A12 savage World first 3 days after patch

[SumoSamurai]

When you make an MMO, you definitely need to balance and make a compromise between casual, midcore, and hardcore play. Each bring something to the table that is required to make a healthy MMO community. It would be the same situation if everything was for midcore/hardcore and casual players were left in the dust. It isn't a "git gud" mentality necessarily, it is that when the scales are heavily out of balance, the development team needs to go back and find out why it is.

Alexander originally described by the development team before release was that Normal was suppose to be Coil level with an echo buff and Savage was going to be harder than that. What we got instead was a ridiculously easy story mode and a brutally hard Savage mode. It broke the balance and midcore players were not motivated to play.

If I want to be realistic on the developer's intent with Alexander: Creator, it is likely they are trying to desperately draw the midcore players back in. Then have them continue raiding 4.0 onward. Also on top of that, the team believes complex lv.60 rotations are what had people quit raiding. I'm...not entirely sure of that, but lets go off that assumption. So their intent is to right now lower the difficulty so midcore can clear it, then when 4.0 comes, they will ease the rotation of jobs at lv.70(?) and in turn, increase the level of difficulty again. So I look at Alexander: Creator as the bait and attempt to work midcore into harder content in 4.0.

Despite SE's claims that adding three modes is too difficult with their resources, I would still attempt to see if a Normal > Hard > Savage set up can be a thing for the expansion. It will not completely resolve their issues in the casual, midcore, hardcore balance, but it is a step in the right direction.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that SE wants to continue breaking away from the common MMO norm and make an MMO that's not generic. And based on my experiences with Job rotations, most are not even difficult. Level 60 rotations to begin with, they're mostly add ons to the 50 rotation. Now I said most, some were literally given full mechanics. I'm not going to point it out. However, I can't totally see this as a reason why Gordias destroyed most of the raiding community. Now you are correct with the Normal being too easy and Savage being too difficult. There wasn't really a step in between that got raiders ready for the raid.

That being said, there's still the issue that most people do not want to spend 80% of the patch cycle struggling to get these raids down. People get burned out and then they will quit. Mostly to wait for the next update for more content. And I do agree with making three tiers however making the savage tier another means to progress in gear and for pure vanity. Which also leads to a possible theory we may get an extreme savage strictly for vanity in 3.5. I understand players wanted to have prototype gear and savage gear different between each other not just dyable. However, looking at the Alexandrian gear, it is not dyable and if they were to add true savage fights they could make it possible to dye them. Again for pure vanity, plus other rewards, maybe even gear like how SCoB was set up. It maybe a very weak hypothesis to my theory, it's a theory nonetheless. If they were to make that possible though. Make Normal and Hard available at the start then add Savage in the catch up patch. It would keep raiders busy.

Like I said just a theory.

[Velhart]

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Some jobs may feel like extensions, but other jobs went through a pretty big change. Comparing between lv.50 and 60 rotations, 60 is definitely more tunnel vision than 50. I'm with you that I don't completely believe that rotations are the core issue of Gordias/Midas difficulty. DPS checks were ridiculous in Gordias even with knowledge of your rotation and Midas had a ridiculous amount of mechanics to deal with. A8S in particular.

I don't think a harder mode of Alex is coming, but color me surprised if it did. It would help create a little more longevity before the inevitable drought between 3.5 and the expansion. For the Alexander gear, I really think they should keep the aesthetics in Savage. Give generic looking Alex themed gear in Normal mode. As silly as it sounds, cool looking gear is a possible motivation tool for some people. Some like looking higher gear level. Then again, most Alex gear look pretty generic itself and hard to pick from a crowd. Now FCoB gear, despite it being over the top, definitely stood out and looked like raid gear. The development team shouldn't be afraid to have gear sets look silly and over the top.