The general player base needs to improve

[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.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

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.

Because of "I'm familiar with. . ." and "my experience told me otherwise. . ."

I don't think it's you personally, and I don't care about FFLogs one bit; that honestly holds no weight in the discussion here. But don't try to use your annecdotal experience to justify others not doing what would generally be considered reasonable, baseline play in sub-Savage content. Don't reach for excuses and far-reaching logic behind why anyone may or may not be playing to par. Yes, new is new, and some people just aren't good at some things. But it doesn't, and shouldn't end there. Saying the general playerbase needs to improve really touches upon the fact that even though the game may perhaps not require players to do better, there seems to be a lacking sense of desire for self-improvement. Just because you're not good or not at a higher level doesn't mean you should or have to stay there. And I'm not aiming this at just you, but anyone who's chimed in with the "people are going to do what they want/not everyone plays on the same level" bit.

No, not everyone does. But if they're not even playing to the baseline, then yes, at or by level 70, they need to be there, plain and simple. And it's NOT impossible to do. Doing what you want isn't how team-based content works. Let's establish that now, and let that crap logic be laid to rest in this discussion once and for all. The moment there's one more person in a party besides you, it's not about doing it your way anymore, and no amount of self-confident declaration is going to justify that.

[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.