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

[Vickii]

I did change my tune from my first thread, yes. I personally play MMOs to play with others to work through challenges and experience the story together. It's natural to me to want to encourage others to experience what has brought me so much joy since the early days of Ultima Online. You will see in my first response to this thread: That just isn't the want of most western mmo players. I do say Western as JP servers seem to have a much larger participation in savage/ex/ultimate.

You and others were twisting my later post, however. Like I said, I think story is more of a reward than gear. Someone had mentioned Wrath, and it was a challenge! Seeing the ending of ICC after the euphoria of overcoming such a difficult fight had everyone screaming and hollering in VC together. It was so much more to me than just crashing through it in a neutered story mode.

I can remember the moment, the feeling, the experience of it. Can't say the same for FFXIV content since that was not something I was ever given the option to experience.

Which is why you are right! I am a human being with complex feelings with opinions that can change when observing others share their own opinions and feelings. I feel OP on them wanting to feel the rewards of a story driven mmo in the way they see fit, just as you and others want the story mode dungeons.

You want to argue it's not the same watching it on YT then please understand it's not the same to me if I don't have to fight for it.

Yes but this playing a game like a job and building a social team is what you want to do. Can’t force it on others.

If you really don’t want to see the story in normal mode, then simply skip the cutscene.

It comes down to wanting to control the content for other people, and again you are not special or entitled to more because you choose to do savage raiding anymore than a saint of the firmament should get an ishgard house ahead of you because they choose to craft... although you could actually make a stronger point for that.

[Vickii]

In fact why not lock the next lore heavy stuff behind a huge botany grind? It makes just as much sense as what you are all proposing and there’s far more BTN than savage raiders xD

[ForteNightshade]

Raiders *already* get something extra in exclusive phases, exclusive bosses, exclusive song drops, exclusive mounts, and exclusive gear. It's not going to kill them to do Normal mode like everyone else for the story. Soloers make the choice to join with 7 others in a raid to see the story. Groupers join 4 more people in a raid to see the story. Savage raiders have to put up with being bored to see the story. Everyone gives up something from their normal playstyle to gain something else. It's equally balanced.

Ironically, several raiders, myself included, would prefer Savage to be unlockable without having to complete Normal and without any story. Why? So we can later go back and watch the story unfold without having to rush through it for week 1. Putting said story in Savage just means we'll skip it since the whole purpose of Savage isn't story but doing challenging battle content. Look no further than E8S. What was the biggest complaint besides Light Rampant? Her minute long cut-scene before going into second phase.

[Packetdancer]

Square Enix already tried that in Final Fantasy XI, which was notoriously difficult. The end result is that within nine months of launch, 90% of the people on my friend list had quit the game, and many, many more were in the beta for World of Warcraft and evangelizing to everyone who would listen about how they should quit FFXI and try this new, up-and-coming MMO.

They've tried it in this game, too.

*insert Will Smith 'tada' meme, but labeled "EUREKA"*

Now, I love Eureka. Being potentially murdered by a mob I was dumb enough to aggro on my own makes me weirdly nostalgic. But I recognize that I am not in the majority. And there are a lot of people who, when corralled into tough content in order to progress their relic weapons, decided that they did not in fact need to progress their relic weapons and noped out.

And this is not unique to 'casual' players; I know plenty of savage raiders -- including the bulk of my own static -- who are Not Best Pleased we learned with the 5.45 patch notes that the next stage of this current relic weapon is gated behind the Bozjan "Castrum Lacus Litore" duty, which itself is gated behind grinding Bozja content in order to attain rank 10 in the first place. They do not like Bozja content. They do not want to do Bozja content. They are now mulling over whether they actually want to progress their relic weapons further if it requires Bozja content.

And these are people who are, y'know, savage raiders, so it's not like "this content is not a faceroll" would be a major factor in their dislike.

(I am personally fine with doing Bozja for my relic, because I also like Bozja. But we established with my previous Eureka statement that I may actually be functionally insane when it comes to my tastes in content.)

But moreover, I would suggest that the bulk of the playerbase by numbers plays this game for the story. And if locking purely optional things like relic weapons behind content that's not as popular earns ire and grumbling and rants on Reddit, imagine locking the primary selling point of a game behind content only a few people will ever do. There would be literal riots; the game may not have destructible environments, but players would find a way to destroy Limsa to show their outrage.

If you really don’t want to see the story in normal mode, then simply skip the cutscene.

To be fair, LisSquid isn't (so far as I can tell) saying "I don't want to see the story in normal mode", but rather saying "I do not want to have to touch normal mode at all, but I still want the story." I.e., allowing you to have the story without having to touch normal mode. Which is something I can understand; since I got into savage raiding last tier, I have come to find the normal raids Extremely Dull. And I'm hardly the best or most experienced raider around; I like to describe myself as 'tolerably competent', or 'more of an asset than a detriment'.

I know a number of more casual players who have real trouble with normal raids when they're current content; if, as LisSquid says, forcing folks to rise to a certain level of performance before they can unlock things would motivate them to improve, then having folks go through the normal mode to unlock savage -- and having folks go through savage to unlock ultimate -- serves precisely that purpose. If you want to set foot in savage, you need to improve to the point you can get through the normal raids. (Which, admittedly, is a pretty low bar and doesn't take a lot of practice/improvement.) If you want to set foot in ultimate, you need to improve to the point that you can get through the savage raids.

Blasting through the normal raids quickly when a new tier comes out is not, honestly, that onerous; if you want the same story unlockable via savage so as to skip normal, I don't see much point to it. (Any more than you should be able to skip to later tiers of relic weapons without completing the earlier ones, or queue right into Ultimate content without ever setting foot in Savage once.)

And if you want the story to differ when unlocked via savage (thus making lore/story a 'unique reward'), I think that'd become a headache quickly if they ever wanted to refer back to older raids in main scenario content -- which they have done this expansion, after all. Because unless you made the story functionally similar or the callbacks extremely vague, they'd have to start producing story content that was more branching and varied, which sounds neat at first but quickly compounds into a nightmarish game-state headache as you progress expansion to expansion.

(Now, if the argument is that it'd be nice for folks to start the race for world first on a savage tier without having to skip the story attached to the normal raids, that's an entirely different matter. But I'd point out that there've been a number of threads on that topic suggesting solutions, including delaying savage tiers slightly after the patch just like they do at expansion launch. And also that if you could skip to savage without doing normal, people in the world-first race would just skip the story in savage as well, because they want to get started as early as possible.)

[LisSquid]

Ironically, several raiders, myself included, would prefer Savage to be unlockable without having to complete Normal and without any story. Why? So we can later go back and watch the story unfold without having to rush through it for week 1. Putting said story in Savage just means we'll skip it since the whole purpose of Savage isn't story but doing challenging battle content. Look no further than E8S. What was the biggest complaint besides Light Rampant? Her minute long cut-scene before going into second phase.

That's actually a very good point!Perhaps a toggle option for it? Or have the option for "I have already seen this, skip it" as an option from the group leader.

Also,

If you really don’t want to see the story in normal mode, then simply skip the cutscene.

That would only work if they put a giant black censor bar over the bosses and arena :P

edit:

Blasting through the normal raids quickly when a new tier comes out is not, honestly, that onerous; if you want the same story unlockable via savage so as to skip normal, I don't see much point to it. (Any more than you should be able to skip to later tiers of relic weapons without completing the earlier ones, or queue right into Ultimate content without ever setting foot in Savage once.)

I just want to end a progression kill with a badass cutscene and story chunk after basking in the euphoria of getting my clear. I don't care about first week or chasing parses. I want to experience the WoL story feeling like a WoL. I know that's kind of a unique situation, but I'm happy to be in a group of people who feel the same.

I'm very much a "media blackout! Don't even show me the trailer!!" kind of person.

[Packetdancer]

I just want to end a progression kill with a badass cutscene and story chunk after basking in the euphoria of getting my clear. I don't care about first week or chasing parses. I want to experience the WoL story feeling like a WoL. I know that's kind of a unique situation, but I'm happy to be in a group of people who feel the same.

I get it, believe me; story is honestly one of the best rewards anyone can give me, too. It's a chunk of why I want to still get through the last bit of Eureka and do Baldesion Arsenal (though "I want the Demi-Ozma mount" and "this sounds like a bonkers experience and I really want to try it" are also major motivating factors). And there's a reason I threw myself at Coils when my folks decided to do a proper run of it; as a former 1.0 player, I really wanted to see what is functionally the epilogue to the 1.0 story, and I wanted to earn it.

I just don't know that it's feasible more widely in this specific game, given that 'story' is the game's primary selling point.

Because, yes, with story being the primary selling point, people would go hurl themselves at savage if that was how you got the story (possibly without going through normal, if normal still existed in such a hypothetical world). And in order to get people through instances that get you story that isn't niche, the things that get you story would most likely need to be added to roulettes... and I do not want to imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth if people could queue into Raid Roulette and end up with a bunch of first-timers in, say, E9S. Especially if they were just plunging straight into savage right after the patch without going into normal at all.

And if it were the same story unlocked via both normal and savage... I think a lot of savage raiders who are motivated by story would be disappointed that if 'story' was supposed to be a reward, you still wouldn't get anything different by doing the more difficult fights. (I know that, personally, I kind of would be.)

[Kamatsu]

Wow those are so rose tinted glasses. Need I link the thousands of old "why vanilla was great" threads saying so because it encouraged community through making the solo experience difficult? The class quests (warlock comes to mind) that needed a full party to take you through?

You have to remember that at the time WoW launched the competition was group-only MMO's such as Everquest 1 & 2. Then WoW came along and compared to both Everquest 1 & 2 it was *extremely* solo friendly at the time. While you are right in that vanilla WoW is not as friendly to solo players as the current version is, that's not relevant since I'm talking about the state of MMO's back in 2004-2006.

Don't know if you played either Everquest 1 and/or 2, but there's been enough post's in this thread by those who have... to attest to just how much those games were "group or don't bother playing" (heck, EQ2 had 'solo' content that had to be done in groups... pffft!).

Perhaps they will let raiders skip normal and go straight to Savage like every other game.

Unless it's been changed (possibly it has, it's been like 5-6 years since I've played it), WoW always required you to complete the normal version of dungeons & raids before you could tackle the harder versions. So in that respect, XIV is just like the big daddy of all western MMO's... requiring players to finish normal/story mode before doing hard version.

Question - what MMO's let you bypass the normal/story version of a dungeon, trail, or raid, and go directly to the harder versions?

I humor you and say, yes, you are still not reading my posts. Who knew wanting alternative options for different people meant I wanted to lock the story away only for me?

I quoted you as what your post said was relevant, but my original post was directed more about what the OP & thread are discussing. I will say it is less relevant to you, as from what I've seen you've more pushed for the ability to skip doing normal mode and not about locking content away from normal players.

Edit: also while it is hard to determine how many people cleared content on WoW before AoTC, you can tell that participation isn't small enough to even say that solo players dominate the game. You can even see key clears, which are arguably more difficult on higher tiers, have more participation than raiding. Definitely not a "solo" experience.

I see you're not reading my post's: I gave out 100% accurate stat's regarding raiding %'s back in original Vanilla and BC - 6-7% of the player base in total ever even set foot into a raid. LESS than 10% of the players. Which means 90+% of the players NEVER went into a raid at all, let alone the harder-mode's of raids. The %'s I stated were provided by WoW's dev's, based off their own metrics and player tracking - thus can be considered 100% accurate as of when they posted it.

So yes, WoW was massively SOLO dominated, and likely still is - despite the fact that current stats are skewered terribly due to LFR being shoved into the main story to force players into raiding. I also doubt WoW dev's will reveal the #'s & %'s of players raiding outside of mandatory raids forced upon players. I say this as I highly doubt things have changed that much - in that the majority of WoW's playerbase are still non-raider's doing solo content and/or dungeons in groups, while the 'visible' base on forums and such is still the raiders.

[TaleraRistain]

So you agree that for some people having no other option than to see the story in normal isn't rewarding?

They added trusts for the solo player, they can let raiders to savage for the story if they wanted to.

Do you think soloers like being forced to get together with 7 others or groups like having to have 4 more people? I'm sorry if raiders are bored, but everyone is making a choice to do something they dislike for the same reward. If they put in the ability for Savage to grant story completion, then they would also need to add a solo instance (possibly with Trusts) and a group version. Otherwise they are skewing it in the favor of raiders because they would have to give up nothing while other play styles still had to give up something.

[TaleraRistain]

Ironically, several raiders, myself included, would prefer Savage to be unlockable without having to complete Normal and without any story. Why? So we can later go back and watch the story unfold without having to rush through it for week 1. Putting said story in Savage just means we'll skip it since the whole purpose of Savage isn't story but doing challenging battle content. Look no further than E8S. What was the biggest complaint besides Light Rampant? Her minute long cut-scene before going into second phase.

That is a perfectly reasonable suggestion. So long as story says with Normal so there is balance with everyone having the same requirements to gain that reward, there's zero issue with letting Savage unlock without doing Normal. And you make a great point of being able to go back through at your own pace and enjoy it without having the pacing necessities of Savage ruin that for you. I'm 100% with you for decoupling Savage access as it is right now from Normal.

[TaleraRistain]

You have to remember that at the time WoW launched the competition was group-only MMO's such as Everquest 1 & 2. Then WoW came along and compared to both Everquest 1 & 2 it was *extremely* solo friendly at the time. While you are right in that vanilla WoW is not as friendly to solo players as the current version is, that's not relevant since I'm talking about the state of MMO's back in 2004-2006.

Oh god, yes. EQII has gotten a lot better. There are entire solo questlines in zones now and they adopted the "hub" style that WoW started doing (I think with BC?) but when they launched WoW was so much more accessible to soloers than EverQuest II and definitely EverQuest. EQII was long-touted on the EQ forums as the alternative to the group-only style of EQ, but it took them a bit and some overhauls to make good on that promise. And even then you had the content ceilings where solo ended and you had to move into grouping or raiding. I'm pretty sure they still stop off expansions with raids, though I haven't dived into the latest expansion yet.