On Ultimate Off Ultimate

[Lambdafish]

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I agree with everything said here. What I would love the devs to do is pour those missing resources back into raid content. I'd love it if we got the next Omega tier which didn't end with Omega himself, and then in 4.5 we get the Omega "trial" which is nowhere near on par with Ultimate, but difficulty wise would pretty much be a pseudo 5th tier to the raid (and would require completion of the raid). I feel like this would fill the hole that ultimate would leave, while also addressing the problems with having too many ultimate fights in an expansion.

INB4 people are triggered that I ask for more raid content.

[Paladinleeds]

INB4 people are triggered that I ask for more raid content.

To be fair, it seems we want similar things. As in more higher difficulty stuff. It just seems our approaches to how it should be done are different. That being said, them throwing more raid content at us isn't something I'm against. But I feel pushing up the difficulty of things (except Ultimate, that's in a good place already IMO) in the raid department would be good. But yes, let's bridge the difficulty gaps.

[Lambdafish]

To be fair, it seems we want similar things. As in more higher difficulty stuff. It just seems our approaches to how it should be done are different. That being said, them throwing more raid content at us isn't something I'm against. But I feel pushing up the difficulty of things (except Ultimate, that's in a good place already IMO) in the raid department would be good. But yes, let's bridge the difficulty gaps.

I disagree tbh, I think the difficulty of omega is perfect. If you want an example of why raid difficulty should not be pushed up, look at gordias. By adding a 5th raid tier that is on maybe brute justice level (i,e, more difficult than now, but not quite gordias), it will allow a much smoother (except chardanook but thats a different discussion altogether) difficulty curve throughout the raid tier, without it becoming inaccessible, stale, and impossible to PUG.

[Rockette]

I disagree tbh, I think the difficulty of omega is perfect. If you want an example of why raid difficulty should not be pushed up, look at gordias. By adding a 5th raid tier that is on maybe brute justice level (i,e, more difficult than now, but not quite gordias), it will allow a much smoother (except chardanook but thats a different discussion altogether) difficulty curve throughout the raid tier, without it becoming inaccessible, stale, and impossible to PUG.

At the start of Stormblood they went into depth of why Gordias was a mistake. The classes had all changed, rotations were more complex. There were new players starting the game. The fights were, as described, Savage.

It took my group months to get through it. I cried at the end of A4s. Man, it felt like an achievement though. It still does, even now. But they were right. It was way too hard to start an expansion with.

After they explained their mistakes with Gordias, I also remember live letters saying that they would start Savage raids in Stormblood at a Creator level difficulty and scale them up progressively through out the expansion as players got used to new rotations and new players had time to acclimatize to the game.

They have not kept to that plan.

Maybe I'm one of few who think this but I find Stormblood savage too... vanilla. I thought the Midas tier was perfect. Not back breaking hard, but not so easy that every midcore group is gonna clear week 1.

I love the concept of Omega in terms of fight story line but both tiers in stormblood have been week 1 -2 clears for mid core groups. Then the 18 week wait until savage...

Edit: I'm worried about my group in light of this news, to be honest. There's no way people are going to stick around for long after we clear the next tier especially if we're looking at a year wait until the next expansion.

[Cetonis]

raid difficulty should not be pushed up

Do people feel that O4S is substantively harder than O3S, or O8S than O7S? I'm not certain I agree, at least for non-healers (the healing difficulty definitely goes up).

Both are light on mechanics relative to past final fights (from Nael to Alexander), and they both lean hard on wombo combo dances that, once solved or guided, are fairly easy to get down and repeat. Emptiness and small Trine are the only mechanics that ask for a reaction beyond "do thing A or B", and mechanics like those exist in the third fights anyway.

I think they could get away with making the lasts fight as-much harder on tanks and dps as it is on healers, and in doing so may better bridge people into Ultimate. Clear rates would go down, but I doubt that participation would - people are more inclined to keep at it when they're three fights deep and at the last boss, than when it's just a middle fight and there's still more after.

[HyoMinPark]

If you want an example of why raid difficulty should not be pushed up, look at gordias.

The issue with Gordias that people seem to always forget about is that the developers admitted that they screwed up and overtuned the fights (particularly A3S and A4S) for what was the current max stats, gear, and item level at the time. Mechanically, I don’t think that Gordias was “too difficult”; but the damage output was way overtuned for its time—healer and tank DPS were absolutely mandatory to clear, even with the best gear the game offered at the time.

The developers learned from their mistakes and made Midas, which I hear from a lot of veteran raiders was perfect in terms of difficulty and overall fight quality (annoying A6S gauntlet robots aside). However, the raid scene was still feeling the fallout from Gordias, so they brought it down to Creator level. Deltascape and Sigmascape are not Creator level, they’re actually slightly easier. Personally, I’d rather see difficulty return to Midas levels, or at least something between Midas and Creator, but since Savage clear rates are the highest they’ve been for all regions with Delta/Sigma, I can see why the developers want to keep Savage at the level it is now.