How's Ultimate?

[loreleidiangelo]

Will be at work all day and won't be able to check the fight out myself until this evening, so I thought I'd ask the perspective of serious groups giving this fight an honest go - how is it? How's the atmosphere and fight design? Does the fight live up to its moniker of "ultimate"?

[LastFireAce]

I hate my very being.
my static found it pretty mean.

[loreleidiangelo]

I hate my very being.
my static found it pretty mean.

Out of curiosity, did you raid any of the Coils of Bahamut when they were current? Do you have an opinion on the learning curve of Ultimate vs them?

[HaelseMikiro]

From the streams I'v seen so far, Twintania doesn't seem bad at all, when you beat her and Nael drops down is when the fight immediately ramps up to borderline crazy, unless you're already familiar with the final phase of T9 from original progression, then it's more nostalgic than anything, and you just have to figure out new dance steps with your current members. I haven't seen any of the combat with Bahamut yet though.

[UnstablePersonality]

First vid I saw was a party killing twin and wiping instantly during the phase transition.

[Pondera]

well, I haven't ran it, but if it falls in line with the rest of the savage raids that I've encountered, I think I can make some predictions

1) Party will be dead within moments of pulling. Massive damage AoEs, instant kill moves, mechanic combos, whatever puts us in the ground the fastest. Basically, a couple hundred hours of deaths while learning the fight like we're Bill Murry in Groundhog Day
2) If a single party member flubs a mechanic, or ANYONE dies, might as well wipe. Tank dead? Unable to execute tank swap mechanic, party died. Healer dies? Overwhelmed by raid-wide damage and everyone dead. DPS dead? Boss has 89 quintillion HP and will enrage in 8 seconds. Everyone dead.

Forgive me for my salt, but I'm starting to believe that SE is padding the Savage/Extreme raid tier so that it takes 3 months at least to bash through it all, and no one complains about content drought. I mean, there is difficulty, and I'm fine with it. I'd consider myself a challenge gamer, but my FC actually has people quitting the raid team for the sake of their mental health. So, when SE talks about clear rewards for Ultimate coil of Bahamut, I find that incredibly optimistic.

[Lambdafish]

Forgive me for my salt, but I'm starting to believe that SE is padding the Savage/Extreme raid tier so that it takes 3 months at least to bash through it all, and no one complains about content drought. I mean, there is difficulty, and I'm fine with it. I'd consider myself a challenge gamer, but my FC actually has people quitting the raid team for the sake of their mental health. So, when SE talks about clear rewards for Ultimate coil of Bahamut, I find that incredibly optimistic.

That is how content padding works yes. Anima grind is another one, they are useful tools for developers of an MMO and helps prevent content starvation.

The raid tiers this time have been designed very well. Ultimate essentially fills the spot of Gordias except that now you can reasonably clear the raid without it. For midcore players, they may spend the raid cycle trying to clear omega and succeed, but for the hardcore raiders, they now have an additional challenge to keep them logging in.

[Airget]

There is no need to do a challenge on day 1 or spend 12hrs+ trying to get a clear. The reason one ends up not enjoying X content is because they willingly burn themselves trying to be the first to clear. Enjoy the content for what it is, challenging, that extra challenge people have been asking for. Try for 2hrs, then try another time for 2hrs but if you're doing raids for 10hrs+ and then complain that it's SE's fault that chose to raid that long, the fault is on you.

[missybee]

Snip

I feel like generally this is a pretty decent policy, but I can't say I agree with it applying to Ultimate.

The primary purpose of Ultimate is bragging rights, and people are going to try their darndest to get world first on the hardest fight in the game to date. That's like...bragging rights squared.

I really don't think this content was designed for the majority of us to "enjoy." It's there as a challenge to people who are the best of the best and/or are extreme masochists.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Forgive me for my salt, but I'm starting to believe that SE is padding the Savage/Extreme raid tier so that it takes 3 months at least to bash through it all, and no one complains about content drought. I mean, there is difficulty, and I'm fine with it. I'd consider myself a challenge gamer, but my FC actually has people quitting the raid team for the sake of their mental health. So, when SE talks about clear rewards for Ultimate coil of Bahamut, I find that incredibly optimistic.

I'll be blunt. If people in your FC are rage qutting, then Ultimate is simply not for them. The entire point was offering hardcore raiders a challenge, especially since Savage has long since been nerfed. Is it dragging out the tier? Yes. The devs have to as there just isn't enough time and resources to make new content at the rate we consume it.

I do not recall asking for this, nor did any of my comrades. I’ve noted in th3 past that there seems to be two kinds of content: trivially easy “expert” grinds and soul crushing despair inducing impossibility. What I would request is a middle ground between the two. My guild made it past savage 2.0, but with 3.0 and Shinryu, we’re starting to splinter. Not great, man.

I assume you mean 4.0, since you're pairing it with Shinryu? Omega is arguably the easiest raid tier they've released, and Shinryu is roughly comparable to Nidhogg. If they made neither much easier, what's the point of "Savage"?