My thinking about Alex normal/savage. Issue IMHO inside

[Nadirah]

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

I'd always get it exchanged by my tank. Or find a mailbox somewhere to do it.

Still had the best crafting I've ever seen. Never played SWG, not a Star Wars person.

Just can't get into crafting here. Inter-dependencies bother me, too. A lot. *hate* that you essentially have to be an omnicrafter to have any kind of decent success and you have to buy a load of gear. Just annoying.

[Erim-Nelhah]

My thoughts: 2 things are needed in order to make 8-person raiding better in FFXIV: A few more bosses per raid, and an extra difficulty level - Hard.

Difficulty: Normal vs Hard should be selectable when you first unlock the raid, and extreme/savage should be as it is now - unlocked from the Minstrel when you complete the entire raid on normal/hard (yes, doing either should give credit for the necessary quests, tho hard should not be DF'able until the next patch). If you want a story reason for the difference between Normal and Hard, alright: for Normal mode your team snuck in and caught them unprepared. For Hard mode, you somehow alerted them in advance that you were coming and they were able to prepare some nastier surprises for you.

Bosses: If the raid were changed from having 4 linear single-boss zones to having 1 single-boss entry zone, 2-3 2-boss "wings" (that could be taken on in any order), and a zone with a single end boss, that would be a great start (6-8 bosses instead of 4). Some of the bosses could even be rehashes of older bosses (NOT from Alex, mind you), in order to save dev time.

Loot: All bosses should drop loot, and lockouts should be on a per-boss basis, with Normal being "until you get loot" and hard+ being "one chance per boss + one token per zone". Normal and Hard should (probably) not share a lockout, but people not wanting to do Normal shouldn't have to provided they have the gear or the skill to bypass it.

With regards to the Devs' MO being that stuff should be doable even for people who have little time to play, that's fine. Once a raid like the ones we have is on farm, it only takes about 10-20 minutes (max) per boss to kill each boss, so 2-3 bosses should still be doable in an hour, and the entire raid with 3-4 hours a week. And before content is on farm, 60-90 minutes is plenty of time for semi-casual players to be bashing their heads against a single boss.

Here's an example schedule with a 6-boss raid for which the first 5 bosses (entry and 2 wings) are on farm:

• Day 1: Kill the 5 bosses (15 minutes for the first boss, 30 minutes for each of the wings). Total: 1hr, 15m. If we still have time, get a few practice runs in on the final boss.
• Day 2: Go in and do our best to kill the final boss. Total time: 1.5 - 3 hours, depending on group preference.

For an 8-boss raid, it's similar, except I'd probably allocate 2 hours for the first 7 bosses. Once either is on complete farm, we split the farm between raid days, and perhaps even run each one twice with 4 mains and 4 alts. Even with the double run, a 6-boss raid would be 1.5 hrs per night, and an 8-boss would be 2 hrs per night. It just takes good scheduling and people being on time for the raid (if they're not, they get warned, then benched if it becomes a habit).

--Erim Nelhah

[Craiger]

As with many problems in the game, it all comes down to the resources of the developement team...

Should the raids be "bigger"? Yes, I think so. I don't think we need more pointless trash mobs, but if they could make more meaningful trash (not trash in other words), then that would be awesome. More bosses would be great too. Can they do it with the current size of the team? Not unless they cut something else out.

They're already working overtime to give us what we are about to get in 3.1 for example.

Should there be another difficulty in raids? Yes, doesn't have to be just the same version in different difficulties, but yes... Can that happen? As before... Not without cutting out something else.

[Madjames]

As with many problems in the game, it all comes down to the resources of the developement team...

Should the raids be "bigger"? Yes, I think so. I don't think we need more pointless trash mobs, but if they could make more meaningful trash (not trash in other words), then that would be awesome. More bosses would be great too. Can they do it with the current size of the team? Not unless they cut something else out.

They're already working overtime to give us what we are about to get in 3.1 for example.

Should there be another difficulty in raids? Yes, doesn't have to be just the same version in different difficulties, but yes... Can that happen? As before... Not without cutting out something else.

This is sad. I mean I just realized that raids and EX primals are one and the same. With one 4 bosses and no trash its like we are doing trials over and over. Why even call them raids if they do not act lime them?

I guess I am just looking for a raid that are actual raids and not trial bosses.

[Velhart]

I guess I am just looking for a raid that are actual raids and not trial bosses.

Last I recall, Turn 2 is a gauntlet of goblins you have to fight. WoW is basically set up like this except not separated by instances. Go in, kill trash mobs, kill mini-boss sometimes, fight big boss, rinse and repeat.

The best solution as I have said like a broken record is that simply Normal mode needs to be on the difficulty level of Final Coil (with no echo buff) and Savage needs to be as brutal as possible. It is sickening when I hear people want a hold my hand baby mode so they can get the story. The story is a reward and it should be treated as such. SE catered to the ones not willing to put the effort or wait to out gear it/echo buff. Normal should of set the motion for midcore players and Savage should of truly been for the best of the best.

SE needs to realize that sometimes they need to balance what is best for the game and not cater to the "I think I am entitled" players. Challenges and walls need to be a thing to give incentive to players to keep pushing. It is also understandable that some teams cannot handle the intensity of Savage. Normal is the middle ground here for people wanting challenge without being brutally punished like some really hardcore crave.

Right now in the game, the only challenging content in this game is Savage and RavEX, which you can easily be carried in RavEX now. I don't believe 3.1 is going to be the solution either. At most the next extreme primal will offer little challenge for a few days until everyone and their mother can farm it.

tl;dr: Developers cater way too heavily on both ends of the extreme and never attempt to find a middle ground.

[KarstenS]

Last I recall, Turn 2 is a gauntlet of goblins you have to fight. WoW is basically set up like this except not separated by instances. Go in, kill trash mobs, kill mini-boss sometimes, fight big boss, rinse and repeat.

CT1 was in my eyes the best designed instance in FF14 to show how fights between the bosses can be interesting. In CT2 they destroyed that line, but got a little bit back to it in CT3.

[Velhart]

CT1 was in my eyes the best designed instance in FF14 to show how fights between the bosses can be interesting. In CT2 they destroyed that line, but got a little bit back to it in CT3.

Difference is CT is built to be done in one sitting. Each turn takes days to weeks to complete. As much as it is not seamless, it is organized keeping it the way it is, instanced per turn. Maybe at best they can make it seem like you are naturally transiting via zoning and let you re-enter at that point.

Not everyone wanted harder raids, though. I was quite happy with FCOB's difficulty, and we weren't really informed prior to release that Savage was going to be a level of difficulty beyond that. The information we got in general suggested that Savage was just the new name for the standard raid difficulty to differentiate it from the "Normal" mode. Instead, we learned after release that Savage leaned more toward the difficulty of SCOB (Savage).

I was actually giving SE credit at first because I thought at first that Normal would be Coil level difficulty, and Savage being SCOB(Savage) hard. Then I saw Yoshi-P said that people will complete Normal in under a few hours. Such awful design the raids are right now.

[Alahra]

CT1 was in my eyes the best designed instance in FF14 to show how fights between the bosses can be interesting. In CT2 they destroyed that line, but got a little bit back to it in CT3.

LoTA was great content for its time--it was the only one of the three that kept me interested long enough to farm a piece every week while it was still on lockout. I got hardly any pieces from ST, and while I usually got something from WoD, I did skip a number of weeks.

I was actually giving SE credit at first because I thought at first that Normal would be Coil level difficulty, and Savage being SCOB(Savage) hard. Then I saw Yoshi-P said that people will complete Normal in under a few hours. Such awful design the raids are right now.

They were pretty clear from the beginning that the normal mode was going to be a "story" mode, so I wasn't expecting it to be anywhere near Coil difficulty. However, it's probably easier than Ravana and Bismarck HMs, which is really silly. I just can't believe they made the gulf between both difficulty modes so large.

[Rin_Kuroi]

I'm pretty happy with alex nm. A lot of people in my fc who never raided are now doing it. I like the idea of having an easy raid that introduces people to the idea. Raider brain drain is a thing and having a raid that's welcoming to new comers helps replenish the raider population. My real problem is the massive difficulty jump for a3s/a4s. There's basically two raids instances for midcore players (ie the largest population of raiders).

[Hito-Shura]

I don't know how to op managed to keep his cool while replying to some of these replies... Some just makes me cringe at how bad they are...

Is opposing a valid thread with bad arguments in an attempt to sound intelligent and experienced a new fad on this forum?