The general player base needs to improve

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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? .

Significant problem with both those dungeons is there was a faster alternative. A proper curve funnels everyone through the same route. Weeping City worked wonderfully in this regard because you either pushed yourself or you weren't upgrading your tomestone gear/obtaining a i230 drop. Had Stormblood began with dungeons of that caliber for Expert, you either do them or accept a less efficient way to cap for the week. You'll be amazed at how quickly people motivate themselves when reasonably pushed. We need to emphasise reasonably here because, no, dungeons shouldn't be some insurmountable activity on par with EX Primals. But I think Expert dungeons should require more than a pulse.

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.

You realize the inherent hypocrisy here, yes? By casting a wide, generalizing net, you look just as toxic as the players you're accusing. When people cite those "refusing to learn," they mean dungeon runs where DPS will not AoE no matter how often they are asked; any job who has not even the basic idea how their job works despite being at max level. In plenty of cases, it's these people who get the most irate despite causing the problem. Or am I an "angry bully" for expecting you to press your AoE abilities when I pull ten mobs and you're wearing better gear than I am?

[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.

[RiyahArp]

There is no gradually in this. You either make it so that the dungeons harshly punish mistakes or they don't. Healers like to say it doesn't matter how low your HP is so long as you are still alive; we have boss attacks that knock people down to under ten HP. You can stand in the fire for virtually all the bosses in expert and survive a hit. We already have gradual or slow examples of one-hit attacks; Nidhogg Hard will wipe you at starting ilvl if you don't react to aoes. Hashmal will wipe you too. These things are both required and apparently do not prepare the player base.

The only way it will work is to essentally make bosses similar to Nid Hard, but increase both the speed of his attacks and and the severity of the dps checks. Both of these need to be hard enough to wipe the party in a way that prevents people from carrying others through it; even if you are a good healer or tank, the DPS have to make the checks or stay alive, or otherwise its just a carry. You can make the total amount of mechanics small, and maybe some leeway; if you get hit by Arbuda's counters or attacks two times with two players you all wipe, for example. But you cannot do this dumb "gradual and optional" stuff; you're shrinking away from the fact that to git gud means people need to fail and fail hard if they aren't gud.

And considering a lot of the complaining is more about ex and savage farms, either you accept a lot of players simply won't be gud, or you make the casual game hard enough to funnel the players who aren't gud out. If you think everyone can be savage caliber, you are mistaken. If you aren't happy with the current playerbase, who does manage to do most casual content fine, and want them to be better in some undefined way, well define it or you are being useless. You can't balance things on undefined quantities.

[Dualgunner]

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.

"OP can't possibly have known the kind of people in her party, but I have a full psychological profile on op and all who are like her / agree with her."

Maybe its me, but you sound like the judgmental angry one here.

[SenorPatty]

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.

Who hurt you?

/soothe

[KaivaC]

snip

Players will be players, unfortunately. Sadly, healers are far too strong that they could easily fix mistakes made in dungeons, and the dungeons themselves aren't really interesting enough once you get out a lot of the pre-60 dungeons that encourages more than the bare minimum to get through them. It isn't as though the devs can do anything about healing potential either, because that balancing will have a huge effect across the game. I think we might just need better dungeons, ones that subtly take away from AOE emphasis and more on role specific stuff. I mean, we're starting to have to use AOEs more now in raids...so I wonder if regular mobs in a run could start encouraging the using the ST skills.

snip

Eventually, yes, make it so that we'll come to a point where Expert dungeons can harshly punish mistakes. But the way things are set up now, that shouldn't happen until the end of 5.0 when you unlock those exclusive Expert dungeons after whatever story is in there. The game has room for gradual difficulty. You can't just suddenly throw in Nid Hard bosses - that will definitely kill Expert runs right now. You say that gradual and optional is dumb, yet you fail to recognize that some of us have already thrown in some ideas on how this could work, whereas, once again, you have not provided anything and now you're on the 'git gud' train. Some of these dungeons shouldn't be labeled 'Expert' if they are practically no different from the rest of the other dungeons, save for the level and the scenery. Lemme pose another question.

This one is specifically for you, Riyah.

What's wrong with having optional, harder dungeons that actually feel like Expert? If they are harder and the rewards are increased enough that they offer rewards like just-below-raid-level gear, materia, exclusive mounts, maybe even tomestones that you can find during a run (though those will have to be capped...maybe implement a system where these harder, Expert dungeons can give you tomestones around 200 above the weekly cap), how is that a bad thing?

See, I just threw in some ideas and incentives just in my response to you.

[Jijifli]

If you aren't happy with the current playerbase, who does manage to do most casual content fine, and want them to be better in some undefined way, well define it or you are being useless. You can't balance things on undefined quantities.

I'd like for dungeons to require some basics when they are in expert roulette. You'd think for a queue called "expert" there'd actually be some expert level stuff in it, right? Nope, you can ignore most mechanics entirely. Let's look at the Hells Lid first boss. You know, the spin attack. You get plenty of time to move out of melee range to dodge it, but nobody does. Why? It's not threatening. At all. I tank that with 5 vun stacks and it still won't kill me. If I can screw a mechanic over 6 times in a row and it still not kill me, it's probably not dangerous.

Let's look at Fractal hard too. The last boss has a hard enrage. Did you know it did? I couldn't tell, because for it to go off both of your dps need to basically be afk. It's a pathetic amount of time. Does it need to expect huge numbers? Nah. Should it maybe expect more than auto attacks? Yes it should. But the dangers of players quitting over any difficulty seems to drive Square away from risking a loss of money. Remember the 4.1 solo mission? People threatened to quit over that, and then we get the 4.2 ones that are braindead easy I fell asleep and still didn't die.

So ya maybe making the dungeons expect things like BLM using fire, or MNK landing positionals, or expecting players to actually avoid mechanics, etc etc. might help with player difficulty. If you don't even want to do your basics, how is it enjoying?

[Ayer2015]

If you don't even want to do your basics, how is it enjoying?

People enjoy fishing.... which I find mind numbing. Its all a matter of personal perspective.

[HyoMinPark]

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.

Because you look so saintly making your sweeping generalizations about someone you don’t even know? I find your post far more “toxic” than Kaiva’s opening post.

[HoodRat]

People enjoy fishing.... which I find mind numbing. Its all a matter of personal perspective.

They let fishers into df now?