Hall of the Novice with Hard Mode

As a new player I would rather practice more alone on some things rather than cause headaches/wipes in DF. Maybe other new players do to, maybe experienced players would also like us to do this.

What do you think of adding one or two new sections to the Hall of the Novice, like running to a spot when you get a debuff so you don't die, and then having those new and currently existing sections get a hard mode where things like telegraphed attacks happen much faster?

This would help many players build confidence and be better prepared for group content.

And if "hard mode" isn't the right term it could be called something else, just trying to give the gist of what I was going for with that term. No hand-holding, just being responsible enough to know when you need to work on a mechanic that you struggle with without forcing other random players to be your involuntary "practice" partners. To take the initiative to fail a lot in the solo scenario with little or no xp reward for the sake of becoming a better player and a better team member to the people you are grouped with. Lots of players complain about/laugh at bad players, so, give them a little extra in the toolkit if they want to train.

I would love for them to implement something like this. As a healer, it is usually left to me to clear the debuffs, and even into later content with level 60's many DPS or Tanks won't watch their own debuffs. I don't know if they don't realize I can't actually clear them every time, but inflicting various debuffs on them to help them learn how they affect them would possibly help me with all the raises i have to perform when they ignore Doom.

Heh, well odie, as a healer who has only played a couple of weeks, I want it too, but for me. I want to practice some things without dragging random people into it and possibly delaying their completion or their XP grind or whatever.

How much hand holding is too much?

At some time everyone needs to kick off the training wheels and go.

Is the next logical step for the game to play itself? So the players don't feel threatened by responsibilities and making choices.

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Originally Posted by Echoloc

How much hand holding is too much?

At some time everyone needs to kick off the training wheels and go.

Is the next logical step for the game to play itself? So the players don't feel threatened by responsibilities and making choices.

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One of the problems with the game currently is that SE is trying too fast to catch people up to later content. There are many who lack skill in their jobs or with mechanics and to compensate for this, SE has allowed us to do older content with much higher than necessary gear levels and in some cases the addition of the Echo, which in my personal opinion is overkill. Add on to that the gear level sync itself is a joke and in some dungeons, such as Amdapor Keep, the party can just ditch the tank for the most part and blast through it. I think the Hall of the Novice is a feature that came much too late. I don't like having my hand held either, but an MMO can be overwhelming to those just starting out. For me, FFXIV is my first MMO.

I didn't know what a DPS or a tank was. I didn't know the term pug, or some of the other very MMO specific terms. I've had some tanks in earlier dungeons not even understand their roles and thought they were just another sword and shield type of offensive class, totally oblivious to the MMO trinity the game has rooted itself so deeply into. Hall of the Novice is something that could have been implemented very early on, and expanded upon as patches were introduced, but they have already set the precedent of letting us outgear the content, and passing on some mechanics entirely with some over the top stat boosts from the Echo. I say, let the Hall of the Novice replace the other hand holding that is prevalent throughout the game and maybe we can finally do away with Echo and overly inflated gear levels and hopefully manage that fine balance between fun and challenging.

Nah, stuff like that is a fight-by-fight basis. And if you want to practice mechanics of a fight, you should, of course, just do the fight.

You shouldn't worry about causing wipes in duty finder because anything that's actually difficult shouldn't be done in duty finder to begin with. Going into a difficult fight in duty finder is going to be nothing but a headache-inducing learning party most of the time.

Similar to this but not quite the same; what I'd personally like is to be able to enter current content undersized to train, watch cutscenes, mess around, take photos etc. Not undersized and unsynced, which is locked out for current content for a reason, but just undersized - in the full knowledge I won't be able to complete it with my trusty BRD buddy alone. Sometimes we just want to experiment without finding six other people with time to waste. It would be fun.

I just want SE to make it that you cannot do a dungeon unsynced until you finish it synced. Learning those mechanics, which are often reused in the HW content dungeons, would improve player skill immensely.

I can't help but think this thread is about Warriors and the debuff from their damage boost ability. They can't avoid said debuff, it's part and parcel to the ability. Further, I don't know if the tanks have any abilities that do remove debuffs so how, exactly, are they supposed to do that? I guess I could put Paean on everyone and keep cycling through that, but then I'm wasting alot of time giving everyone Paean when I could be shooting things in the butt. A healer's work is cut out for them, this is the truth of it. That just happens to include removing debuffs. And, honestly, this is the first I've heard of anyone being annoyed at having to remove debuffs as a healer. My biggest complaint as a healer has never been having to cure debuffs. It's been White Mage's slow mp recovery.

You misunderstand. There are some debuffs that healers can't remove. Like Esuna doesn't remove them. Some of these like doom require a mechanic to be managed to clear it by the player who has it or they die. The healer can't save them. Others like environmental debuffs affect the type of amount of damage the player takes and stays on them and can not be cleared by the healer. While the debuff may not be cleared, the player should learn to be mindful of their own status afflictions instead of ignoring them completely, which is what a lot of the players are doing now.

In cases like those, though, you either learn or suffer peer indignation. Like Doom, if you don't recognize that you've got it things go south people are going to point it out. If they still don't get it then no manner of tutorial is going to change that. Can't cure stupid. Environmental debuffs are often impossible to avoid, like an elemental weakness or electrified floors. In those cases you either look to see if there's some kind other mechanic you should run into/avoid or hope the healers have area heals at the ready and power on. Point being, in those cases there's not a whole lot you can do from any standpoint. Sure, you can make a tutorial of these things but the people that'd be doing them are most likely people who know full well about the mechanics and just want the prize at the end for participating.

There are too many inconsistencies with a number of debuffs in particular that making a training mode for them would do little to nothing.

Let's take the example of Doom. There are 2 instances of this that I can recall off the top of my head, World of Darkness and Wanderer's Palace (Hard). In both cases the debuff results in the same thing, instant death if it isn't cleansed. The approach to cleansing them however is completely different. For one you have to step on a pad, the other needs HP to be full. Herein lies the problem.

How would you go about creating a Hall of Novice exercise that encapsulates getting rid of the same debuffs in many different ways. How do you teach someone that "that heavy is dispellable, but that one isn't, so you have to get hit by x mechanic to get rid of it, even though they have the exact same icon." You can't. People are only going to be even more confused.

First time in WP HM, "I've been doomed but there's no pad to step on, what do I do?! Too late I'm dead."

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for more advanced Hall of Novice exercises, but there are some things in this game that you can, and should, only learn via practice and failing that, research.

Side note: Square, it's about time you differentiated debuffs that aren't dispellable by using a different coloured icon. Please.

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

There are too many inconsistencies with a number of debuffs in particular that making a training mode for them would do little to nothing.

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That's a pretty valid point. I wish that would be a separate debuff where doom is concerned.