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

Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Says the person talking from the opposite extreme. The both of you are the problem.

I don't think you see the big picture here. All three forms of play need to be balanced. Casual, Midcore, and Hardcore. Right now motivation is dead on all levels. For one reason or another, each style of play has a severe lack of motivation. A large contributing factor to that is how much this game hands out everything to you for doing borderline nothing. Mindless dungeons with no depth, relics that only have grind content, overly easy mode for raids.

When you make everything a participation reward, then all three levels of play lose motivation to progress. At least making dungeons more challenging (like 2.0 Amdapor Keep/Wanderer's Palace), more trials to overcome in relic (Chimera/Hydra), and so on are what people need to stay focus and motivated. Its like developers want you to get really bored before even the odd patch hits.

A restructure of how we progress is very much needed. Casuals need proper motivation to advance without everything handed to them, Midcore need more variety of challenges, and Hardcore need something to overcome that only the higher skill of player can take on.

Basically do what they did at the start of 2.0. A lot of good ideas there were tarnished because special snowflakes can't be compelled to step out of their safe zone in the slightest bit.

Originally Posted by Taika

remove the tomestone gear entirely.

This is the solution to many endgame woes (except for crafted/normal mode gear invalidating the previous raid - that just needs to stop entirely). Getting item drops feels good. Buying items and seeing trash drop (sup dungeons) feels like crap.

RNG was hellish in 1.x so a lot of people asked for a token system, but I think the devs misinterpreted what a token is supposed to do. I always expected something like how WoW used to do set pieces - a generic item would drop with three or four classes on it (Paladin/Mage/Priest for example) and those classes could roll for it and turn it in for a piece of armor. That, or how Gordias/Midas pages work (which is good).

Instead we got spamming Wanderer's Palace for raid-level gear.

Another solution is to keep tomestones, but only have them come from the 8 man savage raid. That way, you could still mitigate bad RNG but the actual drops from dungeons wouldn't be completely useless. They could set up a progression of something like

New Dungeon/Old 8 man savage raid < Ex Primals/24 man raid < 8 man savage raid

Originally Posted by Hayward

I know for a FACT you and others who think this way would put "[insert raid-level gear] or GTFO" in the PF comments if SE followed your selfish suggestions. What other reason would you have for removing Tomestone gear except for creating a chasm between filthy commoners and the noble raiders?

When was the last time you actually used an item that dropped from a dungeon on your main class? I know the last time I used an item from a dungeon was 3.0 launch, but I replaced all of it with uncapped tomestone gear (which was higher item level than the drops for some reason) almost immediately. If we don't count expansion launches, the last time I used an item that came from a dungeon was 1.x. That sucks and tomestones are basically just poison. Beyond invalidating all dungeon gear, though, they actually make the """"catchup"""" patch 24-man raid gear less exciting because, by the time the 24 man raid comes out, everyone already has at least one full set of same-ilvl gear.

Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

You're basically asking the developers to take out something from non raiders and give nothing but a 3 month delay in return. In my view, if there's nothing for non raiders to do if you go for the trickle down effect for gear, that could affect subs as well. If you couldn't tell, people hate waiting. If people can't get raid gear along side savage raid gear, then what do you propose that the delay should offer other than a waiting game?

If Alex(Story Mode) was an actual Normal mode then the current gear progression currently would be fine. Tomestone and gear from that could line up. Savage having high gear ilvl that would give a nice slight advantage to hardcore raiders for the next tier set.

In all honesty though, increasing ilvl in raids in general will not solve any major issues the current structure has. Like I said before, all levels of play need to feel like they are progressing. The question is, how much do players who only like the easier content line up with those who enjoy the harder content. Players right now can go through hardships and stress to get ilvl240 gear, which the average midcore group takes at least the even and odd patch to complete. Or you can just grind tomestone gear and have a set with upgrade items given in a odd patch that is roughly the same time. Sure BiS can be taken into account, but the general idea is still there.

While above is true, at the end of the day, gear is truly a means to just accomplish content. It is not doubtful however that a lot of people put value in gear more than they should and a motivation to push forward. So while I don't completely agree with the mindset, I am very much a minority on that. So developers should look back and at least find out how to motivate people into harder content, because it sure isn't Story Mode.

Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

You're basically asking the developers to take out something from non raiders and give nothing but a 3 month delay in return.

Don't you think the "non-raiders" would actually spend that time doing things like the previous Savage raid, older extremes etc. instead of nothing? Since that content has been made easier and put in Duty Finder for accessibility and does not require a static or having studied the strategies perfectly to be able to complete the fights. What would be wrong in spending that time farming gear from that content (which already has a token system similar to Alexander normal except it's better since you get 1 token drop per win for sure every week) instead of just farming the two expert dungeons?

In my opinion, if we need to keep something similar to the current system, the perfect rotation would be:

1. New Savage tier raid + New Extreme + 2 new dungeons with relatively relevant gear
2. New 24 person casual raid + 2 new dungeons with relatively relevant gear (story mode of the current Savage raid here if there really has to be one)
3. New Savage tier raid + New Extreme + dungeons + the (1.) Savage and Extreme are nerfed and moved to Duty Finder so that those who haven't done them yet can experience them and farm the gear
2. New 24 person casual raid etc.

Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Unlike ARR where you could ignore mechanics and just burn down everything HW is not like that all of these past fights (except Ravana) require you to do the mechanics, failing to do so means you die instantly/kill other people/wipe the raid. The echo does not help in these fights if people don't know the dance they wont clear. All overgearing does is making the dps check sections of the fight easier. Maybe 4.0 will change that but i doubt it the design concept for ex trials and savage raids has changed from 2.0

But like in previous Coil turns, the developers are able to adjust the fight mechanics while they move them in Duty Finder. That's not really an issue.