New Direction in Content

[zosia]

Is this not what we have with Alex? Do you have no recollection of the past? When they do this people will just complain "The fights haveno new mechanics, just higher dps checks, they are boring. Gear is just just recolor of normal mode with no new story and no reason to do it.". There is no winning (although I personally prefer the Alex way). Unless people have forgotten, people who develop the game are also regular players and they know what is a good idea based on the fact that they can model their own enjoyment of the content as any particular working adult, which is their main demographic. Usually the people who have problems with the scheme are just people who did not fit inside of the targeted demographic.

You missed the point. Alex N was tuned to appeal to the non-raiders in this game. Why can't raiders have something more in line with what would appeal to them every "catch up" patch?

Thus far, if all we are getting is SR EX, 3.1 will be one of the cheapest end game patches ever released.

We are literally at this point where we are begging for a modicum of decent end game content. SE is just all over the map and their poor performance is finally starting to show.

I see it more as a stepstone that will replace the tome stepstones. Don't forget, there will be players who join during or after 3.1

3.0: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> law tomes (ilevel 180) -> Esotheric tomes (ilevel 200)
3.1: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> law tomes (ilevel 180) -> Ark1 (ilevel 200) + Esotheric tomes (ilevel 200)
3.2: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> Ark1 (ilevel 200) + Esotheric tomes (ilevel 200) -> ??? tomes (ilevel 220)
.
.
.
3.4: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> Ark1 (ilevel200) -> Ark2 + ??? tomes (ilevel 220) + ??? tomes (ilevel 240)

Even during 2.5 there were still new players to those the CT was a nice option to gear up. Particularly if their average ilevel was only between 50 (enough to enter CT1) and 80 (required for high level roulette in 2.5). Now they can just buy a full set of ilevel 115 gear.

Yeah, still seems pointless since eso tomes will be uncapped in 3.2 and anyone can be ilvl 200 from a week of grinding DF. That's what catch up should be. Void ark is literally just for glamour and alts, oh and the welfare upgrade items.

-stuff-
TLDR: It's the player's fault that people are not enjoying the game, it has nothing to do with the dev team.

Fixed that for ya.

[Elazu]

Because then the people running Savage will get all uppity that their raid should always have the best gear no matter (see: Exploratory Voyages). I'd appreciate 205 gear at the very least though, along with weapons. Why don't we get weapons with CT-like raids? =(

Obviously, since the hardest content should always reward the best gear, duh.

OP is making great points that SHOULD be adressed by SE in the future, but right now I have little hope of that happening, seeing how disappointing 3.1 looks to be.

[Felis]

I will never understand why they need to make void ark catch up content.

I see it more as a stepstone that will replace the tome stepstones. Don't forget, there will be players who join during or after 3.1

3.0: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> law tomes (ilevel 180) -> Esotheric tomes (ilevel 200)
3.1: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> law tomes (ilevel 180) -> Ark1 (ilevel 200) + Esotheric tomes (ilevel 200)
3.2: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> Ark1 (ilevel 200) + Esotheric tomes (ilevel 200) -> ??? tomes (ilevel 220)
.
.
.
3.4: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> Ark1 (ilevel200) -> Ark2 + ??? tomes (ilevel 220) + ??? tomes (ilevel 240)

Even during 2.5 there were still new players to those the CT was a nice option to gear up. Particularly if their average ilevel was only between 50 (enough to enter CT1) and 80 (required for high level roulette in 2.5). Now they can just buy a full set of ilevel 115 gear.

[Fevelle]

I see it more as a stepstone that will replace the tome stepstones. Don't forget, there will be players who join during or after 3.1

3.0: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> law tomes (ilevel 190) -> Esotheric tomes (ilevel 200)
3.1: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> law tomes (ilevel 190) -> Ark1 (ilevel 200) + Esotheric tomes (ilevel 200)
3.2: last leveling dungeon (ilevel 148) -> first lv 60 dungeon (ilevel 160) -> Ark1 (ilevel 200) + Esotheric tomes (ilevel 200) -> ??? tomes (ilevel 220)

Only remark is that law is ilv180, Alex NM is 190

[Felis]

Only remark is that law is ilv180, Alex NM is 190

thanks, fixed

[Kailok]

Thank you, i'll make the adjustments now!

[Kailok]

I think they just need to make 2 tiers of Raid content - the LFG version where you get the "catch-up" gear, kind of like how current Alexander exists, and then the more endgame oriented version where you take a small group in and spend some time in there. Sort of how WoW's Ice Crown Citadel worked where you went in and fought trash and each boss had a checkpoint where you could pick up again for the rest of the week. I just miss the "raid feel", and arena-based boss fights do not give any sense of adventure. Sure it feels good to finally win after hours and hours of getting everything just right, but that isn't a raid.

[Rufalus]

The difficulty of the savage raids makes them straight to the point, boss fights, so you don't have to go on a long journey back to the boss every day your group attempts them. Difficulty also being the reason it's kept down to 8 players since coordination in larger groups is harder and the big alliance raids with multiple sections are kept as the casual catch-up difficulty tier.

3.x series already stated as the time they are introducing new kinds of content, with exploration missions being the start of it. Randomised relevant loot; big areas to explore with FC; NM and HNM battles. Can't say they aren't trying.

I know a lot of people like myself who log on every day and are satisfied no matter how much time has passed since the last content update. We craft things, help each other leveling alts, do roulettes (not just expert), collect glamors, etc. The pvp queues on my data center can still be almost instant at times. It varies a lot.

[Kailok]

And yes, with PvP it can vary a lot - sometimes it'll instant queue but most of the time I queue up and it says the average wait is over 30-35 minutes. I think the general disinterest in PvP is because of the queue times and lack of variety in gametypes.

[Welsper59]

I think they just need to make 2 tiers of Raid content - the LFG version where you get the "catch-up" gear, kind of like how current Alexander exists, and then the more endgame oriented version where you take a small group in and spend some time in there. Sort of how WoW's Ice Crown Citadel worked where you went in and fought trash and each boss had a checkpoint where you could pick up again for the rest of the week. I just miss the "raid feel", and arena-based boss fights do not give any sense of adventure. Sure it feels good to finally win after hours and hours of getting everything just right, but that isn't a raid.

While I certainly share your views on the old school raid exploration format, I am very confident that most raiders will begin to complain about this. FFXIV does not transition well when you throw players into lengthy instances, at least among the player base. The lengthy completion times are fine the first few times, but then it gets to be nothing but a burden. Proof? Dungeons. At first, the idea of a larger dungeon seems like a fun idea, but then think about how you feel running through a regular dungeon your 10th time. Chances are, you and/or your group members, would rather just get straight to the boss so you can call it a night faster.

It's the exact same results over and over again when you give players what they think they want when it comes to style of content. Do you know how much of a godsend it was, to those of us that raided before, when means to go straight to a boss, like with primals, were the new thing? If you asked any WoW player, particularly those that raid normally, most would opt for an option to instantly be sent to the boss after their first clear of an area. This game is not as fast paced as some others, so by adding more travel to something, it feels bigger even if it's not by any means significantly different. T1, for example, sort of feels like it's an entire wing of Naxx, even if it's barely larger than a small area of a dungeon. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people would enjoy it... but we don't like the idea of unnecessarily wasting time, so we would opt not to do it. If someone in the group wants to hurry it up, skip pointless trash and go straight to the boss, I guarantee no one would object in a traditional pre-made raid setting. Think if you had to run through a map like Tam Tara before every boss in Alex Savage. I don't think you'll be singing many praises after your 5th week of clearing the raid, especially when you remember that the game once had it be a norm to just go straight to the boss.

And just to be clear, a lot of people (myself included) like to think of raids like ICC as having been overall fun. The thing that needs to be noted though is that... it was an exception. I mean, the entire feel and design of the place was worked on since WC3 essentially, long before WoW even came to be. Plus, with how popular undead stuff tend to be in today's entertainment, it kinda adds to it. Think back to non-undead related raids or ones without critical lore appeal (like Black Temple with Illidan). SSC wasn't exactly hailed for it's overall raid design. Most of the raids after ICC weren't exactly stellar in upstaging it from raid enjoyment standards. Same for most, if not all vanilla raids. The bosses were memorable, but technically the same could possibly be said here... I mean we get the bosses, just not the whole forgettable raid format.