The general player base needs to improve

[Bourne_Endeavor]

No, because if they actually listened to people and made expert harder...you're going to end up doing stuff in a static either way, to avoid all the wipes, 30+ min clears, and vote abandons. Do you think we're going to be able to keep fifteen minute no-death dungeon runs if the goal is to make them harder than launch ilvl rab and shinryu? Do you remember how often people did wipe and abandon on those?

How do you manage to always make such quantum leaps? Right now, Expert dungeons are so braindead easy, if you did only small pulls, you wouldn't even need a healer, let alone cooldowns. I think making them a little harder than that won't lead to mass vote abandons.

[Vahlnir]

How do you manage to always make such quantum leaps? Right now, Expert dungeons are so braindead easy, if you did only small pulls, you wouldn't even need a healer, let alone cooldowns. I think making them a little harder than that won't lead to mass vote abandons.

My take on this is, whenever they DO make harder content...people will complain for a week or 2 before coming to accept it, and learning to do said content pretty well. We saw this with Weeping City.

[RiyahArp]

How do you manage to always make such quantum leaps?.

What quantum leap? I healed Shin and Rab at launch, and I went into them probably 30 times or so in two weeks at the patch start. I saw a tremendous amount of vote abandons, and a lot of them took 45 minutes from all the deaths. And what's the point of making expert easier or even equal to both of those, since we already had them and they didn't seem to achieve the goals people want. Making expert a tiny bit harder wont really help. The only thing that helps is making it hard enough that they have to put significant effort to beat the thing, like most relevant ex primals.

My take on this is, whenever they DO make harder content...people will complain for a week or 2 before coming to accept it, and learning to do said content pretty well. We saw this with Weeping City.

Not really. it was painful to do for quite a long time, because many people only did it the one time they needed per week. the only way you get comfortable is by doing it repeatedly often enough to know it by rote. Its just those that didn't could lie on the floor as dps because it had no real dps checks.

[Vahlnir]

What quantum leap? I healed Shin and Rab at launch, and I went into them probably 30 times or so in two weeks at the patch start. I saw a tremendous amount of vote abandons, and a lot of them took 45 minutes from all the deaths. And what's the point of making expert easier or even equal to both of those, since we already had them and they didn't seem to achieve the goals people want. Making expert a tiny bit harder wont really help.



Not really. it was painful to do for quite a long time, because many people only did it the one time they needed. the only way you get comfortable is by doing it repeatedly often enough to knwo it by rote. Its just those that didn't could lie on the floor as dps because it had no real dps checks.

First and 2nd week of Rabanastre for me wasn't that bad. Heck, the very first run I got into when I logged on the day of the patch went flawlessly...and that was with a ton of new people, as there always is on patch day. Yeah, a few runs after that were kinda ugly, but what do you honestly expect on day or even week 1 of a patch? Perfection? By week 2 a lot of people had things down, but there were still just as many still learning. I saw a vote abandon here and there, but none of them ever actually stuck. Think I only ever ended up leaving 1 or 2 groups in total. So...it's really not as bad as you seem to think. Everyone's experience is different though, I just don't see the things you claim to see as often as you would say they happen. Maybe you just have bad luck. Random 24 people gonna be random.

[RiyahArp]

First and 2nd week of Rabanastre for me wasn't that bad.

Nah, you really can't say stuff when all you do it is once per week. You have to see a lot of people try it, and believe me, it is a lot uglier when its all skill levels and not just the people who show up first thing on reset day.

[Vahlnir]

Nah, you really can't say stuff when all you do it is once per week. You have to see a lot of people try it, and believe me, it is a lot uglier when its all skill levels and not just the people who show up first thing on reset day.

I ran it quite a few times, I can assure you. I wanted my SAM glamour pretty bad and the RNGesus wasn't too kind.

[KaivaC]

What quantum leap? I healed Shin and Rab at launch, and I went into them probably 30 times or so in two weeks at the patch start. I saw a tremendous amount of vote abandons, and a lot of them took 45 minutes from all the deaths. And what's the point of making expert easier or even equal to both of those, since we already had them and they didn't seem to achieve the goals people want. Making expert a tiny bit harder wont really help. The only thing that helps is making it hard enough that they have to put significant effort to beat the thing, like most relevant ex primals.

Because it's called EXPERT. Good grief, you act like turning up the difficulty immediately means that all content is going to get harder as a result. Quite a few of us have said that the difficulty increases should only apply in EXPERT dungeons. Not in dungeons that you are required to go through as part of the storyline, but completely optional dungeons - tune up the difficulty and make better rewards out of them. There are plenty of other options out there. You say that making expert harder won't help...but Hells' Lid and Fractal are a bit of a step up from Kugane and the Temple. Yet, you're so opposed to this and wanting to stick only to your argument that even you failed to notice it. THIS is what we were talking about - gradual increases in difficulty for optional content. Shinryu should be the top of the line as the highest difficulty should get for casual content. Those people who vote abandoned are part of the problem that we have today because, hey, while the dungeons leading up to it failed to convey proper difficulty, you actually had to earn your victory if you wanted to unlock the other stuff. The first month after launch, I saw a lot of vote abandons either, and I shook my head at those people who quit just because they didn't want to help other players get the clear.

Shinryu is a huge wake up call to the playerbase. But in no way should expert dungeons immediately go to that - never said that, yet you keep implying that. We've said multiple times that it should be gradual. You don't like that...but, I mean, hell, it's optional content, you don't HAVE to do it. It's not a part of MSQ. The devs usually add other stuff that is not a part of the EXPERT line, either. We are just wanting expert to feel like that - if players are unable to do expert dungeons as they start stepping up in difficulty, then they don't have to do it either.

So stuck on your argument and wanting to disagree with anything that even remotely promotes a difficulty increase that you were too blind to see that Fractal Hard was already an increase, though small, in difficulty.

[RiyahArp]

Fractal Hard is not an increase in difficulty, good lord, its easier than many dungeons that preceded it. The bosses are easier than rhalgr's and even easier than leveling dungeons; the bit boss does all of three attacks that can be easily soaked, and the last boss you can just eat all his attacks if you don't know his tells. I've never wiped once in Fractal Hard; I have on the arboteum, just due to the honeycomb walls.

You're mistaking "slightly increase the damage numbers of slow attacks" as difficulty. Because if anything, you wipe even less on the new experts than in old ones; the only difficulty at all is in Hells Lid, and that's because two of the trash use tankbusters and are more dangerous than all three bosses. If you think they are any increase in difficulty that teach anyone anything you aren't even qualified to talk on that; the only casual content that even is difficult was shinryu and rab at launch, and that's the level of content expert will have to be to teach something. The gradual approach doesn't work.


You learn to overcome a hard dps check by just trying that check; nothing else works. The "enrage" at fractal's boss is just him stopping attacking otherwise; the real dps check is the whole fight in an ex or hard mode. Rab makes you learn to read a line aoe by murdering you every single time you fail it, and the bosses where they don't are easy because they can't kill you when you make a mistake. You cannot do this gradually, because every attack you survive can be cheesed.

[KaivaC]

You learn to overcome a hard dps check by just trying that check; nothing else works. The "enrage" at fractal's boss is just him stopping attacking otherwise; the real dps check is the whole fight in an ex or hard mode. Rab makes you learn to read a line aoe by murdering you every single time you fail it, and the bosses where they don't are easy because they can't kill you when you make a mistake. You cannot do this gradually, because every attack you survive can be cheesed.

And therein lies the problem. There's been a couple posts I've engaged in where we discussed some ideas...whereas all you're doing is complaining and saying 'No, it can't happen!' or 'This doesn't help anyone if it can be cheesed'

Come out of that glass box and actually engage in the discussion at hand instead of being so quick to dismiss everything.

[MoroMurasaki]

snip

I healed Shin and Rab at launch as well. I've disbanded two Rabs (one of which was last week) and 2 Shins. In my opinion if your healer is awake and paying attention there is a lot that you can live through and if people are being kept alive (sometimes in spite of their own stupidity/ineptitude) you generally have the dps to clear.


Your antecdotal evidence is completely contrary to my own so at best both are moot points but yours certainly doesn't serve as any kind of reliable reasoning to not tune up dungeons that are going to find themselves in a roulette labeled "Expert".

The point is that they should be something other than faceroll. Letting bad players routinely complete something declaring them an expert is only helping to inflate their egos and let them think that level of play is going to serve them well through subsiquent tiers of content. This is how you make yourself an Ice Mage that doesn't take advice because they think they know what they're doing while they're contributing less damage than the healers.

The playerbase aren't tools to be used to your own satisfaction in order to complete content. If you re unhappy with the level of the players you're matched with then maybe it is time to start your own guild and see if people are willing to play with you.

Starting to think I need to keep this post open in a tab so I can just edit it into all the people making this idiotic argument...

The "if you dont like x about the general population you should only do things in a static" argument is a little dated at this point don't you think?

Don't like zero-DPS healers? Only use a static.

Don't like tanks that pull big? Only use a static.

Don't like wiping over and over to content of trivial difficulty? Well clearly the problem is not the people subjecting you to their poor play - it's you expecting them to be considerate of others! Use a static.

What's next? Don't like Miqo'te? Use a static.

God, it's so tiring explaining the same things to the same people over and over again.