The time has come to get rid of enrage timers

[Kamatsu]

I play less than 4 hours a week. I cleared all of Omega Savage. Limited time is not an excuse for minimal effort.

I was using 'limited time' as one example of what people call/dub/consider as being "casual" - you are correct in that limited time doesn't always mean limited effort/knowledge/ability. However there are those who WILL use their limited time to justify not looking up guides, clear video's, etc - I've seen them in virtually every MMO I've played. Whether or not that is a justified opinion/attitude all depends on each person - as some will find it justified, while others will not (like you for instance, since you obviously wish to try and improve as much as you can even with limited time to play).

On a personal note - I understand where they are coming from, but I also don't agree with it. Take FFXIV for instance - most dungeon/raid video guides are 5-7 minutes long... one view will give you enough information to have at least an idea of the mechanics of each boss so you can act accordingly. I consider myself a 'casual', sometimes I have very limited time... but regardless of time I always try and ensure my rotation is as best as I can, that I'm trying to hit positionals whenever possible, trying to not get hit by AoE, etc. I also take the time to read over a dungeon/raid's boss mechanics briefly and/or watch a video before doing it.

Can you try and link some information to this? I scoured GW2 forums, reddit, and google and found no evidence of this. I also don't play the game, but I imagine something as bold as that would have been captured somewhere.

I got the data from NCSoft's earnings reports: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx

Guild Wars 2 had a big spike of earnings leading up to, and including, the release quarter of Heart of Thrones Expansion - It released in the 4th Quarter of 2015.

3rd Qtr 2015 - 20,699
4th Qtr 2015 - 37,311
1st Qtr 2016 - 30,557
2nd Qtr 2016 - 15,894

When you look over GW2's financial history, it was generally always on a downward slide (as one would expect), however it had never suffered such a massive 6 month loss of revenue previously. Going from the high of HoT's launch to 2nd Qtr 2016 was the single biggest loss of revenue ever suffered. It dropped the income to a point lower than had ANet not released the expansion and let their revenue slide at the average rate it was decreasing each Qtr, that's how bad the financial backlash was - had they done so, revenue would have likely been around ~17-18K, not 15-16K (based upon average revenue loss over whole game life, avg over past year and current trending downrate).

I'm not surprised you can't find talk about this - I was actively reading the GW2 forums & reddit during this time, and they were filled to the brim with "ANet Defense Squad" - people defending ANet religiously, attacking any and every negative post, telling ppl to leave or "just use party finder", etc. In all the "This game is too hard" or "where are the people" threads I saw the same people spamming them with "I find the game easy, git gud" or "use party finder" / "I see lots of ppl" type of responses.

I can't comment about their latest expansion, Path of Fire, since NCSoft have not released the 4th Qtr 2017 earnings report yet. So no idea what the loss of revenue has been like - they did have an upswing in revenue for it's release (expected), but it was nowhere near the upswing as happened with HoT. It went from 13,557 up to 20,145 - a jump of 148.59% vs 180.25% from HoT, so confidence in PoF is definitely lower. However it's also a lot easier expansion from what I've read, and does a lot of things differently & more "base game player" friendly (ie easier, bigger maps, less annoying mobs, not gating story behind group-only events, etc)... so it will be interesting to see what it's 4th Qtr 2017 revenue was. Obviously to make a proper comparison with HoT's loss would mean waiting for 1st Qtr 2018, so we can review a 6 month change for each.
--------------------

In regards to the OP - I have to disagree with removing enrage timers. These are needed for dps check's... and just so people can't sit doing piddly all and clear the content without trying. Rather than dumbing down all content, or making everything harder, I wish they would bring in more tutorials and ways of teaching players how to actually play in-game... or decent ways to practice rotations or such.

Stuff like the Stone, Sea that got added in the end of Heavensward is a good example of this - it has post's that you can get called down which have the hp of whatever boss/setting you choose and thus you can then see what you're dps is like vs them. I wish something like this was added into the game & story earlier and pushed players to it - say by adding it as part of the requirement to rank up in a Grand Company... that you have to defeat a boss post of whatever Primal that region faces in X time (ie Ifrit for Immortal Flames). Add in a npc in every place the Scions setup their home/base that ports you to this area... and have the MSQ point you to this training region whenever facing a primal / major Boss that is "known" to the scions in some way.

Can also add in rooms/area's that do mechanic training - such as dodging AoE effect's from each different bosses. IE like the outer/ then inner AoE of the 'Book" fight in Gubal Library, or the raide-wide curving slash AoE from the last boss in Crystal Towers Labyrinth, etc. Point players to this training again via both the MSQ and Grand Companies, make it more accessable earlier... to give those who would like to try and improve themselves and/or learn different mechanics a way to do so that doesn't then effect other players (since right now the only way to practice / improve vs mechanics is in fights... where you can/will effect others).

Yes I know that the Hall of Novice exist's, and that the MSQ point's you to it right before the 1st dungeon. But you're not required to do it, and it really only teach's a bare basic's of dealing with AoE and such... and doesn't let you practice fights vs boss mechanics or such.

[Akor]

On the one hand they say that there shouldn't be this DPS min/maxing meta that pushes speed and lower clear times, but on the other they push a game design that encourages DPS min/maxing in order to succeed. Either the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, or SE is full of it.

Two things: first: its JP mindset is telling them not to take risk for saying healers should not just heal but dps secondly: while they want to ppl to do dps in savage. Theres your answer. And this goes many ingame decision they are making: housing, balance issues etc.

[loreleidiangelo]

I wish more fights had "soft enrages" rather than frustrating wipes at 1% because of "just barely not good enough". I'm also okay with DPS checks, but always having them in the form of hard enrage is a little uninspired - why not more things like A3S back in the day with the hands? That was a neat mechanic. Just saying "you're done at this many minutes into the fight" is kinda lazy.

I think there are ways to make sure people are doing adequate DPS without always putting arbitrary timers on fights.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Disagree, anyone who over simplifies things (he basically said the entire game is missile command) and brings up min percentile logs as proof a class is OP is not going to get the benefit of the doubt from me. It would be different if he approached it in a different way but he was pretty much indirectly making fun of people and said that we're "defending non challenging content" by not wanting enrages removed. Maybe if he approached it in a different way people wouldn't be discountinghim so readily. That's just me though. (I'm talking about Bobs).

Half of the games mechanics actually FEEL like missile command to me. As far as SB goes, I've cleared the entirety of Deltascape Savage and half of Sigmascape Savage already (in pugs) and all EX's playing this game 4 hours a week. I wish I had a static for UCoB, because I simply don't want to invest the time to learn it in pugs. I'm also a previous top 20 US WoW raider. I always hated 18-24 minute boss fights in WoW and I will hate them here, especially considering how FF14's encounter design is considerably more punishing than WoWs.

Just because I haven't done UCoB doesn't mean I don't have any insight into what it would be like. I've watched streams, I've read guides, I've analyzed the mechanics, and I've done similar fights in other games. These all afford me some insight, definitely not as much as someone who has cleared, but to say it offers NONE? That's a ridiculous notion. That's why I don't advocate for blanket disregard and instead advocate for targeted rebuttals in order to discredit his POV.

Now that you have some insight into my perspective, hopefully that allows some credibility for discussion on Bob's behalf. Even though HE hasn't cleared/set foot, some of his points have merit and are worth discussing.

Excuse you, but I never told anyone to "get lost" so don't put words in my mouth. If you notice my post DID ask him a question: "how can you think that way?" and basically explained that from my point of view his stance makes no logical sense to me. So, that's interesting... didn't I do what you asked? He has simply not replied.

Dial it down a notch Miste ^_^. I did not personally attack you, nor did I put words in your mouth. I simply iterated a more direct point that you and other posters made.

I did see that you asked a question and I am glad you did. As I suspected of course it was ignored, much like mine was as well.

My "see above" was in relation to you saying that expect someone to have experienced something prior to commenting, to which I vehemently disagreed and firmly believe that does the discussion more harm than good. I previously cited my reasoning for this analysis, and as always are welcome to rebuttal. You can see above in this post in my response to @Vaer for additional clarification.

Thing is though naturally other people are going to call you out on opinions which have no base. Like if you told someone "I hate Sushi" and they are like "Well, have you tried any of it?" and if you answer "No, none." ...do you really think that person is going to take you seriously? Chances are they'll probably say something along the lines of "Well how can you hate something you haven't tried?"

This is a great example that further supports my point. If you dismiss the person (i.e. not take them seriously) you never learn WHY they hate something they never tried Vs. asking why they hate something they never tried.

To be fair, it’s not a perceived lack of experience; Bobs has said that he hasn’t done anything past V2S; since he hasn’t cleared Neo, it’s safe to assume that he’s never set foot into Ultimate. He also equated Savage fights to a game of “Asteroids” in another thread, yet has only seemed to do the two most easiest of the fights. Hence why everyone keeps saying things like “If it’s so easy, go clear Ultimate” and “You have no experience, so how can you speak on the difficulty/state of the content”.

To which I actually in a way agree with. That has a lot to do with encounter design decisions FF14 employs and I've long thought is an excellent discussion point. I've actually cleared Neo, half of Sigmascape Savage, and all EXs. I have not set foot into Ultimate, but I've done similar fights in other games, and I've watched streams, discussed with people who have participated, read guides, etc.

I'm all for making Bob's defend his viewpoints. What I am not for is dismissing them entirely.

I have no Rival Wings experience; that doesn’t give me any sort of perspective to judge or make comments about the current state of the content. By equivalent, Bobs has no experience in Ultimate Savage; that doesn’t give him any sort of perspective to judge or make comments about the state of it.

So you have 0 insight into your job or how it works in PVP? You've never played a single PVP match in FF14, or any game? You've never watched a video or a stream or read any reddit/OF posts about it? You have nothing at all?

I'm surprised you of all people take such a hard line stance. I'll be honest I expected better.

I got the data from NCSoft's earnings reports:

I'm not surprised you can't find talk about this - I was actively reading the GW2 forums & reddit during this time, and they were filled to the brim with "ANet Defense Squad" - people defending ANet religiously, attacking any and every negative post, telling ppl to leave or "just use party finder", etc. In all the "This game is too hard" or "where are the people" threads I saw the same people spamming them with "I find the game easy, git gud" or "use party finder" / "I see lots of ppl" type of responses.

You made a claim that their revenue dropped massively as a result of a change of difficulty across the curve, but nothing you've linked indicates that. That's my point. It's very obvious that it dropped and we have the data to verify that, but what I want to know was how and why you know for a fact it was due to making content more difficult. Nothing you provide supplements that statement.

I wish more fights had "soft enrages" rather than frustrating wipes at 1% because of "just barely not good enough". I'm also okay with DPS checks, but always having them in the form of hard enrage is a little uninspired - why not more things like A3S back in the day with the hands? That was a neat mechanic. Just saying "you're done at this many minutes into the fight" is kinda lazy.

I think there are ways to make sure people are doing adequate DPS without always putting arbitrary timers on fights.

The A3S hands were not a soft enrage. They were a hard enrage. If you failed to pull together/away you wiped instantly. If you missed the DPS check you wiped instantly. If I am wrong about this let me know, it's been a long time since I've set foot in A3S.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

I'll be the one to defend Hyo Min there and say that jobs, as of Stormblood, have been greatly changed to work differently in PvP than they do in PvE, not entirely for the better. And given how widely people hate PvP as if it's a mark of pride among the community, only those who actively WANT to PvP seek out the information on it. On top of that, nothing beats practical experience. Even if you've seen the job played, that doesn't mean you can play it to that same level from that alone. I might perhaps make PvP MCH look easy (and in fairness, it's a bit braindead in comparison to 3.x PvP MCH), but I've seen and defeated plenty of other would-be MCHs in PvP, attracted by its flash and damage.

[Vaer]

Half of the games mechanics actually FEEL like missile command to me. As far as SB goes, I've cleared the entirety of Deltascape Savage and half of Sigmascape Savage already (in pugs) and all EX's playing this game 4 hours a week. I wish I had a static for UCoB, because I simply don't want to invest the time to learn it in pugs. I'm also a previous top 20 US WoW raider. I always hated 18-24 minute boss fights in WoW and I will hate them here, especially considering how FF14's encounter design is considerably more punishing than WoWs.

Just because I haven't done UCoB doesn't mean I don't have any insight into what it would be like. I've watched streams, I've read guides, I've analyzed the mechanics, and I've done similar fights in other games. These all afford me some insight, definitely not as much as someone who has cleared, but to say it offers NONE? That's a ridiculous notion. That's why I don't advocate for blanket disregard and instead advocate for targeted rebuttals in order to discredit his POV.

Now that you have some insight into my perspective, hopefully that allows some credibility for discussion on Bob's behalf. Even though HE hasn't cleared/set foot, some of his points have merit and are worth discussing.

Some mechanics sure, but in harder fights you still have to play a job properly in addition to coordinating with 7 other people. Calling it literally missile command is really oversimplifying it. Blanket disregard sort of happens when you start making fun of people and try to defend your viewpoint with silly data (claiming a job is OP using min percentile logs) that makes no sense.

Sorry I still disagree, if I haven't done Ultimate I'm not going to pretend like I'm qualified to talk about the difficulty of it since I'm not IMO and I've cleared most of the content in this game from the beginning. That's just me though. My ego ain't that big.

[Miste]

Dial it down a notch Miste ^_^. I did not personally attack you, nor did I put words in your mouth. I simply iterated a more direct point that you and other posters made.

It seems you have made an assumption that I felt personally attacked? I did not feel that way so there is nothing to dial down.

You did kind of put words in my mouth since you quoted me then directed me to you explaining that people shouldn't say "you have no experience so get lost"

So if I misunderstood then maybe you should have been more clear with your response to me instead of simply quoting and reusing a reply to someone else for me as well?

There is a difference from having an opinion on something about the fight and actually claiming said fight is easy without having done it.

So I don't think you are fully understanding me. You seem to think I am dismissing him entirely if I go based on what you replied to Hyomin, but you've definitely not understood me then. The thing I was dismissing was him calling the fights "not challenging".

He claimed the fights were "not challenging". Whether you played other games with similar fights, read guides, watched videos, is irrelevant to my point.

My point was that there is a difference between theory and practice. You can't call a task easy based on theory alone...that would be ignorant in most cases. In a lot of cases reading about or watching someone else perform a task is a lot different from performing said task yourself.

I mean to use the piano example my boyfriend used earlier...say an acquaintance who has been taking piano lessons for 5 years comes and vents to you about a decently complex piece of sheet music they are practicing to learn to play and are struggling with, and you don't really have any practice playing piano at much higher skill level than beginner...

For example you learned up to playing this:




Now your acquaintance shows you the sheet music they are having trouble learning and it looks like this:




And you say to your friend who is struggling to learn this: "Oh, that's not challenging"

I mean...I don't think I need to elaborate further. Most people's reaction if they were the acquaintance in this example would not likely be a positive one. Honestly if someone did that to me my first response would be to hand them the sheet music and say well if it isn't challenging can you play it for me?

I mean no one should have that big of an ego...sometimes you have to have someone yank your floating head back down out of the stratosphere because you are trying too hard to pretend to be knowledgeable about something you aren't.

[loreleidiangelo]

The A3S hands were not a soft enrage. They were a hard enrage. If you failed to pull together/away you wiped instantly. If you missed the DPS check you wiped instantly. If I am wrong about this let me know, it's been a long time since I've set foot in A3S.

If they were pulled away you wiped, but IIRC the damage was like Byakko tiger where the closer you got their HP together the less damage it did overall. I don't think you could survive PAST a certain point, but not reaching the max optimal "perfect" point didn't kill you.

Mostly though I'm using the phrase "hard enrage" to refer to all bosses in this game being on a timer rather than creating more interesting DPS checks throughout. Even if the hands were TECHNICALLY a hard enrage, it came in the middle of the fight and still served the purpose of forcing teams to do enough DPS, not just turtle with tanks/heals. Whereas I feel like the "timers" we have on every fight are a little uninspired when it comes to forcing teams to do decent DPS.

The Byakko tiger is another example of an okay DPS check, but sadly it can just be ignored with a cheese strat that ALSO serves the purpose of letting mediocre players do extra damage on the boss so that they also make the boss enrage check. In my ideal world the tank LB3 strat for that fight would go the way of the dodo but in return the boss enrage would also disappear. So long as people can meet that add DPS check, I don't see the harm in the rest of the fight turning into an attrition war slightly (healer mana isn't infinite, after all).

[Nora_of_Mira]

I only read the OP's post as 23 pages is insane. Idk how anyone doesn't understand that DPS checks are the only true form of difficulty in this game. Without them, everyone can go tank and just survive all mechanics while pummeling away at the boss for 30+ minutes (a lot like some of my 24 man runs when we have low dps...).

Extreme primals would become casual content without DPS checks on the day of release (though Byakko was cutting it close). Lack of DPS checks pretty much defines all casual content as I cant think of any that have a hard enrage.

Mentioned something about "DPS meta"... the boss has a health bar...how do you expect it to go down?

think about it. How great would it be for a close-knit group of average players, none of them top tier at their class, but all of them competent, to marathon their way through an encounter together. Maybe it takes them 60 minutes of straight fighting to clear OS4,

that sounds god ****ing awful, in fact. If a boss took me 60 minutes to clear, I would never do it more than once. And if that's all these players want to do, its not worth anyone's time to compensate for them.

[HyoMinPark]

So you have 0 insight into your job or how it works in PVP? You've never played a single PVP match in FF14, or any game? You've never watched a video or a stream or read any reddit/OF posts about it? You have nothing at all?

I'm surprised you of all people take such a hard line stance. I'll be honest I expected better.

I have very limited insight to how PvP works in any serious manner in this game. I do not play any other games; FFXIV is the only game I play. I do not watch streams (they never seem to hold my interest). I generally do not read posts about PvP because it does not interest me, and I usually don’t spend time reading things that don’t hold my interest.

The most I did was Frontlines during the Garo event for some outfits and the mounts, and I did a little bit of The Feast the last two weeks or so of Heavensward because I figured I would try it out. I have done one match of PvP (Shatter; no Feast matches) since the Stormblood rework; I have never touched Rival Wings. I do not consider myself proficient enough nor experienced enough in the content to start entering discussions about the current state of it. Nor do I think I have the right to tell more hardcore PvPers what “the truth” is about their content, or what their content is really like on any sort of serious level.

I honestly don’t know why you are so “disappointed” or “expected better” from me with regards to this viewpoint. I don’t do PvP; I don’t like it nor care for it, and it simply is just not my cup of tea. But I’m not about to go into a PvP-oriented discussion and start acting like I know what I’m talking about there... The only thing I would accomplish by doing that is making myself look like a fool.

The point I was making is, unless you have experience in the content, and an understanding of it, I don’t think you really have the right to tell people what the current state of said content is. Bobs’ understanding of the more difficult Deltascape Savage tiers seems to be limited to “watching videos”...which is vastly different from actually experiencing the fight itself. He has no experience in Ultimate either, yet he wants to tell people that have actually stepped into that content what the content is “actually like”. I disagree with such behavior. I think people should have a little bit of credentials if they want to talk about things like they know about them. And I’m not going to apologize for holding that viewpoint, regardless of what people think about it or me. /shrug