Another World First Clear got disqualified due to "Cheating"

[Samaeliza]

How is this shocking to anyone when NA PF ultimates are full of open cheaters with "allagan melon".

[Grumblecakes]

These people were always cheaters. It was obvious. It won't change. How about SE makes content like midcore or anything for the majority playerbase then update after update of savages and ultimates? There is your solution. Stop fixating on this stuff such a small percentage of cheaters, i mean players, actually do.

[KuroMaboroshi]

Disregarding the obvious venting surrounding some of them and just trying to address arguments like these...

[...]How about SE makes content like midcore or anything for the majority playerbase then update after update of savages and ultimates? There is your solution.[...]

SE might as well dedicate themselves to make more mid-core content than this.
What the majority of players would play, instead of maybe the top 2% or so.

...in what I hope is reasonably good faith:

Definitions of "midcore" are going to vary so widely that it's a nebulous request. Personally I'd say alongside Extremes, many early Savage fights each tier could easily fall under that label as well. But difficulty is an inherently subjective measurement so that's like arguing taste.

So let's focus instead on engagement, which we can track to some extent. And the truth there is:
Savages (and even a few Ultimates) are more popular than some like to make everyone believe.

According to achievment tracking website FFXIVCollect, roughly 6.3% of tracked characters have cleared the current Savage tier (based on having the achievment). Luckybancho gives a similar number, putting ownership of the M4S mount at around 11.3% of the currently active playerbase. Even if we lowball it (although Luckybancho tracks more overall characters so that one is bound to be more precise, as per FFXIVCollect's own statement) with the first number, and then round further down to 5% to account for an insane amount of alts (which we have no way of proving or disproving actually exist), that is still 5% of people who have cleared the tier. Many more have likely at least attempted it. Looking at PF, many people each week still seem to be trying and they don't show up in the statistics yet.

Looking at older savages for more "final" clear rates is always a bit tricky since unsynching makes them way easier to pass, but if we take the most recent non-Dawntrail Savage, Anabaseios, it sits at a comfortable 10% of players, while the first one, Asphodelos, reaches a whopping 20%, which is likely closer to the amount of people that attempted it. Every fifth player was interested enough in Savage to clear it, even if some of those are late clears or unsynchs.

To put it into another perspective, if we stick solely to FFXIVCollect data points for the rest of this post (which again is probably lowballing those numbers), 23% of people cleared the Normal mode of the current raid tier. So roughly one fourth of those also successfully went through all of the Savage tier.

Also, more people finished this Savage tier than:
-did 20 or more current treasure map dungeons in Dawntrail
-finished their Field records in Bozja/Zadnor
-queued Rival Wings PvP 100 times
I could go through the listings and find many more examples, but the point I'm trying to make is that there are many, many pieces of content in XIV that have an engagement rate of about the same as Savage. Savage is not the one outlier of content that almost no one does that some try to make it out to be. Especially considering many of those pieces of content are significantly older already which should lead to higher completion rates.

And the cherry on top: Some of the older Ultimates even have similar clear rates or higher to the current Savage. Weapon's Refrain sits at a comfy 12% clear rate of tracked characters.

Now, of course one can make the argument that then logically all of those pieces of content should be removed and the game should only ever focus on content that 50%+ of the playerbase engage in. But then even supposed "midcore" content is going to way of the dodo. The last few Extremes of Endwalker, which can by now be unsynced (at which point you're not even really doing the content anymore) sit between 40% and 15%. Not even all Beast Tribe Quests from previous expansiosn, the easiest content of them all, reach 50% completion rates. It's an insane standard to hold any content to.

[Grumblecakes]

My statement is more of a better balance. I do not think savage or ultimates should not exists but not releasing any sort of content more accessible that isn't over in an hour sonce DT release is bad. It has been savage and the iltimates. The alliance raid is good but thats only a weekly thing. The only ones against that are savage raiders who rhink no one else's opinion matters unless they do hard content. There are players like me who don't do that stuff but also don't log in to RP at venues either as my hobby. I am tackling some older stuff but that is not an answer that I find acceptable. There should be something new other than a short MSQ patch and garbage hildebrand which I despise but am forced to do incase something else like last expansion relics are gated behind it. So have your savages but other players deserve stuff too whether raiders want to accept that or not.

Edit: I am only doing older content because I have literally nothing else to do in current endgame. And when that dries up then I will be down to logging in once a week if nothing comes out.

I don't do savage because I can't, I don't do it because I don't find it fun at all. It is tedious and isn't complicated. Memorize or die and if someone else screws up. Then die. Not really fun for me.

[shigaisen]

Just shut it all down, no one gets to play the game anymore, period. Won't have to worry about cheaters and content of any level if there's no more game.

[Mijeme]

Yoshi P will still make Ultimates for the game but he wont merit or congratulate the World First anymore and I doubt the community regians his trust unless the WF all plays on PS5 Pro.

[Kes13a]

Yoshi P will still make Ultimates for the game but he wont merit or congratulate the World First anymore and I doubt the community regians his trust unless the WF all plays on PS5 Pro.

that works both ways, and the goodwill is running low.

[Atreides]

I don't know why people expect a statement from Yoshida, his last stance on it was like many mentioned before that he won't comment or congratulate world first groups anymore.

[MaxCarnage]

Some people are just so used to modding every game they play that they are unable to play it vanilla. No one should be surprised.