My thinking about Alex normal/savage. Issue IMHO inside

[Alym]

Alex normal mode has killed raiding and it painfully boring. It needs more challenge IMO.

I'm not interested in arguing over opinions so I won't post beyond this, but I wanted to add mine to the forums to be heard. I actually believe Savage mode is what's killing raiding.

For some background, I'm raiding Savage mode Alex (currently on the last phase of A3S) and beat each tier of Coil before echo in ARR. I know lots of people in a lot of raid groups (or at least I did). All the raid groups I know didn't break up when Alex Normal was released because now they got to see the story easily. They didn't break up when Savage was released due to Normal mode burnout. However, one broke up when Faust/A1S was too hard of a DPS check for them. Almost all of the others fell apart on A3S. The fight was too much of a challenge. When raid groups are working for weeks or months on the same phase of the same fight, people get frustrated, bored, tired and burnt out. That's the point where people may say, "Well, I saw the story and A4 boss in Normal so... whatever. Bye!" but they never would've gotten to that point if Savage hadn't been tuned so high. To me, this clearly shows that the Normal mode isn't the problem; the lack of progression in the only real progression content is the issue.

I've been in three statics since the start of HW. The one I had going into 3.0 had been together for all of 2.0. They hated Alex Savage and the unchanged (since 2.0) gearing process. All of them but me and one other quit shortly after Savage was released. The next group I was in was rebuilding after half of their group quit because of A1S in the early weeks. They couldn't ever get 8 people on all at once to even enter Savage, so I left. The third group I am now in is with my real life best friend. I joined because their caster quit in A3S. Shortly after I joined, their PLD quit (due to real life scheduling issues) and we had a very tough time finding a replacement because no one wants to do Savage anymore. I'm wondering how long this group will survive, though. Our WAR has flat out told us that he only logs in to raid because we're his friends but he no longer likes the game and does not have fun in A3S. My best friend, our WHM, is pretty much of the exact same opinion as the WAR. Truth be told, I'm getting there myself. I have fun on Tuesdays when we clear A1 and 2S, but dread having to login for our A3S progression days because Savage is just not fun. It's tuned too high to be fun and A4S is supposedly even worse. As a group, we are now talking about cutting back a progression day because so many people are miserable.

Our group isn't the only one like this. Another group in my FC just decided they would no longer do A3S until 3.1. They said they will try it again then and, if it's still the same, they will likely stop raiding. This is on the heels of another group I know breaking up over fighting while progressing through A3S - the leader of my FC was in that group. She and most people in her group also rarely log on now either.

All of these people I listed were people who, like me, cleared all tiers of Coil before echo. They weren't casual raiders.

My point of showing all these examples is that I don't believe the easier Alex Normal is what's making people not want to do Savage. I think it is, in fact, the extremely challenging difficulty of Savage that is making people give up. So to say that the game "needs more challenge" is, I think, harmful feedback to the health of raiding.

We have the challenge in Savage now, but very few seem to actually like it. Add onto that the state of the game outside of raiding and it just makes things worse. Those are topics for other threads, however.

EDIT: To propose a solution, I believe Normal mode should stay the same including drops and ilvl, Hard mode should be added and tuned to the same difficulty of 2.0 Coil and be the main progression content in terms of drops, and Savage (if they insist it should continue to exist) should offer the exact same drops as the new hard mode but should also give an extra chest, titles, and/or small vanity rewards.

[Arashmin]

EDIT: To propose a solution, I believe Normal mode should stay the same including drops and ilvl, Hard mode should be added and tuned to the same difficulty of 2.0 Coil and be the main progression content in terms of drops, and Savage (if they insist it should continue to exist) should offer the exact same drops as the new hard mode but should also give an extra chest, titles, and/or small vanity rewards.

So like how Coil did it's entire thing, but with a Story mode. I think this is what people actually wanted when there was clamor for an easy-to-access mode, not to have the previous model (which catered well to its proponents) obliterated.

[Colorful]

So like how Coil did it's entire thing, but with a Story mode. I think this is what people actually wanted when there was clamor for an easy-to-access mode, not to have the previous model (which catered well to its proponents) obliterated.

I think most of us were hoping for coil + echo as it was advertised honestly, but it looks like we're not going to get that.

[Alahra]

My point of showing all these examples is that I don't believe the easier Alex Normal is what's making people not want to do Savage. I think it is, in fact, the extremely challenging difficulty of Savage that is making people give up. So to say that the game "needs more challenge" is, I think, harmful feedback to the health of raiding.

I can echo your sentiments from what I've seen on my server at least. One of Diabolos' oldest raiding FCs (and I think the oldest that hadn't transferred, but I could be wrong on that) broke up several weeks ago entirely because of AS3. As far as I know, only one FC has cleared AS4 on Diabolos at this point, too. A large number of folks that were raiders in ARR that I know don't have raid groups anymore, either, and I'm seeing many of those folks online less and less.

[KarstenS]

However, one broke up when Faust/A1S was too hard of a DPS check for them. Almost all of the others fell apart on A3S. The fight was too much of a challenge.

Sorry to say. But when groups break up just that fast, then there is something else wrong, but not the challange.

One important point of raiding is patience.

Just a "wall" didn't broke up serious groups in coil.

The issue on Faust is more that these groups have no experience on raiding in early days with low gear and don't have the patience to get better. ADS in T1 was similar to Faust in early days with nothing else than Darklight gear.

Yes. A3 is a jump. But in my view, its the first floor where progression feels like coil within the first month before gearing out.

Its not the challange that broke the most groups. Maybe one or two month after Void Arc, if they are still struggeling at the same boss and have maxed out thier gear without success in progress. But not so fast like now. The reasons are different. And for the most of the players I've talked to, the way they implented the normal mode was their reason to stop raiding at all.

Also in my own group, a guy that regular skip cutscenes in most quest did say last evening, Alex is boring in his eyes, because it was always fun to work torwards to see the next cutscene and to reveal which boss is the next one. All this is gone with Alex normal. Everything was known on day one, because Alex normal is required for unlocking savage and gear progression.

[Laraul]

Alex is boring in his eyes, because it was always fun to work torwards to see the next cutscene and to reveal which boss is the next one. All this is gone with Alex normal. Everything was known on day one, because Alex normal is required for unlocking savage and gear progression.

Alex normal and Alex Savage are no different then the hard mode and extreme mode trials. You have to do the hard mode ones first to unlock the extreme mode versions, just like you do need to beat Alex Normal for Alex Savage. Yet no one is asking SE to remove the Hard Mode versions. So why are people asking to remove normal Alexander?

I personally barely bother with the normal Alexander and personally have no desire to bother w/ Savage because I don't have the time. So I personally haven't experienced the savage versions myself, so it might be inappropriate for me to comment on the Savage version of Alex. But from everything I read, it sounds like people are experiencing general burn-out. Part of this may be brought on by Alex's drop system and increased difficulty of the final floors of Savage, thus requiring more attempts to successfully progress and successfully obtain necessary loot. But I don't think it's the normal mode that's the problem.

[KarstenS]

Alex normal and Alex Savage are no different then the hard mode and extreme mode trials.

My personal interest in the expreme mode trials was always low. One time to have seen it. Yes. But after that, I went just into it again, when someone needed me to fill missing spots. I've never really farmed one of them for my own, except ravana, which dropped the best weapon out of the box.

The practise time you needed for the ex primals was also much lower than for coil or now AS.

The first 3 primals did also burn me out. At 2.0 the 3 primals Ifrit, Garuda and Titan were already as story and hardmode in the game and for patch 2.1 it got announced, we will see these 3 primals again. Yay. My first thoughts were: not impressive.

[Mutemutt]

Alex normal and Alex Savage are no different then the hard mode and extreme mode trials. You have to do the hard mode ones first to unlock the extreme mode versions, just like you do need to beat Alex Normal for Alex Savage. Yet no one is asking SE to remove the Hard Mode versions. So why are people asking to remove normal Alexander?

Well, there's always been "story mode" primals, so to speak, so I don't think the extreme modes have ever really appealed to that challenging story aspect. Coil didn't really have a "story mode", so I don't think it's unfair to say that challenging story feel of the endgame raid has been lost with the introduction of normal mode alexander.

[Nadirah]

Wait wut? this game has most involving crafting system i have ever encountered, instead of "press button to craft" you actually need a rotation and manage you buffs while doing that.

You never played EQ2.

Absolutely loved its crafting system. Fail to counter that? In the beginning, it could *kill* you. Literally. Forge on isle of Refuge, best boss.

There was no rotation and there was no macro crafting. Spontaneously react to conditions that pop up or lose power(spent on abilities), progress, durability, hp or all.

[Sapphic]

You never played EQ2.

Off topic. Vanguard crafting was pretty cool. But my favorite was SWG pre CU. Even the resources had different stats that randomised every fortnight. Different values of the stats affected different outcomes of the finished item. Add in expermintation to improve certain aspects made it extremely open. Found an awesome comnination of experimentation and resources? make a blue print and mass produce in a player made factory.

All loot (pretty much) was crafted and did decay to broken so had to replace which kept the market open, plus you found you're favorite crafters and stayed with them.

I used to buy armor by the crateload XD High kinetic resist crafted armor for PvE, high stun resist for PvP.

Oh and I remember launchday crafting in EQ2. watching the botters die in the forge never got old. Then again I remember spending a few hours grinding XP in Fallen Gate and having to walk to Freeport because I was overloaded with copper coins XD