The general player base needs to improve

[Gallus]

And then we'll be back to Amdapor Keep 2.0 where half DF parties couldn't make it past demon wall. Or even worse, Pharos Sirius, where people wouldn't even bother to queue up because the first boss overwhelmed most DF parties with an army of explosive hellhounds.
What are these "acceptable standards" you are talking about? Where do you exactly draw the line?

Completely offtopic, but I just came back a few days ago from taking a break. Completed the Sigma NM quest and proceeded to start doing the NM turns. I even watched some videos. On Sigma V4, on the very start, one of the healers says "if I find another troll I'm afk". I was like wtf? This was my very first time, I even watched a video but I didn't know if I was going to do everything perfectly? That comment at the start made me feel so uncomfortable with the run and I ended up dying a couple times. And then I come across threads like this and they infuriate me to no end.

The TC came across a group that couldn't clear Garuda EX. What the hell does he even know about that group? Perhaps new players? Perhaps someone that had a bad day? There could even be a person with some sort of physical deficiency or anxiety issues.

You guys can keep your "acceptable standards" to yourselves.

[Ayer2015]

snip

Sadly our community has devolve substantially as the game has become more popular.

[Thoosa]

I tried to beat Byakko extreme and Sigmascape 1 Savage over the weekend by joining party finder groups and on Sigmascape I found that:

1. People blowing up all the ghost boxes and is being thrown off the edge.
2. Not sticking the green aoes to the edge.
3. Picking the wrong ghosts to enter the carriage and fight.
4. Placing the bombs in the wrong place and killing us all.
5. Not killing the putrid passengers fast enough.

In byakko it was slightly better but people kept dying to the first tiger fight or leg sweep.

Also in party finder groups you get people treating practice as “farm party” and leaving after first wipe, or in a farm party, repeatedly wiping.

I jus think savage and extreme content is a huge leap and people seem to think they can sale through it! Also it seems to highlight bright as day bad dps.

[Sesera]

Completely offtopic, but I just came back a few days ago from taking a break. Completed the Sigma NM quest and proceeded to start doing the NM turns. I even watched some videos. On Sigma V4, on the very start, one of the healers says "if I find another troll I'm afk". I was like wtf? This was my very first time, I even watched a video but I didn't know if I was going to do everything perfectly? That comment at the start made me feel so uncomfortable with the run and I ended up dying a couple times

Learn the difference between a troll (someone who comes only to waste other players time) and a new player please.

[Gallus]

Learn the difference between a troll (someone who comes only to waste other players time) and a new player please.

Your so called "good guys" that only "offer friendly advice" and think that it's the rest of the community that "refuses to learn" are very often people that should be more concerned about solving their own anger issues rather than trying to change the rest of the players so that they meet their own "acceptable standards". I have no idea who the TC is, but I'm very familiar with this sort of player profile that claims to have just given advice when on reality ingame they are nothing but angry bullies ready to rage at the very first mistake your party makes.

[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]

Your so called "good guys" that only "offer friendly advice" and think that it's the rest of the community that "refuses to learn" are very often people that should be more concerned about solving their own anger issues rather than trying to change the rest of the players so that they meet their own "acceptable standards". I have no idea who the TC is, but I'm very familiar with this sort of player profile that claims to have just given advice when on reality ingame they are nothing but angry bullies ready to rage at the very first mistake your party makes.

I assure you, you are not familiar with me at all, especially with that blanket statement. I have never raged at any of my parties, thank you very much. I am the sort of individual who will queue up in mentor roulette, as I said in my original post, and I will stay and help. No matter how many wipes we get, I will not rage at folks. But please, go on about how I fit this profile of yours. Do compare that to the times I have genuinely offered help to other players, even brought a couple of them through some of the harder content - and not once did I rage.

[Tridus]

Your so called "good guys" that only "offer friendly advice" and think that it's the rest of the community that "refuses to learn" are very often people that should be more concerned about solving their own anger issues rather than trying to change the rest of the players so that they meet their own "acceptable standards". I have no idea who the TC is, but I'm very familiar with this sort of player profile that claims to have just given advice when on reality ingame they are nothing but angry bullies ready to rage at the very first mistake your party makes.

There's certainly people who act like jerks when it comes to offering advice.

But at the same time, when I do levelling, I get lots of newbie tanks who hit Brayflox & Qarn, are losing aggro frequently, and aren't using tank stance. Usually, that means they just got it and don't really understand what it does, or they forgot to turn it on. I feel like saying something is what an experienced player should do, because they may simply not understand why they're struggling and that the button they just recently got would help fix it (and that it turns off when you zone into the duty finder, usually).

Usually, that type of advice is met with a positive reaction. But it's all in the delivery. "Acceptable standard" there just means I want to clear the dungeon, and I want them to clear it too.

[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.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

And then we'll be back to Amdapor Keep 2.0 where half DF parties couldn't make it past demon wall. Or even worse, Pharos Sirius, where people wouldn't even bother to queue up because the first boss overwhelmed most DF parties with an army of explosive hellhounds.
What are these "acceptable standards" you are talking about? Where do you exactly draw the line?

Completely offtopic, but I just came back a few days ago from taking a break. Completed the Sigma NM quest and proceeded to start doing the NM turns. I even watched some videos. On Sigma V4, on the very start, one of the healers says "if I find another troll I'm afk". I was like wtf? This was my very first time, I even watched a video but I didn't know if I was going to do everything perfectly? That comment at the start made me feel so uncomfortable with the run and I ended up dying a couple times. And then I come across threads like this and they infuriate me to no end.

The TC came across a group that couldn't clear Garuda EX. What the hell does he even know about that group? Perhaps new players? Perhaps someone that had a bad day? There could even be a person with some sort of physical deficiency or anxiety issues.

You guys can keep your "acceptable standards" to yourselves.

First, these aren't our standards. You see aoes and knockbacks in plenty of content. Are you telling me dealing with the same things we've dealt with since level 50 was the cap is somehow insurmountable? The demon wall wasn't hard, even with the adds. Yes, it was a bit of a DPS race with aoe dodging, but it was a worthwhile challenge for its time, and clearing it not only made me ready for what came after, I actually had a sense of pride and accomplishment when I bought - and still have - my first Darklight piece. Pharos was a challenge as well, but the first boss? That was little more than a lesson to not try and ignore adds and zerg a boss.

That tank's comment in O4 wasn't aimed at you and had nothing to do with you. Sure, it wasn't cool of them to say, but don't let your confidence be shaken with something that little. Yes, I just said that. Don't let someone else's words destroy your confidence. Someone might have something bad to say, even when you do it right, but if you know what to do and you're confident in doing it, or even if you're new and you've taken steps to try to be prepared, then who cares what they say? If it's an issue with anxiety, I'm not one to make light of that, as I understand it's a serious issue for many. But! This again backs up my statement from before; get people used to dealing with mechanics they'll frequently see in endgame, and they won't be blindsided or unprepared.

So, first - and I'm not pulling punches here - get over yourself, and properly assess what an acceptable standard is: being able to perform your job at the most basic level while dealing with common mechanics. Even guildhests only ask that of you. . . or is that too hard?