8 man endgame content should go back to the 2.x method (no baby mode) Hear me out...

[ItMe]

From what I understand their point is more that they think it should go back to how the Coils were done as far as difficulty goes,

OP's post wasn't just about difficulty. They mentioned lore a number of times and their TLDR at the end even focused on it.

TLDR: I miss skill locked lore content, and I realize my opinion doesn't matter really and I just enjoy the nostalgia of 2.x

[Vickii]

OP's post wasn't just about difficulty. They mentioned lore a number of times and their TLDR at the end even focused on it.

Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with difficult content but TC is essentially saying put lore and story behind hard content, as they did with Bahamut Arc.

Wow used to do this, they’d sell people the game with videos of illidan stormrage shouting at them, only for them to find that to actually even meet him they’d have to basically do a part time jobs worth of raiding.

It’s just not a great business model and that was a game that was much more raid focused than FFXIV. Most players do not raid beyond raid roulette/Eden’s and most are doing that for the glamour/tomestones as opposed to particularly enjoying raiding.

[Novae]

Wow used to do this, they’d sell people the game with videos of illidan stormrage shouting at them, only for them to find that to actually even meet him they’d have to basically do a part time jobs worth of raiding.

SE did it too, showing part of the E12S cutscene in their 5.4 trailer.

[Vickii]

SE did it too, showing part of the E12S cutscene in their 5.4 trailer.

Oh I didn’t notice that! Yeah that was a very weird choice having that particular character be savage only. They could have come up with literally any other additional phase for savage. But I guess it’s fair to say we got 99 percent of the content of the raid in normal mode.

Original WoW was doing a bunch of quests leading up to fighting a big villain... then you either spent the best part of a year raiding before you could fight him or you moved onto the next expansion without ever doing so.

It’s like saying we can’t actually fight Zenos if we don’t raid but don’t worry we can carry on our adventure anyway. Just doesn’t make sense to me.

[Payadopa]

I honestly kind of wish they would at least add more interesting aspects to jobs other than new shiny nuke damage buttons.

With ranged support being nonexistent, tank aggro management being nonexistent, healers only having 1 button and dps aggro management tools like diversion being gone it feels like the only thing there ever is to do is just mindlessly burn the boss down and maybe mitigate damage, but even mitigating isn't very meaningful.

Call me weird but I preferred when fights were more uncertain and less scripted dpsfests, and you could do something at least a bit meaningful like ripping boss aggro from the tank because you're killing your rotation, or using refresh so that freshly rezzed healer can get back on their feet and back to keeping the party alive a little quicker.

Heck being able to choose between more healing or more dps with Eos/Selene was interesting in a way since you could use Selene in fights where you felt more confident in your healing

I see it similarly. Too much was taken out and not replaced with anything.

[Rilifane]

Oh I didn’t notice that! Yeah that was a very weird choice having that particular character be savage only. They could have come up with literally any other additional phase for savage. But I guess it’s fair to say we got 99 percent of the content of the raid in normal mode.

Original WoW was doing a bunch of quests leading up to fighting a big villain... then you either spent the best part of a year raiding before you could fight him or you moved onto the next expansion without ever doing so.

It’s like saying we can’t actually fight Zenos if we don’t raid but don’t worry we can carry on our adventure anyway. Just doesn’t make sense to me.

It made more sense in WoW because you weren't the ultimate hero, renowned through the whole realm, feared by your enemies, revered by your allies and so on.
You were some dude with something pointy (or blunt) getting drowned out by the real soldiers while helping out here and there but never really doing something that the NPCs couldn't have. It could've been literally anyone else doing this thing you just did.
The story was more about assembling the manpower and strategising to fight this big bad villain and wether you were part of the big showdown or not didn't really matter lore-wise. You helped (or not) but you were never vital for the success. It was much, much later that your character was renowned and recognized by many NPCs and even lauded as a commander.

In FFXIV there is so much focus on the character, a big part of the story literally wouldn't make sense if we didn't finish the fights the story led up to. We have a unique edge over the vast majority of people and it gets frequently mentioned. FFXIV's story focuses on your character, WoW's story on the world as a whole.
The former basically requires you to be there when something big is happening. The latter not.

[technole]

I'm fine with the status quo of fights like O4S and E12S having something exclusive to savage. You should have been here a few years ago when there was a thread from someone harping why couldn't they could see the cutscene and fight Neo Exodeath in normal mode, lol.

Despite all they did in the end days of ARR to keep adding echo in Final Coil in the final months, there was still a considerable amount of people who did not clear it. I remember queuing in DF all the time to help people clear when it was unlocked. Sometimes you were successful, sometimes not.

There were dud parties at-times. So I don't miss that aspect where there were people who really had no business trying hard end-game content when they didn't know their job well. You get a bad tank or healer? You knew this wasn't happening in the first 30 seconds of T13.

In one way I enjoyed the aspect you had to take a leap into harder content to get the canon part of the story. Plus there was "The Final Witness" title allure, probably one of the best titles this game has ever graced on a player at the time. The legends titles today don't seem to have that same caliber, but that's maybe because we are several in now.

[Undeadfire]

I'm fine with the status quo of fights like O4S and E12S having something exclusive to savage. You should have been here a few years ago when there was a thread from someone harping why couldn't they could see the cutscene and fight Neo Exodeath in normal mode, lol.

Actually it started with A8S by having Brute Justice go Winged Brute Justice, A12S (Alexander) didn't however. Checkpoint started with O4S however Eden didn't do this till E12S. E3S did battle form change with Neo-Leviathan glowing augmenting his mechanics and adding new ones. And I guess E7S with Tornado form even though it lasted like a couple mins?

Anyway the main purpose is to remove any hints from the normal mode since Raiders will scavenge data the normal bosses use and Savage usually uses all of them with modifications, except the exclusive battle form. It gives Savage identity and provides a need of challenge. SE learned this with A12S being cleared way too quickly since A9S-A12S did essentially the same thing as normal mode with modified mechanics that were too easy to figure out.

[technole]

Actually it started with A8S by having Brute Justice go Winged Brute Justice, A12S (Alexander) didn't however. Checkpoint started with O4S however Eden didn't do this till E12S. E3S did battle form change with Neo-Leviathan glowing augmenting his mechanics and adding new ones. And I guess E7S with Tornado form even though it lasted like a couple mins?

Anyway the main purpose is to remove any hints from the normal mode since Raiders will scavenge data the normal bosses use and Savage usually uses all of them with modifications, except the exclusive battle form. It gives Savage identity and provides a need of challenge. SE learned this with A12S being cleared way too quickly since A9S-A12S did essentially the same thing as normal mode with modified mechanics that were too easy to figure out.

YoshiP was on-record saying they liked how Alexander Creator turned out and that was the savage difficulty they were always going to strive for going forward. He didn't say it was too fast. They have kept to that since then, only real change was tightening the heal and DPS checks.

A8S doesn't count it still had intermissions and everything that was remotely different aside from gavel and the water. Sudo designed it, and he was the best battle designer they ever had and he's no longer there. He also did O3S/O4S and UCoB.

It's all battle designer specific because fights like E7S was designed by someone new to savage for the first time. There are many newer battle designers now, and the guy who designed Cruise Chaser in A11S is now the battle lead.

[Undeadfire]

YoshiP was on-record saying they liked how Alexander Creator turned out and that was the savage difficulty they were always going to strive for going forward. He didn't say it was too fast. They have kept to that since then, only real change was tightening the heal and DPS checks.

Never claimed it from Yoship words it was simply cleared too quickly which was 2 days. Adding in a new battle form and scaling the difficult a bit more than Creator aligned it much better, and honestly Creator was waaay too easy.