Factors Affecting Test Data From Abyssos Savage Delay

[Aurelle_Deresnels]

Unfortunately, much like most content in this game with recent expansions, SE didn't interested in skill value but rather accessibility.

The sad thing is that they're not really accomplishing accessibility by removing skill ceiling in the first place. Accessibility is not about neutering hard content, but about offering both disability-friendly options and 'easy modes'. In the words of Damion Schubert, "the point of [his essay about gaming accessibility] is not that game designers should make games EASIER. Game designers should make the EASY parts EASIER and they should do everything in their power to make the hard parts ASPIRATIONAL. Players should want to walk that journey."*

We have easy modes. That's called Normal Mode, and it's entirely sufficient to see the story and access the game's wide variety of content. Levelling crafters and gatherers to see their storylines is similarly easy, and so are their casual endgames. This thread is about Savage Mode and its associated crafting and gathering support - the opt-in hard mode for those who desire a challenge. Removing challenge from hard modes does nothing to improve accessibility - the people in need of easy modes are not playing hard modes anyway - while driving away the more dedicated players. Not only does this reduce player enjoyment and subscriptions directly, the more dedicated players also support the rest with guides and the like, as Damion also mentions.

If SE was truly after accessibility, we would see things like removing the APM check QTE from Seat of Sacrifice Normal and adding better colorblind modes. I could go on about skill floors and skill ceilings, but I think you get my point.

* I would just cite the original essay on Twitter, but that's been locked due to Twitter issues. Viewing the content publicly now requires nine separate links from the Wayback Machine, courtesy of the Internet Archive, which I present here:

1. part one
2. part two
3. part three
4. part four
5. part five
6. part six
7. part seven
8. part eight
9. part nine, addenda as replies to comments

My own preference would be a sort of light version of Expert crafts being required for Master Recipes and for the whole Augmented Crafting gear to actually require new crafters. It's always bothered me the odd numbered patches have next to nothing for crafters to partake in because by that point everything has been marked down into oblivion. I think the Augmented sets should be craftable with a new mat to breeze a little life back into the market instead of essentially being a handout that only further devalues what little recipes we have.

None of this will happen, of course.

I agree it won't happen, but it would be very nice. No one needs gear in bulk, so it can be locked to manual crafts only, while food and potions can serve as easier-but-still-current endgame since they need to be macroable.

The dev team dislikes the idea of crafters seeing gil itself as a ranking system.

Even for crafters who don't care about gil as a ranking system, gil is a representation of value provided to the customer. Without crafted goods being worth something significant in trade, crafters get neither the satisfaction of fulfilling others' wants and needs nor the satisfaction of a job well done.

We won't know until 6.4 comes around. All we do know is this tier proved surprisingly profitable despite almost everyone assuming the markets would crash within hours. Even Yoshida himself acknowledged that very same concern, and his subsequent surprise when the opposite happened. 6.4 will more or less be the litmus test since they've all but confirmed Savage will be delayed again.

Yes, we need a tier without confounders to be the litmus test. Abyssos is clearly not that, being full of confounders, which is why I wrote in to point them out. Hopefully we will get such a tier with 6.4.

Raiders essentially have only five fights dedicated to their preferences in nearly the span of a year. Delaying three of them would feel awful while accomplishing absolutely nothing in terms of speeding up gear progression. There is no "issue" in regards to pushing people. Show some self control and simply raid at a lighter schedule if you either can't keep up or simply don't want to spent a lot of time progging. There's no shame in it taking you several weeks or even months to clear compared to those clearing week 1-2.

I agree. The fights are presented to allow each raider to go at the pace that suits them personally. Delays would only ruin the fun of those who want the faster pace for themselves, without helping anyone.

[Aurelle_Deresnels]

It definitely doesn't feel like the gear is enough if it takes a top tier playgroup to manage to barely kill the fight with what is considered to be "good enough" gear. ...

But this also isn't stating that they need to nerf savage as much as they need to create content that has the ability to work with more than one audience. ...

And going to mention that this is also why we have so many discussions on savage in the second half, because the tuning on the fights are not really meant for those who are more into "I like hard content but not the nightmare level content" kind of groups. I mean many of the savage fights have mechanics that without a guide would take forever to figure out for most people. Week 1 savage runners are pretty damn methodical on figuring out the strategies blind.

If you want moderate difficulty, you are welcome to take the fights at a slower pace yourself. That's how the high-end content works with and serves more than one audience. The fights are presented immediately for the benefit of those who enjoy and can handle a faster pace, especially along with blind prog. Yoshi-P has stated outright that the final fight of a Savage tier is tuned to make a tight DPS check in week 1 gear, because that's what those players enjoy.

"If we were to ship content with the same values which challenged our battle team, the top raiders would be deprived of that by-the-skin-of-your-teeth victory in the initial week of release.

...

A high-difficulty raid is a special kind of battle. We want players to enjoy a satisfying, hard-won victory, and we keep that ideal in mind when making tweaks and balance adjustments. Although we failed to walk that delicate line this time, the experience will help us to design a more perfectly thrilling battle in the future."

Why ruin their fun, and the fun of the people who support them, when you could just take the fights at your own pace and let the guides come out ahead of you?