Chaotic is midcore, in case you were wondering

[Havenchild]

Weren't you one of the people arguing in previous threads that the Chaotic is Savage tier? Now you're saying EX? No, nobody in this thread has asked for more "brainoff" content. I feel like the sentiment is, nobody except Havenchild enjoys a 24 person body check.

Keep re-reading the following until you understand the difference between mechanical difficulty and what the encounter actually is as stated by Devs themselves.

If you were to put Chaotic on a mechanical level, it actually is on par with an EX, and it's all relatively easy to grasp concepts we've seen in the game over and over, (Stack Spread, In, Out, Look Away etc) but when you add 23 other people vs the usual 7, you have upped the fail points by 3fold at least, which makes it a low savage level.

[Havenchild]

But that's not true though, is it. Alliance raids are on the same level as normal trails. Which tbh are nearly on par with expert roulette in terms of encounter difficulty. Really the only difference being party size and actual fight length.

An Alliance Raid and Normal Trial can be cleared by a party of semi-competent people, even throwing in a few grey parsers in there for good measure, with relative ease. It also doesn't require manually putting together a party of people and trying to ensure they are all on the same phase of the fight (for all the good that does). Someone earlier in the thread put it well when they said that the type of content missing in FFXIV is encounters which can be explained in a few minutes by a party leader with experience, and can be cleared in about an hour with clear signs of progress after each wipe.

FFXIV doesn't have a dungeon or raid system with several variable difficulties. Sure we have normal trials and raids, and their EX/Savage versions, but those aren't really the same thing. They don't just increase health and damage, and add one or two mechanics. In many cases the EX/Savage versions of the fights are nearly unrecognizable from their normal counterparts. It's not the same as having content with a difficulty ramp

Few points I'm going to heavily disagree with.

80%+ of mechanics in Savage are all present in their Normal counterparts with the only thing different usually being the indicator of said mechanic being something different, whether a lack of an indicator (now a status ailment instead ) or some alternate way of communicating the same info but obscured and then layering of patterns of a sort which may cause you to "solve" it differently occasionally.

As for what falls between an Expert Dungeon and an Ex Trial being Alliance Raid well lets look at it..


Expert dungeon -

Can the party wipe on any boss despite losing a member? All bosses can be solod by tanks alone.

Do they require strong mechanical knowledge of XIV? No, brute forceable


Alliance Raid

Do you need mechanical knowledge? Not generally, brute forceable.

If one party goes down, does the raid potentially catapult into a wipe? Depends on the mechanic you are at and if it requires multiple parties to complete.

Can you clear an Alliance boss with only one party up? In most cases, No but sometimes yes if no mechanics exist that require multiple tanks.

Are Alliance Raids generally recoverable if healers go down? Yes, if you have ress mages but if not, in most cases, no.


Extreme Trials

Can you wipe if you are missing 1 party member? Yes, depending in the mechanic
Generally recoverable with ress mages if healers go down? Yes as long as there isnt a mech that requires 8 ppl
Do you need strong mechanical knowledge to win? Yes, generally not brute forceable

The point being that to find something harder than an Expert, you have to imply some punishing feature, whether it be mechanically difficult or punishing damage wise for failure. If everyone ignored mechanics in Alliance Raid, you definitely can wipe (see first week raids)

Despite being able to wipe in an alliance raid though, they are still brute forceable as most people can fail the mechs and still you can succeed 9/10 times through each boss usually. Any mechanic punishing enough to hold a player accountable to their death, when amplified by x23 players having to do the same, will easily result into a more difficult encounter.

Which means that, yes as I said, the complainers want mechanics they can't essentially wipe to easily and can generally brute force through with enough ress mages. That's simply a fact if we cannot implement body checks that actually hold players accountable to their gameplay skills.

[Lilapop]

Keep re-reading the following until you understand the difference between mechanical difficulty and what the encounter actually is as stated by Devs themselves.

I was trying to find where you actually acknowledged what I said until I realized you didn't. If people asked for a 24 person body check and enjoy a 24 person body check, where are these people? Other than yourself, since Havenchild isn't multiple people.

[Colt47]

Savage, EX, Chaotic, Criterion, and Criterion savage are all the same thing and the only difference is the amount of "SURPRISE DEATH" that happens because of lack of forewarning, the period of forewarning being too short, a lack of a clear way to learn what happened in-game without the use of video editing software, or a combination of the three. They also are fights where the time it takes to clear is based on the whole of the group and not the individual.

It kind of sucks that running this content is kind of an unpleasant throughfare in the US due to the mental gymnastics people keep throwing around. It's basically this weird thing where the US mindset is all about "holding oneself by the bootstraps and personal freedom", and when faced with the truth that they can't accomplish things without the help of others, they blame everyone else but themselves ("The group is holding me back, I know what to do, why don't you?"), and then typically run off out of the blue and leave the group in shambles. It's bad enough with 8 possible lemons and tripling it up to 24 sounds like a horror show. Like the reason no one can agree how hard the content is on this particular forum is because there's "the boss fight" and then there is "the group fight". To be frank they got enough difficulty in "the group fights" they don't even need to make things as hard as savage. At the 24 man level fights could be as complex as freaking Zodiark EX and still be a nightmare to do.

[jonimated]

snip

I appreciate you reading my whole post and replying to points specifically. I think though in going through specifics you may have missed the overarching point I was trying to make, while also somehow agreeing with it? That may have been my fault.

I was trying point out the chasm of difficulty between normal content/alliance raids and Extreme/Savage. For purposes of argument lets just use Extreme.

I used Expert roulette only as an example to point out that an Alliance raid is far closer to an Expert dungeon in terms of difficulty than it is to an Extreme trial by a pretty huge margin. And in doing so show that Alliance raids are not the "middle ground" content between normal and EX as you claimed they were. In the same way that EX is not the "middle ground" content between Alliance and Savage. Alliance and EX are just too far apart in terms of difficulty for that to be even remotely true, and you even said as much when you were breaking down the points in my last post.

They type of group required to clear an Alliance raid is so vastly different from the type of group required to clear EX, up to and including knowledge of mechanics and group composition. As far as Alliance Raids are concerned that is by design. It falls into the bucket of content, much like dungeons, that SE thinks should be able to be completed by a literal potato. And it serves that purpose well. The overarching point is that FFXIV doesn't have any content between very large Alliance and EX gap.

Now Alliance Raids *could* fill that gap, and there's maybe 1 or 2 instances where that has been true, but overall in the history of the game it is not. Alliance raids have for the most part been long form dungeons as far as difficulty is concerned.

[AllenThyl]

What "complainers" want is more content that falls between normal and ex trial difficulty. If you equate that with braindead content that can not wipe you then you are free to have that opinion. As it stands, the jump of difficulty between the 2 types of content is bigger than any other jump in difficulty in this game. I am not here to argue how the chaotic raid should have been, I just want more stuff to do for people that want to transition into playing a fight of that difficulty.

That already exists, it's called "Extreme" mode content. I don't mean that in a "gotcha" way, but the Extremes of previous expansions (synced or unsynced), as well as current expansion extremes, do fall within that definition when higher gear and echo is introduced. As frustrating as mentor roulette can be, but out of the 2 dozen EX trials I got in there so far, all were cleared within the lockout, even with a significant portion of first timers. And those were synced. Similarly, EX1 during EW could be cleared by following someone with a danger dorito, and healing / dps requirements were eased with progressively better gear as well as the introduction of echo. If the goal is to "practice" without too big a risk of failing, then unsynced EX trials are indeed the perfect outlet, and they already exist. They even have worthwhile rewards (mounts)!

At the end of the day, it's not about the lack of content that precludes people from engaging or learning. It's the people themselves. If people don't want to properly spread during proteans when they can survive doing it, but it becomes "too hard" a mechanic when overlapping cannot be survived, then there is no content that could bridge this. One either learns, or doesn't. 30 ray people dying to every single mechanic in Red Choctober say hi.

[Havenchild]

I appreciate you reading my whole post and replying to points specifically. I think though in going through specifics you may have missed the overarching point I was trying to make, while also somehow agreeing with it? That may have been my fault.

I was trying point out the chasm of difficulty between normal content/alliance raids and Extreme/Savage. For purposes of argument lets just use Extreme.

I used Expert roulette only as an example to point out that an Alliance raid is far closer to an Expert dungeon in terms of difficulty than it is to an Extreme trial by a pretty huge margin. And in doing so show that Alliance raids are not the "middle ground" content between normal and EX as you claimed they were. In the same way that EX is not the "middle ground" content between Alliance and Savage. Alliance and EX are just too far apart in terms of difficulty for that to be even remotely true, and you even said as much when you were breaking down the points in my last post.

They type of group required to clear an Alliance raid is so vastly different from the type of group required to clear EX, up to and including knowledge of mechanics and group composition. As far as Alliance Raids are concerned that is by design. It falls into the bucket of content, much like dungeons, that SE thinks should be able to be completed by a literal potato. And it serves that purpose well. The overarching point is that FFXIV doesn't have any content between very large Alliance and EX gap.

Now Alliance Raids *could* fill that gap, and there's maybe 1 or 2 instances where that has been true, but overall in the history of the game it is not. Alliance raids have for the most part been long form dungeons as far as difficulty is concerned.

I will say I half agree and half disagree with the notion that Alliance is closer to Expert than EX, but I believe yes, it is the middle ground. If you parse it out, you will almost never wipe on an expert dungeon. An Alliance Raid, you can wipe on if enough people go down, especially the tanks, while EX is harder sure, and its 8 people usually needing to be responsible for themselves.

The issue comes with going from Alliance to EX as you say. Tell me How do you make something more difficult than Alliance Raid but not as difficult as an EX Trial? As you approach an EX trial, which you would with this theoretical middle content sandwiched between AR and EX, you HAVE to create a sense of difficulty, and that difficulty comes in DPS Checks or Mechanical failures and wipes. There IS no middle ground without those, because absent of any wipes based on mechanic failure or DPS checks, you essentially STILL have Alliance Raid.

If you add a DPS check that needs to actually be met, and has some difficulty to meet it, then you likely have mechanics that can one shot or severely hamper DPS.
If you have something that requires a person to be mindful of their positioning, well when you factor x23 other people all having to do the same, you instantly rev up the difficulty by a lot, not necessarily because it's hard to do, but because the fail points increase dramatically and the overall player base tend to be lemons mechanically. The only work around to this difficulty usually is the ability to brute force mechanic failure with nonstop ressing. Even the arguments against CAR and specifically people pointing to the challenge of ressing people from other platforms/alliances PROVES exactly what I'm saying about how difficulty is tied to people brute forcing with ressing and the ability to do so.

People out here thinking that "oh wow people are dying nonstop, but we were able to clear it" and that's considered "difficult". No it's not, that's just Alliance Raid nonsense. The moment you cannot outright brute force content with ressing, is the moment these complainers think the content is "too difficult".

[Aravell]

I think the main takeaway from this statement is that the dev team has their own definition of "midcore", so if chaotic raid isn't your cup of tea, perhaps it's time to stop asking for "more midcore content" and start being more specific in what kind of content you're requesting.

[Buttobi]

That already exists, it's called "Extreme" mode content. I don't mean that in a "gotcha" way, but the Extremes of previous expansions (synced or unsynced), as well as current expansion extremes, do fall within that definition when higher gear and echo is introduced. As frustrating as mentor roulette can be, but out of the 2 dozen EX trials I got in there so far, all were cleared within the lockout, even with a significant portion of first timers. And those were synced. Similarly, EX1 during EW could be cleared by following someone with a danger dorito, and healing / dps requirements were eased with progressively better gear as well as the introduction of echo. If the goal is to "practice" without too big a risk of failing, then unsynced EX trials are indeed the perfect outlet, and they already exist. They even have worthwhile rewards (mounts)!

At the end of the day, it's not about the lack of content that precludes people from engaging or learning. It's the people themselves. If people don't want to properly spread during proteans when they can survive doing it, but it becomes "too hard" a mechanic when overlapping cannot be survived, then there is no content that could bridge this. One either learns, or doesn't. 30 ray people dying to every single mechanic in Red Choctober say hi.

Are you seriously telling people to just go do old ex trials overgeared as a solution to lack of current content?

[localareanetwork]

The people on this forum will argue that any content that you can wipe to is hardcore