SE: Savage Difficulty Spike and PF Toxicity Shows we need Hard Raids

[Hastatus]

However, more generally, you're not going to produce this comfortable funnel from normal --> hard --> savage that significantly increases the number of players who choose to challenge themselves beyond normal.

Probably not, but one must always hope and be willing to try.

I would say the tier's difficulty isn't a spike, rather a return to normalcy because the last tier was a complete joke

Perhaps. But when I talk about the Savage difficulty spike here I intended to mean the difference in difficulty between Normal and Savage, not the differences in difficulty between Savages of different tiers and expansions. Maybe it was a subconscious double entendre.

On Extremes:
The idea that Extremes are in between the difficulty of Normal Raids and Savage Raids is true but they are insufficient for the job of attraction and retention of players for multiple reasons. They are not actually Raids. Normal Raids unlock Savage Raids, and Normal Trials unlock Extreme Trials. There are fewer Extremes: one Extreme to every two Savage Raids. Extremes are almost always released individually while Savage Raids are released in groups of four. Extreme Trials are usually released alongside other content rather than during lulls. When Savage Raids are released there is usually no other or not much other current content. The design of the rewards system for Extremes promotes very fast farming for mounts. The extreme repetition of farming and knowing it will have to likely be 50 to 99 times creates a quick burn. Kind of the opposite problem of Savage Raids where the rewards system tries to promote only one completion per week. The slowness of the gearing system makes Savage a very slow burn. The burn is so slow one has to decide whether the more numerous motivated clearers at the start is more or less important than the gear later that might reduce the time investment in progging. That very slow burn might actually be reducing the total number of participants earlier on. Because interests fade quickly, many don't bother entering the content at all especially when other new current content is added later. Old extremes and Savages would be fun, but other than the single Extreme SE turns into an Unreal every eight months or so there is not much of a chance to find many doing old ones in PF (unsynced mount farms do not count). Even the four-month-old Chaotic is practically dead and the leftover players are not seeing many clears (I spent the past two weekends during bonus hours and saw 3 clears in about 12 hours). It could just be a new temporary trend, but the art/story of the characters in the fights has an impact. The last Extreme with the knight of roses (Cordelia?...nope...Zelenia) is just a blip that appears and disappears like the hologram it is, but Black Cat, Honeybee Lovely, Brute Bomber, Wicked Thunder, Dancing Green, et al are very fun and attractive characters that have a larger role and interact with the WOL in the actual story. It feels like the production values for Raids is improving. If the Extremes were this magic bullet of difficulty content between Normal and Savage Raids why does the tension between players in Savage Raids seem so high? I would love to see more Unreals and Extremes (without excessive mount farms) but that would likely require way more effort on SE's part than copy-pasting and adjusting a few numbers on existing fights: TO ADD ANOTHER SEPARATE OPTIONAL DIFFICULTY MODE, NOT TO COMPLETELY REPLACE THE CURRENT DIFFICULTY MODE (just to be clear).

But how would the gearing work?

Good question. I thought about discussing this but it felt a little off-topic so I left it out of my original post.

On Rewards:

Hard Raids:Drops upgraded Historia Gear; Mount won by completing Hard Raids on every job class (achievement mount).
Savage Raids: Drops Babyface Gear and market-sellable upgrade materials for Historia gear (intended to be sold to normal players); Mount drop.

Forget the weekly lockouts in Hard Raids. If you want to farm gear, farm gear...that's more players playing each week and the freedom to gear any job you want without having to plan out one job weeks ahead of time. If all that gear and practice makes you feel done, move onto Savage. I really don't know if it would be better or worse to keep weekly lock outs in the Savage Raids. Under the current system I often find myself wanting to go help others clear a Savage but decide against because finding anychests at the same time that I have an itch is rare. If there were Hard Raids to fall back on, I guess Savage could keep the weekly lockouts too. The main idea is that Hard Raiders would have access to good gear quickly but Savage Raiders could still get all BiS. Upgrade materials would only be needed by those who do not do Hard or Savage Raids. *** It would be too harsh to lock a mount behind a MINE Savage so I would create a challenge achievement of some sort that could be done to earn the same mount in Hard Raids too. Such an achievement would give more players another reason to participate in Hard Raids.

People who want savage content but easier are just lazy.

I have a problem with people who don't like savage, come here and ask for the same mechanics but with everything watered down so they can do them.

I love Savage, but I'm not in a monogamous relationship with it. I like all kinds and levels of challenge. I love playing with people at all skill levels in content that suits their skill level (i.e. where they are having fun). I'm sorry you only see and imagine the worst in people and their motives. I do like the existing Savage Fights a lot and will do them. I'm just waiting until the average random PF Savage Raider has enough gear to clear the adds in M6S. I also see the unnecessary tensions that arise from the way the difficulty levels in this game are implemented. People's skill levels are on a bell curve but the amount of content vs difficulty is like an inverted bell curve (and yes obviously shorter on the tougher side). Can you not imagine or empathize with people at lower skill levels or lower endurance levels? Why must someone who advocates for variety automatically be an unskilled player? I might have more Chaotic clears than most players and yet I still think there should have been a slightly less strict version for other players to enjoy. Maybe a good player wants to drink a little while playing. Some people age and are closer to death than their birth. Why are you so afraid of an extra mode? Would someone clearing M6H diminish your clear of M6S? I'm sorry if you could not possibly have fun playing both Hard and Savage Raids with different types of people in different states of mind. *** You do realize that the current way Savage works is exactly that it is getting watered down over long periods of time by the way the gear is released right? Maybe it's so slow you never realized it or never thought of it that way. It is the very reason another poster was angrily afraid my solution would make a MINE Savage impossible for some to clear because it would never get watered down. My world first race comment was probably over the top: I don't know how to describe what SE is aiming for when they tune. [But to be clear I do not try to world first anything...except fishing.] But thanks to the two of you for proving my point that Savage seems to easily bring out negative emotions in some people.

[Mawlzy]

Probably not, but one must always hope and be willing to try.

I admire effort, but I'd suggest it's heavy sledding when you have the following obstacles to overcome if you want more people in Savage.

The fight design is formulaic and probes a tiny area of design space. As such, it is doomed to appeal to a minority only.

The skillset this favors is highly specific, despite assertions from those in this thread who have apparently never studied intrinsic variations in the cognitive abilities of our species. (This also leads to toxic ableism through the assertion the only thing preventing people from succeeding in certain content is "disabilities." Gaming bigotry is still ensconced in the 1990s.)

The monothematic, DDR boss design is driven by the limitations of the engine, pressure from parsers who need nice, clean metrics so they can show how clever they are, and a lack of imagination endemic to CBU3.

The increasing use of visual clutter as a "mechanic" is a refuge of scoundrels who are constrained by the factors mentioned above. Giving the middle finger to accessibility issues is something that simply isn't tolerated from studios in most of the world.

Finally, even on data servers where the dominant ideology is "the game gave me this content, I must therefore do it," only 50% of subscribers clear Savage. On the remaining servers, it is more common to find players who regard a game as a game rather than a second job, and thus have no interest in Savage.

And to repeat, none of the above points suggest Savage should be removed or even watered down. What they suggest is the futility of any attempt to drive more players into content that they simply do not like. Unfortunately, the tail will continue to wag the dog because SQEX panders to streamers and may even believe such "players" are somehow representative of the player base. Or they just don't care.

[Volgia]

I love Savage, but I'm not in a monogamous relationship with it. I like all kinds and levels of challenge. I love playing with people at all skill levels in content that suits their skill level (i.e. where they are having fun). I'm sorry you only see and imagine the worst in people and their motives. I do like the existing Savage Fights a lot and will do them. I'm just waiting until the average random PF Savage Raider has enough gear to clear the adds in M6S. I also see the unnecessary tensions that arise from the way the difficulty levels in this game are implemented. People's skill levels are on a bell curve but the amount of content vs difficulty is like an inverted bell curve (and yes obviously shorter on the tougher side). Can you not imagine or empathize with people at lower skill levels or lower endurance levels? Why must someone who advocates for variety automatically be an unskilled player? I might have more Chaotic clears than most players and yet I still think there should have been a slightly less strict version for other players to enjoy. Maybe a good player wants to drink a little while playing. Some people age and are closer to death than their birth. Why are you so afraid of an extra mode? Would someone clearing M6H diminish your clear of M6S? I'm sorry if you could not possibly have fun playing both Hard and Savage Raids with different types of people in different states of mind. *** You do realize that the current way Savage works is exactly that it is getting watered down over long periods of time by the way the gear is released right? Maybe it's so slow you never realized it or never thought of it that way. It is the very reason another poster was angrily afraid my solution would make a MINE Savage impossible for some to clear because it would never get watered down. My world first race comment was probably over the top: I don't know how to describe what SE is aiming for when they tune. [But to be clear I do not try to world first anything...except fishing.] But thanks to the two of you for proving my point that Savage seems to easily bring out negative emotions in some people.

It's not that hard to warrant another easy mode. Why waste resources on doing an easier mode of M6S when they could just work on different challenging content in-between savage and extreme? If you don't like how fast paced the mechanics are, or how tight the DPS checks are, then you don't like the content you're trying to water down. If savage content wasn't challenging, it would be there dead and dull like the rest of the game.

People who feel left out because they're not willing to learn their jobs, mechanics and encounters despite their limitations is a them problem, not a problem with the game.

[Amarande]

Extreme Trials and Chaotic Raids.

EX maybe. In practice, the desire for multiple reclears in a single session tends to inflate one's choosiness to the point that it's the same or higher than Savage (where you can usually afford a couple wipes, since you only need one weekly clear, while a 33-50% clear rate in EX makes the farm go from grindy to numbing).

Chaotic is a hard sell, due probably to the fact that the first outing included a 24-player body check late in the fight, you see a lot of sentiment that despite Chaotic being nominally easier, it should actually be a later stage (I saw a LOT of remarks on the lines of "if you couldn't EVEN clear savage I don't want you in my chaotic group" implying that Savage is seen as a way to prove yourself for chaotic and therefore, logically, the lesser task)!

Hardest content should reward the best gear.

This is a problem, even if fairly normalized in MMOs. In fact, it wastes quite a bit of potential for the gear system altogether, since instead of it being more readily given to people that actually need the leg up that gear in an RPG is supposed to provide (otherwise, after all, why not just not even HAVE non glamour gear and just have every piece of content be MINE?), it's more or less only given to people that already showed they could beat the content without it. At which point it's only really useful for things that, in FF14's case, the Terms of Service tell us not to do anyway ...

Either accept you're not good enough for Savage or strive to improve and make yourself good enough for Savage.

And by the time you improve, it's gotten dang near impossible to find the seven other people you need to clear Savage. They are sticking exclusively to reclear parties, maybe they'll help you out late in the week at the expense of the loot that you need.

Need, not want, because if you're a PF player in recent expansions gear requirements have ratcheted up significantly after a few weeks compared to older days. There's been loads of complaints where even skilled PF folks are slowly shouldered out of their routine reclears because they didn't win enough loot and the pity books are not enough to keep up (since it's 1-2 months for a single piece there - a piece which the people that did win loot will ALSO get, anyway, so it's not like it actually helps you keep caught up with the Joneses).

Role shortages are accentuated as well - "why no healers?" then people try to switch to healer, find they're stuck with crafted gear because of weekly locks and proceed to find that fewer and fewer PFs will take them because the ilvl is set around the desired DPS joiners, so they give up, so "why no healers?"


(That could be alleviated by using the system like WoW and Lost Ark have where you apply to a group and the lead can decide if they want to take you, but then that further accentuates the "oops, didn't win enough loot rolls, you're out" problem noted above)

Also, the ilvl IS given out much more readily later on - the problem is that's really not till odd patch, which is a scale of months, and was even before SE slowed down the patch cycle. Before then, you have only Tome gear that's given out at a terribly slow trickle. +10 ilvl in ONE slot, once every week or two (since you can't get any left side pieces on one week's worth of tomes).

I'm at 744 right now on my Dancer. Only thing I missed was a M8 run at some point so I don't get the weapon till next week. And far as I can tell, unless I'd opted for all accessories, that's literally the best you can have if you haven't already been clearing/reclearing High End Duty. IE. The best you can have GOING INTO High End Duty.

I'm sorry but if people find these normal raids or trials hard, that's a skill issue.

Again, it's not just your skill, it's the other people you have to find and bring with you.

The rainmakers leave the building in a week or two. It takes three months to get a full set of tome gear, 4-5 months till the odd patch comes out and lets you have any other source of that ilvl, or any non-Savage source of the top ilvl at all.

In that whole time in between, PF becomes just a struggle bus of groups the majority of which were probably moot from the very get go.

It basically leaves nearly everyone who does not have an untrammeled enough RL to have a static or to set aside launch week to power grind content with months of thumb twiddling until SE finally decides "okay, you can have gear now." And for the sake of what? The prestige for the minority of high end players that clear content early enough it's practically on the verge of MINE anyway?

[CidHeiral]

If the Extremes were this magic bullet of difficulty content between Normal and Savage Raids why does the tension between players in Savage Raids seem so high?

Because that's a natural result of trying to overcome a challenge with random people. Some people are more testy than others. You see the same thing in ultimate PF, that doesn't mean there's a problem with savage fights. Heck, you see the same thing when working with randos on things IRL. That's why people tend to keep collaborating with a select group of others they already know they work well with.

[Kohashi]

On Extremes:
The idea that Extremes are in between the difficulty of Normal Raids and Savage Raids is true but they are insufficient for the job of attraction and retention of players for multiple reasons. They are not actually Raids. Normal Raids unlock Savage Raids, and Normal Trials unlock Extreme Trials. There are fewer Extremes: one Extreme to every two Savage Raids.

If there is something I do really agree with is the lack of a proper difficulty spike. SE is too comfy with their sloppy slog.

Like: 1 Extreme + 4 savage tiers every 3 months. 2 months locked, 1 month echo while increasing difficulty for each tier.

If the first tier were slightly more challenging than the Extreme, the Last tier of savage would be vastly more difficult to complete. This would allow entry-level people to master each fight and difficulty spike before moving into the next.

Also, I was thinking it would be cool if Savage had 2 modes, like Normal and Nightmare difficulty. Normal for entry people and those with a time constraint, but enjoy this type of content, and Nightmare for those who like to be challenged.

Nightmare difficulty can have the scaling like UR (forced Min Ilvl and increased boss HP).

[TheRealQuah]

Aye, it's not my fault that hardcore content is daunting and unappealing to a casual player like myself, and it's also not my fault if hardcore players ever lack for warm bodies to do content with because of the skill wall that Square-Enix built.

Besides, I thought most hardcore players LIKED having gates kept up everywhere, and even gloated over Chaotic in particular recently, so they should be the happiest that the current filter is "working as intended" to keep casual and hardcore players separate in their own pieces of content.

Complete opposite in reality, Hardcore players want as many people as possible to clear savage content. The more people that clear savage the better. More clears results in getting more and harder content. The hardcore players are also the nicest and most accommodating part of the playerbase, they always want to help people improve,

The players you are actually referring to are casual players who think they are better than they are because they cleared UWU once and think they are god's gift to MMO's. These are also the prog liars you meet everywhere and people like that guy who has done 800 P6S pulls without clearing and thinks it's other players faults.

[Volgia]

Complete opposite in reality, Hardcore players want as many people as possible to clear savage content. The more people that clear savage the better. More clears results in getting more and harder content. The hardcore players are also the nicest and most accommodating part of the playerbase, they always want to help people improve,

The players you are actually referring to are casual players who think they are better than they are because they cleared UWU once and think they are god's gift to MMO's. These are also the prog liars you meet everywhere and people like that guy who has done 800 P6S pulls without clearing and thinks it's other players faults.

I tend not to take Aidorogue seriously because they haven't even finished Shadowbringers, so most of their complaints about hardcore players are in their imagination.

[Valence]

Complete opposite in reality, Hardcore players want as many people as possible to clear savage content. The more people that clear savage the better. More clears results in getting more and harder content. The hardcore players are also the nicest and most accommodating part of the playerbase, they always want to help people improve,

The players you are actually referring to are casual players who think they are better than they are because they cleared UWU once and think they are god's gift to MMO's. These are also the prog liars you meet everywhere and people like that guy who has done 800 P6S pulls without clearing and thinks it's other players faults.

In my experience it's a very mixed bag, especially the higher you get on the scale of "hardcoreness". Not to say that every very hardcore player is toxic, but saying they're here to help others feels a little like a bad joke to me (is this really how high end raiders see themselves?). The higher in skill and expectations I've gone when raiding (aka, HC groups), it's always been like competing for jobs and having people judge everybody else constantly watching for the smallest mistake, get frustrated, and start drama to find the next player to dismiss from the group (for good or bad reasons). I've rarely seen help being offered before it was too late. If anything, people won't help because they want to get rid of the player they deem unfit or problematic, whether said player is indeed dragging the group down, or just dragging the group down in their imagination.

Ultimate groups especially, where really something with this, perhaps because of how the content tends to put players over the stove enough for cracks to start showing.

[Rin_Sato]

I like the idea if it means the "preventing my friends from getting loot if I cleared" restriction was lifted, as it would no longer be "needed" if the savage fights were below the ilvl anyway.
Nice and simple! Though it might make finding a PF for savage even harder, even if it would mean Raid Finder may become more active on NA/EU...