Discussion : How to boost Alexander attractiveness ?

[StouterTaru]

You kind of contradicted your own point. We can have cutscenes without having to have new areas. The last boss area in 5 mans use the checkpoint system to play cutscenes, not sure why that couldn't be implemented to the raids.

The dungeon pre-boss cutscenes are just the boss coming out and flexing his muscles for 20 seconds. Cramming a big story movie in there at least three times would just be brutal, and would encourage people to drop out after a boss. So would already having your weekly loot from the remaining bosses.

Like I said, it could work in savage since the group has already seen the movies, and the lockout isn't one drop per boss per week.

[Osteichthyes]

What I find to be most unappealing is just how dull most of the areas are. Coils had some interesting features in relation to colour, but Alex is just all grey and bland. Everything just feels the same, and I know they are limited as to what they can create to maintain the aesthetic, but they could have done a little more. Even thinking about the first coils there was a lot of difference, oranges and blues then into reds, there was a lot of variance.

In relation to savage not being popular, I think it could work if savage was released first then normal mode later. The people who would run normal mode would be less likely to complain (although there would have to be something else for them to do in the meantime), but the hardcore people would be able to jump straight into the action and the fights wouldn't feel stale. This would mean adjusting difficulties to make up for the lack of gear but it's better than no one running the content, because then it is just a waste of resources that could go into making more content.

[Februs]

In relation to savage not being popular, I think it could work if savage was released first then normal mode later. The people who would run normal mode would be less likely to complain (although there would have to be something else for them to do in the meantime), but the hardcore people would be able to jump straight into the action and the fights wouldn't feel stale.

I don't think this would work either. The problem with the difficulty of Alexander (INCLUDING Savage) is that a lot of it falls to Dps checks. It's a trend throughout all of Heavensward, actually, and it's a bad one.

I hate to say it, but SE was blatantly lazy when designing their new content. Dps checks are intimidating when you first come across them, sure, but they are not "hard." What they are is a temporary and artificial difficulty spike. Mechanics make a fight "hard." Twisters, Divebombs, Dreadknights, Alternating Status Debuffs, these are the things that made certain coil fights hard and are still, to this day, cock blocking players who think they can just unsync and power through them. Dps checks are just a temporary stop gap. Consider A1-2 Savage. They are almost identical to their normal counterparts, with only a couple tiny tweaks in mechs (Ie: A1 missiles leave puddles... yup. Very exciting). Once people get better geared for the fights (item level 200+) the Dps checks become attainable even by players who are not that good. Suddenly the "savage" content is nothing. You can't say the same for the Coils. Savage coils are still mercilessly brutal.

The way I see it, Alex Normal is a nice pace for casual players. Alex Savage would have done better to have been called "Alex HARD (with the exceptions being, maybe, A3 and A4)." After that, they should have come out with a proper Alexander Savage in 3.1 or 3.2 that is more the speed of what coil players remember. By then new gear would make it doable and more enjoyable for hardcore raiders.

[Nyghtmarerobu]

I think its to late to fix the "Attractiveness" of Alexander. You can say that its boring and bland. You can make excuses about how the story is unintresting and the goblins aren't threating. In reality, majority of the people not raiding anymore, is simply due to the difficulty, and the way gear is dsitributed.

The difficulty of current Alexander: Savage is what the hardcore raiding groups wanted. Kudo's to all of you guys who got your wish for challenging content. But when it comes down to it, it is well beyond what a normal player can do. The wall that was erected by AS3, is absolutely ridiculous, and is only made worse, by the current gear progression of savage. "Can't beat this turn, come back when you have some more gear buddy" - But the gear I need to beat savage, comes from savage. And with minimal left side upgrades, beating AS3 is quite the challenge.

Now I understand why they made two separate difficulties. Not everyone plays this game to raid. Some people want to play more casually, but still experience the raid story, and the Alexander normal content is perfect for them. They made the savage content for the people that play this game to raid. However only a small minority of the people that play this game to raid will ever complete all of Alexander savage pre-echo.

They have alienated the medium-core raid groups. I'm talking groups that have skilled players that raid two or three days a week, a few hours each day. I've seen so many groups broken by A3S, so many friends quit because of the insurmountable progression wall. We are losing our medium-core raiding community because savage is to difficult. Statics are breaking over this turn, and groups are scrambling to keep their groups together over lost players. It needs to be fixed before the next raiding cycle or were gonna see an exodus from the raiding scene.

[Februs]

The difficulty of current Alexander: Savage is what the hardcore raiding groups wanted. Kudo's to all of you guys who got your wish for challenging content. But when it comes down to it, it is well beyond what a normal player can do.

Not exactly. I don't know about the people you know or have talked to, but the general consensus among most of the truly hard core raiders that I know, as well as the majority of the people in the two Raid LS's I'm a part of, is that Alex savage is not the challenge they wanted and that they the way the Coil was done.

As you said, if you can't beat it, "come back when you have some more gear, buddy." But that's not really "challenging." You just need to get better gear and then you're good to go. Strictly speaking, you don't even have to run Alex Savage to get the better gear. You can pay for upgrades to your Antiquated set and gear up that way. Even if they don't put echo into Alexander Savage it will still be made achievable by future gear levels that exceed the current sets. To be perfectly honest, the main reason more people haven't beaten it now is because slightly less hardcore players just can't commit to regular scheduled raids. The Coil was not like that.

If you couldn't beat a specific section of the coil it had almost nothing to do with gear (Dps checks were still in the coil, but they were not the be all end all of the difficulty). When you lost, the coil said "come back when you git gud." There's a HUGE difference between Alexander Savage and what Raiders who were committed to running the Coil are used to, because the coil didn't just demand better gear. It demanded that the players run the content over and over again until they got good enough to manage the mechanics. As it is right now, there are certain mechanics to the Normal difficulty of the coil that actually exceed Alexander Savage in difficulty.

The fact that there are even misconceptions about it is proof of this. You say that Alexander Savage is "well beyond what a normal player can do." That's true enough, but consider that, before echo and higher gear levels, Bahamut's NORMAL Coils were "well beyond what a normal player could do." The idea of clearing it with a PUG or even a fresh PF group was somewhere on the same level of winning every lottery in North America at the same time. It's great that casual players can experience the Raids now, but I think that a lot of people are taking the fact that they can even complain about it for granted. This is content that they were essentially locked out of back in the Coil days. Now they get to run it on easy mode, but the players who wanted a challenge were left with a sub par raid and a "savage" mode that is basically just one big Dps check... I can understand why Hardcore players find that to be a bit of a let down.

[Mugetsu13]

Why on earth did they put CT's bosses in an ENTIRE instance and they can't do it with Coil/Alexander. Seriously ? What about putting all bosses in a complete environnement ?

I think another point about this is that while CT had different bosses on a single map they also had an appropriate timer for it's length and difficulty. The problem with applying that to something like Coils or Alexander Savage is the fact the the timer on it's own would have to be extremely long (with the higher end raiders going in for well over 6 hours at times for a single fight). Now itake that and add the fact that eventually people will start moving through the fights faster and soon you'll have an absurd amount of surplus time (i.e. Crystal Tower Trio). This is aside from the fact that the instance servers are fucked as is and the shorter timers keep people going in and out instead of loitering and cluttering it past what it can handle.

[Jim_Berry]

I like the music. Need more good music.

[Suhr]

You can't.

Normal mode kills any and all sense of adventure, progression, mystery, and accomplishment of the raid tier. All of the achievements and discoveries that you used earn through completing the raid is now given to you for free on the very first day. There is nothing new to see after completing normal mode- no mystery of the raid and seeing whats behind the next locked door, because the locked door is held together with a bread twist tie. The story is concluded within literally an hour (it also sucks), and you are expected to be content with farming the same, mind-numbingly easy content for 5 months afterwards. Savage is tuned way too hard for most players, but normal mode is stupidly easy, thus alienating a majority of the midcore players with no meaningful content despite them being the backbone of the game.

Environments are all almost identical, with brown square room (A1), brown square room (A2), brown circle room with blue accents (A3), and brown circle room (A4). There is no variety in the environment, and the bosses, aside from A3, are uninspired, boring, and not even fun to fight. There is a lack of cinematic and epic grandeur that was present in Coil, as the scale and importance of the raid in a lore-wise setting seems drastically reduced.

[seekified]

How about we don't make the goblins fight over a cheesemake, we get A LOT more of the super-steampunky, dark, smokey look that you get at the A1 entrance and some deep, overarching plot other than "robot awoke, will destroy world - plz kill".

Coil had a real draw in terms of presentation and story. Alex really doesn't. Hell, the reason I came back to the game in 2.4 after a six-month break is because I'd finally have the chance to finish it. Fight Bahamut, put an end to the epic struggle that was presented so well in the opening cinematic.

[Februs]

How about we don't make the goblins fight over a cheesemake, we get A LOT more of the super-steampunky, dark, smokey look that you get at the A1 entrance and some deep, overarching plot other than "robot awoke, will destroy world - plz kill".

Coil had a real draw in terms of presentation and story. Alex really doesn't. Hell, the reason I came back to the game in 2.4 after a six-month break is because I'd finally have the chance to finish it. Fight Bahamut, put an end to the epic struggle that was presented so well in the opening cinematic.

I feel like that opening cinematic packed a lot of punch into the intrigue of getting into Bahamut in the first place. Even though Bahamut is not technically part of the MSQ, during the entire time you play through the main story you are wondering "Where is Bahamut? / When will I see Bahamut? / What will Bahamut's role be?" etc. The opening cutscene really drives it into you, because you don't know what happened. So, when you get to the end and you hear the roar, you're like, "dude... now we're finally getting somewhere." That cutscene made me wait all MSQ for the resolution, because it built a tiny bit of underlying story within it that made me wanna know where it was going.

Alexander lacks that, and I think the fact that he had no cutscene to build up excitement and intrigue has a lot to do with it. I Know it's not easy or cost efficient for SE to just pump out compelling CG cutscenes on a whim, but I think some kind of scene that shows the threat of Alexander, or maybe some history... anything, really, would be nice to help build that driving interest. The concept art of Alexander was what made me interested in him in the first place (it was very majestic and intimidating), but the actual implementation of him has all but killed that little spark of excitement. There's just not enough story in Alexander to interest me, and what little story there is seems barely related to Alexander himself. He's just... there. The way this is now they could have replaced him with anything (like some kind of death ray) and it would read the same. Kind of a let down, really.