The difficulty curve in the game has... problems...

[Tobias_Azuryon]

The question that the devs should be asking themselves is this: Why are these other kinds of players that do not want hardship doing content that involves taking excessive amounts of time to complete, often at the sacrifice of newer content, for excessive numbers of weeks?

I'm trying to discern if you're trying to say "Why are bad players trying and failing at hard content" or "the devs should ask why more players don't engage with said content" The answer to both is the same as anything else: Effort.

Your post is kind of all over the place but let's address the key points:

1. Solving a Difficulty Problem

People aren't making tools to circumvent difficulty or to make it more accessible. They're doing it to make it easier. They're doing it to make things take less time.All of the raids including Savage are doable without any kind of third party software/assistance. The difficulty doesn't "ramp up" all of a sudden and if you pay the sligthest amount of attention to not only previous content but the light version of savage/ex/etc fights you will know how to handle the harder ones to some extent.

That's why I like the game's design mentality. They take a mechanic, then that same mechanic comes back later but now with a twist. Or you see a fight in a normal version, and then the savage version of it is the same mechanic but amped up to 11. It's not like they pop up out of nowhere (usually).

2. Fancy Rewards

The point of putting a carrot on a stick is so that people chase the carrot. If you give them a stick they're going to just say "okay" and leave. Rewards get people playing.

The balancing act is the totem/mount rewards that are either there for bragging rights or just to have them. It's not like it's a mobile gacha game or something, the game has conceivable "tracks" to go on to get the rewards you desire.

3. Dumbing Down of Jobs

This is kinda silly considering one of the most prevalent arguments in the "hardcore" spheres outside of Dragonsong was that most content was too easy because the jobs are too easy to use now and everyone knows their kits due to the lack of substantial shifts/changes after SHB.

If your job being made easier somehow makes "Now you have to actually get out of the AOE" too hard for you then maybe the game isn't for you? I don't think I've hit a dps check outside of savage in a long time, and the rest of the savage tier currently is mainly just getting your group to move in tandem to not wipe.

Not only do a million and one different varieties of guides exist/get created every year (Hector is one of my favorite new additions to my guide references, he does great shit) but the content is never and has never (outside of arguably ultimate) been an insurmountable task. This last EX was a joke, especially compared to Hades from ShB. If you couldn't handle 5 heads I'm sorry.

There is no reason you need a robotic voice to tell you and show you where to stand and what to do at every second of the fight. There is no reason you need third party tools to track your own skills. There is no reason to need third party tools in a game designed without them in mind.

An argument about accessibility becomes moot when the only application of said tools is to exempt the human interaction from it entirely. People aren't using callouts because they're slow or disabled, they're using them because that means they don't have to think. These tools are crutches that people rely on because for some reason they either can't stand the idea of expending effort in anything or just aren't strong enough to go without a new shiny for a few weeks until the content becomes trivialized 10 ilevels later.

People like to get mad about those who say "some games/pieces of content aren't for you" until something they like is under scrutiny. If you want to steamroll new/harder content, wait a few months to out level it with gear. The game is built around having counter systems to this problem innately meaning the defense for these tools once again falls apart.

Reading more of your posts:

Leadership and guidance is something that is missing from savage that is provided in-game during normal content through visual queues in the fights, which in combination with zero enrage timers enables that content to be playable by just about all people who play this game.

There's two counters to this.

One, the normal version of the fight gives you the frame of reference (usually) to know what the base versions of endgame mechanics are. Even if they resolve slightly different, the aoes and telegraphs that are "absent" help you know.

Two, The point of difficult content is to be difficult. If you keep getting knocked off the stage by a pushback mechanic in a fight with a move every time, without eventually going "maybe I should actually use my pushback mitigation" then that's on the player. That's not a gate made by the game, that's you/the player refusing to acknowledge why you died.

There should be difficult content, and adding an enrage timer and taking out a few telegraphs isn't the"LEAP" that you're making it out to sound. It's not like you go from EW-Trial1 to EW-EX1 and all of a sudden every mechanic changes. It's built upon something you've already HAD to clear to get to that point. That's why it's well designed.

But the issue is that the second someone steps into doing savage or extreme trials, the guidance is taken away and enrage timers are applied.

And? That's why the content is called "Extreme" and "Savage." I'm not going to complain on the forums that I can't get an ultimate clear because I'm not BiS. I'm going to realize that the content is labelled as such that I need to know what I need to prep and know in order to join said content.

Mods that were developed in World of Warcraft were designed to fill the gap of missing guidance and enabled groups with poor leadership and learning skills to tackle content they otherwise would be unable to handle, which then lead to an arms race between the devs and the community at large where they started making content to meet some arbitrary difficulty wall for player retention.

Now I know this is a bait post. "Player retention" when the game has done things the same way for years and done nothing but grow its playerbase due to HOW it handles its content vs WoW and other MMos is certainly a take.

[Issaella]

*snip*

I've gone back on forth on responding to this since I saw this thread a couple days ago, but as someone who has been trying unsuccessfully work up the courage to do current Savage I feel you are wrong on a number of points. For one, I agree with the OP and others in this thread that there is no ramp-up in endgame difficulty in this game, at all. The difference between doing a raid boss on Normal vs Savage is -to use a WoW comparison- the difference between raidfinder bosses and late heroic/mythic bosses (I feel I'm being generous with later heroic), there is nothing in between. And the amount of mechanical overlap between the two is like teaching someone to drive automatic, then putting them behind a manual transmission race car and walking away saying "well, the first 2 pedals and steering wheel are similar, figure it out". Then telling them to keep driving until they get 1st place in a national race, until then they will get no compensation (and if anyone more experienced helps them then they have almost no chance of compensation).

Additionally I would argue that overgearing any current savage is essentially moot due to the sheer number of instakill/instawipe mechanics, where most failures are not recoverable. The only thing overgearing does is speed up the kills for people who can already do the mechanics. For people struggling on the mechanics it doesn't really help at all, because it seems like there are really only 3 outcomes in Savage; 1) make a mistake and you die, the odds of clearing are now negligible, 2) make a mistake and everyone dies, start over, 3) perform flawlessly and succeed. I may be wrong on that, but after watching guides/walkthroughs for a couple weeks trying to psych myself up, I'm even more hesitant because the amount of personal responsibility is such that if everyone isn't performing at at their best at all times there is very little chance for success.

Related to the previous point I would not agree that you can carry people who may be struggling, it's just not possible with the enrage timers and the number of pass/fail mechanics where failure by anyone results in a wipe. If you have carried someone through to completion, then arguably they could have done it on their own under ideal circumstance. You cannot carry someone who cannot do the mechanics without error.

To be honest, I would really like to do a couple of the early Savages just for a couple of the dyeable gear pieces, but being able to perform at that level just looks absolutely exhausting. The distance between taking the first step and the endpoint seems gargantuan, the time investment equally so, and the likelihood of success seems infinitesimal.

[Zaene]

*Snipity snip*

I agree and understand 100%. The thing about savage that many people overlook is that it requires the time (a variable about depending on player skill) and patience (also a function of the required time) of a STATIC. That is to say, unless everyone in a hypothetical "learning" PUG you're looking to join is actually self-actualized and knows that it might take a good while for the least skillful member of the PUG to get the hang of the mechanics, you're looking at someone getting annoyed at the *time* taken and losing their *patience*, and leaving. Then the group implodes and you're left at square one.

So, I highly recommend finding some /genuinely/ good people, talking about what you want to do, trying your best, and you can clear everything with enough pulls.

[Tobias_Azuryon]

For one, I agree with the OP and others in this thread that there is no ramp-up in endgame difficulty in this game, at all.

So if I said there's no ramp up "at all" That was a faux pas on my part as I mean there is no "omg insane what the eff" ramp up from mechanics specifically. In group content the whole group has to be working together to a solution. I think the difficulty is maintained with Normal > EXes > Savage > Ultimate being the ascending difficulty duties.

Part of the point about Savage and Ultimate is the puzzle solving aspect of it. If you know what everything does or have a bunch of telegraphs there is less/no difficulty there. The reason I like this as a mechanic is because it compensates for the fact that players have gotten so skilled at the game that they can read telegraphs and mechanics that now the fights have gotten to buffs/debuffs/resolves in order to solve it.

One of the absolute best parts of initial raiding is going "Okay so this applies this buff and that does this but how do we resolve if X and Y happens." But this is made moot when party finder strats/video strats are made widely available. So again the "difficulty" is mitigated by the player spending the 3 seconds it takes to google/youtube the video and learn about the mechanics. Then it's just...seeing the fight live to adapt from there.

Let's take P1S as an example. P1S is your "intro to Savage" content. You know from Normal that he'll cleave one side and then the other, he just does it back to back now. Okay cool.

Then you have the flail a big heavy object vs the sickle, a light object. Through visible tells you know know that one will do X and the other will do Y. As soon as you die to it or see it you can go "okay now I know that Flail means get out and sickle means get in. Puzzle solved.

Shackles is a new mechanic, with visible telegraphs that tell you if you're resolving the mechanic properly or not. If four people have the purple together and no red are in the group/overlapped, it will resolve. This was a new mechanic that took trial and error to solve. Puzzle solved.

Temperence is much the same as normal. Now EVERYONE has to resolve buffs together, but it's the same mechanic just with one "no no square" inbetween everything but N/S.

Dart Board has the same mechanics but now you have to be on red and white. In/Out Right/Left Red/White three fields of combos that become easier to plan for as you practice.

Then four fold is the only thing where people shit the bed and that was a puzzle that has been solved by either flexing or timer strat. Looking at debuffs you know they have different timers meaning you lose track after a while but you KNOW that you're red or purple. As soon as you get the buff you know from the first shackles that you have to be out or in, the rest is agreeing on positioning. Puzzle solved.

P2S has the same mechanic with Predatory but you gotta move with channeling flow being the "new mechanic" as well as the triangle/squares move.

P3S has bird phase.

P4S has second phase which is new but also the capstone fight of the tier.

If none of these did new things they'd be boring, and the fact that people can clear day 1 and/or deconstruct mechanics day 1 shows that they're not insurmountable or impossible. It just takes trial and error and being okay with looking like a fool sometimes. that's why most pfs (are supposed to anyways) advertise what phase they're progging so that people can join in on the things they don't know how to handle and eventually get a good grip of them.

Additionally I would argue that overgearing any current savage is essentially moot due to the sheer number of instakill/instawipe mechanics, where most failures are not recoverable.

Gear helps a metric ton for tanks and healers. Your first day/week of savage with the gear you have vs after you've had a few weeks of ilevel jumps are night and day differences. Speeding up kills means less mechanics at the tail end, and means that if one person dies it's not instantly a wipe from lack of dps. If I heal with my SGE now at ilevel 600 vs when I first started or downsync it I guarantee you I will have more tight windows and less room for mistakes.

I'm speaking mostly to savage here as majority of EXes are baby level of difficulty in terms of dps checks and the rest is just not dying to mechanics, something that again you're GOING TO DO at first, we all do, but you die and then you learn and then you try again.

If you die in savage week 1, yes it's most likely a wipe, but my group can clear despite depths all the way up to P4S and that's just because we just got to P4S phase 2 and in 4 runs are at enrage for final phase due to hilariously blowing ourselves up in curtain call.

I may be wrong on that, but after watching guides/walkthroughs for a couple weeks trying to psych myself up, I'm even more hesitant because the amount of personal responsibility is such that if everyone isn't performing at at their best at all times there is very little chance for success.

I think the key thing here is that you and others (Including myself when I first started) are afraid of failure and/or possibly sucking/failing. I told my fc lead I'd never do raids because that shit seemed like too much for me to handle and for some people it MIGHT BE. I know after I first tried (NORMAL mind you) raiding I was like Okay cool what about exes and then I got good at those and moved to savages, I have not cleared ults yet haha.

No one said all this content had to exist for every type of player. It's called SAVAGE for a reason. I'm sorry that having personal responsibility for your own actions is a scary thing, but if you can't handle that, then you're not going to magically get better with addons until you die a few times and figure out what happens.

You cannot carry someone who cannot do the mechanics without error.

In Extreme content you absolutely can, and as this topic was encompassing all of endgame/"hard content" I felt it necessary to add that. To be fair people can buy clears and I've seen more than one person with an ultimate weapon where I had to go "how did you get this" in my head after watching how bad they were at basic mechanics.

To be honest, I would really like to do a couple of the early Savages just for a couple of the dyeable gear pieces, but being able to perform at that level just looks absolutely exhausting. The distance between taking the first step and the endpoint seems gargantuan, the time investment equally so, and the likelihood of success seems infinitesimal.

Anything prior to EW savage isn't even hard? With ilevels now you can basically laugh at most the first two tiers of SHB savage minus a few mechanics. I literally pf'd Titan for the first time a month ago and got my first clear of it in a few runs. That's not to say I'm good because I died a lot, but we absolutely can now (with more ilevels) clear with minimal effort.

So aside from EW content (which is current and SHOULD be difficult) the "early" savages aren't something you should see as insurmountable at all. Break this idea that savage is so much "harder" vs just being more "elaborate" and you'll start to get a better headspace about it. Just like when everyone started, the first time you see a stack marker you have no clue what the eff you're supposed to do. The first time you see those yellow triangles in Titan you have no clue what you're supposed to do. But then you die to it a few times and you learn.

When you stop being afraid of looking bad you can become good. "Sucking at sumthin' is the first step towards being sorta good at something."

The thing about savage that many people overlook is that it requires the time (a variable about depending on player skill) and patience (also a function of the required time) of a STATIC.

With the advent of discord it has become insanely easy to coordinate with people and find groups. On many discords/reddits/etc are constantly people advertising for fill ins and new statics forming. I did all of P1-P3s mostly through like 4 different groups depending on what day I had free. I coordinated my schedule and relegated it to ONLY two nights a week, and only for 2-3 hours a day. Sure I progged "slower" but I didn't have to go batshit on time expenditure to learn and I did it with a few different groups until I went to my original static group again later (I didn't want to play NIN anymore I wanted to play GNB and SGE so until GNB opened up there just wasn't a spot there for me).

That is to say, unless everyone in a hypothetical "learning" PUG you're looking to join is actually self-actualized and knows that it might take a good while for the least skillful member of the PUG to get the hang of the mechanics, you're looking at someone getting annoyed at the *time* taken and losing their *patience*, and leaving. Then the group implodes and you're left at square one.

Numerous groups say "fresh prog no salt" and other stuff and most of my learning in exes and stuff when I started was from joining said groups, knowing I wouldn't clear that day and just playing to see mechanics. Prog is prog baby.

So, I highly recommend finding some /genuinely/ good people, talking about what you want to do, trying your best, and you can clear everything with enough pulls.

Again, discord/reddit/etc all have people who are looking for people for groups, just bounce around to find one you like and/or a few you like and see where you land. You don't win by not playing.

In the end we can't all sit here and talk about how stressful and daunting and terrifying a task of the game is while simultaneously going "well it's just a game I should be able to clear it if I want to it's not a big deal." It's either an actual investment of time and effort for difficulty and rewards you with cool stuff, or it's a game that should be "nerfed" because anyone should be able to clear at any time regardless of what things exist in game to facilitate later clears (like ilevels and levels in general).

[Issaella]

Gear helps a metric ton for tanks and healers. Your first day/week of savage with the gear you have vs after you've had a few weeks of ilevel jumps...

I think what you are missing here is that if a mechanic kills you (or wipes you) regardless of gear then overgearing the raid is meaningless in terms of progressing. Getting better gear doesn't help people who are trying to get past the mechanics do so any faster or easier. Even your own argument is solely based on being able to blast through content you have on farm even faster with better gear. This is my main problem with trying to get into Savages, no matter how much ilvl I've been able to pile up (592 on my main DPS) I am still going to have to put an enormous amount of time progressing at a much slower pace with a much lower chance of success. There is no natural lessening of the difficulty that you see in other MMOs due to increased gear due to the sheer number of pass/fail mechanics where failure means death/wipe regardless of gear level. It really feels like a single mistake means the end, start over.

I think the key thing here is that you and others (Including myself when I first started) are afraid of failure and/or possibly sucking/failing...

It is less the fear of failure (granted it is that too) and more the fear of putting in dozens of hours to learn something and still having no success. It feel like Savage is really bad in terms of time investment vs reward unless you have a dedicated static. And I think that's what it boils down to. Even if you are trying to PuG the content you have to put in static amounts of time and effort, but actually it's considerably more because there is no uniformity between one prog group and the next.

So aside from EW content (which is current and SHOULD be difficult) the "early" savages aren't something you should see as insurmountable at all...

I don't see how you can say with a straight face that current Savages are not MUCH harder than Normals and significantly harder than current Ex. From the discussions I've had with other people who have cleared p3s and p4s, the only one they think is even close to Ex2/3 difficulty is p1s, anything beyond that isn't even in the same ballpark. Reiterating my previous argument it's the difference between raidfinder difficulty and mythic difficulty in WoW with nothing in between. This essentially cuts out an entire group of mid-level raiders.

I just don't feel like the odds are in my favor having any kind of success this late in the tier. Without a static you are essentially stuck in the prog stage indefinitely until you get absurdly lucky and get a clear and can move into Duty Complete parties or eventually give up (which seems more likely given the sheer number of repeat PF postings I see day after day, week after week)