Thread: Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

Originally Posted by CyrusBryant

Format aside, I just wish they would address raid gear becoming worthless with the release of every new raid. It feels pointless putting in the effort to raid, and the BS that can be included with it, when they release crafted gear/NM raid gear 10 ilvl's higher than the previous ilvl raid gear (rendering the gear that we all work so hard for to become useless other than glamour).

I agree.

I just want to use my raid gear in the next raid please. You can keep giving out max level gear for clearing easy content like dungeons and 24 man, but stop making me throw away stuff (that you now expect me to MELD as well) for easy mode/crafted gear on day 1 of the patch.

At least Savage probably won't be so pound-me-in-the-ass hard.

Difficulty has never been my issue... 8 man raids just aren't rewarding or even particularly interesting at this point... As much as Alexanders story improved with Midas, I still can't bring myself to care about it even remotely as much as I did Coils... Coil just had vastly superior subject matter, you could insert Hildibrand into Alexanders plot and I wouldn't be remotely surprised... Level design was also better with Coil, and even then it wasn't particularly great... I guess people complained about Coil actually being a raid though, so now we get Alexander as a glorified trial...

It's a real shame too, Alexander was pretty much the perfect chance to try introducing some more challenging level design... Coil was pretty much just a cave with Allagan sh*t trying to kill you, interesting caves, but still just caves... Alexander you're actually inside the Primal... I think only once did I actually feel like my surroundings were remotely an enemy though, and thats A4 where the vents suck you up... That kind of thing should have been played up a whole lot more... We're inside Alexander, the entire level should be as much an enemy as the bosses, just getting to those bosses should be half the battle... Shame "trash packs" are the only thing developers seem to be able to handle these days...

Still, difficulty isn't my issue with Savage... It's that there are no real rewards... No story. No gear. What? There is gear? Lol, you must be confused, XIV doesn't have gear. Glamour is the true endgame... Add the fact that it's just painful to do, and... I'm just not going to do it... Heck, even if you made it a delight to go through at this point... I'd still just go through and experience that in Normal... Savage just doesn't add much...

Honestly, I'm happy they're keeping normal. Raids are one of the most expensive pieces of content to produce, and previously they were also one of the least played pieces of content. The vast majority of the playerbase has little to no interest in hardcore raids. Whether it be due to time commitments, difficulty, rewards, or whatever, most of the playerbase just isn't going to it. "Normal Mode" opens it up to a MUCH larger portion of the playerbase. They get to experience the story, the fights, and the zones at a difficulty they're more comfortable with. I'm sure the clear rates for normal mode are at a much more acceptable level.

Moving back to the "one difficulty" level of Coil would be extremely problematic. Just look at the clear rates from April 2015: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...active/cqjuvsn

The highest server clear rate for NA was 4.80%. For JP it was 15.60%. They want a larger proportion of the players actually completing the content. Building such an expensive addition for such a small proportion of the fanbase is just bad business sense.

Keep in mind, even these forums are a very small representative of the playerbase. Only the more dedicated players end up here, hence the common requests for higher difficulty content and/or raids, when realistically only a very small amount of players will ever engage in it. The Devs have the difficult task of balancing the expectations and desires of the hardcore, midcore, and casual audiences. I'm not saying they've succeeded at this point, but getting rid of "Normal Mode" would be an absolute step in the wrong direction.