Ultimates need to be easier going forward

We're at the point where most raiders use third-party tools to do Ultimates, and you can't get into a group if you don't want someone using those third party tools. The playerbase having to use these things is a big indication that the new ultimate difficulty wall is pushing what the playerbase can do without assistance.

Square Enix can end the third party tools usage very easily. Make Ultimates easier. Without the need to use third party tools, the problem will be completely gone. Ultimates should be similar in difficulty to a fourth floor savage fight, and fourth floor and third floor savages should be nerfed so there isn't a huge difficulty spike between second and third floor.

Am I high or did Ren Thras make a smurf account? That aside, I think UCOB at launch / DSR is about perfect for difficulty. "Muh addons" isn't really a coherent argument for the devs changing the difficulty of anything. There are so many pitfalls and slippery slopes pertaining to what'll happen should the devs account for addon usage that they just shouldn't. Just see what that's done for WoW's encounters over the last decade. Good luck doing heroic or mythic raids without at least DBM.

lol. Between this and the unfair vacation post, no wonder the devs don't take this place seriously.

Ultimates can be done without third party addons. I know a few PS4 players that have beaten them. Them being difficult doesn't excuse or enable rule breakers.

Horrible idea. Making that easier is not going to magically get rid of the tools. They're just going to be used elsewhere.

All that's going to do is add to the already big list of complaints of how the game has gotten too 'easy'.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

Am I high or did Ren Thras make a smurf account? That aside, I think UCOB at launch / DSR is about perfect for difficulty. "Muh addons" isn't really a coherent argument for the devs changing the difficulty of anything. There are so many pitfalls and slippery slopes pertaining to what'll happen should the devs account for addon usage that they just shouldn't. Just see what that's done for WoW's encounters over the last decade. Good luck doing heroic or mythic raids without at least DBM.

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This happened a while back, I'm assuming around the time the account was made. It's not him.

I’m so iffy on this one. I definitely don’t want ultimates to become easier. It should be the most difficult fights in the game. Though I agree that something needs to be done about addons. I play PvP allot and the cheaters man. It’s just ridiculous and unfair. I know the housing addon is really nice and makes housing easier. I say if SE completely unlocks housing and made placing furnishings easier for designers then yeah ban all addons I say.

Just my personal opinion.

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Originally Posted by Threneras

Square Enix can end the third party tools usage very easily. Make Ultimates easier. Without the need to use third party tools, the problem will be completely gone.

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History demonstrates that this theory is false, as third party tool usage has been a part of the game for many raiders since well before Ultimates even existed.

The truth is that there is a culture around using add-ons for MMO raiding, and that culture has affected FF14. Players have never needed add-ons to complete content, but that doesn't stop players from wanting the leg up that add-ons provide. The problem you're describing isn't one of necessity created by the game, it's a problem of culture created by players.

Why are the most troll-threads from Lalafell.

I smell a conspiracy!

This is why we can't have nice things.

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Originally Posted by Sayo_

Ultimates can be done without third party addons. I know a few PS4 players that have beaten them. Them being difficult doesn't excuse or enable rule breakers.

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It doesn't, but sadly at this point the only way to defeat third party addons is to remove the reason for their existence altogether.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

History demonstrates that this theory is false, as third party tool usage has been a part of the game for many raiders since well before Ultimates even existed.

The truth is that there is a culture around using add-ons for MMO raiding, and that culture has affected FF14. Players have never needed add-ons to complete content, but that doesn't stop players from wanting the leg up that add-ons provide. The problem you're describing isn't one of necessity created by the game, it's a problem of culture created by players.

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Before Ultimates existed, third party tool usage will get you kicked out of free companies... Now if you don't want to play with someone using a third party tool doing TOP you'll be kicked out instead.

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Originally Posted by Threneras

Before Ultimates existed, third party tool usage will get you kicked out of free companies... Now if you don't want to play with someone using a third party tool doing TOP you'll be kicked out instead.

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Good, that's easier than leaving the group by yourself.

Make up your mind. Either you are okay with people cheating in your team, which means you are already a cheater and can use the tools yourself with no further moral problems, or you are not okay with people cheating in your team and you should leave anyway.

And they don't have to make ultimates easier. What would be the point? We already have savage for that. What they should do instead is remove ultimate. Because spending dev time and money just to entertain some computer programs seems like a waste of ressources.

Less need for something does not necessarily equate to less widespread use of something. People will use something regardless of whether or not they need it, especially if the use provides an advantage, and short of going nuclear on all third-party tools, or short of having a duty action that is an "Instant win" button. You won't really accomplish much.

Pretty universal across gaming and many hobbies.

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Originally Posted by Threneras

Before Ultimates existed, third party tool usage will get you kicked out of free companies... Now if you don't want to play with someone using a third party tool doing TOP you'll be kicked out instead.

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I presume this is your personal experience, but that's not everyone's experience. There have always been groups that would kick you for not rolling with their tool setup; you simply seem to have been lucky enough to avoid them. Congrats on that, it sounds nice!

And to this day there are still FC's that will kick you out if you violate the ToS; that's another thing that hasn't changed.

Welcome back.

Extremes are easy to PUG while still being fulfilling in a way that normal modes are not. It is true that as the difficulty scales up it just increasingly leads to this sort of thing.

But at the same time, there are always those voices crying out for harder content. For most of the time I've played this game, once people learn the script for a fight and get used to it, they start claiming it's "easy" even though first timers struggle with it, as if they don't understand that it's only easy because they know the script.

So maybe this hard content needs to be there just to silence the people who are never content with the difficulty of the content below it. Maybe its role is to convince them "you don't want it to be harder". Or alternatively, satisfy them with its difficulty.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

did Ren Thras make a smurf account?

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No, they didn't. But someone did.

Bruh, If you think only people doing ultimates or savage using addons that make game easier by showing where to go etc, you would be surprised.

I generally dont care if they make ultimates easier or harder, the thing they should focus on though is not how difficult fight it, but how fun it is.

Hard, Extreme, Ultimate and Savage is like the difficulty settings on old games. Level 1 to 10. Just leave people who wants harder difficulty alone. Play with settings that suits your playstyle.

I don't think addon usage is indicative of something being too difficult, really. Ultima Weapon Ultimate is considered one of the easiest, if not the easiest, Ultimate to do and people still utilize third party tools in that fight - with or without VOIP involved. People will, generally, always use something they find to help them to win at something - be it programs that automatically assign roles in the heat of the moment, or programs that tell you precisely where to go, or programs that do personal shotcalling and so on. There's no level of content that's free of people utilizing tools to make it easier, for one reason or another, and I wouldn't say difficulty is necessarily correlated with accessibility - accessibility is making sure a designed fight operates as intended for those with disabilities, such as colorblind/blindness (pairing image with indicator/telegraph and audio queues, for example); trying to keep responsiveness tighter so someone can play a class effectively despite a higher ping/weaker connection inherent to their ISP/Location/Set up etc... or making sure the game can operate on devices that are there to allow people to play the game with other physical disabilities (there's a plethora of specialized keyboards, mice, controllers, control schemes/set ups and other devices in this vein). And, I'm sure, a lot of other considerations not tied in with the intended difficulty of the experience (although, I suppose, that description relates to: unintended difficulty, as someone who can't see what they're supposed to see are not experiencing the fight's design as intended -- and not out of a lack of attention, but in a genuine "it's invisible"/"it's non-existent" -- I had some issue with this, as well, with Midgardsormr in Omegascape back when, with the shield to pick up - me not being able to see it on the ground isn't an intended factor of difficulty).

A fight can be easy, and inaccessible (I found the Phoenix Mage in Bozja particularly egregious for me, since I had to shift the colorblind settings until everything was a mountain dew green to see the birds on the sides of the arena and, without that - which was headache inducing - they were basically invisible against the backdrop/ground for me). And just because, for example, I find something difficult by the basis of it being designed for that experience, doesn't mean that because I find it hard it's "inaccessible" really: it'd mean I'd have to put in more time to clear/beat it (which, time isn't something everyone has access to/wants to spend time on that, but that's less accessibility and more dealing with factors outside of reasonable control for an intended experience).

I don't really think Ultimates must be easier/harder - DSR is the one most people I know cite as their favorite, even after running the gambit, and that one is one of the more difficult ones from design/current scaling from what I hear with mixed opinions (in my experience with what people who've done it say) on TOP, although most I know say TOP was a lot less fun for them.

They just need to stay at a difficulty level for the expected target audience to reasonably clear, reasonably being (broadly) 3-6mos, as that tends to be the trend for most who do Ultimate in a non-competitive capacity, from what I've seen (Some take longer, some shorter, and if someone's raiding over 20hrs a week to clear it as soon as they can, I wouldn't necessarily classify them in the broader audience I'm referring to). And the design just needs to feel fun, and rewarding. No matter what's done with Ultimates, there'll always be various third party tools utilized to make individual experiences easier, or group experiences.

Personally speaking, I don't really care about third party tools unless they began to impact my experience (ie: if the dev team decided to design around them, leading to the potential situation where a player would suddenly /require/ them to participate in the content, or by nerfing the content down in hopes to curb the tool usage). But, the main factor as to why I don't really do Ultimates is more related to time (between finding/putting a group together, to scheduling, to actual time in etc...).

Sometimes the troll you know is better than the troll you don't.

Welcome back :D

https://media1.tenor.com/m/k_OPQpRPf...awkward-hi.gif

Honestly arguments of if it will discourage third party tools or not aside I do think there is a legit argument that TOP went a little too far and because of it it isn’t remotely fun

Ultimates are the hardest content in the game but there is a point when you approach something like T7S where the oppressive difficulty just isn’t remotely fun and there is way too much RNG involved

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!...

This reminds me of that twitter post that was going around talking about the use of addons in ultimates and starting a while thing over there about it loool

With that said the point of ultimates is for them to be challenging, but you can def clear them without addons. Making them easier would ruin the point.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Honestly arguments of if it will discourage third party tools or not aside I do think there is a legit argument that TOP went a little too far and because of it it isn’t remotely fun

Ultimates are the hardest content in the game but there is a point when you approach something like T7S where the oppressive difficulty just isn’t remotely fun and there is way too much RNG involved

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I think it all really comes down to one question: "Is Run : ****mi* a well-designed mechanic in terms of mental load on the players?". If the mental load is too high, it makes a lot of sense for some to turn to tools to make it more manageable. That's not to say whether or not it's a good thing when people use tools, but it does raise the question of how much mental information can you load into a mechanic before it becomes too much for most people?

They should add an ultimate that is (secretly) not beatable, just to teach 3rd party tool users a lesson

Peoples "requirements" of add-ons is a big reason I haven't gotten a decent group for any of them.
One day I hope SE finishes this honeypot and we see the third party using playerbase snapped out of existence.

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Originally Posted by Threneras

It doesn't, but sadly at this point the only way to defeat third party addons is to remove the reason for their existence altogether.

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No it isn't. People use third party programs for easier stuff besides ultimates too.

As someone who doesn't engage with Ultimate content and therefore has no chocobo in this race...

No.

Make each new one harder than the last.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

Am I high or did Ren Thras make a smurf account?

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Thren Ras is a known Titanman troll alt, originally created to troll Renthras specifically by sarcastically emulating his posting style. Everyone seriously replying is taking the bait.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

Thren Ras is a known Titanman troll alt, originally created to troll Renthras specifically by sarcastically emulating his posting style. Everyone seriously replying is taking the bait.

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Which is weird since there is currently no Ren to troll. Bizarre to bring back what was otherwise a dormant alt who serves no purpose for this.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Which is weird since there is currently no Ren to troll. Bizarre to bring back what was otherwise a dormant alt who serves no purpose for this.

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nothing weird about it... his other accounts are likely on "vacation"