Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[Penthea]

That's because the DPS checks have become a joke nowadays, and you can clear most fights on the first week even with multiple deaths. This wasn't the case in Gordias

I don't know why you are using Gordias as an example of "better" raiding. It was a mistake. SE even admitted this. The release of content as difficult as that was severely mistimed with Gordias. Coils was no walk in the park but it didn't prepare you for Gordias. None of the HW pre-Alex content prepared you for Gordias. It was so highly tuned that killing one of the bosses was literally impossible without farming for gear first.

It's not good design to be unable to beat a boss with entry level gear even if you're among the best players in the entire game. It really cheapens the idea of a challenge when the wall isn't skill based, but is instead ilvl based. If you lack skill you can keep trying until you improve. If you lack gear then you need to stop, go elsewhere, and come back later. Take a guess as to which one competitive raiders tend to prefer.

But SE didn't completely abandon difficulty and requirements as high as Gordias. We see it with Ultimate now. However unlike Gordias Ultimate is gated behind content that legitimately trains you to be good enough for it. It's in a place in the progression ladder that actually makes sense.

I understand wanting content to be more challenging, and I'm not against this idea, but if you want to be taken seriously by both other players and SE, stop using Gordias as a reference point for good content. It is widely regarded as poorly balanced by both players and the devs.

Midas is a better representation of the post-coil, pre-creator era, and even then it was only a little over two weeks.

Pretty much.

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.

Cds resetting is a serious game-changer on its own. No more standing around waiting for them to reset for several minutes, even after an ill-fated pull that ended early. Less guesswork due to standardised markers saves a tonne of time as well. These may seem like small things to some players, but they're actually significant changes that eliminate a lot of wasted time.

[Wegente]

It's not good design to be unable to beat a boss with entry level gear even if you're among the best players in the entire game.

Being able to clear the second or third turn, with multiple deaths, on the first week with no gear is not good design either. It's just a sign of poor tuning.

I know of a group that cleared the second turn of Creator with something like 11 deaths, and they still managed to beat the enrage.
And I've beaten the third turn with 4-5 deaths in Creator and Deltascape as well, in the first week.

I think DPS checks should be a little bit more unforgiving than this, at least in the first week. I'm asking for a middle ground here.

[Penthea]

I know of a group that cleared the second turn of Creator with something like 11 deaths, and they still managed to beat the enrage.
And I've beaten the third turn with 4-5 deaths in Creator and Deltascape as well, on the first week.

I know players who consistently hit 90% + percentile dps on any class they play but that doesn't mean I'm going to start calling the act of dpsing too easy to do.

Judging something based on how exceptional people perform is flawed. You need to look at everyone. You might know of one group who blazed through Creator crazy fast, but you can't say this is even remotely close to how the average static progressed.

I think DPS checks should be a little bit more unforgiving than this, at least on the first week. I'm asking for a middle ground here.

It doesn't seem this way considering you are using a famously overtuned and poorly balanced raid tier as an example of good content, and exceptional players as an indication of how difficult content should be.

It appears you want raid content to be designed around a tiny percentage of players. Raiding is for everyone. That's why there is a gradual progression ladder that starts from the very easy normal modes to the brutal ultimates. It sounds like you want all of savage to be as difficult as end-tier. Sure SE could do it, but not without alienating a huge part of their playerbase. They already did that once and the result was not good.

Again I'm not against raiding being tuned upwards a little, I just doubt that this is what you want given that you use the exceptional as a reference point.

[Wegente]

That's why there is a gradual progression ladder that starts from the very easy normal modes to the brutal ultimates.

But the problem is indeed in the progression ladder which is not gradual at all, since the last boss of the Savage tier only lasts around 12 hours whereas the Ultimate encounters can last up to 11 days like UCOB.

The disparity is too large there. That's why I ask for a middle ground and a harder Savage raid progression.

[Penthea]

But the problem is indeed in the progression ladder which is not gradual at all, since the last boss of the Savage tier only lasts around 12 hours whereas the Ultimate encounters can last up to 11 days like UCOB.

The disparity is too large there. That's why I ask for a middle ground and a harder Savage raid progression.

Really? Up to now you have been saying you want savage to be more difficult because you think it's killed too quickly. You haven't mentioned the transition from savage to ultimate since I entered this conversation, until now.

[Wegente]

Really? Up to now you have been saying you want savage to be more difficult because you think it's killed too quickly. You haven't mentioned the transition from savage to ultimate since I entered this conversation, until now.

I do think that current Savage is being killed too quickly, since what SE said back when Savage was first introduced in 3.0 was that since people wanted to experience the story without stressing out, they would get normal mode raids instead for that.
Savage was meant to be something that requires effort and dedication to clear, and that not everyone can aim to clear. And that's how we got Gordias, and Midas after that.

Then apparently people weren't satisfied anymore with just clearing the normal mode raids and also wanted to take on the challenge of Savage and clear it, so raids were made easier as a result to accomodate those players.

Now we've got Ultimate as well, which is the real challenge for those who seek one, but Savage doesn't really prepare people for it because of the disparity in difficulty.
And my fear is that Ultimate itself is going to be tuned down as a result, since the next step is for people to start complaining that they want to clear Ultimate as well, and want it to be made easier. And so the cycle will repeat itself.

[Penthea]

I do think that current Savage is being killed too quickly

But you use exceptional players as an example for this. You can't use only these people as an indication for how difficult content is. You need a far larger pool of players than less than 1% of raiders. What you're doing is akin to looking at a medal winning Olympian athlete to gauge the average running speed of a human who merely jogs to stay fit and beat personal records.

Savage was meant to be something that requires effort and dedication to clear, and that not everyone can aim to clear.

It still does...just because you and your buddies clear things quickly doesn't automatically invalidate how difficult something is.

Now we've got Ultimate as well, which is the real challenge for those who seek one, but Savage doesn't really prepare people for it because of the disparity in difficulty.

You could say the same about normal to ex, normal to savage, even ex to savage a lot of the time but I don't see you complaining about this at all. Maybe it's because in other content you do expect a significant increase in challenge when you do a different difficulty, but you somehow don't when going from savage to ultimate. Hmmm.

And my fear is that Ultimate itself is going to be tuned down as a result, since the next step is for people to start complaining that they want to clear Ultimate as well, and want it to be made easier. And so the cycle will repeat itself.

Players always complain that they can't clear something regardless of difficulty, and SE have not given in every time. If they did the game would have little more to offer than Haukke Manor normal. SE changed how they balanced raid content during and after Alex because Gordias was an unbalanced mess that they learned a lot from.

But I don't think any amount of talking to you will change your mind. You have it in your head that top-tier raiders are somehow an appropriate reference point to how the rest of the raiders are doing. Oddly enough, you just make it look like that you're selling yourself short. It almost looks like you really don't know how skilled you actually are compared to most decent players.

[TaleraRistain]

Then apparently people weren't satisfied anymore with just clearing the normal mode raids and also wanted to take on the challenge of Savage and clear it, so raids were made easier as a result to accomodate those players.

Do you honestly think if SE didn't want more people in Savage they wouldn't tell those complaining where to get off? They've done it before. Players are going to ask for things. Put the responsibility where it belongs, on the devs who made the choice to change something.

[Crushnight]

People getting clever is an expected outcome to utterly overtuned fights. Problem with the current discussion is people forget the context of fights like that but remember the challange think "Ah yes, the good ol days." It's literally the "old man" syndrome - how everything was better before the modern era, but conveniently forgetting that people had shorter life expectancy, more disease, less food, crappier quality of life, and a lot more struggle. In here, people are forgetting all the garbage that people had to put up with. Never mind that for anyone who did clear that content and actively participated in it were literally trialed by fury and hellfire and therefor their standards are skewed as it were.

Sorry bit far back raided after posting comment and went straight to sleep after, yea i'm under no delusion of past raids some felt good to clear and some were just awful, no raid tier has been immune to issues. Midas's A7S beam +DoT tick could kill someone before you could react due to server ticks lets also not forget the buggy mess of A6S where your could straight up wipe for no fault of the players, phase pushing of Creator was a problem. Delta's glorious Alte Rolte who was easier than extreme Susano on their respective launches, Sigma's Gaurdian who my group firmly believe Kefka pilots due to it randomly start targeting a tank for beam before doing a complete 180* turn killing every non tank as it fired, Alphascape's Middy who no one seems to like as a savage fight to the length of A12S.

Currently a big problem I have with savage fights(some Exs too) is the random Enrage timer, some pulls get longer some get shorter due to whatever pattern the boss decides to do (It has been an issue since Gordias Jigglybutt was the 1st time i really noticed it), i think this should stop period, they should have a set time only and the boss stops casting/doing its pattern the moment its enrage timer has gone over and wipes the group.

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?

Ah i remember this my group was part of the 38k A2S people, we were both happy and worried seeing that number, it felt like we were part of a small club but at the same time it worried us that if anyone was unable to make it we were unlikely to find pugs to replace and this drove morale down hard both looking at A3S/A4S clear rates due to our 2 day a week/3 hrs per day schedule, we eventually got A3S down in patch 3.1 and we tried A4S but ultimately decided not to bother as we felt we weren't going to kill it before patch 3.2 launched.

What also didn't help Gordias was that the weapon was ilv 210 which was equal to the upgraded tomestone weapon/relic weapon at the time so the only real incentives for A4S was BiS and a mount.