Normal/Savage Alexander complaint

[dejavutwo]

So I have been doing Alexander savage, and am on floor 3 now. One thing I am noticing among not only my own raid group, by my friend's as well is that players are burning out incredibly fast compared to previous raid tiers. I usually love progressing through the difficult fights and it is the primary reason I play MMOs, but even I am feeling the burnout. The main reason for me is that in order to gear up to progress in savage I had to farm normal. By the time I was doing the fight in savage, I had grown tired of the fight.

My suggestion to prevent players from burning out this quickly is to reverse the order in which 24 mans and 8 man Normal mode is released. This way there is a lot more variety in the fights while you are gearing up for savage. Normal mode then becomes available later so that everyone can do all the story stuff.

[Bokuhn]

Or they can release both normal and savage on same patch. . I too get burnt out on savage. . With no story it's difficult to be excited on progression.

[m3eansean]

I too, feel it has gotten stale.

[dejavutwo]

Or they can release both normal and savage on same patch. . I too get burnt out on savage. . With no story it's difficult to be excited on progression.

If they release both on the same patch, then you still need to farm normal for gear, which is what I feel is causing players to grow tired of the fights much quicker than usual.

[Welsper59]

If they release both on the same patch, then you still need to farm normal for gear, which is what I feel is causing players to grow tired of the fights much quicker than usual.

What's causing players to tire out faster is the constant failures. Most people are not accustomed to unrelenting difficulty and failing for it. Seriously, wiping over and over again is FAR more of a detriment to morale and willpower than anything else that might be lacking. The amount of effort someone puts in per attempt is also a factor. Source: 12 years of MMORPGs and more than half of that raiding current tiered endgame. Now that Savage is seen as the content that people should be doing, thanks mostly due to the top tier gear being there and how things have been in modern MMORPGs, having extremely hard/taxing degrees of difficult content be put in front of them like Alex Savage is causes people to forget "their place" when it comes to how to attack these sorts of things. By that, I mean folks automatically assume that just because the top raid groups can clear it that any schmuck can and is expected to instantly be able to do the same. That these world first folks don't do, think, or play any different than their peers in the raiding world.

[dejavutwo]

snip

Constant wipes has always been part of progression, and I have been with the same group since SCoB. We were all excited about Alexander, and as a group do generally enjoy the learning process. Its just the fights no longer feel exciting as we've done them so many times while gearing.

Savage fights just don't have that new and epic feel to them anymore.

[Welsper59]

Constant wipes has always been part of progression, and I have been with the same group since SCoB. We were all excited about Alexander, and as a group do generally enjoy the learning process. Its just the fights no longer feel exciting as we've done them so many times while gearing.

Savage fights just don't have that new and epic feel to them anymore.

SCoB (or Coil in general) isn't exactly the same degree of tedious nitpicky difficulty that Alex Savage is though. Proof being the amount of effort it took to get even the very first clear for each floor, compared to what it was like before. It's true that the fact that it's familiar surroundings can have an impact on how quickly it can wear on someone, but it's hardly a large reason for it. If it were a universal fact, and not simply something maybe a very small selection of people weigh heavily on, we wouldn't have people doing what they did to get their clears. We automatically associate Savage as it's going to be the hardest thing to do atm, especially given how long it took the best groups out there to do it, thus we naturally lower our own morale by a default even if by a small amount (resulting in a quicker response to stopping).

Something to keep in mind is that Savage is literally designed for the best of the best. I'm actually willing to bet that the rate and number of groups at which people are clearing Savage is actually intended and going according to plan. Maybe they'd have hoped for a bit more (or less) people to have cleared stuff by now, but not by anything truly noteworthy. If you're not among the top tier of raiders, you're going to be incapable of clearing it until you get better gear (even if it just means a couple pieces). Any effort before that is simply burning yourselves out, assuming you're going that extra mile to achieve what is essentially impossible for a specific group/person. Not just attempting for the experience. Not everyone is going to perform in the same dedication, effort, and consistency as these top tier raid groups, so other players need to accommodate for that fact... even if it means simply being incapable of it for a short while. Again though, not everyone is capable of handling themselves in the same way. It's very possible that all the wipes that people went through before, learning Coil and whatever else, has taken its toll and shortened some peoples willpower to continue as many attempts now. That's exactly how burnout works, and is rarely ever exclusively attributed to one specific thing. It's a build up of frustrations and relief, given time to saturate in our minds as nothing more than a memory to reflect on (negatives and positives), and apply that to what to expect now and how far we're willing to take it given the past experience.

Perhaps it could just very well be that for some folks, the repeated use of the same environment and boss types is enough reason for you to not bother with Savage, as you've indicated. Everyone has their own ways of finding boredom in something, this could be yours.

[Sapphic]

Savage fights just don't have that new and epic feel to them anymore.

One of the big driving factors for me progressing through coil was the compelling story and cutscenes that played out after each turn, plus entering a new area. Whereas with Savage being released after normal and being part of the gearing progression path then theres no sense of discovery either with new zreas/mobs or opening up new parts of the story. Normal Alex takes that away hughlighting that it isn't just loot and challenge raiders in FFXIV are doing the content for, but the lore and story, Which, in my opinion, the Story for Alex is pretty dull. No where on the same level as it was in Coil. Mayhaps it will open up more later, as first coils story wasn't as strong as later coils became.

Think also it is hard to take Goblins serious compared to Dragons and Allagan tech. Also you were constantly reminded that there is a Massive city sized primal there, which gave a sense of urgency to it whereas Alex just seems like another dungeon.

[Stanelis]

What's causing players to tire out faster is the constant failures.

As a veteran raider (in FFXI, WoW, wildstar and FFXIV, but mostly in wow) I can tell you there are two types of bosses (not necessarily taking difficulty into account) :

1) the boss which feels boring when you attempt it,
2) the boss on which you have fun while attempting it.

If you have to make a lot of attempts on a boss of the first type of boss, then you ll most likely quit raiding soon. If you have to make a lot of attempts on the second type of boss, then wiping won't be an issue. We saw that very well on wow. Some bosses were very hard and required a lot of attempts, but everybody was more than happy to come wipe on it (like Muru in the Sunwell). Some bosses were very hard but people simply didn't have fun on those (like anub arak heroic in the patch trial of the crusader). It is due to how the boss feel when you are fighting against it. In wow the issue started to arise when they implemented the hard modes for bosses. Back then the difficulty of some heroic bosses felt as if it has been artificially inflated, and not due to any particular mechanics. And I think the issue is the same in FFXIV (and that's why I stopped to do alexander savage).

If story was all that got you excited (not the challenge) then Savage might not be for you. If you need one to get excited for the other, maybe you don't really want the other thing?

Please we re supposed to be playing a RPG, of course the story should be the motivation for clearing a raid (rather than the gear). The main point of the difficulty is to make things immersive (one cannot expect a fight against bahamut to be easy). This also bring the question of how hard a raiding encounter should be in order to be fun, in regards to the specific mechanics of the fight, which is a very complex matter.

[Colorful]

If they release both on the same patch, then you still need to farm normal for gear, which is what I feel is causing players to grow tired of the fights much quicker than usual.

Then make so Savage progression isn't locked behind gear, but tuned to the best gear available at the time? Anything else is just artificially extending the time it takes to complete it. You could also make them share the same lockout.