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

[Mindy_Macready]

Another problem with 2.x EX primals is that they never gave relevant rewards. Think Bismark EX with the weapons, except that was a reoccuring trend until shiva (the last EX primal no less) with her bracelets (and diamond dust upgrade, which was introduced later). Ramuh, Levi and Mog drops were all i100 , there was no sense of progression from the gear perspective.

When they added accessories to the EX primals, those were ilvl 90 back in myth days, and more than a few were BiS. I farmed for those Titan EX earrings for my SMN for a long time, and I enjoyed that (some may disagree on the enjoyment of farming Titan EX, of course).

Leviathan EX weapons were actually great for those who hadn't cleared T5 and wanted alt weapons for Second Coil (or, if you were ridiculously lucky with mirrors, get something better than a T5 weapon).

[Rowyne]

"We saw a lot of people did Easy Mode Alexander." Of course they did, it was easy content at a borderline insulting level with what had the best gear until Esoteric/Savage. You were basically handing candy to people on a silver platter, of course lots of people are going to go in and grab it.

SE should be focusing on trying to get less experienced people into challenging content, and then try to get people into really hard content after that. Not release an easy mode so you don't have to put the effort end game.

Exactly. It makes me nervous to think they're looking at the loot pinata that is Alex Normal and think because it's easy to complete that it's a successful raid model. Where is the story? Where is the sense of accomplishment? Entry level raiding should be left to the 24-mans. I want raiding to feel like Coil again.

[UBERHAXED]

When they added accessories to the EX primals, those were ilvl 90 back in myth days, and more than a few were BiS. I farmed for those Titan EX earrings for my SMN for a long time, and I enjoyed that (some may disagree on the enjoyment of farming Titan EX, of course).
Leviathan EX weapons were actually great for those who hadn't cleared T5 and wanted alt weapons for Second Coil (or, if you were ridiculously lucky with mirrors, get something better than a T5 weapon).

Levi Ex was the "entry level" fight to prepare you for second coil. Either you didn't have a 95 weapon and you needed one for SCoB or you did and you needed a 100 weapon (because we didn't have charity weapons like tome weapons back then, you needed the unidentified allagan tomeston (a raid drop) to get a 100 or 110 weapon). Similarly Ravana was the entry level fight for Alex savage since a lvl 190 weapon was the new "prereq" weapon. Where they messed up was releasing a charity weapon (eso weapon) so people don't bother with the intended progression anymore. We even had another progression weapon fight (Thordan) to fix that, but then they oddly messed up again by making the anima weapon 210. The progression was there. The difficulty increased smoothly from Bismark to Ravana to A1S to A2S to Thordan to A3S to A4S. Of course Thordan was released after A3S and A4S (obviously) but that was because if they release it at the same time, then people would just so Thordan before they entered A1S and that would mess up the intended progression.

You also didn't need 205 weapons for any of the raid tier, so it wasn't a necessity. It also wouldn't make sense to make Thordan of higher difficulty of the highest raid because only those who cleared the raid could attempt him. I'm talking solely from the weapon perspective though, they can give out as much charity gear of anything else.

[UBERHAXED]

Exactly. It makes me nervous to think they're looking at the loot pinata that is Alex Normal and think because it's easy to complete that it's a successful raid model. Where is the story? Where is the sense of accomplishment? Entry level raiding should be left to the 24-mans. I want raiding to feel like Coil again.

The purpose of the easy mode is for people who were unable to complete Coil because of the difficulty and missed the story. It wasn't for people who could complete coil. Those people are intended to follow the progression and not even bother with the story mode (the whole reason they are releasing the next set at the same time).

[Ibi]

The purpose of the easy mode is for people who were unable to complete Coil because of the difficulty and missed the story. It wasn't for people who could complete coil. Those people are intended to follow the progression and not even bother with the story mode (the whole reason they are releasing the next set at the same time).

Except that savage required you to clear the story mode (and likely will again).

And unless they make the Midas gear dead on arrival by making it i210, most groups attempting savage are still going to end up farming normal, because it will provide upgrades.

[Alahra]

What you're really saying is that no meaningful rewards should have come from tomes (which actually they threw a curve ball here since it didn't require a raid drop) or the anima weapon.

That isn't really what I'm saying at all. Primals can still provide meaningful rewards even if they don't provide weapons (some of the old i90 Primal Accessories were best in slot, after all). Tomes essentially have nothing to do with it.

[Velhart]

The purpose of the easy mode is for people who were unable to complete Coil because of the difficulty and missed the story. It wasn't for people who could complete coil. Those people are intended to follow the progression and not even bother with the story mode (the whole reason they are releasing the next set at the same time).

Easy mode only accomplishes limiting hardcore raiders to midcore raiding with how they have the development team set up. Easy mode is only relevant for a few weeks till it gets forgotten. It would of been so much better if they made Normal Mode on Final Coil level and then echo buff/tune it down over time when it is outdated for people who wanted the story and fight at an easier level. This would make the content stretch out two patches easily and eventually give less experienced players access. Seriously, raiding is the only potential hardcore content in the game, the only content in this game. Why must we bring it down to people who only want the story? If we had Easy/Normal/Hard I wouldn't care as much because it doesn't affect the intended audience, but SE seems intent on catering to those who feel entitled to a no effort story mode. It doesn't make sense when you are balancing the three different types of audience. The hardcore just got pushed to the side, and that audience definitely sees it, and a lot have left due to it.

SE's mindset should be how to work someone into more challenging content, not how they can make it easier for them. Its backwards thinking.

[Moomba33]

I'm quite happy with Alexander Normal myself. I never got past t9 during ARR and I still need to find a group to do final coil with now.
I'm glad that this time I'll be able to see the story play out when it's new instead of waiting for nerfs.

I don't mind if SE decides to lock the best equipment behind challenging content in the future but I hope they continue to keep all story elements accessible.

[Alahra]

SE's mindset should be how to work someone into more challenging content, not how they can make it easier for them. Its backwards thinking.

How would you suggest for them to do that? They did various things in ARR as I talked about a bit earlier, but my impression is that there are still a lot of players for whom that approach didn't necessarily work, who didn't raid regardless of the various stepping stone paths, "catch up patches" and so on. What other methods do you think they should try to work players into challenging content who have not historically been interested in it?

[RiceisNice]

How would you suggest for them to do that? They did various things in ARR as I talked about a bit earlier, but my impression is that there are still a lot of players for whom that approach didn't necessarily work, who didn't raid regardless of the various stepping stone paths, "catch up patches" and so on. What other methods do you think they should try to work players into challenging content who have not historically been interested in it?

If the option is that we can only have 2 tiers of difficulty , "EX" difficulty and savage difficulty with be an ideal curve. In regards to EX difficulty, it can always be toned down to suit the players who are not interested in raiding (which is our current normal mode). Savage is meant to be hard, so there's really no point in nerfing that. If they do nerf it (or undertuned it to be EX), you're going to omit the hardcore players from a content they'd enjoy (which would be the ball busting one, although that's up for debate of those sort of people enjoy the current savage)