The time has come to get rid of enrage timers

[Darrcyphfeid]

I think the opposite should happen. They need to add DPS checks and hard enrages to more casual content, like the Alliance Raids, so that people are encouraged to perform well.

When Weeping City came out, during the first week, I solo'd Calofisteri down from 5% on WAR. It wasn't even hard; she hit like a wet noodle and her telegraphs were easily dealt with. Things like that shouldn't be possible. It's dumb.

[RiyahArp]

I think the opposite should happen. They need to add DPS checks and hard enrages to more casual content, like the Alliance Raids, so that people are encouraged to perform well.

You can't do this, because unlike savage or ex trials, casual content is designed to be run a lot more, often daily. If you add decent dps checks, and the failure or abandon rate gets high enough, people are going to just pass on doing it if they have to do it for months on end. The only way this would work imo would be to make everything have weekly lockouts, so you only need one clear to get the reward and extra clears can be to help or for fun.

Remove the enrage timers and you remove a large part of the impetus behind everyone trying to push out as much dps as possible.

You could only do this if you severely limited combat raising. The enrage is there to punish too many deaths, and then to punish low dps. You'd have to move the focus to the deaths just triggering a hard reset and forcing you out of the arena beyond so many lives. Idk if this is better or not.

[Darrcyphfeid]

You can't do this, because unlike savage or ex trials, casual content is designed to be run a lot more, often daily. If you add decent dps checks, and the failure or abandon rate gets high enough, people are going to just pass on doing it if they have to do it for months on end.

Bull. I'm in no way advocating for "orange flogging or bust!" here, I'm seriously just saying that the game should encourage some bare minimum of personal responsibility. Almost nothing in this game outside of the EX Primals and Savage raids are actually designed with 4 or 8 people in mind. Do you know how many times my healer has dropped dead to the first Voice attack from Chimera in Cutter's Cry and we've proceeded to clear it? How many dungeons I've tanked the entirety of on a DPS job? How many times I've cleared Titan HM with only 2 or 3 people standing? I've had a Thok ast Thok clear that took 13 minutes because for the last quarter or so there was only a tank, a healer and a DPS. I've tanked Sirensong Sea on WHM up through just beyond the second boss. That, again, I could have solo'd any arbitrary percentage of the final boss of Weeping City once her DPS check transition phase was cleared?

You wouldn't have problems with enrages in EX Primals and Savage content if half or more of the party in virtually every other type of content couldn't just be carried through to the endgame.

[RiyahArp]

You wouldn't have problems with enrages in EX Primals and Savage content if half or more of the party in virtually every other type of content couldn't just be carried through to the endgame.

Problem is people won't stay for that. They go into titan hard, and if they see one or two wipes they are gone. When royal menagerie first came out, I think like 25% or more of runs ended in vote abandon, because people got sick of wiping to it. Everyone talks about making stuff harder, but no one is going to like it being harder. You'd have to change the model to be like ex content in general; you have a learning party, a clear party, and then you do it a relatively small time if you actually need the weapon from it, or a large time if you want everything possible you can get from it. You can't make the whole game like that and force people to run multiple instances of it per day; you'd get enough wipes and abandons it would get old fast.

[Darrcyphfeid]

You'd have to change the model to be like ex content in general; you have a learning party, a clear party, and then you do it a relatively small time if you actually need the weapon from it, or a large time if you want everything possible you can get from it.

You're coming at it from the wrong angle. I'm not saying you just walk up to the closest newbie and flog them with a carp. That would be hilarious, briefly, but ultimately solves nothing. It's a gradual process.

You don't, for example, take Cutter's Cry Chimera and give him all of the mechanics from A Relic Reborn. Rather, you keep him the same mechanically while significantly increasing his outgoing auto-attack damage. You make it so that I cannot, regardless of my skill or gear, survive against him for long without my healer. On any tank job. You also add hard enrages on Titan HM and Ravana HM, in addition to their already existing DPS checks (which should be bumped up a bit more so that two competent DPS out of four total can't carry), so that people aren't sitting there for 10+ minutes waiting for another chance to do the fight and are actively encouraged to participate.

Would the game lose players? Maybe. Would people whine and rage quit more often? For a time. But let's be real here, if you willfully refuse to push your buttons and do even 60~65% of your job's full potential at any given level you're not really playing the game anyway. And that's why things like Final Steps of Faith and Royal Managerie were kind of awful experiences in DR Trials at first anyway; the game didn't provide stepping stones of difficulty to get people into shape and instead just threw them to the wolves after letting them be carried for ages (by nerfing anything with fangs previous into the ground).

[RiyahArp]

YYou don't, for example, take Cutter's Cry Chimera and give him all of the mechanics from A Relic Reborn. Rather, you keep him the same mechanically while significantly increasing his outgoing auto-attack damage. You make it so that I cannot, regardless of my skill or gear, survive against him for long without my healer. On any tank job. You also add hard enrages on Titan HM and Ravana HM, in addition to their already existing DPS checks (which should be bumped up a bit more so that two competent DPS out of four total can't carry), so that people aren't sitting there for 10+ minutes waiting for another chance to do the fight and are actively encouraged to participate.

He has weak auto attack damage because is his aoe attacks are devastating if you mess them up even with max ilvl. If you up the auto attack damage, both the healer and the tank will not be able to make a mistake. Especially since one attack paralyzes. The side effect is that he can be kited due to low aa damage if you are a vet, but you're more or less increasing the difficulty a lot more than you think, and you aren't considering other things.

Like Ravana. You add a hard enrage past the butterflies. Problem is that its trivial to actually reach any realistic enrage in that fight due to mistakes. A lot of first timers get knocked off the platform after "flies"because rav is the first reoccurence of that, and once they are off, they are out of the fight. If you get two of them, grats, restart. If you get those two dead twice, now you only have one dps in terms of output for a minute, so unless you make it a very gentle enrage, wipe. And if the purpose of this is to teach DPS to play better, you have to make an enrage that kills you when two dps are raise sick the full amount, otherwise its still carrying by everyone else. So the enrage will be tighter than you think imo.

And anyways, again, you do this, people are going treat them more like ex parties and just leave after a bad wipe or two unless its specifically learning for them and not "farm" i.e. roulettes for tomes. people will be more like "they hit enrage, we can't beat this" unless the enrage is so generous it can be overcome easily. That's pretty killer for leveling and early content.

[Kamatsu]

You're coming at it from the wrong angle. I'm not saying you just walk up to the closest newbie and flog them with a carp. That would be hilarious, briefly, but ultimately solves nothing. It's a gradual process.

You don't, for example, take Cutter's Cry Chimera and give him all of the mechanics from A Relic Reborn. Rather, you keep him the same mechanically while significantly increasing his outgoing auto-attack damage. You make it so that I cannot, regardless of my skill or gear, survive against him for long without my healer. On any tank job. You also add hard enrages on Titan HM and Ravana HM, in addition to their already existing DPS checks (which should be bumped up a bit more so that two competent DPS out of four total can't carry), so that people aren't sitting there for 10+ minutes waiting for another chance to do the fight and are actively encouraged to participate.

Would the game lose players? Maybe. Would people whine and rage quit more often? For a time. But let's be real here, if you willfully refuse to push your buttons and do even 60~65% of your job's full potential at any given level you're not really playing the game anyway. And that's why things like Final Steps of Faith and Royal Managerie were kind of awful experiences in DR Trials at first anyway; the game didn't provide stepping stones of difficulty to get people into shape and instead just threw them to the wolves after letting them be carried for ages (by nerfing anything with fangs previous into the ground)

Here's the thing a lot of people who push for harder content for everyone, or push's for EX/Savage mechanics be put into normal/casual content, seem to miss - most people who play this game (and most other MMO's for that matter) are casual players who don't have the time or inclination to 'git gud' or 'learn to be better'. These people have 30-90 minutes a day/2-days/week to play and just want to log in and play without having to stress, worry about hard-to-play mechanics or such. These are people that will leave a game if their casual content becomes too hard for them to casually beat, they won't go to forums, reddit, guides, etc to try and learn how to play better, they won't seek FC's / LS's / etc to try and improve... they will just up and quit the game.

I have seen what happens when an MMO game company listens to people calling for all content, including the main/casual story content to be made harder - the game had a population exodus. Classic example is Guild Wars 2 - many people claimed the base game was way, way too easy and cried and cried for the whole game to be made harder. ANet listened to the forum posters crying for everything to be made harder and made their expansion Heart of Thorns way, way harder - virtually everything was group focused, monsters were closer and had lots of CC... basically unless you travelled in a group / zerg you were not going to be able to get through the games base story, get hero points to unlock skills and classes, etc - if you were a casual player you were doomed. After the launch of the game the forums were filled with complaints about how hard the expansion was, how casual player unfriendly... and after a week or 2 the forums filled with threads complaining about how there was no-one on the maps, that people were struggling to complete events as no-one was playing the game anymore.

ANet suffered a 67% drop in revenue after the launch of HoT expansion. All because they made the casual / story content harder and more like what those wanting hard content wanted. After a while they came out and said this was a mistake, and that they shouldn't have made the casual / story / easy-to-access-parts as hard as they did and nerfed these parts quite a lot - so much so that most of the expansions zones, maps, hero points, etc could be done by a casual player.

Am I saying all content in FFXIV should be made casual? NO! There does still need to be harder-than-normal content for players who like and want to play content. Take the current-content Extreme & Savage fight, and tinker with their mechanics and such as needed to make the fight's harder/easier as required - ie if ppl are clearing the 'meant to be hard' stuff too quickler/easily then make it harder, and if no-one's clearing it even after weeks/months after launching then make them easier. However, leave the older and/or casual and/or story content alone - leave that to the casual's who want to play. Cuz if you make it harder, they will leave... they will not 'git gud' or 'learn to play'.

And as for the "if you're not doing the maximum dps/tanking/healing you're not really playing"... I'll use a FFXIV comeback - "you don't pay my sub". And they might not be playing to a min/max'ers standards, but they are still playing the game... they are playing to have fun, relaxe from their work/family/etc obligations and don't care about trying to maximize their classes potential.. as long as they can press buttons, do decently well, kill/heal/tank things and not die too much...then they are happy, havbing fun and will continue to play. Moment that stops, they'll move onto any number of other games that offer them easy casual fun.
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One thing that maybe could be done with the older content - such as ARR & HW dungeons & trials - is look at the level and gear synch settings. Because right now even with the synch'ing, these are all pretty much cakewalks due to overgearing... and it's usually only mechanics which kill people or threaten wipes. Maybe SE could look at tinkering with that so players stats and such are synched at a slightly lower level than they currently are - this would encourage better playing, while still not making the fights so hard as to discourage casual players from doing the content. They would likely need to keep tinkering with the stats & such till an 'optimum' level is found... but it's something I'd like to see them do

[Nhadaly]

snip

Raiding isnt meant for those kind of people, raiding EX/Savage requires time to learn your class(which isnt rocket science) and do mechanics while pushing out average dps at least to clear enrage, people whos mindset is "i dont have time to learn and work together with a group of 8" shouldnt be raiding, this isnt meant as an insult, but thats how raiding is, it requires effort(and not much) and some time, remember that you can clear that content anytime you want, you dont have to do it while its relavant, you can wait until you vastly overgear it.

[Darrcyphfeid]

And as for the "if you're not doing the maximum dps/tanking/healing you're not really playing"... I'll use a FFXIV comeback - "you don't pay my sub".

Do the words reading comprehension mean anything to you?

Try reading what I wrote again, friend. 60~65% of maximum potential =/= maximum potential.

I didn't read most of what you wrote, I just skimmed and saw that. If you can kneejerk, then so can I.

[Selova]

most people who play this game are casual players who don't have the time or inclination to 'git gud' or 'learn to be better'. These people have 30-90 minutes a day/2-days/week to play and just want to log in and play without having to stress, worry about hard-to-play mechanics or such. These are people that will leave a game if their casual content becomes too hard for them to casually beat, they won't go to forums, reddit, guides, etc to try and learn how to play better, they won't seek FC's / LS's / etc to try and improve... they will just up and quit the game.

This is something I've wanted to address for a while because it seems people like to toss around a certain word, and not only that but, twist it to fit their personal narrative. The term "Casual" in MMO's, only refers to the amount of time you are able to put into the game, It has absolutely nothing to do with what you do with that time or how you go about using that time.


Generalizing all players who can't put a lot of time into the game as players who are unable to complete endgame content because of a lack of skill and/or interest has nothing to do with being a casual player, all that is is a bad player or just someone that isn't interested in that type of content and has no relevance on how much time they can or can't spend on the game. There are plenty of endgame raiders that complete challenging content that have just as much time, if not less than your average casual player.


This is why this "casual player" argument holds no weight as a debate tactic. People constantly twist the word according to what their narrative is, instead of actually knowing what the word even means. Being a casual player doesn't mean that you are unable to complete content or push your character to it's maximum potential, all that is is a player who either has no desire to complete it due to lack of interest or someone that isn't good enough, both scenarios have nothing to do with being a casual player. Please stop using this word incorrectly.