Extreme 4 & Savage 24 please :)

[Zaft]

Well they did add a challenge with Coil Savage, but apparently no one wants to do it.

The problem is there's no reward. It's like if WoW attempted to have Mythic raiding with nothing but a title from it. The large majority of people wouldn't bother.

If you're going to have harder content, the reward needs to be superior. Otherwise people will do it once and never touch it again.

[nuyu11]

Many option is nice, I support that.
Easy content for those who want to complete story fast.
Hard, Extreme & Savage for superior reward.

What more important is no more nerf...

Casual player can obtain high end gear with currency progression.

[Belhi]

The problem is there's no reward. It's like if WoW attempted to have Mythic raiding with nothing but a title from it. The large majority of people wouldn't bother.

If you're going to have harder content, the reward needs to be superior. Otherwise people will do it once and never touch it again.

There is a risk with multi difficulty tiers with superior rewards with higher difficulties that it leads to Power creep and stat bloat. One of the reasons WOW just did its 'crunch' with numbers was because their raid structure caused that. They also said they will have to do it again in a expansion or two.

There are two factors I see governing this. How many people will actually be doing the harder content vs the time it will take to manage the rewards system and structure the encounters to work well as a challenge in 24 man fights and what other ingame systems they wish to create that would have to be pushed back or laid aside to facilitate it.

For the first one, its important to remember that large group hardcore content has a relatively small playerbase. Wow is the best example and I think the last time I saw details on it, it was something like under 10% of the playerbase even touched the content and only a small portion of that completed it while the content was still relevant. I cant say how much work it would require to create and test the harder version and manage the reward systems but I'd assume including QA testing it would be a decent amount.

For the second issue, you have to consider that SE has many content forms they are looking to develop. They have the new Airship system, are talking about 3 new features in the Gold Saucer and of course, all the usual patch dungeons and such they are working on. Resources in this game are finite. They can't just simply do more. These devs work their asses off as it is. So to include the above system its likely something else will get left out. Whatever it is, the devs would have to be convinced that it is more healthy for their game to include content a small portion of the playerbase are likely to play than add whatever other systems they are looking at.

Their compromise looks to be Alexander Savage. I think they will wait and see how much people play that before they consider adding anything else.

[nuyu11]

Snip.

Hate to say this but somehow I have to admit it, player base is small and this is a business.
I like multi tier system, but I'm also from WoW so I know the commitment and time consuming that we need to pour into harder content.

For 20 man raid, to success 1 run it's not easy and drop only limited for few item and not all party member can obtain it,
So we need many runs and need more times, but not all player have much time on it especially for those who have career or family.

I start to understand now why SE put Coil without difficulty level and they adding Echo for each update.

[Yuri_Hyuga]

Game needs 3 supported difficulties for various contents (not all, but definitely for dungeons/raids) +9,001

[Onikimaru]

Signed!. I'd love more challenging content to be honest, i don't see them doing it though. I mean look what happened to steps of faith. It was the final boss of ARR and they STILL listened to people complaining about it...skyscraper dragon, immense amount of power...let's nerf it.

[Stanelis]

Well they did add a challenge with Coil Savage, but apparently no one wants to do it.

The release timing of savage coil wasn't ideal for a large majority of players (eg those who didn't clear T9 fast enough).

Every people I could have run savage coil with were too busy farming for their relic or hunts to do the coil, once we had cleared T10~T13 they were too busy farming those floors for gear, end once they were geared up they massively took a break while waiting for heavenward.

[Drako]

I think this would be a ok idea so long as it isn't in duty finder. If you leave it out of duty finder, and put some rewards in there, it would be decent. Just because you can group up with either FC people, or PF to find people that have progressed to x phase. It's true people will sometimes drop in that haven't got that far, but you can just kick.

[Cidel]

I support the OP's idea. It wouldn't even have to be a "savage" mode of existing content, simply adding new things that can challenge 4-man groups (which is easier to put together/find people than 8-mans) or challenge 24-man groups (which is easier for any somewhat active FC and LS to include more participants). Heck, I'll even take challenging 16-man group content as a start.

But predictably, we already see the common counter-arguments for anything over 8-man compositions:

Just can't support this as much as I would like... even the current easy 24 man raids are made up of
25% people just there to do as little as possible, get loot and go
25% trolls to disrupt everything for lulz
25% people with no idea about their role/mechanics/anything
25% actually there for the intended reason of being there

Which are really mostly just Duty-Finder anxieties; about half of that list isn't even a real issue on a server-side/Free Company/Linkshell basis where people should be a little more motivated and mindful of their behavior.

And inb4 "it's too hard to get 24/16 people to show up/organized" because there are no FCs and LSs with over 24 active members at a time, nor can they be made. /eyeroll

I mean, I can totally see parts of WoD(for example) that could have spiked the difficulty up a bit for more focused and coordinated groups; such as the 6 portals that spawn the Thors needing to die before the cast bar finishes otherwise they explode into, I dunno, 4k-5k dmg (some would prefer instant death), as opposed to DFs where usually a party's worth of DPS ignore portals. Just cranking up small things here and there like all bosses' auto-attack damage or more activity from the 5-headed dragon's different heads can be a good challenge for serious groups.

I think this would be an ok idea so long as it isn't in duty finder. If you leave it out of duty finder, and put some rewards in there, it would be decent.

This sort of approaches what I mean; it doesn't have to start out in DF. None of the Coil raids started out in DF.

[Drako]

If you would have DF for it though, it would need some additional settings. To put in if a player reached X phase of a fight. Or player as X ilvl, or have completed X raid. I know its a pipe dream to think DF will ever have any level of customization. But that would make it actually useful for things like coil, so its not always a RNG. You wouldn't have stories of how people did titan EX in duty finder after their 200th attempt.