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

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Originally Posted by -Xenia-

From what I have experienced in pf, your view is clearly not shared by many. It was unbelievably hard for me to find a group capable of clearing m7s. In fact, I went an entire week ready to clear the fight and could not the entire week because of how bad pf was.

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My view that M7S is EASIER than TOP / DSR?

PF is a problem on every tier, that's a player problem, not a design one, these fights were made in mind of 8 people trying to clear together in a static. They're doable in PF, but you deal with the chaotic throw of the dice, you might get inconsistent players or consistent players. Last week reclearing M7S felt painful, this week I did it in a couple of pulls. That's just how the nature of pugs is.

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Originally Posted by Volgia

PF is a problem on every tier, that's a player problem, not a design one, these fights were made in mind of 8 people trying to clear together in a static.

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I don't know if that's necessarily the case. Don't most groups on JP servers use the PF instead of forming statics for Savage?

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Originally Posted by Andevom

I don't know if that's necessarily the case. Don't most groups on JP servers use the PF instead of forming statics for Savage?

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That feels like an oxymoron. If you have a group of 8/8 why would you use the PF? But I'll assume you meant "raiders" and not groups. I'm not sure, I don't have the metrics, I have friends who stream their savage clears and reclears on Mana servers and from what it seems it's just as chaotic as the NA/EU servers.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Although that one is rough at first since the revamp, it's your basic in-out mechanics from every other piece of content. Probably the main thing that makes it feel like High-End content is that they don't telegraph it in advance, and there is a very quick in-out moment, but that's been normal for dungeons for a few expansions now - you're meant to just observe which environmental objects are associated with which attacks or they hit you.

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Reworked ARF is the only MSQ dungeon I had to quit twice, since in both runs the healer was not able to do the mechanics, even after lots of explanations in chat. Compared to the other HW leveling dungeons the increase in difficulty is immense. So in my book that particular rework was a complete fail. Especially when you compare it to the following trial (Singularity Reactor), which is still the same boring snoozefest as it ever was.

Aetherochemical Research Facility lives or dies on the Healer being able to do Dualstar, if they can, it's easy, if they can't, the subsequent mechanics will get the DPS, then if the Tank lives, they will be unable to finish the LB sequence and wipe.

It's not even that hard, the Healer can choose to get single-hit during Dualstar, since it's the dual hit that gets you, and just live with a vul stack, but if for whatever reason they can't or insist in trying to do it correctly and fail, and assuming there is no SMN to pick up the slack, it will hold the entire party hostage.

Put a Dorito above your head and tell the healer to follow you at all times, it generally helps. The lethal mechanics aren't individual in here fortunately.

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Originally Posted by Valence

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.

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At the higher end you kind of need that though. If you are in a group with a specific goal, e.g. clearing a tier day one, then if someone is not up to the task then they need to be replaced. That's not toxicity, it's reality. Could argue that the player themselves are the toxic one by trolling the group because they aren't competent enough. Which happens a lot in all levels of savage, especially PF.

If someone isn't respecting 7 other peoples time and goals, it's not toxic to call them out and kick.

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Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

At the higher end you kind of need that though. If you are in a group with a specific goal, e.g. clearing a tier day one, then if someone is not up to the task then they need to be replaced. That's not toxicity, it's reality. Could argue that the player themselves are the toxic one by trolling the group because they aren't competent enough. Which happens a lot in all levels of savage, especially PF.

If someone isn't respecting 7 other peoples time and goals, it's not toxic to call them out and kick.

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I never said anywhere that at higher levels groups shouldn't concern themselves with the group's performance.
Helping within raiding circles is all well and good when it's on the balance, but it stops being a thing when it's about people's statics.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

This just makes me wonder how anyone gets anything done at all in the hardcore scene if accusations and kicks are so common, or why people think this "your wasting my time" mentality DOESN'T bleed over into normal content too (because it absolutely does) and people just automatically assume anyone failing at anything must be a troll.

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You wonder because you take one or a few specific anecdotes and use that to paint a broad brush across everything under the sun, especially when it comes to content you yourself haven't even set foot in.

"Clearing a tier day one" is a very different goal from "starting the tier a few weeks later and hoping to clear… eventually."

"Just want to get my weekly re-clear over with" is a very different goal from "prog the later phases and hopefully clear today."

Etc. Etc.

It might surprise you, but people come in with different attitudes and expectations depending on their goal. (And a good Party Finder listing makes that clear up front.)

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I wouldn't have any reason to step foot in it though? I'm not good enough to clear, and nobody is going to have the patience to wait until I am.

I'm not here to screw up other people's fun or hold them back despite how many times people say I'm the "toxic casual" ruining their game just for existing.

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To be honest, there are many players that are far worse than you clearing savage. Many of them can and do still get farmed in normal mode content.

If our purpose is to ease clears and incentivize players who wouldn't normally try to go for it, wouldn't the far easier solution be to just incentivize that initial progress -- say, via High-End Duty Finder (which tends to be less intimidating) by...

1. offering partial tomes for progress and some significant amount on checkpoint therein, maybe
2. include a raid journal that expands details on the boss abilities after seeing them enough times or after clearing them alive, for rapid review (and maybe even sharing, if taking someone more progressed), which could double as a way for the game to sort players with those with similar progress within the player's chosen tolerance (for PF and HE-DF both),
3. have no penalty from matchmade veterans and greatly reduced penalties for veterans if they're not in the majority within the party one queues up as (and, yes, with new clear tome/whatnot rewards for the veterans helping), and maybe even
4. swap Duty-finder raids to personal loot (tradeable only if one already has equal ilvl or better for the given slot) and allow a player's missed weeks' chances at loot to increase their likely number of drops once they actually clear it (again)?

No need for a second system. Just polish what's there and supporting already.

That said, I would love if MI-NE would increase drop chances proportionately to ilvl lost in going MI-NE. For the whole game. Everything. Maybe even a bigger increase (especially for certain items, like mounts) when losing levels, too.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I wouldn't have any reason to step foot in it though?

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And at some point, the lack of personal experience with something means that you're lacking in perspective that allows you to understand what people are actually saying.

For example, turning a comment about "clearing a tier day one" into "how anyone gets anything done at all in the hardcore scene" is like turning "water is wet" into "how anyone manages to live with rivers and oceans flooding all the time".

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I'm not good enough to clear, and nobody is going to have the patience to wait until I am.

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As Alisaie says it, "Let's give it our all!" I think that's really the first thing people look for.

I mean, I've done some Mentor Roulette runs where it was an ARR extreme with a bunch of sprout first-timers. More than anything, the clears came from people being upbeat, willing to talk, and willing to give it another go.

I don't even know why they let people play through 500hrs of MSQ in complete solitude in an empty open world but then they force them to socialize with 7 other people they've never met only to reach a common goal in a video game, which is a recipe for disaster. Yoshi should just get over his huge inflated ego and give bots for all max. level content and people will be happy. You still need to deliver, you still need to learn the mechanics, but you don't have to deal with artificial difficulty and the drama the nolifes will bring on. In a way it's even harder because the second you die with bots you go back to the start, there are no resses. This is not an esports game and no one gives a fuck about FFXIV clears especially not with the well-known plugin & cheats scandal nothing is being done about, so why try so hard? At this rate they will just lose more and more people of the already thin crowd that is still here for gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

I don't even know why they let people play through 500hrs of MSQ in complete solitude in an empty open world but then they force them to socialize with 7 other people they've never met only to reach a common goal in a video game, which is a recipe for disaster. Yoshi should just get over his huge inflated ego and give bots for all max. level content and people will be happy. You still need to deliver, you still need to learn the mechanics, but you don't have to deal with artificial difficulty and the drama the nolifes will bring on. In a way it's even harder because the second you die with bots you go back to the start, there are no resses.

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I very much doubt that the outcome would sanctify the cost. I for one failed to finish the one trial you can play with trusts, as I lost the last of my 3 lifes at 70% boss HQ. Was this an incentive for me to git gud? No, I returned to duty finder and got carried by a group of strangers. Did I learn anything from it? Sure - trials aren't fun.
Now I'm not gonna make a fool out of myself by telling you that I represent 97.789324% of the playerbase... or "the majority"... but I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one with this take on harder content. So for people like me, bots wouldn't solve anything. And on the other hand, I think that the majority of players that are interested in harder content will always find ways to play it /cough/ socializing /cough/
The only problem occurs when people use an automated match making system and then expect to be matched with a group of other players on their exact skill level. This can and will never work, leading to all the complaints about prog liers and what not.
Guess why WoW has no matchmaking for Mythic+?

I think it was irony. Because yes, the way raiding and pve in XIV has been going since Stormblood/ShB, it's all about you playing a solo game where the 7 other players happen to be actual people and not AIs.
So there is little wonder that people get mad at variables that they can't control because the healer fucked up again and stood in the bad spot and wiped the party.

Real talk the reason I stopped raiding is because for the most part the game is a solo game and the systems pretty much cater to this. I got tired of spending time learning the fights on my own and then solo queuing and trying for 3 hours at a time (killing my weekend) to not get any clears. It's a lot of frustrating wasted time if you have already done your own homework and practiced your rotation. Whats worse is that you really can't get mad at other players who don't know any better, or who don't understand the proper etiquette. The game caters to solo and lower level players so the majority aren't really taught how to play the game, or to expect such a jump in skill. On top of that most of it is just simply memorization so you literally have to study the fight. And, as someone who's busy I don't have the time to commit to a static that practices 3 days a week for a single instanced fight.

Also side note, I still hate that "raiding" in this game refers to instanced single fights lol. As someone who used to do ffxi Dynamis runs it does not mean the same thing, and I bet my wow counterparts feel me too.

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Originally Posted by Amarande

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 ...

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MMO's are designed to reward you based on your effort put into the game to begin with.


If you're not willing to do Savage then that's okay but you cannot expect to be on the same gear/power level as someone who does.

Not a real answer. I completely agree with that long post.

Gear takes way too long to get, DT is even worse with ragequitting. Ive seen people leave after ONE wipe. On week 2. Thats ridiculous. I did prog and they balance it for 3 pieces of time gear assuming everyone gets it? Why? Just let people have higher gear. They aren't going to instantly kill the boss.

Ive quit savage bc not a single time. Not ONCE did I win a drop. By that point I was so done.

Ex trials.. funny. All I want to do is Ultimate and it had an unnecessary gate. It shouldn't need gear either. Me holding on to gear for 5 Ultimates means I got no space in my inventory

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Originally Posted by Saraide

Ex trials.

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Very this but I wish we got more of them and they gave more relevant gear. In general I think the extremes are a nice middle ground of being very puggable and reasonable challenge for most players. But only getting 8 across the entire expansion just sucks.

And just more methods to gear in general, why the hell doesn't the criterion dungeon savage version drop savage level gear for example?! Whyyyyy SE whyyy. The one that did needed stuff from savage to actually get which defeats the point of doing that content. The choices the devs make truly baffle me at times. We have 21 combat jobs and in a savage tier we will never gear our main and a handful of alt jobs in reasonable timeframe.

Why are they against giving more reasons to play the game? People like playing alt jobs and have been clamouring for things to do. Let us do more content for gear!

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Originally Posted by Aelin_Ashryver

Very this but I wish we got more of them and they gave more relevant gear. In general I think the extremes are a nice middle ground of being very puggable and reasonable challenge for most players. But only getting 8 across the entire expansion just sucks.

And just more methods to gear in general, why the hell doesn't the criterion dungeon savage version drop savage level gear for example?! Whyyyyy SE whyyy. The one that did needed stuff from savage to actually get which defeats the point of doing that content. The choices the devs make truly baffle me at times. We have 21 combat jobs and in a savage tier we will never gear our main and a handful of alt jobs in reasonable timeframe.

Why are they against giving more reasons to play the game? People like playing alt jobs and have been clamouring for things to do. Let us do more content for gear!

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Because devs want you to spend more and more time in savages so you can build your subscription to the maximum. It's all part of getting more cash and reason why they are locked once per week. If you got all, people would unsub and they lose money. A very well known game-sin that is happening across many games not just this one.

As for PF that guy above mentioned, this is very true. People have been leaving just after 1 wipe but I don't blame them really. A lot of the times you can already see if you will prog or it's lost from the start. Having bard, dancer, machinist or those "low / green" dps jobs in your pf is going to make you eerie because you do well know that an enrage is incoming and a lot of phases will be harder. Not players fault, they play what they like but those classes just bring nothing. While having Samurai, Viper, Black mage already makes you feel comfortable and you do fights much much faster.

Whenever I had best dps classes in unreal, I would never see enrage. Like literally not even close to it. Have it other way where you get support dps classes and oh boy... it's every single time and 50% that you fail the entire encounter. Some pf's can't even pass Zenos dps check and you already can guess what those dps classes are.

Sometimes people see that others fail simple mechanics which is another reason to instant quit after a wipe or several deaths. Unreal has been somewhat cursed these weeks where people advertise 2x but do 1x and then leave all of us to seek and destroy other pf's because we just need one more clear. Another thing is that everybody likes to use different mechanics and instead of saying "tanks go to C which is blue color", no it's "tanks go to A which is red color so its confusing even more!".

I don’t do savage myself so I’m asking genuinely but are Bard, Dancer and Machinist (and maybe Summoner/RDM) really so bad that having one in your party is literally enough to cause an enrage?

Or is it just that people playing physical ranged/support casters generally just less skilled lol. I mean it’s possible I guess, they do have a reputation. I used to be a Bard so I’m proof lol)

Either way, you’d think that fact alone would make the devs thinks to themselves ‘wow we need to like rethink the phys ranged role as a whole what’s it even doing now’.

Sadly though I’m fully expecting nothing to change and 8.0 will add one new flashy combo finisher to all three phys ranged and that’ll be it. Probably delete Minne/Warden’s Paean because they really hate Bard lol

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Originally Posted by Connor

I don’t do savage myself so I’m asking genuinely but are Bard, Dancer and Machinist (and maybe Summoner/RDM) really so bad that having one in your party is literally enough to cause an enrage?

Or is it just that people playing physical ranged/support casters generally just less skilled lol. I mean it’s possible I guess, they do have a reputation. I used to be a Bard so I’m proof lol)

Either way, you’d think that fact alone would make the devs thinks to themselves ‘wow we need to like rethink the phys ranged role as a whole what’s it even doing now’.

Sadly though I’m fully expecting nothing to change and 8.0 will add one new flashy combo finisher to all three phys ranged and that’ll be it. Probably delete Minne/Warden’s Paean because they really hate Bard lol

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Rather than the "support" dps players being bad at the game the more likely explanation is that your average PF players are bad and don't effectively press buttons inside raid buffs.

The effectiveness of these jobs scales directly with the quality of your party and whether you are stacking raid buffs or not as they scale exponentially with each other. Hence in a typical PF party where your players are likely not very good at pressing their buttons and are playing the more popular non buff jobs it often makes a lot of sense to just go "selfish" dps and carry the damage yourself.

Summoner is genuinely pretty bad at this point in time though.

The main issue with SMN in current time is that it is so inflexible that it is entirely incapable of holding its burst, the entire kit hinges on the use of Summon Solar Bahamut/Bahamut/Phoenix, which is also your main burst, which means they can't hold it in for when it is more appropriate to use the burst if necessary, if they need to hold, all they can do is spam Ruin III, and 20-30 seconds of nothing but spamming Ruin III is really bad, it even ruins what can be one of the main appeals of SMN to people who like it, that it is a Magic DPS that does little casting, and temporarily turns the SMN into a bad BLM.

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Originally Posted by ShaneDawn

Rather than the "support" dps players being bad at the game the more likely explanation is that your average PF players are bad and don't effectively press buttons inside raid buffs.

The effectiveness of these jobs scales directly with the quality of your party and whether you are stacking raid buffs or not as they scale exponentially with each other. Hence in a typical PF party where your players are likely not very good at pressing their buttons and are playing the more popular non buff jobs it often makes a lot of sense to just go "selfish" dps and carry the damage yourself.

Summoner is genuinely pretty bad at this point in time though.

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Just to clarify, I wasn’t suggesting the latter was ‘the actual truth’, just considering other angles.

The thing about overall power of said jobs being proportionate to the output of other jobs makes sense though. So those jobs can’t do well unless their parties members are already doing extremely well?


To respond to the other poster I can see why the inflexibility of Summoner’s rotation would affect its viability as well. You’re effectively at the mercy of the encounter design at that point I would imagine.

I guess the follow up from that is how do they solve these issue? Summoner’s rotational issues are more straightforward to solve but what about jobs designed to ‘have low dps themselves but support the party’? Kinda hoping it’s not ‘make them all selfish’ tbh lol. But then, what other way is there to remove such contingency on party performance?

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Originally Posted by MayuAmakura

Because devs want you to spend more and more time in savages so you can build your subscription to the maximum. It's all part of getting more cash and reason why they are locked once per week. If you got all, people would unsub and they lose money. A very well known game-sin that is happening across many games not just this one.

As for PF that guy above mentioned, this is very true. People have been leaving just after 1 wipe but I don't blame them really. A lot of the times you can already see if you will prog or it's lost from the start. Having bard, dancer, machinist or those "low / green" dps jobs in your pf is going to make you eerie because you do well know that an enrage is incoming and a lot of phases will be harder. Not players fault, they play what they like but those classes just bring nothing. While having Samurai, Viper, Black mage already makes you feel comfortable and you do fights much much faster.

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Think the devs might have overestimated everyone's patience a tad. I mean if people are leaving and breaking up parties in just few pulls, that really isn't fostering a healthy gaming environment

I think there should be more difficulties around the board. Normal stuff is too easy and difficult stuff is too difficult for a casual player. It just really feels like we are dealing with a small team who can only provide the bare minimum. Something between normal and extreme, something between normal and savage. More dungeon difficulties. Something between normal alliance raid and chaotic.

Level of skill varies widely in MMO's you think another difficulty between normal and savage will fix things. LMAO!!! No it wont cause there will be players who find that new difficulty too easy or too hard and want a difficulty that suits them added.