FFXIV: The State Of Raiding

[Warlyx]

Actually, the same can be said for the country - after all, you can move there.

post of the month !

p.d with raiding in FFXIV u leave all your family/friends/cat/dog behind and never look back :P

[Altena]

Sorry but no, to the entire OP. For a number of reasons...

1. There is currently no other content on a similar level of difficulty to Savage, and nerfing it in the "catch up patches" simply means you are removing any form of challenge for those people that actually want to play a game that isn't "braindead easy". You argue that it is "braindead" hard which makes absolutely no sense.. If something is braindead, it is implied that it does not require a brain to complete. Nerfing the most challenging content in the game just so that "everyone can complete it" is so backwards it's not funny.

2. What do you want higher iLvl gear for, if you aren't challenging the hardest stuff in the game on a new raid cycle? There is a reason higher iLvl drops from raids, and that is because you actually need the gear. What do you want ilvl 240 gear for if you're not running the hardest content? Treasure maps? DREX?

3. For groups (mine included) who have been working through the 4x turns (started a little later this cycle), but have not yet defeated A8S would be disadvantaged. Not in gear, but in self gratification. What would you say if you were running and learning the last fight or 2, only to have it nerfed just before you beat it? It's pretty damn demoralizing. Using the recent A6S nerfs as an example, we were well on our way to defeating Vortexer, only to have it nerfed just before we actually beat it.. Meanwhile we were spending a good month on the few days we ran to learn that turn, and got used to the "harder" version of the fight, only to come in the next week and cruise through it.. It was pretty damn demoralizing when we noticed how easy it was after the nerf, when we had spent so long trying to beat that turn.

4. "Normal" is there for the very reason that you are complaining about. People still run Midas Normal, and it's there for that purpose. It's certainly not a challenge for raiders, nor is it "braindead" easy, yet it still allows mid-core or casual players that don't raid, the opportunity to beat a "nerfed" version of the savage raids.. I mean that's effectively what the entire Normal difficulty is there for, and why it was implemented in the first place. If you raided during Coil days, then you would know this. The "Normal" coil was somewhere closer to the Savage we have today, and "Normal" today is more of a story / nerfed version that allows you to get "decent" ilvl gear for the difficulty, while still allowing players to complete fights of the same flavour to the high tier raid.

5. The current problems with raiding in this game have nothing to do with the difficulty. I won't go into this because it warrants an entirely different discussion and I won't derail the thread here, but difficulty is not the problem. It may be a "reason" why some people don't raid, but that is what Normal mode is for.

Finally - if you want to clear Savage, then wait for Echo. You already get your "nerf" in a sense, but not as soon as you may like. If clearing a hard fight that has been nerfed to appease casual/mid-core players ends up filling in some weird jollies in your life, then wait for echo or undersize and remove iLvl sync. Don't ruin the most challenging content in the game for those of us that wish to attempt it.

[KeiranOlive]

I've done some coil after it had echo, but hearing about the brutal difficulty of Alex Savage in which all 8 party members have to perform perfectly or wipe, makes me want to avoid it. So, as someone who has no interest in Savage, I was excited when the developers announced a normal mode. However, I think the biggest mistake with that was releasing both Savage and NM at the same time.

If Alex Savage had been released first, then that would have given hardcore raiders more motivation to do it, since they would have had first access to the story, mechanics, and gear. Then a patch later, Alex normal could have been released, letting everyone else experience a toned down version (still with inferior gear to savage). I believe that the hardest content should give the best rewards, and as many have said in this thread, clearing new, challenging fights and being rewarded with story and exclusive gear are major motivators that make all their hard work worth it.

[IgnisFatuus]

there are many problems with raiding right now. personally, I don't raid anymore, because of time commitment, organisation and fulfilling my share of self-hatred for a lifetime.

I don't really want to get into much of the meta stuff, but since a lot of hardcore peeps stopped raiding, there seems to be a gap and since it's so hard to get into raiding not many people have actually taken to fill those positions.
then there's an obvious lack of reward incentive, variety and such.

ofc, we can't compare to the likes of wow in terms of cash, but we all thought there'd be so much more when the game just got up and running. instead, basically nothing much has changed in terms of sheer gear progression/raiding tiers. even the backwardness of CT/void ark is still there and that was supposed to be a placeholder, because they couldnt finish CT1 in time for release of ARR.

with most stuff I just can't be bothered anymore, because I know itll be useless a few months down the line or get nerfed to hell and back. right now, my condolences go out to anyone who grinded their arse off to get fenrir in the early days. while it's nice to have it finally too, it's always a pain to see so much of your life's hours spent being invalidated in an eye-blink.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

I dunno how the heck you can compare the grind for the Fenrir mount to savage raiding.

[Colt47]

Well, point is that if they allow larger groups to tackle savage content together, it lets people with rough schedules go in with a less organized group and potentially power through the tougher parts so they can learn all phases of the fight. They'd just have to add extra cosmetic rewards to the 8 man version so as to provide a reward for achieving it with a lower amount of people. There's no need to post patch nerf content: That's only needed because they want to make time lock exclusive content based on difficulty, which ends up causing people to go at each others throats and makes the transient population leave even faster as most view savage and hard mode content as non-existent, despite all the hours the developers are putting into testing and building the encounters.


Really, we are addressing this as if this is a brand new problem, but the end game problem has been around for the last decade and it really all goes back to putting too much emphasis on challenge modes and not enough emphasis on keeping your community of players working together.

[Stanelis]

1. There is currently no other content on a similar level of difficulty to Savage, and nerfing it in the "catch up patches" simply means you are removing any form of challenge for those people that actually want to play a game that isn't "braindead easy". You argue that it is "braindead" hard which makes absolutely no sense.. If something is braindead, it is implied that it does not require a brain to complete. Nerfing the most challenging content in the game just so that "everyone can complete it" is so backwards it's not funny.

I think the game being as a whole braindead easy, with only a tiny fraction of content being far harder, is an issue by itself.

[Zojha]

p.d with raiding in FFXIV u leave all your family/friends/cat/dog behind and never look back :P

ARE YOU DEDICATED OR NOT NOW?! It is your decision to not live in these countries and clearly you are unwilling to put in the effort to move there, so lazy people like that do not deserve the items.

I mean, we could accept that even though exclusion barriers can often be theoretically overcome, the required level of dedication to do so is too much to ask for many people. But that would just be silly.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

They do, some weapons in Bloodborne starting out made many parts of the game easier and in Dark Souls certain classes had better abilities and made fights easier. Those aren't exactly easy modes, no, but they do certainly impacts a players ability to learn the games flow and encourage different playthroughs.

Only in later patch updates not unlike the eventual echo nerf we see. At release, Bloodborne was outright advertised as a game where you will die, repeatedly, endlessly, until you learn.

Actually, it will fix the issue. This was done in some other lesser known titles in the past that failed for other reasons (Nexon... enough said) and the community loved it. It enabled groups to bring in people they knew needed to learn the fight still without impacting their own raiding schedules, and also let organizers make less intensive groups via shout out. Everyone got access to the same gear level and there was basically no grumbling about gear level because everyone, no matter how hardcore, could eventually get the gear. It was just faster to do so via the smallest group possible so tight nit groups (on balmung it would be RareEX), would still be the first to clear content and get it on farm. It worked a lot better than what the developers currently are doing, which is gating gear via time lock and making the highest level gear exclusive to a small niche part of the community.

What purpose does that gear serve though? You only need ilvl 240 to make Savage a slightly easier fight. You can theoretically get by with just ilvl 220 crafted gear and a Sephirot EX weapon. If you aren't looking to challenge yourself to extreme content, where a few mistakes means a wipe, you'll never need better gear. Nevertheless, the problem remains, larger groups wouldn't experience the mechanics, let alone practice them simply due to all the additional damage pushing phases. Even worse, the bosses often enough raid wide mechanics everyone has to do properly. Eight people struggle getting the timing right on Vortexer. Adding even more would be a nightmare, especially with those players lacking experience, skill or both.

And this alone would result in most raid groups restricting their group dynamics.

People aren't grumbling over gear level because those uninteresting in Savage know they'll never have any need of it. I again reiterate, there is not a single piece of content in the entire game where you even ilvl 230, let alone ilvl 240. So if you're having trouble getting a group or the sheer challenge itself is proving too much. Wait for the inevitable echo boost.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I dunno how the heck you can compare the grind for the Fenrir mount to savage raiding.

I assume it's because the event "nerfed" the MGP grind. Kinda silly if you ask me.