Alexander Normal difficulty...

[Airget]

I'd say think of it more like story mode dungeons at the end of 2.0, the 8 man content that at the time was tough and you had to know what to do to get through it, but it wasn't as intensive as base coil.

[Nikita]

You failed to discuss this golden nugget:

Q. So Alexander was made with player clear rates in mind?
Y: Yup. Looking at the number of player clears, we also have something called Content Costs where we basically want our content to be enjoyable by more people.

[Felis]

Do you think there is some misunderstanding here? Because they were pretty clear that Alexander Hard mode is going to be as hard as FCoB Savage (doesn't exist, but we know what they mean)

They have said that the difficulty of Alexaner (hard) will be between Coil (with no echo) and Coil Savage, not like Coil Savage.

[Cyrus-Wallace]

I've cleared SCOB Savage and trust me, it's not something you'll want to farm every week. It's super hard, even with the current gear it's really challenging. It's something you want to clear and be done with. I think too Alex hard will be like FCOB without echo (maybe a bit harder), but thinking its difficulty will be on par with our SCOB savage is a nonsense.

[Craiger]

You failed to discuss this golden nugget:

They can't please everyone with just 2 different raids... They would have to add at least 1 more raid difficulty for that(that's a lot more work though), but they could make it more enjoyable for a lot of players by making Alexander Normal mode easier than current Coil, so that more people can get into it... but at the same time, it can't be too easy.

Maybe Alexander Hard mode isn't going to be as hard as we think, but they said it's going to be like Coil Savage several times now, and remember, Savage coil came out 2.3(!) and is still considered to be a really big challenge for most players. It's the hardest raid in the game still. If Alexander Hard mode is like that, and Normal mode is a faceroll, you'll see majority of players stuck on it still in 3.3 or something, and I'm not just talking about the players that are stuck on T5 right now.

They have said that the difficulty of Alexaner (hard) will be between Coil (with no echo) and Coil Savage, not like Coil Savage.

They just had a Q&A at Nico today

Q. How hard is Alexander Hard?
Y: About as hard as FCOB Savage

FCoB Savage doesn't exist, that's why I kinda made this thread asking if something got lost in translation or something...

Even if Alex hard is same or slightly harder than FCoB, I'm kinda disappointed with Alexander Normal mode anyway, if it's going to be that easy. I was looking forward to having 2 raids to go through, but I don't just want it to be a 8 man version of CT

[SpookyGhost]

Un-nerfed Turn 7 would like to speak with you.

T7 definitely had a lot of mechanics to deal with.

... for your Bard.

Also this is kind of interesting, the discussion about Alex Normal being too easy and Alex Savage being too hard. I think we are guesstimating a bit too much and assuming that Normal will be faceroll, but since it's on a loot lockout instead of the usual one then that guess could actually hold some weight. Alex Normal and weekly tomes, I assume, are for gearing for Savage, thus incentivizing players of all sorts to group together to gear up, either to tackle Savage or just to make normal dungeons easier. We'll probably get an upgrade system for the weekly tome gear, but that'll probably be locked away in Savage at least for quite awhile.

It kind of depends on just how casual it is, though. LFR in WoW is faceroll and most players complain about it because of that. Normal in WoW, however, is just your standard difficulty - not too hard, not too easy. Hopefully SE is taking a note from Blizzard (as they often do... maybe too many times) and tuning it that way, making Savage like Heroic difficulty.

[Craiger]

T7 definitely had a lot of mechanics to deal with.

... for your Bard.

Also this is kind of interesting, the discussion about Alex Normal being too easy and Alex Savage being too hard. I think we are guesstimating a bit too much and assuming that Normal will be faceroll, but since it's on a loot lockout instead of the usual one then that guess could actually hold some weight. Alex Normal and weekly tomes, I assume, are for gearing for Savage, thus incentivizing players of all sorts to group together to gear up, either to tackle Savage or just to make normal dungeons easier. We'll probably get an upgrade system for the weekly tome gear, but that'll probably be locked away in Savage at least for quite awhile.

It kind of depends on just how casual it is, though. LFR in WoW is faceroll and most players complain about it because of that. Normal in WoW, however, is just your standard difficulty - not too hard, not too easy. Hopefully SE is taking a note from Blizzard (as they often do... maybe too many times) and tuning it that way, making Savage like Heroic difficulty.

I'm not too familiar with the difficulties on Wow raids etc, but in the same Q&A at Nico, they got this question:
Q. Was Hard mode made with WoW's Mythic raids in mind?
Y: We're actually calling them Heroic internally.

As for the difficulty, I guess it was too much expecting hard mode to be like SCoB(Savage), but I was hoping it would be harder than current coil though... But the reason they could make that one harder, I thought was because they were adding normal mode, which could keep players busy for a while at least, and help medium core players gear appropriately before entering Hard mode. It could also work as a stepping stone for players that haven't gotten into raiding before, or are new to the game.

We already have the CTs now, and the new one in heavensward for the casuals... what was needed was a stepping stone between the highest level raid and "CT", not another CT level raid. So I really hope there is some challenge to it

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

Here's the source for the info: http://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest.../blog/2192330/
Could be real, could be made up, idk, wasn't on camera, just some guy asking Yoshida at the event.

Says Alexander Savage difficulty is going to be on the level of what FCOB savage would've been like.
If it's as hard as SCOB savage is, that seems somewhat contradictory with the whole "being considerate with content development costs" idea.

[Illya]

I'm not too familiar with the difficulties on Wow raids etc, but in the same Q&A at Nico, they got this question:
Q. Was Hard mode made with WoW's Mythic raids in mind?
Y: We're actually calling them Heroic internally.

As for the difficulty, I guess it was too much expecting hard mode to be like SCoB(Savage), but I was hoping it would be harder than current coil though... But the reason they could make that one harder, I thought was because they were adding normal mode, which could keep players busy for a while at least, and help medium core players gear appropriately before entering Hard mode. It could also work as a stepping stone for players that haven't gotten into raiding before, or are new to the game.

We already have the CTs now, and the new one in heavensward for the casuals... what was needed was a stepping stone between the highest level raid and "CT", not another CT level raid. So I really hope there is some challenge to it

Keep in mind that what is now called Mythic in WoW was Heroic before, they added Mythic as a new difficulty level in Warlords of Draenor IIRC.

[Ulathskullsplitter]

...

Even if Alex hard is same or slightly harder than FCoB, I'm kinda disappointed with Alexander Normal mode anyway, if it's going to be that easy. I was looking forward to having 2 raids to go through, but I don't just want it to be a 8 man version of CT

Normal mode being easy and allowing lots of players to clear it is the whole point. Its supposed to be easy. The only thing unclear i guess is just how hard hard mode will be. SE wants people to actually see the content they are taking time to create. Check the thread about coil clear numbers. Only 10% of all players have cleared all of coil and only about 2% of NA/EU players have cleared it. They obviously dont want a repeat of that with Alexander.