The time has come to get rid of enrage timers

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

You're usually so calm and cool but this... this is a gem. Thank you ma'am. You've brightened an otherwise boring day. Take all my likes, they're yours. Stand up to those crybullies! It's appreciated by those of us with less patience.

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:D

Do I get a real life minion of me? Oh......wait, I just came up with another idea, build-a-bear style.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

There's no fault at all. I mean there isn't simply enough players who can reach a level of skill that can populate a game. MMOs cost too much to turn into niche hardcore games that rely on a small playerbase.

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MMOs themselves are a niche market. Outside of WoW, there's really not any MMOs that have been able to generate a massive playerbase, and that includes FFXIV. Subscription model or not, MMOs cater to specific groups of players. Triple-A games tend to bring in a huge portion of the player market. And, borrowing from what you've been saying earlier, Ultimate probably didn't have high or moderate production costs. I say probably, because this is SE, so who knows how exactly they divy up their budget, but given that Ultimate is largely reused assets with intense mechanics, the production costs for harder content may not actually be as high as you are implying.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

:MMOs themselves are a niche market. Outside of WoW, there's really not any MMOs that have been able to generate a massive playerbase, and that includes FFXIV.

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I don't think they are that niche. If we have 800k accounts, that's more than the sales numbers of many games, and if you double it (assuming people who subbed then quit) that's more than any but the best video games. It's also at least double ffxi's population and 4 times everquest's original population. And among MMOs itself, that's huge; niche MMOs barely break 10k subs if they even last. Stuff like A Tale in the Desert, for example.

I just meant that reply for someone who was kind of bewaliling having to support the casuals. There simply isn't enough high skilled hardcore to support this game. If you make it harder to try and focus on them, it really won't work well. Not to say it would die, but this game would be a lot different with 100k total subs than 800k.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

I don't think they are that niche. If we have 800k accounts, that's more than the sales numbers of many games, and if you double it (assuming people who subbed then quit) that's more than any but the best video games. It's also at least double ffxi's population and 4 times everquest's original population. And among MMOs itself, that's huge; niche MMOs barely break 10k subs if they even last. Stuff like A Tale in the Desert, for example.

I just meant that reply for someone who was kind of bewaliling having to support the casuals. There simply isn't enough high skilled hardcore to support this game. If you make it harder to try and focus on them, it really won't work well. Not to say it would die, but this game would be a lot different with 100k total subs than 800k.

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We have, what, Wow, FFXIV, ESO, GW2, Eve, BSO, SWTOR (which is dying)...and that's it for MMOs for the most part as far has having a sizable market at a minimum. While these MMOs do pull in a good chunk of players, that audience tends to build over time. Whereas Triple-A titles are often the ones that break sales records upon release, upon first week of release, and upon first month of release. When I say Triple-A, I'm talking about titles like Call of Duty (before they screwed themselves over), Mass Effect (before Andromeda), Final Fantasy (particularly 7, 9, 10, 12, and 15), and I'll even use a non-Triple A title in the Witcher 3 (CD Projekt Red is still technically an indie studio).

That's why I feel MMOs are still something of a niche market. The MMOs we play don't exactly reach across to a national or worldwide audience in quite the same manner as what triple-A studios are capable of achieving. If I were to use an analogy...think of MMOs as a slow burn, gradually spreading over a number of months and years before finally starting to reach and break peak audience numbers.

On your other part, do you mean purely hardcores, or are you lumping midcore players in with the hardcore crowd? I lean towards hardcore, but I'm a midcore at best personally. To a point, you are right that this game shouldn't put a huge focus on hardcore. But...I feel like this might be bleeding into another discussion at large, so I'll just end this particular post by saying that while it may be true that there aren't a lot of high skilled hardcore players, that does not mean that there can't be content for the casual>midcore crowd.

And let's be honest - enrage is not the only issue that has come out here. It's a mixture of somewhat decent hard DPS checks, player competence vs reality, PUG capabilities, and a lack of legitimate alternatives to how to replace enrage without ruining both lore and the fight itself.

I recall someone saying several pages back that O3S boss pulls power out of nowhere to wipe the party. I meant to respond to that as well. But no, she didn't 'pull power out of nowhere'. She just got bored with you and stopped giving you chances to complete one of her games. And honestly, O3S is not one of those fights that should be endless...healers will definitely run out of MP at some point if she more HP with no enrage timer just because of all the pure burst healing you have to do for lengthy periods of time.

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Originally Posted by Quor

The upcoming WAR nerfs have brought out the usual

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where for the downvote button?

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

But no, you did typical Riyah stuff and went straight to an extreme and chose Ultimate.

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Literally the truest thing spoken in this thread.

Riyah, I think the fact that you blindly stand by your initial opinion on things no matter how much cold hard truth is put before you is a bigger reason for you to avoid threads like these than any lack of experience. There is literally no point in trying to debate with you as you're just not interested in listening to what's being said.

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Originally Posted by Bobs

Let me say this again. Memorizing a DPS rotation IS NOT CHALLENGING.

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Memorizing is not challanging.

Using it without mistakes is another thing.

Using it without mistakes in an encounter while handling 1, 2 or more mechanics at the same time is also another thing.

Not to forget you can't play down many rotation straight forward beside the trainings dummy without loosing alot of damage. With a summoner in Exfaust for example, you will loose very much damage when yo play the rotation straight forward. You have to audjust for good damage. Thats more than just memorizing.

And exactly this is the reason for enrage timers. Its a test to see if a player can perform its rotation and audjust for the fight while doing other things or not.

Everybody who thinks "Memorizing" is the key to play good is completely wrong.

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Originally Posted by KarstenS

Memorizing is not challanging.

Using it without mistakes is another thing.

Using it without mistakes in an encounter while handling 1, 2 or more mechanics at the same time is also another thing.

Not to forget you can't play down many rotation straight forward beside the trainings dummy without loosing alot of damage. With a summoner in Exfaust for example, you will loose very much damage when yo play the rotation straight forward. You have to audjust for good damage. Thats more than just memorizing.

And exactly this is the reason for enrage timers. Its a test to see if a player can perform its rotation and audjust for the fight while doing other things or not.

Everybody who thinks "Memorizing" is the key to play good is completely wrong.

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I can't upvote this post enough. You said it all.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Riyah, I think the fact that you blindly stand by your initial opinion on things no matter how much cold hard truth is put before you is a bigger reason for you to avoid threads like these than any lack of experience. There is literally no point in trying to debate with you as you're just not interested in listening to what's being said.

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i don't see truth, i see a lot of people misunderstanding my initial points and responding to what they want to hear. I didn't say anything particularly extreme in this recent exchange. It just boils down to "hey, you can do o1s and o2s and know what enrage means too, and have an opinion on it" and "you can't really build a game on the hardcore." Its just people really hate to hear anyone challenge them without doing so to concede right after, if its unpopular.

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Originally Posted by Llus

Everyone really should be looking at 50th percentile. By definition 50th percentile is the average player.

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No it's not. It's the data point at which 50% of other data points are below. That's it. You can't extrapolate that into the "average player", because you don't have the same players in the same places.

A 50th percentile player on O4S is in no way an average player, because a huge chunk of the playerbase has never been there and thus isn't counted at all. They will likely be far better than a 50th percentile player in Expert and probably Rabanastre, but worse than 50th percentile player in Ultimate (who almost certainly does know about burst windows and isn't just getting lucky crits). Lots of players aren't really counted at all in any of the data and are thus totally excluded from the "average player" with this method.

Getting an "average player" analysis out of the data doesn't work very well. It can give you "the median Hashmal player" type information, but that isn't the same thing, and treating them as equivalent will lead to a lot of misunderstandings of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Kamatsu

These people have 30-90 minutes a day/2-days/week to play and just want to log in and play without having to stress, worry about hard-to-play mechanics or such. These are people that will leave a game if their casual content becomes too hard for them to casually beat, they won't go to forums, reddit, guides, etc to try and learn how to play better, they won't seek FC's / LS's / etc to try and improve... they will just up and quit the game.

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I play less than 4 hours a week. I cleared all of Omega Savage. Limited time is not an excuse for minimal effort.

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ANet suffered a 67% drop in revenue after the launch of HoT expansion. All because they made the casual / story content harder and more like what those wanting hard content wanted. After a while they came out and said this was a mistake, and that they shouldn't have made the casual / story / easy-to-access-parts as hard as they did and nerfed these parts quite a lot - so much so that most of the expansions zones, maps, hero points, etc could be done by a casual player.

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Can you try and link some information to this? I scoured GW2 forums, reddit, and google and found no evidence of this. I also don't play the game, but I imagine something as bold as that would have been captured somewhere.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I generally play with friends so i'm not the guy that's gonna boot one of them out because them out because they are able to mechanics perfectly just not fall a fraction short on dps... and generally when you see wipes at 2-3% despite the fact you've survived everything to that point. it's infuriating and generally puts players off wanting to try again....

if they scrapped enrages but had more dps checks the overall difficulty of content wouldn't change that much but it would just get rid of those wipes that screw you over when you've actually done nothing wrong...

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In your example they did not do all mechanics perfectly. It appears they failed the DPS mechanic.

Doing poor DPS is doing something wrong. Just like getting a 42 out of 100 on a test is a poor score. You should not get credit because you merely answered all the questions regardless of their validity. That is what you are advocating for.

Now - with that said, I personally agree that the game could definitely benefit from more soft enrage design instead of hard enrages (mercy rulings). However, asking for "more DPS checks" when people are failing the existing one seems counter-intuitive.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

I've seen games that decide that ZOMG HARDCORE CUPCAKE! is the way to go. Wildstar tried that. They listened to their echo chamber forum group of hardcore endgame raiders and focused on that too much in their marketing and at late/endgame in general (there were some downright brutal dungeons at higher level at launch).

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Did you actually play Wildstar? I did. It was actually a pretty freaking solid game. Excellent mechanics and gameplay. Where WS failed IMO is not in its implementation, but in its marketing. I'd posit if Blizzard released it with their powerhouse it'd have been a success. Don't get me wrong it had a ton of issues, like all games, but I don't thinks it difficulty curve was one of them. It was actually one of the better implemented ones I'd seen in a long time.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

As a compromise, they could have it so that if you don't beat it by the official original enrage time, you loose a chest, after a bit more time, the next chest goes and so does any titles / rewards. You got a clear but you got just that a clear only, no rewards or anything else. It has a similar effect as an enrage, punish poor performance but it would allow people to just get through it. It would also make for some very interesting specialty runs where people try to do the encounter with the fewest people possible.

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Everything about this suggestion is bad. I don't see an actual good side. Do you? If you'd like me to cite some reasons why this is bad let me know, but since your comment is kinda old I'll only do it if you ask.

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Originally Posted by Kaonis

Enrage has always been a cheap thing to do. It's not bad for some fights, but they abuse the hell out of it in their designs. They should just stick to most fights having a DPS check in the fight like meteors on neo instead of every fight being a DPS check to prevent a hard enrage.

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Meteors on neo are a hard enrage. If you fail, you restart the fight.

There are 2 types of enrage. Hard and Soft. Hard is any mechanic that instantly mercy rules you. That is a term in game design that says if you're incapable of clearing it, you don't waste any additional time trying the fight. You're simply sent back being told you need to fix xyz before surpassing it. An "enrage timer" is another example of this.

A Soft enrage is something like Titan where he casts 1+x raid wide AOE pulse every ability rotation. Eventually he casts so many healers cannot provide enough throughput or go OOM and the party falls apart. T2 Pug cheese strat is another example of this.

I fully support a blend of both hard and soft enrages in encounter design and I do fully believe that SE overuses hard enrages.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Well, the way the game is set up they need enrage, but it's not a particularly fun mechanic as it is. I wonder sometimes if it wouldn't be better just to have the boss wipe everyone after so many deaths, since repeated deaths are the biggest component, and then have multipel dps checks through the fight. The enrage can make it that you can't recover from a fight, despite overcoming a flurry of deaths.

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It's a good example of a viable hard enrage mechanic for sure. Not sure it is what the community wants (personally I think FF14 has plenty of hard enrage design currently implemented, it could use some soft).

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Originally Posted by Dzian

That's crap. you can scrap enrage timers. add more dps checks. and thus find all tank or all healer parties will still fail.

look at ifrit ex. no enrage timer on that. but 6 tanks and 2 healers would never have smashed any of the nails down in time and that fight has what 3-4 sets of nails (thus 3-4 dps checks) i think been quite some time since i did it.

removing enrages does not mean the dps role would be useless... people need to stop exaggerating things so much

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Ifrit EX nails are hard enrages, much like Neo Exdeath's or Alta Roite. They're just tuned much easier. People are still going to fail them and complain about "dps checks". Whether it's at the end of the fight or in the middle, a hard enrage is a hard enrage.

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Originally Posted by Baalfrog

Nails are a soft enrage, screw those up and party will wipe. Also I'm going to repeat myself once more, enrage timer is a dps check. So what you are suggesting is, remove the dps check to see if you can clear a fight, and replace it with dps checks to see if you can clear a fight (nails of Ifrit etc.). Basically taking off something, and then replacing with a same thing, is not innovation or smart, its what EA does with Fifa games every year.

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Nails are a hard enrage. They are just a mid-fight one, not an end one. They do not complicate the fight if failed, they end the fight.

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Originally Posted by Bobs

The point is we should not even be talking about Tank's DPS at all, or healer's. That's not their job. The Hyper focus on DPS the problem. Having a 10min enrage time so everyone is focused on the DPS is the problem.

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I asked this to you elsewhere. If you remove enrages why bring a DPS at all when you can stack heals/tanks and trivialize all mechanics?

How would you mitigate this?

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Originally Posted by AxlStream

Oh how I wish we could make people that haven't beaten the last fight of the raid tier not comment on such things... I'm not even talking Ultimate here, just Neo.

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Dismissing insight from people with differing/lesser experiences does more harm than good. In my profession, experts are often very biased and lack critical thinking. An average end-user might not understand XYZ, but they're feedback is often invaluable in determining overlooked things that may be trivial to myself or colleagues, but to an uninformed person appears like gibberish.

By ALL means feel free to refute Riyah's claims with actual insight/evidence, but don't DISCOUNT him because he hasn't cleared O4S. I know he's probably a troll, and just plays devils advocate for the lulz, but you hurt your credibility more by not being open minded to his feedback/discussion, than he does by stating it. As someone who frequently butts heads with him trust me I hear where you are coming from. Especially with his grandiose extremes and hardlined stances, but by dismissing him there on that notion, we end up no better than him.

Is that what you want? I sure as hell don't LOL.

"You haven't cleared XYZ, why do you think ABC? What assumptions/insight do YOU have to qualify your position on the topic?"

Vs.

"You haven't even cleared O4S. Get lost."

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Originally Posted by Miste

If someone is going to call any fight in this game "easy" or "not a challenge" then I expect them to have experienced said fights.

How can you say something is "easy" or "not challenging" to do when you haven't even step foot in the fight at all nor have a clear of said fight?

People making claims about subjects they have no idea about or that they've never experienced usually doesn't work for obvious reasons.

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See above.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

How is this remotely comparable? The actual equivalent would be me giving Scholar advice when it's fairly obviously I don't play it. Bobs is claiming Ultimate isn't hard yet has never even set foot inside it. As someone who has, let me tell, Ultimate is on a whole separate level. For him to make such a remark screams ignorance.

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Ask Bobs why he thinks it isn't hard. Instead of discounting his argument on his perceived lack of experience, see if he can defend the statement and qualify it with evidence/insight. Being dismissive is not the correct way to approach.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Literally the truest thing spoken in this thread.

Riyah, I think the fact that you blindly stand by your initial opinion on things no matter how much cold hard truth is put before you is a bigger reason for you to avoid threads like these than any lack of experience. There is literally no point in trying to debate with you as you're just not interested in listening to what's being said.

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This 100%. It's not his inexperience that really disqualifies him from discussion. It's his general lack of an open mind. No amount of evidence could ever be sufficient for him to change his mind. IMO of course.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

"You haven't cleared XYZ, why do you think ABC? What assumptions/insight do YOU have to qualify your position on the topic?"

Vs.

"You haven't even cleared O4S. Get lost."

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Disagree, anyone who over simplifies things (he basically said the entire game is missile command) and brings up min percentile logs as proof a class is OP is not going to get the benefit of the doubt from me. It would be different if he approached it in a different way but he was pretty much indirectly making fun of people and said that we're "defending non challenging content" by not wanting enrages removed. Maybe if he approached it in a different way people wouldn't be discounting him so readily. That's just me though. (I'm talking about Bobs).

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

"You haven't even cleared O4S. Get lost."
See above.

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Excuse you, but I never told anyone to "get lost" so don't put words in my mouth. If you notice my post DID ask him a question: "how can you think that way?" and basically explained that from my point of view his stance makes no logical sense to me. So, that's interesting... didn't I do what you asked? He has simply not replied.

He said we are defending "non-challenging" content. His statement includes all of endgame IE Omega 1-4S and also Ultimate since they all have enrages. So he is including fights he has never experienced yet seems to think he can call them "easy", how would he know they are easy?

His other example about the minimum fflogs is just factually wrong so ain't no saving that one.

Look, I get it. Everyone has a right to an opinion even if said opinion is based on no actual experience. No one can stop you from having an opinion about something even if it makes little to no sense for you to have that opinion.

Thing is though naturally other people are going to call you out on opinions which have no base. Like if you told someone "I hate Sushi" and they are like "Well, have you tried any of it?" and if you answer "No, none." ...do you really think that person is going to take you seriously? Chances are they'll probably say something along the lines of "Well how can you hate something you haven't tried?"

Do you not understand this is normal behavior?

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

Ask Bobs why he thinks it isn't hard. Instead of discounting his argument on his perceived lack of experience, see if he can defend the statement and qualify it with evidence/insight. Being dismissive is not the correct way to approach.

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To be fair, it’s not a perceived lack of experience; Bobs has said that he hasn’t done anything past V2S; since he hasn’t cleared Neo, it’s safe to assume that he’s never set foot into Ultimate. He also equated Savage fights to a game of “Asteroids” in another thread, yet has only seemed to do the two most easiest of the fights. Hence why everyone keeps saying things like “If it’s so easy, go clear Ultimate” and “You have no experience, so how can you speak on the difficulty/state of the content”.

I have no Rival Wings experience; that doesn’t give me any sort of perspective to judge or make comments about the current state of the content. By equivalent, Bobs has no experience in Ultimate Savage; that doesn’t give him any sort of perspective to judge or make comments about the state of it.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

Did you actually play Wildstar? I did. It was actually a pretty freaking solid game. Excellent mechanics and gameplay. Where WS failed IMO is not in its implementation, but in its marketing. I'd posit if Blizzard released it with their powerhouse it'd have been a success. Don't get me wrong it had a ton of issues, like all games, but I don't thinks it difficulty curve was one of them. It was actually one of the better implemented ones I'd seen in a long time.

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Yup. At launch. Once they made it work on the ATI card I had at the time it was pretty great, right up until it wasn't. And that was where the problem was. The marketing was hardcore focused, and the endgame was extremely hardcore focused (aside from housing, which made XIV look like a sad joke). People got to a certain point, hit a brick wall of "oh hey, now you need to do the 20 person raid to get attuned to do the even more people raid", and bailed out en-masse.

Was a shame, really.

I'm a fan of the idea, it would be cool if some fights in 8 man roulette were easier with 6 tanks and 4 healers or something crazy like that.

But that doesn't have to be a thing for every fight, its just something that could happen with out a enrage timer or DPS Wipe marker. A lot of old school mmo players didn't have enrage timers on anything they fought or player caps. A bit more freedom in a fight here and there could be cool, more world boss content would also be nice :(

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Originally Posted by Valknut

But that doesn't have to be a thing for every fight, its just something that could happen with out a enrage timer or DPS Wipe marker. A lot of old school mmo players didn't have enrage timers on anything they fought or player caps. A bit more freedom in a fight here and there could be cool, more world boss content would also be nice :(

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A lot of old school MMO players also had hour long fights, graveyard zerg tactics, and many other things that we don't really want back. Enrages are a natural development to block those sorts of things.

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Originally Posted by Darrcyphfeid

I think the opposite should happen. They need to add DPS checks and hard enrages to more casual content, like the Alliance Raids, so that people are encouraged to perform well.

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Sorry but there's nothing about zerg rushing that indicates the party can perform well. That's the problem with the design in this game. It puts dps output as king over everything with these ridiculous mechanics that encourage zerg rushing instead of requiring actual party cohesion and comprehension of role.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

A lot of old school MMO players also had hour long fights, graveyard zerg tactics, and many other things that we don't really want back. Enrages are a natural development to block those sorts of things.

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Enrages encourage zerg rushing. As an old school MMO player, I can tell you that fights didn't come down to zerg rushing because there were mechanics that didn't easily telegraph what was going to happen, so you had to have situational awareness, and all roles were important and necessary to beating the boss. I was *not* using my offensive spells as an enchanter back in EQ. I was using my crowd control abilities to keep the mobs from eating the healers. XIV's huge problem is that they're making roles outside of dps unnecessary.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Enrages encourage zerg rushing.

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Worth noting that I said graveyard zerg, which is a specific thing where pepole just constantly raise and come back from the graveyard (or get raised seven times in one attempt, as my cohealer on a Lakshmi normal did last week). Lack of enrages absolutely does enable that, because so long as you can keep enough people there to not reset the boss, people can die and get back into the fight all they want.

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As an old school MMO player, I can tell you that fights didn't come down to zerg rushing because there were mechanics that didn't easily telegraph what was going to happen, so you had to have situational awareness, and all roles were important and necessary to beating the boss. I was *not* using my offensive spells as an enchanter back in EQ. I was using my crowd control abilities to keep the mobs from eating the healers. XIV's huge problem is that they're making roles outside of dps unnecessary.

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Agreed, but that's a separate issue. It's all DPS, all the time in XIV because tank enmity generation and healing people back to full after damage don't require a monopoly on the time and resources of people in those roles (and CC basically has no reason to be used aside from Holy spam). Far from it. My not terribly good PLD can spend most time in Sword Oath and be at no real risk of dying or losing aggro. Given that, why wouldn't I? When Moro and I heal Rabanastre together, any of the bosses can do their big AoE attacks, and we've got our group back to full in one button press each (2.4 seconds). Then what?

Tanks and healers aren't DPSing as such a large part of their game play because of enrages. They're doing it because doing more tanking and more healing beyond what you need is redundant and what else are they supposed to do for half the fight?

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Sorry but there's nothing about zerg rushing that indicates the party can perform well. That's the problem with the design in this game. It puts dps output as king over everything with these ridiculous mechanics that encourage zerg rushing instead of requiring actual party cohesion and comprehension of role.

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I mean, you're not wrong. But within the context of the thread I'd rather there be more things in the game to encourage and teach the playerbase, and maybe ease them past the "faceroll" -> "Oh hey it's an EX Primal, I'll jump into this farm party completely blind because the rest of the game has been super easy" difficulty spike than to remove the ones we already have and just tapdance on our keyboards until we win. I know cross-world PF is a thing now and has restrictions in place to stop the latter example, but oh my lord did it happen so frequently in HW before that.

Outside of the context of the thread, we can't even get beyond housing issues and a stagnant gear treadmill to worry about mixing up the way combat design/approach works. I'd love to take the trinity system out back and bury it so we could get some super situational buffing/debuffing/support jobs, and change up how tanks and healers interact with enemies and each other, or have stuns and silences be more relevant, or whatever. But I've long since resigned to that never being a thing; every job must be able to do every piece of content in the game. Paired with the trinity system I'm not sure how much wiggle room they've given themselves.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

I play less than 4 hours a week. I cleared all of Omega Savage. Limited time is not an excuse for minimal effort.

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I was using 'limited time' as one example of what people call/dub/consider as being "casual" - you are correct in that limited time doesn't always mean limited effort/knowledge/ability. However there are those who WILL use their limited time to justify not looking up guides, clear video's, etc - I've seen them in virtually every MMO I've played. Whether or not that is a justified opinion/attitude all depends on each person - as some will find it justified, while others will not (like you for instance, since you obviously wish to try and improve as much as you can even with limited time to play).

On a personal note - I understand where they are coming from, but I also don't agree with it. Take FFXIV for instance - most dungeon/raid video guides are 5-7 minutes long... one view will give you enough information to have at least an idea of the mechanics of each boss so you can act accordingly. I consider myself a 'casual', sometimes I have very limited time... but regardless of time I always try and ensure my rotation is as best as I can, that I'm trying to hit positionals whenever possible, trying to not get hit by AoE, etc. I also take the time to read over a dungeon/raid's boss mechanics briefly and/or watch a video before doing it.

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Can you try and link some information to this? I scoured GW2 forums, reddit, and google and found no evidence of this. I also don't play the game, but I imagine something as bold as that would have been captured somewhere.

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I got the data from NCSoft's earnings reports: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx

Guild Wars 2 had a big spike of earnings leading up to, and including, the release quarter of Heart of Thrones Expansion - It released in the 4th Quarter of 2015.

3rd Qtr 2015 - 20,699
4th Qtr 2015 - 37,311
1st Qtr 2016 - 30,557
2nd Qtr 2016 - 15,894

When you look over GW2's financial history, it was generally always on a downward slide (as one would expect), however it had never suffered such a massive 6 month loss of revenue previously. Going from the high of HoT's launch to 2nd Qtr 2016 was the single biggest loss of revenue ever suffered. It dropped the income to a point lower than had ANet not released the expansion and let their revenue slide at the average rate it was decreasing each Qtr, that's how bad the financial backlash was - had they done so, revenue would have likely been around ~17-18K, not 15-16K (based upon average revenue loss over whole game life, avg over past year and current trending downrate).

I'm not surprised you can't find talk about this - I was actively reading the GW2 forums & reddit during this time, and they were filled to the brim with "ANet Defense Squad" - people defending ANet religiously, attacking any and every negative post, telling ppl to leave or "just use party finder", etc. In all the "This game is too hard" or "where are the people" threads I saw the same people spamming them with "I find the game easy, git gud" or "use party finder" / "I see lots of ppl" type of responses.

I can't comment about their latest expansion, Path of Fire, since NCSoft have not released the 4th Qtr 2017 earnings report yet. So no idea what the loss of revenue has been like - they did have an upswing in revenue for it's release (expected), but it was nowhere near the upswing as happened with HoT. It went from 13,557 up to 20,145 - a jump of 148.59% vs 180.25% from HoT, so confidence in PoF is definitely lower. However it's also a lot easier expansion from what I've read, and does a lot of things differently & more "base game player" friendly (ie easier, bigger maps, less annoying mobs, not gating story behind group-only events, etc)... so it will be interesting to see what it's 4th Qtr 2017 revenue was. Obviously to make a proper comparison with HoT's loss would mean waiting for 1st Qtr 2018, so we can review a 6 month change for each.
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In regards to the OP - I have to disagree with removing enrage timers. These are needed for dps check's... and just so people can't sit doing piddly all and clear the content without trying. Rather than dumbing down all content, or making everything harder, I wish they would bring in more tutorials and ways of teaching players how to actually play in-game... or decent ways to practice rotations or such.

Stuff like the Stone, Sea that got added in the end of Heavensward is a good example of this - it has post's that you can get called down which have the hp of whatever boss/setting you choose and thus you can then see what you're dps is like vs them. I wish something like this was added into the game & story earlier and pushed players to it - say by adding it as part of the requirement to rank up in a Grand Company... that you have to defeat a boss post of whatever Primal that region faces in X time (ie Ifrit for Immortal Flames). Add in a npc in every place the Scions setup their home/base that ports you to this area... and have the MSQ point you to this training region whenever facing a primal / major Boss that is "known" to the scions in some way.

Can also add in rooms/area's that do mechanic training - such as dodging AoE effect's from each different bosses. IE like the outer/ then inner AoE of the 'Book" fight in Gubal Library, or the raide-wide curving slash AoE from the last boss in Crystal Towers Labyrinth, etc. Point players to this training again via both the MSQ and Grand Companies, make it more accessable earlier... to give those who would like to try and improve themselves and/or learn different mechanics a way to do so that doesn't then effect other players (since right now the only way to practice / improve vs mechanics is in fights... where you can/will effect others).

Yes I know that the Hall of Novice exist's, and that the MSQ point's you to it right before the 1st dungeon. But you're not required to do it, and it really only teach's a bare basic's of dealing with AoE and such... and doesn't let you practice fights vs boss mechanics or such.

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Originally Posted by Quor

On the one hand they say that there shouldn't be this DPS min/maxing meta that pushes speed and lower clear times, but on the other they push a game design that encourages DPS min/maxing in order to succeed. Either the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, or SE is full of it.

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Two things: first: its JP mindset is telling them not to take risk for saying healers should not just heal but dps secondly: while they want to ppl to do dps in savage. Theres your answer. And this goes many ingame decision they are making: housing, balance issues etc.

I wish more fights had "soft enrages" rather than frustrating wipes at 1% because of "just barely not good enough". I'm also okay with DPS checks, but always having them in the form of hard enrage is a little uninspired - why not more things like A3S back in the day with the hands? That was a neat mechanic. Just saying "you're done at this many minutes into the fight" is kinda lazy.

I think there are ways to make sure people are doing adequate DPS without always putting arbitrary timers on fights.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

Disagree, anyone who over simplifies things (he basically said the entire game is missile command) and brings up min percentile logs as proof a class is OP is not going to get the benefit of the doubt from me. It would be different if he approached it in a different way but he was pretty much indirectly making fun of people and said that we're "defending non challenging content" by not wanting enrages removed. Maybe if he approached it in a different way people wouldn't be discountinghim so readily. That's just me though. (I'm talking about Bobs).

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Half of the games mechanics actually FEEL like missile command to me. As far as SB goes, I've cleared the entirety of Deltascape Savage and half of Sigmascape Savage already (in pugs) and all EX's playing this game 4 hours a week. I wish I had a static for UCoB, because I simply don't want to invest the time to learn it in pugs. I'm also a previous top 20 US WoW raider. I always hated 18-24 minute boss fights in WoW and I will hate them here, especially considering how FF14's encounter design is considerably more punishing than WoWs.

Just because I haven't done UCoB doesn't mean I don't have any insight into what it would be like. I've watched streams, I've read guides, I've analyzed the mechanics, and I've done similar fights in other games. These all afford me some insight, definitely not as much as someone who has cleared, but to say it offers NONE? That's a ridiculous notion. That's why I don't advocate for blanket disregard and instead advocate for targeted rebuttals in order to discredit his POV.

Now that you have some insight into my perspective, hopefully that allows some credibility for discussion on Bob's behalf. Even though HE hasn't cleared/set foot, some of his points have merit and are worth discussing.

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Originally Posted by Miste

Excuse you, but I never told anyone to "get lost" so don't put words in my mouth. If you notice my post DID ask him a question: "how can you think that way?" and basically explained that from my point of view his stance makes no logical sense to me. So, that's interesting... didn't I do what you asked? He has simply not replied.

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Dial it down a notch Miste ^_^. I did not personally attack you, nor did I put words in your mouth. I simply iterated a more direct point that you and other posters made.

I did see that you asked a question and I am glad you did. As I suspected of course it was ignored, much like mine was as well.

My "see above" was in relation to you saying that expect someone to have experienced something prior to commenting, to which I vehemently disagreed and firmly believe that does the discussion more harm than good. I previously cited my reasoning for this analysis, and as always are welcome to rebuttal. You can see above in this post in my response to @Vaer for additional clarification.

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Thing is though naturally other people are going to call you out on opinions which have no base. Like if you told someone "I hate Sushi" and they are like "Well, have you tried any of it?" and if you answer "No, none." ...do you really think that person is going to take you seriously? Chances are they'll probably say something along the lines of "Well how can you hate something you haven't tried?"

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This is a great example that further supports my point. If you dismiss the person (i.e. not take them seriously) you never learn WHY they hate something they never tried Vs. asking why they hate something they never tried.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

To be fair, it’s not a perceived lack of experience; Bobs has said that he hasn’t done anything past V2S; since he hasn’t cleared Neo, it’s safe to assume that he’s never set foot into Ultimate. He also equated Savage fights to a game of “Asteroids” in another thread, yet has only seemed to do the two most easiest of the fights. Hence why everyone keeps saying things like “If it’s so easy, go clear Ultimate” and “You have no experience, so how can you speak on the difficulty/state of the content”.

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To which I actually in a way agree with. That has a lot to do with encounter design decisions FF14 employs and I've long thought is an excellent discussion point. I've actually cleared Neo, half of Sigmascape Savage, and all EXs. I have not set foot into Ultimate, but I've done similar fights in other games, and I've watched streams, discussed with people who have participated, read guides, etc.

I'm all for making Bob's defend his viewpoints. What I am not for is dismissing them entirely.

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I have no Rival Wings experience; that doesn’t give me any sort of perspective to judge or make comments about the current state of the content. By equivalent, Bobs has no experience in Ultimate Savage; that doesn’t give him any sort of perspective to judge or make comments about the state of it.

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So you have 0 insight into your job or how it works in PVP? You've never played a single PVP match in FF14, or any game? You've never watched a video or a stream or read any reddit/OF posts about it? You have nothing at all?

I'm surprised you of all people take such a hard line stance. I'll be honest I expected better.

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Originally Posted by Kamatsu

I got the data from NCSoft's earnings reports:

I'm not surprised you can't find talk about this - I was actively reading the GW2 forums & reddit during this time, and they were filled to the brim with "ANet Defense Squad" - people defending ANet religiously, attacking any and every negative post, telling ppl to leave or "just use party finder", etc. In all the "This game is too hard" or "where are the people" threads I saw the same people spamming them with "I find the game easy, git gud" or "use party finder" / "I see lots of ppl" type of responses.

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You made a claim that their revenue dropped massively as a result of a change of difficulty across the curve, but nothing you've linked indicates that. That's my point. It's very obvious that it dropped and we have the data to verify that, but what I want to know was how and why you know for a fact it was due to making content more difficult. Nothing you provide supplements that statement.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

I wish more fights had "soft enrages" rather than frustrating wipes at 1% because of "just barely not good enough". I'm also okay with DPS checks, but always having them in the form of hard enrage is a little uninspired - why not more things like A3S back in the day with the hands? That was a neat mechanic. Just saying "you're done at this many minutes into the fight" is kinda lazy.

I think there are ways to make sure people are doing adequate DPS without always putting arbitrary timers on fights.

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The A3S hands were not a soft enrage. They were a hard enrage. If you failed to pull together/away you wiped instantly. If you missed the DPS check you wiped instantly. If I am wrong about this let me know, it's been a long time since I've set foot in A3S.

I'll be the one to defend Hyo Min there and say that jobs, as of Stormblood, have been greatly changed to work differently in PvP than they do in PvE, not entirely for the better. And given how widely people hate PvP as if it's a mark of pride among the community, only those who actively WANT to PvP seek out the information on it. On top of that, nothing beats practical experience. Even if you've seen the job played, that doesn't mean you can play it to that same level from that alone. I might perhaps make PvP MCH look easy (and in fairness, it's a bit braindead in comparison to 3.x PvP MCH), but I've seen and defeated plenty of other would-be MCHs in PvP, attracted by its flash and damage.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

Half of the games mechanics actually FEEL like missile command to me. As far as SB goes, I've cleared the entirety of Deltascape Savage and half of Sigmascape Savage already (in pugs) and all EX's playing this game 4 hours a week. I wish I had a static for UCoB, because I simply don't want to invest the time to learn it in pugs. I'm also a previous top 20 US WoW raider. I always hated 18-24 minute boss fights in WoW and I will hate them here, especially considering how FF14's encounter design is considerably more punishing than WoWs.

Just because I haven't done UCoB doesn't mean I don't have any insight into what it would be like. I've watched streams, I've read guides, I've analyzed the mechanics, and I've done similar fights in other games. These all afford me some insight, definitely not as much as someone who has cleared, but to say it offers NONE? That's a ridiculous notion. That's why I don't advocate for blanket disregard and instead advocate for targeted rebuttals in order to discredit his POV.

Now that you have some insight into my perspective, hopefully that allows some credibility for discussion on Bob's behalf. Even though HE hasn't cleared/set foot, some of his points have merit and are worth discussing.

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Some mechanics sure, but in harder fights you still have to play a job properly in addition to coordinating with 7 other people. Calling it literally missile command is really oversimplifying it. Blanket disregard sort of happens when you start making fun of people and try to defend your viewpoint with silly data (claiming a job is OP using min percentile logs) that makes no sense.

Sorry I still disagree, if I haven't done Ultimate I'm not going to pretend like I'm qualified to talk about the difficulty of it since I'm not IMO and I've cleared most of the content in this game from the beginning. That's just me though. My ego ain't that big.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

Dial it down a notch Miste ^_^. I did not personally attack you, nor did I put words in your mouth. I simply iterated a more direct point that you and other posters made.

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It seems you have made an assumption that I felt personally attacked? I did not feel that way so there is nothing to dial down.

You did kind of put words in my mouth since you quoted me then directed me to you explaining that people shouldn't say "you have no experience so get lost"

So if I misunderstood then maybe you should have been more clear with your response to me instead of simply quoting and reusing a reply to someone else for me as well?

There is a difference from having an opinion on something about the fight and actually claiming said fight is easy without having done it.

So I don't think you are fully understanding me. You seem to think I am dismissing him entirely if I go based on what you replied to Hyomin, but you've definitely not understood me then. The thing I was dismissing was him calling the fights "not challenging".

He claimed the fights were "not challenging". Whether you played other games with similar fights, read guides, watched videos, is irrelevant to my point.

My point was that there is a difference between theory and practice. You can't call a task easy based on theory alone...that would be ignorant in most cases. In a lot of cases reading about or watching someone else perform a task is a lot different from performing said task yourself.

I mean to use the piano example my boyfriend used earlier...say an acquaintance who has been taking piano lessons for 5 years comes and vents to you about a decently complex piece of sheet music they are practicing to learn to play and are struggling with, and you don't really have any practice playing piano at much higher skill level than beginner...

For example you learned up to playing this:

http://www.pianomother.com/assets/im...piano-solo.jpg


Now your acquaintance shows you the sheet music they are having trouble learning and it looks like this:

http://cdn.imslp.org/images/thumb/pd...862f417674.png


And you say to your friend who is struggling to learn this: "Oh, that's not challenging"

I mean...I don't think I need to elaborate further. Most people's reaction if they were the acquaintance in this example would not likely be a positive one. Honestly if someone did that to me my first response would be to hand them the sheet music and say well if it isn't challenging can you play it for me?

I mean no one should have that big of an ego...sometimes you have to have someone yank your floating head back down out of the stratosphere because you are trying too hard to pretend to be knowledgeable about something you aren't.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

The A3S hands were not a soft enrage. They were a hard enrage. If you failed to pull together/away you wiped instantly. If you missed the DPS check you wiped instantly. If I am wrong about this let me know, it's been a long time since I've set foot in A3S.

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If they were pulled away you wiped, but IIRC the damage was like Byakko tiger where the closer you got their HP together the less damage it did overall. I don't think you could survive PAST a certain point, but not reaching the max optimal "perfect" point didn't kill you.

Mostly though I'm using the phrase "hard enrage" to refer to all bosses in this game being on a timer rather than creating more interesting DPS checks throughout. Even if the hands were TECHNICALLY a hard enrage, it came in the middle of the fight and still served the purpose of forcing teams to do enough DPS, not just turtle with tanks/heals. Whereas I feel like the "timers" we have on every fight are a little uninspired when it comes to forcing teams to do decent DPS.

The Byakko tiger is another example of an okay DPS check, but sadly it can just be ignored with a cheese strat that ALSO serves the purpose of letting mediocre players do extra damage on the boss so that they also make the boss enrage check. In my ideal world the tank LB3 strat for that fight would go the way of the dodo but in return the boss enrage would also disappear. So long as people can meet that add DPS check, I don't see the harm in the rest of the fight turning into an attrition war slightly (healer mana isn't infinite, after all).

I only read the OP's post as 23 pages is insane. Idk how anyone doesn't understand that DPS checks are the only true form of difficulty in this game. Without them, everyone can go tank and just survive all mechanics while pummeling away at the boss for 30+ minutes (a lot like some of my 24 man runs when we have low dps...).

Extreme primals would become casual content without DPS checks on the day of release (though Byakko was cutting it close). Lack of DPS checks pretty much defines all casual content as I cant think of any that have a hard enrage.

Mentioned something about "DPS meta"... the boss has a health bar...how do you expect it to go down?

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think about it. How great would it be for a close-knit group of average players, none of them top tier at their class, but all of them competent, to marathon their way through an encounter together. Maybe it takes them 60 minutes of straight fighting to clear OS4,

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that sounds god ****ing awful, in fact. If a boss took me 60 minutes to clear, I would never do it more than once. And if that's all these players want to do, its not worth anyone's time to compensate for them.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

So you have 0 insight into your job or how it works in PVP? You've never played a single PVP match in FF14, or any game? You've never watched a video or a stream or read any reddit/OF posts about it? You have nothing at all?

I'm surprised you of all people take such a hard line stance. I'll be honest I expected better.

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I have very limited insight to how PvP works in any serious manner in this game. I do not play any other games; FFXIV is the only game I play. I do not watch streams (they never seem to hold my interest). I generally do not read posts about PvP because it does not interest me, and I usually don’t spend time reading things that don’t hold my interest.

The most I did was Frontlines during the Garo event for some outfits and the mounts, and I did a little bit of The Feast the last two weeks or so of Heavensward because I figured I would try it out. I have done one match of PvP (Shatter; no Feast matches) since the Stormblood rework; I have never touched Rival Wings. I do not consider myself proficient enough nor experienced enough in the content to start entering discussions about the current state of it. Nor do I think I have the right to tell more hardcore PvPers what “the truth” is about their content, or what their content is really like on any sort of serious level.

I honestly don’t know why you are so “disappointed” or “expected better” from me with regards to this viewpoint. I don’t do PvP; I don’t like it nor care for it, and it simply is just not my cup of tea. But I’m not about to go into a PvP-oriented discussion and start acting like I know what I’m talking about there... The only thing I would accomplish by doing that is making myself look like a fool.

The point I was making is, unless you have experience in the content, and an understanding of it, I don’t think you really have the right to tell people what the current state of said content is. Bobs’ understanding of the more difficult Deltascape Savage tiers seems to be limited to “watching videos”...which is vastly different from actually experiencing the fight itself. He has no experience in Ultimate either, yet he wants to tell people that have actually stepped into that content what the content is “actually like”. I disagree with such behavior. I think people should have a little bit of credentials if they want to talk about things like they know about them. And I’m not going to apologize for holding that viewpoint, regardless of what people think about it or me. /shrug

2WAR 2WHM 4RDM fully geared youd have little difficulty with enrage since RDM dps is pretty nice or unless someone is slacking off (id be guilty of that)

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Originally Posted by Tridus

Tanks and healers aren't DPSing as such a large part of their game play because of enrages. They're doing it because doing more tanking and more healing beyond what you need is redundant and what else are they supposed to do for half the fight?

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I absolutely agree there. I'm a big proponent of SE strengthening the roles in this game, and giving tanks and healers abilities that will still keep them busy and contributing to the party, but without having to segue into the DPS role. Which is the only choice right now.

Removing enrage timers will make this happen more often:

https://i.imgur.com/RPHQU2v.png

It could also lead to much more clever mechanics and make those the focus instead of dps output.

and then nobody would try because there would be no challenge and everyone quit the game because it wasn't fun anymore.

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Originally Posted by WilhelmWhite

Removing enrage timers will make this happen more often:

https://i.imgur.com/RPHQU2v.png

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Honestly why is that a bad thing? Coming from behind is arguably more satisfying in the end than just perfect play start to finish.

Having the timer limits the amount of people willing to even try the "hard" content. Is that what this is about? A few people wanting to feel like they are better than everyone else? Play a MOBA if you want that, really. You get a rank of just how good you are after every match. No need to guess.

Part of the tool kit IS Raise by the way.

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Originally Posted by Bobs

Honestly why is that a bad thing? Coming from behind is arguably more satisfying in the end than just perfect play start to finish.

Having the timer limits the amount of people willing to even try the "hard" content. Is that what this is about? A few people wanting to feel like they are better than everyone else? Play a MOBA if you want that, really. You get a rank of just how good you are after every match. No need to guess.

Part of the tool kit IS Raise by the way.

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Because honestly if the party is dying that much they REALLY don't deserve the clear. There is meant to be a difference between the savage/extreme versions and the normal versions of encounters.

As much as I don't like enrage mechanics for one reason or another (perform mechanics perfectly, but don't meet the DPS checks), they are necessary. Without them, all you need is two (or more) good healers to carry the team :/

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Originally Posted by Bobs

Honestly why is that a bad thing? Coming from behind is arguably more satisfying in the end than just perfect play start to finish.

Having the timer limits the amount of people willing to even try the "hard" content. Is that what this is about? A few people wanting to feel like they are better than everyone else? Play a MOBA if you want that, really. You get a rank of just how good you are after every match. No need to guess.

Part of the tool kit IS Raise by the way.

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Do you think everyone should be able to go into all content in parties of 6 healers and 2 tanks and clear through sheer persistance?

Would the encounter clock actually be the enrage timer then?

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

Do you think everyone should be able to go into all content in parties of 6 healers and 2 tanks and clear through sheer persistance?

Would the encounter clock actually be the enrage timer then?

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WELL, Like i said in other thread(s) TANKS and HEALERS should NOT be DPS. So that would solve your first hypothetical.
And yes, I think a 10min "perfect" fight is less interesting than a 60min "struggled" fight.

Currently the system is Pass/Fail. Without enrage timers is would be a Graded System, SSS, SS, S, A, B, C, D, F.

Sure some people would pass with a C but why is that SO bad? A SSS clear might give more gil or a mount chance drop, something as a reward. You are all just limiting yourselves because you choose to narrowly define success.