About (Savage) Raid Difficulty...

[HeavenlyArmed]

I've had a few discussions with people, such as my static and the /r/ffxiv/ subreddit community, regarding a specific thing mentioned at a recent event with Yoshi-p. Specifically, the event referred to in this post on reddit. I find myself concerned with a statement made regarding raid difficulty, that further nerfs to Midas are being considered and they plan on making the next raid tier even easier than the current tier is now.


I'm going to start with the Midas concerns. Personally, I don't feel that this tier should be nerfed any further while it remains relevant. The difficulty curve has been corrected by the existing nerfs to A6S, and any further nerfs would in my opinion do more harm to the raid scene than good. In regards to Fist, Cuff, and Arm of the Son (Savage), to many groups the difficulty as it is seems disappointing. Not to mention how most groups that were having trouble with Cuff of the Son and did not just quit raiding have found the new difficulty of the fight to be at a level where they're comfortable taking on the fight. While due to some groups quitting raiding as a result of the fight's pre-nerf difficulty the clear rate may still seem off, the difficulty curve itself has been corrected. I understand the desire to bring groups that quit back, but further nerfs will not do this. No group that quit because of the Cuff of the Son (Savage)'s pre-nerf difficulty and has not come back post-nerf will be brought back by further nerfs to the content.

On that note, I also feel the need to warn about being too hasty with nerfs to Burden of the Son (Savage). As it feels like the only fight remaining that could possibly have nerfs applied, I plead that a low clear rate at the moment won't prompt a nerf in the near future. Most groups want to tackle this encounter at its current difficulty. Groups that were held back by Cuff of the Son (Savage) have not had enough time to help correct what may appear to be a low clear rate as of yet. So even if in 3.3 the clear rate appears to be low, I beg that the dev team will hold off on nerfs to allow groups such as my own to have ample time with the content to at least attempt it at its current difficulty. I am sure that given time to make up for Cuff of the Son (Savage) being the wall that it was, the clear rate for Burden of the Son (Savage) will correct itself.

Nerfs at this point in time will only serve to further frustrate the playerbase that is currently raiding, seeing that content they haven't had appropriate time to challenge has been nerfed despite being sure they could have handled the content at its pre-nerf difficulty. We even saw this to some extent when Cuff of the Son (Savage) was nerfed. The difference is that this time there is no issue in the difficulty curve to correct, and as such any adjustments would not be justifiable to most of the playerbase.

Now, as for the next tier being less difficult, this is something I'd be more okay with, if done right. Specifically, it was said that Yoshi-p wants the next tier to be cleared in around 1 week for the world first race. My personal thoughts on this are that most of the current tier's difficulty would already allow for this. As such, I would be disappointed if this meant the first three fights of the next tier were easier than the first three fights of this tier. The only fight this tier that I feel currently has a difficulty level that would not be conducive to this is Burden of the Son (Savage). So, my hope for the next tier is that only the final encounter is of lower difficulty than its counterpart in Midas (Savage) as it exists right now.

But those are just the thoughts I've had in the conversations I've had on this topic. If anyone has any staunch disagreements on this, I'd love to hear why. Alternatively, if you have some sort of other suggestion relating to the current raid difficulty issues, I'd love to hear those as well. Let's get a conversation going and hopefully attract some attention to this (imo) very troubling tidbit of information.

[KarstenS]

When Midas Savage will put in DF for Solo queue, they will audjust A5-7 to meet the stupid AI how the duty finder puts jobs together.

A8 will not get any change beside echo. Every final turn (T5/9/13/A4) got not touched.

[Werhusky]

I agree there shouldn't be any further nerfs before DF. Surely for DF there have to be; A6S silence e.g. and idk if Blaster in A8 also needs it.

My group is midcore and we just start on Vortexer in A6 and the problem I see is:
1) the story mode takes away the will to raid from those that did Coil for story
2) Gordias was a wall when you came from casual raiding, aka the difference of normal to Savage was riddiculous high especially given the DPS checks and A3S demotivated many
3) People think midas same wall or hit A6 and get demotivated again

I enjoy Midas pacing so far even when A6 is annoying with having to do the earlier "bosses" over and over again DX

[ruskie]

I'm fine with adjustments to fit a difficulty curve but it should stop there. The fights should be challenging to a point. So yeah please no further nerfs. They are at least fun now. Even though when you wipe in A6s and need to redo it all it's still somewhat fun.

Sure adjust it for putting in DF due to mechanics reasons but not before.

Besides friends and the challenge of Coil what kept me going there was the story. I wanted to see more of it. It was driving me further. Now it's just friends and the challenge...

Alexander's story... is still meh. Though I must say that Midas design feels much more grander than Gordias(that felt like I was in a 1x1 box most of the time.

[KarstenS]

I'm fine with adjustments to fit a difficulty curve but it should stop there.

A6 is still alot harder than A7. We practised 6 weeks in A6. 4 weeks before and 2 weeks after the audjustments before we killed it at the first raid day of week 7. Now we practised 2 raid days (we raid 3 days a week with an average of 2 hrs per day) in A7 and got it down to 24%.

[HeavenlyArmed]

A6 is still alot harder than A7. We practised 6 weeks in A6. 4 weeks before and 2 weeks after the audjustments before we killed it at the first raid day of week 7. Now we practised 2 raid days (we raid 3 days a week with an average of 2 hrs per day) in A7 and got it down to 24%.

To be fair, you're now going to spend the next two or three days minimum trying to clean it up and wiping to dumb stuff in the last phase. That's how A7S progression works, you spend more time basically just "cleaning it up" than you do progressing through the fight. Source: my own experience and the experiences of everyone else I've talked to or watched progress through the fight.

[Kaenbyou]

To be fair, you're now going to spend the next two or three days minimum trying to clean it up and wiping to dumb stuff in the last phase. That's how A7S progression works, you spend more time basically just "cleaning it up" than you do progressing through the fight. Source: my own experience and the experiences of everyone else I've talked to or watched progress through the fight.

This, and that's what I love about this fight.
You learn all the mechanic in the 1st phase of the fight (cage, adds, tank buster and aoes) and once you learned them, the boss throws everything at you with more damage and more violence.
I think this is one of the best turn progression-wise since you can really feel the progress when you try it over and again.
A6S was more frustrating in comparison since you had to do again the bosses you already knew how to kill just to try one pull on the one you're still struggling.

[Acheron_Abolisher]

Well, I guess I gotta disagree with the thread consensus here (God in heaven, help me). I'd actually like to see Alex Savage made easier since SE has told us time and time again that they won't be adding a third raid tier in between normal and savage. FFXIV is the only game I've ever raided in, but I feel like progression is always so slow even on fights my group learns relatively quickly. My static is pretty casual and raids only 6 hours a week. It's kind of annoying to take weeks to learn a fight and after a month and a few dozen hours of time spent, all I can say is I downed a single fight and learned some of another one. I'd really like the opportunity to move through a "medium-mode" faster and then have us try the savage fights for fun after the medium fights are completed. Since it looks like we won't get this, I'd like to see raids that can reasonably be cleared in about 10-15 hours of raid time per instance rather than about 20-30 hours per instance, which seems to be the standard post A6S nerf (people tell me A8S takes longer, I haven't gotten there myself). At my current rate of progression, I'll probably never clear A8S and I may never even see it. If we had a medium raid tier, I would be ok with this, but if we don't get this, I'd like to see the content nerfed to allow more, less serious groups to experience it.

Someone like me isn't really that interested in challenging myself to the fullest extent in a video game, but would still really like to run somewhat tricky and fun content. It seems many (and possibly most) of the really serious groups have cleared A8S already, so I don't see an issue with a general nerf (except maybe for A5S) with 3.3. Clearing content before the nerfs can still give a strong sense of achievement and exclusivity, so I believe that difficult raiding can still offer a lot in FFXIV even with content nerfed relatively quickly. I'd also be fine with achievements, titles, glamour, etc given for clearing content before planned nerfs if people are really concerned about incentives.

tl;dr: I don't have the Vince Lombardi Attitude (there is no fun, only striving and achievement) towards raiding.

*Braces for angry "You Carebear!!!" responses.*

[Kaenbyou]

It seems many (and possibly most) of the really serious groups have cleared A8S already, so I don't see an issue with a general nerf (except maybe for A5S) with 3.3.

3 groups on my server managed to down A8S. In comparison, ~100 groups managed to down A5S, so there's still a lot of margin.
For the rest of your point of view, they took a stance for Heavensward after the feedback in ARR.
In ARR, one of the main storyline was gated behind the coil of Bahamuth, and there was only one mode, the hard mode.
A lot of people were complaining about it so they decided to put a casual mode for the new raid so people can experience the story and keep the hard mode for raider.
Having to add a medium mode would be too much effort for the dev team probably since they already did 2 raid mode now, don't forget the fact that they'll have to rework all the different tier of gear too, either by downgrading the casual mode loot or upgrading the savage mode loot. If they upgrade the savage mode loot, they have to review the ilvl from the trial loot or tomestone. All that for a mode that wouldn't convince a lot of people. And remember that this existed already with previous trial but was quickly left behind because the hard mode was basically "we killed it, let's never do it again".
Also from what you said, you raid around 6h a week, that's already midcore raider level and in that tier should allow you to progress quite fast already (especially due to the fact that those tiers' fight are really quick to learn).
tl;dr : I don't think SE will go back to the normal->hard->extreme kind of a raid/trial.

[Nezerius]

In ARR, one of the main storyline was gated behind the coil of Bahamuth, and there was only one mode, the hard mode.

Binding Coil was always the normal/medium mode. The only hard mode of it was released during Second Coil, named Second Coil of Bahamut (Savage).

A lot of people were complaining about it so they decided to put a casual mode for the new raid so people can experience the story and keep the hard mode for raider.

In turn, plenty of raiders also complained about the difficulty of Savage Gordias, which was far more difficult than Coil. I enjoyed the Coil difficulty because it wasn't super difficult like Savage, but it was still a good challenge for the static I was in.

Having to add a medium mode would be too much effort for the dev team probably since they already did 2 raid mode now, don't forget the fact that they'll have to rework all the different tier of gear too, either by downgrading the casual mode loot or upgrading the savage mode loot. If they upgrade the savage mode loot, they have to review the ilvl from the trial loot or tomestone. All that for a mode that wouldn't convince a lot of people.

It'd mostly be difficult if they have to design the item level around the three difficulty modes. What they did with SCoB and SCoB (Savage) was having both versions drop the same gear, while having title rewards for people who cleared it on savage difficulty.

They could easily put some aesthetic rewards in savage mode, with gear sets that look slightly different, as well as titles, and perhaps a mount off the last boss. Then keep the medium and easy modes with the current item level upgrades.

Ofcourse, this'll again prove why SCoB (Savage) wasn't all that popular, since players felt like their effort wasn't rewarded with gear that made them stronger than the ones clearing normal SCoB. Considering this, it's more likely they'll lower the difficulty of the third part of Alexander to be more in line with SCoB/FCoB.

And remember that this existed already with previous trial but was quickly left behind because the hard mode was basically "we killed it, let's never do it again".

I always saw this as more of a naming issue that started off in ARR, where (Hard) was seen as the story mode version (thus, no loot, usually easy enough to clear in DF), explaining the "we killed it, let's never do it again" mentality, while (Extreme) was the actual fight that'd get farmed for loot.
This was fixed with the recent trial, as there's only a story mode and an extreme version.