"Casual" content thoughts

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

That is a very big generalization you're making there. And, honestly, I find it incredibly incorrect. Threads here alone suggest the opposite: content is too faceroll, and people still cry for nerfs (honestly, look at the threads demanding the second boss in Rabanastre be nerfed when he's incredibly easy if one just pays attention), or devs release something mildly challenging > "omg too hard pls nerf" (ShinEx). And that comes largely from the more softcore/midcore side.

Look at all the people that asked for Ultimate; none of the hardcore players have complained about Ultimate's difficulty. All the Ultimate complaints have ultimately come from the more casual side, saying it's "a waste of resources".

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I'm just speaking from what I've experienced, much the same way you are. Also, by claiming the second boss of Rabanastre is easy, you're kind of making the OP's case. You think it's easy? Okay, great. Not everyone does, though. And yet the response to that is just "Those people are just whining, it really is easy." So they say it's hard for them, but you don't think it's hard, so therefore it should be easy for them too. That's the mindset problem the OP pointed out.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Did you not browse the forums either here or on reddit about royal menagerie? Do you ever read the FFXIV reddit? They say stuff like this all the time.

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The forums and reddit for that matter are not a good representation of the hardcore raiding community as a whole, As such, trying to use either of the sites as a debate tactic for what the majority of X players think and say is incredibly misinformed and misguided.

Here's how it currently works.

Solo content: Fates, Beastman Quests, Crafting, Gathering, Hunts, Squad Missions, MSQ, Regular Quest ect. Comprises of 90% of the game. Completed by the lowest tier of player. Believe it or not, this stuff is still quite challenging to some.

PUG group content: 4 mans, trials, group fates, group hunts

Harder PUG content: 24 mans, normal raids

Non* PUG content: Extreme trials

Harder non* PUG content: Savage raids


Five levels of difficulty. Seems like a good spread to me. Most MMORPGs have 3 or 4. But for some reason, everyone wants to change the first 3 levels to have components of the last two. Healers need to Heal! Tanks need to Tank! Yeah.. they do in some of those stages. In the later ones they need to do everything, as does the DPS in some cases. That's why they're harder content. They're less forgiving than the PUG content.

I think what SE should do is add roulette for them. Let people get kicked into the dirt when they try to do them. They'll whine and cry about the difficulty, but they'll learn that needing tanks and healers doing their jobs more is.. tough. Tougher than they are willing to accept.

Read that list people. If you think the content you are doing is too easy, feel free to walk it up a stage. Stop with the veiled attempt to bring that stage down to your comfort level.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Did you not browse the forums either here or on reddit about royal menagerie? Do you ever read the FFXIV reddit? They say stuff like this all the time.

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I'm not a hardcore player, and I thought Royal Menagerie was easy, assuming you actually get paired with people who didn't play like it was their first 5 minutes on the game.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Did you not browse the forums either here or on reddit about royal menagerie? Do you ever read the FFXIV reddit? They say stuff like this all the time.

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The posts on here about Royal Menagerie were either cries to nerf the content because it was “too hard” to be a part of the “casual, MSQ content”, or praise saying that the fight was fine for it’s relative ilvl and that it was a fitting end to the end of a main expansion (assuming you’re talking about normal mode). With regards to Extreme, the fight, while Phase One is mechanic-heavy, is not that difficult. Considering the developers said that it was between the difficulty of V2S and V3S (which has a pretty wide gap in difficulty), and not near the difficulty of Thordan Ex (which was considered by a lot of players to be an excellently tuned fight).

By all means, please quote some of these posts that you’ve seen.

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Go sit down some time, and look up a HW-era opener for a job. A lot of it was using the precise proper sequence of moves, with additional moves weave into every single space in between them. They literally would break down everything you needed to do 10 sec before the pull, 5 sec, and then the precise sequence of moves you need. They had to gut the jobs from HW to deal with how complex those jobs were to achieve decent performance.

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I started playing in 3.1. I started raiding in 3.4, and did Ex trails before that. I’m well aware of how the old openers were designed. That’s not complexity, having to pressing certain buttons pre-pull (such as the old HW Bard opener, or the old 23 seconds pre-pull opener NINs did), and then press another set amount of buttons after the pull. Openers in Stormblood follow the same formula (press some things pre-pull for some jobs > pull > follow an opener sequence). There are deviations in some (e.g., SAM’s 1-sen opener versus 3-sen opener), but the design of “press these buttons in this order for the best optimization” is not something that went away with Stormblood’s launch.

Example:
HW Bard opener was 5-seconds pre-pull: the Wanderer’s Minuet > Foe’s Requiem > Quelling Strikes > Battle Voice on pull > then it deviated on whether you were doing Krietor’s Opener or the Double IJ opener
SB Bard opener is: 4~5-seconds pre-pull: Foe’s Requiem > Infusion of Dexerity > Refresh (which could be done on pull or at 25~27 seconds into the fight) > Stormbite > Bloodletter > Raging Strikes > etc..

Example 2:
RDM opener: 10 seconds > Acceleration > 5 seconds: Diversion > Veraero/Verthunder > opposing Veraero/Verthunder on pull > Fleche > Contre Sixte > etc..

Pre-pull set ups are still present in the game.

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Originally Posted by NocturniaUzuki

I'm just speaking from what I've experienced, much the same way you are. Also, by claiming the second boss of Rabanastre is easy, you're kind of making the OP's case. You think it's easy? Okay, great. Not everyone does, though. And yet the response to that is just "Those people are just whining, it really is easy." So they say it's hard for them, but you don't think it's hard, so therefore it should be easy for them too. That's the mindset problem the OP pointed out.

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No, my point in saying that was: with content that is not particularly difficult but that requires players to actively pay attention to the fight/mechanics, people still do not want to put in that type of effort into it, but rather cry for nerfs instead. Considering I was also discussing it in the context of poor content difficulty scaling, and how this game has very poor scaling when it comes to difficulty context and how such fails to properly prepare players for ‘endgame content’... you’re taking my points entirely out of context and trying to apply them to OP’s argument, which sounds more like they are saying people should presume that the “lazy” or “idle” players in content are actually players with disabilities that may or may not be able to perform to standards. Which I also said is not a very good mindset to have, in addition to the fact that people with disabilities usually prefer to not be treated as different from “normal people.”

If you’ve actually seen hardcore raiders say that they want challenging content but in actuality demand a faceroll, please give me examples. Because I have never seen such a thing. The more hardcore raiders have been asking for content that provides them with a challenge they want, hence why Ultimate was so positively received by hardcore groups: they asked and the developers actually delivered.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Did you not browse the forums either here or on reddit about royal menagerie? Do you ever read the FFXIV reddit? They say stuff like this all the time.

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Do you? I am a frequent poster on both and never have I once seen widespread demand for all content to become equivalent to Savage difficulty. At most you'll see people lament Midas or Thordan but not they want dungeons or normal mode to be extremely challenging.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Go sit down some time, and look up a HW-era opener for a job. A lot of it was using the precise proper sequence of moves, with additional moves weave into every single space in between them. They literally would break down everything you needed to do 10 sec before the pull, 5 sec, and then the precise sequence of moves you need. They had to gut the jobs from HW to deal with how complex those jobs were to achieve decent performance. Not only that, a lot of the additions we got in SB were to fix those jobs even more; Bard has their DOT duration extended to 30 sec, Monk can refresh GL on a hit or can passively generate chakra, and SCH getting a simpler, buffed micro in fey union.

The game actually relies on a lot on performing a particular sequence of moves perfectly, and optimal play is harder than people think to achieve. You literally need to plan everything according to an encounter; if you don't, DPS can fall off very much. Not everyone is good at that style for every job, and raiders tend to never really get how difficult this style of play can be for certain players, who do fine with positioning and the basics.

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You presume I haven't. I raided in Heavensward and bounced DRG, WAR and NIN, albeit to varying levels since I were still new. The complexity you reference basically hinged around one minute countdowns and double weaving—the latter of which we still do. None of it were overly complex if you took the time to figure it out. That all said, things like the Triple Fell Cleave opener were advanced ideas in the same sense I Elusive Jump from my opposite clock position in V1S. No one expects casual to even midcore players to consistently use tricks like that. You know how I started doing the EJ flip? I saw it on Momo's video and decided to watch said clip a handful of times to get an idea before I went ahead and tried. I know, so difficult! So challenge! However did I possible manage? You know what else? Not many DRGs do that. It's far from a big deal unless you're chasing orange parses or speed kills.

This idea hardcore raiders have these unrealistic expectations is little beyond an excuse to justify the fact you can't be arsed to do more than the bare minimum.

Fun little factoid. I leveled DRG from 34 to 52 doing nothing except FATEs for a single day. I took into Nidhogg EX as my first taste of harder content after searching youtube for rotation guides. Somehow, I went from grey parses to various orange ones now. If it was so complex. How did I manage? It's almost as though practice will take you pretty far. That, or I was just born to be a decent raider. Clearly that's how it happens... :p

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Originally Posted by HoodRat

I'm not a hardcore player, and I thought Royal Menagerie was easy, assuming you actually get paired with people who didn't play like it was their first 5 minutes on the game.

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It's a dramatically harder fight than any story trial before it. if you did it at launch, at around i300, it was a lot tougher than if you did it weeks or months later once people were gearing past it. Go do it, then Go do Nidhogg hard, and watch the timing of the abilities. It's no contest in terms of tells or time to activate.

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If you’ve actually seen hardcore raiders say that they want challenging content but in actuality demand a faceroll, please give me examples. Because I have never seen such a thing. The more hardcore raiders have been asking for content that provides them with a challenge they want, hence why Ultimate was so positively received by hardcore groups: they asked and the developers actually delivered.

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Ultimate was received by people who aren't even doing it. It didn't even attract attention to raiding in the game; after the world firsts, any mention of it died off a cliff, and even the PFs for raiders it inspired are gone. It was great to watch other people do it, but in the end that's all it was good for.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

It's a dramatically harder fight than any story trial before it. if you did it at launch, at around i300, it was a lot tougher than if you did it weeks or months later once people were gearing past it. Go do it, then Go do Nidhogg hard, and watch the timing of the abilities. It's no contest in terms of tells or time to activate.

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I did it with the free 290 gear from job quest and 270 slaying accessories. I'm no mathematician, but I believe that's lower than 300.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

It's a dramatically harder fight than any story trial before it. if you did it at launch, at around i300, it was a lot tougher than if you did it weeks or months later once people were gearing past it. Go do it, then Go do Nidhogg hard, and watch the timing of the abilities. It's no contest in terms of tells or time to activate.

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Overgearing content is automatically going to make the content easier; this is always a given.

That being said, the group I was with during Early Access cleared it in a couple pulls. Most of us were in i290 Antiquated gear with level 67~69 accessories. The fight was not a difficult fight—every attack it used was recycled from previous primal fights, and a couple from Coil. It just required people to pay attention. That shouldn’t be hard to do, but I guess it is.

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Originally Posted by HoodRat

I did it with the free 290 gear from job quest and 270 slaying accessories. I'm no mathematician, but I believe that's lower than 300.

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Did you tank it? Because tanking it literally requires the least skill of any job in it. You're just a big DPS that can survive all the hits that kill, don't have to do anything but run to your tethered partner and gather adds three times, and more. DRK even had an "ignore damage button" with Blackest Night that made it braindead. It was a lot harder for the DPS and heals that did it, in the same way the second boss of Rabanastre is for tanks.

Did you do it with a premade? Because that's easier too. I used to pug it, and no, it wasn't particularly easy for people used to the mechanics of the game. Hyomin talks the old line about "seeing mechanic before," but at the time shiva's diamond dust was a joke unless you did EX, and people had stopped doing coil long ago, even for WT.