Rework how Savage look works

[Tracewood]

Misspelled LOOT in the title, I'm worn out from wiping e5s today...

Maybe someone can explain this to me, but why does Savage chests have a different system that normal?

With normal, you can choose any one and it doesn't automatically lock you out of chests for a previous battle. Even if you clear for that week and already have your loot, you should be able to help others clear and not hinder their chest.

I'm at a bit of an impasse, where a friend of mine wants to do Savage, but he's fairly new and will have some struggles but I don't want to start a PF, I'd rather have us join one. He also has a family so there will be moments that he will need to pull away, so he can't sit for hours wiping to the same fight. It would also mean I won't get any clears if I did it this way, I'd have to join a random group and clear, but it would hinder his chances at loot as well as the rest of the party.

Other games handle end game loot far better than this game. Destiny, Monster Hunter World, FFXI (While RNG, you were never truly locked out though some content you had to wait a few days for refresh) FFXIV doesnt' encourage teamwork and helping others when it comes to Savage, yet they have it perfect for normal raids and 24 man. Savage wants to punish people who haven't cleared for that week by taking loot away if someone who clears wants to help?

What is the logic behind that?

[KDSilver]

Because Savage gear are currently ilvl500, which is the highest item level currently.
Tomestones are 490, can only be upgraded through savage as well (E6S/E7S).

The highest your gears are, the easiest content will be.
This content is supposed to last for 6 months.

While gearing isn't one of the most interesting thing is XIV, it's still a reward.
If you could help people without gutting a chest, they'd be free to roll on everything and getting all the loot for themselves (admit 7 helpers).
This system may not be well fit for helpers, but is meant to be done once a week only to keep the content alive.

If you could do what you suggest, some people (assuming they have at least another character or more) could counter this system, and gearing an entire party extremely fast, making the content less relevant/easier faster. It also wouldn't be fair for people who are 8 to roll vs 1 who gets everything, and people would start wanting to get some help and lock out people who want their weekly clear.
That's why you get one token per week at least if you're not lucking with loots/chests. You'll get what you need through time.

I won't say this is a great system. But it tries to be fair at least.
"More experienced" player (if we could say it this way I guess) come with a trade of.

I used to hate this sytem to for the exact same reason.
But I can now understand why it is this way.

[Vidu]

I'd like to remind everyone here that the system we currently have (aka loot-lockouts and less loot if people who already cleared the fight are present) is already in place to make it easier for someone like your friend to participate in Savage. The way it used to be was that you couldnt even go back once you cleared a fight - helping a friend with Coil 2 was impossible if you had already cleared Coil 4 for that week.
So what we got now is a compromise: Anyone who just wants to clear the fight and doesnt care about loot (except for their weekly token) can get help from more experienced players, while those who follow the intended path get rewarded with more loot (or rather: the intended amount of loot).
So our current system is actually designed to allow people to help those who couldnt find a party so far or dont have a static.

While the main reason is certainly what Silver already explained (aka: not wanting people to gear to fast to make the content last longer - love it ot hate it, fact is they need to keep this content alive for longer than some of us need to clear and farm it), I wouldnt be surprised if part of the reason here is also to reward and motivate statics and/or people to follow this content in the right order. Considering how Coil (and maybe Alexander too?) had you walk to the entrance of the raid instead of just using the DF I dare say that they had the strong intention of making this content for statics, by encouraging teamwork that way. You might consider that outdated, but I'm getting the strong sense that even though they're easing up on restrictions more and more they're design philosophy for Savage is a bit different from NM and 24-man raids: Those are supposed to be open for everyone, while Savage is a bit less... "willy-nilly". Its not something you just jump in to and are done with for the week in less than an hour. By requiring you to put a bit more effort into the finding out your party, it seems to encourage more teamwork to me than NMs do - NMs require almost zero teamwork, I can queue up for them all by myself and get my clears without ever even asking anyone in my static if they want to come along. For Savage on the other hand we actually discuss who wants to play what, when they can play, how we're getting this to work etc. It feels a lot more like a team than the other raids.
And you can still help your friend to get his clears and, over time thanks to tokens, his loot.

If your friend just wants to do Savage for the sake of it, you could always start or join a PF with him after you got your loot. From your description it doesnt sound like hes super serious about it and even if there are no chests he'll still get tokens - might take a few weeks to get the gear he wants, but as pointed out: He has 6 months.
So if you manage to get your loot during the week, the two of you could do some loot-free Savage on sundays?
I'm just speaking from personal experience here - most people that I know who just want to do some Savage dont care all that much about loot and are more intrested about getting to see the fight. And seeing how even those of us who do Savage on a weekly basis can go without loot for weeks its not like he'd be at a huge disadvantge - as long as he keeps up with his tomestone-grind and more importantly his general skill with the job hes coming with.

[Aurelius2625]

There IS an answer for this: Make an alt and level it.

I plan on doing this but dear god the MSQ is enormous and I'd have to skip everything, and play with the low skilled residue of players going back through Normal Mode trials...yuck.

[BluexBird]

As others have mentioned, it's to stop people from gearing up too quickly.

In a worst-case scenario, assuming you get shit rolls on every single item, for every single chest, in every single raid tier, you're looking at having to do a full 4 months of raiding, so you can slowly buy the raid items you need using pages.

On the other hand, if you get an item per week, going by the standard drop tables, you'd be done in a month. Week 1 you'd get weapon, pants, gloves, ring. Week 2 you'd get chest, boots, bracelet. And then another 2 weeks for the helmet and other accessories. Fill out the rest with tome gear.

Square-Enix doesn't want that. They want to force people to stay subscribed as long as possible. And so they created this shit system. If it was just about the gear, I'd be OK with it. But it's like you said - it impacts the gameplay. Once you get your gear, you can't help people get theirs. Nobody wants you in their party, except maybe the last 2 days before the reset. lol

Technically, they could make it like how the normal raid loot is, and drop "parts" that can be exchanged for gear. This would average things out, but steal away from the possibility of instantly getting the item you want. Personally, if it were up to me, I wouldn't mind if they completely removed restrictions and allowed you to get whatever gear you want, so long as it dropped when you killed a boss, regardless of whether you cleared it once or 10 times in a single day.

With the way things are now, players who actually want to play one of the biggest content in the game, can only realistically do so once a week. Good job! Great game design, guys!

[Vidu]

Square-Enix doesn't want that. They want to force people to stay subscribed as long as possible. And so they created this shit system. If it was just about the gear, I'd be OK with it. But it's like you said - it impacts the gameplay. Once you get your gear, you can't help people get theirs. Nobody wants you in their party, except maybe the last 2 days before the reset. lol

Technically, they could make it like how the normal raid loot is, and drop "parts" that can be exchanged for gear. This would average things out, but steal away from the possibility of instantly getting the item you want. Personally, if it were up to me, I wouldn't mind if they completely removed restrictions and allowed you to get whatever gear you want, so long as it dropped when you killed a boss, regardless of whether you cleared it once or 10 times in a single day.

With the way things are now, players who actually want to play one of the biggest content in the game, can only realistically do so once a week. Good job! Great game design, guys!

Two things people always tend to forget when they argue that all SE wants is to force us to stay longer subcsribed, are that first: Of course they do. They're a buisness, they make money by keeping us playing - and they cant release enough content to keep us as busy as we need/want to be kept - so they need to create gates to ensure that we're not done with this content after two weeks. You cant really blame a buiness for wanting to make money...

And the second thing is that we, as players, should have an intrested in keeping people invested in this kind of content for a longer amount of time than the bare minimum - because if you could get everything you want from Savage in 2 or 3 (or even 4) weeks, a significant amount of people would get their stuff within that timeframe and then leave the content alone. Meaning that for everyone who cant catch that initial wave, chances to even find a party decrease - we're already seeing this with EX-primals: If you dont clear and farm them when they're recent, you have a much harder time finding parties later on.

Savage has to last us 6 months - they cant release that type of content any faster. If people could be done with it in 2 weeks - or, lets assume that realisticly not everyone is going to clear everything week 1, lets give it 4 weeks, that would leave 5 more months with Savage as the most recent raidtier thats either not getting attempted at all anymore OR where you see people struggling even more to find parties to try their hands on it.

[Vaer]

You would encourage funneling gear even more if you could easily help 1 person get their stuff with the same character repeatedly. Other games call these splits (Using alts to funnel gear to mains). Right now you at least have to make an army of alts to do this which would be a really big investment for barely any gear due to the chest locking mechanism.

It would make it way easier to sell runs as well.

You can still at least help people get their page/token per week and over time get the gear even with people that have cleared though.

I think the gearing system is boring, but restrictions are in place to drip feed you gear. Unfortunately, that is just how it goes.