Is EX/Savage content a battle or a dance number?

[-BlueGreen-]

I'm really loving how BlueGreen totally ignored the response that I wanted him to respond to. I made it all nice and presentable.
I'm not irritated...nope, not at all.

*veins in forehead*

I'm going to leave this to you to shut this down. Can I trust you?

Two whole pages were added to this thread from the time I joined in until the post I'm writing now. It's not that I ignored you, but rather that I simply didn't see your post. I double-checked, and the below post seems to be the one you want a response to (please correct me if I'm wrong, but the only other post I saw from you within this time wasn't a reply to me, but to the OP instead):

Umm...I'm definitely an average player.

While there's not as many parses for you on fflogs, from what I did find, you at least know what you're saying for your DPS classes. I'd venture to say that you might actually be somewhat above average for when you play healing roles, but healing/tanking involve way more metrics to quantify them than just DPS.

Having friends or an FC is better, but these fights are definitely doable, so long as you understand the fight and actually know how to do your job. Besides, it is called Extreme/Savage for a reason. These aren't meant to be faceroll fights, nor should they ever be.

It's an MMO. You get online, you meet people, make friends, and do things with those friends. Without them, you might as well be playing some single player game with top-notch AI (to replace the other players). Of course, what you could say that FFXIV has that most single player games (if not all) have is that FFXIV gets regular updates and expansions to the story. Granted, for as much as you pay to play FFXIV (that subscription sure adds up quick), you should hope to at least get that much.

As for your Mario comment, I seem to recall that Super Mario Bros. had a punishing level towards the end with the Hammer Bros. And SMB3 had quite a few difficult as hell stages. I'm not sure why you brought Mario into this discussion. Please explain.

I remember having some difficulty with some parts, too, but I also remember being like 5 or 6 at the time as well. I'm also talking about the newer Mario games and not as much the older ones. In the *new* Super Mario Brothers, do you know what happens when you play multi-player and someone gets hit when they're small mario (or the equivalent of)? They don't die... they get trapped in a bubble that can be broken by another player without costing anyone a life. Basically, the whole team has to wipe before anyone loses a life in multi-player. It's kind of hard for it to be challenging at that point.

Anyway, I brought it (and indirectly, stuff like dark souls) into this discussion to point out something about them: They're consistent. Start to end they play roughly the same with an expected level of difficulty throughout and a learning curve that shouldn't surprise anyone at any point after the first few levels. Some Mario games even have a challenge mode added to them of sorts (that usually consists of playing the same levels again, but with the goal of collecting a set of special coins hidden in each level).

Besides, it is called Extreme/Savage for a reason.

Yup, because they're harder than the base game. Extreme/Savage/Challenge, call it whatever you want, but the idea is the same. So yes, the current ex/savage/ultimate content fits that basic description, but I'm pointing out that the learning curve on those doesn't fit in with the rest of the game.

Finally, it's late and I need to get some sleep. If there's anyone else wanting me to weigh in on anything, don't expect a reply soon (if at all).

[HyoMinPark]

BlueGreen:

Savage content is not hard enough that it is only clearable by the 1%. Maybe not every single person in this game’s nearly 1 million active characters can clear it, but for a game that caters majorly to the majority with piece after piece of casual and leisurely content, why is it so bad to include one thing for the hardcore players that want more? Take away Savage, and all the people who want more, who want a little bit of a challenge, would leave. This would include myself; I started doing Ex primals, Savage, and improving myself because I needed more. Sure, I enjoy crafting; I enjoy gathering; I like to goof off with my friends and be silly and run dungeons with Emperor’s gear glamoured; but when they aren’t around, I need more. Otherwise, why log in?

If people are neglecting their friends for raid, that is entirely on them for poor time management. As it has been stated multiple times by a few people in response to you, people can raid and still hang out with their “non-raider friends”. I have a lot of friends who don’t raid and I still talk to them when they’re online. I have friends in other statics that raid at different times from me, and I still manage to talk to them and run content.

Savage is entirely optional content; same with Ultimate, and same with the Ex primals. It’s there for people who want the challenge. If you want the challenge but cannot rise up to it, practice and practice and get better. Referencing back to the logs and percentiles you posted before, did you dig deeper into those to see why they were below 20th percentile? How many deaths were there from the group? Why? What went wrong? What were the comps (I recall one comp having double BRD, BLM, and RDM... a very, very BAD comp)? All of these and more contribute to low numbers and low percentiles. How many of these people tried to do better later? Or did they just throw their hands up in the air and say “I can’t do this content that is completely optional, but I want the shinies from it; the developers should remove this content from the game just because I can’t do it”. If the developers were to listen to complaint about removing content just because a few people can’t do it, or don’t like it, then why haven’t they listened to my abhorrence of Perform?

Also, you cannot compare V1S and it’s nearly 29,000 uploaded parses to V1N, and its puny 1,500 parses. That is an extremely skewed and inaccurate comparison—the data pools differ too much for it to be a good comparison at all.

Savage has gotten easier compared to previous tiers, thus why the hardcore raiders—that 1%—begged SE for more. So SE gave them Ultimate, and there has been resoundingly positive responses from raiders about this piece of content—the only negative things people have to say about it are the side of the playerbase who do not raid, to which I ask them all the time why they care so much. A lot of them (the raiders) were glad that it took more than 20 hours to clear, which is how long it took for a world first group to kill Deltascape Savage as a whole. Deltascape took 20 hours; Creator Savage took 36 hours; Midas took 2 weeks; Gordias took 5 weeks.

Gordias only took so long because the fight was massively overtuned for the maximum ilvl available at the time, and the developers acknowledged that that was their fault for not properly testing the content. It wasn’t because the content was hard, per say (A4S is considered probably the most boring fight in this game because it’s nothing but a glorified striking dummy), but that it was poorly tested and tuned.

I’m probably rambling at this point, but my main point still remains: Savage is not content that is so hard that only 1% of the entire playerbase can clear it. This game caters majorly to the leisurely, casual side. Let the people who want more have more for once rather than complain that everything needs to be made for the “Average Joe” player. I highly doubt that people are unsubscribing just because of Savage and Ultimate existing, but I feel fairly confident in saying that people would unsubscribe if FFXIV were to become Baby’s First MMO and remove all traces of a challenge.

I do want to add that I do think the increase in difficulty/learning curve in this game needs some work. I feel like some of the harder content gives players little or no preparation for them in any of the “easier tiers”. But, that being said, I do not think that it’s unreasonable to have Savage/Ultimate content in the game; not all content needs to be easy.

[KaivaC]

While there's not as many parses for you on fflogs, from what I did find, you at least know what you're saying for your DPS classes. I'd venture to say that you might actually be somewhat above average for when you play healing roles, but healing/tanking involve way more metrics to quantify them than just DPS.

Hmm? I have recent parses? I thought my last one was way back in October? I don’t understand FFLOGs, so I don’t mess with it. And you have multiple quotes…the bane of my existence on these forums. Ugh…I hate multiple quotes lol. Lemme give this a shot.

It's an MMO. You get online, you meet people, make friends, and do things with those friends. Without them, you might as well be playing some single player game with top-notch AI (to replace the other players). Of course, what you could say that FFXIV has that most single player games (if not all) have is that FFXIV gets regular updates and expansions to the story. Granted, for as much as you pay to play FFXIV (that subscription sure adds up quick), you should hope to at least get that much.

I do end up doing some things with my FC, but in regards to what we are currently talking about, all of my clears save for maybe one or two recent runs on Savage have been randoms. I don’t agree with the sentiment that not having friends means that I’m essentially playing a single player game. If I make friends, fine. If not, it doesn’t mean I’m playing single player. When people play Call of Duty multiplayer, are they playing a single-player game if they don’t friend up? When people go into WoW and join a guild, only playing with them for raid reasons, are they only playing a single-player game with supposed top-notch AI (which we know isn’t true a good portion of the time, otherwise we wouldn’t have the behemoth that is Tales from the Duty Finder).

I remember having some difficulty with some parts, too, but I also remember being like 5 or 6 at the time as well. I'm also talking about the newer Mario games and not as much the older ones. In the *new* Super Mario Brothers, do you know what happens when you play multi-player and someone gets hit when they're small mario (or the equivalent of)? They don't die... they get trapped in a bubble that can be broken by another player without costing anyone a life. Basically, the whole team has to wipe before anyone loses a life in multi-player. It's kind of hard for it to be challenging at that point.

Anyway, I brought it (and indirectly, stuff like dark souls) into this discussion to point out something about them: They're consistent. Start to end they play roughly the same with an expected level of difficulty throughout and a learning curve that shouldn't surprise anyone at any point after the first few levels. Some Mario games even have a challenge mode added to them of sorts (that usually consists of playing the same levels again, but with the goal of collecting a set of special coins hidden in each level).

Admittedly, MSQ did not prepare players for Savage. I remember the difficulty steadily increasing as I went through HW, but I felt that most of 4.0 was a faceroll. Then you run into Shinryu and it’s a surprisingly difficult fight that you were not prepared for, considering it’s a story boss. Consistency is definitely a problem that we are seeing with SB. Yet still, all it takes is a few runs to understand that this is going to be a tough fight, and O1S doesn’t really have many mechanics that are different if you’ve gone through MSQ.

Yup, because they're harder than the base game. Extreme/Savage/Challenge, call it whatever you want, but the idea is the same. So yes, the current ex/savage/ultimate content fits that basic description, but I'm pointing out that the learning curve on those doesn't fit in with the rest of the game.

Finally, it's late and I need to get some sleep. If there's anyone else wanting me to weigh in on anything, don't expect a reply soon (if at all).

Hahah, I have the advantage of being a graveshift worker, so I am wide awake and this place stimulates my need to do something. Like I pointed out above, SB was horrible as gradually scaling up difficulty. Players still need to be able to adjust to the punishment. Yea, it’s a huge step up, but take my example – I didn’t need friends or a static to clear it. I didn’t even need to spend ‘hours upon hours’ to clear it. The basic were explained and I cleared the fight in the same week.

[Aramina]

In otherwise... target dummies that require little more than class awareness to overcome.

There is no reason to live in a world of extremes. Thinking there are too many role agnostic mechanics in no way means that there should be none at all.

[KarstenS]

Current Ex Primals and at least O1S and O2S are very easy. Thats a result of the huge amount of crying "you don't pay my sub" babies here in the forum.

Even O3S and O4S are not what Savags was originally meant to be.

If you want a challange, go for Ultimate. There is nothing else left.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

There is no reason to live in a world of extremes. Thinking there are too many role agnostic mechanics in no way means that there should be none at all.

It isn't extremes though. The OP is complaining about how much of a "dance" O1S and O2S are when they barely have any mechanics. Reducing them any further would make them target dummies that prog. Not in the literal sense but it should be fairly obvious how I meant it.

[Aramina]

It isn't extremes though. The OP is complaining about how much of a "dance" O1S and O2S are when they barely have any mechanics. Reducing them any further would make them target dummies that prog. Not in the literal sense but it should be fairly obvious how I meant it.

Fair point. I was speaking in a more general sense, not about any specific fight.

[AppleJinx]

All this back and forth is just dancing around a pretty simple fact that you don't want to admit you are not as good of a healer in this game as you seem to think you are.

[Awha]

All this back and forth is just dancing around a pretty simple fact that you don't want to admit you are as good of a healer in this game as you seem to think you are.

'sarcasm'

That is unfair, didn't you know that you that ones skill at their role should not be predicated on their ability to press movement keys while performing said role.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Just seeing what others think. I recently dipped my toes into Savage content and discovered it not to my liking. I'd like to think I'm a good astro, and can rock casual content quite well. So, I got to thinking, why is EX/Savage not engaging for me? It's not difficulty. I love a challenge, and beating my head against A8N until finally getting the clear remains a highlight of XIV for me. So, I thought a bit more and it hit me.

Now, I realize my opinion is my own, I'm not going to say SE should change things, because there are obviously people out there that like it in it's current incarnation. But I figure I could at least express my disappointment and see if there was anyone else out there that felt the same. There is nothing savage about Savage. It's actually quite formal and civilized. All you need do is learn how to dance each dance.

I know you probably checked out of this thread, but I hope you respond to this.

My biggest gripe with Savage raiding is that everything is pass/fail. There's absolutely very little organic gameplay. I think this is maybe what you're getting at.

Let's use O1S as an example. Failing an ice slide -> Levinbolt, generally kills 2 people (unless one is a tank). Nothing in the encounter ever forces this to change. You simply always go to a safe assigned spot. Same thing with fireballs.

What if fireballs spawned randomly in the arena (like O4S black holes) and outside of the arena and Alta Roites location was also spawned randomly. What if in addition to flapping the fireballs away, he could vacuum them in? What if Levinbolts also went off at different times? What if a player got hit by a fire orb (since it was harder to dodge now), instead of just killing them unless they outgear the content, now it leaves a puddle of fire on the ground that persists permanently. If another fire orb hit it, maybe it enlarges the puddle slightly (to add a little RNG). The idea would be that instead of a mistake just instantly killing someone it makes the room smaller and harder to navigate. Each mistake would make subsequent phases/mechanics more difficult to manage, not reset the fight.

Now, with that said, I URGE you to try O3S/O4S. They're great fights and O3S last phase is an absolute treat.