I would like to see a Hall of Adept and Masters

I like perusing the FFXIV forums from time to time. With a fondness of Tank forums the most since I am a Tank Main. Anyway, I been seeing some rather strange opinions and back and forths between people which normally boils down to either "You're a casual player, therefore you're opinion doesn't matter." or "You're an elitist player, therefore your opinion doesn't matter". This is always strange, but I think the issue is that some things aren't really learned about till someone tells you.

I have met a few extreme trial DPS melee players that didn't know their's positionals for their class. Or keeping DoTs up as a healer, or weaving Tank Mitigation abilities while you attack to keep up-time. I always wished Square would introduce a new Halls of Adept and Masters to teach players these crucial ways to play, and mechanics. Like Tank Swapping, mitigation control, Mob Mitigation, Interrupts. Esuna, and DPSing as a Healer instead of standing there beside the tank waiting for my health to dip below 99.9% then casting benediction (Hyperbolic but I have seen it), keeping DoTs up, MP management. And DPS positionals, using Feint or Addle, and showing how to use Arms Length to keep up time (An maybe introduce an special bar color for Armlength push-back abilities or some sort of way to show it happening). Add some fancy rewards and EXP boosting rings from 30-50 and 50-60.

Yeah. Hall of Adept and Masters would be nice.

I heard a number of good things with the in essence hall of X job WoW had with it's 'Proving Gounds'. Wonder if SE has checked that out, not saying to make a 1:1 copy but for inspiration and to see what worked well and what didn't.

I think for hard, optional, content that it might be an interesting idea to make that required to do them in DF (optional tick in PF). Perhaps just test it on one savage/ex or something and see how it goes in comparison to one that doesn't have it (ideally you can skip right to the master hall if you choose; or at least not requiring the novice one, so players don't have like 3 hours of practice tests before the real one(s) lol). Certainly I feel if people were required to prove they know something that then people would be more likely to be like "I know you know that marker means stack, and I know you can do it because you had to prove it to get here, so why are you not stacking?".

This type of stuff I don't really care or think should be strict for MSQ content, but when you can waste your entire play time and have absolutely nothing to show for it, so in that harder content, I feel like.. might be an interesting experiment to see if you can help players learn in a comfortable environment (sometimes after coming back to a job in a long time it would be nice too), and help players who already know what's up be able to expect certain things. Rather than argue what the stack marker means they can be like "yeah you can't grab those until this happens, because of y mechanic needs it later, better luck next time though- good work on all the standard mechanics, we're already 60% the way there".

Hall of Novices actually make a small reference to positionals during the first DPS exercise that requires defeating the opponent. It tells you that attacking from behind an enemy can deal more damage. The problem is that it doesn't mention that some attacks are meant to be performed directly behind the enemy while others are intended to be done from the flanks, and where one ends and the other begins.

The big problem with programming something like this is jobs aren't truly homogenized. Different though similar skills between jobs get added at different levels. We also have jobs that start at higher levels. When do these exercises get introduced? Also jobs and abilities get redesigned occasionally. Change when abilities get added and exercises may no longer work at the level they were programmed to be learned.

Certainly I would love to see Hall of Novices expanded to include more exercises relevant to all jobs, such as common mechanic markers and Limit Break, but going into job mechanics may not be realistic for the system.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I heard a number of good things with the in essence hall of X job WoW had with it's 'Proving Gounds'. Wonder if SE has checked that out, not saying to make a 1:1 copy but for inspiration and to see what worked well and what didn't.

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Unless it's been radically changed since I quit playing, Proving Grounds was a test, not a teaching tool. Either you beat an encounter and moved to the next wave, or you didn't and had to start over from the beginning. There was no advice on what to do or what went wrong (outside of snarky NPCs in the Healer trials talking about how you needed to heal faster if they died while standing in AoEs). It was still left up to the player to turn to other players or third party sources to try to figure out what they needed to do to improve then go back to try again.

Ultimately, it didn't solve the problems that players were hoping it would solve in end game dungeons - making certain players were ready for the content. Someone could beat Gold or even Endless - and still not give a crap about putting in effort when joining random groups for dungeons or raids.

Attitude is as much of a problem as skill. Someone can have all the skill in the world but if they have a poor attitude, they're still going to cause problems for the groups they join.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Unless it's been radically changed since I quit playing, Proving Grounds was a test, not a teaching tool. Either you beat an encounter and moved to the next wave, or you didn't and had to start over from the beginning. There was no advice on what to do or what went wrong (outside of snarky NPCs in the Healer trials talking about how you needed to heal faster if they died while standing in AoEs). It was still left up to the player to turn to other players or third party sources to try to figure out what they needed to do to improve then go back to try again.

Ultimately, it didn't solve the problems that players were hoping it would solve in end game dungeons - making certain players were ready for the content. Someone could beat Gold or even Endless - and still not give a crap about putting in effort when joining random groups for dungeons or raids.

Attitude is as much of a problem as skill. Someone can have all the skill in the world but if they have a poor attitude, they're still going to cause problems for the groups they join.

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Nah I don't think it changed from then, but perhaps some of my schools experimental stuff ruined me but tests are also a way to learn lol. So I can see how you're splitting the difference but to me the Proving Grounds is still a guide, cause if you can't pass it then you need to learn how and it's only on you so others can't carry you.

Which is also why I said not to 1:1 it but to just do what was good, since I heard a lot of people had fun with it beyond it just being a test.

As for the later bit of course there will still be people who can put in the effort, do for the test, and then still not care for the said hard content- that's always going to be true. However for the people who do care but just need guidance, or maybe a reality check lol, it would work for that, someone who thinks they're doing enough and the game is like 'no, no you're not' and those players might like OH.. Wow.. okay (like what happens to some people if they get introduced to parsing in a non-aggressive format).

Attitude you can't really fix, skill you nudge around a bit lol. So I hear you saying some issues will still exist and can't be fixed no matter how hard you try and pray and cry :p, but if you're suggesting because one issue will exist that there is no reason to work on another.. then I guess I don't agree. Especially because said content could be fun too :).

Expanding the Hall of the Novice has been suggested numerous times over the years, but we didn't get anything yet unfortunately.
Personally, I think it's desperately needed. There are many, many players that would benefit a lot from it.
I also think it has to be mandatory though, not optional, to have any effect at all.

This reminds me the Gatekeeper in The Secret World. It is a solo scripted fight, one per role. To clear it you need to know basic mechanism, i.e. mitigation, clean dot, tank swap, no overheal, dps check, etc. If you don't clear it, you cannot tag for "HL" content. The same idea could be implement in XIV.

That would be really helpful, FFXIV does a pretty bad job at teaching jobs with msq alone (and you can easily see it reflected in the average player skill), something that helps or even forces players to learn the basics and more advanced stuff could solve that to some extent

Here is the problem you can teach a player how to play their role. But you can't force them to play properly after you teach them, brining you back to the original problem of getting them playing correctly. WoW's proving grounds showed this pretty clearly, players would go in play well enough to beat it then go right back to playing like trash.

Hall of the intermediate/masters should be the content itself and reading the damn tooltips lol

I remember the Maat limit break fights in FFXI...imagine if FFXIV had gatekeeping like that in order to level up further lol...(never ever would happen!). Even getting the testimony to even do the LB5 was quite the experience..

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

Here is the problem you can teach a player how to play their role. But you can't force them to play properly after you teach them, brining you back to the original problem of getting them playing correctly. WoW's proving grounds showed this pretty clearly, players would go in play well enough to beat it then go right back to playing like trash.

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You can if you've taught the players the proper way to play then you can raise the bar for clearing content. Making the way for harder and harder content as players level up. Players then have the choice to stop playing or play the the standard.

1. Requirement for joining the DF after lvl 30: Hall of the Novice Complete, Job Stone Equipped

Goes over basic job functions

2. Requirement for joining the DF after lvl 50: Hall of the Adept Complete

Goes over newer added elements of battle (stack markers, CD management etc)

3. Requirement for joining the DF after lvl 70: Hall of the Master Complete

Implementing this won't give the results you're looking for. Neither the Proving Grounds in WoW nor the Gatekeeper in Secret World were any kind of test of competence in dungeons or raids. They were solo fights with artificial limitations that in no way tested or prepared a player for group content.

You learned how to beat those specific fights solo, and very little of what you did bore any resemblance to how you played in a dungeon.

I suppose you could argue that such a system would weed out the hopelessly incompetent, but the merely bad would still get through. And it would do nothing whatsoever to deter jerks.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

You can if you've taught the players the proper way to play then you can raise the bar for clearing content. Making the way for harder and harder content as players level up. Players then have the choice to stop playing or play the the standard.

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Bar already raises does nothing to stop people from playing like trash. When I see people in full savage playing like garbage one moment, then the next moment playing like they know what their doing. Makes it pretty clear to me people choose to play like trash when the chance presents itself. Being new and learning is one thing, intentionally playing garbage while knowing how to play is another.

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

Bar already raises does nothing to stop people from playing like trash. When I see people in full savage playing like garbage one moment, then the next moment playing like they know what their doing. Makes it pretty clear to me people choose to play like trash when the chance presents itself. Being new and learning is one thing, intentionally playing garbage while knowing how to play is another.

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The bar hasn't raised at all. People troll in video games. Sometimes just to do it other times to change things up A week or so ago me and some buddies make an titinia ex party and we didn't have our job stones on. Only one person in the party did and we still cleared in about the same amount of time a good party did when it was relevant content just as an example.

If the bar was actually raised people wouldn't be able to do things like that and still win.

Its a good idea to have a high end job-role tutorial stuff, but since they keep implementing and changing job actions (and some even revamping them completely) other than the very basics on novice level will just waste dev time every time something changes, so they MIGHT implement something like than after the number crunch and revamps for next expansion.

I think rather, the Guildhest system should be chucked out and instead replaced with solo tutorial-esque missions which cover certain things... Basically have them replace the combat dummy thing (or have one of these guildhests BE vs a combat dummy).
I would like to think these guildhests just be a bunch of mechanics thrown at the players to clear; something like Titan's rotation to teach that most bosses have a rotation/pattern that's predictable.

The thing really is though, whatever mechanics they "didn't get" eventually just become a common thing later on- specifically "harder" mechanics found on raid bosses often just become normal dungeon bosses in the following expansion.

If anything the game itself needs to polish/rework their own use of mechanic iconography so that there isn't ambiguity on what certain symbols mean. This is often a problem in 2.0-3.0 as their meaning is different fight to fight. Normally I'd say it's part of learning a dungeon/raid boss, but the game will often use the generic red/blue/purple arrows to mark things that other perfectly good markers exist

(the gather/run away mechanic on a certain heavansward slime throwing dinosaur is exactly what I'm talking about)

The "unpopular opinion/(tank) rushing" thread actually reminded me of this thread and of a certain phrase:

"You think you do, but you don't."

People already don't necessarily follow what Hall of Novice actually teaches. If there is further expansion to the hall, my guess is it will teach even more things that the player base don't actually follow as it could have different objectives to what the player base might have.

Yeah, not everyone is gonna care or learn anything, but by that same token not everyone would feel that way either.
It's still a useful tool that some would find helpful. I know I sure struggled when I first started and Hall of the Novice really helped me out.
If they had tools to teach me more advanced things I def would have had less problems later too.

As long as the development of this feature didn't get in the way of any other development projects, even on a small scale like new primal weapons, triple triad cards, etc, then I wouldn't mind it.

But there is so many guides on YouTube and other platforms that we really don't need this, if someone really wants to learn they will do the easy step of watching a guide or reading a tool tip.

Plus don't confuse players who are trying to learn/ haven't fully figured out thier job yet with a bad player, cause everyone learns at different paces and anyone that's played this game long enough doesn't need me to spell out the difference in these kind of players.

I would like to see a new Hall around level 60 or 70, at the least, to teach people about standardized raid markers (stack, prey, etc).

And make it mandatory for anyone who buys a level skip. As in, you log straight into the Hall and can't leave until you clear it.

I think this would definitely be a good idea. The game does pretty much nothing to on ramp players from the most basic level of play to anything requiring more knowledge, and doesn't require more knowledge in any of the required content, so it's just a self defeating circle. And since so many players in FF14 seem unable to actually communicate with each other respectfully it's clear there's no pathway for players to help each other either.

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Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

You can if you've taught the players the proper way to play then you can raise the bar for clearing content. Making the way for harder and harder content as players level up. Players then have the choice to stop playing or play the the standard.

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Developer conundrum: how to best satisfy the small core of "make it so hard that unskilled players quit" without actually changing the game so completely that unskilled players quit.

Business conundrum: more players in an MMORPG equals more revenue. Deliberately creating leveling content that encourages players to stop playing equals less revenue. Which, as the owner of the business, do you pick?