Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[MariaArvana]

Are you implying there were way more clears back then as well? Are you saying that official data like this one is all false then?

I wouldn't exactly count Gordias as some kind of shining beacon of difficulty when one fight's dps check was severely overtuned to a good 80% of the player base at the time, and the other was mathematically impossible to beat in entry level gear if you executed the fight the intended way. (Several of the world first raiders on Mainpulator were mentioning seeing enrage cast as early as 30s into final phase on the 1st/2nd weeks before weapons were available, or something to that effect.) Midas is a better representation of the post-coil, pre-creator era, and even then it was only a little over two weeks.

Honestly though, the clear times would be much different if those fights were released today. On top of many, many QoL changes that helped speed up progression (Cooldowns resetting every wipe that was implemented in Creator so you no longer had to do nothing but wait for literal minutes at a time.) better standardized markers (most mechanics that do certain functions (stack, spread, etc.) tend to have standardized markers now, whereas back in the old days it was a relative free-for-all and groups would have to spend more time arbitrarily discerning what certain markers did.) On top of all of that, just plain experience. When Gordias came out, there was only ARR's raid fights worth of experience to build up against. Now, most of the top raiders have been in the game across multiple expansions, having experienced the full spectrum of raid tiers since then.

Outside of creating complex puzzle mechanics, there's not much you can do to slow down the best raiders in this game outside of a large overhaul of the combat system.

Also, all the recent bfa raids took less than two weeks, most of them took less time to beat than UCOB did as a note.

UCOB - 11 days.

Uldir (8 days), Dazar'alor (7 days), crucible (9 days). Only Palace has lasted longer than UCOB at 12 days.

Savage is fine where it is. If people want more challenge Ultimate will keep groups occupied for long periods of time. Even my own group, which had 5/8 people already cleared Ultima Weapon, still took well over three weeks to get our first clear, and we're currently working on week 4 of our UCOB prog.