A12 savage World first 3 days after patch

[Kaurie]

Yes and no. I'd like to see some statistics on this but I'm not sure there are any. HOWEVER, in my anecdotal experience there are FAR MORE casual players than even mid-core players.

Now, everyone wants straight-up MORE content all around, me too, but considering the very limited development team FFXIV has, IMO they'd be doing the right thing from a business perspective giving their time to a ratio of about 2/3 casual content and aesthetics and QoL, about 1/4 to Midcore and 1/12 to the hardest of the hardcore.

I imagine there are more casual players, but casual players currently have: expert dungeons, normal trials, normal Alex, crafting, gathering, palace of the dead, diadem, lords of vermillion, gold saucer, hunts, beast tribes, wondrous tails, squadrons and probably more.

Midcore players have: 1 ex boss per 3 months, 4 savage bosses per 4 months (as of now, previously just 1 ex boss per 3 months)

Hardcore players have:

It just seems like that isn't very balanced to the actual population, even if it's 75% casual, 20% midcore, 5% hardcore (or whatever it actually is).

I'd like if they added a difficult dungeon level (i.e. Mythic+ in WoW), and more open world challenging content.

[KaitlanKela]

I'd like if they added a difficult dungeon level (i.e. Mythic+ in WoW), and more open world challenging content.

I'd love it if they added more things too, but again, you have to respect the business model. If they KNOW that the content is going to be too challenging for 3/4 of the playerbase, they have to spend less time on it. They don't really have a choice from a business model-perspective. It sucks, I'm midcore too and I would like more fights. But you have to temper your expectations with reality.

[Sandpark]

There is no doubt that casual outnumber the others 3 to 1. The fact that subs quit and return every patch and raid clear rates is evidence of that. Even the director himself states to come and go when you get burned out. So their income must be decent from that model.

If you beat the games toughest content on day one and unsub. That doesn't mean your hardcore, it means you are a skilled elite. If you play long sessions over long durations you are hardcore. If you play in short durations over short spurts you are casual. Midcore exist between casual and hardcore and alternate. The skill can exist in all three playerbases. However, casual and midcore are less accepting of failure due to whatever due to not having as much time to invest.

Typically when I think of casual as I am one myself at times. It is I just want to have fun without watching youtube videos, reading walkthrough guides, or having an aggressive player in their pursuit of perfection give me beef for not doing something exactly how the current best way to do something is.

I alternate between casual, midcore, and hardcore on any given day or week.

Granted not every casual will feel the same way I do in their casual mode. I feel that as long as raids require tons of practice or watching/reading x content to learn strategies. It doesn't matter what the devs do, because they won't draw that type of player into raids. Which is where most of the get good or die exists.

I'd prefer the story mode to be more like public event type content something like Castrum Meridianum with bosses slightly more difficult like late game dungeons. And have a current raid be hard like another poster said above, but not so hard groups can't recover from mistakes or get one shotted. While Savage exists for those die hard players who want extreme difficulty. As long as the ilvl reward gap isn't too large between the three groups. Because the wider this gap gets, the more you have players from opposite sides whining for more content. One side will lose for the betterment or detriment of the game.

[Kaurie]

I'd love it if they added more things too, but again, you have to respect the business model. If they KNOW that the content is going to be too challenging for 3/4 of the playerbase, they have to spend less time on it. They don't really have a choice from a business model-perspective. It sucks, I'm midcore too and I would like more fights. But you have to temper your expectations with reality.

Yeah, I just think they have come to conclusions with misinterpreting data. Hard to tell for sure though.

It just sucks that I am now down to playing 5 hours per week, where I used to play 5+ hours a day.

[Dement]

Granted I am not a game developer so it may be more work than I imagine but if Yoshi said that they created fights at Savage difficulty and tune them down for Coil why not just do the same for Alex, tuning it down to old coil difficulty and call it "Hard" which drops the Prototype gear. This now creates two of the tiers. To create the third tier: leave the Hard fight the same but adjust the damage output numbers for every mechanic way down to face roll levels so that nothing will easily kill a group even if a mechanic is failed and call it Normal or Story mode.

There, now you have three tiers: the casual group can clear the Story mode cause damage and failed mechanics are easily healed through failure and they see the fight. Midcore groups get a training mode (something also frequently asked for through Coil) by being able to train on the whole fight in Normal mode to make sure that they fully understand the mechanics before attempting Hard mode clears. Savage exists to appease the hardcore crowd as well as give midcore groups something to strive for once they've cleared Hard mode. Everyone gets something, everyone is happy.

How much extra development time would this really take? It's the same way they said they did Coil with the added step of only adjusting damage modifiers between Story and Hard. I can't imagine changing some numbers around would be incredibly time intensive.

As I fleshed this out further in my mind, this method could also solve some of the gear and motivation concerns that exist now.

If a cycle is tuned around the Prototype gear being high end gear, the Savage gear would be overpowered for a current cycle but would be base line for the next cycle. For example: At the end of Midas, 240 would be the top end Savage gear ilvl with most midcore and casual groups being in the 230 range then when 3.4 hit the new crafted gear and unaugmented tomestone gear could be 240 to help bring casual and midcore people up to the baseline but Savage raiders would already be there. The new high end gear would be the Prototype gear and Augmented tomestone gear at 250 and the overpowered Savage gear would be 260.

This would make it so that Savage gear isn't immediately outclassed upon a new raid cycle by crafted gear as well as slow the creep of ilvls by 10 each patch since there would be overlap.

Odd number "catch-up" patches could drop 250 (the new high end but not overpowered) to give another option to reach what would be considered good gear as well as a way for people to gear alt classes.

[Marcellus_Cassius]

It is ridiculous to manipulate raid difficulty for extending content life beyond 2-3 months. So you've cleared it in a month. Congrats, content working as intended. What now? Omg three more months until something new, that's too bad don't depend on one outlet for your free time.

[Kaurie]

It is ridiculous to manipulate raid difficulty for extending content life beyond 2-3 months. So you've cleared it in a month. Congrats, content working as intended. What now? Omg three more months until something new, that's too bad don't depend on one outlet for your free time.

What a rather insensitive reaction. Out of curiosity what is your favourite activity in the game?

[Reynhart]

Yes, but with that in mind - that is 6 fights per 6 months for the midcore crowd. That's pretty barebone considering how much content is designed for casual players.

Not really. Keep in mind that casual players only do casual content, while midcore do midcore and casual content.
Hardcore players also do hardcore, midcore and casual content.

[Kaurie]

Not really. Keep in mind that casual players only do casual content, while midcore do midcore and casual content.
Hardcore players also do hardcore, midcore and casual content.

That depends on the player. I do not do anything I listed in casual (outside of unlocking stuff, and expert roulette, usually about 10x per patch).

[KaitlanKela]

That depends on the player. I do not do anything I listed in casual (outside of unlocking stuff, and expert roulette, usually about 10x per patch).

In that respect, I think you're in a very small minority. I have to do all kinds of "casual" things to support midcore raiding, like keeping up with my tomes, relic, earning gil for crafted gear as I don't craft (yet), grinding Alex NM for drops (next patch it'll be the next 24-man for drops), and that's JUST to support my "raiding", I also try to level my crafters and gatherers and increase reputation with beast tribes as a long-term investment, and things like PotD and Aquapolis just for fun.

I'm inclined to think most of the "mid core" pop is like me and not like you. And it's totally fine to make the choices that you do, but there's not going to be enough content in that tiny category alone to hold you over for a whole patch. That's totally unfeasible from a cost perspective.