Normal/Savage Alexander complaint

[Fendred]

Well, the problem for Savage Alexander isn't the existence of normal Alexander. It's that all they did was create something with boosted stat requirements. That is not what we were telling them to copy from WoW's Wrath of the Lich King expansion many months ago. If a player wanted to do hard mode Naxxramas, they could do that in the same gear as regular Naxxramas (referring to Wrath of the Lich King here). The only difference is the complexity of the fights.

Requiring raiders to work on both normal and savage mode Alexander for their gear makes about as much sense as saying someone in a drinking contest needs to beat the "bud light" challenge before moving onto the "Captain Adam's" challenge in the same night. Captain Adam's challengers would be puking their guts out or need their stomach's pumped.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

My only complaint for Alexander is ilvl 170 requirement for normal.

[dejavutwo]

...

Just finished reading the whole thing and you do bring up a lot of good points about progression flow, content gating, and frontloading development work. I still feel normal mode gear farming diminishes the enjoyment in savage, and that it is something the developers should be conscious of.

[HeavenlyArmed]

Just finished reading the whole thing and you do bring up a lot of good points about progression flow, content gating, and frontloading development work. I still feel normal mode gear farming diminishes the enjoyment in savage, and that it is something the developers should be conscious of.

They most definitely should be conscious of it. As video game developers they're in charge of crafting experiences, and savage causing so much burnout due to the lack of the epic feeling is in a sense a failure in that regard. I guess as an addendum I should mention that despite the issues I have I still believe the best solution would be to release normal mode at the same time as the 24-man and have it not drop gear. But due to the issues I understand why the devs might hesitate to take that patch. I should also add that I've thought about adding something extra to savage, such as perhaps an extra meaningless boss or extra little lore tidbits about each or maybe even having savage have some sort of preview cutscene for the next raid tier's story, but due to the potential lore problems with the first suggestion and the latter two in a sense defeating the purpose of having normal at all, I consider them less likely than even my main suggestion and as such didn't wish to include them in my main post.

[Akiza]

The best solution is to release Alexander Savage when they release the 24-man raid since it makes the most sense game development wise. Releasing the hardest raid content before the story mode level of difficulty goes against basic game design. In every game players get a easy, normal and hard version of the game with the hardest difficulty setting being locked behind completing the easier difficulty level. Also players get rewards at every level of difficulty so no gear drop in Aleander Normal Mode is a non starter. What SE should do is release Alexander Normal and Savage at the same time with the ilvl still being 20 levels difference between them. The reduce the minimum ilvl required to enter Alexander Savage to a full set of tomestone gear so hard core raiders can have fun banging there heads against the wall in challenging content.

[Colorful]

The problem with releasing the normal mode with the 24 man in 3.1 would be the lack of any raid content for the casual player base, and what happens then is you get people to unsubscribe. Release the Savage in 3.1 instead of 3.0 and the hardcore players have no raid content (not to the same extent, they have a raid but they'd want a challenge out of it) and would unsubscribe if they feel it isn't worth their money. I think how it's being done now is the best option, and I'm sure most top end raiders who care about progression would agree (Elysium went through it how much times, several hundreds of wipes? And yet they still persisted because raiders like that are interested in progression of the actually challenge).

But, if it has to be a different way, I think putting 215 gear into Alexander 2 NM would be the way to go, and 235 into Savage, with Savage being enterable with the only requirement being that you cleared previous Savage, or Alexander 2 NM and tuned to Savage's previous 210 drops. If you complain about having to raid normal to get that extra 5 ilvl boost for content tuned to be beaten at 210, then that's no one's but your own fault. You can easily avoid spoilers, while progressing through Savage. Not like that matters though, the guides a lot of progression groups are reading are going to spoil everything about the raid except the dialogue.

[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.

[DkDerek]

Do what WoW did with LFR. Make it drop horrendous gear.Problem solved.

Story - Check
Glamour - Check
Easy - Check


Release the real raid at the same time.

[Kosmos992k]

Well, the problem for Savage Alexander isn't the existence of normal Alexander. It's that all they did was create something with boosted stat requirements.
*Snip*
Requiring raiders to work on both normal and savage mode Alexander for their gear makes about as much sense as saying someone in a drinking contest needs to beat the "bud light" challenge before moving onto the "Captain Adam's" challenge in the same night. Captain Adam's challengers would be puking their guts out or need their stomach's pumped.

Or perhaps they created Savage mode, and then detuned it and nerfed it into normal mode?

Oh and just for the record I don't for one moment believe that the players farming Alex normal, would instead be running Savage, if they'd been able to enter Savage on day one. No,they'd have batted their heads off Savage a few times, realized they aren't geared and then gone off and farm Alex Normal for gear. In this case they have the benefit of being able to train themselves on Alex normal, at the same time as they gear up. Sounds like a good thing. Don't anyone kid yourselves that would be otherwise, and lets face it, instead of whining about Alex normal, those same people would instead be complaining about being bored with nothing to do.

[Molic]

Think one reason is there isn't a lot of variety for end-game systems, We have one thing to do, enter a raid and only fight a singular boss. Its been the same pattern since 2.0 came out. They should add some kind of new end-game system, to mix it up. Examples like dynamis where you had to go into a city and kill hordes of mobs and farm your equipment, or limbus where you could build up a set of items to enter either ultima or omega. Or salvage where you started out nakkid and had to slowly build up items to, be able to wear your gear again then fight the boss at the end with w/e gear you had managed to get. Also lots of mini bosses taht dropped items. BCNMs/KSNMs. (eh sorry for all the ffxi references). FFxi was and end game theme park with a ton of different things to do, while xiv is a theme park... but has only 1 end game ride.

Its kinda of the same for dungeons to, there basically just reskins of other dungeons, follow a linear path and kill 3 bosses. idk SE just needs to add some innovation and creativty to new content so its not the same stuff over again imo.