Omega and future raid concerns

[FeliAiko]

There is a clear difference in accessibility regarding savage and 24-man/normal trials and there are numbers to corroborate that.

Players choosing not to do the content does not mean the content itself is not accessible. An example of something that's not accessible would be housing when all plots have been bought up.

More often than not, the only thing preventing people from entering Savage is themselves, not the game. SE has progressively dumbed down the raids since Gordias/Midas - and as of SB, even the Jobs to some extent - yet it means nothing if certain players are not willing to challenge themselves but would rather stick to the low effort route that XIV also enables them to do.

[HyoMinPark]

Just to make it clear: I agree with the notion of making players work for their reward. As someone who grew up with FFVI, I did clear God Kefka despite not enjoying the fight from a tank point of view, just because I enjoy the challenge of beating that divine clown again - now in HD.

And you still can challenge him—it just requires that you become a Savage raider. Which, Savage is watered down now compared to how it used to be, so that’s only going to make it easier. If you don’t want to become a raider, well you’ll be able to unsync the fights in 5.0 and steamroll them then like a bunch of people did Coil in HW and Alexander in SB.

Even earlier Savage floors you would probably be able to do mount farms for near the end of SB like people were doing for A4S and the Gobwalker in 3.55 (and even before then). At i370, Neo-Exdeath is far easier than he was a i340.

The question however remains of why wasn't the winged Alexander Prime locked behind savage, considering how much of a badass he is in FFIX? Why was the final boss of FFIII a 24-man raid boss in ARR, rather than a higher tier of challenge just like the Coils were back then? Yiazmat is a well-known FFXII super boss that takes like 1 hour to defeat, but you can readily face him in the Ridorana Lighthouse.

Winged Justice was Savage-only. Brute Justice was in story mode, but Winged Justice was locked to A8S. As for accessibility, they are all accessible—Neo-Exdeath and God Kefka. Savage is more accessible than it has ever been.

Besides, Normal Exdeath was rather challenging for many DF groups on the first week after release. I feel we can say that to an extent fights like normal Shinryu, Nidhogg and Tsukuyomi are enough to be both challenging while also accessible to most of the playerbase. More middle of the road fights is what I feel this game needs to reduce the skill-gap discrepancy. Not everything needs to be extremes: it doesn't have to be either Nael or Lakshmi.

I’m repeating myself here, but, again, all three of these fights have had thread after thread made for their story modes to be nerfed. The same thing would probably happen with Neo and God Kefka, because their Grand Crosses and Forsakens, respectively, make those fights. There is no way that they would be present in any sort of story mode, or, if they were, they would be ridiculously watered down. And still people would complain about it.

There is a clear difference in accessibility regarding savage and 24-man/normal trials and there are numbers to corroborate that.

They are all accessible. Less people choose to raid, but the fights aren’t any less accessible to the playerbase than the other content. Want to do it? Jump into Party Finder right now and start learning. Get friends or FC mates together and start learning—for Neo, you don’t even have to do Alte Rolte, Catastrophe, or Halicarnassus to jump into V4S now. Or you can wait until the end of the expansion and start doing PFs at max ilvl for the experience/mounts, a la A4S and Gobwalker. You probably won’t get the final tier done that way without putting in some effort, but Neo and God will probably roll over enough at i400.

[Pastahnak]

Im looking forward to complaining about how this easy mode is too hard so SQUEENIX wastes more time and makes me an easy easy mode.

[Consurgens]

Players choosing not to do the content does not mean the content itself is not accessible. An example of something that's not accessible would be housing when all plots have been bought up.

More often than not, the only thing preventing people from entering Savage is themselves, not the game. SE themselves have progressively dumbed down the raids - and in some cases, even the Jobs - yet it means nothing if certain players are not willing to challenge themselves but would rather stick to the low effort route that XIV enables them to do.

I believe we attribute different semantic values to "accessibility". I don't mean Savage isn't accessible as in it's an abstract wall - but that there is a clear difficulty gap between it and other non-ultimate content (Alte Roite notwithstanding). Debating whether everything is accessible or not necessarily means pondering on the concept of individual skill. I know some people believe that there is no such thing as "innate skill limitation" but that's still a whole psychological debate that unfortunately I don't think will be solved in here.

But going by your meaning of accessibility, I completely agree with you.

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Please refer to my first post regarding the nostalgic value, which is something XIV invests heavily on and is the subject that I'm talking about. Brute Justice has, as far as I know, zero references outside of FFXIV. No Final Fantasy fan that never played FFXIV will say "ohhh it's Brute Justice from that other FF game" because there is no such thing. My questioning is why certain franchise throwbacks are locked behind savage while others behind less demanding content.

I merely find it counterproductive that a game that puts so much on it's nostalgic value and franchise self-plagiarism to design Neo Exdeath and God Kefka the way they did. That's simply it. I'm not asking for a normal mode God Kefka or such thing, at least not with the way the fight is mechanically designed; and I agree with most of the points made here by you and others.

I don't use these forums a lot but I haven't seen a single complaint about Tsukuyomi recently. Bear in mind forums are inherently a vocal minority and doesn't represent the entire playerbase feelings (which also applies to this thread). I wasn't around for the Steps of Faith nerf so I can't comment on what happened there though.

[Kaliesto]

I don't care anymore, but I will say I'm not whining about it if you're going to take that route. In one way my point was made by trying to antagonize me by using such buzzwords which seems all too common in MMOs.

Attack me all you all want, I've made my point and also I recommend OP to go ahead and close the topic before it gets too toxic.

Btw to add about Tsukuyomi is because her mechanics are not insane and actually quite manageable once people get it down.

[HyoMinPark]

I don't use these forums a lot but I haven't seen a single complaint about Tsukuyomi recently. Bear in mind forums are inherently a vocal minority and doesn't represent the entire playerbase feelings (which also applies to this thread). I wasn't around for the Steps of Faith nerf so I can't comment on what happened there though.

Day 1 of Patch 4.3 was people asking for Tsukuyomi story mode to not only be nerfed because the mechanics (which are basically from Shiva with regards to the fans attack), but to also have the item level requirement lowered. The main argument was that the content was “too hard for a required MSQ trial”; this was the same argument used for Royal Menagerie story mode, despite all of his mechanics being present in the ARR primals save for Ahk Morn (which was from T13, but later repeated in Final Steps of Faith, albeit a little differently as it was a party stack, not a shared tankbuster). When Patch 3.3 came out with Final Steps of Faith, the complaints were the same as well: too high of an item level requirement, and too hard to be a mandatory MSQ trial.

My point is (and this isn’t limited to the forum community), is that people do not want content that is even in the slightest bit challenging. Weeping City and Dun Scaith were both challenging 24-mans in HW (especially if you consider the walking simulator that was Void Ark)...yet people were saying the content was too hard for the general playerbase to do. And, to be frank, a journey into Duty Finder proves as much—but not because the content is inherent hard mechanically, just because people don’t want to be faced with a challenge.

I don't care anymore, but I will say I'm not whining about it if you're going to take that route. In one way my point was made by trying to antagonize me by using such buzzwords which seems all too common in MMOs.

What buzzwords?

Attack me all you all want, I've made my point and also I recommend OP to go ahead and close the topic before it gets too toxic.

People disagreeing with your “compromises” =/= people being toxic or “attacking” you.

Btw to add about Tsukuyomi is because her mechanics are not insane and actually quite manageable once people get it down.

No one here is saying that she’s even hard; but there are people that complain about her story mode being hard. And complain about Royal Menagerie. And Final Steps of Faith. And 24-mans like Weeping City, Dun Scaith, Rabanastre, and Ridorana.

[Kaliesto]

1. Whining
2 Stop asking for things to be handed to you
3. Git Gud (which some here do)

list goes on, and to me those are antagonizing buzzwords and does not help anyone.

Also I forgot to add, and I agree with this...in the end we're all just a vocal minority here as I don't see many players using these forums...and it is usually the same faces here I see daily, so maybe we're all just wasting our time here for no reason.

[Tsubaki75]

I wasn't around for the Steps of Faith nerf so I can't comment on what happened there though.

The Steps of Faith on release was nothing short of a wake up call for the player base. It forced everyone in the duty to communicate specific roles and for everyone to carry them out or you were going to wipe. On top of that even if the mechanics were done correctly if ppl weren't competent with their jobs you wouldn't make the dps check and still wipe. It honestly isn't comparable to the face-roll it is now.

[jameseoakes]

The Steps of Faith on release was nothing short of a wake up call for the player base. It forced everyone in the duty to communicate specific roles and for everyone to carry them out or you were going to wipe. On top of that even if the mechanics were done correctly if ppl weren't competent with their jobs you wouldn't make the dps check and still wipe. It honestly isn't comparable to the face-roll it is now.

It also took a very long time as the Dragon has to make it it to the end before the fight reset. This lead to most runs ending in the first few seconds when someone who came in from the trial roulette dropping out immediately and everyone else following so it became very difficult to clear.

[Ameela]

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No one's trying to antagonise you, I mean yeah you've got people here saying you to essentially 'git gud', but that's what you have to do if you want to see the fights and that's probably one of the reasons they've even locked behind Savage in the first place.
It's not like your FFXIV experience is ruined by never doing them if you so choose, you can still do literally everything else and you never even need to do them to progress in any questline.

I just don't see the point of making these fights normal mode difficulty, it just means people have less of an insentive to go into Savage, even people who would have gone in anyway.
I'm already not the biggest fan of having to do Normal to unlock Savage, as it ruins a lot of the cool surprise factor in a fight when you've already seen all the mechanics that will be thrown at you in a simplified manner, so I thought Neo and God were a really good fix to this, even if it's just for one fight.