Raider to Non-Raider: an exhibition on thoughts and misconceptions

[UBERHAXED]

I've read this, and it's elitist garbage. I've cleared A3S and I still disagree with it. I see you, however, have not. So I have to wonder, why preach elitism if you are not among the elite? Seems silly and delusional.

I don't recall claiming that I was a good player (read every quote carefully). However, what was presented in the article was not elitism, but the bare truth. That's like saying why agree with Donald Trump's policies if you aren't a billionaire and English contract law if you aren't English. It doesn't take much to realize a sound argument, even from the other side. On the same note, it doesn't take much to realize a bad argument. But I guess you like being a rebel since you can't agree with policies and groups you aren't a part of. Must be a hipster thing or something.

[KarstenS]

I've seen loads of testimonials talking about how FCoB was not hard enough

I remember these threads. The message was: Are DPS checks all what they got to make Final Coil difficult?

(This thread got opened just some days right after the release of Final Coil)

Noticed something? FCoB had DPS checks. Something that ppl complain in AS while they say difficulty of FCoB was fine.

Whats happened at the end? We got more than DPS checks. Exactly what ppl requested.

[FeliAiko]

"Coil is too easy even though I've only done the easiest turns so far" - OP

"I haven't done Final Coil yet, but..." - Others.

Definitely a representation of the whole raiding community wanting harder raids right there...

[KarstenS]

"Coil is too easy even though I've only done the easiest turns so far" - OP

He cleared T10 & T11 and got though half of T12 within the first ID after release. Isn't that enough to complain about when we are talking about the "hardest endgame" raid that was fresh at this time?

[HorseBoots]

I remember these threads. The message was: Are DPS checks all what they got to make Final Coil difficult?

(This thread got opened just some days right after the release of Final Coil)

Noticed something? FCoB had DPS checks. Something that ppl complain in AS while they say difficulty of FCoB was fine.

Whats happened at the end? We got more than DPS checks. Exactly what ppl requested.

So instead we got a fight were the server infrastructure is just as much of a threat than the boss itself and a final boss who's mechanics were created with just egregious oversights that players have discovered ways to completely circumvent them.

In SCoB literally every single wipe I ever had I could point out exactly why it happened, who was responsible, and what needed to be addressed in order to fix it. "DPS was too low on the slime." "Masako, you didn't aim your voice away from group." "We missed a mine" "Oh meteors was too close."

SCoB had PLENTY of RNG associated with its fights, but I had plenty of control over it. No matter the situation I could call out a method to deal with it, and when we die I could almost always say "Oh that was on us." With the exception of a handful of extreme cases, even if a mechanic was failed to be preformed properly you still had hope to finish with a clear if you kept your cool. I can't count the amount of Nael kills I had from the jaws of defeat.

Due to the nature of A3S's RNG and the way plenty of it's mechanics are coded you can and will have plenty of wipes where you just go "well the way it came out there wasn't really much I could do." When you fail pretty much any of these mechanics you are almost guaranteed a TPK.

Tank got digititus'd? He's a dead man walking. DPS got digititus? Good luck beating the hand of pain check, or the liquid gaol if you're that late in the fight. Slime got to the edge, but you still managed to keep people from dying from the damage? Well too bad! You also gave Living Liquid a permanent damage up! If Cascade or the first x6 Splash wave doesn't kill you, I'm sure the second one will. All of which served within about 4-6 second windows, with plenty associated with plenty of actual travel (But don't touch anyone :^))

Since the game rebooted itself with 2.0 there are two design philosophies that have always rang true with the game's community. 1. A fight that is both difficult but also tuned in a way that allows a bad run to be recoverable with enough cool-headed determination will always be praised as good game design. And 2. A fight with unrecoverable fail-states have always been loathed within the game's community.

Alexander Savage's fights take 2 years of player feedback and development team experience and throws about 80% of all of it into the trash and instead serves an underwhelming first half and an over tuned latter half riddled with RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG with 6 second windows and arbitrary gear gates to pad out the entire experience because the development team thought it would be more impressive to create 2 bad, overturned fights to drag out the experience so they can gloat over "how long it took the best of the best to clear it" rather than just creating 2 good, quality fights that are actually praised by it's community.

Even if you somehow find the length it takes for people to clear bad content interesting, the first two clears weren't even cleared in the intended manner, instead exploiting Square's netcode.

So now we have this thread that has 300+ replies in less than two weeks and daily complaints over on the subreddit.

tl;dr: This raid is poopybutt.

[RiceisNice]

I don't recall claiming that I was a good player (read every quote carefully).

It's your perspective of not having cleared A3S (or not even stepping into it) versus a perspective of someone who has cleared it. Who has a bit more credibility when it comes to talking about A3S?

However, what was presented in the article was not elitism,

Regardless of it's intention, it was presented with elitism. It was overflowing with ways just to berate players and downplay their achievements, on top of setting a rather high standard of what constitutes as "good" (which again, is a subjective thing). When you start valuing your own definition of whats good or not against the norm and hold it people, that's elitism right there . Or we can keep talking semanics on whether or not its elitism (part of the article is practically forcing their own viewpoint of what's "good" and not and using it to label the players, regardless of what it is)

It doesn't take much to realize a sound argument, even from the other side. On the same note, it doesn't take much to realize a bad argument.

Likewise to you when do things like...

But I guess you like being a rebel since you can't agree with policies and groups you aren't a part of. Must be a hipster thing or something.

Most of your arguments lately have only been direct attacks or attacking the credibility of someone else, while supporting your own credibility (which can be hypocritical at best; you say world firsts are just "random people" but are willing to accept other random people without even a source, so this might as well be confirmation bias on your end or worse, the same tangent as "the players who said FCoB was too easy"

I remember these threads. The message was: Are DPS checks all what they got to make Final Coil difficult?

(This thread got opened just some days right after the release of Final Coil)

Noticed something? FCoB had DPS checks. Something that ppl complain in AS while they say difficulty of FCoB was fine.

Whats happened at the end? We got more than DPS checks. Exactly what ppl requested.

The thing is, when you keep saying "people wanted X", it's hard to quanitify that statement. We don't damn well know for sure if the very same people are in this topic complaining about the difficulty. But this is a whole mess of cogs that SE needs to carefully play with.

The top 1% has cleared FCoB within the first two weeks. People outside of that raid say its too easy. Should their words be taken for value? Likewise, what about when the 1% people who have cleared it within the first week said it was too easy? You take those statements from two different perspective (at least, I hope they realize it's two different perspectives) and see what each player group wants out of it. On top of that, I'm sure they have numerical data to support clear rates at the time of release, how it increases over time, and what the final clear rate was before and after echo was introduced.

[Avidria]

I don't recall claiming that I was a good player (read every quote carefully). However, what was presented in the article was not elitism, but the bare truth. That's like saying why agree with Donald Trump's policies if you aren't a billionaire and English contract law if you aren't English. It doesn't take much to realize a sound argument, even from the other side. On the same note, it doesn't take much to realize a bad argument. But I guess you like being a rebel since you can't agree with policies and groups you aren't a part of. Must be a hipster thing or something.

Elitism is less of an argument and more of an attitude. That arrogant "I'm better than you because I did x, git gud" type of attitude. That article you linked is riddled with that type of arrogance and condescension, to the point where the author's original point seems to be lost.

The author actually does a better job of explaining their point and outlining his/her intended message and audience in the comment section underneath than in the actual article. It still comes off as a bit arrogant, but it's more reasonable and puts emphasis on working to improve rather than just saying "you're not as good as you think you are" and little else.

My hope in this post is for those players to realize that being good isn't something you "are" by default - being good requires you to work for it, and to be able to try your best constantly.
One thing I did want to explore was the difference between Alexander and Coil, and to explain why it is that players who are struggling now managed to do Coil without many problems.
The two raids are intrinsically different, but are often compared with each other - I wanted to point out the difference, and that being good at one does not automatically make you either good at the other, or a good player in general.
I really didn't have a firm idea of it when I started writing, so in a way, writing this helped me to crystallize my ideas - in a way, it was for my own benefit as well. After writing this, I'm more confident in explaining why it is that a good player from Coil-days cannot progress through A3S.

^from the author.

[Renault]

But I guess you like being a rebel since you can't agree with policies and groups you aren't a part of. Must be a hipster thing or something.

Not sure if you even read my post or checked my lodestone, but I have been killing A3S every week for 5 weeks now... So it IS technically a group I belong to. By the OP's standards, I belong to his definition of "good", but I still think he's a pompous ass. Also, defining his opinions as "policies"? I don't really understand.

[zosia]

Most of your arguments lately have only been direct attacks or attacking the credibility of someone else, while supporting your own credibility (which can be hypocritical at best; you say world firsts are just "random people" but are willing to accept other random people without even a source, so this might as well be confirmation bias on your end or worse, the same tangent as "the players who said FCoB was too easy"

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up right there. It's the entire problem. Players like uberhaxed, similar to Donald Trump (*snicker*), make assertions and act as if they understand some greater depth about topics they are not experienced in. They draw wild conjecture and mold it into a malformed though that happens to leak out of their brain in one manner or another.

Rather than valuing the feedback of a very discontent, unsatisfied portion of the player base, people like uberhaxed go into white knight / apologist mode. I remember when WoW made moves like that in cata and they lost how many subs before that xpac ended?

How about LoTR online? They stopped making content for raiders in general and the game slipped into absolute obscurity. That's whats going on in this game now, the general raid population has no real meaningful content. The absolute best argument that can be made is that population has a1s and a2s. Two bosses for roughly 10% of the population over five months is not a way to sustain a healthy raid community.

If you think people will stay subbed for two bosses over five months, pass me that pipe, you must be hitting some really good stuff!

Not sure if you even read my post or checked my lodestone, but I have been killing A3S every week for 5 weeks now... So it IS technically a group I belong to. By the OP's standards, I belong to his definition of "good", but I still think he's a pompous ass. Also, defining his opinions as "policies"? I don't really understand.

Yup, same here, on a4s and that reddit thread is garbage. I's literally the "git gud" argument taken to an exhaustive extreme. It was a devises post that only served as a wedge in the raiding community. I am on of the top 2% and I think there needs to be a raid for the majority of raiders, not the minority.

[cgbspender]

*gives everyone a cookie*