A12 savage World first 3 days after patch

[KarstenS]

Omg three more months until something new.

Uhm. The next patch doesn't offer meaningful content for Savage raiders. The next content will be the new "Savage" in the expansion or whatever it will be called.

A Savage raid should last around 3-5 month for a regular mid tier raid group.

[Auteur]

To be blunt, there seems to be a very small vocal minority of hardcore players demanding that this game conform closer to one of the hardcore F2P grinder mmos where rewards are dependent largely on time spent in game. Newsflash: this is not a F2P grinder.

It seems rather than play a grinder more suited to their demographic, they are here perhaps to feel like a big fish in a small pond or because they are afraid of competing with their brethren over there. Whatever, free country. But SE has not, and will never make, sufficient profit from FF14 by catering to that select minority. In short, if have the time and want to play a grinder, go play one of those games; don't try to impose yourself in an environment where you are clearly not the target audience and can cause severe damage to the base of this game (the vast majority of people, the silent majority mentioned by Yosh, do not want to deal with the mindset of the "git gud" world first players).

[Pasquale]

As i said before 99% of the population are social/casual/mid so the balance should be 99% content for them 1% for hardcore as it was before , now it is 100% for the first side

[Crysten]

As i said before 99% of the population are social/casual/mid so the balance should be 99% content for them 1% for hardcore as it was before , now it is 100% for the first side

SE gave hardcore raiders what they wanted last patch and it very nearly killed off the raid community.

The trouble with the game is that it's far too skewed in the direction of total casual or elite hardcore. It seems A9-A12S has been SE's attempt to tone things back towards midcore and unfortunately, I feel this is the way they prefer to go going forward as much as you'd hate it.

It's a hell of a cheaper, easier option than developing a 3rd difficulty tier, as nice as that would be.

[Kaurie]

Disagree. I think to have a lot of casual content, little midcore and less hardcore IS balanced, relative to the player population and respecting SE's profit-making strategy. There are few midcore players and even fewer hardcore players so you kinda just proved my point?

I think what you said can be balanced, to what is in the game isn't..
Like 80% casual. 15% mid 5% hc would be good

We have 99.9% casual, 0.1 % mid and 0.0 % hc

[cammi]

I think what you said can be balanced, to what is in the game isn't..
Like 80% casual. 15% mid 5% hc would be good

We have 99.9% casual, 0.1 % mid and 0.0 % hc

I don't know.. I don't feel the game is 99% casual when more than half of the playerbase can't even complete the content we have now. It'll be different if that 99% was clearing everything but it isn't.

[Kaurie]

I don't know.. I don't feel the game is 99% casual when more than half of the playerbase can't even complete the content we have now. It'll be different if that 99% was clearing everything but it isn't.

Casual doesn't mean bad though. One can play casually and be a skilled player. I definitely would not say that Normal Alexander is midcore level of content.

[cammi]

Casual doesn't mean bad though. One can play casually and be a skilled player. I definitely would not say that Normal Alexander is midcore level of content.

Ah my mistake. I thought you were using the bad meaning of the word. Sorry for the mistake. :O

[Yallaid]

As many of these discussions we've had that just go in circles, I feel like everyone can agree that there are 3 large classes of players that we can generalize FFXIV's audience into and the only solution acceptable to all of them is to have 3 corresponding modes to the end-game raid.

I really think we're at the 'worst of all worlds' by having only 2 modes. If there was only savage (i.e. bahamut coil style, ignore the actual Savage bahamut raid pls. it's doesn't fit what I'm describing) raiding, it would be acceptable to all raiders but it would exclude a class of players who do not want that level of challenge from experiencing an important part of the story.

SE has decided that this 'exclusive' nature is not acceptable and has created the tiered system we have now. But this has required all raiders to compromise because all raiders want to raid, but not all raiders raid at the same level of competency. So the exact difficulty tuning of the Savage mode raid has huge implications for who can and cannot effectively enjoy the content.


Unfortunately, I believe that it is the case that the only acceptable solution in a tiered end-game is the have 3 tiers of difficulty. As a community we need to unite around this suggestion and force SE to take notice. We should also be willing to sacrifice potential content that we may lose out on by forcing them to create yet another raid tier. But I seriously think that a system which allows players to basically pick the difficulty of their end-game from 3 options is the only one that's viable in the long term.

As well, make it so that you can immediately enter the raid at whatever difficulty you'd like. There should be frankly separate communities of raiders for each of 'Story', 'Normal' and 'Savage' raiders and we shouldn't force people into the 'Story' mode the way we do now. Allow people to create the end-game experience that's right for them, do not tie the 3 tiers together into a united equipment progression curve like we have now. This just frustrates players at all 3 levels.

[SublimeIbanez]

@Yallaid
I agree with pretty much everything you've said, but I want to just throw some things out that might provide some more perspective for everybody.

The casual playerbase is fine. There's no need for them, and they don't want, to do the hardcore stuff. It's simply too much of an investment and they don't need it. So the two playerbases right now are pretty much at odds with each other. On one hand, we have the midcore, on the other, the hardcore. So, arguing that a majority of this game is for casuals isn't wrong, it's simply misguided. Casuals aren't interested in this type of content, what needs to happen is exactly what you said, a 3 tiered system.