I might of figured something out today. Game too easy for leveling duties?

I am not sure if people experience this and I have a concern in general with the players who just play the game and typically do not come here or read up on the game in general. Some people call them "casuals" but I am not sure if they all play little bits at a time. Anyway it has to do with what I just ran into today, leveling queue for Aery.

So we get to the first boss, and I tell the new person to move to statue when he got tethered the second time. (Due to fast pull and well geared I thought maybe the new person was just an alt or something) So he did not move. I was like, okay maybe he will know better for next time. He got tethered again, and I said much sooner to move to statue, he did not.

So after the fight I ask why did they ignore me in saying anything and the mechanic, no answer. "don't worry about it person is new" I was told, and my reply to that was being new has nothing to do with being ignored? and we continue.

second boss idk what was going on, I had to focus on more healing then normal, all I know is a 3 stack poison is a pain. Never had trouble on it before.

Then finally near the end I see this after asking if someone can explain the fight to them because they are ignoring me throughout the entire run for some reason: "oh im reading just more important things going on then typing to you" so kick passed, I can't do a boss where you need to listen to pass it or wipe (and interesting enough the 3 where a premade, could easily revenge kick me too if they read it wrong.)

So the point of this story is to ask this, is this game too easy, so easy it provokes to bread toxicity? "Oh it is only xxx it does not matter" is something I hear a lot. How come there isn't more mechanics that basically kill you if you fail? Why does a healer have to carry so much when things are ignored, and people ignore you when you tell them how to do the fight? I also had a comment in the past "someone is dying why aren't you healing?" when they do not take account getting hit by A leads to getting hit by B and that B kills you no matter what.

I just want to see what people thought of this, and if they have ideas if something being too hard or too easy can be toxic encouragement. There has to be a balance somewhere i think, where people feel challenged but not so hard they enter the mentality of "skip soar or be kicked"

I know this is not an "easy fix" and your entering grounds of programing a game such a way to curb people's psychology. I have my own issue with that, as people should take some responsibility and simply try their best making me confused why I see this behaviour a lot in the first place.

Yeah, the entry level stuff is probably too easy and resulting in people going semi afk to watch a movie, expecting others to carry them to a win. There's a lot of fairly useless mobs or "trash pulls" that have no chance against you, just waiting around to be killed. Slows you down a little but is not memorable due to effort or thought not being needed.

Again, its not new players that are the problem. Its lazy players. Sometimes they are new too, which can make things, interesting.

I had an issue in the Aery about 2 months ago. Literally the only issue I've had since I came back. Except I was the new player and the healer. I made sure the group knew that fact. They seemed fine with it.

First boss, no one tells me the mechanics. I don't remember getting tethered, and well I just did what every healer should do, keep everyone alive and dodge AoE's. Fight was uneventful. Course I didn't learn anything since no one explained it (that was another run later that someone told me the mechanics).

Second boss. That got interesting. I stayed out of the poison clouds and like before. Kept everyone alive. As best I could. For some reason one of the DPS was stepping in poison. To this day I dunno how a machinist does that. I couldn't keep him alive. He kept standing in poison. So he died. The mechanics were screwy because of that so stacks went out. I kept the tank and other DPS alive and we got the boss down.

No big deal right? The dead DPS went on this ranting tirade about how the fight went slower than it 'should have', simply because I didn't rez him during combat. Well because of him damage was stupid and I had to work to keep the tank up, I didn't have the time nor the MP to rez him. He also went on another rant about how I didn't cure the poison (poison was incurable, disease wasn't, which I was curing off as soon as it popped up).

From that point onward, he complained. Didn't do any damage and let the other three of us carry him. We get to Nidhogg and he goes on about how we're going to wipe on the boss because of me. At that point my patience, which was unneccessarily lengthy that day, had run out. I told the group, "I'm booting this jerk." Vote kick immediately goes through and he's gone. Tank says something along the lines of "finally someone booted him."

Issue there wasn't the new player (I was effectively new since I hadn't played since 2.4 and didn't know the HW fights). But a lazy vet who was an absolute screw up, inept, and used new players as a scapegoat to hide their own weaknesses. When I read these forums and some players complain about newbies, you can see there are others like this. Not saying anyone in this thread so far is like that. But its sometimes easy to lose track of the real issues.

Simply put new players aren't always bad players. They simply don't know the mechanics. Many are easily instructed and become vets instantly thereafter once they get the hang of things. 2 months ago I didn't know any of the HW content. Now I can speed run with the best of them and quickly getting some of the raids down pat.

With that said though. I do support making leveling content more challenging. Baptisms by Fire do work. So long as they are in group oriented content and not brick walls for people to get stuck in Solo content. I don't really care how easy Solo content is. It teaches nothing for group stuff. People go on and one about how we need class quests to teach people stuff. You're not going to learn anything in a solo duty. Just memorizing keypresses, but not application. In groups you have to be able to react intuitively, not through muscle memory like in solo content. That only comes with experience from grouping with others.

When I was new to the Aery, almost the same thing happened. I got tethered and I had no idea what to do with it other than wait to see what happens. However, since the mechanic is similar to one of the bosses in Amdapor Keep HM, and enemy tethers tend to mean focused damage is coming towards that players way, I was familiar with it and able to muscle through it. However, the point being is that I can read a guide or be told how to do a certain mechanic, but something just clicks when you learn how to handle it, or predict when it is coming. Basically, I learn mechanics best by failing them. Until that time, any mechanic I get through unscathed is pure luck of being in the right place at the right time.

As for being ignored, this person could be using a controller and has no keyboard. But again, I am guilty of this too despite having a keyboard. Sometimes I am just really nervous, and my brain tells me to type, but my hands ignore it. It isn't anything personal, but I feel like I am in the spotlight when such things happen, and it makes me really uncomfortable, and I would really rather just continue. Especially if the fight is already over. If the result was a wipe, then I am more likely to talk and respond.

I honestly don't mind healing new players. I tend to look after them in duties, and it is unfortunate if they are DPS and I am forced to prioritize my heals for the tank. This sometimes means I have to let them die, and in the worst cases, I have to leave them down because the MP they are costing me is not balanced with their outgoing damage.

The challenge of DF content is fine as is. One-shot mechanics are present in them that is no one's fault but the player themselves if they fail it. That is as challenging as it will ever get. It really isn't stressful to just heal. New players that require special attention usually means you can't DPS as much. This is not your primary duty as a healer, but you did try and take to time to explain things. Not much more could be asked of you, but cases such as these are rare in my experience. I don't think you fix it by making casual content more difficult.

I've noticed that nowadays, people tend to ignore the tether mechanic in that boss, which is mildly annoying, because, if you're a caster, you have to continuously keep interrupting your casts to avoid the lightning AOEs, or else eat the damage and make the healer hate you more than they hate the person ignoring the tether. Unfortunately, I see this more with people who are not new to the instance, and less with the newbies, most of whom tend to listen when I tell them what to do with the tether (most, but not all, sadly).

I was actually in a run where this same thing happened, except the machinist decided they didn't need to move out of the lightning AOEs, and eventually died. I raised them twice, and they didn't seem to understand what they were doing wrong, so the third time they went down, I just left them there. Then, for the second boss, both the tank (mentor, PLD) and DPS (machinist) would pop the poison bubbles. I was on AST, and I politely told them not to pop the poison clouds, because I can't esuna that poison stack off of them. I was then told to "shut it" and that I didn't know what I was talking about. I responded with "Uh, yes I do. The mechanic here is that you let the Bomb add eat two poison clouds, and then kill it." Again, I was told that I was "wrong" and to "shut up" because the actual mechanic was "you don't want that add getting big at all because it will explode." I replied with "Yes, it will explode, if you don't kill it."

Anyways, long story short, I stopped healing both of them, and focused on keeping my friend alive. I was then threatened by the tank, and the machinist told me that they "weren't going to give me MP turret." I just laughed at them because really? They honestly think that's a threat to me? They eventually just kicked me out of the instance (my first ever kick from a duty!), but honestly, I was relieved. I didn't even want to think how terrible Nidhogg would have been with those two.

I genuinely don't know if that was a case of just laziness, like most that I see, or just pure stupidity. Or maybe a combination of both. Both players had Padjali weapons equipped, and their gear was a mismatch of gear ranging from level 50 NQ white gear to level 57 Vault gear. I honestly think that, with so many people using PotD to level, they sincerely don't think that they have to follow actual mechanics when they enter other duties, because they were able to level all the way to 60 in PotD barely having to follow any at all.

I really think that this game needs to provide more duties or more leveling activities of some sort (more Guildhests maybe?) to promote learning and following mechanics. People harp about insta-kill mechanics, but sometimes I wonder if that would be the best way for people to learn to follow them, if mechanics weren't that forgiving if failed. I know some duties have mechanics of their own, but so many people find ways to just cheese them, I don't know how effective they are at teaching players "Hey, you need to do [mechanic] when the boss does [move], otherwise, bad things happen."

For the gas cloud boss... the more clouds that are up the more damage the boss does as he gets a damage stack for each cloud. So as a dps and as a healer i will eat one cloud just to make things easier on the healer. The first stack of cloud dmg is easily cured with a second wind. But eating a second cloud and getting 2 stacks is painful

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Originally Posted by bardaboo

For the gas cloud boss... the more clouds that are up the more damage the boss does as he gets a damage stack for each cloud. So as a dps and as a healer i will eat one cloud just to make things easier on the healer. The first stack of cloud dmg is easily cured with a second wind. But eating a second cloud and getting 2 stacks is painful

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In my case, both of these players had way more than 1 stack each; try upwards of 3-4. I've never ran the Aery with a group before that eats any of the clouds, as we usually let the Mustard Gas take care of the majority, and by the time that any excess clouds remain (that would give the boss too many damage up stacks that it would start hurting the tank), the boss is usually near dead.

Yeah that seems counter productive, as there is a lot of leeway in that fight for healer to dps. Now you have to heal all the dot dmg, plus now the bomb will agro you. I would've been upset as well.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I really think that this game needs to provide more duties or more leveling activities of some sort (more Guildhests maybe?) to promote learning and following mechanics. People harp about insta-kill mechanics, but sometimes I wonder if that would be the best way for people to learn to follow them, if mechanics weren't that forgiving if failed. I know some duties have mechanics of their own, but so many people find ways to just cheese them, I don't know how effective they are at teaching players "Hey, you need to do [mechanic] when the boss does [move], otherwise, bad things happen."

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I'm on the fence with more punishing mechanics in casual content. The problem I see with making content more punishing is it also punishes the game's healers. On one hand, I am perfectly fine with more one-shot mechanics and increased healing activity. OTOH though, it would likely result in more raises/MP spent during duties. I lean towards the former though because when players die, they tend to gain awareness opposed to a punishing mechanic that doesn't kill them because the healer got them through it. I am just not sure the increased healing that would result in making casual content more punishing would result in closing player skill gaps.

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Originally Posted by bardaboo

Yeah that seems counter productive, as there is a lot of leeway in that fight for healer to dps. Now you have to heal all the dot dmg, plus now the bomb will agro you. I would've been upset as well.

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Yup, this is a stack management fight and it's just a LOT easier to let the mustard bombs eat a cloud and then kill it. They immediately go after a cloud when they spawn unless picked up. DPS should continue to focus boss until a bomb eats a cloud, and special attention given if it grows in size. Done this way, your healer will not be stressed and have plenty of time to add in DPS. This boss goes down really fast with coordinated effort, but I suppose the same is true for most bosses.

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

Again, its not new players that are the problem. Its lazy players. Sometimes they are new too, which can make things, interesting.

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You got a point, maybe I should of worded it as "Make things harder so people do not have room to be lazy" Being new is no excuse to ignore directions for the same mechanic 3 times in a row (first time after the fact, second during the fact, and 3rd time right when it appeared)

Well Ama here's my thought on it, make of it what you will. I do think that the (early) leveling duties are a bit too easy and that the difficulty curve of the dungeons as you level is fairly inconsistent, even a fairly average player can progress through all of the main dungeons pretty easily right until you reach the Vigil/Darkhold/Vale set of dungeons where the difficulty noticeably ramps up. I actually thought the difficulty curve leveling from 51-60 was fairly consistent until you reach library which is significantly easier than the dungeon before it: Vault. Not to mention the addition of the EX dungeons and their inconsistent difficulty, back in early HW we had Neverreap and Fractal, Neverreap was noticeably easier than Fractal for example.

Going forward I believe there should be a consistent incremental increase in the dungeon difficulties to maintain a steady difficulty difficulty curve rather than an inconsistent one. But as far as the difficulty of the content goes you reminded me of a question I asked a long time in a few other games and I'll pose that question to you in relation to the difficulty of the content and I'm serious, I don't mean this in a sarcastic way:

Should there be an expectation of victory when you run any type of content?

I really started dwelling on this question when Wildstar first came out, a game that marketed itself on it's high difficulty and I believe, normal pug groups couldn't even get past the first boss in the very first dungeon because it required a lot of careful coordination with hard hitting difficult trash pulls, it was taking coordinated premades on voice chat to even get past the initial bosses in non-level capped dungeons.

Do we go in expecting to be able to clear everything and know that even if we have a bad group we can usually scrape by? Or do we go in understanding that if we have a bad group then it means you have to give up, re-queue and try again to hope for a better group? Which way should the devs design the game?

The problem is that the level sync system is complete garbage. While it knocks your level down to whatever the given dungeon is sync'd to, the item level sync gives you the equivalent of the highest in every stat a piece of gear at that level can be at. This means that if your gear is high enough item level to be sync'd down, you're put into a position of vastly overgearing the dungeon. There's only a couple dungeons where this isn't the case, but those dungeons also suffer a bunch of other oddities as well so I'm pretty sure it's just the dungeons themselves being broken.

Would more guildhests help this issue at all, or increased reason/reward to use the ones we have help?

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Would more guildhests help this issue at all, or increased reason/reward to use the ones we have help?

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Yes that is a good idea, they need to relook at those, put some 50-60 ones in and have the rewards enough so people do them. Also they need to be hard enoughwhere you have to follow the instructions or wipe, there is a few you can completely ignore them.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

Well Ama here's my thought on it, make of it what you will. I do think that the (early) leveling duties are a bit too easy and that the difficulty curve of the dungeons as you level is fairly inconsistent, even a fairly average player can progress through all of the main dungeons pretty easily right until you reach the Vigil/Darkhold/Vale set of dungeons where the difficulty noticeably ramps up. I actually thought the difficulty curve leveling from 51-60 was fairly consistent until you reach library which is significantly easier than the dungeon before it: Vault. Not to mention the addition of the EX dungeons and their inconsistent difficulty, back in early HW we had Neverreap and Fractal, Neverreap was noticeably easier than Fractal for example.

Going forward I believe there should be a consistent incremental increase in the dungeon difficulties to maintain a steady difficulty difficulty curve rather than an inconsistent one. But as far as the difficulty of the content goes you reminded me of a question I asked a long time in a few other games and I'll pose that question to you in relation to the difficulty of the content and I'm serious, I don't mean this in a sarcastic way:

Should there be an expectation of victory when you run any type of content?

I really started dwelling on this question when Wildstar first came out, a game that marketed itself on it's high difficulty and I believe, normal pug groups couldn't even get past the first boss in the very first dungeon because it required a lot of careful coordination with hard hitting difficult trash pulls, it was taking coordinated premades on voice chat to even get past the initial bosses in non-level capped dungeons.

Do we go in expecting to be able to clear everything and know that even if we have a bad group we can usually scrape by? Or do we go in understanding that if we have a bad group then it means you have to give up, re-queue and try again to hope for a better group? Which way should the devs design the game?

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"farming" it should be "expected" like i need spend 5 hours + collecting lights, I should have easy outs for that.

Progression, no it should not be guaranteed, like at level DFs, MSQ, current DF raid (our dun atm) back when the gear was tied to being weekly, so if we are going by this, now it would just fall under farming, but when first out, no victory shouldn't be guaranteed.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

Do we go in expecting to be able to clear everything and know that even if we have a bad group we can usually scrape by? Or do we go in understanding that if we have a bad group then it means you have to give up, re-queue and try again to hope for a better group? Which way should the devs design the game?

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My 2 cents.

Harder content please. Yes, there will be growing pains. But I think it is worth it.

We have so many threads here about our character's progression and growth. But what about *OUR* progression and growth? What about how we learn new things and find new applications of them? I don't see anywhere near as much interest displayed for that.

Lack of content difficulty is part of the problem.

People are lazy because the game does not punish them for being lazy. There is no reason to exert yourself for most people as the benefit is quite small.

Why spend time at a training dummy perfecting your rotation? Why bother to look at the different pieces of gear available to you and figuring out which pieces when combined make the best set?

People get more utility out of their time by watching a movie on Netflix while putting in a minimal amount of effort in this game.

Another problem is the reward system.

If you clear a duty in 15 minutes or it takes 40 minutes, your rewards for that content are the same. Bring back the bonus chest system. Give people a reason to pay attention, care about their performance and they may.

Another part is the rest of us.

We accept poor performance in DF all the time and for the most part, we just suck it up and keep going since doing something about it is problematic.

You may need to wait to replace the person. You may have to disband and start over, and with a 20 minute queue, people don't want to do that. Lastly, if you try to get someone to perform better, even if you are nice in what you tell them, you run the risk of them attacking you.

There are players who don't want to be particularly challenged when playing. They want to veg out and play. Its like when watching TV. Some TV shows you watch just to kick back. They don't have to all be educational Documentaries or highly through provoking dramas.

There player base is varied with a board range of interests and desires. I often here people complain about dumb questions at Q&As but people forget that to someone that question was important enough to their enjoyment of the game to ask. Satisfying that player is just as important to SE as satisfying any other. This is why just pushing up the difficulty on everything is a bad idea. Trying to force people who are casual and want an easy play through to play harder is just as likely to drive them from the game which in turn lowers SE's revenue from the game and effects the resources the devs have to make more content. This is why they try and present a variety of content for players.

In your case if it was a premade I'm not surprised that they where that way honestly, the worst people (personality wise) I encounter are often the ones that have "friends" with them, and in most cases being friends means looking at nothing they do critically and going along with everything just because.
I was partied with two other people once who kicked the tank because of aggro and pulling before him issues, now in some cases it is on the tank but in that case I don't think it was, so I clicked no, didn't matter though since they obviously clicked yes. Turns out that tank was the same tank we had in the previous run too, wich went down without problems, who gave the dps his commendation. And I guess justice was served as we had to abandon the dungeon, since they kicked the tank and no new tank came.

I think the skip soar problem is more an issue with the design of the boss and the fact that ilvl is most of the time higher than the minimum required to kill the boss.
If you can skip something and make it more efficient, then people will want that in a farm party. Same as "why have two healers if you can do it with one".
I neither like nor dislike that mentality, I can understand it though and it makes sense.

I hope things won't get easier in the future, if there is such a gab between skill/lazy level in players (and I have been in Dun Scaith runs where we wiped at the pure "dps the portal or die" mechanic) I think there should be more levels of difficulty.
Give players the choise to stop at their comfort/skill level but don't dumb it down just because some don't care.
Make normal hard and extreme dungeons, make the extreme first and take away HP and some mechanics for the other two. If someone can't beat the harder ones then that's fine, there are still the easier ones.

I often see people describe something as toxic but honestly the definitions vary, so I'm not sure what could stop it. I just think, based on the kind of 'toxic' in this case, that every group of players should have something. Give lazy people appropriate content give casual appropriate content and same with hardcore.
Don't need to make a new dungeon, just make some adjustments to difficulty, I'm sure now that the cash shop flourishes there are some recources.
Although people will still try to do things that aren't quite on their level (yet?).
How do you tell a DRG that, just because Ring of Thorns sparcles after Heavy Thrust you shouldn't use it on single target and to watch a guide on the boss, without being the one in the wrong? Most of the time you can't if you dislike confrontation and hysteric people, but then again it might not even matter because you won't beat the Ex Primal anyway or see the last phase even though that's what the party was for.
And you just go on trying anyway because you think "At least I'm training...".

Well, although I think that most new players here have previous experience with MMOs, or at least previous gaming experience, the early difficulty progression definitely seems to be designed for very inexperienced players, even from a more basic gaming perspective. Which is good, in many ways, even if it is painfully boring for people who already know what to do.

I think sometimes we take for granted the abilities of new players because so many of them are not really new to MMOs or even games. Heck, I tried to get my Mom to play Portal once. It was a total disaster. She couldn't even control the player character because the concept of using WASD to move in conjunction with the camera was beyond her grasp. That was a bit of an eye-opener for me where I realized that, frankly, most gamers already exhibit a distinct skill in just being able to manage these control systems. It's not something that everyone in the world can actually do. Online gaming communities often have these hierarchies where people say you're "trash tier" or "total garbage healer/tank/DPS" when you can't heal the tank through a large pull, etc. But even the so-called "garbage" players are already very good if you take all of the non-gamers in the world into account.

Anyways, I have to go to an appointment, so I'm out of time, but the point is, even though it's an easy progression, in a lot of ways it's still not THAT easy. It's easy enough that you don't need to be an average-tier gamer to get through it. You can be a "bad" gamer and still enjoy quite a bit of FF14.

I used to have a lot of issue in Behemoth. But I am no longer having this issue after moving to a JP server. not only they listen but most of the time they read the strat while waiting for the queues. Even in 24 man raid just came out, i rarely see people just rage quit. I think it's the environment not the game tbh.

I always wondered something. When people clearly want harder content, the peopel who doesn't, are usually the RP'ers or limsa afk people, why does it bother them if content will be harder? D:

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Originally Posted by akaneakki

I always wondered something. When people clearly want harder content, the peopel who doesn't, are usually the RP'ers or limsa afk people, why does it bother them if content will be harder? D:

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It doesn't. As an RPer my self, I could use from more challenge in expert so I don't fall asleep. I thought Mhach was great.

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

It doesn't. As an RPer my self, I could use from more challenge in expert so I don't fall asleep. I thought Mhach was great.

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My bad, which is true. But there are insanely many RP'ers on this forum who complains about it however. I have nothing againt's RP'ers, so you know that :). Or people who just afk a lot. But yeah, I agree with you! Mchach was great! and I would love to see stuff like that againt too! :D

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Originally Posted by akaneakki

I always wondered something. When people clearly want harder content, the peopel who doesn't, are usually the RP'ers or limsa afk people, why does it bother them if content will be harder? D:

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Prople don't only just do one activity in this game. I find this game's definition of "harder" often to be more "frustrating" than "challenging" as it relies on--you guessed it -- instant kills. makes someone wonder why hp numbers are even a thing. if one is supposed to be killed in one hit.

It is often a subjective judgement to talk about "how to improve the player base" and I think it is more than just making it harder all around. You might just have more people avoiding the roulette or selectively bailing. From my own experience ive had more problems from people that flake from playing at the first sign of trouble than from one who is new or lacked damage.

I will be happy with something similar to heroics dungeons during WoW Cataclysm at release or a new mode similar to how mythic (and mythic+) dungeons work, also no DF only premades for this new mode. Normal mode for raids should be similar to expert primals and 24m should stay the same.

But outside a new mode for dungeons anything else won't happen, others MMO's tried this "hardcore" route it already and did not work, the game failed or subs dropped.

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Originally Posted by akaneakki

My bad, which is true. But there are insanely many RP'ers on this forum who complains about it however. I have nothing againt's RP'ers, so you know that :). Or people who just afk a lot. But yeah, I agree with you! Mchach was great! and I would love to see stuff like that againt too! :D

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I might have an idea why. Remember Steps of Faith? That was a disaster the first time it was released. Not because it was hard, but because people didn't want to take the time to do it. They would zone in, realise what the trial was and then zone out. They didn't want to waste their time wiping. I'm wondering what would happen if they made both of the new expert dungeons like it. Would people stop running it? Or would the player base actually get better? Aurum Vale suggests that they would and Steps of Faith suggested that they wouldnt. It's interesting to think about.

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

I might have an idea why. Remember Steps of Faith? That was a disaster the first time it was released. Not because it was hard, but because people didn't want to take the time to do it. They would zone in, realise what the trial was and then zone out. They didn't want to waste their time wiping. I'm wondering what would happen if they made both of the new expert dungeons like it. Would people stop running it? Or would the player base actually get better? Aurum Vale suggests that they would and Steps of Faith suggested that they wouldnt. It's interesting to think about.

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The issue with Steps was more of the design. It took way too long to wipe and start over. It wasnt the difficulty that made people instantly zone back out it was the way the trial was designed IMO.

I've been doing a lot of leveling dungeons on alts going through Heavensward recently, and it's been frustrating. Last night we wiped four times on Tioman, and I'm not even sure why. It didn't seem to be ignorance of mechanics, just an inability to stay alive. And it wasn't fun. Challenge is great as long as you still win in the end, but when you don't, it sucks.

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Originally Posted by RukiaFae

The issue with Steps was more of the design. It took way too long to wipe and start over. It wasnt the difficulty that made people instantly zone back out it was the way the trial was designed IMO.

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Yeah I think so too. There was a point in the fight you were waiting for ages just to see the wipe.

I just have a question. Do you guys think that uping the difficulty would get rid of the laziness of the player base?

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

I just have a question. Do you guys think that uping the difficulty would get rid of the laziness of the player base?

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Yes, it absolutely will, but that's not necessarily a good thing. If you're good enough to get through hard content, great. If you're not, you're going to do one of two things: get better, or quit. Either way, the people who are left will be better. But the problem is, people quitting is bad for the game financially, so it's not something Square Enix will do (nor should they).

In terms of laziness specifically, I'm not sure if it will matter. Most of the laziness I see is downright incompetent. For instance, people pulling in leveling dungeons like they would in a level cap dungeon. That has never worked, and will never work, yet people do it anyway, and then get mad when it fails. I think the problem is that people can clear content and memorize mechanics without having any understanding of why those mechanics work the way they do. Every time I see a tank pull multiple groups at level 20 when no one in the party has any AOE attacks, I die a little inside. That tank just has no conception of why pulling multiple groups is effective. They just know that's what people do, so they do it. I think laziness is similar: people ignore mechanics because they've learned that you can, but in some dungeons (especially leveling dungeons) you can't actually get away with that because you're not nearly as overgeared as you are in level-cap dungeons.

So if you forced every player to have a strong understanding of the game itself, and not just memorize mechanics, you'd be left with a very small population of very good players. And again, that's not a good thing.

EDIT: Actually the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that making the game harder will help. "Harder" in this game typically just means you need to memorize more mechanics. And memorizing mechanics only helps in that fight. Indeed, people often try to extend those lessons to other fights where they aren't appropriate. But I don't think having less mechanics is going to compel people to understand the game better, either. Bottom line, easy works, hard might not, so they go with easy.

Challenge is very subjective , I have a friend who want even do the 24 mans with me, who left diadem because of the emergency tactics mission. I think alot of it has to do with people being criticized for failing maybe while learning or just in general. And so build walls up and just say f it , and then others just simply wont even participate, if they start makin dungeons harder then some people may end up quitting the game if they get hurdles that put fear in them. Dungeons are easy but alot of people think they are very challenging like the vault, av, the gubal library etc.

It really does come down to laziness rather than a lack of skill a lot of the time. A lot of the playerbase seems to be fine with the "good enough" play style these days and don't want to put in the extra effort. Now, I'm not saying you're a an awful person for it, but it can be quite evident at times who really cares and who doesn't.

Case in point: I started an alt on Diabolos the other day (got an invite from ASR to come by so I took them up on it) and have been leveling it somewhat casually. I got to Tam-tara last night and I was paired up with a level 30 BRD as a level 23 ARC. Since I already have an end game BRD I was doing all the typical stuff, DoTing all the adds, using quick nock on packs, repelling spot when it was up and all of that. The BRD was single target, no repelling or anything and I out DPSed them the whole run (based on emnity tables, not a parser btw). How does a lower geared, lower level ARC out DPS a lvl 30 BRD? The only answer I could come up with is they just didn't care... And that really does go a long way.

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Originally Posted by Talraen

Yes, it absolutely will, but that's not necessarily a good thing. If you're good enough to get through hard content, great. If you're not, you're going to do one of two things: get better, or quit. Either way, the people who are left will be better. But the problem is, people quitting is bad for the game financially, so it's not something Square Enix will do (nor should they).

... you'd be left with a very small population of very good players. And again, that's not a good thing.

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so your answer should be No? if it makes 3 people get better and 7 people quit, that's not "getting rid of the laziness of the player base" that's just "getting rid of the player base".

and some people are just bad, not because they are lazy.

I've spoken on this already and I'm of the mindset that we need the challenge for very big reasons:


1. Kill the "It's just Duty Finder" mentality:
Simply put, if you give players a challenge they need everyone all in for, players will - more often than not - do what it takes and work together. Weeping City was a decent example of this. It was challenging, and though most are used to 24 man raids being easier (thus not having to focus or make effort), many pushed to do it, then realized it was just fine as is. I understand devs don't wish to make everything a challenge, or perhaps want to keep the bar set at a reachable level, but when you consider Heavensward dungeons largely had many old raid mechanics (as we were used to them by then - those who ran Coil, that is) the hand-holding becomes unnecessary. So as long as things are easy and bare minimum effort is more than enough, the "it's just Duty Finder" mentality will continue. Throw players that curveball to make them wake up every now and then.

2. Make gear and rewards feel rewarding again:
I can't stress this enough. Do you know why I still have my Darklight Corset of Aiming? Because I beat the original Demon Wall. Bees and all. Might not seem like that much of a challenge looking back, but then? Whew, it was pretty tough. And when I walked into Mor Dhona with that thing on, man. . . I had my own personal Miqo'te Paradise. I was THE MAN. . . Okay, jokes aside, I have it because it really was rewarding to get it then. I faced a tough challenge and earned myself a nice reward. That's the feeling we need again. Less time-based rationing of gear and rewards and more rewarding of skill and effort. For those that might worry it will drive off players, let me say this: If you are expecting time and minimal effort to give you everything you want in game, you are wasting both the game's potential and your own. When I hit that wall and I suddenly had to get tough or leave empty handed, I got tough. And I won. And I've stayed getting tougher and winning ever since. It's a much better feeling than rolling over and fetching tomes/tokens. If it means culling the numbers a bit, that's fine too.

I play games to relax personally. I'm not interested in daily content being challenging to complete.
Stuff like Weeping City and Final Steps of Faith are about the max I would take for difficulty from normal content. Wipes happen but most groups can pull through and finish.

If normal content became a struggle to complete I would probably stop playing.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

so your answer should be No? if it makes 3 people get better and 7 people quit, that's not "getting rid of the laziness of the player base" that's just "getting rid of the player base".

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Yeah my personal answer would be "no." But when people say "if you make it harder, people will get good," they're not wrong. I phrased it that way because I wanted to point out that what seems to a given user as "people getting good" also consists of a lot of bad people quitting. There's a reason the harder historic MMOs had far fewer users than WoW, and it's this. Or to look at it another way, the more exclusive you make the club, the better the community is liable to be. But that doesn't help Square Enix's bottom line.

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Originally Posted by Moomba33

I play games to relax personally. I'm not interested in daily content being challenging to complete.
Stuff like Weeping City and Final Steps of Faith are about the max I would take for difficulty from normal content. Wipes happen but most groups can pull through and finish.

If normal content became a struggle to complete I would probably stop playing.

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No one's saying make normal content on par with raids, alliance raids, or trials. We are saying that "Expert" dungeons shouldn't be easier than leveling dungeons. Especially not when you're bound to be running them ad nauseum for 3 months. Even the gear that drops is effectively obsolete for anything but glamour along the way because catch up patches literally boost players to near-raid level gearing, and thus well above what's offered (in the i260s, but Baelsar's/Sohm Al drop 245. . .) And call me bad to say it, but there's plenty of relaxing content in game as is, though mileage may vary. Personally, I find gathering relaxing. I love battle content and enjoy a challenge, so stepping away from that to gather now and then feels good to me.

And while I'm not directing this at you personally, the idea that players don't want to be challenged is a huge setback to the game's growth. Already we have people at level 60 that can't even handle neutered versions of level 50 content and mechanics; imagine how shameful that will be at level 70 when faced with what was "hard" at 60. If we keep rising, but the bar stays low, we'll soon be so far above and beyond the content and challenge as is, and why even bother then?

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

No one's saying make normal content on par with raids, alliance raids, or trials. We are saying that "Expert" dungeons shouldn't be easier than leveling dungeons. Especially not when you're bound to be running them ad nauseum for 3 months. Even the gear that drops is effectively obsolete for anything but glamour along the way because catch up patches literally boost players to near-raid level gearing, and thus well above what's offered (in the i260s, but Baelsar's/Sohm Al drop 245. . .) And call me bad to say it, but there's plenty of relaxing content in game as is, though mileage may vary. Personally, I find gathering relaxing. I love battle content and enjoy a challenge, so stepping away from that to gather now and then feels good to me.

And while I'm not directing this at you personally, the idea that players don't want to be challenged is a huge setback to the game's growth. Already we have people at level 60 that can't even handle neutered versions of level 50 content and mechanics; imagine how shameful that will be at level 70 when faced with what was "hard" at 60. If we keep rising, but the bar stays low, we'll soon be so far above and beyond the content and challenge as is, and why even bother then?

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My fault for not quoting. I was responding to the person who mentioned Wildstar's difficulty and saying that I don't want failure to be a norm for PUGing dungeons.
Expert being easier than leveling dungeons is mostly the fault of the gear syncing being tighter for leveling content in my opinion.
I don't consider you bad for saying it. We just value different things in our games.

I don't view that as a setback personally. As I've said I don't consider challenge an important part of gaming. Ex primals are the highest content I do and I have to be in the right mood for them. I wouldn't want to deal with frustration and failure in regular content.
As for why to bother I primarily play FF to enjoy the music and story. I like the feeling of building up my character's power over time through leveling and gearing. I like that XIV allows me to experience that with friends.

The thing is, maybe the changes to the jobs and cross class system will help with this, and depending what happens, I feel they need scale the "difficulty" to match it. For example, what if everyone got aoe and blood for blood to sastasha? How I feel things should be challenging enough where you are not simply hitting 1 button over and over again. Everyone is remarking how people quit in fear it might be made too hard, but what about people quitting from being board that it is too easy? How come this was never addressed till this post speaking on it?

When I say harder, I mean people finding a reason to actually use rotations, not this:
https://youtu.be/wNMWVMGoWOE?t=218
I swear people really do that at times.

Also this gets old:
https://youtu.be/L2wt7xb0HiI?t=256

Had a tank today doing that in fact then said i was "B*** too much about it when I only remarked about it twice throughout the whole run.

most of these lazy players would be weeded out if there was any content that was mildly difficult other than savage. Dungeons should be much harder in my opinion. Leave the solo instances at the Barny difficulty.