About (Savage) Raid Difficulty...

[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.

[Kaenbyou]

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).

I know, I wasn't really talking about a hard mode, this was more a figure of speech since a lot of people complained about coil difficulty, especially t5 and t9 when we were doing the fight undergeared.