Raid Dificulty levles - request to SE

[AnaviAnael]

I don't know, people have enough trouble with Alex Normal as is.

[Alexftw]

I thought we have 4 levels of difficulty (each floor). That being said a6s is more complicated than a7s, but still less punishing on death + lower dps check(as for vortex compared with a7s I'd say I find the 3balls more stressing to deal with. Vortex is always the same once you're used to it, as for the iron balls, you can't predict their path. They don't even move in perfect straight lines sadly... I swear the iron balls follow people. )

But yeah I guess the gap between normal mode and savage is a bit too high. Maybe a hard mode in between aswell wouldn't be a bad idea(something between normal and trial extreme level).

[Khalithar]

I'd love some midcore content in this game, something between the current "Normal" and "Savage" mode.

[Eidolon]

What I'd want:

Have story mode, but remove the gear from it. Make the fights watered down compared to real raids. They're already treated as a joke. Heck you may as well make them solo or 4man with how little regard people give them.

Savage mode should be extra story that fleshes each area out. It should give the same rewards it currently does.

[Nestama]

Savage mode should be extra story that fleshes each area out. It should give the same rewards it currently does.

But then we'll just go back to the Coil days of people begging SE to "nerf content plz" because they can't experience the story.

SE should just make it so that Story Mode raids come out on the odd numbered patches (so Mhachi and Alexander Story, as an example) and the midcore and hardcore raids come out on even numbers. The midcore and hardcore raids being unrelated to the 'Normal' and each other.

Downside to this idea is that it may delay patches because of the amount of work it would require.

[Eidolon]

But then we'll just go back to the Coil days of people begging SE to "nerf content plz" because they can't experience the story.

SE should just make it so that Story Mode raids come out on the odd numbered patches (so Mhachi and Alexander Story, as an example) and the midcore and hardcore raids come out on even numbers. The midcore and hardcore raids being unrelated to the 'Normal' and each other.

Downside to this idea is that it may delay patches because of the amount of work it would require.

Why would they ask for nerfs anymore than they ask for it now? While I like your idea, I don't quite see how you connect the dots. They also only nerfed when the content became irrelevent - and even then, they kept the final turn (Turn 5/9) pretty unchanged every time, at that. The only nerfs we really got for those were frequently Echo, at best. And that just made it easier to reach dps/hps/tank checks.



However, as far as making it so it comes out in the Odd number instead of Even number, I dont' find this to be a bad idea. It serves to help in a catchup-patch. The only issue is you create a gap during the start of every patch that would need filling, which isn't currently being addressed (Except by crafted gear - and trust me : I definitely don't want to give crafters a one-up as the only way to progress gear-wise every other patch.)

A way to handle this may to be just reduce the gear by 10 ilevels (See in our current situation: Midan would be i210 instead of i220, and the Lore would be i220, and the Savage would be i230) which helps out all around in keeping all jobs relevent, keeping the gear itself relevant longer, and helps combat the power keep.

The problem if you remove the gear and weekly stuff, will result in people never run it again. Run it 1 time for story and never return, making impossible for new people complete it because the lack of players.

I think Alexader is good as is it.

For me, the current system presents 3 major problems:

1) it makes your alt jobs harder to keep relevant. Because every other patch sees a 30 ilevel raise, the old alt jobs we brought up become irrelevant extremely fast. The baseline becomes Alexamder story gear.

2) it worstens the power creep we saw in the 2.x series. Heck we're currently 3-4x stronger than 2.x. If this happens every expansion we're gonna see absurd numbers - just like wow did.

3) the content becomes irrelevant the moment the next major raid patch comes out. They tried to fight this with anima but let's face it - no one runs Alexander Gordias like they were running coil in the later patches (Especially the most major of 'gatekeeper' turns, because they were trying to catch up to raiders and join the pool - which also served as a great skill-check and kept the community pretty healthy.)

The solution? Make story mode just that - a STORY mode. You don't need gear for it. As a matter of fact, you could actually conceivably give each turn a daily or weekly quest that would give you the previous Savage items (max ilevel) as a reward. This would help people optimize alts, get glamor, keep it relevant, AND mitigate the power creep to its previous levels.

Even if you don't give the previous savage raid rewards, you can add a set of armor there in some way to help. The point is: STORY mode should be a STORY mode; NOT a part of the raid cycle for savage raiders.

Leave trying to force people into outdated content to the Anima grind, which even then imo fails pretty badly to draw people back to the Alexander line because of how long it takes to grind out the items.

[Noxifer]

2) it worstens the power creep we saw in the 2.x series. Heck we're currently 3-4x stronger than 2.x. If this happens every expansion we're gonna see absurd numbers - just like wow did.

And not only do we get ilvl upgrades of 30 ilvls instead of 20, but the stat increases are twice that. Made comparison between gear pieces from level 50 gear, i think i120 and i130 or something, and then between i190 and i200, and the difference was close to the double. Meaning that ilvl-wise, 3.0-3.4 (last ilvl upgrade) could be compared to getting patch 2.0-2.6, but statwise it's more comparable to getting 2.0-2.12 (if there were 12 major patches instead of said 12 being counted as a subpatch to 2.1). Math might be off, but I hope what I mean is clear enough ^^;

I get that people (in general) like to feel powerful, and a difference of 2-4 def/mdef and 4-6 points of your main stat on one piece makes little difference when you look at the numbers we're currently sporting (even if said number would be a lot smaller if we didn't have all this gear bloat to begin with), but... it does mean that the power creep is very real. What will it be during 4.0? An increase of 40 ilvls every other patch, with 3x the stat increase we had at 50? It just... doesn't bode well ^^;
(And don't even let me get started on the whole "hey, you get a new gearset every level between 50 and 60!" -_- Sure, the levels take exponentially longer than they did before 50, but still... it makes it close to impossible to gear up, because unless you're really lucky, by the time you've gotten together the entire lvl51 dungeon gear set, you've most likely dinged 52 or even 53 already and don't need it anymore. ;_; )

Sorry for the off-topic ramble. It just bugs me ^^;

As for the raid itself... I don't know if it needs that much adjustment. Though I do think the idea of "don't give loot from normal, but give it a repeatable quest to gain previous raid tier's loot" is an interesting one. You just need to figure out what to do with the first normal tier, or people's motivation to run it will only last until they've gone through it once (for story and to unlock the next one).

I also agree that there needs to be a lot more diversity in the things to do at max level, to keep people interested for at least two out of those three months until next patch.

[Xlantaa]

What I'd want:

Have story mode, but remove the gear from it. Make the fights watered down compared to real raids. They're already treated as a joke. Heck you may as well make them solo or 4man with how little regard people give them.

Savage mode should be extra story that fleshes each area out. It should give the same rewards it currently does.

The problem if you remove the gear and weekly stuff, will result in people never run it again. Run it 1 time for story and never return, making impossible for new people complete it because the lack of players.

I think Alexader is good as is it.

[Worldofwarcraft]

I know this might not be a popular opinion, but.... I think if they want to maintain the playerbase the only way they can do it is by having the easy mode, which would be story mode, and then the savage mode, BUT it needs to be a medium difficulty, and not as hard as savage is. I'm not going to go in to depth about it, but basically it seems like a super easy mode, and then a hard mode. The leap between the two is to drastic, and it discourages the story mode players, to want to enter savage mode. Currently raiding isn't really being done, and I don't see the point of having raids if barely anyone is doing it. NOW remember, lets say there are 50 GC doing it, thats 50 x 8 = 400 players, thats impressive, but then you are reminded there are 600k+ players subbed.....

[SpookyGhost]

Personally, I think it speaks volumes that people like Normal Mode, but probably not in the way you're thinking. I don't honestly expect everyone to git gud and be able to challenge Savage - I think those that are happy with the existence of NM are well within their right due to the current state of the game. However, what speaks volumes is that there needs to be a NM because everyone needs to know the story of the current raid. What people understand subconsciously but not consciously is that they wouldn't need NM if end game actually had any sort of battle content that lasted more than a month that wasn't the raid. Once you've completed the story and the EX Primal what else is there to do, battle-wise? The same 2 dungeons over and over and over? The same 24 man that takes one lockout to learn entirely?

Realistically, the model they had before in 2.0 worked perfectly fine in a bubble. They nerfed the raid tiers every 2 patches, removed the lockout, and let people enjoy their free loot. If, for 6 months, there was worthwhile content outside of raiding then this would be a fine system. You'd do your stuff for 6 months, have fun, maybe get a few pieces of raid-tier gear from that battle content, and then you could challenge the old raid with your friends, have a good time, etc. But there isn't - there's nothing to do. I've been raiding Savage for about 2 months now, and I log on just to raid - I have Lore pieces missing but I honestly do not have the mental energy to continue running Antitower however many more times. I get that people enjoy the game for other reasons (like crafting and, for some reason, Golden Saucer) but there are a lot of us out there that just care about the battle content and currently there is practically nothing to do outside of raid.

Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd get rid of Savage and NM entirely and devote those resources to smaller, more varied end game battle activities that actually kept people active and didn't force them into a do or die static. It's not like Savage has even a moderate percentage of players tackling it - it's too challenging for the average player of XIV as nothing in the game has conditioned them to think at all. Most content all the way to 60 you can do with your brain shut off, and in anything requiring any effort you can easily get carried through. Then Savage shows up and it's like "hey. time to learn your min/max rotation and execute precise mechanics that could easily kill yourself or everyone if you mess up one of them". There's no curve, it's just a spike, and it doesn't fit with the flow of the game at all. If they want to rebalance everything so that they actually teach the player to not just smash their face on their keyboard, cool, but if not Savage shouldn't exist at all and we should have more forgiving, varied stuff to do at end game.

Maybe I'm asking for too much here, I'm sure there's a "they're just a small dev team" excuse waiting for me at the end of this, but I mean c'mon you're a customer paying monthly for this service - surely they should provide you with something worth paying for, yeah? If you feel like you get your money's worth from XIV, I'm happy for you and I wouldn't wish for that happiness be taken away, but it would be cool if those of us who just want to fight FF baddies with our buddies and get sweet loot also got to have our money's worth.

e: Just want to quickly note that I do feel like they're at least attempting to do this, slowly, with stuff like Diadem and Deep Dungeon. As questionable as Diadem was implemented, it was a fantastic idea conceptually and would've made for another route of gear progression in odd patches as well as battle content to do that wasn't 4mans, EX primal, or 24m raid. I really hope Deep Dungeon is cool and fun, because I'm a fan of smaller size group content (just not the faceroll dungeons). I'm sure it probably won't be too challenging or anything, but it's nice that they're at least trying now. Most of this post is in reference to the current state of the game, and how things have been. I hope in the future we'll see more routes to take for battle content.