The general player base needs to improve

[Transient_Shadow]

I apologize if you take offense but I'm simply stating that not everyone will be on par with players who have had more time to master their classes. Sprouts can reach SB content fairly quickly and we have jump potions now. its to be expected to have a level of play gap. I'm not saying people shouldn't improve. I'm saying they shouldn't improve at your pace

[KaivaC]

I apologize if you take offense but I'm simply stating that not everyone will be on par with players who have had more time to master their classes. Sprouts can reach SB content fairly quickly and we have jump potions now. its to be expected to have a level of play gap. I'm not saying people shouldn't improve. I'm saying they shouldn't improve at your pace

No offense taken. I'm simply stating my point. Bluntly, yes, but I usually don't speak indirectly. This isn't about mastering a job...like I said above, I struggle myself with DRG, but I will carry my weight. Again, I have to point this out, my original post isn't talking about regular leveling roulettes, MSQ dungeons, or even the lvl 50/60 dungeons. Most of the time, you can get away with using the basic 1-2-3 combo if you're not throwing out AOEs. Nor have I suggested that players should go 100% at all times. I don't even do that in these dungeons. What I am saying is that when content like Rabanastre, which was released in October, still sees full out alliance wipes, and a vast number of the players in it have farmed this place for the coins, I view that as an issue on the player base.

Yes, it is true that all it takes is one player to wipe out an entire alliance in Rabanastre with double stack markers, but that doesn't account for the other stuff happening in it, like tanks that will not pick up their adds, players ignoring the first set of adds on Mateus which in turn creates a snowball effect when Blizzard is cast by the boss, DPS who focus down the boss instead of taking care of their alliance's adds...stuff like that. Basically, level 70 content.

I could even dial it back and say, how it is possible when, after being told not to take any action whatsoever on the second boss in Baelsar's Wall when it does the cast for motion sensor, players still move around, DPS'ing/healing away, and wonder how, after two wipes, they still died. Of course, this is one of those uncommon occurrences and I won't touch on that.

Regardless of jump potions, there is enough from Sirensong Sea to Ala Mhigo, not to mention the various story battles that you engage in, that you have to have some competency in order to clear through them - at the very least, the story battles that you are in. Even job battles will require you to put in some effort in order to clear them - from the ones I've experienced up to 70, you cannot get by simply from cheesing the fight...you actually do have to pay attention.

To close this response, it is not elitist to expect some average play from who you are playing with in the casual instanced content. If I were to come out and say the entire player base needs to be capable of clearing Savage - then that is truly elitism. I don't believe the whole player base should want to be capable of Savage-level gameplay - Savage is meant for a select group of players. Before anybody else comes out and says I'm being elitist, maybe hear out exactly what I'm saying. And then actually get involved in this discussion instead of being ready to get offended on behalf of other players, some of whom have agreed with my postings.

This is not a 'git gud' thread. This is a thread bringing my thoughts to the forefront, one that I am openly willing to have a discussion with from alternate points of views. Talking about how to raise the player base from below-average to average does not equate 'git gud'/elitism.

[Tridus]

This is not a 'git gud' thread. This is a thread bringing my thoughts to the forefront, one that I am openly willing to have a discussion with from alternate points of views. Talking about how to raise the player base from below-average to average does not equate 'git gud'/elitism.

By definition, half the playerbase will always be "below average". Collectively, the entire playerbase is not below average (because half of them are above average), and you can't raise the whole thing to average, because the average is defined by the skill level of the entire playerbase.

You can try to bring people up so that the gap between the top and bottom is lowered, but you will always have above and below average players, and if content is tuned for the average or higher, you'll always have people failing it along with people at the top finding it easy.

[KaivaC]

By definition, half the playerbase will always be "below average". Collectively, the entire playerbase is not below average (because half of them are above average), and you can't raise the whole thing to average, because the average is defined by the skill level of the entire playerbase.

You can try to bring people up so that the gap between the top and bottom is lowered, but you will always have above and below average players, and if content is tuned for the average or higher, you'll always have people failing it along with people at the top finding it easy.

Well....I actually thought pretty good about this response. And the truth of the matter is, yeah, you're right. Taking into account the entire player base, including raiders, streamers, and everyone in between that group of people, the player base perhaps is already above-average, or at the very least, are capable of being above-average. I might have to change my wording around some...competent feels very ...degrading to say, so I'm looking for a synonym to describe what I should be saying.

The skill gap will always be there, I'll admit, and unfortunately, proposing a way to shorten that skill gap enters into territory that I've been trying to avoid - which, to me, means perfecting rotations, min-maxing, spending hours learning, which is an area I'm trying hard to avoid bringing into active discussion. Conversely, I don't mind that there are top players and bottom players - my thoughts start to lean towards how to raise those bottom players up to be at the current average level in level 70 content where being average is desired.

[Tridus]

Well....I actually thought pretty good about this response. And the truth of the matter is, yeah, you're right. Taking into account the entire player base, including raiders, streamers, and everyone in between that group of people, the player base perhaps is already above-average, or at the very least, are capable of being above-average. I might have to change my wording around some...competent feels very ...degrading to say, so I'm looking for a synonym to describe what I should be saying.

Often times, the phrasing used is something like "wanting to bring the baseline level of play up to a higher tier" along with "closing the gap between the top and bottom". ie: You want to bring the people who find Rabanastre hard up to the point where they start finding it easy, at which point that becomes the new baseline difficulty (rather than the comically undertuned Kugane Castle).

The skill gap will always be there, I'll admit, and unfortunately, proposing a way to shorten that skill gap enters into territory that I've been trying to avoid - which, to me, means perfecting rotations, min-maxing, spending hours learning, which is an area I'm trying hard to avoid bringing into active discussion. Conversely, I don't mind that there are top players and bottom players - my thoughts start to lean towards how to raise those bottom players up to be at the current average level in level 70 content where being average is desired.

The thing with the skill gap is that people don't need to improve most of the time. Hence the pushing for the difficulty curve to start going upward, instead of the current weirdness where arguably the hardest dungeon in any dungeon roulette in the game is Auran Vale at level 49, followed by The Vault at 57. Those ones are serious in that if you decide to just sleepwalk your way through, they can push back. But they're not punishingly hard, either (I guess some people would say The Vault was pre-nerf, but I liked it, and groups still have trouble in there today).

For the 70 dungeons, Hells Lid was a step in the right direction, IMO. It's entirely clearable with a wide range of skill levels, but it also says "messing this up will hurt". It has the right idea with the DPS check phase, although it's a fairly easy check. They could keep doing stuff like that and gradually ramp up the requirement such that you'd need to be doing something resembling a proper (but not optimal) rotation to clear it. Fractal Hard doesn't accomplish the same goal. The tank can ignore half the mechanics in there and I can easily heal through it without really breaking a sweat. While that makes me feel like a great healer, it's not sending the right message.

We don't want to chase players off by sudden, jarring spikes. That's bad design. But having a sense of achievement requires the risk of failure. Beating a target dummy doesn't mean anything. I felt that way when I beat Thordan normal the first time. It was "that's it?" Comparatively, Shinryu wrecked me a few times, so when I figured him out and got that kill, it was much, much more satisfying.

The other way you can reduce a skill gap is to make the game easier to play, although lots of players frown on that kind of simplification. They went that way with some jobs in Stormblood, making mistakes less punishing in rotations and such. That helps, but more in the sense that it brings the top players down due to reducing the impact a high level of knowledge/skill will have on performance. At the same time, you don't want to have jobs so complicated that external guides and precision timing are required to be at all competent, because large swaths of the playerbase will never have that and it's frankly bad business in a mass market game.

It's a difficult balance to get right when you're trying to cater to several different types of players at the same time. I feel that's why Ultimate was a good idea: it's content I'll never do, but it's tossing a bone to the elite and saying "we know you exist and find things easy, here's something aimed squarely at you." I also thought Rabanastre was pretty good difficulty wise for content that's expected to be done by most players. And Bardam's has some good difficulty in levelling. Really, expert is where I have the biggest problem in Stormblood because the first set was just so undertuned and with that name I'd expect more than "it's literally impossible to fail this".

[KaivaC]

I hear where you're coming from on that, Kavia, and while I fully agree, I gotta take the hardline on it.

Yes, the gap will always exist and there are people that just won't get better regardless. But it really is time for SE to push people a bit. I don't mean suddenly spike the difficulty, as people had run into before with all content up to Coil back then, but I mean start putting up more of a challenge in low to mid content that will condition players for more once they reach endgame. Don't wait til endgame to get people accustomed to stack/spread mechanics, or mob separation, "Extreme Caution" mechanics, or facing enemies in given directions. Acclimate people to mechanics that will be thrown at them in endgame while they're leveling, or as part of their "lighter" endgame fare, and it won't be so undoable if/when the same mechanics come up in tougher content.

This isn't me saying "make it harder and make them either get used to it or get out!" But I do have confidence that most players, if not all, can at least develop a sense of familiarity with things and handle it accordingly from there. As a mild example, my group was having a little trouble with a double aoe mechanic in O6S, and while everyone was overthinking it, I just said "oh, it's like double Weight of the Land in Titan". . . We've never had a problem with that one since. Back in Weeping City, someone started to explain Acceleration Bomb to me on my first run, and I think "sounds like Blighted Bouquet from T6". . . never been hit by it. If players are given more than a superficial challenge in "expert" or daily content, this familiarity will be established well before they realize it. No, it's not going to do anything for the guy that's phoning in his efforts and single targeting in an aoe situation, but at the very least, when a mechanic that calls for a particular response comes up that he remembers from leveling/daily content, if he's paying even a little attention, he won't fail it.

As an addendum to that idea, and I know people aren't gonna like this: Punish failure of mechanics in daily content. I've heard people mention Kugane Castle on this one a lot. It doesn't have to be an instant kill, no. But let there be some kind of penalty for it. Did you not interrupt something? Let the enemy be buffed for it. Want to pull everything and mindlessly aoe it all? Not if mob A and B will buff each other's attack/defense within range. When the enemies present more of a challenge than just existing, that too can help raise the competency of the playerbase a little.

As mentioned below, any kind of difficulty increase should be glued solely in optional dungeons. Shinryu was one thing, because he was an appropriate boss, but dungeons involved in the main storyline, I feel should be pretty casual. There are ways of testing player skill without hitting them with Savage level mechanics. You know, make it a challenge, but also make it so that it doesn't overwhelm players like the truly hard fights do.

Often times, the phrasing used is something like "wanting to bring the baseline level of play up to a higher tier" along with "closing the gap between the top and bottom". ie: You want to bring the people who find Rabanastre hard up to the point where they start finding it easy, at which point that becomes the new baseline difficulty (rather than the comically undertuned Kugane Castle).

The thing with the skill gap is that people don't need to improve most of the time. Hence the pushing for the difficulty curve to start going upward, instead of the current weirdness where arguably the hardest dungeon in any dungeon roulette in the game is Auran Vale at level 49, followed by The Vault at 57. Those ones are serious in that if you decide to just sleepwalk your way through, they can push back. But they're not punishingly hard, either (I guess some people would say The Vault was pre-nerf, but I liked it, and groups still have trouble in there today).

For the 70 dungeons, Hells Lid was a step in the right direction, IMO. It's entirely clearable with a wide range of skill levels, but it also says "messing this up will hurt". It has the right idea with the DPS check phase, although it's a fairly easy check. They could keep doing stuff like that and gradually ramp up the requirement such that you'd need to be doing something resembling a proper (but not optimal) rotation to clear it. Fractal Hard doesn't accomplish the same goal. The tank can ignore half the mechanics in there and I can easily heal through it without really breaking a sweat. While that makes me feel like a great healer, it's not sending the right message.

We don't want to chase players off by sudden, jarring spikes. That's bad design. But having a sense of achievement requires the risk of failure. Beating a target dummy doesn't mean anything. I felt that way when I beat Thordan normal the first time. It was "that's it?" Comparatively, Shinryu wrecked me a few times, so when I figured him out and got that kill, it was much, much more satisfying.

The other way you can reduce a skill gap is to make the game easier to play, although lots of players frown on that kind of simplification. They went that way with some jobs in Stormblood, making mistakes less punishing in rotations and such. That helps, but more in the sense that it brings the top players down due to reducing the impact a high level of knowledge/skill will have on performance. At the same time, you don't want to have jobs so complicated that external guides and precision timing are required to be at all competent, because large swaths of the playerbase will never have that and it's frankly bad business in a mass market game.

It's a difficult balance to get right when you're trying to cater to several different types of players at the same time. I feel that's why Ultimate was a good idea: it's content I'll never do, but it's tossing a bone to the elite and saying "we know you exist and find things easy, here's something aimed squarely at you." I also thought Rabanastre was pretty good difficulty wise for content that's expected to be done by most players. And Bardam's has some good difficulty in levelling. Really, expert is where I have the biggest problem in Stormblood because the first set was just so undertuned and with that name I'd expect more than "it's literally impossible to fail this".

Agreed with you there. It's these 'Expert' dungeons that really don't feel any different whatsoever from the other dungeons we've been face-rolling from time and time again. Hopefully the devs keep the trend going - just gradual, nothing that is an explicit spike in difficulty. And as I've always promoted, keep that sort of thing in the optional dungeons...just increase the rewards that can be gained from them. I think that would go a good ways toward closing the current skill gap.

[HoodRat]

which, to me, means perfecting rotations, min-maxing, spending hours learning, which is an area I'm trying hard to avoid bringing into active discussion.

For starters I think having more uptime would be a big improvement from what I see now. I can't tell you how many people I've seen lose dps because they leave the boss for a mechanic way too early and get back to the boss way too late. I've seen people on jobs with gap closers that don't use them to return to enemies and people who completely ignore sprint for some reason even though it has no cost now. Back in deltascape savage in the static I was in before my current one, I had a pld who would try to move bosses while they're casting something and he would just stand on the other side of the map doing 0 damage. Better yet, he actually said, "I don't understand how plds are doing 3k dps." And don't get me started about gcds. Many people just don't hit buttons. I don't understand what exactly is going on but it happens more than you think. I've been in parties where dps are doing less damage than what I did as a tank in the previous expansion. In HW, I had a brd that did 400 dps in a level 60 dungeon; in SB, I had a mnk that did 1k dps in Temple of the Fist. I remember a story on reddit where a tank showed a parse for a level 60 dungeon they just ran in which the blm and brd they were paired with had abysmal dps. So the tank hopped onto their level 51 brd, went to a dummy and did nothing but spammed straight shot...and somehow did more damage than the level 60 blm and brd they just had. Even back during all the healer dps threads, you'd see healers complain that they couldn't dps because they had to babysit their party. But if they had logs on fflogs, you could look and see that the problem is they just weren't hitting buttons. They seem to favor not using ogcds decreasing the amount of time they have to dps, and even when they did have time they just wouldn't. You could literally go to casts and timeline and see all the gaps where they just do nothing at all. Most, if not all people, are not expecting perfection in df but honestly in the words of Lyth: it's not a skill gap, it's a participation gap.

[Shurrikhan]

I apologize if you take offense but I'm simply stating that not everyone will be on par with players who have had more time to master their classes. Sprouts can reach SB content fairly quickly and we have jump potions now. its to be expected to have a level of play gap. I'm not saying people shouldn't improve. I'm saying they shouldn't improve at your pace

Why shouldn't we expect people to learn their levels x to y skills over the process of reaching y+1? They have the whole level to read the tooltip and figure out how best to fit it in, with only at most a small part of their overall strategy needing to be reconsidered beyond what's been done across all previous levels.

I don't expect everyone to do so on their own, but there are also a plethora of resources available to stimulate and spot-check improvement, especially for PC players.

[Gallus]

Playerbase is fine. People have the right to have their own goals in the game and to be more or less ambitious, you are nobody to judge at what level each individual should aim to play. The "stop wasting my time" can only be applied to PFs or premade parties, but there you have an easy solution which is booting the person who is dragging out the rest of the party. In blind content you should expect anything, people are just different and play the game for different reasons. I'm a bit tired of the whole "people refuse to learn" garbage when most of the times it's more about a temperamental player that goes nuts when a DF party doesn't clear an EX primal on their first try. Learn to deal with the diversity of this community rather than mindlessly banging your head trying to change peoples' aspirations and goals, that's not in your hands and it shouldn't be.