My instincts tell me progging shouldn't be this horrible

i've been progging TOP this patch and this is my semi-first experience doing an on-patch Ultimate.
I've always been told that the only fun part of raiding is the first prog, that after clearing it just becomes boring.

However, I've been having so, so, so much trouble and am struggling so much progging TOP that it has become not fun.

At this point I no longer have a drive to play the game, I just login during static raid hours and immediately log off when it ends, it's the first time in many, many years where I've picked up a new game to play as a full game.

If first prog is supposed to be "the fun part" then why is it so horrible in general?

-I'm locked into one job for the entirety of the prog, and switching jobs requires me to waste time I simply do not have
-speaking of time, I am constantly being rushed and compared with the progress of other people
-I've been required to basically spoil the entire fight by reading guides and watching PoVs of the entire fight
-resolving the mechanics no longer gives me any dopamine, I'm just waiting for 7 other people to get it right and not mess up the mechanic I've already solved 1000 times before.

Comparatively, I've had so much fun raiding abyssos after I cleared it on week 4
I've learned new jobs, I've optimized the fights, I've joined clear pfs and helped tons of friends and random PFers clear, I even joined streamer pfs and made a lot of friends.

Something tells me that this shouldn't be so bad, that I'm doing something wrong.

But then I ask other friends what their experience is... most of them quit and gave up progging due to the same reasons.

Sounds like you're burned out on it and not having any fun. I don't raid here but I have done that prog treadmill in the past. The reason I don't raid here is because I'm not interested in fulfilling the requirements for it. You sound similar. You're getting something from your Savage PFs. You sound like you can do things more on your own terms. Doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong. Sounds like the prog experience isn't giving you what you would need for it to be worthwhile for you to do. And there's nothing wrong with that.

You have been told it's the only fun part? I thought you already had experience with ultimates.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

You have been told it's the only fun part? I thought you already had experience with ultimates.

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I cleared DSR but that apparently doesn't count as experience because I cleared on patch 6.2 not 6.1

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Originally Posted by SeiyaSoiya

I cleared DSR but that apparently doesn't count as experience because I cleared on patch 6.2 not 6.1

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Damn that's rough buddy. Have you considered making a thread about clearing a patch later vs when it dropped? Maybe that helps your troubles.

I don’t have any real experience in the raid scene in this particular game, but from my experience in other games there just comes a time where you’ve had enough.

Sure, try it again when you feel up to it (maybe the next next ultimate?), but there is no shame from being done with it.

That said, it could also be that a change of group is needed. Less “get with people to clear for clears sake” and more “how far can my rag tag group of friends get in a single month”.

I’ve also had a lot of fun seeing how gimmicky we can do old fights (so 3-4.x savage stuff).. using bluemage or like..2-3 people. It can be hard! It’s not by any degree ultimate,but it is fun and there is no real time pressure.

I have multiple week 1 Savage kills, all Savage were week 2 or before + UWU/TEA/DSR on-patch kills. I'm a retired raider and haven't done 6.2 or TOP but hopefully this gives me credibility (despite the char i'm posting on).

Here's the thing:

(1) I don't know what job you are playing on but on most jobs you are really just memorizing a script. And with DSR and TOP being so long, really that script is just like playing the same piano piece repeatedly for a month or more. With FF14 jobs becoming so gutted and braindead, it's almost trivial to optimize your job well enough by a fair margin even during Ultimate progression! This is frankly absurd to me. It took me less time to optimize in DSR than it was to optimize during HW/SB Savage fights, because job complexity meant that there's always something to think about and play with even if I'm not messing up the mechanic and am just waiting for others to get it. Now, without that much to optimize even during prog, there seriously is nothing to think about and you're really just repeating the same motions again and again.

(2) In line with the piano recitation theme of modern FF14 raid design, the only skills valued today in current high-end content in FF14 today is job optimization and the ability to solve Hello World, Grand Cross Delta, Intermediate Relativity-esque mechanics. Why do we still call so many mechanics in Ultimates "trios" to this day? The current designers rely too much on instant-failure states. It sure makes for hard content, but it is not in any way engaging or fun. It feels like a chore and a grind. A grind where you're just waiting for everyone to get it 2 weeks after you already digested the mechanic. Much of the focus has shifted from raw skill and problem-solving to piano-recitation-in-Carnegie-Hall-like flawless execution. Which, if you enjoy that kind of thing, more power to you, but a lot of people, like me, don't. Because a lot of people like me remember the "good old days" when healers are able to think on their feet and react to novel, surprising situations and salvage the team and still get the team to limp to a clear. With the mechanics either giving you a damage down that might as well be a death or... a death, that type of problem solving is just much less useful and you derive much less satisfaction from being able to save your team that way. This is just one example but little things like these add up. There just seems to be fewer surprises during raiding and fewer unscripted fun moments.

(3) And it's also not fun to know how to solve the mechanic but have to wait forever to execute it flawlessly. Back in HW/SB, there were fewer instant-fail states, even in on-patch UCOB/UWU. You can make mistakes here and there and still succeed. This means that the gap between the level of execution needed to clear the mechanic and the intuitive comprehension of the mechanic was narrower in HW/SB. It felt like in HW/SB more time was spent on actually struggling to learn the mechanic whereas in DSR it felt like most of the time was spent on trying to get a perfect execution, even if, by my count, I cleared all of them within a similar time window. This to me is just not fun. In UCOB-TEA I felt like by the time when the static really finally "got" the mechanic after like a dozen pulls or so, we can then quickly move on to the next mechanic in the fight. In DSR it felt like you can get the mechanic in 2 pulls but you'll still fail it again and again for the rest of prog. The ratio is off to me.

(4) I didn't use to care about that logging website but now I do. I competed on it back in SB and it was fun for a while. But the corrosive impact of that website on this entire game is crystal clear. Encounter designs cater way too much to the people who scream and cry about not getting 100% uptime for their log epeen. We now have an absolutely boring 2-minute meta on every single job that started all the way from HW when people cried about how triple piercing ruined everything, but the proposed solution was to remove piercing and not to balance it. SE's version of balancing and addressing the logging-raider's concern is to homogenize everything and to make everything as smooth as possible. Getting uptime in DSR on melee is unironically easier than getting uptime in O8S. That is frankly ridiculous. This makes even Ultimate progging feel like you're just doing yet another log run. It doesn't even feel like prog since the mechanics aren't hard enough that you need more than a few pulls to get (most of prog time is on execution these days see point 3). It literally feels like crit farms.

tl;dr Ultimates now feel like a grind: a grind of repeating the fight until everyone executes it perfectly despite comprehending the mechanic eons ago, and a grind of beating the enrage that feels more like crit-farming on e7s than doing an ultimate.

I don't entirely fault the devs though. Players have gotten so good and have seen so many mechanics that the way they make fights harder is now by making fights longer (in effective "thinking" duration) and more punishing, rather than develop mechanics that players will be surprised by or struggle to learn. The latter is much harder for a game this old. There's no reason to expect this to change though, so there's no point of sticking around if Ultimates are the only thing keeping you.

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Originally Posted by Reaver1236

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How is it that you of all people are the only serious poster in this thread?

The approach to make parsing easier fundamentally can not make sense. If you are a mid player the fight being easier doesnt improve your color. People who are better than you also have an easier time. And even then the approach isnt even consistent as seen with the p3s add phase. Which was just yeeted from fflogs because of how much of a shit show it would be to parse. A while ago I did kefka savage with a MINE group and while the fight was still eviscerated by potency creep it did provide a very interesting perspective into fights with tiny boss hitboxes and no free uptime whatsoever. Meanwhile hesperos was essentially the size of the entire arena. I want to give a specific negative shoutout to high concept because there can only ever be one way of solving it. There cant be strats optimized for either safety or uptime on mechanics like that.

I would have to agree that prog isn't really fun, at least if it takes more than a day. Extremes are great and the first two floors of a raid tier are often good too, but after that the prog can get awful, both in pugs where you constantly don't know eachother and their habits and usual spots or in a static where you do know eachother, but you're waiting for one of them to get it right always. Oh and kicking people from a static isn't fun either, especially if you have become friends.

I enjoy the reclears, especially in pugs, because pugging reclears means I have a different experience with different people, but I still get the dopamine of actually clearing.

The months gap between raid tiers is good because it means we get some time to relax from it and do other things so we don't get burned out. Not clearing gets in the way of that and makes you feel like a snail going through it and that it's taking up all your time and never ending. Yes, the jokes and banter with a static can be fun but that doesn't change that your planned relaxation after clearing is cancelled if they aren't progressing fast.

You need to keep your expectations in check next time. Ultimate Prog is not meant for everyone. You're gonna be in there for hours upon hours, dying over and over and sometimes not making very much progress at all. Some people love that, fine tuning their gameplay inch by inch, but it's not supposed to be easy and it's supposed to be a niche type of content. You also need to make sure you're even in the right group. Statics and friendship have been destroyed by Ultimate fights, and if your current group isn't working, that usually means you'll have to start progging all the way from the top with a new group, and though this can be mitigated if you're joining an experience group, there will always be a readjusting period.

You know how people say Ultimate is really hard? Yeah, it is. Don't underestimate it by thinking you'll clear after a week or two doing only a couple hours a day.