Problems with the strength of gear coming from easy mode Alexander

[Vaeria]

Yes. This. Exactly this.

XD sorry...just used that to begin my edit~

[Belhi]

And why should someone who is capable of clearing the last Savage wing be forced to farm an EX trial? They'll still clear it because that's what they do but forcing them to potentially grind it 10 times for their weapon is just stupid. If they are a melee DPS that double dips in MNK / DRG, a MT that plays DRK / PLD, or a healer that plays WHM / AST / SCH, the grind will be even worse. The ones who care will still go back and farm for glamour, push for fflogs rankings, farm for the bird and other stuff, and play the content because unlike casuals, HC players don't need as much incentive to actually do content.

And really, SE actually agrees. Back in 3.0 when raiders were complaining about needing to spam Gordias NM for 5 weeks to gear for Savage, SE agreed it was dumb and added crafted gear to negate that need. Unfortunately, as with many changes SE makes, they never considered the overall negative effect on gear progression their short term solution would have.

In reality, if they implemented ilevel boosting crafted gear as a one-time solution to Alex NM gearing issues and then actually took the time to really think about the issue and read threads like this one, they would've seen better solutions.

Fair enough. I am working on the basis the original OP had that the current set up removes the reward factor to make farming Savage worthwhile. I read that as an argument that the issue was the content was unrewarding to run more than once. I assumed this would also apply to other content and as such beyond seeing it, any new release content would lack the same incentive to run more than once that the Savage raid had. I assumed by this logic you would just be shifting what was less rewarding to the newer non savage content. If that is a scenario that didn't bother Savage raiders then I agree it would be fine.

I am not trying to be difficult as much as prod the discussion to identify potential issues and consequences. One core aspect of a developers job is to find ways to incentivise players to run content and one of the common methods in games like FF14 is rewarding character strength. I mean the lack of such reward is what the OP took issue with. A change such as rendering all but the newest tier's savage gear inferior to the past savage tier's strength removes that particular reward option from most of the games content.

[Shai]

I stand by my post even tho the quote changed.


I mean - I raid because it's the only PVE content I think is remotely fun. If I'm not being challenged, I don't see the point to playing. That's just me and I know that's just me. I don't try to force that mentality on others and I don't expect others to pander to my opinion. That said - as the OP said - since HW came out, I've not understood what the point is of farming Alexander, because unlike Coil the reward was worthless. I mean, legitimately worthless.

I - too - play this game largely for glamours, and I wish the glamour system would get a serious overhaul to be more accommodating (and I'm a conspiracy theorist about why they refuse to implement a proper system). I would literally farm every piece of gear in the game if I had a place to put it just so I could build cute outfits for myself AND I MEAN THAT SINCERELY. That said, why bother farming up glamour pieces of Alexander A8S when I can just clear it once for the "huzzah! I did it!" and come back in 4 months and farm the hell out of it effortlessly with +30 iLv and +20% Echo. Why waste that much time on something so absolutely meaningless when you can do it faster and more efficiently if you just come back later.

So yes - I raid for the raid. I don't raid for the gear. When I want the gear, I come back when it's easy mode and farm for gear because outside of the raid itself the gear serves no immediate use. That's the entire gist of this thread. It would be great if they made raid gear meaningful. No one is crying that it's not the most OP gear available, or we have to replace it every other patch - just that we'd like to have a single USE for it. We'd like to use it on a single boss that actually required you be in top form before having to toss it aside for progression's sake.

[Brannigan]

if you need a shinies as reason for do it you are not a raider.

I've found this to be a common sentiment among those who like the idea of raids but haven't actually set foot in them. Here's reality: it sucks hard to spend hundreds of wipes learning something and then log in every week to kill it only for it to all amount to zero progress. You don't earn gil by raiding so between buying gear, using consumables, and repairing, not skipping a raid patch is actually detrimental to you. Skipping 2.2~2.3 might mean you'd have to spend a lot of time either farming gear or spend a lot of gil getting it crafted in order to raid Final Coil. Skipping 3.2~3.3 puts you in a better situation than someone who has been killing the content for months.

Besides, I'm not asking for shinies. We already get shinies, but then you have to throw away those shinies because of how fucked up Heavensward is.

[Brannigan]

Wanted to ask about this at fanfest, but didn't get called on. Got questions about Sophia costumes instead. Onward to 4.0!

p.s. at least Creator Savage was fun. That's a step in the right direction. Still, I dropped all my old gear in about a day.

[MihaelB]

Wanted to ask about this at fanfest, but didn't get called on. Got questions about Sophia costumes instead. Onward to 4.0!

p.s. at least Creator Savage was fun. That's a step in the right direction. Still, I dropped all my old gear in about a day.

Well these were the stats from the unofficial census, I imagine the real one would be lower with bots, newbies & people blocking private access to their lodestone.



Literally catering to the 1%, though I guess it is good to dangle some rewards/ incentives for the unknown percentage who tries/tried.
Feels like a waste of development like PVP at this point from my perspective.

[Brannigan]

Yeah it turns out that if you put next to zero rewards in something that's difficult and time consuming no one will do it (like with 2.3 savage). Who knew? I agree that they should put good rewards into raids and not make them as retardedly difficult as Gordias and Midas were so that more than 1% of the population will do them.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Feels like a waste of development like PVP at this point from my perspective.

Calling you out on this one: Do you PvP? Because if your answer is no, then on what grounds do you say it's a waste? If raiding caters to the 1% would that not be a waste too? Would Gold Saucer be a waste based on anyone who perhaps only pops in for the Daily Cactpot and nothing else? How about crafting? Not everyone does that either.

There is quite a lot of people that play and enjoy PvP, and I myself enjoy it just as much as I do raiding, or even somehing as casual as customizing housing. I barely craft and do not enjoy Triple Triad at all, but those are not wasted development. Please do not toss out opinions as fact.

[MihaelB]

Calling you out on this one: Do you PvP? Because if your answer is no, then on what grounds do you say it's a waste? If raiding caters to the 1% would that not be a waste too? Would Gold Saucer be a waste based on anyone who perhaps only pops in for the Daily Cactpot and nothing else? How about crafting? Not everyone does that either.

There is quite a lot of people that play and enjoy PvP, and I myself enjoy it just as much as I do raiding, or even somehing as casual as customizing housing. I barely craft and do not enjoy Triple Triad at all, but those are not wasted development. Please do not toss out opinions as fact.

I PVP'd probably than majority of the player database ever have.



I had no care for Feast as Primal was just ~200 players bashing each other repeatedly in a poorly designed system which did get a repeated patches. I may be wrong in the JP servers which I have yet to see.
It was released with the eso/lore farm fiasco, horrible ninja abuse and other bugs that made a poor concept even worse.

Daily Cactpot requires how much development time do you think? Do they regularly fine tune it? When did a new mini-game get released last?

What have we got from PvP lately? Shatter? Feast? Duels? Not to mention all the fine tuning development time to put in to balance it out.

My problem is the development time gets invested into the areas of PVP & Raids which the 1%(or however much % PVP has) enjoy.

[silentwindfr]

I've found this to be a common sentiment among those who like the idea of raids but haven't actually set foot in them. Here's reality: it sucks hard to spend hundreds of wipes learning something and then log in every week to kill it only for it to all amount to zero progress. You don't earn gil by raiding so between buying gear, using consumables, and repairing, not skipping a raid patch is actually detrimental to you. Skipping 2.2~2.3 might mean you'd have to spend a lot of time either farming gear or spend a lot of gil getting it crafted in order to raid Final Coil. Skipping 3.2~3.3 puts you in a better situation than someone who has been killing the content for months.

Besides, I'm not asking for shinies. We already get shinies, but then you have to throw away those shinies because of how fucked up Heavensward is.

i did my share of raiding on other game *look up* i will always remember you Razorgore!.... 6 month, you did take us 6 month!

anyway what i was pointing is the mentality of the raider that did go from beat a challenge and use the gear as means for beat this challenge.
to a mentality of.... beat a challenge with as purpose get shinies. it's often seen into message from some raider that are there defending that the need the best gear into them raid and such...when technically this gear is not needed for complet this raid.

i take the case of the last part of alexander that was beaten with 240/250 ilevel gear. then why reward the raider that did complete this challenge and don't really need a boost for complete it.... with 270/275? for allows them to beat the next content faster? that kinda silly... it's the reason of why the challenge was beaten that fast. because people was able to get the gear needed before the raid is there.

Raiding gear must help to complet a challenge, not be the purpose of this challenge.

it's a sort of old school mentality but that how i see stuff... my gears is a means for reach my purpose, beat a challenge. when now for most raider it's: the challenge is a means for reach my purpose, get gears.

I PVP'd probably than majority of the player database ever have.



I had no care for Feast as Primal was just ~200 players bashing each other repeatedly in a poorly designed system which did get a repeated patches. I may be wrong in the JP servers which I have yet to see.
It was released with the eso/lore farm fiasco, horrible ninja abuse and other bugs that made a poor concept even worse.

Daily Cactpot requires how much development time do you think? Do they regularly fine tune it? When did a new mini-game get released last?

What have we got from PvP lately? Shatter? Feast? Duels? Not to mention all the fine tuning development time to put in to balance it out.

My problem is the development time gets invested into the areas of PVP & Raids which the 1%(or however much % PVP has) enjoy.

the trouble is for many player of mmorpg that did grow while looking big guild face challenging content, for them mmorpg = raiding.... *scratch head* what is not that true sadly. raiding is a part of the game, it's called endgame because for more of 20 years nothing was placed at the same level than the raiding (outside pvp on some game)

even the expert dungeon in some game are vast joke that are barelly more difficult than normal with the right gears. the point is, the mmorpg didn't really evolve for the past 20 years, do it's the fault of the dev? probably yes, but not only, playerbase are too responsible for this. they refuse new gameplay quite fast and begin to scream.

even if in the case of FF14 most of the time we did scream it's because.... they did bring old idea that was working 20 years ago like diadem or the hunt. most of this are monster party and NM. stuff you was able to do in FF11.... but do it work well with a mmorpg with more of 500.000 playerbase? not really. hunt was a huge mess where you had most of the server hunting 1 sad monster that had like 3 second of lifespan. no danger, no challenge, no glory.
for the diadem is the fact that it did ask us to what? chain kill monster for 90 minutes... ok, it's what we do normally, but there it monster with tons of hp and one more time, no real danger, no challenge, no glory. because you was often ending at more of 24 on one sad monster.

in old mmorpg it was working because it was hard to create true challenging content, then create content that was asking tons of player was the best. but in 2016 it's perfectly possible to create true challenge without rely on this sort of pity mechanic.

but i digress, why POTD work better? it's for 4 player, it have a part of random and we don't spend 90 minutes to kill the same monster over and over and over and over.

POTD content is not perfect, he have a lot of evolution to do for be something that can easily rivalize with raiding. but 2 point, 1) do the playerbase will allows this? 2) do the dev will even try to make this content as important than raiding?

because soo far the POTD is far more used than the raid savage.... and i'm kinda sure will have far more use with the 3.45 arriving. because you don't need to gather 7 other person (what not everyone can do sadly, for multiple reason) and it's random, then force kinda to be cautious all the time!