My thinking about Alex normal/savage. Issue IMHO inside

[Madjames]

Hello everyone. I would like to talk to you today about Alex normal and savage.

First let me tell you a little bit about myself so you can get a little more insight on who your reading from.

I have been playing computer games for a little over 20 years now. I have been playing MMORPG's since September 1997 until now. I have never taken a break from MMORPG gaming (meaning I have always had a subscription going from then up to and including now to some MMORPG or another).

With that in mind I just ran Alex Normal mode for the first time tonight. I am seeing something very strange and maybe you all can clarify this strange issue for me.

In world of warcraft I would raid 5 days a week while attending school as well as working part time. I ran regular and heroic mode 10 and 25 man and cleared every raid in BC, WOTLK, Cata and Mists. I know these two games are different so I am not here to say that wow's raiding is better or anything.

However, the issue I see is that the alex normal mode is 1-2 trash packs and a boss and then your finished. In every raid in wow I have been in, it took you days to clear the whole place. I remember back in WOTLK there were 15 bosses in Naxxramas. There was also a dragon boss (forgot the name) but even that encounter had 3-9 trash packs where they could all drop rare materials and random epic gear. In ICC, there is 12 bosses there. There was separate wings. Ulduar (which was the best raiding experience I have ever had in any game) had 13 bosses, 14 if you counted Algalon.

Alex normal as I said had 4 bosses with little to no trash pulls at all. Normal mode seems to me to be the Raid Finder mode in current Wow. Which leads to the question if savage alex is on the difficulty lines of 10 man normal mode raids in Wow.

Maybe I was expecting harder and longer lasting content but this seems to me to be an issue. If savage Alex is on the difficulty lines of 10-25 man heroic raids back in the day in wow, then they need to create a normal mode that is more challenging and get a story mode (Raid Finder mode) for easy lower level gear so everyone to see the content.

I am also writing this to maybe understand the thinking here. I am not saying that this game's raiding sucks at all. I am simply saying that maybe I was expecting more along the lines of Wow's longer lasting raid tiers that have multiple bosses per level with trash mobs to drop epic quality gear kinda like wow.

What is your experience with this? Is this an issue with any of you raiders out there? Thank you for your time.

[Bernelli]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...misconceptions

Also, you're not wrong. Normal is a joke, it's overall easier than the 24 man "raids" from ARR. Savage is full of bad design decisions and also requires near perfection from each player because of it. I think that most people would agree that the vast majority of raidgroups in this game would be defined as midcore, and while Bahamut (ARR raid) catered to that majority, there is now basically zero lasting content designed for that group.

[FallenArisen0990]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...misconceptions

Exactly.. Perfectly good thread that talks about this issue... v.v;;

[Duelle]

On point. I think it's fine. Personally, trash pulls in raids are moot, they don't drop anything worthwhile. I've played since launch and have totally embraced the way trials are designed; Boss there, destroy boss, get loot.

The thing is that if we are to get bigger raids, trash is sort of necessary for the sake of pacing and making the space feel "lived in" for lack of better terms. Not to mention you can make trash challenging (Faust sort of proved this; if you want another example, the spark guardians in Ulduar are another good use of trash). Trash in WoW also provided zone drops, which at the moment sadly don't happen here because loot comes from treasure chests instead of from mobs.

As far as the OP goes, he makes a good point. The issue was also brought up back in ARR when people started complaining about how they could clear Coil 1-5 in one night and have nothing to do the rest of the week. And as the OP mentions, in WoW a standard raid took about 2 or 3 raid nights to clear once you got it on farm. More if you were working on specific fights or trying to achievements/hard modes (specially Uldaur, since progression would get real for stuff like Firefighter and 0 lights Yogg). Part of it was the sheer number of bosses, part of it was the size of the instance, and part of it was how the content was tuned.

For WoW players, what they did in FFXIV is make every raid basically the Argent Tournament. I particularly had no problems with Argent Tournament since it was a change of pace from Naxxrammas and Ulduar (which were massive environments), but even I would have a problem if every raid was designed like it. This is where variety in raid design is supposed to kick in.

A quick question op, what other MMo have you played since 1997 that you could bring examples of? only mmo you mentioned was WoW.

There's not much I would want to take from older MMOs when it comes to raid design. City of Heroes had Task Forces that took around 4+ hours in one sitting to complete (good chunk of it involving running around). Lineage II had one-room encounters with massive bosses like Antharas the Earth Dragon (which when implemented would still wipe a 500-man raid due to sheer AoE damage, stuns and so on). A good part of the older stuff boiled down to "boss deals a ton of damage with no real mechanics", which I'm not too fond of.

[Colorful]

As it stands, Alexander Normal is easier than LFR and Savage is about as difficult as Mythic raiding. It's an endless debate on these forums, some people want normal removed, some people want it's difficulty adjusted, etc. Most people want them to be released at the same time with a 3nd difficulty in between, but SE doesn't seem to be willing to provide that. The tiny raids are due to the small developer team and SE isn't willing to invest more into the game (more developers) only nickle and dime us further.

[StrejdaTom]

As it stands, Alexander Normal is easier than LFR and Savage is about as difficult as Mythic raiding. It's an endless debate on these forums, some people want normal removed, some people want it's difficulty adjusted, etc. Most people want them to be released at the same time with a 3nd difficulty in between, but SE doesn't seem to be willing to provide that. The tiny raids are due to the small developer team and SE isn't willing to invest more into the game (more developers) only nickle and dime us further.

You! I like you! (no sarcasm)
If there wasn't your nick I would think that I wrote that. ^^
Could not agree more on this.

[Madjames]

Hmm well I hope in the future they start making larger and better raids then. A story, normal, and heroic difficulty in raiding seems to be the ticket.

[Gardes]

Hmm well I hope in the future they start making larger and better raids then. A story, normal, and heroic difficulty in raiding seems to be the ticket.

Looking at your join date, did you take a break from the game or something? Cause I'm gonna tell you that you should give up on hoping. Game's endgame structure hasn't changed in 2 years and will most likely never change. Plus their gear system does not allow for much variety at any current level cap to accommodate for new types of content and will probably relegated to one shots then be updated to serve as filler for updates.

[Iagainsti]

Is this not a less-ranty, less raged filled version of your other thread?

[Madjames]

Is this not a less-ranty, less raged filled version of your other thread?

My other thread was the issue of requiring non-relevant content to be completed to unlock current relevant content. This is about raid sizes and bosses and such, totally different.