We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[Imuka]

I know the Thread is old, but I would like to share my 2 Cents.

1: It is okay, if the best Gear is in Savage, but we need a Rework of some of the Tome Gear. There is a reason why a Part of the Non-Raiders are unhappy and that are the Substats of some Tome Gear, like Weapons. The Devs put the unwanted Stats on it pretty often and that makes them feel bad. A BLM wants Spellspeed and Crit on his Weapon and they put Direct Hit and Determination on it. Sure, many Non-Raiders will not really care, but for another Part of the Players, this just feels bad.
Enough Player have differrent reasons, why they don't Raid, but the Devs treat them like they are to dumb, to see the difference between good and bad gear. Not the best, just good and bad.

I think, there is no Problem if the Raid Weapon on 405 is slightly better, than the 400, those Players did the last Savage fight. But I also think, no Raider Blackmage would freak out if the Tome Weapon would also get good secondary Stats and is a little weaker on 400, than the 405.
The same goes for the normal Tome Gear. I would not even care if the Savage Gear atm would sit at 405 for all pieces and the Upgraded Tome Gear at 400, just give the Player an Option to make their Class work. Certain Jobs want certain Substats and a specific Number of Skillspeed to work well, but the Devs on purpose create this mix Gear and make some of the Tome Gear bad on purpose. And this feels bad for all the people who can't clear a Savage Fight like the last, but care enough to want to see some vertical Progress, because vertical Progress is the only Progress in this Game.
Maybe they should have picked to make to put the normal Omega Gear on 390 and also make it upgradable later. Raiders would sit on 405 and Non-Raiders at 400, but both can pick the wanted stats if it may be Crit, Direct Hit or Determination and the Skillspeed they need for their Rotation to work.
Some classes lose their Rotation, if just one piece gets changed, because of Skillspeed and they might need to wait 8 Weeks, before they can swap a single Piece of Gear. This feels bad for everybody and they need to change certain things about the Gear Progression. Nobody wants to carry around a 390 Tome Armor or 400 Savage Armor in the Inventory for 3-6 Weeks, because they need a specific Pants, because of the Skillspeed or Speelspeed. This is unfun for Non-Raiders and Raiders.
Maybe we need a slightly more linear Gear Progression, without bad Gear and a set for every Class per Patch. Just split the Monk and Sam into two Gearsets, it can still have the same look. And instead of direct Loot from Savage, people get a Token, they can trade for the Armor. Like a Medallion for the Sam and Monk another one for the Tanks. Sure, there will be no fancy drop anymore, but I think, this is a small price for a better worked out Gear System, without Stats on Gear the Devs clearly know are undesired by that class.
With Set Bonuses those Sets could feel unique and less like a simple +1 compared to the last one. Raiders would focus on combining Set Bonuses and other things, to get the last Drop out of it and Non-Raiders would see a steady Progress, instead swapping their BLM Staf with Crit and Spellspeed for another one with Det and DH, while the 405 Weapon clearly shows, which Stats are the ones to be desired.

2: For that heated Part about Raiders. I don't hate Raiders, but at the same time, Raiders were put in a bad Spotlight, because a Part of their Community is toxic as hell.
This is the same with Games like Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege etc. not every high Rank Player is toxic, but because those Toxic people get noticed the most, it gets attached to every Raider, High Rank Player etc.
And I think, the people who were so heated against Raiders met those people somewhere in their Time in 14. I also meet some of them and those people ruin the last fun you could have in the Game, by being Toxic and telling everybody that they are bad and should quit the Game. I had a guy, who absolutly freaked out after two wipes back then at Alex Savage 4. (the one with the 4 Legs etc.)
That guy freaked out, insulted people, that they should not raid, because they are shit and all that stuff. And people remember those Events for a long time and either get sucked out all the fun of the Game or start to get angry at Raiders themself.
The Months back, I would have liked to know, why they dislike Raiders so much, instead like some just answer in a way, that those people completely associate with Raiders: Sitting on a high Horse, acting like they are better than others.
(if somebody feels insulted by those words, that was not the purpose. If you still feel insulted after those words, you should maybe think, how you look on other people in the Game, who are maybe not as good as you are)

3: A Problem with the Content.
There is a super simple Reason, why they make Raids more and more easier. If everybody Raids, they need to make less Content. The Game does not center around Raiders, it centers around the Idea to make everybody a Raider for the sake of doing it. But there are people who will not go into Savage no matter how they change it and those people lose Content, not because of the Raiders, but because of the mindset to make everybody a Raider.
And those people feel left behind over time. They don't want to play Savage and they will never do, but Yoshi can't force them into this, by thining the Activities outside of Raiding. It is not the fault of Raiders in any way.

Eureka sadly shows, how little the Devs listen or how much they don't want to let lose on something, they like even if the Community dislikes it.
Diadem 1.0 had things, people did not like and those things were carried over to 2.0.
Eureka is worser and became even worser over time. Anemos was not great, but because it made people play together, it was quite friendly there.
Pagos punished the Train Players and forced everybody to a Mob Grind and even punished people for having a Gap bigger than 2 Levels. Combine that with limited spot and people saw everybody as the Enemy there and you can still see this.
While in Anemos the Lvl 20 Players used their 2 Player Mounts to carry low Level Players, this becamse super rare in Pagos and in Pyros, you get rezzed by Partymember and then they sprint away, leaving you between tons of mobs, that just one shot you.
Why is there no Potion to become invisible like in 11? This would help low Level Players to reach certain Fates, a Bunny Treasure or the Questmarkers, without needing other Players to distract those one Sgot Monsters.
A lot of the Mobs are placed to Gatekeep low Level Players from anything and so they can just wait for a Fate close to them and then go back into mental AFK for another 40 Minutes, till another low Level Fate pops up, which can be reached by them or hope, that somebody will carry them on a Chocobo for the whole 3 Hours. Many people reached the max Level of Pyros shortly after the Release, but a lot of people stilll sit in Pagos with Levels between 38-45, because in Pyros so much kills them in a single shot and they can't use their Mounts.

Mentor Rework:
I liked how WildStar made their Mentor System. You got into a Party with a low Level Player and everytime, they cleared a Event, Quest, Dungeon etc. the Mentor got Points, for Rewards and the Mentor stayed with that single Player in the Overworld.
Sure, there would be people abusing the System, by creating a Twink and Mentor each other. But only because of a small part, would abuse the System, does not mean, that nobody would help. This would also mean, that the Mentor can't freak out in the Text Chat, because otherwise the other Player will just leave the Party. Unlike of RRoulette Mentor, were people freak out because they expect everybody to do Ramuh Ex on the first time, when there are 4 Bonus Players.

Crafters: I don't think, that we need a way for them to get the strongest Raid Combat Gear, but I think, they need their own Progress Gameplay.
At the moment, all they do is: Get the new Crafter Gear on Day 1, meld it like crazy, be done for 12 Months. That is just boring.
I have no clue, why they always make the crafted Marketboard Gear the better one, when they create Jobgear for the Crafter Classes.
Make the Jobgear the best and give them something to do, that come with a similar Progression Game, like for the Combat Classes so that very good Crafters get a better Crafter Gear over time.
The same goes for Gatherers.
I think, some want to get Combat Gear Progress with the Crafters, because of the lack of any Progress for the Crafters and Gatherers.
Back in HW it took several Weeks, to get the best Version of the Crafter Jobgear, but it was just not as good as the melded Marketboard Gear.
I did this for the Carpenter and I enjoyed the small Progress every Week. Upgrading my saw, upgrading my Chestpiece etc. I did it for the Glamour, but there was this bad taste in my Mouth, that this took time and effort to reach, while somebody who wants to get into high end crafting or gathering can also just buy 50 Millions from an RMT Service and overcome this in 20 Seconds. Sure he lacks the knowledge, but he got the betterr Gear for doing nothing else than having bought 50 Million Gil.
For my Gatherers, this meant to gather special Nodes with good enough Quality, to trade them for the currency to Upgrade my Gear and again, somebody could just buy a ton of Gil and have the better Gear.
And compared to buying Savage Raids, this is even supported by the Designers themself.

[Ilan]

Giant wall of text

1. Unwanted stats can be balanced if you mix your gear. You don't have to get full tome gear + weapon to play effective in current content especially if you don't raid. As for your example with the BLM weapon: The so much wanted spell speed can be gained by the suzaku weapon which is completly fine, or you balance it out with your melds. Someone who doesn't raid doesn't have to min max stats at all, even most people who raid wouldn't need that if they are not going for pure parse runs.

2. Not only a part of the raiders are toxic as hell, there is also a good part of the non raiding community that is toxic as hell and this part is even bigger than the part of the raiders. The only reason the toxic raiders get mentioned all the time is because the people of the non raiding community are much more vocal about stuff like that.

3. SE does make raids easier for the people who didn't go raid before because it was to hard for them, not because they have to create less content because of it. They started with less content even before they started to make raids easier.

4. Eureka is a thing on its own because the design is flawed in many ways. But as long as people go into there nothing will really change.

5. I would prefer if they would go even a step further so that you would've to need a certain amount of points to become a mentor in the first place.

6. I agree that crafters don't need to be able to craft the best gear, they already craft the progression gear and sometimes at least 1 BiS part. For me crafters and gatherers are overall to boring, you have long rotations and it takes quite a while for some things to craft, but i don't complain because there are enough people who enjoy it.

[Imuka]

1. Unwanted stats can be balanced if you mix your gear. You don't have to get full tome gear + weapon to play effective in current content especially if you don't raid. As for your example with the BLM weapon: The so much wanted spell speed can be gained by the suzaku weapon which is completly fine, or you balance it out with your melds. Someone who doesn't raid doesn't have to min max stats at all, even most people who raid wouldn't need that if they are not going for pure parse runs.

Only if a Player would start to favour 370 Gear over 390 Gear, in a Game, with only a vertical Progression System. The Problem is, that the Devs create undesirable Gear on purpose to fill the Slots. And a Weapon should never ever come with undesirable Stats in any way. Heck, not even normal Gear should go for that.
Non Raiders have only one way of Progress: Raising their Numbers.. Which is also the only way for Raiders...or better said for everybody, because this is the only way to Progress in a Vertical Game.

And some here wonder why a Part of the Non-Raiding Community shows so much hostility against Raiders? In this Thread you could see how people started the "Raiders deserve vertical Progress and the best Gear. Non Raiders deserve shit. Not even good shit, just scrapyard Shit." Mindset.
We could demand a Gear System that is fun for everyone from the Devs, but then again someone says "No Non Raiders deserve no Gear fun!".
Some want fun for everyone and some just want fun for their kind.

Building a good gear is not a mechanical Task it is a though Process. A Person could not be mechanical strong enough to Clear Savage 1, but still be able to calculate the best Gear and creating a 2 Class System is not a solution.
Raiders get 400 and their Classes gets the best Substats, the right Skillspeed and Non Raiders should just throw together something with the 370-390 Gear and be happy with it. With mish mashed Substats, that don't work well together a crude Skillspeed, that makes Rotations unfun and no concept of vertical Progress.
Then why should non Raiders even do anything in the Game, if people deny them this vertical Progress?

There are people who are able to calculate the best Builds for Games like Path of Exile, while at the same time not being able to clear the hardest Content. There are also Raiders who clear Savage 4 with little work, but would horribly fail to create a good Gearset or a good Rotation and they only live with Notes, Guides, PDfs, etc. made by other Reddit Users.
Imagine how the Game would look like if we deny non raiders even more vertical Progress: They log in let somebody craft them the new HQ Gear, put Materia in it, run 5 Rounds of the new Primal and are done with the Patch in just an afternoon.
Keep in mind, that not only the Raiders pay this Game, the Non-Raiders also pay the Game. This is exactly like with Fighting Games, not only the FCG Players pay the large Bill of the new Game, the Casuals do. Because of that, a Game must be fun for non Tournament Players or Non-Raiders.

Because of that, we need a Gear Progression System, that is fun for all Players, not just for Raiders.
The most people who don't go into Savage know, that they won't get the best Gear, but from my View, they also deserve to be able Build a good Gearset.
Like I said not the best, but a good one which fiels viable, not something that looks like a Car build from several Parts of other Cars on the Scrapyard.
Just let the clever people min max, but the Devs act like everybody who does not go into Raids is to dumb to notice, if a 390 Weapon is just bad in every way.

People often ask, "Why do Non-Raiders want better Gear if they don't go raiding?".
This is like the Question "Why do Raiders need Loot from the last Savage Fight?", because the cleared the hardest Fight, why do they need better Gear now? Because they also like seeing their little Numbers grow.
It is simple, because Humans enjoy seeing Numbers raising. People who play Destiny 2 and mostly stay in PvP, still like to see their Gear Level rising, even if a better Armor has zero impact in PvP. Because, when the only Goal in a Game is, to raise those Numbers, the only Progress is raising those little Numbers.
Otherwise Raiders would not demand Loot, because clearing a fight should be Reward enough. But they like it, like every other Player in the Game.

Despite the Risk of sounding like a broken Record. The Maingoal of the whole Gear System should be fun for everyone, no matter what type of Combat Content they play.
People should be able to build a good working Gearset at 380, 390 and 400 at the moment.
390 does not need to be BIS, because 400 would be BIS, but the 390 Gear needs to work for it's own and not have slots be filled with Substats that are just bad for a Class.
There is no fun for Players of they change their Weapon, Armor and Accesoires from 380 to 390 and just feel no real difference in Numbers, because their Substats work against each other.
I would even drop the 380 of Omega Normal Mode and put it on 390, the same Level as the Tome Gear.

2. Not only a part of the raiders are toxic as hell, there is also a good part of the non raiding community that is toxic as hell and this part is even bigger than the part of the raiders. The only reason the toxic raiders get mentioned all the time is because the people of the non raiding community are much more vocal about stuff like that.

The Non-Raiders are more vocal outside the Game about it, not inside the Game. I met enough of the Oucasted of the Raiding Community over time.
The guys, that freak out, as soon, as something goes not super smooth. The people who insult ingame, on Discord or Teamspeak. The guys who really freak out in the Chat, like somebody killed their Dog, when it was just a simple wipe.
There are also toxic people in the Non-Raiding Community, and they also freak out, and none Person is better. Please don't make it look like they Casual Community is what ruins the Game. Both Toxic Parts share their Part of this horrible envoirement.
The good Raiders stay away from their toxic Outcasts, and play with their Parties and Friends, but those Outcasts are that Part, where the Non-Raiders have often their first Contact and most contact with people called Raiderss. While the non toxic Non-Raiders often run normal stuff, like Dungeons etc. with Randoms.
Now imagine being a Non-Raider and meet Toxic and non Toxic "Casuals", and then meeting in 3 of 4 cases again on the people "outcasted" of the Raiders. People get the Picture that Raiders have a large Group of toxic Players. At the same time, it does not help, when Raiders here, start their "Non Raiders deserver shit" Propaganda.

3. SE does make raids easier for the people who didn't go raid before because it was to hard for them, not because they have to create less content because of it. They started with less content even before they started to make raids easier.

Back in Coil and Alex nearly nobody of the Non-Raiders complained that they wanted easier Raids. Alex 1-4 was the opposite, I saw Raiders complain, that it is too hard. Now we reached a Point of "Everybody can Raid. Everybody should go Raiding!". And this is because we have such a huge lack if midcore Content for Players. We allready lacked that before, but instead of fixing it, they thought "Hey, if everybody goes into Savage, they won't notice, even if we reduce the amount of activities".
We have only 1 Dungeon for every uneven Patch and some people blame Ultima for it, and there might be something behind it, because for everything we get, they take something away.
But from my View, their long Term Goal is, to make everybody go into Savage, to strech the small Content even more.
I noticed how little in ARR & HW people who did not Raid cared for Raiding, but since SB, suddenly so many people want to do Savage. And the reason is in the Game, not in the Community.

5. I would prefer if they would go even a step further so that you would've to need a certain amount of points to become a mentor in the first place.

This would change nothing, if you demand them to Grind something to achive this Status, because the most horrible Mentors in this Game are often those people who are very good at grinding Stuff.
The flaw of the current System is, that the requirement to be a Mentor is grinding and nothing else.
Others demanded that people who cleared Ultimate shoule be Mentors...but does clearing Ultimate Fights make somebody a good Teacher? No, not anywhere.
Being mechanical good at the Game, does not make anybody a good Mentor. Heck, I even know some people who are good at the Game, but if they talk 5 Minutes to a Newcomer, that Newcomer would move back to Steam and instantly hit the Refound Button.
We need a System, that makes the Players spend Time with those Newcomers and maybe even get invited by those into a Party. The Goal is, that mentoring should be fun for those who like to teach and not for those who like to get achivements and Stuff.

[Melichoir]

Only if a Player would start to favour 370 Gear over 390 Gear....in a Vertical Game.

They create 'undesireable' gear as a form of balance in a few different ways. They dont want you so hyper stacked with crit or DH or what not that every piece of gear has the 'optimal' amount of these stats. It would actually make things super easy. They also give access to teh best gear to players who are able to clear content earlier than those who dont. That is a more mechanically driven aspect than gear. That is a fair system because it rewards players who are better at the game for their skill than those who struggle. It's not that lower skilled players wont have access to better gear, they do get access to that gear, just a bit later in the content than the better skilled players. As a point, if you have full ilvl 400 tomestone gear, I guarantee you could clear the savage content even with semi sub optimal stats on some of the gear.

Also, balance wise, tehy want to make sure there is some mix-and-matching going on. Meaning, they dont want raiders to just use raid gear, and non raiders to use tome gear. They want to keep raiders engaged with non raid content, so that does mean still doing dailies for the tomestone gear that fits that slot best.

And some here wonder why a Part of the Non-Raiding Community shows ....... fun for their kind.

I rarely see this form of argument. I more often see people saying "If I play the hardest content in the game, I should be rewarded for doing so over the player who can just run DR:Expert and Trials 4 days of the week." And the difference in reward should be substantial enough to demonstrate the difference in skill. As much as this argument that "there are raiders who want it all for themselves," it is easy to turn around and say there are non-raiders who think they should have access to all the same gear without any effort applied. That would also be incredibly unfun and unfair to players actually doing work to get access to better gear sooner.

Building a good gear is not ......people deny them this vertical Progress?

The game is, as I said before, designed to reward players EARLIER if they complete the hardest tier content and not deny outright people. You can get ilvl 400 gear, but you need to wait further into the content patch to get access to the upgrade items through the alliances unlike raiders who can get those drops via books or actual clearing the Savage fights. Youre not stuck at iLvL 390ish, but rather gated from higher iLvL till later in the content. You can get passed that gate by improving your mechanical skill and clearing the harder content. And this is just a thing that all games do - those typically with better mechanical skill reap better rewards than those who dont. And that is fair to players who are simply better at the game. Unless your point is to just say "Hey, mechanical skill should be of minor relevance. All that matters is people try." That is just tearing down the best players in favor of making nice with the worst.

At the end of the day, if non-raiders want that sweet gear, they need to go do the content that provides it. Just like everyone else. And instead of making excuses about how bad non-raiders are or how hard it is, we should be encouraging people to get better and brush up on their mechanical skill - a "Lets make people play better, instead of lowering the bar."

There are people who.....made by other Reddit Users.

I am strongly under the impression that most people who clear Savage content on a regular basis know how to build their armor sets and have a pretty good fundamental understanding of the game in that regards. And most of them talk with one another and theorycraft all this out. And that information isnt locked behind some wall or in some ivory tower. Its freely accessible, with lots of guides actually talking about the breakdowns of skills or stats or etc. There are discord servers where you can literally go and ask questions of people who understand the content and how they came to certain conclusions. And they will tell you more often in a very nice way. That is as long as you dont go in and say "Nah, Everything you say is 100% wrong. Im right, I just have crappy pugs and you just have the privilege of having a nice static."

Imagine how the Game would look like if we deny ....Tournament Players or Non-Raiders.

You keep framing this up as a 'two-class' system with no ability to move between the two groups. As if raiders are the gatekeepers that are denying the plebs from having any fun. Raiders arent stopping non-raiders from raiding. The fights are. Theyre designed to be difficult. And you need to step up your game, just like ALL the people who cleared current raid content did. However, it sounds like the point your making is that SE is designing stuff to specifically cater to only a particular segment of the player base and sneering at anyone who doesnt meet its requirements. The truth is SE wants people to play the content. They want non-raiders to become raiders. They want players to push themselves. That takes effort on the players part. I dont see how arguing for a new system that rewards more or less the same thing for players who dont push themselves vs players who do is some how a good system.

Because of that, we need a Gear Progression System..... is just bad in every way.

A 390 weapon is superior to a 370 weapon on virtually all cases. Primary stat and Weapon damage advantages mean a hell-of-a-lot. Is a 390 weap going to be as good as a 405 weap? No. Thats fine. Again, youre able to get that 405 weap by improving and clearing the harder content. Or! by doing the anima weapon which will supposedly award you that same weapon level. Again, this is goes back to my earlier points - people who beat the harder content get access to the better gear sooner.

People often ask, "Why do Non-Raiders want better Gear if they don't go raiding?"..... like every other Player in the Game.

Its not just seeing better numbers, but that better gear translates into an advantage in the next tier/xpac, as well as farming that content becomes easier for things like mounts. People definitely do like bigger numbers, but I dont believe that most raiders are in it for that at that point. A lot of raiders enjoy the challange of it.

Despite the Risk of sounding like ....the Tome Gear.

You have to balance out whats fun for everyone vs what rewards players for their efforts. You can get a solid 390 set by grinding out tomestones and not touching savage at all. And that doesnt require all that much effort other than running the DR:Expert a few times a week. Experts arent all that difficult. So if you want the biggest, baddest numbers, you gotta fight the biggest, baddest bosses. Which are there for everyone. There is no gate other than getting a basic iLvL together and learning the fights - most of which are scripted to a T.

But what youre describing would promote a system of best-bang-for-your-buck. That is, why should I grind out substantially harder content if I can just do expert roulette a few times a week and still get fairly comparable gear.

The Non-Raiders are more vocal outside the ...."Non Raiders deserver shit" Propaganda.

There are toxic people at every tier. This isnt even an issue of 'Toxic Raiders' and the casual interactions. Ive had plenty of runs in non-raid content over casuals who will not even put up the slightest bit of effort to make things easier on the group and start getting angry when being called out on it. Ive been called an elitest for telling another player once that "Hey, if you arent going to MT the fight, please dont pull early." Ive run into my own fair share of bad and toxic 'casuals' - the kind thatll scream at you for doing mechanics wrong but regularly fail said mechanics because they dont know what theyre talking about. Seen plenty of that. But I know that they dont make up the bulk of the player base.

I know that there are plenty of casuals who dont understand certain things do to not ever being told or learning it wrong. I see them often enough. And the truth is, MOST of those people will change their play style with a bit of polite conversation. Some wont, most will though. This cuts both ways. While there are toxic raiders, casuals need to start engaging with raiders in a more constructive way. Most raiders, contrary to popular myth, will gladly discuss things with you if you ask them politely with the intention of improving. Cause frankly, the most cynical and blunt reason is it makes their lives easier if the player base overall was better. But the more charitable (and I feel the deep down true reason) is that people want to have fun playing thsi game with everyone and raiders want to see people improve and play with them too. Most raiders will say its cool if your a casual but you want to get better and do raiding. Theyll point you to the right guides and resources. Theyll answer questions and talk with you. Show the initiative to be better than you were yesterday, and most raiders will give you props for that. Casual players also need to reach out and interact with the better raiders. And that will take some humility for some.

Back in Coil and Alex nearly nobody of the Non-Raiders complained that they wanted ....not in the Community.

Alex 1-4 is not a great example due to how extremely fine tuned those DPS checks were. At that time, people were literally stripping their tanks down to the bare minimum HP in order to maximize damage just to meet DPS checks. Those fights, for all the cool things they had, also had major design flaws - something the raiding community picked up on really quickly. From my perspective, they substituted the mechanical skill of Coils for ridiculous DPS checks in A1-4. From my understanding, the latter end of Alex was top notch though. Still had DPS checks, but it was more mechanically focused.

And thats the crux of a lot of the savage content. Its mechanically focused. Something you can learn to play and do. If you sit there and study the fights and know your skills and work with a group, you can do it too. Everyone can do these fights. Chaos will Always go into fire phase after he does his damning edict. He will always do water if he starts with Long/Lat at the beginning. Fire always transitions to wind, and Water to Earth. He will always cast Chaotic Dispersion at certain points in his fight. These fights are highly scripted. It just takes you sitting down and learning the script and playing along and adapting to it. Is it easy? No. It is hard. But it's not outside of anyones real skill, so long as they put the effort. The irony here is that Raiders know this fact. They firmly believe that anyone can do this content - even casuals. It's only some of the more vocal casuals who say that its impossible for them.

Beyond that, the content release formula has been pretty stable for a long while. Even considering HW. I would say things appear more lackluster thematically for SB, but thats just how this xpac played out. Maybe a more tightly knit and focused story on either Ala Mhigo or Doma wouldve been better, but at this point its whatever. But there is a wierd perception that there is 'less' to do in SB. I dont think thats the case, particularly since were about to have the same amount of dungeons, diadem-esque things, raids, and alliance raids along with trials in SB as we did in HW. It just seems things appear more lack luster, or have been. Honestly, the Burn is a breath of fresh air for me cause it feels like an expert a little bit. But thats just opinion.

This would change nothing, if you demand them to.... achivements and Stuff.

This is a weird segway but for the mentor system, youre essentially saying that there is no qualifications difference between someone who beat the hardest content and someone who did not. It's a wierd statement to make. It's like saying someone whos an expert in surgery and a doctor is only as good as a person who reads webMD when it comes to teaching. That the doctor is no more qualified than an internet reader when it comes to teaching a subject. Not to say that every doctor is a great teacher, but it is worth noting that the doctor is more likely qualified to teach a subject like surgery over the guy or gal who just reads webMD.

You also keep trying to distinguish 'mechanical skill' and understanding as if theyre mutually exclusive, when its probably closer to the truth that most of those with the mechanical skill to clear savage on a regular basis are also pretty well rehearsed with how the game works from a stat/gear/skill point of perspective.

[Ilan]

Too much text

1. For what do you really need 390-400 gear? For nothing. You only want it and if the stats are so crappy that your rotation doesn't work, you'll take 10 ilvl below. No one needs the highest ilvl to be able to play the game if you know how to play your class, you are fine with a mix of 380-390, i don't know why people always need the best gear if they don't do the hardest content or can't even play their class good enough that 10 ilvl and better stats would matter at all (not talking to you personaly because i don't know you).

2. Excuse me, but this is bull. I've seen far more of these non raiders that can't behave because most raiders keep to themselfs, i'm not talking about these players who have maybe o10s down they are still not raiders.

3. If you would be able to see all old threads, you would see that a lot of people complained that savage is too hard and they want it easier. Of course people complained about gordias because it was way overtuned because the dps checks where way to tight for people who are not absolut hardcore raiders. Now raids get easier so that they are available for more people, especially for the ones who didn't dare to go in there before. But guess what? People complain again.

4. The problem is that no system would change anything really. If you are a player who is really out to help new players you'll get ignored, flamed or accused of beeing an elitist for giving tipps how to play a class properly or for explaining how mechanics work. So why bother at all to make a change? A lot of mentors just want the mount and the crown and a lot of new players don't want help because you don't pay their sub. I for my part have never seen a community in a game that is more willing to help someone who is new, but i also have never seen so many stuborn players that straight up refuse help and beeing rude if someone tries to help them instead of booting or flaming them.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

It is okay, if the best Gear is in Savage, but we need a Rework of some of the Tome Gear.

Secondary stats are completely meaningless outside of Savage. Tomestone gear is hilariously overpowered for everything else in this game you could literally throw Tenacity on a BLM body piece and never notice the difference. Hell, you wouldn't notice without a parser anyway. Should they make more relevant content for non-raiders? Sure. But even in such a scenario, secondary stats are really only going to impact raiders chasing FFlogs.

A Problem with the Content.

Non-raiders aren't losing content. Normal and Savage are almost identical save for a few mechanical differences. They are designed that way purposely so the devs don't have to make too much exclusive content for a smaller percentage of players. The only exception has been the final fight of each tier: Neo, Godka and Final Omega. Now I'd argue Normal mode is far too easy but that's another argument entirely. As for Eureka, much to my own surprise, it's turned out better than initial reactions would have you believe. Pyros did a lot right to make people willing to slog through Pagos, myself included. I won't say it's widely successful, however it's certainly not hurting the game any despite what people would otherwise have you believe.

I think, some want to get Combat Gear Progress with the Crafters, because of the lack of any Progress for the Crafters and Gatherers.
Back in HW it took several Weeks, to get the best Version of the Crafter Jobgear, but it was just not as good as the melded Marketboard Gear.

This also marked one of the most hated iterations of crafting in the games history. Why? Craft tomes were capped, thus making it impossible to catch up to anyone who started early since by the time you did, the gear wasn't relevant anymore. The whole reason they abandoned this type of progression is due to it being near universally despised.