with you learning at a reasonable pace and vice versa, make a schedule for raiding days or times, and begin watching videos of other raids so you'll get the idea of what you'll be doing for hours to complete something.

The reasons these Alexander Savage modes have been killing statics is because some players have been losing patience with players, mostly the ones asking for more Savage Modes or saying not to nerf them, yet they're impatient with others, go fig. Just remember these modes are meant to be hard and a synchronized dance.

And if you see someone start to flip out on you, make that shit known and tell your static leader or co-lead if you have one. Best to pick out the problems before your whole group gets messed up. Need to keep an eye out for the toxic members. That's all I have on the matter :/

[MilesSaintboroguh]

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.

No, Pharos was nerfed because the devs admitted it was over tuned and it gave the same rewards as the other dungeon that was easier.

[SpookyGhost]

Creator (Savage) is going to be easier than Midas, and apparently WF will kill it in >1 week while casual groups will kill it in 2 months (@ 1-2 raid days a week). Final Coil, arguably the most accessible raid in XIV's history, was killed in a similar time frame and everybody loved that raid. Gear is also more accessible with Sophia being easier than Seph/Nidhogg and crafted gear (apparently) being easy to craft. Gordias basically killed the raid scene and Midas didn't really do much to bring it back - mainly due to the A6S wall discussed earlier, which wasn't really that difficult of a wall (especially after the nerf) but had too much personal responsibility for most groups to handle. I think the idea with Creator will be to make the raid super midcore/casual friendly to get people back into attempting the raids - I believe Midas got a few of them back, but I imagine Creator is aiming for a much bigger number. Whether it'll work or not we'll find out when 3.4 hits.

[Lone-wolfe-02]

You don't need to do savage. It's there for those that want a challenge and to get rewarded for it, some people just aren't cut out for it and that's why there's the easier difficulty Alexander and Extreme primals.
Of course you will need a static for challenging content this is an mmo get out there and talk to people.

[Auteur]

Dunno but probably not going to be able to do a static on Gilgamesh, I think this server exemplifies how the raiding community dug its own grave:

1. Complain raids too easy
2. Get a raid too hard (AS)
3. Large numbers within an already small group quit, and
4. The remainder doesn't want to deal with new people and just cannabalizes a declining group of exp raiders.

This quote from http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/678050-final-fantasy-xiv-online-a-realm-reborn/74262206 is instructive:

'"But why don't you make a static or join one?"

Because those are still filled with morons as well and the few that actually have quality players in them expect you to not have a life. Statics are a failed concept for this game and the Devs should find a way to make content that trains the players to actually be good, know their jobs and actually motivate people to improve and to release content that isn't dependent on having "static" groups.

The MSQ and story trials do nothing to address this and actually make things worse. I 100% agree with Yoshi P that the average player skill dropped when Heavensward came out. People were better at this game in the 2.0 patch series as a whole.'

Although arguably coming from an elitist perspective, the implication is clear: the statics produced by the current raiding community are counterproductive and self-defeating.

Arguably, if SE wants to rebuild the "raiding" community, it needs to hit the reset button and blow it up. Reduce difficulty on all raids so that they are puggable/DF, and then gradually increase difficulty from there. The idea: cast as wide a net as possible to rebuild the base, and work it up from there.

If there's one segment of the player base that SE can use for short-term pain/long-term gain, it's the raiders. They're already a small group as is and SE already got their money and attention.