Aloalo Criterion is DEAD

[Caro178]

Yo!

Criterion Aloalo is already dead in Party Finder. If you haven't done it yet, tough luck. It's great content btw, really fun and I enjoy it a lot. But it has ridiculously low half-life and an absolutely tiny community that actually cares. I didn't clear it and at this point it's probably a done deal.

I haven't done it at all in pf yet, but I have about 12 clears now with the group of friends I've been running it with and not one of us has gotten a mount drop. Not one in 40+ rolls. I actually really love the criterions - I think they are fun, creative and well designed and wish more people would attempt them, but the drop rate of the major reward is atrocious for something that takes 20 minutes to clear minimum with no deaths/wipes. Because of that I truly cannot recommend that anybody really bother unless they're in it for the long haul of doing 29 clears to buy all the items or want the savage weapon designs. They've absolutely killed this genuinely fun difficult 4 man content with a reward as rare as an extreme trial mount drop when it takes on average 3x longer to clear even when you don't wipe! It's tragic.

We are going to keep at it and do savage within the coming weeks for the weapon glamour and then be done with this forever, probably, unless some other friends decide they want someone to teach it to them.

My recommendation is the same as some other people here: you should get a group of friends together to complete this. I never would have bothered if I had to resort to party finder.

[caffe_macchiato]

Have you tried making three friends?

Imagine thinking anyone still has friends playing this game when the developers did everything they could to get people to "take a break".

[ZiraZ]

I really do wonder how they test criterion, do they actually make the testers run the dungeon start to end? I kinda doubt it, savage just seems to unappealing to most people, even ultimate players just cringe at the idea of zero deaths allowed on a 20+ min long dungeon
I hope they change the format, normal crit being more like extreme difficulty and savage difficulty having extra mechanics and more damage instead of zero ressing, maybe even including the secret variant boss with extra mechanics but with normal ressing rules.
Also stop making the mount MBable goddamn, this kills a lot of interest in people doing the content in the first place.

[Caro178]

Imagine thinking anyone still has friends playing this game when the developers did everything they could to get people to "take a break".

I was able to get 3 friends together within a few hours of the patch release to run it and we have tons of clears. Even if you can't track down 3 long term friends XIV recruitments are still pretty active with requests for weekly criterion groups to farm out the mount and eventually attempt savage. How do you think most people find statics for savage or ultimate? You can think of criterion more like an ultimate that way, your best bets are either gathering your own group of friends or seeking out a group of likeminded folks via discords. This dungeon will have some longevity in endgame circles just because of the shiny weapon reward.

[Caro178]

It's content that requires BiS to attempt in PF which means it is regardless going to have a tiny player base, just wait till you can unsync it and people will run it more often.

They will never let this content be run unsynced for the record. They are already ilevel synced and eventually will be entirely level synced just like ultimate raids. These will be level 90/ilevel 605, 635 and 665 forever.

[Miki_L]

It's definitely true that it's easier to find statics for this content with its smaller party size and relatively little restrictions on job requirements. I think the problem is that a lot of people were not really looking for more content to require forming groups outside of the game. The lack of content like exploration zones where you just find a pick up group and play is being sorely missed this expansion.

There are also issues with timing. The first two dungeons were released at a time where a lot of the less hardcore savage raiders were still busy with the tier. That combined with the general difficult of the content really does reinforce the idea that SE really only designed this for the more dedicated savage level players. The problem with that is they have two difficulty for this mode (normal and savage) and with the general lack of "midcore" content in EW it feels like a miss for this difficulty to not be more evenly distributed.

Also agree the amount of runs required to get the pity mount is way too excessive for how difficult the content is. I think this could all be solved by just making normal mode easier and replacing savage version with the current mechanical difficulty + more damage with no rez restrictions. Then the content becomes more of something you can gradually do on your spare time with randoms to farm the mount with savage actually being something people who don't hate themselves want to do.

[Cpt_Jack_Irons]

They will never let this content be run unsynced for the record. They are already ilevel synced and eventually will be entirely level synced just like ultimate raids. These will be level 90/ilevel 605, 635 and 665 forever.

That is really stupid considering how we can do Extremes unsynced

[Caro178]

That is really stupid considering how we can do Extremes unsynced

I believe the intention was always for Criterion (normal and savage) to be challenging evergreen content more comparable to ultimate raids not necessarily purely from the perspective of difficulty but in how the content is meant to be tackled. The design philosophy is different from extremes and regular savage raids which are never ilevel synced at all. They have always been that way. If you hop into P4S with a premade right now with no additional settings it will load you in at your current maximum ilevel as the default option. Load into Another Sil'dihn Subteranne, however, and you'll notice you are item level synced to 605. All the criterions are already ilevel synced just like ultimate raids so it's obvious what their plan with them is. It is fine to disagree with that design philosophy but there is plenty of logic behind it in my opinion. This is not even mid-level difficulty content, it's basically a middle ground between savage and ultimate that the devs intend to treat like evergreen challenge mode content going forward.

[Derio]

Doesnt matter if the content is good if the rewards is trash.

[ServerCollaps]

Doesnt matter if the content is good if the rewards is trash.

I fail to understand, how a 20m gil mount is trash. Thats 1m gil per run (which only takes 20 min)
3-6 mil gil per hour sounds like a very nice reward to me