Are the raid tiers "too hard?"

[Eldevern]

...

I'm not that sure, I've seen many players who have left the game even before HW and have not coming back. Maybe IRL matters but a lot of mid-core have left because of behaviors of each sides : impatient ultra-hardcore and trolls (how could they be that bad and anyway clear main story?).

And the point many people forget : not all players are rushers and all those who wanted to take their time just gave up being left behind. "You want to really clear HL? Then rush." They end to reply "Thanks but no. I'm not interested." and left the game.

Now, was COIL too hard? No, the problem is to build the team with the good synergy (skills and availability). I remember people told echo came too soon. I think that's a real point.

[Zojha]

This is not true. Raiding isn't less popular because of the way that western players play, we as a playerbase haven't changed since 2.0 in terms of mentality and coil was a big success for raiding and clear numbers.

Was it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...y_730k_active/
If I recall correctly, only 4,5% of people on the top raiding server Gilgamesh cleared FCOB as of April 2015 (I wager that's when they introduced echo?). Right now, it's at a similar number for Gordias and 1,73% for Midas if we go by the censi. Worth noting would be that the data was taken via searching minions and the minion for coil went to everyone who cleared it, whereas only one minion is given out for the Alexander tiers, so people would have to clear it 8 times to get the same number as coil. Feel free to correct me on this one. Also: We can only compare the final tier of coil because the others didn't have minions.

Personally, I don't feel raiding has ever been a "success" more than Lord of Verminion is >_>

[Lambdafish]

Was it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...y_730k_active/
If I recall correctly, only 4,5% of people on the top raiding server Gilgamesh cleared FCOB as of April 2015

My mistake, coil wasn't as successful as I remember but the point still stands that coil was far more successful than Alex. FCOB clear rates can easily be contributed to one single thing - being locked behind BCOB and SCOB (T9 being harder than anything FCOB had to offer), which made it very inaccessible to many people, and I feel that without this limitation, it would have been more successful.

[Velhart]

My mistake, coil wasn't as successful as I remember but the point still stands that coil was far more successful than Alex. FCOB clear rates can easily be contributed to one single thing - being locked behind BCOB and SCOB (T9 being harder than anything FCOB had to offer), which made it very inaccessible to many people, and I feel that without this limitation, it would have been more successful.

FCoB was more successful on the midcore side than the hardcore side. Hardcore players beat it in the same week or a little over last I recall(please correct me if I am wrong on that). Raiding should be built towards midcore and hardcore only really with the casual base being an afterthought. It is one piece of content in this game that is suppose to truly challenge you. The best set up really is making Normal Mode have FCoB's difficulty, and Savage be something that give hardcore a run for their money. This balances out things. Not only that, keep Savage always on a ilvl sync so the reward for it, be it titles or certain gear always hold some form of value. The Savage titles from SCoB are mostly meaningless because anyone can jump in at lv.60 and easily get it done.

If SE wants to dish out three modes (Story > Normal > Savage), I don't mind, but they play the "we can only do two" game and they should cater to who the content was intended for, people seeking a challenge. What makes better sense? A story mode people beat in a day and get their gear less than a month and it is barely touched by people again? Or a Normal Mode that lasts two patch cycles and a Savage that stays relevant forever? Can even dumb down Normal Mode and add the echo once the new tier raid is introduced for casual players.

This game is 95% casual content, it wouldn't hurt anything to keep raiding catered to the midcore/hardcore scene.

[Brannigan]

I think Midas was still a little overtuned. 5 and 6 are not - their numbers are fine, mechanics aside. In 7 and 8, I think the damage numbers are a little too high on stuff like the final J-kick, some raid AOEs, and the two stack lightning beams. Early on it basically makes it so you're required to bring an INT debuff (2/13 jobs), a warrior (1/13 jobs), and a scholar (1/13 jobs). My group has three (including myself) who prefer PLD/NIN/DRG, so we were a little screwed. I did DRK for Gordias because I really wanted to win, but I didn't really like it, so I really didn't want to do it again this time.

The bigger problem I have with Midas is how punishing every mistake is.

Messed up High/Low? The culprit dies, you get a high raid AOE damage, and you get a damage down debuff to screw over your DPS checks. Oh, by the way, on Brute Justice another raid AOE is immediately incoming so you just wiped.
One person got hit by a Chakram? GG, wipe it out. Can't live through the next phase with the permanent damage stack.
Someone was a little late to [anything] -> Instant kill/wipe.
One person died to anything on Quickthinx -> permanent damage stacks, snowballs out of control quickly.

Killing the person who made the mistake or even wiping the raid is fine, the problem is the sheer amount of insta wipes and unrecoverable situations in the Midas fights. If you can't balance around combat rezzing then throw someone off the battlefield or get rid of it, but at least let the survivors still try to win the fight. Instant wiping because one person made a mistake last phase sucks and it leads to a lot of frustration with your friends. In The Good Raids (AKA Coil) you could carry a couple of people who were maybe a little bit underperforming. Now, you can't. That's bad.

The cherry on top is that for all of this the rewards are complete crap. You get a minion and some bad looking dye-able gear (that you ALREADY HAD, but it wasn't dye-able) - half of which isn't even necessarily good - and it doesn't even have a set bonus or something to make it interesting. CRIT, SPEED, DET, ACC. Whoopdie doo. Oh, tanks also get screwed over with parry. Also, you THROW ALL OF THIS GEAR AWAY in patch 3.4 because crafted items and easy mode gear are better and practically free.

You don't even get a title and anyone can go back at item level 400 next expansion to farm out your stupid little minion you spent 150 hours getting.

SE failed to realize that when people asked for harder content they meant that nearly everything else in the game outside of raids/EX primals is stupidly easy to the point of being BORING.

[Daemius]

My main issue with raid content right now isn't difficulty. I don't mind tackling difficult content over and over again and failing. What I do mind is that A) I already have the Alex story from beating norm B) Why am I fighting goblins and boring steampunk robots? The stakes felt much higher in coil. The environments looked cooler. Etc etc. I feel like Alex and the Void/Mhach story should have been swapped. I also just think they should scrap norm mode raids and go back to the way Coil was in 2.x but that's because I find exclusive story content more appealing a carrot than raid gear.

[Velhart]

My main issue with raid content right now isn't difficulty. I don't mind tackling difficult content over and over again and failing. What I do mind is that A) I already have the Alex story from beating norm B) Why am I fighting goblins and boring steampunk robots? The stakes felt much higher in coil. The environments looked cooler. Etc etc. I feel like Alex and the Void/Mhach story should have been swapped. I also just think they should scrap norm mode raids and go back to the way Coil was in 2.x but that's because I find exclusive story content more appealing a carrot than raid gear.

I think SE in that interview said they acknowledged that Alexander's story was not favored in comparison to Coils. Likely they will take it back to a more serious tone and make the stakes high again. The thing with Coils however is that a lot of people came from 1.0, and it was strongly tied in with 1.0's MSQ. People were wondering what happened since 1.0 shut down and the mystery was exciting. I can imagine in raiding stories it is hard to live up to this because Coils had a lot of background going for it. However Alexander is pretty lackluster. It is an entertaining story in itself, but it does not do well in bringing scale to the conflict. With SE knowing this, I can only imagine where they can go from there.

Also, I agree that story is a reward in itself for accomplishing difficult content. Unfortunately, you and I are in the minority in that mindset. Brought it up once but apparently no one agreed with me there. Only things considered rewarding by many is just gear. It felt so rewarding when I beat a difficult boss then got to witness a pretty intense scene like after T9, T12, and T13. Finally downing T13 after quite a while of trial and error, and then finally being rewarded for the closure in the story I long been seeking. However, SE believes story should be handed out on a silver platter to those not compelled to hit more than the 1 key.

Raiding isn't too hard for me, but it certainly is boring. Oh look, someone had a brain fart five minutes in and now we're back to the start of the fight because for the most part, a single derp is unrecoverable. Zzzzz. When the content relies on 8 people performing in a predetermined pattern without a single screw-up, it gets pretty old and tiring after a while. I don't really equate gimmicky one-shots with difficulty, they're just needless frustration, and XIV raiding has gimmicky one-shots in spades.

Maybe all raiding is like this, idk. But I'd prefer if rather than pointless pass/fail checks there would be more "snowballing" mechanics where if you derp once, it's harder (but still beatable), derp too many times though and you wipe.

SE is the heaviest abuser I seen with one shot mechanics. The fights are similar to WoW where if you do not perform a mechanic correctly, it is basically a wipe even if it isn't a one shot. Its more like there is a ton more strain on your tank or healer if you do not do mechanics correctly. I would argue however that WoW at least has better methods of recovering yourself from a fight or improvise better if something goes sour. Some fights in FFXIV, if you are just one toe off it is a wipe. So it is understandable that it can get frustrating quick. SE should think of ways to keep the fights very difficult but not overly frustrating.

[loreleidiangelo]

Raiding isn't too hard for me, but it certainly is boring. Oh look, someone had a brain fart five minutes in and now we're back to the start of the fight because for the most part, a single derp is unrecoverable. Zzzzz. When the content relies on 8 people performing in a predetermined pattern without a single screw-up, it gets pretty old and tiring after a while. I don't really equate gimmicky one-shots with difficulty, they're just needless frustration, and XIV raiding has gimmicky one-shots in spades.

Maybe all raiding is like this, idk. But I'd prefer if rather than pointless pass/fail checks there would be more "snowballing" mechanics where if you derp once, it's harder (but still beatable), derp too many times though and you wipe.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Raiding isn't too hard for me, but it certainly is boring. Oh look, someone had a brain fart five minutes in and now we're back to the start of the fight because for the most part, a single derp is unrecoverable. Zzzzz. When the content relies on 8 people performing in a predetermined pattern without a single screw-up, it gets pretty old and tiring after a while. I don't really equate gimmicky one-shots with difficulty, they're just needless frustration, and XIV raiding has gimmicky one-shots in spades.

Maybe all raiding is like this, idk. But I'd prefer if rather than pointless pass/fail checks there would be more "snowballing" mechanics where if you derp once, it's harder (but still beatable), derp too many times though and you wipe.

While I don't find these mechanics boring, I do tend to agree with your overall point. Groups should be able to pull out an underdog moment. In fact, those typically are much more fun because it's inherently unpredictable and exhilarating. Which segues into another issue I see with the game: predictability. Instead of having trunk loads of damage or near one shot mechanics, I think the devs should explore allowing the A.I. more leeway with when mechanics start happening. Let the difficulty come from having to anticipate attacks on the fly.

[FunkyBunch]

The problem I have with raiding is that it's tough to get into. I nearly quit FFXIV because of it. I tried for weeks to get a group for Midas and then after about four hours of trying Seph Ex (over two raid days) the group kicked me (despite my average DPS for my role and being the last one to die) for one of their friends who came back to the game, by then it was too late to latch onto a new group if one could even be found.
I also tried to make my own group, and getting 8 people together at the same time is nearly impossible.
There needs to be a way to make it so midcore people can raid without the wall of "have you raided this tier before"?. That basically leads to a smaller and smaller raid community.
On our server I don't think anyone has even cleared A8S, and there are only two groups that have cleared A7S that I know of.
The fights need to be designed around midcore player abilities instead of hardcore player abilities or the cycle will just keep repeating until there's no one left to raid.

That being said, I loved BCoB->FCoB. The story was great and the fights were interesting. The story in Alexander is terrible.