Thread: The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

Originally Posted by Velhart

I would be interested to see how hard Savage would of been to approach if midcore players had something more FCoB level before hand.

They sort of did. AS1 and AS2 were comparable in difficulty to FCOB once you had the gear to clear them. It wasn't a full raid tier, but there was at least something there. The gap between FCOB and Savage difficulty was probably too big. If AS1/AS2 had been more in line with SCOB's difficulty, it's possible that some groups would have been better prepared for the jump to AS3, but it's really hard to say.

Originally Posted by Ibi

Which it sounds like SE are going to do in 3.2, and it'll be interesting to see the results.

Yes it will be interesting. I think that we need to not over-simplify things. As you say down below:

However, a lot of the damage that's been done may be irreversible. There are likely players who quit based on the difficulty of Savage (who would have stayed around if it had instead been at Coil difficulty and they'd been more able to make progress) who won't come back regardless of how difficult Midas is.

Further, there are things coming out this year that may take people away from the game. It's quite possible that the tuned down raid will be more widely enjoyed, but may receive fewer clear numbers due to already lost players and/or losing players to other games. I know that I am leaning more and more towards moving to WoW for Legion's launch with each live letter/interview that I read.

Originally Posted by Ibi

My suspicion is that even if every single person that's cleared A4S to this point clears A8S in the first two weeks and quits because they have absolutely nothing else to do (which would say as much about the non-raiding content available, or lack thereof), the impact on the economy will be negligible and you'll actually end up with a higher percentage of the players tackling and succeeding in Savage that you have now.

But that's just my feeling, and I have no data to back it up, so I'm not going to try and claim that it's "common sense" (or anything similar) that that will be the outcome.

Unfortunately, we have a severe lack of data. Further, the data we do have is prone to being misinterpreted, due to the lack of other data. I think you make an alright argument, but I'd say that the higher end raiders make a pretty significant impact on the economy. I know that raiding food and potions are quite expensive, but are rarely used outside of progression. At least, I've never known anyone to eat HQ foods or use HQ pots in dungeons/expert roulette (or even Void Ark), but I've almost never seen someone not use these in Alexander Savage (or coil). If the prices are as high as they are, the demand must be pretty high or the supply pretty short - I'm honestly unsure of which - but would guess it's demand. If the hardcore raiders left, that is a significant chunk of players who want to be on the 'bleeding edge' of progression. Once mid-core groups get there, they can get away with not having food/pots, as they are generally geared well enough to make the DPS checks without them. This is my reasoning for believing that Hardcore Raiders have a significant crafting impact.

On top of that, you likely will lose some hardcore players due to it being too easy. If Gordias had been at Coil-level difficulty, you might still have lost those players, but now they're going to lose them in addition to the group they already lost by alienating them with Gordias' difficulty, rather than losing them instead of that group.

That said, i don't think that lowering Midas difficulty will all of a sudden remove hardcore raiders from the game. I think uninspired, recycled content and lackluster responses to consumer feedback are what will.

Originally Posted by Ibi

Based on the WoW numbers, where they have the two intermediate difficulties and see similar levels of player engagement, I suspect it might not have made a huge difference. That's something I'd like to be wrong about though.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's practical even with a much larger development team (if it's even possible) to get small enough gradients to get people from where Alexander Normal is to where Alexander Savage is. Even more so if you're doing it by repeating the same fights multiple times at slightly higher difficulty each time.

I don't think they needed to make more encounters, but simply tune the encounters they have.

A4 should be much harder than it is
A3 should be harder than it is
A2 should be slightly harder than it is
A1 should be as is

A1S should be as is
A2S should be harder than it is
A3S should be easier than it is
A4S should be as is

This would have a more natural progression of difficulty

Originally Posted by Ibi

It'd be interesting to know how many people who couldn't beat A3S prior to having weapons from Thordan extreme obtained them and went on to beat A3S.

I doubt this made much of a difference. If all of my SMN stats were made to INT equivalents using stat weights - I had with my 200 eso weapon 3404 INT. With my Relic, I am at 3445. Thordan EX would have been about half way in between. That 40 INT gain to my relic is roughly a 1% increase in INT, and has indeed given me about a 1% increase in DPS - from 1333 to 1343 on my dummy parse. The issue is that all stats, including weapon damage and main stat, are becoming less important with each gear step (diminishing returns and all).

Originally Posted by Ibi

It'd be interesting to know how many people who couldn't beat A3S prior to having weapons from Thordan extreme obtained them and went on to beat A3S.

I'd imagine it's "not enough," judging by Yoshi's comment about item level not being enough to help with the DPS checks. It's possible Thordan was just too little too late though—I'd imagine some groups that had been at the AS3 wall for awhile when 3.1 dropped had already given up out of frustration. If the weapons had been available earlier they might have been able to have a greater impact than they seem to have.

Originally Posted by Kaurie

Once mid-core groups get there, they can get away with not having food/pots, as they are generally geared well enough to make the DPS checks without them.

I'd say a lot of midcore players still buy them, too. Hell, when my static cleared FCOB, we beat the DPS check at the very literal last second. Bahamut's final attack (was it Terraflare? I don't remember) finished its cast bar, the animation played, and then we got the fade to black from the last bit of his health ticked down. We wouldn't have done it that night if it weren't for food and pots.

Originally Posted by Alahra

I don't know how significant the loss of players was when it came to FCOB being "too easy," and Midas is going to be somewhere in between SCOB and FCOB (at least, that's what they're telling us). Given that a lot of the raiding community saw SCOB as the pinnacle of the game's raiding content, I think aiming for somewhere in between Second and Final is likely to be the best compromise the developers can make between midcore and hardcore focus.

It's hard to make a direct comparison because of the circumstances between FCOB being too easy, and Alexander Savage being too hard. In the case of FCoB, it was the only difficulty for that raid tier. and SCoB savage was still present at the time. There's also a variety of content at the time to suit people outside of raiding; those who didn't have a static could do the 24mans, PF their primals, DF old coil, among other things. Those with statics could tackle FCoB at a comfortable level when it was still relevant, and still have the option to do so by clicking off echo. The hardcores would rush for their world firsts, and at the time SCoB savage was still available to them as well. I mean I could also argue that SCoB was relatively much, much harder and unforgiving than FCoB before the nerfs, to the point that I'd almost consider it to be "hardcore" due to the amount of coordination needed to get through something like T7.

For people who didn't do coil even when it was DF accessible, it's a different problem altogether; Why were they not doing coil despite it being accessible on DF with echo (which essentially trivializes the fight)? And what do the clear numbers in general mean? What about in the case of Alexander? Getting clear rate numbers is tricky because only developers can truly get the solid numbers, versus player-made census that can only really go by achievements (if they have public display enabled) or items (which is tied to redeeming from achievement or winning a roll).

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

It's hard to make a direct comparison because of the circumstances between FCOB being too easy, and Alexander Savage being too hard. In the case of FCoB, it was the only difficulty for that raid tier.

You can't make a direct comparison, no, but the point was just that, in general, hardcore players will still do somewhat easier raids, while non-raiding/midcore players often won't step up to the higher ones. We didn't have significant player bleed around the time of FCOB due to the raid being easier than SCOB/SCOB (Savage), so I'm not sure we'll see a notable loss of players over the lowered difficulty of Midas relative to Gordias, either.

It's possible we will, but even if we lost every single player that cleared Savage, that's only perhaps 5% of the population or so (at most) which isn't large enough that it would be unable to be recovered from so long as the game continues to grow.