Yoshida, The Creator: Savage is the worst tuning ever in an MMO

[Velhart]

That doesn't mean there isn't still a substantial cost involved. Even if they build Savage first, then scale down, they have to re-design the fight to accommodate a few missing mechanics, thus necessitating different animations and/or coding. The quote you cited doesn't specify money. Saying one of the raid tier is "pennies on the dollar" is ridiculous. Computer animation and CGI is absurdly expensive. Not to mention, you again, have man hours. Regardless, it remains a waste of resources if 1% of players even bother with.

I never said it wasn't expensive. I said it is not as much to make as it would be to add onto it and create new assets to accommodate the harder mode. Developing anything in an MMO costs money and time. The question is, is it to the point that SE cannot add an extra mode. Their last update of this a few months back according to them is yes, it is too much.

You have to remember however is what that 1% brings to this game. The hardcore players are the ones buying the crafted gear, food, and potions, not the casual players so much. They are the ones making raid guides, how to's, and BiS theories that a lot of casual players follow. If SE truly believed they were not important, then raiding would not even be a thing to begin with. They would not of experiment as much as they did, they would just make Alexander on normal mode and that is that. SE does value that 1% in some form, they just have this belief that the raids have to have high clear rates as opposed to simply high activity.

[Mature]

The solution? to go back to COIL standards where there was one raid as a whole.

Scrap "Savage" mode for once and for all.

[Kyne_Lyons]

A9S-A12S is essentially them saying, the clear rates were far too low and it needs to be better accessible to be worthwhile.

This is the reason they decided to add Normal Mode to begin with. The significant cost of developing an encounter is mainly in the art assets and animation modeling, and musical composition which in 2.0 was limited to just one difficulty of raids. The participation rates of the content (note: not completion rates) wasn't where they wanted it, and Yoshi mentioned that there was an internal discussion to not develop raids in Heavensward because much of the community didn't even try it out. On top of this, in 2.0 the raid was tied very closely with the story. So they decided to add a Normal Mode since it was content designed for anybody who queued to complete, and allowed them to justify the cost of developing it. Earlier this year he said (quote is on the first page with a source) that 50% of max-level players had completed Normal Mode and that they were very happy with that level of participation.

The main difference between WoW and FFXIV in development terms is that content balancing is developed for Savage and then scaled down (also linked with source on the first page). WoW develops Normal Mode balancing and scales up. There is something you need to understand when quoting development costs. Once the money is spent making an asset, it doesn't cost more to use it again. The idea that there is extra cost for another mode is a misnomer, you aren't paying for the same meal twice. They are justifying the cost of encounters for Normal Mode, which again, is the only reason they didn't decide get rid of raiding entirely in Heavensward.

[Arashmin]

Considering the whole bigger picture of it, they tuned everything for Savage from the beginning, and most groups can only really meet the checks of what would otherwise be Extreme/Hard to the rest of the 'story' versions, and that's probably only when they've achieved all top-end gear for that cycle. So now they have these tuned to what people can actually meet, and now you're going to have groups who have been conditioned to pushing to the limits who are able to down it far too easily. EDIT (in regards to what was posted above while composing my post): Whereas the 'story' versions also don't hold well as farmable content, and yet have taken the place of content we'd be up to farming otherwise, i.e. Trials with gear from their base versions or even just at least token drops like minions and such. And weapons, perhaps the more egregious form this issue has taken - 7 weeks of the final story raid to get your non-raiding weapon. And it still ties up your tomestones too. Comparing that to 2.x and also 3.0 where you had to spend 3 weeks getting it instead. So they've also taken this as a way of bottlenecking progress, and thus reducing participation further since people don't really want to have to bother with it and getting multiple weapons. So if they can't do that, if they can't also then do the next tiers of raid up because of a difficulty spike with no transition, will players stick around and keep paying for it? So this is probably part of their response to the drop-off.

All the more reason they need to ensure they have a strong core of devs who aren't going to be reallocated to other projects and make sure these are tuned viably, so it's not so ridiculously easy to push phases while also still being something that the playerbase isn't going to shy away or feel shunned from.

Or heck, do a three-tier thing. Don't even put new mechanics from Hard/Extreme to Savage, just increase the values of the boss. I know they keep saying they don't want to do this, but I think it's because they're over-complicating it with the assumption of having to do new mechanics for each tier. EDIT: This is also something WoW already does.

[Lambdafish]

The solution? to go back to COIL standards where there was one raid as a whole.

Scrap "Savage" mode for once and for all.

This is not the answer. I used to think so too, but I have thought long and hard about it and giving a NM raid is a good thing, this one has simply been poorly implemented.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I never said it wasn't expensive. I said it is not as much to make as it would be to add onto it and create new assets to accommodate the harder mode. Developing anything in an MMO costs money and time. The question is, is it to the point that SE cannot add an extra mode. Their last update of this a few months back according to them is yes, it is too much.

You have to remember however is what that 1% brings to this game. The hardcore players are the ones buying the crafted gear, food, and potions, not the casual players so much. They are the ones making raid guides, how to's, and BiS theories that a lot of casual players follow. If SE truly believed they were not important, then raiding would not even be a thing to begin with. They would not of experiment as much as they did, they would just make Alexander on normal mode and that is that. SE does value that 1% in some form, they just have this belief that the raids have to have high clear rates as opposed to simply high activity.

Actually, that isn't true. MrHappy has openly expressed enjoying this raid tier and outright said on his Twitch stream if they hadn't scaled Savage down to allow the raid scene a chance to recover, they wouldn't have one in 4.0. Mizzteq is midcore, and actually a victim of Gordias. She only managed a full clear after Midas dropped due to her static giving up. They are both the most well known and popular guide makers, and neither have any intention of leaving. Furthermore, Elysium and Angered have also said they liked The Creator. Can't get much more hardcore than World First players. And prior to 3.2, crafted gear was utterly worthless to raiders. It remained among the primary complaint of crafters, yet all of them made a profit. xAshe10x and Mithrie do guides on all level crafting. Both have made tons of profit outside the top tier crafts.

I never said the hardcore side isn't important, but you cannot cater to it when the vast majority of your audience has next to no interest in that content. Not when the statistics are so enormously one-sided. They attempted this for over a year, yet Savage clear rates remained abysmal. Hence why they are now attempting to make it midcore-esque. Whether they scaled Savage back too far is up for debate, but no, you aren't going to see guide markers or the market suffer even if they kept it exactly as is.

The main difference between WoW and FFXIV in development terms is that content balancing is developed for Savage and then scaled down (also linked with source on the first page). WoW develops Normal Mode balancing and scales up. There is something you need to understand when quoting development costs. Once the money is spent making an asset, it doesn't cost more to use it again. The idea that there is extra cost for another mode is a misnomer, you aren't paying for the same meal twice. They are justifying the cost of encounters for Normal Mode, which again, is the only reason they didn't decide get rid of raiding entirely in Heavensward.

If this were true, we would already have three difficulties. Yoshi specifically cited costs and a lack of resources (in so many words) for the reason we don't. Bosses are all scripted, thus certain attacks follow a specific animations. I never said you couldn't reuse assets. I said not every asset is re-useable, thus necessitating new animations. If say, Sophia does a certain motion in extreme to provide a hint to her next mechanic, but that whole sequence isn't in normal. Then that animation is exclusively for extreme, and therefore, an extra cost. The order they develop it is irrelevant. They still had to do a separate animation at some point.

[Kyne_Lyons]

If this were true, we would already have three difficulties.

The FFXIV development team has shown that they prefer incrementalism, they tend not to make radical shifts in development practices on just any old patch. I think there's a chance for it in 4.0, but my theory is that 3.0 was the Normal Mode "experiment" to see if it was worth continuing. We'll just have to wait and see.

[Velhart]

snip

You are arguing something else entirely. The argument was the cost of adding tiers and the importance of hardcore players. I never brought up how they feel about this tier in particular.

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

Also, most of us are aware as I said in previous posts/threads that 3.4's difficulty is the result of the team believing that the lv.60 rotation is too complicated and difficulty may be increased again depending on how battle classes are set up in 4.0. In actuality, Creator is probably the best midcore raid they have done this expansion. I do agree with the OP that gear scale and mechanic skipping should come into question and be taken in as feedback for 4.0 expansion. If SE took that feedback into consideration with 4.0 and add a Savage difficulty on top of that. That really is the best compromise the game can make.

The FFXIV development team has shown that they prefer incrementalism, they tend not to make radical shifts in development practices on just any old patch. I think there's a chance for it in 4.0, but my theory is that 3.0 was the Normal Mode "experiment" to see if it was worth continuing. We'll just have to wait and see.

One thing we do know is that SE knows player's thoughts on the raiding scene are very split. If he decides to try to make a compromise or simply decide to cater to one side only is something we have to wait till 4.0 to see. They at least acknowledge there is controversy.

[Remedi]

Nice taking as an example wow devs team vs FF14, considering that the content there was beaten in mythic in 16h from release if I'm not wrong, I'm honestly curious what OP actually thinks about it

[Kyne_Lyons]

Nice taking as an example wow devs team vs FF14, considering that the content there was beaten in mythic in 16h from release if I'm not wrong, I'm honestly curious what OP actually thinks about it

I feel pretty much the same way about it as I do this content. I think that it's not tuned properly whatsoever and the fact that the entire tier was over in 18 hours is pretty sad, that said, I'm not sure WoW has the same problems FFXIV has where you can prematurely push entire phases. If there's someone more familiar with the current WoW tier feel free to correct me.

Meanwhile, this is currently happening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osry...ature=youtu.be