Does 14 Promote a Culture of Mediocrity?

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Originally Posted by Nabby

Disagree. As a DPS it is not enjoyable or engaging to have aggro management take up hotbar space instead of a more complex base rotation with more buttons. DPS still have plenty of damage mitigation abilities that are basically useless outside of high-end content and that's fine. We don't need every aspect of tanking to be a team effort. Especially not when the aggro management system also made it a fucking nightmare to play with strangers who refused to use their tools effectively or disagreed on who's responsibility it was to manage aggro. I don't need tanks refusing to take a damage hit and letting the DPS die, and I don't need healers greeding damage with cleric stance and letting the tank die.

SB also still had TP, which was also a pretty terrible system held over from an earlier design philosophy where complexity was put into the player toolkits rather than the encounters themselves, and it also restricts the design space for hard encounters because those tools are either essential (which means old encounters become broken and incomplete when job skills change, like in WoW) or non-essential which then makes them rather useless as skills unless they do more damage and kill the boss quicker.

In order to keep the game fresh with each new expansion and content release stuff has to change. Jobs have to change, but old encounters still need to work and provide some level of challenge at the appropriate level. If you design the encounter challenge around frankly niche skills the challenge doesn't last more than one expansion, as those niche skills get old the fastest, are removed and the encounters are rebalanced to allow brute-forcing mechanics. On the other hand, if you just shuffle around the ways Jobs do and mitigate damage they can still feel fresh each new expansion without breaking all the old fights.

In short, it's not about how easy or hard it was. SE isn't designing the game the way they do in order to make it easier for players. The difficulty is just shifted to the encounters themselves, because they're going to stay the same even when the next expansion comes out, while the Jobs will inevitably continue changing.

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I mean it was pretty easy to manage aggro. Using DPS as a cooldown taught them to hit their 1 or 2 buttons every minute or so to drop aggro. Encounter difficulty hasn't really changed either. O12s was no easier than E12S.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

I mean it was pretty easy to manage aggro. Using DPS as a cooldown taught them to hit their 1 or 2 buttons every minute or so to drop aggro. Encounter difficulty hasn't really changed either. O12s was no easier than E12S.

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Gotta agree with Caurcas here. Wasn't it like, two buttons, one to lower your enmity and the other one to prevent it from rising for a time(I don't remember the names for them)? SB will probably the only expansion I've played where people would get so riled up at the thought of hitting any of these two things in their rotation and as much as I hate to say it because I'm not a fan of unsubstantiated generalization, but it seemed to me like the type of players who would use those things regularly in their rotation were savage/ex raiders. Time after time, in any role I was, someone refused to pitch in for aggro management or mindlessly not use it, it was usually a casual.

Unfortunate, because it was one of the last semblance of "busywork" and usually, if both dps (and even healer to some extent) used them, things went as smooth as butter and even allowed tanks to have a bit more fun off-stancing.

In my opinion, in this game, difficulty should come from the encounters, not from the abilities which just add a layer of "busy work".
If controls are too complex, it is often bad game design.
That said, I think content (especially new dungeons) should be harder by now...

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

Go play Dark Souls or Lost Ark if you want a difficult game. Have fun. The devs have stated they made this game so people can have fun not so tryhards can gloat about a bunch of pixels.

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The devs also gave you buttons to use. Not just to fill your hot bars with

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

Go play Dark Souls or Lost Ark if you want a difficult game. Have fun. The devs have stated they made this game so people can have fun not so tryhards can gloat about a bunch of pixels.

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Sadly I probably will because this game has gone to shit and it is suffering at keeping my attention. Hopefully the next live letter gives me some hope, and the devs get back some sort of passion for the game back. Copy pasted content got old last expansion, and I am sick of running 1 dungeon for my expert roulette. Which how do you call something a roulette when your option is 1 dungeon (not this patch but the next patch). If you are not going to put more interesting side content that retains value then just give us more dungeons again and make them better then 2 pulls and a boss x3.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

Sadly I probably will because this game has gone to shit and it is suffering at keeping my attention. Hopefully the next live letter gives me some hope, and the devs get back some sort of passion for the game back. Copy pasted content got old last expansion, and I am sick of running 1 dungeon for my expert roulette. Which how do you call something a roulette when your option is 1 dungeon (not this patch but the next patch). If you are not going to put more interesting side content that retains value then just give us more dungeons again and make them better then 2 pulls and a boss x3.

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Maybe the answer is a new deep dungeon, since we can travel back in time and through the aether current they don't lack a concept for one.

Maybe if you want more of a challenge you guys can try to group with your friends and put limitations on yourselves like speedrunners and Dark Souls players have been doing for decades now. Force yourselves to minimum item level, don't use certain damage mitigations, take off your helmets, I don't know. The point is fun, and as many of the posters on here have already explained, the devs aren't too keen on making things any more difficult in a broad sense, but they also don't really have to in order to have more challenging content for those who want it. There are always options, so if the challenge is really something you care about, make the challenge yourself and don't force others to suffer just because of your own views on how the game should be designed. Not every MMO is one size fits all, as much as devs would love it to be.

FFXIV hardcore raiders are like wrestlers intentionally going into a kindergarten to beat up some kids then complain to the teachers why everybody here is such a loser

The endgame content provided by FFXIV is at least more difficult than anything WoW has to offer. Anything below that endgame content, however, has to be accessible to the masses. That isn't encouraging a culture of mediocrity; it's making a game lucrative. Ramping up the difficulty of non-hardcore content will serve only to alienate a portion of the playerbase, thus bringing in less money and ultimately resulting in less interesting content for everyone.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

The game is meant to largely appeal to casual audiences, which is where most of the games financial success originates. Many of the old HW / SB era systems that were streamlined were pointlessly punishing to casual players, but had very little real impact on high-level gameplay. They've made a few missteps, but seemed to have fairly solid reasoning behind most of their decisions. Rather than stripping away 'complexity', it's more replacing convoluted design with overly simple design. 'Complexity' just gives a little too much credit to some of the bad systems in SB/HW.

This game has a lot of bad players and weird white-knighting no doubt, but I feel like a lot of people just defend "bad" players because they find it more satisfying and entertaining to get under the skin of people who whine about performance in casual content.

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Ive always assumed they were the bad players.

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Originally Posted by Theox

The polarizing nature of this forum is insane. We have a 1000 page thread dedicated solely to documenting less than mediocre players ruining the game for everyone else, but we also have threads like these where people would die to defend their right to "have fun" and not "work" in the game (as if demanding basic stuff the game basically teaches you to do is somehow demanding hard work).

Please remember that the fun you get at the expense of other people NOT having fun is also not ok. The entitlement of some people in here is unbearable.

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Its like they join a baseball team, go to bat with a hokey stick, strike out, demand to round all the bases on their dirt bike because its fun and your the bad guy for telling them they shouldnt.

It's hilarious how hardcore use to mean farming EX fights as soon as they were released and tackling Ultimate fights to knowing how classes work. Drg double weaving? Tryhard. Mnk trying to keep leaden fist up as much as they can for Bootshine damage? Tryhard. Smn using astralflow during the gcd cooldown? Tryhard. At this point it's safer to keep quiet if you find that ice mage in your dungeon run, after all it's their 15 dollars. :^)

At this point I would take an ice mage. I seem to get glare mages instead, but I only run into them when playing DRK or (if not tanking) grouped with a DRK. If I use a job that can actually heal itself I instead run into healers that completely refuse to DPS and instead want to try for the world's overhealing record.

Also to all those complaining that "All you want is savage everything, just do that!" No, its not about challenge. It is about wanting the gameplay in more casual relaxed content to be engaging again. To have fun when running it, and not tittering on slumber while having to grind it out.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

At this point I would take an ice mage. I seem to get glare mages instead, but I only run into them when playing DRK or (if not tanking) grouped with a DRK.

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You do realize a Glare Mage is a good mage right (provided you're not dead). That's literally all they can do if no one is in danger.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

Also to all those complaining that "All you want is savage everything, just do that!" No, its not about challenge. It is about wanting the gameplay in more casual relaxed content to be engaging again. To have fun when running it, and not tittering on slumber while having to grind it out.

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It wasn't engaging the first time you ran it and even it if was harder it wouldn't be engaging throughout. Why are you even still grinding at this point? You should be nearly done with all your tome stuff.

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

It's hilarious how hardcore use to mean farming EX fights as soon as they were released and tackling Ultimate fights to knowing how classes work. Drg double weaving? Tryhard. Mnk trying to keep leaden fist up as much as they can for Bootshine damage? Tryhard. Smn using astralflow during the gcd cooldown? Tryhard. At this point it's safer to keep quiet if you find that ice mage in your dungeon run, after all it's their 15 dollars. :^)

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Yeah, it's funny that now the definition of tryhard is pushing a button you're supposed to.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

It wasn't engaging the first time you ran it and even it if was harder it wouldn't be engaging throughout. Why are you even still grinding at this point? You should be nearly done with all your tome stuff.

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Range BiS this tier is tome heavy, plus multi jobing and getting other roles ready for a smooth pf experience.

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Originally Posted by Asmodai

Ive always assumed they were the bad players.

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Yep, and it's not even hard to be 'good' at the game at a general level. The bar is low and many don't even make that.

Good to me is doing normal mechanics, and keep pressing buttons.

You don't even need a guide to play all the jobs in the game at a respectful level. Reading tooltips and putting 2+2 together generally is enough to do good damage.

Majority of the problem is people just sit there and drift, too much. Drift is mostly a result of not pressing buttons for every GCD.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

Go play Dark Souls or Lost Ark if you want a difficult game. Have fun. The devs have stated they made this game so people can have fun not so tryhards can gloat about a bunch of pixels.

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I'm casual and this game is barely fun with how the combat system is such a boring mess.
I'm not a tryhard, but I also don't want this game to be so easy that it isn't fun.
It's gotten to that point now. Also lmao, Lost Ark ain't hard.

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Originally Posted by Zsolen

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Bit late to this one. But no it is not my place to do so but when someone doing so potentially comes at the cost of a group acting uncivil to one another, and if they cannot get around that without throwing around remarks then arguably they shouldn't be teaching regardless of your own personal feelings. I never said only experts should teach, but only those with a sufficient enough of a tenacity not to resort to crying after 15 minutes, or if it'll just result in insults being thrown around. By all means if you want to pat the back for people that do this and say it's ok, then by all means. But me? I'd rather these people just not until they have had a proper look at their own attitude. If you don't have enough tenacity to follow through without resorting to insults, and if you cannot adapt then don't bother - Again, if someone explains something several times in the exact same way as all the previous times and then gets angry and pretends like they could not have done better, nor done any wrong, then I'm going to just say no. Regardless of your own personal feelings on that matter. My definitions of teaching and learning I don't think have really been stated - Just the expectation that I have and the reality of the issues. Again, that people should feel so inclined that they cannot help people or give feedback on peoples' playstyles without the risk of being banned or sent to the GM is just weight towards this.

I wish this were true, and in many cases it arguably is, but as I have said people go into a duty with the expectation of a smooth run, when that is compromised people generally tend to get a little annoyed. There's practically threads and subreddits dedicated entirely to this. I would beg to differ that people do absolutely care. As you've claimed me to be moving the goalpost, equally players move the baseline for what constitutes as contributing, ironically I've had many cases where people have resorted to having fits because slow pulling, or have had fits because tank decided not to LoS to force mobs using ranged attacks all in 1 clutter. (Little throwback to the first pull of AV with the kets). I think the only thing I'm willing to even remotely agree on is that I don't think the toxicity or the majority comes from the top. Arguably I've actually found those players to be the most receptive or empathetic. But midcore? Now that's an entirely different slugfest of people trying to preach standards that they themselves cannot reach. Most of the toxic encounters I've had in this game have been related to this.

In any circumstance this thread has been derailed sufficiently enough on this topic, so I'm probably not going to bother even replying to the next, regardless.

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Originally Posted by drtasteyummy

FFXIV hardcore raiders are like wrestlers intentionally going into a kindergarten to beat up some kids then complain to the teachers why everybody here is such a loser

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This is one hell of an analogy.

Certain someone, you know who you are, remind of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ (Argument - Monty Python)

I thought this post looked familiar, and guess what. From the WOW forums.

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On Steamchart , FF14 already lost -30% Players in 1 Month after expansion release

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https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...-month/1175287

Mediocrity is a choice in FFXIV. A lot of people choose to be mediocre because that's all you need to be to clear the content in the MSQ and mainstream, but there's plenty that want to challenge themselves and put a lot of time into higher end content. Albeit, there's also quite a few people who definitely should be spending more time learning how to do proper rotations and use skills that somehow end up trying to do savage. I won't say that they shouldn't be doing savage, but I will say they need to be humble and understand their shortcomings.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

As the title ask, does 14 create and promote a culture of mediocrity within it? I say it has been sliding that way since ShB. The healing and tanking roles have been reduced to dull, hollow shells of what they were in HW and SB. The skill celling and floor no longer exist for these roles. DPS roles are heading in this direction as well with all the flavor and mechanical complexity being slowly striped away. See the removal of synergy and reduction of positionals, and reduction of punishment for rotational screw ups. These issues, however, are nothing compared to how the community and general attitude have shifted toward shielding the bad from valid criticism, and a general apathy towards self improvement. Even the devs have admitted to designing content in this manner. It's all quite disheartening, given 14 was at in time one of the most mechanically engaging MMOs.

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Yep. SE is a company whose goal is to make money, and if they make the content too "difficult" they might scare off customers.

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Originally Posted by WhiteWitch

agree that the healing classes don't feel rewarding. I've seen people running 90 expert roulette without any healers now. I'm wondering... what is square doing with game design that you don't need a healer for 4 man content? Like why have tank/heal/dps if you just need 4 bodies? Give everyone a healing skill like GW2 and call it a day at that rate.

We really only needed one regen and one shield healer. Like, astro gives the same results as white mage, but you need to put in 200% more effort. I played it in umbra savage last year for like one night, and i was like...nah. Too much mechanics are going on to be looking at screen, your buttons, dealing cards all at the same time, etc...

This thing they have done to the healers is noticeable in the tanks too. All of them have an invuln, two aoe skills and a stance. Why level 4 of them up when they all do the same thing tbh?

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Do you look for a expert roulette group in the PF? Otherwise you can't run roulette with out a healer. Why you making up BS?

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Originally Posted by Lily_Skye

??? FFXIV is a themepark MMO lol

BDO is a sandbox MMO

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I've had some discussions with people in which I describe this game as the perfect marriage of sandbox and themepark design. It's awesome as a themepark in that your are spoonfed what was months for me, of some of the best story I have ever encountered in any form of media. You almost never run out of on rails stuff to do.

But as a sandbox, the options you have are almost limitless. Crafting, RP, venues, Bard performance, collecting, side quests, glam, PotD, HoH, Eureka, Bozja...it goes on and and on and almost all of it is completely optional. Not to mention all the content I see players create for themselves. It's wonderful.

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Originally Posted by drtasteyummy

FFXIV hardcore raiders are like wrestlers intentionally going into a kindergarten to beat up some kids then complain to the teachers why everybody here is such a loser

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hahaha woke up my cat laughing at this. Its so true!

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Originally Posted by WhiteWitch

agree that the healing classes don't feel rewarding. I've seen people running 90 expert roulette without any healers now. I'm wondering... what is square doing with game design that you don't need a healer for 4 man content? Like why have tank/heal/dps if you just need 4 bodies? Give everyone a healing skill like GW2 and call it a day at that rate.

We really only needed one regen and one shield healer. Like, astro gives the same results as white mage, but you need to put in 200% more effort. I played it in umbra savage last year for like one night, and i was like...nah. Too much mechanics are going on to be looking at screen, your buttons, dealing cards all at the same time, etc...

This thing they have done to the healers is noticeable in the tanks too. All of them have an invuln, two aoe skills and a stance. Why level 4 of them up when they all do the same thing tbh?

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i totally agree, the game is way DPS oriented , playing healer is not rewarding, 90% of skill healer do is DPS. but some people just player healer class to get carry especially in extreme and savage since the bar is so low

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

Do you look for a expert roulette group in the PF? Otherwise you can't run roulette with out a healer. Why you making up BS?

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Premades don't need to meet role requirements, WAR + 3 DPS for Expert Roulette has been a thing for years now.

Check yourself.

Bring back Alexander-difficulty content. Who cares about the casual players? They can get an easy mode just as hard as current savage and they'll be happy. Just don't throw the competitiveness into the dumpster. People play this game for various reasons, and dismissing their obvious concern stating "this is a game, not a job" is honestly a sociopathic thing to say and you should definitely not be playing this game. I don't see how top level players who want something challenging can't also get something that caters to them. Current savage may as well be another normal raid.

Hydaelyn IS the goddess of mediocrity, after all....

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Originally Posted by BaconBits

Premades don't need to meet role requirements, WAR + 3 DPS for Expert Roulette has been a thing for years now.

Check yourself.

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Premade, and PF are pretty much the same thing.

tbh I just can't be bothered to really care about dungeon performance. DPS low, I'll just DPS higher. Healer wants small pulls? I went warrior. 3 people afk or whining at each other? I'll take the 30m and play Master Duel or something.

but no, every MMO community has the same dichotomy of players who struggle heavily with the rudimentary stuff. And every MMO has people whose identities are so interwoven with their game that they take critique on play in content where performance matters a bit more, personally. And every MMO has people who tend to be a bit better than average, but think that it makes them Better Than Everyone(tm).

it's all the same, end of the day. And for the most part, it doesn't really matter unless you're weirdly obsessive over casual progress efficiency.

when it comes to Job design, I have my preferences, but if the boss design remains fun/interesting and there's still a variety of different offered playstyles to learn and get better at, I don't really feel like it affects me much. I can live with the tank changes if more fights like Phoinix come out, since that fight alone beat most fights from last expansion for me.

You know what? I've changed my opinion. The way they enforce their ToS certainly gives off that impression.

To point an answer to the topic:

Yes. Easily.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

You know what? I've changed my opinion. The way they enforce their ToS certainly gives off that impression.

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Welcome back to the dark side Storm. It was always like this.

Genuine question : how many in this threads that complained about the game being not hard enough or need harder contents have actually cleared all of the Ultimates?

Because you really shouldnt moan about Dungeons if your point is about difficulty or players skill. Harder contents are designed around higher players skills and you will find more skilled players playing those contents.

Moaning about normal dungeon is kinda weird. Almost in all MMO normal dungeons are supposed to be easy. Who in their right mind would want to grind and wipe 10 times in normal dungeon?

It's also fairly difficult to balance content in such a way that it remains engaging under optimal play while still being reasonable under unoptimized play.

I'm not really sure I am buying the difficulty argument. Pretty much every game I played with more difficult content devolves almost immediately into meta obsession, streamer worship, BiS lists, rotations, 3rd party tools, parses, etc. For a lot of people these seem normal these days, but to me, they're not really how challenging activities are meant to be, and a lot of the fun aspects of a game are sucked out by them. As a result, more challenging cooperative content tends to come with a dramatic decrease in agency, and then all these various adaptations make it not as challenging.

I think what's actually happening is a lot of people want content that is flagged as difficult, so that they can clear it and point to themselves and say "I have cleared this difficult content". Which is not the same thing. That's why they get very angry at, say, off-meta play, because it affects their ability to clear the most difficult content, and why they don't seek out difficulty where it's available, because there's no cool achievement to wave afterwards. It gets extra bad when people start using clears or parsers against each other, since that just reinforces the behavior.

I have seen similar things around the Necromancer title. It seems people just want it for bragging rights, not as a fun challenge.

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Originally Posted by Repulse97

Bring back Alexander-difficulty content. Who cares about the casual players? They can get an easy mode just as hard as current savage and they'll be happy. Just don't throw the competitiveness into the dumpster. People play this game for various reasons, and dismissing their obvious concern stating "this is a game, not a job" is honestly a sociopathic thing to say and you should definitely not be playing this game. I don't see how top level players who want something challenging can't also get something that caters to them. Current savage may as well be another normal raid.

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You uh.. do realize they game needs to make money, right? Catering only to competitive players will doom the game, as we constitute a very, very small percentage of the overall population. The majority don't even set foot in normals, let alone savage or ultimate. Everybody loses if SE can't rake in enough cash for the game to be worth investing so much time, energy, and funding into.

As for Alexander; remember, SE themselves apologized for A4S being so ridiculously overtuned that it was almost mathematically impossible to clear at one point. Bringing back Alexander difficulty is fine, but I would hope you're not including the intentional overtuning of bosses in that equation as well. A3S was similarly overtuned but none the less (barely) passable earlier on with the right jank. Gear finally caught up and solved both problems, but by that point many progression statics had already imploded.

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Originally Posted by MidnightEquinox

It's also fairly difficult to balance content in such a way that it remains engaging under optimal play while still being reasonable under unoptimized play.

I'm not really sure I am buying the difficulty argument. Pretty much every game I played with more difficult content devolves almost immediately into meta obsession, streamer worship, BiS lists, rotations, 3rd party tools, parses, etc. For a lot of people these seem normal these days, but to me, they're not really how challenging activities are meant to be, and a lot of the fun aspects of a game are sucked out by them. As a result, more challenging cooperative content tends to come with a dramatic decrease in agency, and then all these various adaptations make it not as challenging.

I think what's actually happening is a lot of people want content that is flagged as difficult, so that they can clear it and point to themselves and say "I have cleared this difficult content". Which is not the same thing. That's why they get very angry at, say, off-meta play, because it affects their ability to clear the most difficult content, and why they don't seek out difficulty where it's available, because there's no cool achievement to wave afterwards. It gets extra bad when people start using clears or parsers against each other, since that just reinforces the behavior.

I have seen similar things around the Necromancer title. It seems people just want it for bragging rights, not as a fun challenge.

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Man discovers it's all about the epeen...film at 11

;-)