Super General Discussion 2.0 - Always offering a happy, fun time~!

[Sylkis]

I want to share my thoughts of the current meta, since this is general discussion:

1. Too much focus on DPS
I posted this one here:

It would be nice if we had a tank/healer check, and soft DPS enrage instead of hard enrage. The check should be on MP and related resources.

Currently:
-Difficulty is only mitigating the tank busters, and tank busters are not happening very often, causing a large amount of downtime
-MP regen too high from bard/mch and MP costs too low (compared to other games where resources feel tight), along with amount healed from basic skills too high relative to tank HP - e.g. Cure heals 3k when Tank HP is 10k. This means that you can heal the tank to full quickly and cheaply, causing more downtime
-> This causes top tank/healers to DPS during healing downtime, and in turn the developers increase the DPS checks by compensating for tank/healer DPS.
Really they should increase the tank/healer check so that this downtime doesn't happen in the first place.

2. Content livespan is too short
Battle content only seem to last 1 or 2 patches, meaning that we only consume the current content... and there isn't much of it.
At any time, we have 2 Dungeons in Roulette? 1 Endgame raid?

Band aid fix would be to give the highest tier tomestones on most dungeons - Expert roulette dungeons aren't harder than the others (see below).
But really, it would be nice if we had something fun. It's hard to come up with content that caters to all and is fun, but I have seen it before.
(There was this old game I played where it was a large scale capture the flag pvp, with high level players getting the flag and infiltrating the enemy base outnumbered 1:20 and low level players building defenses using level independent items for the base blah blah blah.... Same thing can happen here if you don't ilvl sync large scale pvp actually you know what this is too long I will make a separate thread)

3. "Hard" (In game term) is a misnomer
I think you can guess this one.
Expert roulette?
The XYZ (Hard)?
When aurum vale (not hard, not extreme) 1 shots you if you can't dodge lol
Not a huge effect (but related to 2. above), it just annoys me

[Aldora]

I want to share my thoughts of the current meta, since this is general discussion:

1. Too much focus on DPS
I posted this one here:


2. Content livespan is too short
Battle content only seem to last 1 or 2 patches, meaning that we only consume the current content... and there isn't much of it.
At any time, we have 2 Dungeons in Roulette? 1 Endgame raid?

Band aid fix would be to give the highest tier tomestones on most dungeons - Expert roulette dungeons aren't harder than the others (see below).
But really, it would be nice if we had something fun. It's hard to come up with content that caters to all and is fun, but I have seen it before.
(There was this old game I played where it was a large scale capture the flag pvp, with high level players getting the flag and infiltrating the enemy base outnumbered 1:20 and low level players building defenses using level independent items for the base blah blah blah.... Same thing can happen here if you don't ilvl sync large scale pvp actually you know what this is too long I will make a separate thread)

3. "Hard" (In game term) is a misnomer
I think you can guess this one.
Expert roulette?
The XYZ (Hard)?
When aurum vale (not hard, not extreme) 1 shots you if you can't dodge lol
Not a huge effect (but related to 2. above), it just annoys me

I can see where you are coming from and i do agree with several points you’ve mentioned, but there are also a few where i disagree with the arguments you’ve used to clarify them.

Lemme explain:

1. Too much focus on DPS
I posted this one here:

It would be nice if we had a tank/healer check, and soft DPS enrage instead of hard enrage. The check should be on MP and related resources.

Currently:
-Difficulty is only mitigating the tank busters, and tank busters are not happening very often, causing a large amount of downtime
-MP regen too high from bard/mch and MP costs too low (compared to other games where resources feel tight), along with amount healed from basic skills too high relative to tank HP - e.g. Cure heals 3k when Tank HP is 10k. This means that you can heal the tank to full quickly and cheaply, causing more downtime
-> This causes top tank/healers to DPS during healing downtime, and in turn the developers increase the DPS checks by compensating for tank/healer DPS.
Really they should increase the tank/healer check so that this downtime doesn't happen in the first place.

Yes, i agree that there is too much focus on DPS, but mostly from the pressure placed on “me” from other players rather than the DPS Checks that SE has added to the end game content.

I’m a Paladin and it’s the class i’ve been taking to Coil since i joined the static. There are quite a few times where people would tell me that i might as well use Warrior, because it was the better tank for <Insert Random Turn here…>. However, i soldiered on. I basically learned how to tank by traversing through Coil. I’ve been laughed at for using vit gear with parry. But, i didn’t care because i firmly believed that it can be done with a Paladin.

And we did.

I’m sure as hell proud of what we’ve accomplished in this game. Even if i’m not at the same level as Lucrezia or Elysium. Those guys are extraordinary players and i applaud them for what they’ve accomplished.

I don’t care people other people think i’m a bad player because i don’t play my class the way they think it has to be played. But i am getting sick and tired of people pigeonholing a class i’ve worked my ass of to learn, just because it’s not dealing “enough” DPS.

Ever since the release of Heavensward, the threads regarding the performance of several classes was the subject of most of the people on the forums as well as Reddit. It’s perfectly fine to discuss balancing issues, if you really believe that they are performing below standard. But, the biggest question is, who determines that a class is performing below standard?

The discussions went on, changing rapidly into heated discussion, followed by raging and flaming each other who thought differently. The forum slowly turned into a war ground in which 90% of the threads became depressing to read. I can tell you that it affects the way you play the game as well and slowly starting to lose the “fun” factor.

Things have changed since the release of Heavensward. Every discussion i read on the forum boils down to DPS, in this case the lack of it. People are now being judged by their Damage output. Not just for Alexander Savage, but for everything. If a healer doesn’t DPS, (s)he’s bad. Even if the duty requires the healer to focus more on healing because of the damage the party takes. If the tank can’t hold hate of 1 mob in a decent sized group, (s)he’s bad. It doesn’t matter that every DPS is focussing on a different target which is not the main target of the tank, if the tank loses hate… (s)he’s considered to be a bad tank. If the tank doesn’t dish out “proper” DPS or is wearing VIT gear and VIT stats, (s)he’s bad. If a dungeon is not being cleared in less then 10 minutes, they are bad. If they cannot clear T9 with Echo, they are bad.

In short, if you don’t live up to their expectations, you are a bad player and subject to rude behavior.

People need to let go of these expectations. Not everyone is top level raiding material. We are human beings with various levels of skill, experience and expertise. I’m not asking for a perfect world, but can we at least get along?

*ahem* Sorry about that… Got a bit carried away there... Back to the subject at hand. (^_^; )

-Difficulty is only mitigating the tank busters, and tank busters are not happening very often, causing a large amount of downtime

I guess this depends on who you are asking. When it comes to tanking on my Paladin, mitigating the tank busters is a very important job, but certainly not the only thing that determines the difficulty of the class nor the content.

Maintaining hate is also a difficult job. I can safely say for myself that if i really have to work to maintain my hate, then the people in the group are putting out a lot of damage and thus generating massive hate. I then really have to pay close attention who is gaining on me when it comes to Hate. This will be very difficult if you (for instance) have 2 Melee characters in the group and they both fight their own monster, instead of attacking the same target together. Based on the damage each of the DPS dish out, i need to switch between the targets and make sure that i keep up with the hate generation.

When i’m not fighting a boss in a dungeon, i barely have the time to switch over to another combo, like the TP combo and the Royal Authority combo. I have to keep spamming Flash and the Rage of Halone combo in order to keep hate.

The worst combination for me is when you have a very good Melee as well as a very good Black Mage in the group. The Melee will generate a lot of hate on 1 single mob, for which i can only keep up by spamming my Rage of Halone Combo. But, at the same time the Black Mage is AoEing the entire group, generating a lot of AoE on the remaining targets.

If i manage to keep hate with that kind of DPS Combination, i pat myself on the back saying i did a good job.

-MP regen too high from bard/mch and MP costs too low (compared to other games where resources feel tight), along with amount healed from basic skills too high relative to tank HP - e.g. Cure heals 3k when Tank HP is 10k. This means that you can heal the tank to full quickly and cheaply, causing more downtime

This also depends on the tank you are healing. For instance, my Paladin currently has 18k HP, so it would be good if the healer can dish out 3k Heals with a Cure 1. I’ve also healed a lot of dungeons and i’ve noticed is that one tank is being hit harder (with hits dealing over 4k damage) then another tank. Resulting in the fact that i have to heal him with Cure 1’s and Cure 2’s to keep him/her alive.

Although, i’m not sure what you mean by “causing more downtime” within that paragraph.

2. Content livespan is too short
Battle content only seem to last 1 or 2 patches, meaning that we only consume the current content... and there isn't much of it.
At any time, we have 2 Dungeons in Roulette? 1 Endgame raid?

Band aid fix would be to give the highest tier tomestones on most dungeons - Expert roulette dungeons aren't harder than the others (see below).
But really, it would be nice if we had something fun. It's hard to come up with content that caters to all and is fun, but I have seen it before.
(There was this old game I played where it was a large scale capture the flag pvp, with high level players getting the flag and infiltrating the enemy base outnumbered 1:20 and low level players building defenses using level independent items for the base blah blah blah.... Same thing can happen here if you don't ilvl sync large scale pvp actually you know what this is too long I will make a separate thread)

I really hope that the FFXIV is currently creating new types of (battle) content for us to participate in. But, they can go a long way by introducing something like random events within existing duties like dungeons.

For example: Bonus objectives

Dungeons are fun, but they get old pretty fast. They could really use a form of randomness to them. During the run, one or more Bonus objectives appear where you would have to perform a certain action like killing an “Elite” monster that just appeared somewhere in the dungeon. They can also make you scour the dungeon for Treasure boxes that appear randomly that contain items which will be worth your while, like upgrade items or tokens which you can spend items of your choice like glamour items, upgrade items, minions (like the Hunt/Centurion Seals). To spice things up, they can make it so that there’s a chance that the treasure box turns into a mimic or it’s a classic “Monster in a Box” and you have to kill them before getting the item.

This alone would make running dungeons a lot more fun for me.

Raids from Alex are too short in my opinion. You enter a Floor, for about 15 seconds, kill a Mini boss followed by the Main boss of the floor and *Bam!*, you’re done with a floor. Duty complete. Floor 4 even shorter. You enter the Boss area immediately upon entering the Duty and you’re finished in less than 10 minutes.

I would like to see “WoD sized” raids, where you have this big area with several trash packs, mini bosses and bosses which will take a while to clear. If you are good, you can clear it within a few hours. Progress will be saved for each boss you clear, so you can always come back later. instead of 4 separate floors. It will also get boring if you farm it multiple times in a row for drops.

I can understand why they implemented it the way they did, but they feel so short… /cry (T_T )

I would like to see things like new types of mechanics added to a dungeon, like a Gate where you need to find a key for it. This in itself isn’t new, since we have this in several dungeons which do exactly that. For instance: Tam Tara Deepcroft Normal, Copperbell Mines Normal, Thousand Maws of Toto-rak, Snowcloak, etc. We also have several dungeons where you need to kill certain mobs before the next gate opens.

What i mean is that a form a randomness can be added to it. For example, more than 1 key is needed to open up the gate to the main boss and the keys have to be found in both random chests spread out in the dungeon as well as from an Elite monster / Mini boss somewhere in the dungeon. There would be no order in which the keys have be gathered. By doing this, it would make the dungeon feel less linear.

But also other events like, clearing an objective within a certain amount of time, before a gate closes or you’re being overrun by monsters. (Something like “Assault Dungeons” from FFXI). If the Gate does close before you managed to get through, a hidden path would then be available so that the party can still progress through the dungeon.

I would also like to see the Hamlet Defense reintroduced within FFXIV, with a hint of Besieged (from FFXI), where a Hamlet is being attacked by Beastmen and if you fail to protect it, something will be stolen from the Hamlet (like NPC’s or something important like a fragment of an Aetheryte, making teleporting from/to the hamlet impossible until the item has been retrieved). That way, we can chose to defend a hamlet or go out searching for the things the Beastmen/Garleans stole from us. (I really want to raid Beastmen and Garlean fortresses with my friends)

I would also like to see a Nyzul Isle (from FFXI), where you have to work your way through a large amount of floors, where each floor has a random objective. For instance:

• Defeat all enemies
• Defeat the enemy leader (mini boss)
• Defeat the enemies from a specific family
• Activate all the switches to open the door to the next floor
• Find your way through a maze
• Bonus floor with (more) loot
• Boss floor

Nyzul Isle Investigation (FFXI)

I’m not asking to change FFXIV into a FFXI-2 game, but there are quite a few types of content build into FFXI that was really fun to play and lasted very long. The FFXIV team doesn’t have to implement the same thing into FFXIV, but can create something that is in essence the same, but has a unique FFXIV flavor to it.

3. "Hard" (In game term) is a misnomer
I think you can guess this one.
Expert roulette?
The XYZ (Hard)?
When aurum vale (not hard, not extreme) 1 shots you if you can't dodge lol
Not a huge effect (but related to 2. above), it just annoys me

The thing is, when dungeons and raids are being released, they are always balanced based on gear that is currently available. When we reached the first Level 60 dungeons with iLevel 142/145 gear, they were considerably more challenging than they are right now with our iLevel 190+ gear. Back when 2.0 was released, Amdapor Keep and Wanderer’s Palace were a “Challenge”, while people were having trouble clearing Garuda Hard Mode. When we were still doing that we running around in our AF gear.

The “Expert”-dungeons were basically the hardest dungeons (excluding Trials and Raids) we could do in the current patch. Compared to the Extreme Primal Trials and the Coil/Alexander Raids, these dungeons were still a lot easier to complete. However, these dungeons were still meant to be cleared by the majority of the player base.

The “(Hard)” dungeons were purely harders versions of their original counterparts. And in all honesty they didn’t lie about that. Copperbell Hard was considerably more difficult to clear then Copperbell Normal was back while the Normal dungeons were released.

But, while we are gearing up, every single one of these Dungeons and Trials will get easier to beat. So, since we get better gear with each patch, the older content will get easier. In order to make them artificially more difficult, they’ve introduced that Item Level Sync for these dungeons, so that we outgear these dungeons too much. But, with the vertical progression we have in this game, there’s no solution to this problem. As long as we are getting gear with better stats on them, this particular problem with remain an issue.

One other thing they can do to make content last longer, is to give it a scaling difficulty based on level and/or ilevel. Instead of placing an (Item) level sync on the players, they could instead raise the difficulty of the duty by making the enemies in there stronger.

What if SE would add a feature we currently have for another type of content. The scaling difficulty of the Leve Quests. What if they added that kind of feature to a Dungeon? In the Duty/Party Settings they can add a slider where you add levels to the monsters in the dungeon. That might be interesting, wouldn’t you agree?

Even though they said that they’ve made the open word monsters more aggressive and stronger, it still doesn’t really feel like a dangerous world out there.

I can remember a time, where we had to gather together a group of 6 people in order to successfully fight your way through an open world dungeon like Garlaige Citadel, Castle Oztroya, Castle Zvahl, etc in order to get that special weapon, spell or an item for your AF.

Those were fun times. I would love to see more of those. I really… REALLY want to raid Beastmen and Garlean fortresses with my friends for things like weapons, AF and special items.

The upcoming 3.1 patch will introduce something that reminds me of Sky. Setting out with your Airship, discovering new lands and fighting very strong enemies. I can’t wait to get my hands on that! (^_^ )

So, what i would like to see in this game to make it more exciting to play would be:

• Add random encounters/events in dungeons
• Add various content like for instance: “Nyzul Isle Investigation”, “Hamlet Defence / Besieged”, “Assault Dungeons”
• Make the world a more dangerous place with area’s where you really need to have a decent party to get through it (for instance, open world dungeons like Garlaige Citadel, Castle Oztroya and Castle Zvahl where you need to get items and/or weapons)

As you can see, i’ve given this a lot of thought and translated them into words. Let me know what you guys think.

[Valan]

Yes, i agree that there is too much focus on DPS, but mostly from the pressure placed on “me” from other players rather than the DPS Checks that SE has added to the end game content.

I’m a Paladin and it’s the class i’ve been taking to Coil since i joined the static. There are quite a few times where people would tell me that i might as well use Warrior, because it was the better tank for <Insert Random Turn here…>. However, i soldiered on. I basically learned how to tank by traversing through Coil. I’ve been laughed at for using vit gear with parry. But, i didn’t care because i firmly believed that it can be done with a Paladin.

And we did.

I’m sure as hell proud of what we’ve accomplished in this game. Even if i’m not at the same level as Lucrezia or Elysium. Those guys are extraordinary players and i applaud them for what they’ve accomplished.

I don’t care people other people think i’m a bad player because i don’t play my class the way they think it has to be played. But i am getting sick and tired of people pigeonholing a class i’ve worked my ass of to learn, just because it’s not dealing “enough” DPS.

Ever since the release of Heavensward, the threads regarding the performance of several classes was the subject of most of the people on the forums as well as Reddit. It’s perfectly fine to discuss balancing issues, if you really believe that they are performing below standard. But, the biggest question is, who determines that a class is performing below standard?

The discussions went on, changing rapidly into heated discussion, followed by raging and flaming each other who thought differently. The forum slowly turned into a war ground in which 90% of the threads became depressing to read. I can tell you that it affects the way you play the game as well and slowly starting to lose the “fun” factor.

Things have changed since the release of Heavensward. Every discussion i read on the forum boils down to DPS, in this case the lack of it. People are now being judged by their Damage output. Not just for Alexander Savage, but for everything. If a healer doesn’t DPS, (s)he’s bad. Even if the duty requires the healer to focus more on healing because of the damage the party takes. If the tank can’t hold hate of 1 mob in a decent sized group, (s)he’s bad. It doesn’t matter that every DPS is focussing on a different target which is not the main target of the tank, if the tank loses hate… (s)he’s considered to be a bad tank. If the tank doesn’t dish out “proper” DPS or is wearing VIT gear and VIT stats, (s)he’s bad. If a dungeon is not being cleared in less then 10 minutes, they are bad. If they cannot clear T9 with Echo, they are bad.

In short, if you don’t live up to their expectations, you are a bad player and subject to rude behavior.

People need to let go of these expectations. Not everyone is top level raiding material. We are human beings with various levels of skill, experience and expertise. I’m not asking for a perfect world, but can we at least get along?

This.
As a tank I agree to every word written here. Too often the people think the tank classes as a DPS with a stronger armor, but they forgot the true role of a tank: lure the enemy and survire in order to allow the DPS to safety kill the mob. everithing else is only a bonus, a good bonus but not mandatory.