The general player base needs to improve

[RiyahArp]

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?

1. To make the boss expert, you are going to have to do things that aren't gradual.

Let's say boss has a cone aoe attack that targets a dps. It hits him for 50% of his health if he doesn't dodge. This is too easy, so you boost the damage to 75%.

The thing is...there's no difference. The healer just patches him up. We have bosses that can drop a player to 1% HP or lower as a mechanic, and it still doesn't change; the healer still patches him back up if he screws up. You can stand in the fire no matter how much damage it does as long as it doesn't kill you.

SE tries to make it gradual, so they add vuln stacks. If you get hit enough, you will eventually get one-shot. But the boss doesn't do their attacks fast enough to be an issue in a normal fight. You get jiji standing in a puddle with six stacks on him.

So in the end, you make it so that two hits of the cone aoe wipe you; the first gives enough vuln for the second to kill you, or maybe even the next aoe. but even then, all the healer has to do is raise the person and they can fight again, just a lot slower due to penalized stats.

So to make the boss not able to be zombied through, you add a strong dps check that penalizes any dps who is at 50% stats. If you get raised too much, it's a wipe.

You go from "let's try to make gradual difficulty increase" to, well, pretty much the same thing you get in an ex fight. Because you really need to have those kinds of things to make the fight expert; you can't gradually make it a challenge in any real way because the healer can fix things, and the dps can still complete things, just a lot slower. To teach the kind of skills you want the players to have, you pretty much replicate the stuff you find in savage. The bosses may not have as much HP, and the mechanics may be slower than them, but the way the game is, you really need to wipe people and have dps checks to add any sense of difficulty to the game. And if you look at some of the harder old dungeons, they do this exactly. Qarn will one shot you if you don't get on the suare to avoid doom. Bees will one-shot you if they are allowed to live. If you do not clear out bombs and fast, the last boss in brayflox hard will wipe everyone over and over again. But Aurum vale is exactly what happens when you try to make a gradual boss; a good healer can keep someone up with 4-5 stacks on some of the bosses, and even if they die, nothing really happens; they just get raised and go back in there.

As for optional experts, go nuts. We have them already, we call them ex trials. You even can get unique mounts from them. They don't really seem to work in the sense of "lets make the playerbase better, though." Because you can ignore them if you like. Heck, the ARR ex primals are already the perfect difficulty for this kind of thing. Its just unless you force people to do them, the people who would learn from doing it won't, and the people who think everything is easy will, and we are back to where we started.

[KaivaC]

snip

Why don’t we just think of Expert as practice for Savage/Ex fights? With everything we’ve seen thus far, there are plenty of mechanics that could be brought in. Widen your scope a little bit. You don’t need to have enemies one or two shotting players. Since we don’t have crowd control abilities ourselves, why not let the enemies have them? You’re right, healers are capable of fixing pretty much any mistake.

So how do you fix that?

Hit all characters with Infirmary. Or give the healers an HP penalty down debuff from an enemy that is never in a fixed location for players to be prepared for ahead of time. Things like that. Hit tanks with vuln stacks. Start giving DPS some damage down debuffs and start a hard DPS check. Have some bosses use skills specific to the jobs in a party. Throw in a mechanic that resets aggro, forcing players to use their enmity dumps.

There are so many ways you can increase difficulty without going the tired route of ‘this boss hits so much harder…healers, top him off’. There’s room to bring in some very interesting ways of beating a boss. I loved the second boss in Bardam’s Mettle, because it was 100% pure mechanics and no DPS. Honestly, I dunno what happens if everybody fails It, but stuff like that would be great in Expert. Not the 100% mechanics part, but something similar where it is unique.

Aurum Vale was punishing because by this point, it is ingrained into players to push forward no matter what. Qarn forced you to do mechanics, because if you didn’t, a lot healers were not capable of saving a wipe at that point. Same with Brayflox…you needed AOEs to be efficient at getting the bombs the hell away from the party.

Ex trials are not expert dungeons…they’re trials. Don’t wanna mess with the rewards there. But with actual expert dungeons, set the item level to about 5 below the latest ex trial. And again, I have to emphasize giving good incentives for completing it. Yeah, maybe players will ignore harder, optional dungeons – just like players ignore SSS…but the option would be there. You’re right, you can’t force players to do hard content…but if you put the option out there, at the very least, it will do a better job of allowing players to be prepared for what they will see in the hard fights.

Who thinks everything is easy? I certainly never said that. A lot of raiders that we’ve talked to on many occasions don’t think that either. I mean, shoot, I just got completely owned by Byakko tonight, and I’ve cleared it several dozen times. Twitch streamers who have gotten through Ultimate and are capable of clearing the latest Savage raid in days may find everything easy, but a lot of us here on the forums who actively raid don’t find everything easy. The ones who find everything easy are a small minority that probably don’t even have the desire to check these forums, and thus they are not included in my original discussion topic, nor are they relevant in this topic.

[RiyahArp]

Why don’t we just think of Expert as practice for Savage/Ex fights? With everything we’ve seen thus far, there are plenty of mechanics that could be brought in. Widen your scope a little bit. You don’t need to have enemies one or two shotting players. Since we don’t have crowd control abilities ourselves, why not let the enemies have them?.

Either the healer uses esuna, and they go, or its the same thing we already have, uncleansable debuffs. The worst we have is paralysis.

So how do you fix that? You’re right, healers are capable of fixing pretty much any mistake. Hit all characters with Infirmary. Or give the healers an HP penalty down debuff from an enemy that is never in a fixed location for players to be prepared for ahead of time. Things like that. Hit tanks with vuln stacks. Start giving DPS some damage down debuffs and start a hard DPS check. Have some bosses use skills specific to the jobs in a party. Throw in a mechanic that resets aggro, forcing players to use their enmity dumps.

There are so many ways you can increase difficulty without going the tired route of ‘this boss hits so much harder…healers, top him off’. There’s room to bring in some very interesting ways of beating a boss. I loved the second boss in Bardam’s Mettle, because it was 100% pure mechanics and no DPS. Honestly, I dunno what happens if everybody fails It, but stuff like that would be great in Expert. Not the 100% mechanics part, but something similar where it is unique.

Those don't really do much. You give dps a damage down and have a dps check, its the same as just not giving them a dmg down and making it a harder dps check. You give them infirmary, you just end up balancing the attacks based on the lowered totals. It just goes back to whether or not what you do has a serious threat to wipe the player. If it doesn't, its the same as we already have.

Aurum Vale was punishing because by this point, it is ingrained into players to push forward no matter what. Qarn forced you to do mechanics, because if you didn’t, a lot healers were not capable of saving a wipe at that point. Same with Brayflox…you needed AOEs to be efficient at getting the bombs the hell away from the party.

Aurum was only hard because people tried to skip mobs. that's it honestly. If you just slowed down and fought them, no difficulty. But yeah, those two examples had risk to wipe the party, so they served as harder content.

Ex trials are not expert dungeons…they’re trials. Don’t wanna mess with the rewards there. But with actual expert dungeons, set the item level to about 5 below the latest ex trial. And again, I have to emphasize giving good incentives for completing it. Yeah, maybe players will ignore harder, optional dungeons – just like players ignore SSS…but the option would be there. You’re right, you can’t force players to do hard content…but if you put the option out there, at the very least, it will do a better job of allowing players to be prepared for what they will see in the hard fights.

Who thinks everything is easy? I certainly never said that. A lot of raiders that we’ve talked to on many occasions don’t think that either. I mean, shoot, I just got completely owned by Byakko tonight, and I’ve cleared it several dozen times. Twitch streamers who have gotten through Ultimate and are capable of clearing the latest Savage raid in days may find everything easy, but a lot of us here on the forums who actively raid don’t find everything easy. The ones who find everything easy are a small minority that probably don’t even have the desire to check these forums, and thus they are not included in my original discussion topic, nor are they relevant in this topic.

no no, my point was that we already have things that are optional, hard, teach players skills, and offer rewards better than the casual content that precedes them. those are ex trials. However, the problem with ex trials is not enough people do it, especially the people who could benefit from having their skills challenged by them. The people though who already find most content in the game easy are the ones who tend to do them, and then they complain its too easy. You can have those dungeons, but they might end up as another form of ex primals in terms of impact.

[VanilleFang]

Those don't really do much. You give dps a damage down and have a dps check, its the same as just not giving them a dmg down and making it a harder dps check.

Not entirely. If you have a tight DPS check you just need proper rotations and damage upkeep to beat it. If you include mechanics that will grant damage down debuffs when ignored you add an extra layer of difficulty. Instead of just having to deal as much damage as possible you will also have to handle mechanics while trying to deal your damage.

You give them infirmary, you just end up balancing the attacks based on the lowered totals. It just goes back to whether or not what you do has a serious threat to wipe the player. If it doesn't, its the same as we already have.

If damage is tweaked to a point that an infirmary debuff will make it impossible for a healer to keep up, it could help make a fight more difficult. For example, if the fight has a tight dps check but the tank dies because they ignored a mechanic and got inflicted with Infirmary. There's even ways to make it so DPS could be negatively effected by Infirmary. Here's some examples:

Mechanic that can inflict Infirmary > AoE that inflicts hefty DoT > AoE > AoE

There could even be a boss that would kill anyone with Infirmary outright, or inflicts a very powerful DoT if they are inflicted by Infirmary.

There's a lot of different things that could be introduced that could make fights more difficult. I can think of things that aren't that "same we already have".

[Gallus]

You can keep banging your heads on the wall trying to change other people's aspirations and aims in a mmo, or you can accept that the FFXIV community (like most communities) is diverse and that people play for different reasons.
There are no people standing on the aoes on purpose to ruin your lives and there are no people ignoring share damage mechanics as long as they notice them.

I said I'm familiar with the kind of player profile that just "harmlessly offers advice" when on reality most of the times they are nothing but people with temperamental attitudes (or a bad day). Perhaps the TC is actually not among these people and he/she is legit concerned about the average level of the players in this game? Possibly. But understand my skepticism when my experience has told me otherwise throughout all these years.

[HyoMinPark]

There are no people standing on the aoes on purpose to ruin your lives and there are no people ignoring share damage mechanics as long as they notice them.

I really want to know what Duty Finder you’re playing in, because in the DF I run in, there are people that just blatantly stand in AOEs, ignore mechanics, and not only ignore the stack markers, but run away with them.

I said I'm familiar with the kind of player profile that just "harmlessly offers advice" when on reality most of the times they are nothing but people with temperamental attitudes (or a bad day). Perhaps the TC is actually not among these people and he/she is legit concerned about the average level of the players in this game? Possibly. But understand my skepticism when my experience has told me otherwise throughout all these years.

Your “skepticism” is nothing more than a baseless assumption that you’ve made against Kaiva without even really knowing them. I understand past experiences can jade people, and I consider myself pretty darn jaded, but I don’t just assume the worst of people, nor make blanket generalizations about them without even knowing them. Especially when they’ve been perfectly cordial in a discussion thread they created.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

I said I'm familiar with the kind of player profile that just "harmlessly offers advice" when on reality most of the times they are nothing but people with temperamental attitudes (or a bad day). Perhaps the TC is actually not among these people and he/she is legit concerned about the average level of the players in this game? Possibly. But understand my skepticism when my experience has told me otherwise throughout all these years.

If you run into tempermental advice givers so much, that raises the question of what you are or aren't doing to prompt such advice being offered? I mean, I so rarely, if ever get advice, but I also show myself to be more than competent at whatever role/job I'm playing at the time, and generally am capable of figuring things out on my own. And I don't think that's anything extraordinary or difficult for any other player to do. The difference is having the will to do it.

Feel free to vote kick anyone in a dungeon who isn't doing the rotation you feel they should be doing, go ahead, you could be kicking someone who either just made it to 70, isn't very familiar with their aoe rotation, recently came back or simply wants to put into practice their single target rotation because they are still not 100% familiar with it. I'm certainly proud of have never done so and I will continue doing the same thing.

Nice try. I speak from experience, both PvE and PvP that after a while, you can really tell the difference in movement between a newer player, and a player just phoning it in. As for practicing a single target rotation, please tell me where the logic applies in practicing single target rotation when confronted with multiple enemies? Striking dummies exist for a reason, so I'm shooting that one down. Just as well, if they're at level 70 and don't know their single target rotation, what have they been doing all that time?

I get that you want to find the outlying possibilities, but let's keep some rationality in the debate. I wouldn't kick someone doing any of the things you mentioned above, but I would speak up to offer them advice. If they don't want to take it and use it, or want to lash out at me, I'm more than free to leave, just as they are. But that won't solve the problem one bit, and trying to justify or excuse it won't either.

[Gallus]

If you run into tempermental advice givers so much, that raises the question of what you are or aren't doing to prompt such advice being offered? I mean, I so rarely, if ever get advice, but I also show myself to be more than competent at whatever role/job I'm playing at the time, and generally am capable of figuring things out on my own. And I don't think that's anything extraordinary or difficult for any other player to do. The difference is having the will to do it.

Why do you assume I'm the one targeted by temperamental people? I don't like these people going wild on others either. I'm not even defending myself here. I know my rotations well. I'm not raiding currently, but I raided in Omega, a fast look at my FFlogs there would be enough to know I'm not the one not aoeing in dungeons or being called out for not pulling their weight.

[KaivaC]

Either the healer uses esuna, and they go, or its the same thing we already have, uncleansable debuffs. The worst we have is paralysis.

Paralysis is one of the most effective things that the game does throw at us. I can't argue this...good point.

Those don't really do much. You give dps a damage down and have a dps check, its the same as just not giving them a dmg down and making it a harder dps check. You give them infirmary, you just end up balancing the attacks based on the lowered totals. It just goes back to whether or not what you do has a serious threat to wipe the player. If it doesn't, its the same as we already have.

Not quite. If you have a damage down with a tough DPS check, you're gonna have to bring out everything you've got. Say, you get it during a Behemoth's Meteor cast. If a DPS is down, you will not pass this check. Obviously, the min ilvl has to be balanced towards this, but we're talking about having expert level dungeons - given that nearly all EX and Savage battles have a smaller DPS check in battle, it will encourage players to push out damage. That's just one example.

Have another one where you're fighting a boss on a platform similar to Demon Wall, and a pushback mechanic that covers the entire platform is about to come up along with particularly nasty, untargetable adds (say aether swords or something like that) that will float across the platform. The adds themselves deal attack/magic damage down debuffs if you touch just one of them. One way of dealing with that would be to stack in a way that the pushback will knock you in a way that the entire party will not touch any of the adds. Have something like that, and boom, you are familiarized with one of the main mechanics of O5S.

no no, my point was that we already have things that are optional, hard, teach players skills, and offer rewards better than the casual content that precedes them. those are ex trials. However, the problem with ex trials is not enough people do it, especially the people who could benefit from having their skills challenged by them. The people though who already find most content in the game easy are the ones who tend to do them, and then they complain its too easy. You can have those dungeons, but they might end up as another form of ex primals in terms of impact.

Ex/Savage trials are a significant step up. Truthfully, all I'm suggesting is a middle ground between the dungeons we currently have now, and those hard battles. I'll even take it a step further, take the existing Hard Mode dungeons and call them (Dungeon Name) Unyielding. The people who find everything easy don't really matter, because their skill levels are just simply far above our own. I'd venture to say Wanderer's Palace Unyielding could be the first. Have a Master Tonberry capable of causing instant death, and being able to cast meteor. Allow it to even invade in the boss fight. That'll give a run a sense of urgency, for example.