The issue nobody wants to address

[Archaell]

...

I share your opinion. Let me quote myself from the other thread:

I am starting to think that we need an encounter that whould serve as a wake-up call. Bismark isn't good enough.

We need 4man trial, where healer and tank are locked in their own fight, while each of the dps has to finish dps check on their own target alone otherwise whole party wipes. Set the bar to average expected dps. We will see how many nerf threads will appear.

[Whiteroom]

I share your opinion. Let me quote myself from the other thread:

Still this would get nerfed. People would cry that the bar was set unreasonably high. It's not until people are faced with what their actual numbers are, and that their bar is unreasonably low that you would see a change.

Edit: Not that I wouldn't enjoy this mechanic and others like it. I just think it may be a waste if it will just get nerfed with the way the community is now. I think adding it after a parser is the way to go.

Unlike the original person you quoted though, I'm not for creating walls to prevent people from progressing. I'm hugely in favor of creating challanging content that pushes players to get better though, so that the game itself can progress and get more challanging.

[dank1]

Still this would get nerfed. People would cry that the bar was set unreasonably high. It's not until people are faced with what their actual numbers are, and that their bar is unreasonably low that you would see a change.

Edit: Not that I wouldn't enjoy this mechanic and others like it. I just think it may be a waste if it will just get nerfed with the way the community is now. I think adding it after a parser is the way to go.

Maybe add it as a 3rd "expert" dungeon with lets say double the esoteric gain with a much (or decent) dps check, doesnt have to be somethig where dps are left to fend for themselves but still something where people need to pull their weight. It doesnt even need to be part of a roulette and actually i'd prefer it not to be but maybe people will realize hey if I improve I can cap my eso faster.

Another idea I had was maybe a bonus for the highest dps in the group, I realize this would be unfair to healers and to an extent tanks (but not in my case, shameless brag but I tend to be the highest dps as an overgeared tank most of the time in exp dungeons) but for the sake of everyone, I guess, it'd encourage faster runs and everyone would benefit directly or indirectly from dps actually trying to perform rather than "netflix and chilling" while they run a dungeon

[Whiteroom]

Maybe add it as a 3rd "expert" dungeon with lets say double the esoteric gain with a much (or decent) dps check, doesnt have to be somethig where dps are left to fend for themselves but still something where people need to pull their weight. It doesnt even need to be part of a roulette and actually i'd prefer it not to be but maybe people will realize hey if I improve I can cap my eso faster.

Another idea I had was maybe a bonus for the highest dps in the group...

I like the ideas. However, you would probably see a lot of the underperforming dps just joining the hard dungeons, and a lot of the DF runs becoming failures, thus negating the bonus. I think until your inital problem is at least partially solved, the community can't handle these types of ideas. The only way to do your idea reasonably would be to have a dps check before entering the dungeon, or use PF. Funny thought, would DPS then become the adventurer in need for that dungeon...

As far as bonus Tomes, I've had a few thoughts on that lately, as far as the AIN bonus applies that is. On how to make it relevant. And one thing I kept coming up with is that if the bonus is too much, AINs cap out too quick, in effect making the problem worse the closer to reset. So the next thought I had was, instead of making the bonus bigger, you just make it so the bonus counts above the cap. Hell, with that you could even make the bonus smaller, and it would probably work better. You probably could even do no bonus, and just have a cap extention added.

[Welsper59]

Still this would get nerfed. People would cry that the bar was set unreasonably high. It's not until people are faced with what their actual numbers are, and that their bar is unreasonably low that you would see a change.

Edit: Not that I wouldn't enjoy this mechanic and others like it. I just think it may be a waste if it will just get nerfed with the way the community is now. I think adding it after a parser is the way to go.

Unlike the original person you quoted though, I'm not for creating walls to prevent people from progressing. I'm hugely in favor of creating challanging content that pushes players to get better though, so that the game itself can progress and get more challanging.

While it'd be nice if that were the case, I sincerely believe you (and others) actually think your peers have a reasonable sense of accountability and responsibility at all times (or at least the times you'd want them to). Them coming face to face with their numbers does next to nothing for the people you find problematic. It's just how they are. The folks that want to improve already would without it being that way sooner than later.

I'd personally prefer they just introduce a difficult tier of content that does force such mechanics upon EVERYONE. DPS needing to kill mobs before they die, tanks need to survive until help comes (this means kiting if need and using proper cooldowns for tank killer mechanics), healers need to heal themselves (or NPC targets) and learn to use their CC/snare abilities until help comes. Basically, some 4-man instances that is aimed for pre-made groups initially that breaks off into a very short solo mechanic. Let the bads be bad, there's no stopping that. Just introduce higher end content that appeases those who want content to force people to be better in situations otherwise seen as faceroll (like 4-man). Force this accountability upon them if they want to complete it.

[Malevicton]

snip

Wouldn't mind something like the Infernal Council in swtor. Was basically 8 minibosses, one for each person. 2 for heals that did high damage but had low health, 2 for tanks that had a bit more health but less damage, and 4 for dps that had the most health and least damage. They were basically each a soft-enrage solo fight designed for your role.

It was right before the last boss at the time and made a nice solo-competency check.

Would need some changes to work for ffxiv though. Positionals would be weird, as well as tuning a dps check so that a brd/mch could do it while still being challenging for the others. Something more like Maat might work better.

[Reinha]

I share your opinion. Let me quote myself from the other thread:

"I am starting to think that we need an encounter that whould serve as a wake-up call. Bismark isn't good enough.

We need 4man trial, where healer and tank are locked in their own fight, while each of the dps has to finish dps check on their own target alone otherwise whole party wipes. Set the bar to average expected dps. We will see how many nerf threads will appear."

That idea has actually been recently used in WoW, in the form of proving grounds. Basically it's an encounter where each of the 3 roles has a task to fulfill or they don't pass. Dps kill waves of enemies that don't hit back. Healers heal npc's who fight waves of enemies. Tanks fight waves of hard-hitting enemies while an npc heals them. Everyone has a timer. The only difference to your suggestion was that it's not a group dungeon, but a solo one. Why make other people wait around for that one person, after all. Proving grounds gates the WoW equivalent to DF expert dungeons, and to this day after a year the gating was introduced you can still read occasional complaints about how it's too hard.

Not going to lie. A version of PG would be amazing to have in this game. Not for the DF gating though, I don't care for that. But to test yourself by pushing up the difficulty of the encounter to earn achievements or items. For me, getting the highest dps achievement was one of the most memorable things of the latest WoW expansion.

[Welsper59]

That idea has actually been recently used in WoW, in the form of proving grounds. Basically it's an encounter where each of the 3 roles has a task to fulfill or they don't pass. Dps kill waves of enemies that don't hit back. Healers heal npc's who fight waves of enemies. Tanks fight waves of hard-hitting enemies while an npc heals them. Everyone has a timer. The only difference to your suggestion was that it's not a group dungeon, but a solo one. Why make other people wait around for that one person, after all. Proving grounds gates the WoW equivalent to DF expert dungeons, and to this day after a year the gating was introduced you can still read occasional complaints about how it's too hard.

Not going to lie. A version of PG would be amazing to have in this game. Not for the DF gating though, I don't care for that. But to test yourself by pushing up the difficulty of the encounter to earn achievements or items. For me, getting the highest dps achievement was one of the most memorable things of the latest WoW expansion.

It's on its way.

[Archaell]

It's on its way.

It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

Now if only it could also teach players a little bit of responsibility for their roles...

[Ryel]

That idea has actually been recently used in WoW, in the form of proving grounds. Basically it's an encounter where each of the 3 roles has a task to fulfill or they don't pass. Dps kill waves of enemies that don't hit back. Healers heal npc's who fight waves of enemies. Tanks fight waves of hard-hitting enemies while an npc heals them. Everyone has a timer. The only difference to your suggestion was that it's not a group dungeon, but a solo one. Why make other people wait around for that one person, after all. Proving grounds gates the WoW equivalent to DF expert dungeons, and to this day after a year the gating was introduced you can still read occasional complaints about how it's too hard.

Not going to lie. A version of PG would be amazing to have in this game. Not for the DF gating though, I don't care for that. But to test yourself by pushing up the difficulty of the encounter to earn achievements or items. For me, getting the highest dps achievement was one of the most memorable things of the latest WoW expansion.

Not gating the latest DF roulette behind the proving grounds or beginners hall equivalent that they're adding to the game defeats the entire purpose of adding one to begin with and even if it did, it still wouldn't really help the issue without a public parse tool to support it.

Here's the thing, I'm not against the addition of a PG type place that allows players to practice to try and get better, in fact i think it's a good idea but the concept doesn't work by itself. Even if 100 players come in here and claim "but it worked in WoW!" they'd be forgetting the fact that WoW allows and supports Recount, which is a public parsing addon in addition to having the proving grounds in the game.

There is no substitute for live feedback.

Let's assume that "The beginner's hall" is required to enter Expert Roulette, and let's assume that it:

A) Always level syncs to the lowest available level cap gear.
B) Is always is required to enter the newest patch released Ex roulette dungeons (as in not a one time deal) and there is a second version specifically for endgame like Alexander (normal) / Ex Primals.

What's to stop players from just not playing at that level again after they clear the Beginner's hall area? Even more likely is the event that players will just eventually learn and play to the "script" of the beginner's hall encounter and eventually get a clear and never use it / learn from it again.

Now you enter Ex roulette and you're failing DPS checks or the party is crawling along at a slow pace, you look to the DPS and they say

"Hey man I've cleared the beginner's hall and you can't prove that my DPS is low"

And you wouldn't be able to, because we still wouldn't have a public parse tool.

Even worse, if it's not gated why would they bother?

Minions? Mount rewards? Achievements? Same scenario, they'll clear the beginner's hall to get the mount or minion and not actually care to learn while doing so.

Players think adding a beginner's hall is some sort of compromise but it really isn't, a beginner's hall by itself without a public parsing tool to support it amounts to nothing more than another (potentially optional) Gold Saucer activity.

The game is heavily reliant from the ground up on DPS performing in content, yet the only tool we have that offers live feedback is a third party program that isn't officially supported by the developers.

That's an issue.