Savage is too easy

[Flay_wind]

If anything they need to add some meaningful 4 man content that is in between dungeon and savage difficulty to target the vast majority of people who run out of stuff to do.

What we need is "Savage" dungeons.
Used to play Everquest II like 10 years ago. In the last 2 expansions before i quit (due to a variety of reasons) there were 3 tiers of three dungeons (sorta easy, normal, hard) and later in the patch 3 more of Very Hard dungeons would be added. Like Vigilant dungeons in Sentinel's Fate or Drunder dungeons in Destiny of Velious. That was content that actually tested you. Tested the limits of what you were capable of. These dungeons were incredibly fun to wipe in and after some time actually clear them. But maybe players' mentality was different back then.
P.S. Fun fact: also these dungeons had Flawless Victory (noone died during the run) and Sense of Urgency (clear the dungeon super fast) achievements associated with them. Sense of Urgency was 1 hour.

[ReiMakoto]

What we need is "Savage" dungeons.
Used to play Everquest II like 10 years ago. In the last 2 expansions before i quit (due to a variety of reasons) there were 3 tiers of three dungeons (sorta easy, normal, hard) and later in the patch 3 more of Very Hard dungeons would be added. Like Vigilant dungeons in Sentinel's Fate or Drunder dungeons in Destiny of Velious. That was content that actually tested you. Tested the limits of what you were capable of. These dungeons were incredibly fun to wipe in and after some time actually clear them. But maybe players' mentality was different back then.
P.S. Fun fact: also these dungeons had Flawless Victory (noone died during the run) and Sense of Urgency (clear the dungeon super fast) achievements associated with them. Sense of Urgency was 1 hour.

Devs are on record saying they don't want to do savage dungeons, as it puts too much pressure on the healer unless you have a rdm or smn, and if they did it they wouldn't want rdm or smn to be mandatory picks

[Flay_wind]

Devs are on record saying they don't want to do savage dungeons, as it puts too much pressure on the healer unless you have a rdm or smn, and if they did it they wouldn't want rdm or smn to be mandatory picks

Last time i did anything remotely stressful as a healer was Mist Dragon. And that one time during Limitless Blue, when the other healer got thrown off the platform in the first 15 seconds of the fight.

[Dzian]

there is also the issue that as veteran players play over time - the level of play increases - meaning you're just naturally playing better over time as the game goes on.

now unless your static is entirely full of noobs to endgame raiding - that might make raiding difficult for them because they've literally never seen anything like it before.

Perhaps in some part but then very few players stay around long enough for that to actually be the case.

SE keeps pushing out ever increasing player numbers. 14 million people have played this game... but the active population is much the same as it was way back in 2.0..

Hell there still running the same servers they were back then. Now yes they did add a few but that was for reasons of latency and an EU data centre not overcrowding populations.. half the servers we have are still as dead as they have ever been. Which is why they added cross server functionality in the first place to combat the low populations

[Risvertasashi]

What we need is "Savage" dungeons.
Used to play Everquest II like 10 years ago. In the last 2 expansions before i quit (due to a variety of reasons) there were 3 tiers of three dungeons (sorta easy, normal, hard) and later in the patch 3 more of Very Hard dungeons would be added. Like Vigilant dungeons in Sentinel's Fate or Drunder dungeons in Destiny of Velious. That was content that actually tested you. Tested the limits of what you were capable of. These dungeons were incredibly fun to wipe in and after some time actually clear them. But maybe players' mentality was different back then.
P.S. Fun fact: also these dungeons had Flawless Victory (noone died during the run) and Sense of Urgency (clear the dungeon super fast) achievements associated with them. Sense of Urgency was 1 hour.

Different terminology but Secret World had this too. I miss it.

But like Rei said, the devs are very shy about any difficult 4-player content.

[Curisu]

Why not a third raid difficulty after savage.
Just take e1s, remove some cast bars, increase dmg and hp and place some random mechanics.
Now you have a new fight with known mechanics and a gear gated enrage.

These e1-4u (ltimate) can even have the same difficulty or the forth could be the easiest one.
As reward you can get a item to upgrade your gear with a additional materia slot.

[HyoMinPark]

Why not a third raid difficulty after savage.
Just take e1s, remove some cast bars, increase dmg and hp and place some random mechanics.
Now you have a new fight with known mechanics and a gear gated enrage.

These e1-4u (ltimate) can even have the same difficulty or the forth could be the easiest one.
As reward you can get a item to upgrade your gear with a additional materia slot.

The higher difficulty tier after Savage is basically the Ultimates. Between the existence of it and the fact that the developers like Savage and Savage-tier rewards being as “accessible” as they are, it’s unlikely they’ll ever do a third mode of the current Savage tiers. Ultimate sort of serves as the way of “revisiting” old tiers and making them ten times more challenging anyways, so it would be a little redundant.

I’d rather just see current Savage upped in terms of difficulty, bridging the gap between it and Ultimate fights (because there’s a huge spike in difficulty between E4S and TEA, just as there was with UCoB and O4S, and UwU and O8S). They could also up EX primals to bring even-numbered patch EX in line with first floor Savage, and the odd number patch EX in line with the third floor (since it’s meant to be a weapon supplement to help gearing).

[Dzian]

I’d rather just see current Savage upped in terms of difficulty, bridging the gap between it and Ultimate fights (because there’s a huge spike in difficulty between E4S and TEA, just as there was with UCoB and O4S, and UwU and O8S). They could also up EX primals to bring even-numbered patch EX in line with first floor Savage, and the odd number patch EX in line with the third floor (since it’s meant to be a weapon supplement to help gearing).

This is because there is no difficulty curve at all. it's just one great big long horizontal line that meets a sheer vertical cliff that steps up to savage. followed by another sheer vertical cliff that steps up to ultimate..

rather than have a curve (orange) that gradually promotes improvement and better play by letting players work there way up. it's just this long flat line (blue) thats suddenly stopped by a massive cliffs which leave players stuck.

the difference is when player A gets to savage they're totally overwhelmed by it because everything theyve ever done has been a total roflstomp faceroll you cant possibly lose...
when player B gets to savage he's already prepared for itand ready to take it on.. the same goes again at ultimate...

excuse my diabolical paint skills..

this game needs to start pushing players up instead of always bringing the content down.
if it did that a lot of the so called toxicity and elitism that gets thrown around wouldn't exist because the generically dubbed duty finder pugs. would be much more pleasant experiences

[Risvertasashi]

Why not a third raid difficulty after savage.
Just take e1s, remove some cast bars, increase dmg and hp and place some random mechanics.
Now you have a new fight with known mechanics and a gear gated enrage.

These e1-4u (ltimate) can even have the same difficulty or the forth could be the easiest one.
As reward you can get a item to upgrade your gear with a additional materia slot.

It's a lot easier to organize 4 people than 8. Now I like raiding, but I can only really do it at very specific times when 7 other people I've made a prior agreement with can be online at the same time to do this content with. And even then sometimes one or two of them can't make it due to unforeseen circumstances - which we might be able to find replacements for, or we might not and so we might have to cancel that particular night. (But to be fair, it would be easier if SE would modernize their loot system and not make running with others that have cleared for the week so punishing...)

With 4 player content, it would be a lot easier to ping a few friends to get together to run it. And there would be a lot less potential for one person to throw a spanner in the works.

[JamieRose]

How does anyone call Savage easy when all it takes is for one player to miss a cue and the whole raid wipes? I just spent 5 hours doing OS8 with a pick up party and we never finished. Furthest we got was F3 and at that point there's too many mechanics going off at once for me to juggle.

It doesn't feel fun, it just feels like a chore. A chore you get no rewards for because failure is inevitable. Been beating my head against TitaniaEX the same way. Again, it just takes one person to goof and the whole thing goes to pot. Still haven't gotten a clear on that either despite 40 or so tries.

I gasp at the thought of what people like the OP might consider to be reasonable difficulty.