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

More news from the reddit page! This was translated by elevenmile
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Mosuu-chan: Raiding prospects from now on. Will the format for raiding be the same as Alexander from there on? If so, how will the difference between normal and savage be from there on?

Yoshida: In other words, A question of "Motivation" eh. For 4.0, we are confirmed to go with Normal and Savage format for the specifications as well. Since we have made it this far, and most players are saved by having the normal mode available for players to access, and thanks for normal mode that the amount of players who can access end contents like this from not being able to do so during Bahamut days, and those who gauged interest on Savage content have since increased. So we would like to remain this way. We also understand that this setup has contributed a lot to the community.

And then comes with the differentiation between Normal and Savage...

Mosuu-chan: For Gordias, bosses from floor 1 to 4 saw no changes and therefore visual wise there were no fresh changes, but for Midas floor 4, bosses saw an additional wings and that added a little motivation. These changes are a welcome addition, so it'd be nice if we can have them.

Yoshida: We thought of wanting to do this for Alexander Creator (Tendou-hen, "The Celestial Chapter") as well, but since we have made this to be just a conclusion to the Alexander chapter, we did not get that involved into those changes. Although, for that portion we're still putting in some adjustments (as in making it as flashy as it can be). Although, there will be some slight changes (between Normal and Savage in terms of something that was mentioned by Mosuu-chan above). People who went through Savage should know this by now but the real battle starts when "entering a certain phase", and that was what I meant by that.

During Bahamut era, we have been told a lot from players as well as our co-workers that we have spent far too much cost making a content that only a certain people would go through, and that we should not invest our cost further on this one. Rather, we don't have much staffs for this. Also, we could have done something if we can have about two skilled developers introduced to us, but then it's not like we did not think through it without them as well. We thought of making Floor 1 - 2 to be normal mode, while 3 - 4 would be Savage and so on. Normal would be the usual story, Savage would be the "What if" story, and so on.

We thought of that a lot, but then who would do so...you see. On the other hand, by putting some lever (As in, a form of pseudo incentive in context) into the rewards it will create this "we have do this!" kind of obsessional and forced incentive onto players so we did not go with it. And even we made it easy and made it a child's play it will just take away the interesting part of such a content so we can't do that as well.

To be frank, we're still working our way around this. Considering we would like to put much care on the raiding culture in Japan that we have cultivated. For Alexander:Creator in 3.4, we would like to see the content walkthrough for this, and determine on which aspect should we adjust on, plus where to lower the difficulty, and think further on what to do next for 4.0 raiding content, along Normal/Savage difficulty.

Since we still have some time before the 4.0 raiding content hits so please let us study further on this. That's how much we have been working our way on.

That's a shame, it would have been smarter to go back to the Coil format. But at least they can apply the lessons they've learned from Alexander to the future.

Originally Posted by Fynlar

Pls no. I'd rather get the chance to play through content while it's still actually relevant

And you would be able to...?

It would just actually take longer than an hour. If you couldn't do Coil while it was relevant, that's more of a you problem, as there were plenty of pugs back then.

Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

And you would be able to...?

It would just actually take longer than an hour. If you couldn't do Coil while it was relevant, that's more of a you problem, as there were plenty of pugs back then.

Pugs aren't going to do it for you, frankly. I spent the entire patch from Sephirot Ex release until echo was added to the fight trying to pug the fight. While I did get the win before echo, it was on the last day before it was added. And that's Sephirot! An EASY fight compared to pretty much any floor of Alexander Savage. I honestly don't see ANY raid pug succeeding, not unless it's about three quarters filled with raiders who happen to be slumming it, or a farm party that decides to take along someone who needs the win.

No, it became very clear with Alexander that the only way to succeed is to join a static party and HOPE that the other members of that static party are able to learn the fight as well as you can. These eight members have to be able to agree on practice times and frequency, and have to have enough spare time in real life to meet these demands.

And let's not forget to factor in the latency issues that many players have to deal with. Raid level fights are very unforgiving. If you're the sort of individual who can expect a moment of lag a second or two every ten minutes or so - well, you might as well not raid. You WILL die to lag, and you will take everyone else down with you. Even if you don't suffer latency regularly, if any of the eight members has a bad connection one night, it will generally be enough to make it not even worth practicing that evening.

It's understandable why folks would be frustrated with these raids and give them up as a lost cause without even trying. There's so many factors that can doom a raid that are COMPLETELY out of the hands of the individual. Windows of free time not matching up with other players, other players' skill levels, your latency issues, other players' latency issues... It can be agonizing, knowing you're GOOD enough to do this (whether or not that perception is justified) but cannot succeed because of all these factors.

There's a reason that folks actually go so far as to change servers to have a hope of dipping into that incredibly tiny pool of players that are actually worth partying with.

Originally Posted by Fynlar

Pls no. I'd rather get the chance to play through content while it's still actually relevant

Nothing would be stopping you.
I too, much prefer a story reward and this made Coil so much better than Alexander in this regards. I'm not striving and failing to get more lore, I'm doing it for a new price if gear marginally equal to what I'm already wearing.

Originally Posted by Canadane

Nothing would be stopping you.
I too, much prefer a story reward and this made Coil so much better than Alexander in this regards. I'm not striving and failing to get more lore, I'm doing it for a new price if gear marginally equal to what I'm already wearing.

Problem is, unless the difficulty is substantially reduced, people who aren't interested in Savage won't do it. Normal mode exists because those same people complained story was gated by high endgame raid content-- something the vast majority of players do not participate in.

I do hope they make it so normal isn't a requirement. Plenty of raiders I know dislike having most of the fight spoiled since they have to clear normal.

Originally Posted by AutumnsHollow

I wish they'd at least delay normal mode so it wasn't up during new raid tiers.

Mhm. That would be a good solution. Push Normal into the "catch up" patch. Raiders get a spoiler free fight and non-raiders get their story, albeit a little later.

Originally Posted by Canadane

Nothing would be stopping you.
I too, much prefer a story reward and this made Coil so much better than Alexander in this regards. I'm not striving and failing to get more lore, I'm doing it for a new price if gear marginally equal to what I'm already wearing.

This so much.

They really need more incentives for doing savage.

Originally Posted by Zojha

...you probably were a part of about 70% of players.

Top clear rate for Final Coil was still 16% on the top japanese raiding server. 4% on the top NA/EU raiding server. If we are lenient and assume only half the people who attempt it end up clearing it, you end up with about 70% of players who never even got into it when it was relevant. And that's taking the top raiding server worldwide as standard.

Better blame it on the players, right? Because the players have to cater to the game, not the game to the players >_>

70% of the player base isn't even max level. Better make leveling easier eh?

Your logic is awful.

Sure, there's people who aren't interested in raiding, and that will never change, but you don't have to completely kill off your raid scene in order to cater to people who probably won't even do the normal mode. You have any idea how hard it is to find people willing to join statics these days?