Savage - A1/2 vs A3/4 - To big of a jump?

[MrTherm]

I've been running a raid group for some time, and while we are not a 'server first' group we typically do not have any trouble getting the job done. That was up until we hit A3. This seems to actually be a very common trend with other various groups I have talked to in that they just hit a wall with A3 savage. Now, I do understand the idea was to make the new endgame raid content more difficult to give more a challenge but uhh.. Yea, its a bit overkill.



I've even been seeing a large trend in PF's recruiting new people for savage groups due to 1-3 members holding a group back. Lets face it, not everyone is a genius with a 402340 IQ. I don't want to be forced on removing members because even though they are good, they are not great.

Currently the difficulty on my fictional scale seems to be as followed
Alex Normal - all - difficulty - 1
Alex Savage - F1 - difficulty - 4
Alex Savage - F2 - difficulty - 5
Alex Savage - F3 - difficulty - 8
Alex Savage - F4 - difficulty - idk 9?

That's just a personal feel to give you an idea of how i view the spike in difficulty.


With that being said, I do question if A3/4 savage was the right place to increase the difficulty spike so heavily and I actually do have another idea that has been generally well accepted when I've talked about it with fellows raiders.

Why not create 1 more additional raid content that is truly savage? Maybe change current savage to "hard" and have a 3rd endgame content that is "savage". Bring the difficulty of A3S and A4S on my scale down to 6 and 7 respectively, and create a new raid with difficulty of 10. (yes make it harder).

With that being said, A common thing i've heard is "but i don't wanna see 3 versions of the same fight". Which is very understandable. So idea! Why not make a "Crystal Tower (savage)" 8 man fights. There would obviously need to be a fair amount of re-working involved, but hey, why not? Would just simply need to use the 4 bosses in LotA for current. 1 instance per boss. 4 total fights. When next ilvl/new raids comes out, use ST, and when 3rd series comes out, use WoD.

This would obviously create a "demand" or "reason to do these fights" issue, specifically with gear drops. You had a great system with 2nd/final coil in terms of gear progression. I think you made a GREAT improvement with the weekly tokens and standardizing how the slots drop floor specific. I actually would like to see this remain the same. What I would propose is new gear dropped from this savage mode.

Considering the extreme difficulty, specially if it was made harder, why not give them better gear? Currently the ilvl for weekly tomes is 200, and the max from raid is 210. Next patch I'm going to assume, from the trend of previous patches, you'll release 220 and 230 gear. Well, why not release the 220 gear with the savage mode? Sure they will be slightly ahead in stats for a short while, till the next ilvl increase, in which case they would just be ahead of the curve for future patches. But only that patch. (in theory? long term effects might skew in their favor?)

Considering the very small amount of people currently clearing A3, let alone the 4(?) groups that have cleared A4, I don't much see a problem with them having slightly higher ilvl gear. I don't think it would be game breaking for those super exceptional people to have slightly better gear for a short time. I also think it would benefit the "casual" endgame raiders like myself to not get so frustrated.

Either way, just an idea. Figure i'd throw it out there.

[Trixxy]

A1S and A2S should've been made mechanically more difficult.
They've gotten ridiculously easy due to more and better gear and don't offer much of a challenge anymore.

Whilst A3S and A4S "suddenly" recquire the flawless execution we're used to from Coil.

[ajx]

This is meant to be savage. If your group is not capable of doing it , then savage is not for you . I know I've never entered savage

[Metterschlingel]

Im perfectly fine with this hump. A good motivation for all in our group to "git gud" as we're currently progressing on A3S. It is a turn which will require several weeks for an average John Doe Raidgroup to clear it. Our goal is to clear it before 3.1 hits, then A4S will come which we wanna clear before 3.2 hits with a new raid A1S/A2S were both very bring, but A3S is definitely fun with all that stuff happening.

[MrTherm]

Thats pretty much my point. Floor one and two are fairly simple, and on par with coil. Historically my group took roughly 10 hours to learn 6-8 and 10-12 and about 15-20 hours to learn 9 and 13. After that we typicay went 1 for 1 save for the random d/c or screw up. This is about how long A1 and A2 took. We are currently at twenty hours and still working on add phase.

While i do understand the difficult spike, and the need for harder content, i do not feel they implemented it in the correct way. They have 50% of the series being on par with normal coil and the other half being on par with savage coil. I just feel the difficulty shouldnt be split half way thru the series of events like that.

[MrTherm]

Im perfectly fine with this hump. A good motivation for all in our group to "git gud" as we're currently progressing on A3S. It is a turn which will require several weeks for an average John Doe Raidgroup to clear it. Our goal is to clear it before 3.1 hits, then A4S will come which we wanna clear before 3.2 hits with a new raid A1S/A2S were both very bring, but A3S is definitely fun with all that stuff happening.

That is pretty much my mindset with my group also in terms of time to kill but my big issue is if they are going to nerf A3S and A4S. Or if they are going to start handing out welfare upgrade items from hunts/VA and make the point of doing these turns fairly moot. I'm sure you can see my need for concern as they typically like to see people able to hit max ilvl before next ilvl increase comes into play.

[Ashelia_Ferron]

I'm pretty sure they said they don't plan on ever merging AS via echo or what not. It's not meant for everyone.

I'm sure they'll release the upgrade items eventually but that doesn't make the turns moot. I know a ton of people who just want that Gobwalker mount really badly

[DragonSlayer45]

I'm pretty sure they said they don't plan on ever merging AS via echo or what not. It's not meant for everyone.

I'm sure they'll release the upgrade items eventually but that doesn't make the turns moot. I know a ton of people who just want that Gobwalker mount really badly

Unless they plan to add an iLv sync, more gear will from later patches will be an Echo.

[Garotte14]

Why not create 1 more additional raid content that is truly savage? Maybe change current savage to "hard" and have a 3rd endgame content that is "savage".

Let's make 9 different difficulties. Or how about 15? Yeah, a different difficulty for every type of player. You can get a slider to adjust the AI, or better yet, you can actually pick which attacks the boss will use. Yeah, a sorta "Final Fantasy Raid Maker." Gimme a break.

You aren't good so you whine that you didn't get to experience story in coil. So SE caters to you and gives you Alexander normal. Now you whine some more that SAVAGE is too hard. SAVAGE!!!

You want something in between. But then what? After that, you'll find something else to complain about. You want the same gear that savage players get, or who knows.

[Kiara]

Related to the OP's topic, I've always wondered why Yoshi P created Savage with the sole purpose of making it *even harder* than Coil (Unnerfed)?

(Note: Our group had T13 on farm before echo, but we're not close to any kind of "world records" or anything.)

Yoshi P has continually stated how he wants FF XIV to be accessible to all; to make sure it's easier for players to see the content, etc.

I totally get that the hardest of the hardcore want challenging content, or else they'd get bored and leave, but to this day I still run into players (from 2.0 era) who haven't cleared Turn 13.

It just felt weird that with all that talk about "casual" and "accessibility" that he goes and makes Alexander even harder than Coil?

It almost feels like the Combat Team is making new difficulty settings just to cater to the Hardest Core groups only, but if 99% of the player base can't clear it, is that ideal?

What's going to happen as new End Game Raids come out over time? Will the combat team keep upping the ante so that now it might take Lucrezia or other World's First groups... 2 - 3 MONTHS to clear? Which means the average End Game static would take 9 Months or more? (obviously it'd be nerfed by then, but as an example...)

It would be nice to hear from the Dev Team as to their philosophy on this.