Yoshida, The Creator: Savage is the worst tuning ever in an MMO

[Kyne_Lyons]

My pretty casual group has always been able to down bosses in a reasonable amount of time only putting in a couple hours per scheduled raid day. We are all adults, mostly leading lives in professional careers. Our youngest is a full-time college student. We've always had pride in the fact that we can get reasonable progress in content on a limited schedule because we're above-average players who are willing to spend the necessary time losing before we can beat a fight. This entire tier flew by in just a couple raid days for us, and in another couple raid days we'll finish A12S. The mechanics have been pretty cool this tier but the tuning is, without a doubt, the worst I have ever seen in an MMORPG for a variety of reasons.

YOU CAN SKIP FIGHT MECHANICS DAY 1
This is one of the biggest offenders of this patch. In many fights during this tier, you are able to skip entire mechanics just by DPSing the boss. In the past this was something that was reserved exclusively for speed kills with 1-healer strats in perfect Best in Slot gear, but in Alexander you can now just completely bypass entire mechanics by hitting the boss with gear you had last patch leading to hilariously awkward and weird forced phase transitions. Yoshida, this is embarrassing, and it tells me that this content wasn't tested or tuned. In A11S you can skip Plasma Shields, GA-100 bombs, Whirlwinds, and if you do Lapis Lazuli orbs fast enough the boss bugs and casts Eternal Darkness twice in a row. You don't even need to go to Alexander to see this, you can phase push on Sophia EX and bypass entire platform swings. When you're learning a fight, this creates a ton of confusion but in the end it means nothing since you just kill it anyways and go "Huh, that was weird." Why? Because the content wasn't tuned.

THERE IS NO MEANINGFUL GEAR PROGRESSION
Because of the above, there is no meaningful gear progression in patch 3.4. You can beat all available content with gear available Day 1, and the only drops that help you beat the patch are the things you get in your first lockout. On the one hand it's nice to not be stressed out about getting inundated with healer drops week 1, but on the other hand I know that that upgrades will be mostly meaningless. The most satisfaction I tend to get from gear is when it helps me beat the content, and after progression is done getting Best in Slot is just a "thing to do". I know this varies from person to person, but honestly after progression is over I quit caring about gear upgrades entirely. I just grab the stat upgrades to prepare me for the next content patch. Normally I at least get the satisfaction of slowly gaining strength for a couple months before I finish progression. For someone like me this patch ended my excitement about getting new gear immediately. Why? Because the content wasn't tuned.

THIS RAID HAS NO LONGEVITY BECAUSE GEAR WILL MAKE IT OBSOLETE
We are already able to skip mechanics and finish the content in the gear available from release, but the power gains from the gear you get means that these fights will be completely irrelevant in even a modicum of i270. At least in the past you were forced to handle phases, do mechanics, and the content was tuned so that even if you were Best in Slot, you couldn't really bypass too much of the fight. Sure you might be able to skip past a tank buster sometimes, but ultimately you were still required to perform the basic routine for each fight no matter how strong you were. We're already bypassing a lot in just the gear available on Day 1, what will this content look like in a month? There just isn't staying power in any of these encounters, and my prediction is that Alexander: The Creator will go down as the most forgettable raid tier to date, which is a little sad since there's some cool ideas in these fights. They're fun on first pass and visually stunning, but after that they come off as fairly shallow. Why? Because the content wasn't tuned.

This content deserves to be tuned properly, and this is the first time I honestly doubt that it was even a consideration. I'm not saying that the answer is to go back to Gordias level DPS checks, but surely we don't have to swing the pendulum clear across to the other extreme like this. Isn't there a middle ground? Final Coil had better tuning than this content did for even semi-casual raiders like me, and that's saying a lot.

Something worth noting from later in the thread:

I haven't read the whole topic but I think people are missing OP's issue.

The problem is not that the content is too easy, but that it's tuned wrong. If you can skip phases with "obsolete" gear, there is a problem.

Let's take Ravana EX, for example. Nowadays, it's common to just burn the boss during add phase to push Chandrahas earlier. But when it was released, you had to focus on the adds to ensure no sword pop, even though it wasn't "difficult".

Even if Creator's difficulty is tuned down to make more people into raids (which is good), you shouldn't be able to screw some boss rotation that early.
And apparently, the same is also true for Sophia EX.

[silentwindfr]

the trouble is the one before, how many pourcent of the playerbase did beat it? 3-5% means 95% of the playerbase simply didn't partake or didn't beat it for any reason (no enough time, no enough skill, ....).
now the question is , do they have the money to invest to make a content only for 5% of the player base? something this big for only 5% of the community? probably no.

then how do it? scrap it? or make it more accessible. do it's the best choice? who know. but don't forget FF14 is first a casual game more than a hardcore game.... because most of the playerbase is casual (i wish it was more midcore) sadly it's a reality you can't ignore.

[Kyne_Lyons]

Raiding is and always has been a niche activity.

Yoshida: First, for normal, the number of players clearing is far more than we expected, which is really good. As of late October, at least about 50% of players who are actively playing battle classes have completed all four parts of normal Alexander Gordias.

Source

This is Normal mode. Only 50% of the playerbase will even go to normal mode, which in Midas was extremely easy.

do they have the money to invest to make a content only for 5% of the player base? something this big for only 5% of the community?

They re-use all the music, art assets, and actually expensive aspects of creating new content from Normal Mode in Savage Mode. It doesn't cost a million dollars to add another phase to a boss. Once all of that content is made for Normal mode, it costs pennies to spend time expanding fights for Savage Mode. Using World of Warcraft as an example, their developers said that 95% of the cost of content development is used creating Normal Mode, and Mythic only costs that 5% since all they're doing is paying people to tune the fights to be harder. 5% of the cost for 5% of the playerbase sounds about right.

[Pasquale]

Give a medal to the guy who made the post , THIS RAID IS TOO EASY EVEN FOR CASUAL GROUPS.

[Fawkes]

Using World of Warcraft as an example, their developers said that 95% of the cost of content development is used creating Normal Mode, and Mythic only costs that 5% since all they're doing is paying people to tune the fights to be harder. 5% of the cost for 5% of the playerbase sounds about right.

Yes, and this is the tuning you get for 5% of the cost. If you want something meticulously tuned so that the best players in the world don't beat it so fast, but the not-so-best players don't run into a wall for three months and then quit, then you need to spend a lot of time and money getting everything just right. Assuming that's even an achievable goal, and with how humongous the skill gap is in this game I'm not sure it is.

[Kyne_Lyons]

Yes, and this is the tuning you get for 5% of the cost. If you want something meticulously tuned so that the best players in the world don't beat it so fast, but the not-so-best players don't run into a wall for three months and then quit, then you need to spend a lot of time and money getting everything just right.

Wrong. Yoshida maintains a strict timetable on content balance.

Yoshida: After the members participate in the test play, they'll receive an explanation of the mechanics from the person in charge and then enter to try the battle. To maintain the major patch cycle, the adjustment period is about 5 to 7 days for each piece of content. As an example, if you include the normal and savage modes of new raid content, there can be eight pieces of new raid content in one patch.

SOURCE

They have always spent the same time frame adjusting every fight, the harder content too.

[Fawkes]

They have always spent the same time frame adjusting every fight.

Exactly. And not everyone was happy with Gordias, and not everyone was happy with Midas, and now not everyone is happy with Creator. They are all just tuned in different directions. The middle ground you asked for probably doesn't exist, or if it does would cost more time/money to find.

[SublimeIbanez]

Using World of Warcraft as an example, their developers said that 95% of the cost of content development is used creating Normal Mode, and Mythic only costs that 5% since all they're doing is paying people to tune the fights to be harder. 5% of the cost for 5% of the playerbase sounds about right.

Do you by any chance have a source for this? I'm legit curious on some of the expense requirements necessary for content like this.

[Pasquale]

They have time to make diadem ( lol it's less played than savage) and they don't have time to add some mechanics to a boss where you have already the istance , music , story ?

[Greedalox]

They have time to make diadem ( lol it's less played than savage) and they don't have time to add some mechanics to a boss where you have already the istance , music , story ?

They've pretty much admitted that Diadem isn't what they wanted either. LOL.