Chaotic is midcore, in case you were wondering

[Buttobi]

Because people do not want to admit that they are actually unskilled players by shifting the definition on what midcore is. It's a useless word because the content it specifically would apply to the most (EX) is actually too hard for some people, again, who are unskilled.

If you were to put Chaotic on a mechanical level, it actually is on par with an EX, and it's all relatively easy to grasp concepts we've seen in the game over and over, (Stack Spread, In, Out, Look Away etc) but when you add 23 other people vs the usual 7, you have upped the fail points by 3fold at least, which makes it a low savage level.

Even players saying something in this thread like we want "a savage mechanic that can wipe the raid but less of them" is a nebulous ask because thats exactly what chaotic is already but they still complain about it.

If you have a mechanic that can wipe a raid, well amplify that by 23 people and its the exact situation with chaotic. What complainers really want is more braindead content that either can't wipe you outright or that with enough res mages you can brute force it with no issue which is basically a normal alliance raid.

What "complainers" want is more content that falls between normal and ex trial difficulty. If you equate that with braindead content that can not wipe you then you are free to have that opinion. As it stands, the jump of difficulty between the 2 types of content is bigger than any other jump in difficulty in this game. I am not here to argue how the chaotic raid should have been, I just want more stuff to do for people that want to transition into playing a fight of that difficulty.

[Havenchild]

What "complainers" want is more content that falls between normal and ex trial difficulty. If you equate that with braindead content that can not wipe you then you are free to have that opinion. As it stands, the jump of difficulty between the 2 types of content is bigger than any other jump in difficulty in this game. I am not here to argue how the chaotic raid should have been, I just want more stuff to do for people that want to transition into playing a fight of that difficulty.

So basically an Alliance raid difficulty as is. Alliance raid is exactly what falls in between a "Normal" and "EX". Yes, its brain-off gaming. Why not call it for what it is?

EX IS the bridge between Normal dungeon and Savage tier, due to the fact that it can wipe you consistently. If you are looking for less difficulty than that, you want Alliance Raid difficulty.

[Buttobi]

So basically an Alliance raid difficulty as is. Alliance raid is exactly what falls in between a "Normal" and "EX". Yes, its brain-off gaming. Why not call it for what it is?

EX IS the bridge between Normal dungeon and Savage tier, due to the fact that it can wipe you consistently. If you are looking for less difficulty than that, you want Alliance Raid difficulty.

Have you not played since Shadowbringers or something? Alliance Raids have not been that way for ages. Even the current one which is supposedly "harder" than the EW ones is barely any different from the 3 raids before it.

[Kaurhz]

So basically an Alliance raid difficulty as is. Alliance raid is exactly what falls in between a "Normal" and "EX". Yes, its brain-off gaming. Why not call it for what it is?

EX IS the bridge between Normal dungeon and Savage tier, due to the fact that it can wipe you consistently. If you are looking for less difficulty than that, you want Alliance Raid difficulty.

Alliance Raids have not been a difficulty between normal and extreme for a very long time. Even then, arguably there's only been 1-2 exceptions where Alliance Raids have actually been above your normal/story difficulty.

There still absolutely needs to be something between.

[jonimated]

So basically an Alliance raid difficulty as is. Alliance raid is exactly what falls in between a "Normal" and "EX". Yes, its brain-off gaming. Why not call it for what it is?

EX IS the bridge between Normal dungeon and Savage tier, due to the fact that it can wipe you consistently. If you are looking for less difficulty than that, you want Alliance Raid difficulty.

But that's not true though, is it. Alliance raids are on the same level as normal trails. Which tbh are nearly on par with expert roulette in terms of encounter difficulty. Really the only difference being party size and actual fight length.

An Alliance Raid and Normal Trial can be cleared by a party of semi-competent people, even throwing in a few grey parsers in there for good measure, with relative ease. It also doesn't require manually putting together a party of people and trying to ensure they are all on the same phase of the fight (for all the good that does). Someone earlier in the thread put it well when they said that the type of content missing in FFXIV is encounters which can be explained in a few minutes by a party leader with experience, and can be cleared in about an hour with clear signs of progress after each wipe.

FFXIV doesn't have a dungeon or raid system with several variable difficulties. Sure we have normal trials and raids, and their EX/Savage versions, but those aren't really the same thing. They don't just increase health and damage, and add one or two mechanics. In many cases the EX/Savage versions of the fights are nearly unrecognizable from their normal counterparts. It's not the same as having content with a difficulty ramp.

The difficulty spike between normal an EX is massive, even statistically so. How long does it take a random roulette group to clear a brand new normal trial? Most can do it in a single go completely blind, some maybe a wipe or two. How long would it take that same group of players to complete an EX trail under the same circumstances. Hours, days, weeks, if they are even successful at all?

FFXIV has always had an issue serving this middle ground of content, an issue (like many others the game has) that other MMOs have solved ages ago. There are many proven ways to provide this kind of content and SE is doing none of it. Semi-difficult content with a low barrier to entry doesn't exist in FFXIV. Some of that does have to do with the rigidity of the game's combat system fundamentally, but that's a completely different can or worms I don't want to open. The point is the game has a content gap that has never been filled, even while other MMOs do it successfully.

[Havenchild]

But that's not true though, is it. Alliance raids are on the same level as normal trails. Which tbh are nearly on par with expert roulette in terms of encounter difficulty. Really the only difference being party size and actual fight length.

An Alliance Raid and Normal Trial can be cleared by a party of semi-competent people, even throwing in a few grey parsers in there for good measure, with relative ease. It also doesn't require manually putting together a party of people and trying to ensure they are all on the same phase of the fight (for all the good that does). Someone earlier in the thread put it well when they said that the type of content missing in FFXIV is encounters which can be explained in a few minutes by a party leader with experience, and can be cleared in about an hour with clear signs of progress after each wipe.

FFXIV doesn't have a dungeon or raid system with several variable difficulties. Sure we have normal trials and raids, and their EX/Savage versions, but those aren't really the same thing. They don't just increase health and damage, and add one or two mechanics. In many cases the EX/Savage versions of the fights are nearly unrecognizable from their normal counterparts. It's not the same as having content with a difficulty ramp

Few points I'm going to heavily disagree with.

80%+ of mechanics in Savage are all present in their Normal counterparts with the only thing different usually being the indicator of said mechanic being something different, whether a lack of an indicator (now a status ailment instead ) or some alternate way of communicating the same info but obscured and then layering of patterns of a sort which may cause you to "solve" it differently occasionally.

As for what falls between an Expert Dungeon and an Ex Trial being Alliance Raid well lets look at it..


Expert dungeon -

Can the party wipe on any boss despite losing a member? All bosses can be solod by tanks alone.

Do they require strong mechanical knowledge of XIV? No, brute forceable


Alliance Raid

Do you need mechanical knowledge? Not generally, brute forceable.

If one party goes down, does the raid potentially catapult into a wipe? Depends on the mechanic you are at and if it requires multiple parties to complete.

Can you clear an Alliance boss with only one party up? In most cases, No but sometimes yes if no mechanics exist that require multiple tanks.

Are Alliance Raids generally recoverable if healers go down? Yes, if you have ress mages but if not, in most cases, no.


Extreme Trials

Can you wipe if you are missing 1 party member? Yes, depending in the mechanic
Generally recoverable with ress mages if healers go down? Yes as long as there isnt a mech that requires 8 ppl
Do you need strong mechanical knowledge to win? Yes, generally not brute forceable

The point being that to find something harder than an Expert, you have to imply some punishing feature, whether it be mechanically difficult or punishing damage wise for failure. If everyone ignored mechanics in Alliance Raid, you definitely can wipe (see first week raids)

Despite being able to wipe in an alliance raid though, they are still brute forceable as most people can fail the mechs and still you can succeed 9/10 times through each boss usually. Any mechanic punishing enough to hold a player accountable to their death, when amplified by x23 players having to do the same, will easily result into a more difficult encounter.

Which means that, yes as I said, the complainers want mechanics they can't essentially wipe to easily and can generally brute force through with enough ress mages. That's simply a fact if we cannot implement body checks that actually hold players accountable to their gameplay skills.

[jonimated]

snip

I appreciate you reading my whole post and replying to points specifically. I think though in going through specifics you may have missed the overarching point I was trying to make, while also somehow agreeing with it? That may have been my fault.

I was trying point out the chasm of difficulty between normal content/alliance raids and Extreme/Savage. For purposes of argument lets just use Extreme.

I used Expert roulette only as an example to point out that an Alliance raid is far closer to an Expert dungeon in terms of difficulty than it is to an Extreme trial by a pretty huge margin. And in doing so show that Alliance raids are not the "middle ground" content between normal and EX as you claimed they were. In the same way that EX is not the "middle ground" content between Alliance and Savage. Alliance and EX are just too far apart in terms of difficulty for that to be even remotely true, and you even said as much when you were breaking down the points in my last post.

They type of group required to clear an Alliance raid is so vastly different from the type of group required to clear EX, up to and including knowledge of mechanics and group composition. As far as Alliance Raids are concerned that is by design. It falls into the bucket of content, much like dungeons, that SE thinks should be able to be completed by a literal potato. And it serves that purpose well. The overarching point is that FFXIV doesn't have any content between very large Alliance and EX gap.

Now Alliance Raids *could* fill that gap, and there's maybe 1 or 2 instances where that has been true, but overall in the history of the game it is not. Alliance raids have for the most part been long form dungeons as far as difficulty is concerned.

[Havenchild]

I appreciate you reading my whole post and replying to points specifically. I think though in going through specifics you may have missed the overarching point I was trying to make, while also somehow agreeing with it? That may have been my fault.

I was trying point out the chasm of difficulty between normal content/alliance raids and Extreme/Savage. For purposes of argument lets just use Extreme.

I used Expert roulette only as an example to point out that an Alliance raid is far closer to an Expert dungeon in terms of difficulty than it is to an Extreme trial by a pretty huge margin. And in doing so show that Alliance raids are not the "middle ground" content between normal and EX as you claimed they were. In the same way that EX is not the "middle ground" content between Alliance and Savage. Alliance and EX are just too far apart in terms of difficulty for that to be even remotely true, and you even said as much when you were breaking down the points in my last post.

They type of group required to clear an Alliance raid is so vastly different from the type of group required to clear EX, up to and including knowledge of mechanics and group composition. As far as Alliance Raids are concerned that is by design. It falls into the bucket of content, much like dungeons, that SE thinks should be able to be completed by a literal potato. And it serves that purpose well. The overarching point is that FFXIV doesn't have any content between very large Alliance and EX gap.

Now Alliance Raids *could* fill that gap, and there's maybe 1 or 2 instances where that has been true, but overall in the history of the game it is not. Alliance raids have for the most part been long form dungeons as far as difficulty is concerned.

I will say I half agree and half disagree with the notion that Alliance is closer to Expert than EX, but I believe yes, it is the middle ground. If you parse it out, you will almost never wipe on an expert dungeon. An Alliance Raid, you can wipe on if enough people go down, especially the tanks, while EX is harder sure, and its 8 people usually needing to be responsible for themselves.

The issue comes with going from Alliance to EX as you say. Tell me How do you make something more difficult than Alliance Raid but not as difficult as an EX Trial? As you approach an EX trial, which you would with this theoretical middle content sandwiched between AR and EX, you HAVE to create a sense of difficulty, and that difficulty comes in DPS Checks or Mechanical failures and wipes. There IS no middle ground without those, because absent of any wipes based on mechanic failure or DPS checks, you essentially STILL have Alliance Raid.

If you add a DPS check that needs to actually be met, and has some difficulty to meet it, then you likely have mechanics that can one shot or severely hamper DPS.
If you have something that requires a person to be mindful of their positioning, well when you factor x23 other people all having to do the same, you instantly rev up the difficulty by a lot, not necessarily because it's hard to do, but because the fail points increase dramatically and the overall player base tend to be lemons mechanically. The only work around to this difficulty usually is the ability to brute force mechanic failure with nonstop ressing. Even the arguments against CAR and specifically people pointing to the challenge of ressing people from other platforms/alliances PROVES exactly what I'm saying about how difficulty is tied to people brute forcing with ressing and the ability to do so.

People out here thinking that "oh wow people are dying nonstop, but we were able to clear it" and that's considered "difficult". No it's not, that's just Alliance Raid nonsense. The moment you cannot outright brute force content with ressing, is the moment these complainers think the content is "too difficult".

[jonimated]

The issue comes with going from Alliance to EX as you say. Tell me How do you make something more difficult than Alliance Raid but not as difficult as an EX Trial? As you approach an EX trial, which you would with this theoretical middle content sandwiched between AR and EX, you HAVE to create a sense of difficulty, and that difficulty comes in DPS Checks or Mechanical failures and wipes. There IS no middle ground without those, because absent of any wipes based on mechanic failure or DPS checks, you essentially STILL have Alliance Raid.

I can only speak to my own experience, but imo a tiered raid system with scaling rewards solves this quite elegantly. And can be done with minimal effort on the devs part (relatively speaking of course).

Taking Alliance Raid as an example: The current Alliance Raid we have now would be the base level. Fairly low ilvl requirement, low stakes, easy to recover from a potential wipe.

You then get Alliance Raid (Hard). Same raid, same bosses, mostly the same mechanics. Increase the minimum ilvl requirement, increase the ilvl of the rewards, and ramp up the damage and hp of the bosses. Add one or two new mechanics to each boss, but keep the bulk of the fights relatively the same, just harder to deal with and recover from because of the incoming damage and time the fight takes due to increased hp.

Lastly Alliance Raid (Expert). Same deal increase ilvl requirement, ilvl of reward, boss hp and damage. Add one more new mechanic per boss. Give the final boss a new phase.

I know at a glance this may seem just like the Normal Trial to Extreme Trial system we have now, but the ramp-up is way more gradual than that. Because the bulk of the mechanics are similar in a tiered raid system a player can play on a lower difficulty to essentially "train" themselves to take on a higher difficulty, or choose to go straight to the higher difficulty if they want to challenge and meet the ilvl requirement. This is currently not what we have. At this time doing a Trial on normal does not in any way prepare you for doing it on Extreme. Same with Normal Raid to Savage Raid. The two tiers are just far too different mechanically for it to be considered a true "tiered" system.

[AllenThyl]

What "complainers" want is more content that falls between normal and ex trial difficulty. If you equate that with braindead content that can not wipe you then you are free to have that opinion. As it stands, the jump of difficulty between the 2 types of content is bigger than any other jump in difficulty in this game. I am not here to argue how the chaotic raid should have been, I just want more stuff to do for people that want to transition into playing a fight of that difficulty.

That already exists, it's called "Extreme" mode content. I don't mean that in a "gotcha" way, but the Extremes of previous expansions (synced or unsynced), as well as current expansion extremes, do fall within that definition when higher gear and echo is introduced. As frustrating as mentor roulette can be, but out of the 2 dozen EX trials I got in there so far, all were cleared within the lockout, even with a significant portion of first timers. And those were synced. Similarly, EX1 during EW could be cleared by following someone with a danger dorito, and healing / dps requirements were eased with progressively better gear as well as the introduction of echo. If the goal is to "practice" without too big a risk of failing, then unsynced EX trials are indeed the perfect outlet, and they already exist. They even have worthwhile rewards (mounts)!

At the end of the day, it's not about the lack of content that precludes people from engaging or learning. It's the people themselves. If people don't want to properly spread during proteans when they can survive doing it, but it becomes "too hard" a mechanic when overlapping cannot be survived, then there is no content that could bridge this. One either learns, or doesn't. 30 ray people dying to every single mechanic in Red Choctober say hi.