The general player base needs to improve

[ShanXiv]

I'm curious...have you done endgame yourself? I dunno about how it was in the 1.0-1.23b series, I'm most familiar with current endgame in 4.x. Just wondering because of your comment about WoW and raiding, and your character level as it is currently. Unless this is an alt of yours.



Yeah, I learned this the last time I was there as well. I tunnel visioned when I was a PLD on the final boss and got hit by one of his attacks...was barely noticable when I had a healer topping me off every time I took damage. Sometimes, I kinda wish for mobs to inflict something like healing down penalties or infirmary.

Ya I've mentioned in other post, I've done the first coil with my static(before nerf,not very hardcore), it was fun,
but after I tried XIV1.1x-1.2x, the "End game" thing isn't my objective when I play a MMO now,

I mean, you buy FF15 because you just want to fight the final boss & watch the ending CG movie & the staff roll?
guess not, you buy it because the stroy, because the contents in it,process is more important than the result.

I played very hardcore in WOW, because I want to know how good I can be when raiding, I've proven myself in WOW,I don't need to prove it again,
& I don't play MMO just for the gears or boss fights ,
I take the gears so I can win the next boss, if I don't raid, then highend gears mean nothing to me, I won't bother with it, ILV340 is already enough for me
if I just want to fight some boss, I will play Monster hunter, Nier, these games are a lot more fun than the heavily scripted battle in ARR.

I play MMO because the people,the community, the player-created events & contents,
but there's no such things in ARR, well.... then I play it for some rest, play it super casually,
I've played many games, XIV ARR is far from the worst , just not the real "Final Fantasy MMO" to me, a fake MMO

[akaneakki]

People being so acceptable people playing bad and get away with it, is one of the bigger reasons why it's still an issue for improvent. While I agree there is a difference between harrasing and telling people tips how to improve, there are too many players who loves to brush it off and say it's fine they way they play it. I know some people I helped clearing shinryu for and they did as good as tanks or just worse. The clear would never happened if the tank dps and healer dps wasn't as strong. This game can let you get away with 1-2 players being bad and the rest doing good, as long mechanics are done. I love to help people but I would like them to carry their own weight. I think it's unfair to help them clear content and they end up with same type of players and never kill the content, wondering why they can't. This happens too often.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

And why should i stay from group content? I feel I do my job good enough at content I'm doing, thing is that i'm just not obsessed with optimisation and perfection. You know why? Because when you try to be perfect - you fail a lot, cos each little mistake is fail. Omg, I pressed cd 0.2sec too late! DPS loss! Oh no, boss turned and i screwed my positional. DPS loss! /o\ Hey, there's so many ways things can go wrong or not according to plan, so if you are all about perfection - you are bound to be constantly disappointed and frustrated.

So I think it's best not to push myself hard, just try to play at acceptable level and it's all good. And no, i don't treat regular dungeons as content who is meant to prepare you for harder content.... No, they are quite enjoyable, until party joins some elitist who complains that tank and healer should dps more...

I want to chime in on this one.

I don't consider myself one of the "best" Machinists. I am however quite competent at it because I've always made the effort to be good at it, even when people said the job was bad. Naturally, I give my all in Savage content, but that doesn't mean dungeons are just an excuse to coast along in easy mode. Hell, if anything, dungeons are where I quietly make my little adjustments and optimizations that I can then perhaps take into harder content. I find myself regularly practicing on dummies in idle moments now - the habit formed before I even knew it. And PvP's taught me to think on my feet and build stronger reaction time; dodging telegraphed, scripted attacks are easy after you've learned how to do it when you're NOT expecting it.

I'm not going to say that you shouldn't take it easy or not push yourself hard, but playing at an acceptable level will only ever be just that; acceptable. When the content or perhaps something in the moment happens that calls for more than that, your acceptable play won't be enough to see you through it. It's hardly about perfection or always doing it right; it's about being capable of performing to the best of your ability, even in the worst conditions or situations. Aiming for par won't accomplish that.

[ToasterMan]

We've had this player base complaining about how people DON'T read guides and watch videos and now we've got complaining about how people relay on guides too much!

Come on guys make up your minds......

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Unpopular opinion: I enjoyed Gordias. It took us months but we cleared it just after Thordan came out. It was way too hard for a starter raid into a new expansion but it was good none the less. We busted our asses and I cried when we cleared 4. I wish we got a title for it. Midas was the right balance I thought..

Although before my time playing, I actually agree, if only based on hearsay and video clips. I suspect with minor tweaks to eliminate gear checks and maybe ease Digititis a touch, A3S would have been a perfect fight... as the last tier. Frankly, the loudest complaints I hear in regards to Gordias is how utterly boring and poorly designed Manipulator was; primarily due to the insane gear check, lack of interesting mechanics and, of course, Nisi.

I agree, but unfortunately, we'll still get those players who seem to think that the only way to increase difficulty is by taking it to Savage levels...which is not what is suggested. I wouldn't mind starting to see some open-ended dungeons, with mobs having varying degrees of difficulty. Lock the best type of loot behind more difficult mobs. The devs could just make one of these dungeons and tie it into the lore by the WoL missing the adventure...this was alluded to in the quest line for Skalla.

I repeatedly turn to the higher floors of PotD as my go-to example. Running with friends several weeks ago, we did aggressive chain pulls to speed through 50-100. That reckless play caught up with us around 110-120 and resulted in a wipe due to hitting a trap and being stun/sleep locked. I was honestly more impressed than disappointed because it was entirely our fault and the game slapped us for it. Now imagine if Expert dungeons worked in a similar facet—with priority mobs to focus down, traps and even patrol packs that could result in high outgoing damage. In many ways, PotD 101+ accomplished what dungeons rarely have: a solid difficulty curve.

Now, we're finding "savage" in stormblood pretty tame. Week one / two clears. I understood they were pretty scared of making the same mistakes as Gordias but I thought they would turn it up a little for Sigma :/ In fact I'm sure they said the raids would scale up in difficulty so it's a little disappointing that they haven't.

I'm glad they're doing the Ultimate's. At least that's something to prog on while Savage has become the weeklies.

They did. Yoshida changed his mind due to Ultimate; preferring to keep Savage as "mid-core" content more or less.

These things are hard to get right, because having the playerbase improve means slowly cranking up the difficulty such that people will adjust and learn without hitting a wall of frustration and quitting in response. If wipes and failure are more frequent, is that a thing we want? Look at how often Rabanastre comes up as a problem, when the "problem" is that failure actually happens there? Do we want EVERYTHING to look like that, with the risk that the bottom 20% might quit the game entirely as a result (and the revenue implications that brings)?

I don't know. I do know that right now the game is very forgiving to people who don't want to invest a lot of effort into learning how to play better, to the point that it doesn't even give you the tools to do that effectively (which is why everyone keen on self improvement is using third party tools/sites). How much harder should it be before it's hard enough and we're all content with the skill gap as being acceptable?

To be fair, those failure lessen if the game encouraged better play beforehand. Some good examples were The Aery and Vault, which hit particularly hard prior to Stormblood. As stated above, I feel higher floors of PotD are perfect benchmarks for what Expert dungeons ought to be. Not only does it offer a reasonable challenge, it helps break up the monotony a bit since certain mobs need to be focused down quickly, thus AoE spamming won't necessarily work. I wouldn't be opposed to them steadily testing things throughout the expansion but they seem entirely averse to the idea yet remain at a loss why player skill just doesn't improve.

[RiyahArp]

Although before my time playing, I actually agree, if only based on hearsay and video clips. I suspect with minor tweaks to eliminate gear checks and maybe ease Digititis a touch, A3S would have been a perfect fight... as the last tier. Frankly, the loudest complaints I hear in regards to Gordias is how utterly boring and poorly designed Manipulator was; primarily due to the insane gear check, lack of interesting mechanics and, of course, Nisi.

You're hearing only the survivors; a lot of people left over it, and don't really show up when we talk about it. This game actually has some seriously massive turnover.

To be fair, those failure lessen if the game encouraged better play beforehand. Some good examples were The Aery and Vault, which hit particularly hard prior to Stormblood. As stated above, I feel higher floors of PotD are perfect benchmarks for what Expert dungeons ought to be. Not only does it offer a reasonable challenge, it helps break up the monotony a bit since certain mobs need to be focused down quickly, thus AoE spamming won't necessarily work.

They aren't a challenge. The only challenge is from roaming mobs, if you get two or more on you. When POTD came out, you didn't really spam aoes and ignore stuff, because you didn't have +99/99 gear that doubled your attack pool, nor did you confine yourself to the easiest floors to grind and ignore the tougher ones. You died then the same way you die at 101+, going too fast for random traps and getting too many adds on you.

That's not hard in any sense that it will teach you to play a class better, it's just now "standing in the fire" ends the run, so to say. And even it can be cheapened a little by the classes you take; get rid of DPS and its much easier, since tanks and healers have much more survivability.

Idk what people want, really. You'd need to make savage-styled content to teach people to be good at savage level play, because you can't learn to be good at a harsh dps check without a harsh dps check. You learn not to fall off platforms in titan or rav by being out the whole fight and dealing with the shame of it.

[akaneakki]

Idk what people want, really. You'd need to make savage-styled content to teach people to be good at savage level play, because you can't learn to be good at a harsh dps check without a harsh dps check. You learn not to fall off platforms in titan or rav by being out the whole fight and dealing with the shame of it.

Making hard checks from the beginning is not a solution either, the gap from doing nothing to something making everything as hard from the beginning wont change anything. What this game need is a checkpoint in the game where you need to rotations a certain amount of times on dummy strike with mechanics and forfil the dps check. And also make fights slightly harder in dungeons as well, because it's just too much of a faceroll tbh.

[Jijifli]

When the hard enrage in one of the new experts won't happen if you have even 1 dps doing damage.

Something is def wrong.

[Lord_Zlatan]

Making hard checks from the beginning is not a solution either, the gap from doing nothing to something making everything as hard from the beginning wont change anything. What this game need is a checkpoint in the game where you need to rotations a certain amount of times on dummy strike with mechanics and forfil the dps check. And also make fights slightly harder in dungeons as well, because it's just too much of a faceroll tbh.

If you ever played FFXI, a better suggestion would be to gate your level 70 quest behind a Maat fight.

Maat was an NPC that basically gated you from levelling your character to the cap. In this game, you could still be level 70 when fighting whatever iteration of it, but it would gate you in some other way (to lazy to think about a fair/balanced way right now). He was basically a clone of you, and used all the abilites plus some others of the class you were fighting him with. To beat him, it was a test of whether or not you knew how to adequately play the class at a high(er) level.

[akaneakki]

If you ever played FFXI, a better suggestion would be to gate your level 70 quest behind a Maat fight.

As much as I would love that, most of the FFXIV playerbase wouldn't pass it or wouldn't bother because it's something they are forced to do. I mean a propper gate in this game is absolutely needed, but at the same time we need to be realistic about how they can do it.