FFXIV players are so obsessed with DPS

I know this isn't only FFXIV but MMOs as a genre,

But why? I play video games from many other genres that doesn't have this problem and I it is more competitive than any MMO out there.

As someone who comes from PvE and PvP games both I never encounter a game that so obsessed with DPS meter and balance like FFXIV.

Even though I don't believe in balance in FFXIV or other games.

DPS,HPS is the only 2 factors in the game that will make X job a better instead of having a good gameplay and fun experience trying different new things even if it feels troll.

It doesn't make me feel comfortable really, If I quit raiding it is because of this.

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

I know this isn't only FFXIV but MMOs as a genre,

But why? I play video games from many other genres that doesn't have this problem and I it is more competitive than any MMO out there.

As someone who comes from PvE and PvP games both I never encounter a game that so obsessed with DPS meter and balance like FFXIV.

Even though I don't believe in balance in FFXIV or other games.

DPS,HPS is the only 2 factors in the game that will make X job a better instead of having a good gameplay and fun experience trying different new things even if it feels troll.

It doesn't make me feel comfortable really, If I quit raiding it is because of this.

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I mean... I agree with you, but is it really the players who are obsessed, or the game itself is obsessed and forces players to only care about dps?

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

I know this isn't only FFXIV but MMOs as a genre,

But why? I play video games from many other genres that doesn't have this problem and I it is more competitive than any MMO out there.

As someone who comes from PvE and PvP games both I never encounter a game that so obsessed with DPS meter and balance like FFXIV.

Even though I don't believe in balance in FFXIV or other games.

DPS,HPS is the only 2 factors in the game that will make X job a better instead of having a good gameplay and fun experience trying different new things even if it feels troll.

It doesn't make me feel comfortable really, If I quit raiding it is because of this.

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Then you didn't play that many games now did you? In WOW you even get the chance to get kicked for not doing enough DPS and yet you say FF14 is the obsessed game over DPS.

DPS and big numbers have always been a discussion as long as raids/dungeons existed in a game.

Before transferring to FF14 I used to play TERA and Blade and Soul. TERA had an unofficial DPS Metter similar to what ff14 has and the Blade and Soul dev team caved in and added a personal dps metter(that only you could see) after the community requested that feature relentlessly and they were using add-ons anyway. That was because bosses had hard enrages if the team had crap dps.

I can argue that FF14 is the most lenient game out there in terms of DPS and a great deal of fights have to go extremely wrong for you to see the boss enraged.

You can also make/ join a group that simply doesn't care about the fight, the DPS, the clear, or the efficiency/consistency of executing any mechanic at all.

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Originally Posted by Erzaa

I mean... I agree with you, but is it really the players who are obsessed, or the game itself is obsessed and forces players to only care about dps?

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It is actually both,
Jobs designed around DPS as a 1 factor to make job viable,
Player also that I find ingame is so obsessed with it and it is the only factor that developers have for players to be better at

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

It is actually both,
Jobs designed around DPS as a 1 factor to make job viable,
Player also that I find ingame is so obsessed with it and it is the only factor that developers have for players to be better at

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They have to be. High-end raiders have to deal with enrage mechanics, some casual duties have soft enrages too. When the game forces you to kill something in a certain amount of time, or die, then the players are going to be forced to care about dps.

And yea, that mindset tends to bleed down after awhile, and players may even get annoyed and call you a time waster for taking even a few minutes longer to clear something. It's just the nature of the game, and it's something that's even taught to sprouts in Novice Network. It's not going to change anytime soon.

In a single player game, it doesn't matter if you kill something in five minutes or 45 minutes. But this game forces players to play almost perfectly or lose.

And, even in a single player game, the longer a fight goes on, the higher the chance that exhaustion might set in and mistakes will happen anyway.

the problem is the two minute burst and the fact the game is balanced on extreme/savage I would like to see more complex skills then that much DPS give back the complexity of jobs in short

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

I know this isn't only FFXIV but MMOs as a genre,

But why? I play video games from many other genres that doesn't have this problem and I it is more competitive than any MMO out there.

As someone who comes from PvE and PvP games both I never encounter a game that so obsessed with DPS meter and balance like FFXIV.

Even though I don't believe in balance in FFXIV or other games.

DPS,HPS is the only 2 factors in the game that will make X job a better instead of having a good gameplay and fun experience trying different new things even if it feels troll.

It doesn't make me feel comfortable really, If I quit raiding it is because of this.

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Not sure how 'many' of this 'many other games' you're talking about. but there is nothing news to the game world.

Survivability only need to performs just about enough, but the DPS number is always the bigger the better.
Always is, always has been and always will be for 99.99999999% of any games out there, not just FFXIV or MMOs

if you knew this wasnt just about 14 but the genre as a whole, why the clickbait title?

dps has long been the best way to be able to brag about epeen.

Dying to a 0.7% enrage after bashing your head against a fight for the past 4 hours will make you care about DPS really quickly

Optimization and improving numbers is human nature. You can see it everywhere, not only in video games.

Imagine two groups of raiders, each one 100% equally friendly and nice. Which one would you rather be a part of:

1. The group who brings in enough DPS to kill a boss consistently.
2. The group who lacks DPS and hits enrage.

Its because the design is based around DPS. Every job is dps. Blame the devs, not the players

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Originally Posted by Xelanar

Optimization and improving numbers is human nature. You can see it everywhere, not only in video games.

Imagine two groups of raiders, each one 100% equally friendly and nice. Which one would you rather be a part of:

1. The group who brings in enough DPS to kill a boss consistently.
2. The group who lacks DPS and hits enrage.

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I know something called optimizing a job mechanic which is not existing in FFXIV

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

I know something called optimizing a job mechanic which is not existing in FFXIV

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So, which group would you pick then? 1 or 2?

Because before DT there were dps checks.

I want nasty puzzle solving inside Savage raids, that puts the mind on the edge, else it is just routine routine and routine.....

Any game with a competitive aspect cares about this in some way. They just frame it differently. Shooters absolutely care about DPS they just call it TTK. Strategy gamers care about APM. Fighters care about APM and executing combos. In every case it all comes down to doing the most the fastest.

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Originally Posted by Kaecilius

Dying to a 0.7% enrage after bashing your head against a fight for the past 4 hours will make you care about DPS really quickly

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Hahaha, that's how my villain arc started, after seeing enrage repeatedly at 0.1% or 0.2%.

Because the games design revolves around DPS? Because doing big damage, seeing big numbers feels good? Whilst Ff14 does not have an actual DPS meter it feels good to see yourself at the top of the meters? What is so hard to get lmao

Tbh I leave my rolos nowadays when the DPS is slacking and it takes forever for packs or bosses to die just to log into another game that respects my time.

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Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

Any game with a competitive aspect cares about this in some way. They just frame it differently. Shooters absolutely care about DPS they just call it TTK. Strategy gamers care about APM. Fighters care about APM and executing combos. In every case it all comes down to doing the most the fastest.

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It's only a competition in this game because you make it one.

And you people wonder why people play solo.

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Originally Posted by TBerry

It's only a competition becuse you make it one.

And you people wonder why people play solo.

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I think we, as a community, are better off with people like that playing solo instead of polluting PF Ex/savage.

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

I know this isn't only FFXIV but MMOs as a genre,

But why? I play video games from many other genres

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Why are you comparing them to the MMO genre?

Why do players care so much about DPS? Because it's the only thing that matters. Combat has been boiled down to how well a player can maintain uptime while avoiding mechanics in a restricted battle space. There is no enmity management, no crowd control, no enfeebling effects to weaken a boss, no elemental alignments to work around, resource management has been all but eliminated--the only strategy to combat is to memorize the dance steps and push your buttons in the correct order at the right time.

Over a decade of encounter design, the gear treadmill, and the content release schedule has created a culture that values high damage output. Low DPS means not being able to beat enrage in difficult content, or makes casual content take longer than it should. I'm not going to get mad if an Expert dungeon takes longer than I want, but I will notice it. Most duties will get quite tedious after a few dozen runs; I just want to get my tomes and get the heck out.

The only thing that matters in this game IS dps. There are no relevant crowd controls abilities, almost non-existent interrupts, and so on. When the only thing you CAN do is damage, then of course that's going to be an important metric.

The game is designed around damage, hence why what's "meta" is the job that can give a tiny bit extra damage rather then a job that brings "utility" This also leads to balance being that every job needs to feel very samey, no job can offer anything too unique on the table ect.

at the end of the day damage doesn't matter that much to most players, but also theirs no reason not to bring the highest damage option if you are trying to optimise, Things like mitigation, healing ect. Don't really matter much as long as you've got the bare minimum so even tanks and healers full in line for damage being the most important.

I personally don't like how slight damage differences are so important, but if it was less important it would also take a lot of fundamental changes about the game, which I doubt will happen in these later years of the games cycle.

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

But why? I play video games from many other genres that doesn't have this problem

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Most other genres are: PvP or single player.

What makes MMORPGs different is it is cooperative PvE, with bosses that have ridiculously huge health pools.

Since the health pools are so big, humans being humans, developed tools to give themselves an advantage. This is what humans have done at least since they stopped walking on their hands.

Those tools then became a competitive measuring contest in and of themselves and what followed that was dopamine hits and using it to judge others.

While FFXIV wanted to avoid all this by not implementing DPS measuring stats, it has still influenced a lot of design decisions such as job simplification and the large hitboxes we got in Endwalker to improve uptime.

Of course, only competitive people care about this, and a large percentage of humans including myself aren't competitive, so if you don't get it then maybe you're in the same camp as me.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Most other genres are: PvP or single player.

What makes MMORPGs different is it is cooperative PvE, with bosses that have ridiculously huge health pools.

Since the health pools are so big, humans being humans, developed tools to give themselves an advantage. This is what humans have done at least since they stopped walking on their hands.

Those tools then became a competitive measuring contest in and of themselves and what followed that was dopamine hits and using it to judge others.

While FFXIV wanted to avoid all this by not implementing DPS measuring stats, it has still influenced a lot of design decisions such as job simplification and the large hitboxes we got in Endwalker to improve uptime.

Of course, only competitive people care about this, and a large percentage of humans including myself aren't competitive, so if you don't get it then maybe you're in the same camp as me.

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When I said other genres I mean also PVE cooperative games like monster hunter, granblue fantasy and dauntless are PvE cooperative games that succeeded to have other things that as important as DPS.

this problem is in FFXIV and other MMOs which is it is one dimensional view that is DPS and only DPS.

PvE games that I mentioned even in high end content there is much more things that is important more than DPS, even DPS has a different variation of it, crit, weak-points and elemental damage and weapon type.
FFXIV doesn't have these things or at least it is not as important as it seems.

Players who plays FFXIV and players who is playing other PvE games are all humans, it is a design choice that lead us to be in this extreme narrow view.

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Originally Posted by TBerry

It's only a competition in this game because you make it one.

And you people wonder why people play solo.

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?

I don't wonder any such thing. How other people play doesn't affect me unless they queue up for things and don't try at all. I'm answering the OP's question: Why are FFXIV players like this? The answer is that they're the same as players of every other game. It's a nonsense question.

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

When I said other genres I mean also PVE cooperative games like monster hunter, granblue fantasy and dauntless are PvE cooperative games that succeeded to have other things that as important as DPS.

this problem is in FFXIV and other MMOs which is it is one dimensional view that is DPS and only DPS.

PvE games that I mentioned even in high end content there is much more things that is important more than DPS, even DPS has a different variation of it, crit, weak-points and elemental damage and weapon type.
FFXIV doesn't have these things or at least it is not as important as it seems.

Players who plays FFXIV and players who is playing other PvE games are all humans, it is a design choice that lead us to be in this extreme narrow view.

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Adding all those variations in an MMO is just illusion of choice. The community will settle in one optimal strategy and will start excluding players that don't conform, or you will be forced to farm specific equipment to deal with specific bosses, at which point we're back to the same DPS discussion because the assumption is everyone is using the optimal equipment for the best odds of success.

The alternative is running content that doesn't involve DPS checks, at which point... Sure, do whatever you want. I don't think anyone cares about the DPS of a random player in Roulette #536.

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Originally Posted by Kaecilius

Adding all those variations in an MMO is just illusion of choice. The community will settle in one optimal strategy and will start excluding players that don't conform, or you will be forced to farm specific equipment to deal with specific bosses, at which point we're back to the same DPS discussion because the assumption is everyone is using the optimal equipment for the best odds of success.

The alternative is running content that doesn't involve DPS checks, at which point... Sure, do whatever you want. I don't think anyone cares about the DPS of a random player in Roulette #536.

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Why PvE games exceeded to not make it "illusion of choice" while MMOs like FFXIV is?

it is just a skill issue

Crit in FFXIV is just a random percentage or 100%, Direct hit is the same thing.

there is no mechanic gameplay for it , it is gutted with boring execution

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Originally Posted by TBerry

It's only a competition in this game because you make it one.

And you people wonder why people play solo.

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It's not that the community makes it one per se, it's that there is literally nothing else to care about. Take the new 24 man or Sphene EX. Once you've cleared them both half a dozen times, the novelty factor wears off. So you either stop doing them entirely, which leaves woefully little else to actually do, or you find alternative ways to extend their longevity. For a lot of players that comes in the form of performance, i.e. DPS. This is especially true at the higher levels where good performance means you skip mechanics. Not having to do Ice phase in Sphene EX isn't just good for your parse, it significantly lowers the failure chance because that's often where people mess up.

I'd love to optimize around crowd control, debuffs or what have you, but they don't exist. So it's DPS or nothing.

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

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The more damage you deal, the faster it dies. 200% of all Videogame that deal in combat

i like big crit

even in single player games I enjoy min/maxing because it's fun seeing how strong you can make your characters

Is it required to beat the game? Of course not, though it can help with superbosses in certain games
In the context of 14 though, you need to worry about DPS to an extent when fighting certain bosses in order to not wipe to their enrage.

There's been plenty of moments when I was farming Diamond EX back in Shadowbringers where my party would finally survive flood rays only to not deal enough damage and the fight would have to start all over again

I think it also comes down to the materia situation
iirc you don't really see Tenacity or Piety used much

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

I know this isn't only FFXIV but MMOs as a genre,

But why? I play video games from many other genres that doesn't have this problem and I it is more competitive than any MMO out there.

As someone who comes from PvE and PvP games both I never encounter a game that so obsessed with DPS meter and balance like FFXIV.

Even though I don't believe in balance in FFXIV or other games.

DPS,HPS is the only 2 factors in the game that will make X job a better instead of having a good gameplay and fun experience trying different new things even if it feels troll.

It doesn't make me feel comfortable really, If I quit raiding it is because of this.

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Gamers solve problems and puzzles, and in FFXIV the most common problem to solve is the hit points of your enemies and the answer is damage per second, or in otherwords, doing the most damage in the least amount of time.

Cause if you don't then you wont clear the fight???

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Originally Posted by Erzaa

I mean... I agree with you, but is it really the players who are obsessed, or the game itself is obsessed and forces players to only care about dps?

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Basically this. My hot take on the entire thing is that the need to keep producing profits and justify server + development costs forces these games into simplifying themselves too much. If I never played FFXIV before and I came and tried it out right now, I'd probably play it for a bit for the story and then just put the game down never to come back. There's just too many games out there that can do things or give better experiences long term than FFXIV.

Conceptually in any game that involves combat, the faster you can kill your opposition, the easier of a time you have.

In order to make things that aren't raw damage matter more, the opposition has to be capable of extremely bad for business kinds of moves. But they also have to be vulnerable to non-damage oriented techniques that actually prevent the bad for business kinds of moves.

And that wades us into the weeds of, "How much damage do we have to deal and how fast in order to ignore that sort of meta?" Because humans like to simplify things that take effort, you will find even in deeply strategic games that there is the, "zerg" strategy. Which is basically, "How often can I succeed just by throwing enough standard fighters armed to the teeth at it?"

As a history lesson for SE and their prior MMO FFXI, FFXI started out very unbalanced.

In the original Japanese client only game, the level cap was 50, and enemies were so difficult that people would team up to fight monsters several levels below everyone in the party, because it was more time efficient to kill weak monsters for low gains than it was to fight strong monsters for big gains. Easier monsters were also more susceptible to melee hits over magic, requiring less accuracy and physically buffed melees.

And even so, magic was the ultimate form of power in early FFXI for several years, all of the way until the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion, really, where for the first time the bosses started to be resistant to not only enfeeblement, but magical damage as well. And the "ideal" EXP mobs could parrot spells back at the party. In addition to the addition of a second buffing job. They course corrected the game towards melee oriented jobs then, because mages had become the de facto always in demand jobs, while melees were sitting with their thumbs up their butts because of a great desire by players to play the jobs that were in the game and were the majority of jobs in the game.

Flash forward to the most recent full expansion, and they added in another buffing job that was magically oriented along with a tank that was oriented towards defending against magic and magical enfeeblement. Both of these jobs reflected a desire and need to rebalance so that magical jobs could come back into prominence along with the acknowledgement that there was no other way to deal with a lot of fights other than to "zerg" them down with fully buffed melees, as players largely had no way to defend a group from multiple unavoidable debuffs and magic.

So the meta now revolves around having a party that always contains all 3 buffing jobs in addition to a tank of appropriate damage protection typing, a healer, and then a really strong melee. Sometimes a second melee over the tank, if the tank oriented jobs are too weak damage wise.

Which is this really twisted spiralling skein of a staircase of a way to land us back in the same boat we were in when the game was new, in that most people want to play melees because most of the jobs are melees, but the actual gameplay demands the buffing jobs.

All a very long winded way to say that people follow whatever the contraints of the meta are, whatever will allow the execution of bosses the fastest, because there are failure states. If the meta revolved around enfeeblement, then those jobs would take priority, but once you satisfied the minimum enfeeblement criteria, damage would be the next most important thing. Cause you can't win without depleting your enemy's life.

Because this game's combat is focused exclusively on DPS, and every damn job is just a DPS with flavor. Even Healers.

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

When I said other genres I mean also PVE cooperative games like monster hunter, granblue fantasy and dauntless are PvE cooperative games that succeeded to have other things that as important as DPS.

this problem is in FFXIV and other MMOs which is it is one dimensional view that is DPS and only DPS.

PvE games that I mentioned even in high end content there is much more things that is important more than DPS, even DPS has a different variation of it, crit, weak-points and elemental damage and weapon type.
FFXIV doesn't have these things or at least it is not as important as it seems.

Players who plays FFXIV and players who is playing other PvE games are all humans, it is a design choice that lead us to be in this extreme narrow view.

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It isn't all MMOs, just FFXIV (as far as I know, I certainly haven't played every single MMO).

Take WoW for example. There is a boss in the latest tier that summons all kinds of adds that NEED to be crowd controlled and interrupted or else they will destroy the group. Consequently, crowd control is valued much higher then other bosses. FFXIV can't do things like this because of the strict dance design of the fights.