Savage is too easy

[Dzian]

The issue with savage isnt so much its difficulty or lack of depending on perspective.

For many people it's simply that you just dont get anything from it. And it's a very western thing I believe. If I'm correct over on JP land. More people raid because they can just jump into party finder or raid finder and get on with it. There's a whole different mentality over there that means people wont even dare to queue if they aren't down with the content. And that leads to a higher participation and higher success rates.

This side though. There's just to many self entitled you don't pay my sub I'm awesome you all suck players that will join any group they can and feel entitled to be carried by the other 7 people. only to end up in a party of people where half of them share that same mentalitiy and it is that reason the raid finder is dead. And many people just dont bother...

It's a very basic context of effort vs reward. And for many the rewards just aren't worth the effort especially when dealing with the vast amount of entitled players and attitudes that are present out there. Even statics continuously fall apart. Oh hey great we cleared 3s. Good going guys... come back the next night and find half ya group has jumped ship to a new group and already into 4s because why should they wait for you... they want it nowwwww!!!

the other issue with statics is the time frames. many statics want players to be there 25 hours a day, 8 days a week to get them clears as fast as possible and many players just aren't that interested. but you won't see statics that are literally just saturday and sunday nights because you can almost guarantee someones going to be impatient and can't wait till saturday to get into the next raid and thus another static ends up falling apart...

The issue this game has with difficulty is its duty finder mentality. It's never about lifting players up to the challenges. It's always about bringing the challenges down to the players regardless of how lazy they are. And that cascades onto every level of content.. regardless of level. oh you failed. it's not a case of if you try just a little bit harder... its a case of here's a massive echo buff to make it even easier than it already is..

I don't do savage raids or rarely even ex trials anymore. Nothing to do with difficulty everything to do with it's just not worth the hassle and drama of dealing with the average player. And in truth I would even label myself as an average player and admittedly these days I probably am. Defeated by the entitled mindset. Why should I bother when none else is... these days i just stick to doing content with my friends and apparantly that makes me elitist.

Unsyncs modes and stuff just make it worse because even if there is a reward youd actually like. You know you can just roflstomp it later which will not only make the reward easier to get but destroy its value to those who earned it.

Be like Usain bolts Olympic gold medals if the Olympic committee just decided to give everyone gold medals just for turning up.. so Bolts gonna be there at the start line and be like sod it i'll just walk to the end. gonna get a gold medal anyway what does it matter.

[JohnathonBravo]

I feel like fights should be closer to midas difficulty instead of what we have now. At least have interesting fights that are pushing the envelope instead of bosses that are basically training dummies. The adds phase in a8s is a great example of being more than a simple mechanics check, its a dps check and a unique one, where you need to manage your dps and not just attack the bosses blindly. This sort of mechanic has been missing completely since brute justice, and only returned in alex ultimate.

[Pallero]

Gordias was exactly how it should be. Playerbase is more informed, we have crossworld parties and connections are better. Tankbusters and basic dumb raid aoes don't need castbars, A2 style fight needs to happen again and fights generally need far more adds, slows and stuns need to matter, and you shouldn't be removing sizeable chunk of the fight mechanics from the end by just dpsing more with gear over time.
E1S is the only one where we see all the mechanics happen at least once by now, and that's just because it loops the post-cutscene phase twice. Skipping the boring heal spam checks is plenty fine, but you don't even see the hardest mechanic phase of E2 and E3 if you didn't mass suicide and heal LB.

[RylaBee]

I have feeling OP is using the word "easy" - as opposed to "difficult" incorrectly, or maybe being misunderstood.

From his post, this is about FFXIV raiding being pre-scripted "synchronized dance".
It is like old 2D scroller-shooters on consoles, where to beat the level, you had to memorize from which corner of screen will new wave of enemies appear.

Depending on how you look at it, you might call it boring easy if you have excelent memory, or very hard if you dont.
Also, you might be annoyed by such memory games, because you are looking for different kind of challenge - namely quick-wit reactions on unpredictable boss mechanics.

That kind of mechanics are well known from other MMOs, WoW being prime example.
(I'm only talking Lich King and older, can't speak for new WoW content)

WoW bosses have by and large had fewer mechanics than FFXIV ones, however, they often use them in UNPREDICTABLE manner + they will be able to randomly crit-hit on tanks, meaning the healers will need to be on their toes, and even that might not save the tank if the crit-hit sequence coincides with some boss ability.

I have only been playing FFXIV from Stormblood, but what I read about original Alexander, it was closer to that style.
In StormBlood's Delta-to-Alphascape, I have seen NOTHING BUT synchronized dancing.

I personaly dislike this as well.
I do like FFXIV for many things, but their japanese-style precision-geometric-timed-raiding, is in my eyes inferior entertainment to some well-designed WoW encounters.

All you really need to do to see this, is how every arena is circle or square - designed to be covered by mathematicaly precise geometric shapes to be avoided by memorizing the right spots.

Remember Gruul the Dragonkiller's uneven "natural" cave? Lady Vash and her throne room with pedestal in the middle going down to water in all directions? And much more.

FFXIV raiding is not more "easy" or "difficult" than for example WoW.
The difficulty is (I'm bit oversimplifying) build by DIFFERENT MEANS - memory game VS quick&correct reaction game.
People will find one or the other more challenging, depending how their minds work.

Note also, that more random design has downsides. One evening you might be lucky and kill boss in one pull, compared to wiping on the same boss next week, because he is giving you nasty combination of abilities in a row.

Personally, I would love for SquareE to get out of their comfort zone, and create more imaginative and random-flowing encounters. Not all of them, just mix it a little.

PS: There is a thread in healer forum complaining about healing in this raid tier boring them to sleep. This problem comes from the same source - predictability once memorized and no strong boss auto-attacks.

[DrWho2010]

there is also the issue that as veteran players play over time - the level of play increases - meaning you're just naturally playing better over time as the game goes on.

now unless your static is entirely full of noobs to endgame raiding - that might make raiding difficult for them because they've literally never seen anything like it before.

[Dzian]

there is also the issue that as veteran players play over time - the level of play increases - meaning you're just naturally playing better over time as the game goes on.

now unless your static is entirely full of noobs to endgame raiding - that might make raiding difficult for them because they've literally never seen anything like it before.

Perhaps in some part but then very few players stay around long enough for that to actually be the case.

SE keeps pushing out ever increasing player numbers. 14 million people have played this game... but the active population is much the same as it was way back in 2.0..

Hell there still running the same servers they were back then. Now yes they did add a few but that was for reasons of latency and an EU data centre not overcrowding populations.. half the servers we have are still as dead as they have ever been. Which is why they added cross server functionality in the first place to combat the low populations

[Curisu]

Why not a third raid difficulty after savage.
Just take e1s, remove some cast bars, increase dmg and hp and place some random mechanics.
Now you have a new fight with known mechanics and a gear gated enrage.

These e1-4u (ltimate) can even have the same difficulty or the forth could be the easiest one.
As reward you can get a item to upgrade your gear with a additional materia slot.

[HyoMinPark]

Why not a third raid difficulty after savage.
Just take e1s, remove some cast bars, increase dmg and hp and place some random mechanics.
Now you have a new fight with known mechanics and a gear gated enrage.

These e1-4u (ltimate) can even have the same difficulty or the forth could be the easiest one.
As reward you can get a item to upgrade your gear with a additional materia slot.

The higher difficulty tier after Savage is basically the Ultimates. Between the existence of it and the fact that the developers like Savage and Savage-tier rewards being as “accessible” as they are, it’s unlikely they’ll ever do a third mode of the current Savage tiers. Ultimate sort of serves as the way of “revisiting” old tiers and making them ten times more challenging anyways, so it would be a little redundant.

I’d rather just see current Savage upped in terms of difficulty, bridging the gap between it and Ultimate fights (because there’s a huge spike in difficulty between E4S and TEA, just as there was with UCoB and O4S, and UwU and O8S). They could also up EX primals to bring even-numbered patch EX in line with first floor Savage, and the odd number patch EX in line with the third floor (since it’s meant to be a weapon supplement to help gearing).

[Dzian]

I’d rather just see current Savage upped in terms of difficulty, bridging the gap between it and Ultimate fights (because there’s a huge spike in difficulty between E4S and TEA, just as there was with UCoB and O4S, and UwU and O8S). They could also up EX primals to bring even-numbered patch EX in line with first floor Savage, and the odd number patch EX in line with the third floor (since it’s meant to be a weapon supplement to help gearing).

This is because there is no difficulty curve at all. it's just one great big long horizontal line that meets a sheer vertical cliff that steps up to savage. followed by another sheer vertical cliff that steps up to ultimate..

rather than have a curve (orange) that gradually promotes improvement and better play by letting players work there way up. it's just this long flat line (blue) thats suddenly stopped by a massive cliffs which leave players stuck.

the difference is when player A gets to savage they're totally overwhelmed by it because everything theyve ever done has been a total roflstomp faceroll you cant possibly lose...
when player B gets to savage he's already prepared for itand ready to take it on.. the same goes again at ultimate...

excuse my diabolical paint skills..

this game needs to start pushing players up instead of always bringing the content down.
if it did that a lot of the so called toxicity and elitism that gets thrown around wouldn't exist because the generically dubbed duty finder pugs. would be much more pleasant experiences

[Risvertasashi]

Why not a third raid difficulty after savage.
Just take e1s, remove some cast bars, increase dmg and hp and place some random mechanics.
Now you have a new fight with known mechanics and a gear gated enrage.

These e1-4u (ltimate) can even have the same difficulty or the forth could be the easiest one.
As reward you can get a item to upgrade your gear with a additional materia slot.

It's a lot easier to organize 4 people than 8. Now I like raiding, but I can only really do it at very specific times when 7 other people I've made a prior agreement with can be online at the same time to do this content with. And even then sometimes one or two of them can't make it due to unforeseen circumstances - which we might be able to find replacements for, or we might not and so we might have to cancel that particular night. (But to be fair, it would be easier if SE would modernize their loot system and not make running with others that have cleared for the week so punishing...)

With 4 player content, it would be a lot easier to ping a few friends to get together to run it. And there would be a lot less potential for one person to throw a spanner in the works.