NO MORE ALEXANDER(NM)!

[zosia]

But then the reverse is also true. If NM Alex came out after Savage, casual raiders would have little time to enjoy the gear when Void Ark is just around the corner and are better off just grinding Esoterics.

How so? It took about a month to get a full set of alex normal gear. It' takes about a month of progression to get an a3s clear. Then you actually have to save pages or pray to RNGesus to get a drop.

The time scales are far from being the same. Yes, eso sort of invalidate alex normal gear. They should have made alex normal gear ilvl 200 and then staggered the alex normal realse release by a month.

The eso gear would still have more value than the alex normal gear, because it's up-gradable. Also, this would provide a much larger range of side grades and allow people to play with their stats more freely. I believe this is the 7th mode of conflict resolution called the win win win? jk =p Seriously though, everyone woudl get gear, raiders and non-raider. The side grades would make the accuracy caps less annoying (too much or too little accuracy). There would still be a reason to do both alex normal and farm eso since they both have weekly limits/caps. Then alex savage would have much more mystery about it for the 1st month.

While I see and agree with some of your points I still think removing Normal mode or releasing Normal mode a month after Savage would've exacerbated the "raiding die off" problem.

Asuran gear is i180 - and crafted gear is exorbitantly expensive to fully meld. I consider myself mid-core; I cleared SCoB & FCoB before any nerfs but I have no interest in Savage SCoB. We started on Alexander Savage the day it came out. Faust smacked use down hard. My group was between i180-i185 due to having Normal mode available and we still took about two weeks to clear Alexander Savage F1 - but if we'd been stuck in i180 gear with no route to grow I doubt we would have made it past Faust.

My only point; if you make the barriers to entry too high or delay the tools too long you stonewall people getting into content while it's current. If you want people to stay interested you can but not without giving them a clear pathway to overcome their deficiencies; it kills any interest in your raid just as quickly.

That just goes back to my point of of alex savage not being designed for the general raiding population, I think that was a mistake on the dev teams part. a1s should have been a bit more accessible on day one. Faust was a neat idea. In execution, Faust worked out poorly. People should be stuck progressing on the boss, not trash.

Maybe instead of a hard dps check with faust, it should have been a more mild coordination check since that's what a1s emphasizes more.

You make a good point, but I think if faust would have been more approachable by most groups, then alex normal would have been fine being off set by a month.

[Ulathskullsplitter]

Sounds to me like most raiders only raid so they can show off their e-peen. And now that most of that has been taken away leaving just the challenge itself most raiders dont want to challenge themselves if they dont have ways to show off while most other players are locked out of the content.

MMO devs have realized there is no sense in catering to the hardcore raiding community, especially in this game. At the end of ARR only about 3% of the NA/EU playerbase had completed FCOB. Whats the point in locking out the other 97% of players. If you want a challenge then go ahead and do Savage, its there for you. If you just want to stroke your e-peen and show off then you're not going to find that here anymore.

[Bernelli]

words

I was wondering when the "screw all raiders" post would show up. Also, you're hilariously wrong and don't even understand what the problem is.

[Kajukai]

I was wondering when the "screw all raiders" post would show up. Also, you're hilariously wrong and don't even understand what the problem is.

He clearly didn't manage to get past Faust ->Screw raiders. E-peen, bla bla bla, and so on.

[zosia]

Sounds to me like most raiders only raid so they can show off their e-peen. And now that most of that has been taken away leaving just the challenge itself most raiders dont want to challenge themselves if they dont have ways to show off while most other players are locked out of the content.

MMO devs have realized there is no sense in catering to the hardcore raiding community, especially in this game. At the end of ARR only about 3% of the NA/EU playerbase had completed FCOB. Whats the point in locking out the other 97% of players. If you want a challenge then go ahead and do Savage, its there for you. If you just want to stroke your e-peen and show off then you're not going to find that here anymore.

Who hurt you =( TELL ME! tell me where they hurt you!!!! Those condescending evil raiders! It's like they are not even people paying an honest subscription!

On a serious note, have they ever catered to the hardcore raiding community in this game? I don't think so. All the content in this game is casual accessible with the exception of 4 raid instances, three of which got nerfed and/or echo.

Also, midcore raiders don't deserve compelling and interesting content? Are they just supposed to be satisfied with alex normal and a1s for six months while their talents go unused?

The vast majority of the content in this game is sooooo easy that EX primals could be sold a few weeks after heavenward release. The causal audience already is catered to, in almost every facet of the game. Your point is moot.

[Sapphic]

Sounds to me like most raiders only raid so they can show off their e-peen. And now that most of that has been taken away leaving just the challenge itself most raiders dont want to challenge themselves if they dont have ways to show off while most other players are locked out of the content.

Sounds to me you don't know what you are talking about. Putting normal mode into the gear progression path, it came out before eso gear, made it mandatory to gear up ready for savage. Which killed off the story (albeit the story imo is lackluster in comparison to coil) and the sense of discovery. IF the bosses in savage would have been different totally than normal that would have satisfied that sense of discovery. Otherwise it is just repeating the exact same content minus the trash at an increased gear check difficulty.

Personally I would have preferred if Alex normal was released when they normally nerf+echo the current top raid, and instead add that so you have the original challenge of savage for those who come later and want to experience the full challenge and the story version for those who want to catch up or just experience the story as I remember those asking for a story mode of coil were fine with not having any gear from it.

[Elazu]

Completely agree with OP. Normal mode was a huge mistake and I seriously hope they rethink the implementation of it in the future.

[Apoptic]

Can't speak for others. Can speak for myself. In ARR, you got something you couldn't get elsewhere from doing coil: the lore/story. You also got gear, but this game has a straightforward progression so you know it will be replaced. There is now no reason to do savage, because you don't get anything from it that wont be replaced soon and there is no special prize unavailable elswhere (the story) to motivate you. So people are demotivated. If you want people to raid, give them a reason that isn't revolving door gear.

As an aside, the bloat of grindy gated content in this game is way out of control. ARR had some nice content that was doled out in nice digestible chunks but didn't force you to grind for weeks and weeks on end to make any progress. And you know that progress will just be erased at the next patch. The team seems to have forgotten that people actually enjoy a game when they can be successful at it without having to do repetitive boring tasks for weeks/months. TT for example, you could go play at your own pace, the drop rates weren't too terrible for most of the cards, and you could get a card here or there almost every day when the content was new. Now , they made the system so that it is punishingly stacked against the player from a rules perspective, farming cards is so difficult as to not be worth it, and so now nobody (i know at least) wants to bother with it. Why are the devs so afraid of letting people succeed without a weeks long grind for a marginal upgrade?

TLDR: devs, you are messing up what you were successful at before.

[Lone-wolfe-02]

The whole Savage and Normal thing was a terrible idea in the first place. Mid core players like myself are stuck in a limbo of Normal being too easy and savage being too hard it's hard not to feel left out when casual and minority hardcore get their raids. Final coil was perfect difficulty for me it wasn't easy but not stupidly over the top hard.

[Zumi]

The whole Savage and Normal thing was a terrible idea in the first place. Mid core players like myself are stuck in a limbo of Normal being too easy and savage being too hard it's hard not to feel left out when casual and minority hardcore get their raids. Final coil was perfect difficulty for me it wasn't easy but not stupidly over the top hard.

Savage is the same as final coil pertty much