The general player base needs to improve

[Tridus]

People immediately started crying that it is too hard. And that because they didn't learn to have patience and play well. They expected to clear it at first try and when they didn't they outraged.
So SE said "lol fine whatever as long as I have my subs here take a nerf".

Steps of Faith was nerfed because it required a lot of coordination, DF groups were bad at that, and then people started quitting as soon as they got it. That created a wall on the MSQ that players couldn't get through. It's not a situation where newbies can just "git gud" because they don't know what needs doing on the fight, and if the people that do know get it in roulette and immediately bail, how does that work? That one is on everyone who bailed every time they got it rather than try to organize the necessary coordination. That fight had a lot of moving parts pre-nerf and teams needed to know to do the correct things.

Shinryu was also hard, but it wasn't nerfed because the same problem didn't manifest. Generally speaking people stuck it out and tried to help new folks through it. Although it did have wipes and disbands, it didn't have the same kind of huge barrier to the MSQ problem. I saw a lot of stuff from the playerbase on that encoraging other players to stick with it and not bail precisely to try and avoid a nerf, so props to the playerbase on that. Part of the price of harder baseline content is that those of us who know what we're doing are going to need to be prepared to lend a mentoring hand.

[VanilleFang]

those of us who know what we're doing are going to need to be prepared to lend a mentoring hand.

Which is all when and good when those we are lending the hand to listen/follow. It's a reoccurring issue I've noticed, and I mentioned it before. Some people just dont want to be taught.

Maybe I'm just being cynical, but lately I've found it easier and less stressful to just carry others through rather than teach them. This doesn't fix the problem but I'm not sure what else I can do.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Speaking for the PvP side of the house, one of my favorite ways to "teach" - that is, when someone fires back at the generally good advice I give or perhaps aggressively wants to stick to a basic strategy I know won't be enough in the given situation, is to literally hand them the reigns.

"Okay, you're the shot caller now. Lead us to victory."

Some, very few, actually rose to the occasion and managed to make good calls, or at least figure out what I said/was doing/continued to do was actually good strategy. Others. . . well, didn't. And while sure, it's cruel of me to put all that heat on someone's head, it teaches them that if they want to take the lead, they better know the weight it carries. You don't always have to be right, but you'd better be ready to own up to it.

That being said, it needs to be noted that someone trying to step up and help guide or offer advice isn't just some know-it-all meanie trying to ruin everyone's fun and have it all done "their" way. Sometimes, they truly just know what you're doing wrong and how to fix it, and are offering advice on the fly rather than a Mr. Happy-length guide on it.

[Iscah]

Now I just came out of an expert on my alt on aether and I really have to question people's situational awareness. I don't suppose this game teaches you what a vulnerability up stack is?

I get the general idea of it - if there's an icon in your 'negative effects' with a number against it probably means you've got some kind of vulnerability debuff - but that doesn't help at all with learning (a) what you did to receive it and (b) what you should do about it now. Is there a trick to removing it? Do I need to play it safe? Does it mean I should hang back and stop attacking? Do I just ignore it and carry on as I was?

And as a PS4 player it is extra hard to check the description of what the icon actually means. I have to let go of the controller, pick up the mouse, find where the cursor is on my screen, move it over to that very small icon (which can shift around as extra statuses appear and disappear)... and it probably still doesn't tell me why I have it or what to do now.

If you're talking about the sort of vulnerabilities that only affect you when you're standing in a marked floor area, that's a bit different - certainly moving out of it is one of the things you *can* do to work out the source of a debuff - but maybe some people might not realise the difference between an enemy-cast area spell and one cast by another player? It takes a long time to understand the "look" of different spells and understand which ones are player abilities. (It took me ages to realise that dangerous looking black circle with spikes was in fact a dark knight's attack and not some monster trying to drag us into the void! Also Rain of Death when you first get high-leveled enough to encounter bards using it.)

Steps of Faith was nerfed because it required a lot of coordination, DF groups were bad at that, and then people started quitting as soon as they got it. [...] That fight had a lot of moving parts pre-nerf and teams needed to know to do the correct things.

Hmm, maybe there could be a "Minstrel's Ballad" level or something that is just the original version of the fight? How did it actually work? Just more focus on needing to use the cannons etc?

Though on my first time through the trial, only recently, I didn't even realise any of the cannon mechanics were going on. Just went along on my usual way being a DPS and hitting things that were within range.... perhaps it needed some more prompts with featured speech bubbles urging us to use the cannons, get up on the towers, and so on. It would draw attention to the fact that they are there, and even if you're not sure how to use it yourself you could see what the other players are doing with it.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Hmm, maybe there could be a "Minstrel's Ballad" level or something that is just the original version of the fight? How did it actually work? Just more focus on needing to use the cannons etc?

Though on my first time through the trial, only recently, I didn't even realise any of the cannon mechanics were going on. Just went along on my usual way being a DPS and hitting things that were within range.... perhaps it needed some more prompts with featured speech bubbles urging us to use the cannons, get up on the towers, and so on. It would draw attention to the fact that they are there, and even if you're not sure how to use it yourself you could see what the other players are doing with it.

Actually, the NPCs did have dialogue bubbles prompting you to use the chains and cannons. Missing a cannon shot was costly, but the big rub was having to literally let it all play out to the end after a costly mistake. I can understand people not liking that, but even then, Steps was never difficult. It just called for more than blind DPS.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Speaking for the PvP side of the house, one of my favorite ways to "teach" - that is, when someone fires back at the generally good advice I give or perhaps aggressively wants to stick to a basic strategy I know won't be enough in the given situation, is to literally hand them the reigns.

"Okay, you're the shot caller now. Lead us to victory."

Some, very few, actually rose to the occasion and managed to make good calls, or at least figure out what I said/was doing/continued to do was actually good strategy. Others. . . well, didn't. And while sure, it's cruel of me to put all that heat on someone's head, it teaches them that if they want to take the lead, they better know the weight it carries. You don't always have to be right, but you'd better be ready to own up to it.

That being said, it needs to be noted that someone trying to step up and help guide or offer advice isn't just some know-it-all meanie trying to ruin everyone's fun and have it all done "their" way. Sometimes, they truly just know what you're doing wrong and how to fix it, and are offering advice on the fly rather than a Mr. Happy-length guide on it.

Wow! I did the exact thing in that other MMO. It's funny that it worked out the same way too. Almost no one rose to the occasion but the ones that did taught me some valuable alternative strategies.

[Tridus]

Hmm, maybe there could be a "Minstrel's Ballad" level or something that is just the original version of the fight? How did it actually work? Just more focus on needing to use the cannons etc?

Though on my first time through the trial, only recently, I didn't even realise any of the cannon mechanics were going on. Just went along on my usual way being a DPS and hitting things that were within range.... perhaps it needed some more prompts with featured speech bubbles urging us to use the cannons, get up on the towers, and so on. It would draw attention to the fact that they are there, and even if you're not sure how to use it yourself you could see what the other players are doing with it.

It was pretty much the same as now except much less forgiving. These days, you can ignore most of the cannons and such and still beat it through raw DPS. Back then, you couldn't do that. So you needed to hit with the dragonkillers, which means people needed to snare correctly, adds needed picking up and moving to the cannons so the cannons could kill them, etc.

I mean, if you're a group on Discord with a leader, that's not that difficut. You'll assign stuff, call when to do things, and such. So someone who has never snared before can be told exactly when to do it and you're probably fine. In a DF PUG, it's a lot harder to do that, so you get more errors just due to weaker coordination. On that fight, those errors were very costly, and making them didn't wipe you immediately. He'd walk all the way to the end before the wipe.

Players reacted to that with "F this". SE reacted to that by making it easier. I mean, as an Ex level fight that would have worked fine (and could have been made harder), because at that level requiring some organization isn't a big deal. It wasn't popular to require it in DF, though, although a lot of groups were able to clear it (I had good luck if someone took charge and asked "who wants to do X?" up front, and although it's more forgiving now, i still find that works).

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I get the general idea of it - if there's an icon in your 'negative effects' with a number against it probably means you've got some kind of vulnerability debuff - but that doesn't help at all with learning (a) what you did to receive it and (b) what you should do about it now. Is there a trick to removing it? Do I need to play it safe? Does it mean I should hang back and stop attacking? Do I just ignore it and carry on as I was?

And as a PS4 player it is extra hard to check the description of what the icon actually means. I have to let go of the controller, pick up the mouse, find where the cursor is on my screen, move it over to that very small icon (which can shift around as extra statuses appear and disappear)... and it probably still doesn't tell me why I have it or what to do now.

If you're talking about the sort of vulnerabilities that only affect you when you're standing in a marked floor area, that's a bit different - certainly moving out of it is one of the things you *can* do to work out the source of a debuff - but maybe some people might not realise the difference between an enemy-cast area spell and one cast by another player? It takes a long time to understand the "look" of different spells and understand which ones are player abilities. (It took me ages to realise that dangerous looking black circle with spikes was in fact a dark knight's attack and not some monster trying to drag us into the void! Also Rain of Death when you first get high-leveled enough to encounter bards using it.)




Hmm, maybe there could be a "Minstrel's Ballad" level or something that is just the original version of the fight? How did it actually work? Just more focus on needing to use the cannons etc?

Though on my first time through the trial, only recently, I didn't even realise any of the cannon mechanics were going on. Just went along on my usual way being a DPS and hitting things that were within range.... perhaps it needed some more prompts with featured speech bubbles urging us to use the cannons, get up on the towers, and so on. It would draw attention to the fact that they are there, and even if you're not sure how to use it yourself you could see what the other players are doing with it.

Just to list the adjustments first. They...

- Reduced Vishap's HP by 35%
- Massively reduced the HP and damage of all the adds
- Reduced Vishap stepping on you by a little more than half (Used to be a borderline one-shot, if not an outright one)
- Greatly reduced cannon explosion splash damage

Prior to these changes, if you missed even a single cannon it usually resulted in a wipe. Since you couldn't easily reset and try again, this meant second or third attempts took forever to start, let alone complete. In some cases, it was faster to simply take the penalty and re-queue later. Once someone left, people bailed en masse. A significant problem outside him being somewhat overtuned is the rewards didn't justify the time. He gave no more poetics than a standard trial of that level. So you basically put in twice the effort for no real benefit. I'll never understand why they didn't stuff Vishap into MSQ Roulette and bump up the rewards.

[Kiryuin-Satsuki]

More challenging content, you say? After the nuclear fallout we saw following Shinryu NM?

As we say in Australia. M8 pls.

It's blatantly clear that there are some people who aren't willing to put forth even the smallest amount effort to not be absolutely horrendous. And I'm not even remotely talking about end-game content here or sneering at gray parses, I mean just basic things like holding aggro as a tank, using heals as a healer, using any AoE as a DPS - I really wish I were joking about these things.

I have witnessed some downright shocking garbage lately just doing my dailies and I don't know where it's coming from. I really have to wonder how some of these people even managed to correctly install the game, never mind actually playing it.

I'm not sure if it's actually true, but I find it highly amusing that player performance standards on average allegedly turned out to be noticeably weaker than the expectations projected by the devs. Says an awful lot I would say. Even better is that this problem seems to be confined more to the West just by looking at the clear rates for things like Ultimate Coil, where Japan has a colossal lead over NA and EU.

[Minako_Nightsong]

I disagree, the general player base does not need to improve. In my experience, roulettes, duty finder raids, dungeons, and trials have the right difficulty for the typical player like myself. Perfect rotations and melds are not needed to finish these, just a willingness to try and also to have fun. While I read the horror stories on these forums about people pressing one button or doing other trolling things, it's a very small minority in my experience.

It will, of course, take more skill and dedication to do extreme and savage content and the game already provides ways for such people to organize these groups. You can be totally selective. If you choose to try this tougher content in party finder then you are taking a chance and if you get a slacker or a troll, it is not the fault of us typical players and our lack of talent.