Are the raid tiers "too hard?"

[StrejdaTom]

I am fine with the difficulty, I would just like more encounters than 4 and also completely different gear rather than just dyable one.

[Lambdafish]

I would just like more encounters than 4

#BringbackT3

[Lovescake]

Raiding is easy once you learn the mechanics. It's also pointless because what are you going to do with that weapon? Stand around Idyllshire and pretend to be AFK?

i feel like this is also an issue, we get given 240 + 245 weapons from the raid encounters which are basically nullified within three or so months because they let everyone get 240 gear + a 240 weapon eventually. it just rips away any incentive to do it because it can be spoonfed to them later on. as well as the content we currently get doesnt challenge a players gear, 240 ilvl all itll get you is an easier time in nidhogg and raid at this point. (which i get is the point of the "catch up patch" but still. it just outright kills the content.) it just makes any form of doing it irrelevant, and becomes a "well, everyone has cleared it now, if you havent youre bad" issue, or the "why would i go do a hard fight for a +5 ilvl weapon".

[Sandpark]

I think raids should be extreme since they target a specific player demographic of hardcore and skilled with time frame adaptability. The smallest fraction of the playerbase imo. But they deserve some love too.

There needs to be a public group content for 8 or more players that is about the same difficulty as most 4-8 man dungeons, with the note that statics can be made for better performance but there shouldn't be so many strict mechanics that result in a wipe. This content should be forgiving on play schedules and failure.

is easy once you learn the mechanics. It's also pointless because what are you going to do with that weapon? Stand around Idyllshire and pretend to be AFK?

This is true too. With so much focus on instances and the knowledge that raids will not be expanded as fast as other content. What is there to do with that weapon when there is not sufficient extreme raids.

[zosia]

Raiding is easy once you learn the mechanics. It's also pointless because what are you going to do with that weapon? Stand around Idyllshire and pretend to be AFK?

This is the problem with the game. Rewards are meaningless, easily obtainable, and have no impact on your gameplay anymore.You can literally show up in 3.4, days after release, with the brand new ilvl 250 crafted gear that easily out performs any gear you have been raiding for. Your progress in midas will have zero benefit to you in the new raid tier. That is absolutely garbage game design and the dev team should be embarrassed. There is no point in working on a BiS set to start the next raid tier with because the BiS set to start 3.4 with will be crafted.

It's entirely unfulfilling and how the dev team keeps missing big picture issues like that one is beyond my comprehensions. It's like this dev team makes decisions without thinking about the impact it will have in other areas of the game. By adding ilvl220 crafted gear in 3.2, any BiS sets farmed from Gordias savage FOR Midas savage were worthless.

Yoshida played captain Ahab with gordias. He wanted to hunt his white lucrezia whale for them beating T13 so fast. Yoshi P. and his dev team took a raiding community that had participation rates close to 10%, said "FU I want to stop lucrezia from getting full clears in three weeks" and destroyed the end game with Gordias.

What a novice move. Now that the raiding community is just about dead, people want to solve this problem?

This game is going free to play soon, the sub numbers are in decline from census to census. This is what happens when you break the backbone of the MMO community. LotRO turned it's back to raiders and the game drifted off into obscurity. The same thing is now happening with this game.

GG yoshida, gordias was perfect and absolutely everything this game needed! Glad you kept Lucrezia from getting a clear within a month, totally worth it! /s

Hopefully SE wises up and dumps the head producer that got so butt hurt that a world first group beat his raid so fast he had to go and destroy the endgame and raiding community over it.

[Nominous]

What I've found is that they aren't too hard, considering the fact that repetition is pretty much all that's required to win.

It's just the value proposition associated with the varying levels of content in XIV. The truth is... Raiding is at best for the challenge, and min/maxing your character. For some people, that's enough to motivate them to wipe for hundreds of hours. For others, and I think this is an increasing statistic, they can live with Tome gear. And the question that poses is the most important one; Why shouldn't people be okay with just Tome gear? There's really no good retort for that right now. You can do everything in the game (literally everything) with Tome gear.

And getting back to the original point...Savage's value is extremely low as far as the effort required. You're getting together a group, matching schedules, spending hundreds of hours, and it's all to get maybe 5% (arbitrary but low number) ahead of the non-raider, with no discernible difference other than slight boosts in DPS/Vitality/Healing.

When they can figure out how to make raid gear feel as rewarding as it should be, I think people will have far less issue with 'difficulty'.

[Kallera]

While I'm not about to make any predictions with the state of the game. If anything is going to kill the sub numbers it will be the design of the endgame progression.

using the pf is and perhaps always has been a crapshoot from learning to farm. It seems when Raid finder was no different people lost interest in using it. when raiding remains a difficult and stressful experience only the few are going to go. If raiding get singled out for unique rewards, it still will be a difficult and stressful experience.

People will still be dying their way to the clear. when it is something they can work on, then it is progression, when it isn't, when that problem is someone else again and again, then what? Isn't that the common experience people go through?

[Yoruichi4478]

I think raids should be extreme since they target a specific player demographic of hardcore and skilled with time frame adaptability. The smallest fraction of the playerbase imo. But they deserve some love too.

There needs to be a public group content for 8 or more players that is about the same difficulty as most 4-8 man dungeons, with the note that statics can be made for better performance but there shouldn't be so many strict mechanics that result in a wipe. This content should be forgiving on play schedules and failure.



This is true too. With so much focus on instances and the knowledge that raids will not be expanded as fast as other content. What is there to do with that weapon when there is not sufficient extreme raids.

There was nothing wrong with the difficulty of coil and the lack of 1 shot mechanics, there were a lot more raiders then too. First Savage took care of that.
Imho they should've just kept the model from scob, have a decently hard raid for midcores to be able to clear in a respectable amount of time and then the Savage SCOB for those who wanted more challenge, titles and bragging rights. That model worked. Same rewards yes but still, it was there if ppl wanted to try something harder but still be able to raid, progress, clear and gear up in the regular scob.

[SpookyGhost]

Imho they should've just kept the model from scob, have a decently hard raid for midcores to be able to clear in a respectable amount of time and then the Savage SCOB for those who wanted more challenge, titles and bragging rights. That model worked. Same rewards yes but still, it was there if ppl wanted to try something harder but still be able to raid, progress, clear and gear up in the regular scob.

Agree w/ this, the only complaint Savage got at the time (and why nobody wanted to do it) was that it shared a lockout with SCoB. If given the option, a lot of people would rather just clear the normal raid for the week and be done with it since the only incentive for Savage was titles. If we had a normal raid introduced in 3.4 and then a Savage difficulty in 3.5 that didn't share the same lockout but rewarded, say, cool glamour gear and a title then I'm sure you'd see a bunch of groups running it. Maybe even tune the first turn or two to below max ilvl and then tune the last 2 for max ilvl challenge.

I know the excuse is "muh resources", but having 3 tiers would've really alleviated this issue. Easy and Normal released at the same time, Savage released in the odd patch, rinse and repeat.

[Yoruichi4478]

Agree w/ this, the only complaint Savage got at the time (and why nobody wanted to do it) was that it shared a lockout with SCoB. If given the option, a lot of people would rather just clear the normal raid for the week and be done with it since the only incentive for Savage was titles.

I know the excuse is "muh resources", but having 3 tiers would've really alleviated this issue.

I remember the lockout being the disincentive but I was more thinking along the lines of difficulty tiers with that model and just use that part of it in Alex. I agree with you on 3 tiers, normal for casuals,midcore for those who liked the difficulty of coil, and savage for those hardcores who want to do the kitchen sink, would've worked, but at the same time not staggered. Gotta keep all raiding lvls of players engaged and occupied but with the ability to see the light at the end of the tunnel for those not wanting to do Savage. Otherwise the game loses subs and active players, which is what's happening in my fc and on Hyperion itself. Already lost my raid grp after getting into a8s some due to burnout since first Alex.