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

Originally Posted by Ibi

Do you have a source for the 30% figure?

According to this post, "By the end of October, around half of active players have cleared Alex Normal," which indicates that at least "around half" of active players were at the level cap at that time.

Lucky Bancho's most recent unofficial census puts the number of active players at 507,722 and the number of players who've cleared the 3.0 story (which requires the player to have at least one level 60 job) at 354,091, which would be almost 70%.

Eoreazen census from '14 and '15 respectively, official data released by SE. These will show you the number of level capped players. It's simple math after that. Just compare t1-13 clear rates with the number of level capped characters during ARR. You will see that T1-13 had varying clear rates ranging from 12% for the earlier fights and 14-0.1% for the final fight (server dependent). Overall, raid participation was around 10%. If you look at the number of level capped jobs (none exceed 30%), you can see that roughly 30% of the players of this game actually reach end game.

So, if 30% of players reach the end game, and T1-13 had a 10% participation rate (meaning they cleared some of the coil fights), that means a third of endgame players participated in raids during ARR. The raiding community was not some fringe community that only comprised 1% of the endgame player base, it was a HUGE portion of the end game community.

Then Yoshida killed the raiding community with alex savage due to it's insane difficulty, junk story force fed through normal, and poor rewards. This is reflected in the 2015 census.

My sources:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...s-embarrassing

The same census source you cite, showing roughly 8% over all servers for a T13 clear. That 8% of T13 clears is easily 10% participation among all the turns (T1-13), there was a census that showed this (T1 having a +12% clear rate), but I am having trouble finding it.

The census data from SE:

2014: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ea-Census-2014
2015: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...e8ff1bcf34c5ae

Originally Posted by zosia

The entire endgame community only comprises 30% of the player base. Both causal and raiding endgame players are the minority already. I already showed in this thread that raiders comprise a larger portion of the endgame community than most people are willing to admit to. A third of endgame players tried coils when they were relevant.

Retreating to this 'minority/majority' argument is pointless when both end game groups we are talking about are minorities and every piece of content outside of ex trials and raids is designed to be SUPER casual friendly.

Is Alex normal, hunts, Palace of the dead, weeping city, treasure maps, DoH, DoL, expert dungeons, aquapolis, the entire gold saucer, housing, the countless holiday events, etc etc etc not enough casual oriented content to sustain this "lifeblood" "majority" you are talking about?

In order to please this "lifeblood majority" we are talking about, do you really need to devalue the one piece of HC content in the entire game to the point where the only reason to do Midas savage is for bragging rights? The casual "lifeblood" of this game already gets 90% of the content catered to them. How much more do you need?

You're right in that a lot of people did try Coil when it was new... but they also failed to beat it. As echo was released, more people did beat it though, granted, but it was obviously not enough for them to be happy with. Until things like Echo happened and better ilvl gear became available, those failed attempt players essentially did not do it or suffered misery for many months, which isn't a good thing btw... just look at what happened with the first range of Alex Savage.

Kinda reaching on the examples of content to take part in in the mean time. Some of that is just outright old or stale content, timed events that last no more than a single day, or stuff that does not appeal to some wants due to limited value. So many variables that don't even deal with a long-term objective, where only a handful would somewhat feels rewarding after a couple months. Some are even finished in a week at most... how exactly is that a lot of content to take on for months? And what do you mean Alex normal? In the current situation, that makes sense, but in the situation you want, how does that work at the introduction of a raid? Not to mention, they can't exactly time travel, so it wouldn't happen in this raid tier, given we're soon to be done with it. Like I said previously, that comment was looking at it from the staggered release of Savage > Normal separated by 3-6 months.

The "woe is me" mentality blinds you from the fact that minority does not equal best profit nor does it, more importantly, equal a majority enjoyment. They are going to commonly appease the majority over the minority, especially when what is being suggested affects EVERYONE. The concerns about lack of difficult content is a separate issue. The detriment behind lack of reward/motivation to the hardest raids is also a separate issue and one that goes together with their outlook of how to properly reward players appropriately.

Just as your constant mention of having quit is apparently seen by you as a "powerful" message or symbol, so too is their desire to keep Savage along the lines it has always been lol. Dime a dozen on quitting something, no matter how good or bad it might be. I have to ask though, how long ago did you quit? Just out of curiosity on that. I'd assume it'd have to be very recent if you really did.

EDIT:

I don't think normal needs to go away, what needs to happen is normal and savage need to be completely separated. This means that normal should not drop the same looking gear and that you don't need to do Normal for anything related to savage.

Then, the rewards from savage raids need to have an ilvl higher than upgraded tome gear in addition to being better than crafted gear in the following raid patch. If you fear that this will screw over crafters, let crafters make gear augmentations that give raid gear the 10 ilvl bump (ex midas gear is 240 > use crafted augmentation > now the gear is 250).

Now this is something I agree with, and is even something along what I've suggested in another thread on the matter of rewarding Savage appropriately (be it story, gear, whatever). It is absolutely tragic for that crowd that Yoshi-P doesn't see it necessary, but that's essentially what we'd expect from the way this game has always been. It's just become more apparent since the beginning of HW, though evidence did exist even with Coil.

Originally Posted by Welsper59

snip

What I wonder is, how much can you cater to this 'majority' till all end game content is just a complete joke? How much can Savage be toned down till it becomes Story Mode > Story Mode? Even disregarding Story Mode, Yoshi-P is so fixed on getting more wins in Savage that by how he sounds, that he is willing to take it to a level where much higher percentage is clearing it. If the content is difficult, but fair, and a very low percentage has a clear, then I say damn good work. If I was a developer and I made really hard content that was well designed and only the upper skilled players could beat it, I would be proud of my work.

Also, is story so devalued that people believe they shouldn't put effort to obtain it? I remember taking a while at T12, and when I beat it, the story I got from it was so satisfying and was eager to find out what happened and I finally got my info. It felt really good and I felt like I earned it. Can argue that Alexander's story is not top notch, but what if 4.0's raid is? Story can be a powerful motivator if it is good.

Originally Posted by Rita1989

Dont see any harm in having savage available from the start or a couple of weeks before normal

Normal existing has been a good thing but perhaps they could change the gear so it serves as a catch up rather then being the best gear available at the start of the patch.

I'm not sure how this fixes anything. You are still giving players a much easier means to earn story/gear without having to earn it during it's prime.

Originally Posted by Velhart

What I wonder is, how much can you cater to this 'majority' till all end game content is just a complete joke?

Looking at diadem, palace of the dead, and platoons... It already is. I guess we will see how many subs this format can retain in 4.0, my guess is not many. Blizzard already walked down this path and lost 1/2 their subs.... Now Yoshida wants to follow Blizz. GG

The thing i feared the most in 2.X is becoming a reality in 3.X

Originally Posted by Velhart

What I wonder is, how much can you cater to this 'majority' till all end game content is just a complete joke? How much can Savage be toned down till it becomes Story Mode > Story Mode? Even disregarding Story Mode, Yoshi-P is so fixed on getting more wins in Savage that by how he sounds, that he is willing to take it to a level where much higher percentage is clearing it. If the content is difficult, but fair, and a very low percentage has a clear, then I say damn good work. If I was a developer and I made really hard content that was well designed and only the upper skilled players could beat it, I would be proud of my work.

Also, is story so devalued that people believe they shouldn't put effort to obtain it? I remember taking a while at T12, and when I beat it, the story I got from it was so satisfying and was eager to find out what happened and I finally got my info. It felt really good and I felt like I earned it. Can argue that Alexander's story is not top notch, but what if 4.0's raid is? Story can be a powerful motivator if it is good.

While I'm somewhat neutral on the matter (since I can understand the positives on both ends having over a decade of MMORPG experience), I do respect the feeling and enjoyment you'd get from striving to overcome a difficult challenge and get your reward, in this case being story. I just relate it primarily to my old XI experience, more than WoWs with prolific raids involving Illidan and the Lich King, as XI was difficult as hell for almost everyone, regardless of raid status, to do lol.

The relief and enjoyment from experiencing the story was very much a reward. Personally, there has barely been any storyline segment in this game that could hold a candle to the storytelling done in XI. XIV just feels cheesy in so many ways. Parts of it are great and it is fun, but it feels like we're trying to watch a children's version of Saving Private Ryan that is all about the power of friendship... and smiling head nods. I'd be sorely disappointed struggling to get the majority of story segments here back then lol. At least where it is now with MSQ, it's a little more grown up.

So in essence, yeah the story is kinda devalued, but in multiple different ways. Final Fantasy is a game you primarily engage for story. They know that people can't handle Savage mode, especially if it were on-par with the hell that was Gordias for most players. I sincerely doubt people would be happy if Coils story were locked behind its Savage mode. This is an era where you don't/can't really go against appeasing the majority in an MMORPG... or really a game in general.

If your goal IS to gate people from large chunks of meaningful story, then that's that. Clearly the devs don't want that and just want everyone to enjoy it. They don't care about it being exclusive because they want more people to enjoy the things they put time in to create. Different devs have different goals. Some are more of the storytelling and sharing crowd, somewhat like the devs in XIV, others are more of earning your keep to enjoy what you came for.

Had XIV started in that latter crowd for greater difficulty and progression, things would be very different. It didn't however, and thus the majority who are just here to experience the game in general are who they are catering more to. Those who are here for that old school gated mass reward system are NOT the primary target audience, at least for now. They'll try to do what they can without endangering their vision, allowing things like story to be experienced by everyone with mostly ease of challenge. They're not objectively wrong to do things the way they are, nor are they objectively wrong to prioritize the majority. They may lose hardcore raiding players from it, but that's just how this game was always designed. Even during the beta days, Yoshi-P never really made endgame raiding the pinnacle of why you should play FFXIV. Even for anyone having joined from 2.0, and only now realizing the raid philosophy and being unhappy with it, that fault is not really on the devs.

Whether or not that should be changed is obviously up for debate, but the question becomes how and why? Closing off significant parts of the game from others is where they will apparently not cross the line for, so the folks who want that are blowing steam up their ass for a stupid reason unfit for this game. Maybe they'll change that at some point, but most likely not while the majority enjoy Yoshi-P's direction. You need someone like Tanaka back if you want that really old school raid mentality.

Going to be honest I am glad they are keeping the Normal and Savage modes. I for one do not have time to form a static group and dedicate x amount of hours each week to learning the savage fights. I prefer to log on when I can and hop in a DF party, either solo or with FC, and run the normal raid content . Don't get me wrong back in the day I loved hardcore content and would spend hours each week learning fights. Unfortunately, savage content requires dedication and a good team that works well with each other and many players just cant or wont be bothered to make that kind of effort.

So yea I like the current setup to where Mid core content can be ran in DF and with a somewhat descent group it can be completed. Those who prefer static groups for savage mode can still do so if they choose to. Its a win win for everyone. I dont get the negativity over this. I loved running coils back in the day but I could only run them in either DF or in PF. Trying to form a static group for that content when it was relevant was a pain in the butt and god-forbid real life stuff happens (like having to stay late at work because someone called off sick) and was unable to sign in on raid night. All you see are pitchforks and chains being slung at you then kicked from the static group.

So thank you to the entire Dev team for keeping Normal and Savage raid content for 4.0 as well. I am sure the folks who are in college or those who have to work hard providing a roof over head and food on the table for their loved ones thank you as well. Not everyone can dedicate 15+ hours to raiding each week. So having a normal mode for raiding content allows those who really enjoy raids but simply cant dedicate those kinds of hours to learning savage content a chance to at least enjoy the story and get some mid tier gear out of it.

Its a WIN WIN for everyone so what is the problem? Those who have time and enjoy savage content will have it and those who enjoy raids but simply cant do savage for what ever reason will also be able to enjoy the same kind of the fun in normal mode. Why are people so bent out of shape over 2 modes of the same raiding content? Do you feel you dont have as much to gloat about? Tough... bragging is for the simple minded folks who apparently needs a lot of attention to feel important o.O.... Are you one of those folks that need to have a statue of your character placed in front of your FC house for clearing savage content? Or are you one of those players that simply enjoy savage content just for fun?

Anyways looking forward to 4.0.