A reason Final Coil is a better raid tier than Creator Savage is T9 requirement

[Jiao]

I see what you're going for OP, but I'm not sure gating is the right answer here.

In my humble opinion the problem currently is the large disparity in difficulty between normal and savage mode, with extremely unforgiving mechanics or even entirely new ones thrown in on occasion. I wouldn't ask that savage be nerfed down to be closer to normal mode, but rather normal brought up or modified in such a way that it better prepares players for savage.

Let me use Cruise Chaser as an example since it's fresh in my mind.
-Bring up the number of optical sights to match savage.
-Bring up their damage a bit to keep them lethal over multiple hits.
-Towers in the final phase, isn't even a thing in normal mode if I recall.
-Bring over the Photon / Pyretic combo to normal

Just a few things that sprung mind that *could* have been done in the normal mode to better prepare people for the savage variant. Of course we can't go back and retroactively change these mechanics but I believe that following a similar line of thinking for further raid content going into 4.0 can better prepare players for savage.

TLDR; If we make normal mode fights more threatening than they are now, and make them closer resemble the savage mode variant, we could see an improvement in overall quality of performance.

But that's just my 2 gil and idle musings.

[Xyno]

I see what you're going for OP, but I'm not sure gating is the right answer here.

I totally disagree, that SE made in 3.X such really strange model- normal mode and Savage mode of the same dungeon, because it is totally not interesting to see the half of the battle and its mechanics in the normal mode and then to see them in Savage. Normal mode musnt be even nearly close to the SAvage, they must differ TOTALLY without any common mechanics

Do you remember the Coil? There was no any "casual" mode for story and hardcore mode for gear (Savage second Coil was a nice experiment). There was only ONE mode- for story and for gear. And you know what? That made the players to try to clear it, because they hadn't the choice. You want to know the story and to get the gear? Make an effort. That is why in the past days of Coil the raid community was much stronger, then now. And what now?

[DinahDemiurge]

Do you remember the Coil? There was no any "casual" mode for story and hardcore mode for gear (Savage second Coil was a nice experiment). There was only ONE mode- for story and for gear. And you know what? That made the players to try to clear it, because they hadn't the choice. You want to know the story and to get the gear? Make an effort. That is why in the past days of Coil the raid community was much stronger, then now. And what now?

exactly! coil was amazing because not only did you work towards getting gear, but seeing the next cutscene was always motivator for a lot of players and it was a good thing!

[Aquaslash]

Oh hey if it isn't our favorite badass catgirl. Now I let you have it in the last threads, but this time I'm on your side. Probably helps that Alexander overall is the most garbage ass excuse for a "raid" I've ever seen and I 100% think the normal/savage setup is a big part of the reason why.

Casuals be damned, we NEED to go back to the Coil setup. If it keeps scrubs from seeing the story, too bad. They should stop being scrubs. This casual pandering ruined Alexander. Don't let it ruin Omega too

And WOW! A post like this comes straight from gilgamesh! Why am I not surprised?

Probably the same reason that nobody's surprised a post like yours came from Balmung. Did you need a quicker raid so you could spend more time at The Quicksand?

[randysquirrel]

I have to agree with xyno. getting the next slice of the story when you finally cleared the next fight in coil was the best reward for me personally, and made it much more memorable.

With the story mode now, you see some of the mechs and can even guess right away how they will be in savage

[Jiao]

snip

I don't disagree with you, not entirely anyway.

Would I want for returning to singular mode raid system of coil? Yes, in a heartbeat.
What I was trying to do was find a middle ground to suggest a change assuming SE sticks to the HW formula of Story / Savage being separate.

I would argue that story being too easy is setting a precedent for players to expect from savage, and then prompty getting slapped around for it. Would you not agree?

Probably the same reason that nobody's surprised a post like yours came from Balmung. Did you need a quicker raid so you could spend more time at The Quicksand?

I'm from Balmung and I avoid the quicksand. Blanket statements help nobody, this also goes for the fellow you're reaponding to.. I just can't be bothered to go get his quote and snip it. Mobile platform problems

[Belhi]

I totally disagree, that SE made in 3.X such really strange model- normal mode and Savage mode of the same dungeon, because it is totally not interesting to see the half of the battle and its mechanics in the normal mode and then to see them in Savage. Normal mode musnt be even nearly close to the SAvage, they must differ TOTALLY without any common mechanics

Do you remember the Coil? There was no any "casual" mode for story and hardcore mode for gear (Savage second Coil was a nice experiment). There was only ONE mode- for story and for gear. And you know what? That made the players to try to clear it, because they hadn't the choice. You want to know the story and to get the gear? Make an effort. That is why in the past days of Coil the raid community was much stronger, then now. And what now?

This also leads to much smaller participation levels of the over all playerbase and makes justifying spending much money on the Harder raids more difficult. As a general rule it makes more sense to spend money developing content for 60% of your player base than 10%. Unless raiders are going to pay more than the bulk of players it is poor financial sense to invest heavily in content only they will experience.

Gordias didn't fail because it lacked its own story. It failed because the bulk of players found it too hard and got so frustrated that they stoped finding raiding fun. If story was the only motivating factor for raiders that drove them forward, WoW's mythic raiding scene would be non existent.

Tight knit raiding communities also generally mean small. That's a problem. Story mode raids practically everyone does. That's not to say that there shouldn't be both carrots to encourage players to improve and
tools to help them do it. Its just if they are going to develop content for the Higher difficulties, then they need to get their money's worth. That's just common sense.

[Reynhart]

Do you remember the Coil? There was no any "casual" mode for story and hardcore mode for gear (Savage second Coil was a nice experiment). There was only ONE mode- for story and for gear. And you know what? That made the players to try to clear it, because they hadn't the choice.

Actually, no...that made the majority of people avoid it completely, and vocal one complained that they wanted to see the story but couldn't face the threat, thus resulting in the cration of Alex Story mode. And even if some of us liked it that way, from a design point of view, if the majority of player avoid your content, it's bad, and not worth investing time and money on it.

[AmalonStar]

Personally I loved coil the difficulty of it never scared me and wanting to get the story of it drove me to do it, I was all over coil.

I've found with Alex I haven't been impressed at all and have had no real drive to do it. I've done a1-a8 normal mode and I've only run the second set once, I haven't even touched savage yet and honestly I doubt I ever will there's almost no point to it for me. I haven't even done the creator yet due to a lack of interest in it .

You can claim elitist all you want but know the difference between an actual elitist and a skilled player. An elitist believes ppl should be skilled and have no patience for less skilled players, a skilled player knows there is different skill levels and will help them. Its the ppl that stick out the bad alex runs trying to help the ppl having trouble with it that are the skilled players but if those ppl don't take advice given and keep making the same mistakes over and over you can't blame them for getting frustrated. The ppl that rage quit after anywhere from 1-3 wipes usually and get verbally abusive those are more of the elitist type, I've left dungeons/raids and take the penalty when ppl start getting verbally abusive because I won't stand for it.

If the new raid for 4.0 is going to be like Alex has been I may not even start it honestly and I may not be the only one that does that. Its a catch 22 with raids, they make them "too hard' for the less skilled ppl and they don't do the raids and if they make them 'too easy' they still loose raiders.

[Xyno]

I don't disagree with you, not entirely anyway.

Would I want for returning to singular mode raid system of coil? Yes, in a heartbeat.
What I was trying to do was find a middle ground to suggest a change assuming SE sticks to the HW formula of Story / Savage being separate.

I would argue that story being too easy is setting a precedent for players to expect from savage, and then prompty getting slapped around for it. Would you not agree?

Maybe Im wrong, but Yoshi told about some middle-difficulty mode or content, created special to fill this gap between normal (casual) content and the hardcore content.