Are the raid tiers "too hard?"

[Lovescake]

Just want to disclaim that this is obviously an opinion, alot of people are going to forget that.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So over the course of the two raid tiers we have had, (referring to Gordias and Midas Savage) there has been an influx of things brought up, this is just gonna be my take on it and an over-all view of what people seem to think about the raids.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gordias Savage

So Gordias Savage came out a month after the release of heavensward, with the first implementation of story mode two weeks prior to the savage release. we were able to get i190 gear from the normal mode, i190 weapons from Ravanna Extreme, and esoterics once the savage turns were unlocked to gain i200 pieces, savage also gave us the i210 upgrade items. (including the i210 weapon on the last turn.

Gordias over-all seemed to be a DPS check, mechanics were good, but people seemed to complain about how tight the over-all enrage timers where with the given output, this also didnt help with the 210 weapon in the final turn + the eso weapon upgrade in the same turn which breaks away from the coil progression...

This tier wasn't "Too Hard". most groups who were competent about raiding cleared this fight before 3.1 and progressed on a4s until 3.2.. the midcore players started clearing this mainly around the steps towards 3.1, and those who really struggled got through it after 3.1 with the 205 weapon upgrade boost from Thordan. a4s strategy for cheesing it basically eliminated the harder part of the fight entirely... casual groups were struggling with a3s but this doesn't mean its the fights fault, although i will agree that a problem with it was the difficulty spike from a2-3s.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Midas Savage

We got 220 crafted gear for early progression, sephirot weapons available (220), alexander midas normal gear (220), Lore gear (230, 240 upgraded)

Midas was already announced to be alot easier in comparison to Gordias, with the same difficulty as around t9-t13 (correct me if wrong.) however this difficulty scaled up didnt really reflect as strong as people thought.

Midas a5s gave us a great mechanical fight, learning the fight was also enjoyable for a first turn and the faust dps check was also relatively nice to have for the current gear available, this turn seems well received by basically all raiders.
A6 however, pre nerf was classed harder than A7, with the duo mine, orb hp, goblins hp, vortexer damage and health, this fight proved a relative challenge even for the harder end of the spectrum, this however does not make it a bad fight. it just took time to clear, and the progression sucked because having to do each robot. A7s was relatively easy, but had a dps check in comparison to the previous turns, giving the cages taking away uptime on the boss, specific roles for each cage, dodging balls etc, this turn is probably my favourite turn of the raid tier so far. as for a8s, this fight was also a very good mechanics fight, making us use previous information from a6s to combat 2nd phase, learn different mechanics on the fly as well as having a dps check relative to the gear given.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over-all

Over-all i think midas was a great balance to an extent, i feel it could be a bit more difficult to excel from the coil, otherwise we'd be stuck with same difficulty forever.. raids are meant to be hard., however alot of people still complain to this day about a6s due to its "difficulty" after the nerf.. as well as the current other turns too.

This is why this hurts the endgame raiding content. the people who struggle to do the content this late into the patches are normally the people who dont understand their role (not saying its everyone. but this holds many others back.) , being full i240 gear in a5-6-7-8s is not what the fights were designed around, this is a handicap you get for the extended time you take to progress the fights. same with the "catch up" patch which is implemented 3 months later. it's there to allow you to tackle the harder content with stronger gear to possibly help you to beat that one specific phase youre stuck on.

these people however, are also a bigger voice stating that the raids are too hard. and because the % of the raid clears being relatively low (which i get from a business POV. this is bad because less clears = wasted content.) but i feel like we're heading backwards within how raids work, coil was good because difficulty increased relatively, however its as if we're going backwards with alexander, this is obviously too late for change, however im more interested in other peoples opinions on what they feel about how the raid scene seems to be going. so lets discuss

[Pasquale]

End game raids should be for end game players .. So it is suppose to be something really hard like it was for gordias but.. As long as casual players still step in is like( like a novice soccer player who decides he must play the champions league and complain about the big challenge he finds) we will see things get easier and easier..

[Moomba33]

Not a raider so my opinion is only based on hearsay.

Gordias had a very bad reputation for breaking statics at A3 and the relatively low clear rates for Midas suggest that the raid community has not recovered. SE most likely has a target number of players they want to see attempting/clearing each content for it to be worth their development time. Something like Savage certainly has a lower target number than something like a story instance, but they'll likely still reduce the difficulty going forward if they aren't satisfied by the number of clears.

[Awful]

It's not that it's too hard it's that there's no incentive to do so Gordias Floor 4 Savage gave a mount, and raid gear but it's not enough to keep raiders around. Not to mention Gordias was overtuned that even the regular raider couldn't get into it without having big issues by the time people got to floor 3 people just packed it in. Fast forward to Midas and we have people clearing it on a weekly basis but they're the minority not the majority which is an issue it shouldn't be the 5% as we're not even in the final floors of Alexander you want your MMO to succeed where the end game content is and frankly Alexander just doesn't offer the rewards or satisfaction coil did.

Savage coil at least gave you titles and bragging rights people don't care if you've cleared Midas or Gordias which is a shame, hell even the gear doesn't keep people around when you can just get free 240 gear from your weekly Mhach/VA runs so the majority who wanted to raid see it as pointless. They need to keep raiders active and the issue is now that Gordias has broken raid groups and the people who wanted to experience early 3.0 raiding can't because of how raiding is handled in this game. It's the same room, same circle that you fight all the bosses in with new abilities it wears you down I can't tell you how many times I wanted to kill pepsiman and strangle him on Gordias savage 3 but I couldn't because he's a liquid bastard.

I'd say the numbers might be higher up to Midas floor 3 Savage but not a lot of people have cleared up to the 4th which is a shame. What i'd like to see is another mid core raid implemented because frankly i'm tired of seeing the same setting over and over again that way raiders can have their cake and eat it too, more titles, more incentive for rewards the game lacks this. Raiders aren't properly rewarded and I stand by that they aren't "special snowflakes" they put the time and effort into raiding and it's frustrating leading a static when you have to replace 3 members, get stuck at a wall and never progress.

[CENTER][B]This is why this hurts the endgame raiding content. the people who struggle to do the content this late into the patches are normally the people who dont understand their role (not saying its everyone. but this holds many others back.) , b

these people however, are also a bigger voice stating that the raids are too hard. and because the % of the raid clears being relatively low (which i get from a business POV. this is bad because less clears = wasted content.) but i feel like we're heading backwards within how raids work, coil was good because difficulty increased relatively, however its as if we're going backwards with alexander, this is obviously too late for change, however [b]im more interested in other peoples opinions on what they feel about how the raid scene seems to be going

You're right about this though a lot of people don't know their roles (mainly DPS/Healers) as they can't maximize DPS with mechanics there are people who are still pulling 800 DPS in A5S 800 DPS
And it's crazy because these are really really low DPS numbers it boggles my brain how this is possible seeing a Drg or monk do 800-900 when they're capable of so much more and hurts their progression. I do like A5 and A7s they're my favorite so far I haven't stepped in A8S and I doubt i'll get my pants or bloody gloves until 3.4 since I just PUG with my FC mates and try to get groups going but we run into the same issue: invite DPS > DPS does low numbers > Healers don't do mechanics with orbs in A6S = 3 wipes then they call it. A lot of new players just don't bother with learning their job or adapting to situations which leads to failed DPS checks/failed mechanics because DPS are dead and can't DPS down X and Y.

I gave up trying to get a static because people just leave and scheduling issues it's annoying, plus half of my FC doesn't even find Alexander that interesting at all either. Anyways sorry for the rant had to get this all out that's pretty much all I have to say about raiding, it's just treading water until the next patch where we'll get the story mode, do the story, do savage floors, wait 1-2 months, get free upgraded gear. I'm honestly just going to play Legion at this point call me a WoW fan boy but at least their dungeons/raids will be fresh and have more modes then just looking for raid > only the 5% will shoot at.

[Morningstar1337]

(Also a non-raider)

I feel like for the next version, if Raiders want to raid the savage version, they have to clear the Previous tier first.

To be more clear:

• The First raid (Savage) for obvious reasons only needs the Story-mode version to be cleared at worse
• The Second raid(Savage) however would require players to clear the last floor of the previous raid in Savage.
• The Third raid (Savage) would likewise have a similar requirement; clearing the last floor of the previous raid in Savage.

The problem I see with this is for people thatstarted raiding when the 2nd/3rd tier is up. In this case I would propose removing the lock on the 2nd tier when the 3rd tier is out (and unlocking the 3rd tier when the next xpac is out) or leaving it as is and use it to test a player's dedication.

The one think i should also say is they when making niche content, expect the results to be scaled down, but as long as they find Clear rates unsatisfactory then nerfs will be inevitable.

[Aylis]

End game raids should be for end game players .. So it is suppose to be something really hard like it was for gordias but.. As long as casual players still step in is like( like a novice soccer player who decides he must play the champions league and complain about the big challenge he finds) we will see things get easier and easier..

As a casual player I am in complete agreement. From what I've seen its just too easy to just break into raiding and also from what I seen it creates a bad mindset in a lot of players. In all the other games I've played their were always these barriers players had to cross to separate the ones that did legitimately /want/ to raid, from the ones that really didn't. Without the barriers it mixes the players that honestly do want to raid with players that normally would not raid under normal circumstances, now it injects in some the feel like they /need/ to raid. When you have players that feel forced into something it can create a very bad atmosphere for all involved. It doesn't help either when SE does their nerfs which can further put pressure on the ones that really don't want to raid to keep struggling through it since it seems SE wants everyone to do every form of content weither they enjoy it or not.

So no, I don't feel raids are too hard per say. It just needs some barriers to remind players that its totally okay to accept theirs content that some may pass and others simply shouldn't be in.

[ADVSS]

1st raid: Bahamut still there and about to wake up
2nd raid: We need the magick cheese, uplander.

sounds really hard and challenging, right? Love the gold background to every floor, it really makes it feel like superstar stuff

more seriously: how well are shortcuts implemented from coil vs alexander? it seems to me that coil would let a raid team cut the crap moreso than alex does. alex seems like a bad endurance run, where you are already burnt out before you get to the final boss. Maybe give raids more lee-way. So you killed the four musketeers, ok you can continue to wipe on the big boss the rest of the week. I'm only offering contrasts whether they seem right, or effective idk. Just seems logical to me.

[Rikku1987]

It's not too hard but ...only 4 encounters. It would be fine if there would be some midcore content but everything you touch in this game out of savage(and current EX primal) is just too easy even for casual/non-raiders.

We need Midcore content, not as hard as savage but still a little challenging. Old turns(A1s-A4s) are obsolete and overnerfed due to ilvl increase, echo and mechanic nerfs,but its difficulty now is not savage, i'd call it Midcore content(somewhere between EX primals and current savage turns)... sadly there's no reason to enter them except A4s for the mount.

[Lambdafish]

My issue with alex savage is not its difficulty but its rewards. Compared to coil, what happened is savage got harder AND less rewarding. Yes, it still gave top tier gear, but the gear was neither interesting or unique (the same gear could be gotten, and would have already been forced on you by alex NM gear progression), and you also didn't get the story tied to Alexander through the savage raids. Because of this, it became not only harder to beat the content, but also harder to find people to beat the content with (then the server jumping happened and the devs started to notice).

• The First raid (Savage) for obvious reasons only needs the Story-mode version to be cleared at worse
• The Second raid(Savage) however would require players to clear the last floor of the previous raid in Savage.
• The Third raid (Savage) would likewise have a similar requirement; clearing the last floor of the previous raid in Savage.

With the current clear rates, this would be the final bullet to kill the raid scene for good. It's a terrible idea.

[Jim_Berry]

Not a raider so my opinion is only based on hearsay.

Gordias had a very bad reputation for breaking statics at A3 and the relatively low clear rates for Midas suggest that the raid community has not recovered. SE most likely has a target number of players they want to see attempting/clearing each content for it to be worth their development time. Something like Savage certainly has a lower target number than something like a story instance, but they'll likely still reduce the difficulty going forward if they aren't satisfied by the number of clears.

I thought people just didn't care due to the rewards.