Diadem and Savage - I can't deal with it anymore

[Aikaal]

I will probably get a lot of hate because OF is mainly read by social/casual players. I'm consider myself a semi-hardcore to hardcore player. I've cleared A3S on the third week and I left my raid group and Ragnarok because the drama was highly toxic between my FC and another FC. I just didn't felt like dealing with crap when I should play this game to enjoy it right?

I want to talk about 2 main subjects that I extremely dislike since 3.0 There may be spoilers about Alexander and Coil of Bahamut lore if you did not clear yet.

Alexander Savage

• I understand and acknowledge everybody should see the lore in the raid.
• I'm extremely unhappy how I did not progress in Alexander Savage. 90% of the mechanics were in normal but they dealt 4 to 5 times more damage. I swear there is 0 new mechanic in A2S, you only added more mobs.
• Progression was replaced with gear gated fights (A3S, A4S). You didn't wipe because of mechanics but because of lack of DPS.
• It would have been great to have complete new fights or new bosses in Savage while keeping the same story. I guess it was too hard.
• There is a serious lack of "the world is in danger" in Alexander. Seriously it seems we're chasing goblins that are looking for shinies inside Alexander. I mean wtf?
• In Coil of Bahamut, we were dealing with the primal that destroyed the world 5 years ago. We found his minions on his damn Right Hand. We faced Nael; the fight was epic! PHOENIX in FCoB? That was a bigger thing than fighting Bahamut Prime! Alexander? Nope, no, nothing exciting. It is simply disappointing. Thordan Extreme should have been A4S in term of excitement.

Diadem

• This is suppose to be an activity to explore with your friends. You spend 90 minutes grinding the same 2 islands to spawn as many Star rank to get 210 pieces.
• Gear from Diadem is better than Savage gear. I don't know any MMORPG that've allowed BiS to be outside of raiding content. People may argue in 3.2 the normal mode raid will give iLevel 220 gear. This is not the case right now and crafted 210 gear is obsolete ALREADY. How can gear that does not exist already obsolete? Well, 5 Savage Aim 5 gives 60 Crit on a chest piece. Regular 210 pieces have 160 stats. Diadem 210 chest pieces can have 220+ stats.
• We shoudl rename Diadem the land of Diablo III where a swarm of zombie players brainlessly grind mobs and pray RNG they get good pieces. Like in Diablo III! Isn't it fun? No.

I'll end saying in 3.15 SE will allow us to get Dips so everybody will have 210 weapons.

They might release new relics in 3.15 that will be iLevel 210. You know, the item we've been told it was suppose to follow us the entire time that is still iLevel 135? That's the biggest lie I've heard. we should already have iLevel 205-210 relics and Gordian weapons should have been iLevel 215, 5 iLevel higher to it's worth raiding.

But it's not worth raiding anymore, it will worth less raiding when everybody gets free Dips to upgrade their weapon. I'm already looking elsewhere. The one thing I've enjoy the most in 3.0 was the story. It was worth the money.

I've done some work and helped the community for BLMs. I just don't have the courage to do anything anymore. I can't deal with the rain of insults SE dropped on me and the raiding community.

Raiding content is really bad right now. You can go ahead and say it takes a lot of time to put new raiding content. Don't get confused with lack of time and laziness. FFXIV is the MMO of recycled content. It began in 2.0. I'll list all the dungeons and fights that were recycled.

All the dungeons from 1-50 minus Aurum Vale.
All the Primals (Yes, all of them)
SCoB was recycled with Savage
Alexander is recycled content

Basically anything that has Hard Mode, Savage or Extreme Mode is recycled content. I didn't bother with it until the current raid content was recycled content.

You can hate and bash me down if you want. That's my 2 cents on the current raiding situation. It will probably not change in 3.2. We'll have Second Alexander Normal and Savage Modes. Crafting gear will be useless since 3.0 (You have no reason to be a crafter except consumables, glamour and housing)

One last thing, I don't believe everybody should have the same change to have the best gear like in Diadem. If you're casual, social and you don't raid. Odds are you don't need that BiS anyways. Its meant for raiders that spend time and need the gear for raiding. It's meant for them to have a reason to do it and have some glory. If you are a social / casual player and you say the game should be for you to enjoy. I, the hardcore player, should have the same right. I never complained about the social aspects of the game because I liked the hardcore aspects of it but SE destroyed the hardcore aspect of this game.

[Butcherboy]

You can't say you don't need BIS because you don't raid, I don't do raids I don't do static but I still want BIS. So having an opportunity to get it by other means is great for me. To me it's more the many ways in acquiring gear not just raids. I love Diablo so I enjoy diadem, and diadem have so much potential. Remember 2.0 when we only had first coil 3 primald and an over spam WP and AK? Well it's the same now. Eventually will get more contents as time goes on, that to me is something to look forward to. I've played a lot of MMO and this by far us one of the best MMO I've played in a long time and it's just the beginning. Right now the game is on a steady phase and when new content s get release it'll go up again. May be a break is what you need.

[Tarta]

Sorry to see you so disappointed Aikaal. Your help in the BLM community brought the job back out of the slimy pool 3.0 shoved it in (also, pretty sure it helped QoL changes to the job too).

I do agree high end raiding in 3.0 is fubar.
*But* I am glad it happened. SE probably tried another direction, and failed. They will adapt the model to go back to Coil (high end being best gear there is). The problem is the time it takes to make the change. Players are consumers here in the West. We're real quick to drop something that doesn't give us what we want for the most part. That's fine and all, but on games...it's potentially dangerous for the game itself.
It's been 5 months or so that it's out, so I'll wait to see if there's something that gives at 3.15/3.2 before hexing it.

PS: ThordanEX is the best fight this game has so far IMO. The best.

[Aikaal]

You can't say you don't need BIS because you don't raid

You need 210 Diadem pieces for what? You need it because it's the best piece in the game. You have no other reason to need that piece besides that. Hardcore players are the same but they actually have an easier life being geared when they do raid content. You also can't judge if you don't raid yourself. There is an unquestionable difference between 2.x raid content and 3.x current raid content. 3.x is awful progression, story, fun wise. I also don't agree everybody have the same chances for BiS. To begin with the best gear shouldn't be RNG distributed. It should be rewarded by clearing hard fights.

Diadem should be about exploring places and seeing scenery. This is not the game, it's a grindfest. SE failed hard on that concept, it's a disaster and a failure. I would love Diadem if it gave cool unique mounts/glamour. Its not the case.

Sorry to see you so disappointed Aikaal. Your help in the BLM community brought the job back out of the slimy pool 3.0 shoved it in (also, pretty sure it helped QoL changes to the job too).

I do agree high end raiding in 3.0 is fubar.
*But* I am glad it happened. SE probably tried another direction, and failed. They will adapt the model to go back to Coil (high end being best gear there is). The problem is the time it takes to make the change. Players are consumers here in the West. We're real quick to drop something that doesn't give us what we want for the most part. That's fine and all, but on games...it's potentially dangerous for the game itself.
It's been 5 months or so that it's out, so I'll wait to see if there's something that gives at 3.15/3.2 before hexing it.

PS: ThordanEX is the best fight this game has so far IMO. The best.

Thanks buddy, I'm still clearing Alexander with my friends and I will check what 3.2 offers but I don't have much hope.

[Brannigan]

Yeah, Diadem gear is pretty stupid - especially when you consider that they just put in Void Ark and the gear is already invalid (well, it would have been because of tomestones anyway but whatever). I don't really like it, but I accept that non-raiders can get tomestone upgrade items 8x faster than in raids during the catchup patch. However, getting better gear from just zerging dinosaurs down is a bit too far. From 3.2 they need to make raid gear actually worth getting, even if you already have 3.3 Diadem gear. Materia melds won't be enough, since as you said Diadem can get ridiculous rolls and Tier Vs just don't give enough to outclass them.

To make raid gear actually better it either needs:

1) Main stat meldable. A tank body with STR/VIT needs to be able to have STR or VIT materia put into its slots. Forbidden melds stay substats only
2) Set bonuses. Other games do it and the technology is here (GC sets), but we don't use it because the item team is afraid to balance stuff I guess
or 3) Materia with unique stats you can't get in Diadem. I doubt this will happen, but it could basically be "set bonus effects" that you can put on any meldable gear.

I hope that the insane Diadem gear is just a reaction to people having nothing to do for so long if they can't get past Living Liquid. Alex Savage is really a terrible raid - some of the fights are fun and have neat stuff in them, but the numbers are just too high and the bosses were not fun to learn. Hopefully they take a look at Second Coil bosses before designing their next raid (and also make a couple more bosses this time. I know it's unlikely but 6 bosses instead of 4 would go a long way)

I swear there is 0 new mechanic in A2S

Also this is a minor point, but I think the "thing does more damage the more HP you are missing" attack the gobwidows have might be new. Still, A2S is pretty boring and a terrible stopping point for those who can't quite beat Living Liquid. Also it's probably really discouraging to get nothing but accessories and gauntlets/boots for so long.

[iPromi]

You can't say you don't need BIS because you don't raid, I don't do raids I don't do static but I still want BIS. So having an opportunity to get it by other means is great for me. To me it's more the many ways in acquiring gear not just raids. I love Diablo so I enjoy diadem, and diadem have so much potential. Remember 2.0 when we only had first coil 3 primald and an over spam WP and AK? Well it's the same now. Eventually will get more contents as time goes on, that to me is something to look forward to. I've played a lot of MMO and this by far us one of the best MMO I've played in a long time and it's just the beginning. Right now the game is on a steady phase and when new content s get release it'll go up again. May be a break is what you need.

"Eventually we will get more content" excuse is lame. This game has been out for too long already to learn from its mistakes. Recycling same stuff is a matter that both the JP and West community have complained about and really, this situation does not seem to be on the right direction. Also this game is not diablo or ffxi, nor will it be. Diadem would be fun if it would not be a dummy fight and chaos all over the place. Im not saying it should be top notch difficulty, but at least you should be required to put some effort to earn your 210 gear.

Aikaal's post is really well written and i hope it will not get deleted. We really need a sign from devs that they listen to us. I am playing the game from beta as a hardcore raider and also doing casual stuff and what we really need is for devs to discuss with us in a thread like this that surfaces good points like Aikaal's. The excuse of "take a break", "level all your classes" etc is just lame. We care for the game and seeing so many posts popping out every day is not a coincidence. Something is going on the wrong direction and its obvious. All we need here is just a sign of life from the devs.

I will compare the situation to Riot games from League of Legends. That game is a MOBA and it also has some issues the community is pointing out mainly on reddit. The difference here is a good thread that discusses some problems gets replies from Rioters. Yeah not everything is transparent but they really care and reply a LOT. I wish we could just have this here.

About Alex savage and diadem, the killer was that you could get BETTER gear from the second with 100 times less effort. Im not saying non raiders should be excluded from 210 gear (even if you do not use or need it at all), but with diadem the effort you provide to get this 210 gear is not even close to the effort dedicated hardcore raiders put to down Alex Savage. This fact is extremely disrespectful towards the efforts of hardcore raiders. Especially with the unrealistic bump of raise of difficulty to it which was not even sophisticated as Aikaal said, just a massive DPS check gear wall.

Atm it is just black and white. You go from the ultimate faceroll dungeons / diadem to the ultimate facestomp which is savage with nothing in between.


The game fails immensely to train people for any kind of easy/medium/ hard difficulty fights. Damage display add ons are not allowed and the game will not impliment anything realistic anytime soon although we have DPS checks everywhere. Also the quests where you get your new skills do not even teach you how to proper use your combo or anything like that. Why? I just wonder, how hard would it be to design an extra quest line that the npc teaches you on a training dummy combos and new skills you acquire.

[Butcherboy]

Listen I'm not one to fight and I do raid just not as hardcore. For the BIS comment, the reason why I want them wether if it's for raids or dungeon or just running around , well I like to do a lot of dmg and it don't matter what contents I do, I'm one of those players that will come in a dungeon with overkill gear just because I like to see a lot of dmg that I'm doing, you can say self gratification. Now I am not blind and there are a lot of SE mess up this 3.0, Alexander as you said not in same comparison as coils. Coils was actually part of the story , Alexander side quest. I agree on everything you said , I just find a different opinions in BIS and where you need or can use it.

[Havenchild]

First off speaking as a player who has cleared all of savage, I think there were several issues with it's implementation.

1) Separation of Story via "Normal" raid from the actual difficult content - I completely understand the want of those who can't participate in raids to view the story. However, I feel that adding the normal mode was ONLY a detriment.
First, you essentially removed a "reward" component to the raiding content. The story, and what it entailed was one of the biggest parts of Coil progression. The normal "raid" was laughable. The savage version was a huge jump across the board. You eliminated a need to raid to figure out what happens.

2) Story - First off, I think the community needs to be honest about something. Coils overall story wasn't super good except for the events on certain turns. Alexander, however seems to be even worse in actual Storytelling. Lack luster plot, characters and onward. Alexander (Primal) is not entertaining at all. For something trying to sap the land of its life, it has a very inactive way of doing so.

3) Fights - As stated before, the savage version (like coil before it) essentially just recycled mechanics with slight tweaks. The problem with this however, is that Savage Coil came much later, while Savage Alexander came out while the normal version was still current. TBH, I think this actually is a form of lazy development. They essentially spoon fed the exact same fights but just changed a few 0's to 1's. The overall theme, for A1-A3 kinda underwhelming and actually contributes to the boorishness of the overall setting.

4) The progressive wall (DPS): This I think I'm more on the fence about. SE cleverly exploited the fact that new players at lvl 60 would have to relearn how to play there classes correctly again. This acts as an invisible wall to those who have not crossed the line into the new playstyles thus causing things like A3S being gigantic walls. Odds are come the next tier, with more players now experienced on their level 60 classes in a raiding environment, following turns will be cleared much faster. The Enrage on the encounters A3S and A4S is definitely tighter than anything we've had before, where essentially during progression, any death essentially meant failing the enrage check almost all the time. A1-A2 more or less were downable with 190 no issue, but A3S was directly a gear wall more than a mechanics one. A4S kicks this even higher by a wide margin. The constant theme of DPS checks in A3S and A4S mid encounter also forces the players to be firing on all cylinders, all the time.

On one hand, I like the fact perfection of rotation is encouraged but, it was most definitely too strict compared to previous raiding. Understand what Savage Alexander is. It's difficulty does not come primarily from mechanics but more so gear barriers. SE elongated the content by doing this, but combined with taking advantage of the newbie 60s relearning how to play, it offended more players away from it.


Then there's Diadem. First I've always been a fan of horizontal progression, in the form of alternate encounters. Diadem is essentially hunts + RNG, but it gives better gear than the most difficult content in the game that much of the player base admittingly can't complete. The first wrong about this is, the frequency of the 210 gear that drops. Too high! The second is with one instance, you have invalidated to forms of content with it, Void Ark and Alexander Savage. This is too strong for a "catch-up" patch. It even encourages raiders to stop doing that, to instead go to Diadem for the best gear.

Suggestion for Diadem: You only need to do two things. First make it so that the gear has stat limits aligned with all the other 210 gear. That means the total amount of sub-stats as well (For ex: a total amount of substats being 150, no matter how many sub-stats a gear may come with, the total cannot surpass 150). Secondly, handle Diadem gear similar to how the Relic Quest was for materia to increase stats but instead of using materia use the seals to up the stats. So for example, some classes like SMN do not have a CRIT/DET belt option among eso or gordian gear. Diadem can then be farmed for a belt. Once a 210 Belt is found, allow the player to change the sub stats- given using seals so an ACC- SS belt and be changed to a CRIT-DET by spending enough seals. Then allow players to increase those sub-stats by spending additional seals. This allows Diadem not to be too broken but essentially adds a relic-style progression option for gear at the high end allowing for a customize-able option.

I'm part of the crowd that is still excited for what Diadem could become, but it needs rather harsh tuning to not become too overpowered from the get go. Right now, it just doesn't fit into the balancing act that should happen amongst all instances of current content.

At the end of it all, I think SE can't win too much on the raiding scene. Mechanical fights are cleared fairly quickly so in using those style of fights, while more enjoyable, I'm sure they lose a lot of people from the game because of the frequency of completions so early. However, mechanical fights aligned with Enrage DPS checks not entirely as strict, akin to T9, is definitely the right spot.

[DarkmoonVael]

OP, i have been raiding since 2.0, and you have just very succinctly summed up why i cant be bothered with alexander savage. It is a little bit of a disappointment after Binding Coils. From the very first step into coils, the place was magnificent. The music, the atmosphere, the magnitude of Bahamut and the story behing it. The mechanics were interesting, the bosses were interesting. Then we have Alexander, a primal who looks like he has broken down in a puddle. The story is bland, the magnitude isnt there, the drive to explore and delve into it is nonexistant. The bosses boil down to dps check + dps check + dps check. Gear in raids was there to help progression, not to block it. Alexander is so unsatisfactory on so many different levels. I lack the motivation to go in there now, yet i still find things like Thordan Ex exciting, so it not raids in general, its just Alexander. Hell, even Void Ark is more interesting to go into. The mechanical difficulty isnt there, but the atmosphere and the style of the place is amazing.

[DenebPunkin]

LIMIT BREAK