Keeping Content Hard and Helping People Learn

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Originally Posted by K8erAide

As someone who picked the game up before at Stormblood and then dropped it for awhile for various reasons and then came back in the middle of Endwalker seeing the changes made to the game was a little startling. I can honestly say the state of the game at the moment is lack luster to say the least. Changing the content to make it easier isn't the answer.

I am the trash tier player. I acknowledge this. I am the person you tell to "git gud scrub". I am the person the healer perpetually has to heal and curses under their breath repeatedly. I have had more concussions than any pro league anywhere would allow. Even the military doesn't want me back and they are the one who broke me. I have the reflexes of the 80 yr old person. I know this. I understand having anxiety or feeling the pressure to perform and not mess up in the dungeon in front of people.

The fix I have to this. A learner badge similar to like a sprout it just sits next to our names in dungeons that we can toggle on and off if we like and once we feel confident with the content. That way people understand the others are still learning the new and difficult content and give them grace or if they don't have the patience for it they can drop and someone else can take their place.

I usually have a small macro explaining that I suck and I am trying to learn the hard content. It's not anyone else's problem that I am a handicap. If they don't want to be in the party they leave and if the people are nice enough to stay, great!

The content shouldn't be dumbed down and turned into soggy milk toast for people because they don't want to try or because they are scared to try. I also know that there needs to space for people like myself that have limitations and need time to "git gud" with out having to out of their way their way to do party finder or grind with npcs or actively apologize in advance.

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That's the right attitude to have. You can accomplish anything you put your mind to even if it may take you longer, and there are plenty of people willing to help. :)

I fear it would make the current issues worse. Sure there could be people who genuinely want to learn and get better, but the reality would be that people would put that icon on as a justification to play bad and not learn.
I think if you're actually trying to improve, saying it in chat, even if its through macro, is the best option.

I would also say that the pace of the mechanics that is in current dungeons or trials can be mitigated by just sacrificing your damage output. Leave optimising to the sweats.
With tanking mobs you can basicly make a plan to follow, what mitigations you use at which moment, since most modern dungeons follow the same pattern: 2 trash packs -> wall -> 2 trash packs -> boss. You usually dont need defensives for boss, maybe the short cooldown like the blackest night, which is not an issue.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I think part of the problem we're facing is that a single mechanic now dominates fights: responding rapidly to (often obscure) tells and moving to the safe spot.

Anyone playing a game will instinctively try to resolve that mechanic. In that sense they are trying their best. But it's also a mechanic that is difficult for a subset of players (for multiple reasons).

Many "good" players seem genuinely baffled by how "bad" some others are in PvE in this game. I'm convinced it mostly stems from this DDR trend.

You can't teach speed.

And the side effect is a "good" player will see a "bad" one who is barely casting and assume they're just goofing off, whereas in fact that player is completely overwhelmed by simply avoiding the bad.

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This.

Fair to say that I probably qualify here since, in terms of the new content at least, it does often feel as if my preoccupation with desperately trying to not be dead interferes with my doing anything useful in terms of attacking or healing :(

No, thanks. I don't come to this game to suffer. I tried hard content like Ex Trials many times and I came to realise that the harder it is - the less I enjoy it. So I'm now avoiding anything that's harder that normal difficulty raids/alliance raids/trials, and I don't feel like I'm missing out of anything. It's very well that you like hard stuff and all, but thing is, we are completely different, so there must be balance. Simplify ex trials, remove savage raids and I'll be happy, but most of raiders will leave the game. Remove all the easy content like dungeons, fates, normal raids, replace it with some hardcore content and I'm sure most of raiders will be happy, but I won't have any reason to play this game anymore. Got it?

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I think part of the problem we're facing is that a single mechanic now dominates fights: responding rapidly to (often obscure) tells and moving to the safe spot.

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To be fair:

As far as any normal-mode content is concerned -- that is, anything someone can reasonably queue for in Duty Finder -- I can't recall any "obscure" tells. If someone can see the tell, then they have a good chance of knowing what they need to do. (I'm setting aside concerns about reaction times.)

Having said that, my "if" there is carrying a lot of weight, and there are two aspects to this:

1. Cast names are meaningful, but the default UI and tutorials makes no effort to highlight that information.
2. Visual effects in Endwalker and Dawntrail have emphasized flashiness to the exclusion of all else. These effects look fantastic in a job trailer, where there is a single character going up against a striking dummy, but those same effects are utterly oppressive and blinding when you have a striking dummy that fights back, or 3 or 7 or 23 other players alongside you.

So, in practice, the boss might be casting, "I Will Fail My Right Arm Like a Crazy Person in 5 Seconds," but good luck actually seeing that in the cast bar or in their character model.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

As far as any normal-mode content is concerned -- that is, anything someone can reasonably queue for in Duty Finder -- I can't recall any "obscure" tells.

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The only one that comes readily to my mind is where the English translator apparently decided to be a dick by naming Omega's attacks Starboard and Larboard like anyone who doesn't know maritime terms is going to know or remember that. From what I read somewhere, English is the only version of the game where it's not just Left and Right.

I do have a few issues where the devs use enemy anatomy/posing as attack cues but that's a little bit self-inflicted because I don't want to turn people's animations off. I think it's reasonable, since all these animations are enabled by default, that this is the intended way to play the game and that all the cues you need to complete an encounter perfectly should be visible with all these effects on but that's a slightly different matter.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

The only one that comes readily to my mind is where the English translator apparently decided to be a dick by naming Omega's attacks Starboard and Larboard like anyone who doesn't know maritime terms is going to know or remember that. From what I read somewhere, English is the only version of the game where it's not just Left and Right.

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I didn't know the terms either, but tbf, it takes seeing only either one once to figure it out (larboard is left), and they weren't hitting for lethal damage pre-vuln-stacks.

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I do have a few issues where the devs use enemy anatomy/posing as attack cues but that's a little bit self-inflicted because I don't want to turn people's animations off.

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This is my bigger issue: We should, frankly, have the option to make enemies (at least during said cues) visible at partial opacity through occluding visual elements (i.e., making occluding visuals partly transparent). Same goes for ourselves and our nameplates' health bars.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

To be fair:

As far as any normal-mode content is concerned -- that is, anything someone can reasonably queue for in Duty Finder -- I can't recall any "obscure" tells. If someone can see the tell, then they have a good chance of knowing what they need to do. (I'm setting aside concerns about reaction times.)

Having said that, my "if" there is carrying a lot of weight, and there are two aspects to this:

1. Cast names are meaningful, but the default UI and tutorials makes no effort to highlight that information.
2. Visual effects in Endwalker and Dawntrail have emphasized flashiness to the exclusion of all else. These effects look fantastic in a job trailer, where there is a single character going up against a striking dummy, but those same effects are utterly oppressive and blinding when you have a striking dummy that fights back, or 3 or 7 or 23 other players alongside you.

So, in practice, the boss might be casting, "I Will Fail My Right Arm Like a Crazy Person in 5 Seconds," but good luck actually seeing that in the cast bar or in their character model.

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My eyesight isn't the greatest and the additional visual clutter and flashiness in DT has been a major problem for me. So, agreed, "obscure" was the wrong term; some tells are simply increasingly difficult to see in the sea of flashing lights.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

That's the right attitude to have. You can accomplish anything you put your mind to even if it may take you longer, and there are plenty of people willing to help. :)

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This is one of the most destructive attitudes currently blighting the game.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

[...] the English translator apparently decided to be a dick by naming Omega's attacks Starboard and Larboard like anyone who doesn't know maritime terms is going to know or remember that. From what I read somewhere, English is the only version of the game where it's not just Left and Right.

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That is why whenever I get thrown into that one for my roulette I make a point to say "Larboard = hits HIS left side" "Starboard = hits HIS right side" because I feel like most people understand the concept, but they get lost at the "it's Omega's left or right, not ours" specially when he starts spinning like crazy. I find that mechanic really fun personally. I love the chaos that ensues with a party of sprouts.
I don't love, however, getting punished because a sprout decided to leave and empty tower and die later into that same fight. Why is it my fault? lol he already got punished by dying, and I couldn't have done nothing to prevent his mistake. Even when you tell them, sometimes they don't read chat (or simply can't understand the language)

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

[...]I do have a few issues where the devs use enemy anatomy/posing as attack cues but that's a little bit self-inflicted because I don't want to turn people's animations off. I think it's reasonable, since all these animations are enabled by default, that this is the intended way to play the game and that all the cues you need to complete an encounter perfectly should be visible with all these effects on but that's a slightly different matter.

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Every fight always has multiple ways/cues to get information on the next attack. The most obvious two are the cast bar and, more rencetly, animations, but often times you can also aid yourself by the arena's floor design (if one part of the arena got hit before, it is fair to assume the opposite version of that attack would affect the previous safe spot, things labeled as "left", "right", "fore", "hind" are likely to affect the arena in the relevant area, divided by the arena's floor design) or even other environmental cues (in Nald'Thal's fight, you can tell if it's a donut or an aoe based on the background's color, blue/orange and also the floating lamps design).
There are also some sound cues in some fights, such as UWU Garuda's laughter before the feather baits.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's part of our skillset to seek out the easiest cue for us to identify when we are learning a fight.


We can all agree the default settings and HUD are horrendous, but that doesn't mean you have to play like that. Otherwise, they wouldn't have bothered adding ways for you to move and change the size of almost every part of your HUD, and choose how nameplates, VFX and other stuff shows up in your screen. It's up to you to adjust the game to make for the best experience for you. I find it a little silly to complain about how bright the sun is while staring directly at it, when someone handed you a pair of sunglasses and a hat that same day.


It's understandable if you don't want to disable animations for everyone, or disable them everywhere. There are commands you can put into macros to tweak nearly everything in your game with a single click. I highly recommend checking out the Lodestone page on commands and trying any that catch your eye on your game. I personally have different HUD setups based on roles, and different VFX settings based on job. It's a game changer!


Example: You make two macros. One for the duties that are easy for you, or just for hanging out. This one has your usual HUD and full VFX on. The other macro, let's say you label it "hard duties", has a bigger enemy cast bar in a visible place for you, a bigger list of debuffs where your cursor usually hangs out so you can hover and check over them quickly without much fuss, and your party's (maybe even your own if you find your own skills distracting) VFX set to Limited so you can still see healer bubbles, DRK/NIN puddles, etc. so you can have an easier time focusing on what is important while not losing your usual, comfy setup you like for everything else. It only took you a slightly modified copy of your HUD and 15min of your time to set that up + your macros. If you want, you can even add a /p message to each macro, the comfy one with your usual greeting and the difficult duties macro with a warning that you may struggle and you will still do your best, if you are worried about the party being annoyed at you dying. If you need any help setting it up, I'm happy to give you some more pointers. Macros are my #1 QoL upgrade to my setup and I just want to spread the word lol

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

This is one of the most destructive attitudes currently blighting the game.

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We could say the same about yours, Mawlzy... I don't understand what is wrong with having a positive and go-getter attitude about challenge.