Put back Extreme trial on raid finder again...please

In my experience this is a good move. RF did not work for solo queue into old ex primals.
I got my Thordan and Sepirot Ex clears in DF before they were moved to RF. Never got either to pop in RF under any setting.
Got into Nidhogg Ex twice in RF with hours of queuing before finally giving up and moving to PF.
Sophia was the one ex primal I had work in RF. Most likely because she was released at the same time as RF and considered PUG friendly.
Zurvon I got into once or twice before his queues died. I think Cross Server party finder killed him and the RF in general since I didn't have any luck with Sophia queues either post 3.5.

As a tool for checking if everyone in your premade had a clear RF was useful. But I think that can be fixed by just adjusting the PF to have a checkbox for clears only and not letting people without clears join groups with that checked off.

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

hard moods are way to easy to get a reward from

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They weren't back in ARR, however hard mode in HW is different than ARR. hard mode should be the entry lvl primal difficultly for endgame. Primals during story should be easy. hard mode should rewards commiserate to it's difficulty and then extreme should have advanced rewards. This also gives multiple levels of endgame difficulty for various players.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

You said that if "those players who want to clear/farm won't queue, then even the newbies won't benefit at all since there's literally no chance for them to clear" but the alternative (the raid finder option, which is what is being asked for in this thread) is that the people who are farming will queue and the newbies still won't benefit at all, because they can't queue with them. Unless you mean that newbies will be able to use the duty finder to queue with other newbies who also don't have clears, but I don't know why that would improve their chances either.

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They have a chance to get queued together with people who want to learn/help in the duty incomplete queue. Of course there will be much less people who are helping new players to clear the fight, compared to people who just want to farm the fight. As I've said multiple times, sometimes helping others learn the fight means not clearing the fight itself, which means you earn nothing from spending 60-90 minutes with them, other than the pleasure of helping others and helping the playerbase get better as a whole (which admittedly, doesn't help much to get your bird mount or weapons/tokens/whatever).

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Originally Posted by Talraen

This thread is about an option to prevent people without a clear from queuing with people who don't want to queue with them. If those people learn the fight, or have even done it on another character, they still can't queue with them in the raid finder. So how does them learning the fight help them here?

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There's a queue for aim to clear group (duty completion + duty incomplete). You make it sound like it's impossible to clear the fight together with others who haven't clear too. It's hard but doable. I did it in thordan ex, which arguably is the hardest ex trial in heavensward, just by joining practice/clear PF groups. Some of these fights are hard enough that you won't clear even if you're the only person in the group who haven't cleared. If you're late to the content it'll obviously be harder for you to find people to learn and clear the fight together, but that's just how it works in this game. You can't really avoid obsolescence in a vertical progression MMO.

Let's go further and think about the reason why most cleared people only want to go with people who have cleared too. The answer is quite simple, because the content is difficult enough. It's hard to carry people who know little to nothing about the fight. It takes a very long time to completely teach them the fight. You can probably slip into a ravana or bismarck clear party with bonus, and people will just ignore you and clear the fight while pretending you never existed, because they still can. That fight is so easy due to overgearing that you don't see half of the whole fight. It's a different problem if you slip into a12s queue without knowing anything, and if I was going to farm a12s then I'll definitely have problem with it since that pretty much means it's impossible to clear it. It takes hours (even weeks/months) for people to learn a12s before they clear it. When I join a practice or clear party for a12s I do so while keeping in mind that I don't expect a clear, but when I farm of course I expect clears (preferably smooth and easy ones too).

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Originally Posted by Talraen

Please explain how the option to prevent people who haven't cleared content resulted in "a lot of people got a lot of clears." I'm pretty confused by that.

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It was fantastic to go into a fight I had not cleared and know that everyone there was of a like mind who might not understand all the mechanics. After a while you graduate and change your settings to communicate that you are almost ready to clear, then finally you clear and have the choice to move onto clear groups. It's quite valuable in building confidence.

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Originally Posted by Feidam

As to the person who complained about the raid mechanics in primal battles...I'm not sure what the issue here is. It has always been that way.

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Not really. Extreme primals had one or two gimmicks that followed you through the whole fight, usually making it harder to do as you go but never changing the main concept (for example, Leviathan can dash in the middle section in the last phase; Ifrit gets countless Nails; you deal with Ramuh's infatuation together with Rolling Thunder; etc). You learned the gimmick and you went in to clear, not to "practice" (honestly the whole concept of "practicing" in MMORPGs sounds ridiculous to me)

Now in Heavensward extreme primals started having several phases with countless raid mechanics that you had to grind. By "raid mechanics" I mean "stuff that you must know and practice if you want to clear", while said "stuff" changes every phase. So things like adaptation and individual skill are thrown aside for memorization and practice. Sure it's cute to see it work, but I honestly have to wonder how people think that being part of a choreography is fun. It's the same thing that made raiding kind of a chore, but people disliked Melusine so... I guess the majority wins.

I've commented about it on another thread and how this kind of design encourages the behaviour seen in this thread. It doesn't helps that ARR primals were also more rewarding. But I don't expect it to change in Stormblood. Just glad I had my fill in ARR.

Edit: forgot to add, while Titan was also a "choreography", outside of Gaols and tableflips his mechanics were just AoEs so you could react (though if you had high ping you'd have to memorize when Landslides and Weight of Land were used to move out of the way just as he casted them)

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Originally Posted by Feidam

As to the person who complained about the raid mechanics in primal battles...I'm not sure what the issue here is. It has always been that way. The difference was you had hard mode primals which gave you a reward to progress, the. Extremes came along with another reward. Only extremes are giving people rewards now. This also needs to change imo.

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This is because the nature of the duty finder is to make sure all content is being done (so people can get clears). Hard mode primals are in roulette, so they're covered even without a fight-specific reward. Extreme primals aren't in roulette, which is why they added a different incentive with a low drop rate (mounts) so people would keep doing them.

The irony is that mounts exist specifically to keep people doing content so new people can get clears, yet the main content people want to exclude people from is those very farms.

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Originally Posted by Ririta

Now in Heavensward extreme primals started having several phases with countless raid mechanics that you had to grind. By "raid mechanics" I mean "stuff that you must know and practice if you want to clear", while said "stuff" changes every phase. So things like adaptation and individual skill are thrown aside for memorization and practice. Sure it's cute to see it work, but I honestly have to wonder how people think that being part of a choreography is fun. It's the same thing that made raiding kind of a chore, but people disliked Melusine so... I guess the majority wins.

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Well, a lot of people like to dance - as in: following a choreography (I mean, its the very origin of the word, right?) - instead of just jumping around the ballroom freely like a little bunny.
While quickly reacting and judging a situation can be a lot of fun too, following a certain pattern and executing it perfectly has a certain... beauty to me - maybe I'm sounding a bit to melodramatic here, but a well structured fight, that allows you to slide from one mechanic into the next one without chaos breaking lose has a certain appeal to it!
...and if I want chaos and reacting to new situations, I do some PvP - which can be more challenging than any EX-primal.

In addition to the whole "HMs need rewards again"-thing... HMs replaced the storymodes pretty much. The only HMs with rewards (beside the rare drop and the TT-card) are Garuda, Titan and Ifrit. The reason for that being: The HM was already the more difficult, challenging version of the storymode (a fight that didnt gave rewards at all!). Since then, we basically lost the storymode and replaced it with the HM-version. The Hardmodes are now the storymodes while the Extreme version has techincally replaced the HM.
I'm not saying that I dont want rewards from HMs (slightly weaker weapons could be nice for example) but I'd like to point out that this more a "naming error" in a sense. Hardmodes arent hardmoes - they're storymodes.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

This is because the nature of the duty finder is to make sure all content is being done (so people can get clears). Hard mode primals are in roulette, so they're covered even without a fight-specific reward. Extreme primals aren't in roulette, which is why they added a different incentive with a low drop rate (mounts) so people would keep doing them.

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I dont actually believe/agree a 100% with this because you forget another reason to give people this incentive: Its in place to keep them playing and give them "something to do". Ypu gotta keep people busy or they'll unsub - so putting this drops in place turns ex-primals into a grind, thats going to make people stick to the game. Its not only to help new people to get their clears, its also to make sure that experienced people have a reason to keep playing after they killed that primal.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

They have a chance to get queued together with people who want to learn/help in the duty incomplete queue. Of course there will be much less people who are helping new players to clear the fight, compared to people who just want to farm the fight. As I've said multiple times, sometimes helping others learn the fight means not clearing the fight itself, which means you earn nothing from spending 60-90 minutes with them, other than the pleasure of helping others and helping the playerbase get better as a whole (which admittedly, doesn't help much to get your bird mount or weapons/tokens/whatever).

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Let me make this explicitly clear: you're right. Having bad players in your group can derail the group. I acknowledge that. Can you acknowledge that removing that risk is not the only effect the duty finder has?

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

There's a queue for aim to clear group (duty completion + duty incomplete). You make it sound like it's impossible to clear the fight together with others who haven't clear too. It's hard but doable. I did it in thordan ex, which arguably is the hardest ex trial in heavensward, just by joining practice/clear PF groups. Some of these fights are hard enough that you won't clear even if you're the only person in the group who haven't cleared. If you're late to the content it'll obviously be harder for you to find people to learn and clear the fight together, but that's just how it works in this game. You can't really avoid obsolescence in a vertical progression MMO.

Let's go further and think about the reason why most cleared people only want to go with people who have cleared too. The answer is quite simple, because the content is difficult enough. It's hard to carry people who know little to nothing about the fight. It takes a very long time to completely teach them the fight. You can probably slip into a ravana or bismarck clear party with bonus, and people will just ignore you and clear the fight while pretending you never existed, because they still can. That fight is so easy due to overgearing that you don't see half of the whole fight. It's a different problem if you slip into a12s queue without knowing anything, and if I was going to farm a12s then I'll definitely have problem with it since that pretty much means it's impossible to clear it. It takes hours (even weeks/months) for people to learn a12s before they clear it. When I join a practice or clear party for a12s I do so while keeping in mind that I don't expect a clear, but when I farm of course I expect clears (preferably smooth and easy ones too).

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I'm not trying to make it sound like it's impossible to win with people who haven't cleared; that's the premise of this request. People want to be able to completely exclude these people because they feel that their presence makes a clear hard or impossible. Yet those same people expect those people to get those clears among only themselves. Or maybe they don't expect them to get clears at all? I'm not sure, because most of said people have barely acknowledged that people who haven't cleared the content even exist, except insofar as they not be allowed to queue with them.

Like I've said a few times, I completely understand why you'd want to have every clear be smooth and easy, and only ever get grouped with people who are well-geared and know the content. I want that too! While I'm perfectly willing to help people with random dungeon mechanics and whatnot, obviously I'd prefer if every run was done in 15 minutes with no fuss. However, I realize that there are implications of a system that allows that, and those implications can be dangerous. I'm not even entirely sure the downside for new players outweighs the upside for farming, but I'd like to at least acknowledge that there is a downside for new players. The mental gymnastics in this thread justifying that no, this is actually better for new players, are interesting to watch, but they don't do much to convince me.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

I dont actually believe/agree a 100% with this because you forget another reason to give people this incentive: Its in place to keep them playing and give them "something to do". Ypu gotta keep people busy or they'll unsub - so putting this drops in place turns ex-primals into a grind, thats going to make people stick to the game. Its not only to help new people to get their clears, its also to make sure that experienced people have a reason to keep playing after they killed that primal.

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Giving people something to do is important, but it's a side benefit here. Everything about the duty finder is there for only one reason: to make sure every piece of content is queuable. Look at the introduction of roulettes, how relic and anima worked, Wondrous Tails, etc. Look at the new player bonus. Everything is about keeping content relevant. That is the primary goal. Keeping players subscribed is important, but so is growth, and the game can't grow if new players can't complete old content. (That said, new players don't have to do Extreme primals so I don't know how important it is that they stay relevant. But I have no doubt that's why the mounts were implemented.)

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Originally Posted by Talraen

Let me make this explicitly clear: you're right. Having bad players in your group can derail the group. I acknowledge that. Can you acknowledge that removing that risk is not the only effect the duty finder has?

However, I realize that there are implications of a system that allows that, and those implications can be dangerous. I'm not even entirely sure the downside for new players outweighs the upside for farming, but I'd like to at least acknowledge that there is a downside for new players.

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For contents below certain level of difficulty yeah maybe new players can slip in without knowing anything and get carried through it and get an easy clear, you can consider that a good thing I guess? The problem is that a lot of ex/savage contents, despite being obsolete, don't allow such thing. Even fights outgeared by 30-70 ilv can be impossible to clear if certain players don't know how to execute the mechanics properly. I guess in most cases they're more forgiving to dps not knowing mechanics.

Look at a6s-a8s DF queues, or maybe a4s, do they even pop? Even if they do, will you have any reasonable chance to clear it? If you're able to filter based on clear status maybe many if not all of previous savage floors will be farmable for glamour/mount/achievements.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

The mental gymnastics in this thread justifying that no, this is actually better for new players, are interesting to watch, but they don't do much to convince me.

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Well I'm not going to argue for/against that, as I've said there are contents where you can know nothing and expect to get carried after all. Though personally I think the harm of not having clear filter in difficult contents is a bigger problem, since that'll pretty much make the single queue unusable except for early phase practice.

The JP data center community worked around it by agreeing that you should join DF queues when you're ready to clear (watched guides, practiced, whatever), so at least the DF is usable despite not having clear filter. On the other hand in NA/EU data centers DF queues for hard contents are pretty much only usable for first phase practice, which pretty much means you won't have any reasonable chance to clear. I guess it's subjective but I'd prefer the former, even if I have to exclude newer players or be excluded in contents I'm behind.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

Keeping players subscribed is important, but so is growth, and the game can't grow if new players can't complete old content. (That said, new players don't have to do Extreme primals so I don't know how important it is that they stay relevant. But I have no doubt that's why the mounts were implemented.)

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Now this is something I don't really agree. In a vertical progression MMO like this you don't have to complete past contents to be able to reach current end game. I started in 3.0, I never had to look back at coil to learn how to play my job at lv 50 to be good at lv 60. I have friends who started raiding at 3.2/3.4, they didn't have to clear gordias/midas savage before starting in midas/creator savage. Gear dropped in those old contents are obsolete for current raids/trials, and it's not like the raid difficulty curve starts low at gordias and grows higher throughout midas and creator. Heck it's the other way around, gordias and midas are much harder than creator savage.

I completely agree that the game needs to encourage player growth, but I don't think helping them slip into old content queues and get carried will help them grow. I personally think this game needs to give some sort of feedback on new players' performance level and a smoother difficulty curve, starting from easier contents like dungeons, normal trials and raids, 24 man raids to harder contents like ex trials and savage raids. Right now the gap between the difficulty of dungeons, normal trials/raids and ex/savage is too big. People may not even know how "bad" they are until they step into ex/savage and fail miserably.

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Originally Posted by aleph_null

Now this is something I don't really agree. In a vertical progression MMO like this you don't have to complete past contents to be able to reach current end game. I started in 3.0, I never had to look back at coil to learn how to play my job at lv 50 to be good at lv 60. I have friends who started raiding at 3.2/3.4, they didn't have to clear gordias/midas savage before starting in midas/creator savage. Gear dropped in those old contents are obsolete for current raids/trials, and it's not like the raid difficulty curve starts low at gordias and grows higher throughout midas and creator. Heck it's the other way around, gordias and midas are much harder than creator savage.

I completely agree that the game needs to encourage player growth, but I don't think helping them slip into old content queues and get carried will help them grow. I personally think this game needs to give some sort of feedback on new players' performance level and a smoother difficulty curve, starting from easier contents like dungeons, normal trials and raids, 24 man raids to harder contents like ex trials and savage raids. Right now the gap between the difficulty of dungeons, normal trials/raids and ex/savage is too big. People may not even know how "bad" they are until they step into ex/savage and fail miserably.

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No, you don't have to clear coil for any mechanical reason, but coil in particular has a very good story, and a new player might want to experience that. Extreme primals are generally a tougher argument to make, since the only practical benefit are the mounts and possibly weapons for glamour purposes, but some people might just want to complete them for the sake of doing so. Square Enix doesn't want to have content that is literally impossible for a new player to ever clear. No one wants this to become FFXI where no one had any incentive to do content with you so if you were late to the party you were basically screwed. (Actually scratch that, I think a lot of people here want exactly that, but I don't!)

I actually don't think the difficulty gap is as extreme as you present it, at least not for primals. Certainly there are terrible players that can barely clear a basic dungeon, and should be nowhere near extremes. But most of the "skill" involved in completing the hardest content is just learning the fight. Of course someone who's never done the fight is going to be worse at it, but given teaching, you can get most decent players through an extreme. (I've never actually done savage or original coil pre-echo, so I'm not going to presume to comment on how hard they actually are.) That's not a skill gap, it's an experience gap; indeed, the fact that it's an experience gap is why an "I've already cleared this content" button is useful. There are plenty of people without clears who are much better players than some people who've been carried to a clear.

More important than any of that, though, is that my point is not that new players should be able to "slip into old content queues and get carried." It's that if you give players the option to exclude new players, they will take that option, thus reducing the pool of players available to help them get those important first clears. You need to look at this problem deeper than just on the surface.