The general player base needs to improve

[KaivaC]

Then it wont teach anyone anything. They'll release it, and you all will complain at how easy they are, because harder than current expert but weaker than rab or shin is still really easy. So you just wasted the devs time. The weaker players will just get carried through them like they get carried through rab. The actual difficulty needed to make an expert that can wipe people and not let dead weight be carried is harder than rab or shin, and closer to an ex trial like susano.

What you are suggesting is making the suggested newer Expert dungeons punishingly difficult right out of the gate. Again - straight to one end of an extreme, never trying to meet in the middle. You can't do that right out of the gate, because all it does is give casuals and casual-midcore level players only the options of either wiping through it and deciding never to run these new types of Expert dungeons again, or opting to get carried through it just for the rewards, and hopefully learning the patterns that will get them through. That's a Leeroy Jenkins situation. You're taking the suggestions that I've been making and saying that they need to be hard right out of the gate.

I'm suggesting putting a gradual difficulty curve, spread out through multiple Expert dungeons that increase in difficulty as you approach the last of whatever set of Expert dungeons you will have, with watered-down-to-slightly-less-punishing mechanics from whatever the Ex/Savage tier placed into it. And again, Shinryu is the absolute bar for difficulty. Nothing dungeon-wise should surpass what that fight through at players who were, at the most, ilvl310 in that time-frame. The very last Expert dungeon in 5.0? Sure, make it about Shinryu-level hard. But the preceding Expert dungeons should gradually build towards this point. The devs are capable of it.

I don't understand why you are not able to see a middle ground between the current dungeons and Savage/Ex (no, Shinryu is not a middle ground...he's just the epitome of a storyline and an appropriately leveled boss fight...the dungeons preceding him are another story). Why must it be 'either this or that' with you? That's a serious question. Why? I really want to know the answer to this. Do you deal solely in absolutes? Because in the past, you've suggested something similar about raiders as well, that raiders in general find practically anything dungeon-wise easy.

[RiyahArp]

What you are suggesting is making the suggested newer Expert dungeons punishingly difficult right out of the gate.

Because punishing is the only way they get better. The way the difficulty is in this game in terms of individual mechanics means there is no gradual difficulty. There's no difference between an attack that lowers you to 50% HP for failng it, and one that lowers you to 1%. Both teach you the same lessons, the healer needs to recover you when you screw up, and dodging more or less is nice, but you don't die if you do and even if you do the healer will raise you. The fights that do teach you in the game have single, punishing mechanics that more or less wipe the party if one or more people fail them. Like if you don't sprint to the meteors in the chrysalis as a tank, everyone will die. If you don't position yourself perfectly from Rav's or titan's knockback moves you die and are out of the fight. But with Sophia you can literally die and fall nonstop; i cleared it with both white mages on the ground, 4 players, and me as only heals as rdm.

They'll seem punishingly difficult because to learn you really can't just keep having the healer fix your mistakes, nor the other dps carry you when you are on the floor. they probably will be a little less punishing than alte roite, who is pretty simple, but you need to have a mechanic like his where everyone has to go to their spots or they will die, and to a point the healer can't compensate for this nor the other member finish the instance.

You're saying gradual but in practice anyways it will be really hard.

And anyways, you truly only get better when you hit a wall and get mad/motivated enough to get over yourself and overcome it.

[VanilleFang]

Because punishing is the only way they get better.

Or they quit.

[KaivaC]

Because punishing is the only way they get better.

...What? I mean...what????

[HoodRat]

...What? I mean...what????

Riyah is into some kinky stuff.

[RiyahArp]

...What? I mean...what????

You don't get better unless you hit a wall of some kind that makes you want to improve, and that legitimately fails you as you are. You look up your rotation only when not knowing it causes you a bad wipe, because if you keep one or two shotting instances, you think you are fine. I get better as a healer not because the difficulty is slowly ramped, because in general it isn't; early guildhest bosses are actually tougher mechanics-wise than later dungeon ones (what boss spams as many adds as the morbol? What boss will keep regenerating unless you kill all five parts close to the same time?)

i get better when the mechanic forces me to perfect something because I die and wipe the party otherwise. And as we are discussing, neither the current hardest casual content in the game is providing that wall for people, because you keep complaining about the players in it.

[KaivaC]

You don't get better unless you hit a wall of some kind that makes you want to improve, and that legitimately fails you as you are. You look up your rotation only when not knowing it causes you a bad wipe, because if you keep one or two shotting instances, you think you are fine. I get better as a healer not because the difficulty is slowly ramped, because in general it isn't; i get better when the mechanic forces me to perfect something because I die and wipe the party otherwise. And as we are discussing, neither the current hardest casual content in the game is providing that wall for people, because you keep complaining about the players in it.

Key word: casual.

I was not bringing up casual content. I've said it before, I don't want casual content touched. You don't need to throw up a wall to get players smoothly into endgame. That does turn off a lot of folks - Aurum Vale, Pharos Sirius, and The Steps of Faith being the most prominent examples. Maybe you get better because you run into a brick wall, but there are other players who might be intimidated by this, and may want something that gradually brings them up to what they could expect when they go into raiding. This entire time, I've been suggesting optional, harder dungeons. Those are most certainly not casual content, but with the right incentives, it would offer another way to get the casual base raid ready without throwing them straight into the Lion's Den. Look at Sigmascape Savage - the first fight of the tier is pretty nasty, especially if one is new to raiding and isn't accustomed to the multitude of mechanics, some of which can act randomly.

It's just another option that I and others I've engaged in conversation with have talked about.

There's more ways to improve players, if they desire, than just throwing up a wall and telling them to figure out how to climb over it, or have someone carry them over it.

[Shihen]

This isn't directed at anyone, just piggybacking off of these comments to make a few points.

You don't get better unless you hit a wall of some kind that makes you want to improve, and that legitimately fails you as you are.

I agree with the spirit of this statement, and the general message, but don't think it necessarily has to be pass/fail to spark the will to improve. An impassable wall is a challenge for some, but for a lot of others it's the end of the road. They aren't willing to put in the effort to scale the wall, which ties into:

You look up your rotation...

The wall is higher than it needs to be. Most players just aren't going to do anything to improve that requires stepping outside of Eorzea and while that's certainly laziness on the player's part, the design is also to blame. There is a lack of meaningful communication when it comes to combat performance in this game that makes improvement unnecessarily roundabout. Many players opt not to improve because they don't even know where to start and are pissed off that they have to at all because they were all straight A students before they signed up for Byakko-sensei's class and got an F. They meld incorrectly because instead of percentages, we have arbitrary ratings that require a google search and calculator to make sense of. They do sub-par damage because knowing how much damage you do requires a third-party, ToS breaking app instead of a conversation with an NPC beside the training dummy. They fail basic mechanics because hall of the novice is an optional hut in the middle of nowhere instead of, you know, a hall novices have to go through.

I think if they really wanted to they could come up with pretty good ways to coax the general playerbase into getting better, but it's probably just not on the radar. Between 5.0 design, 4.x development, bugs, and drafting a statement that pretends to care about PvP, their hands might just be full.

[RiyahArp]

I agree with the spirit of this statement, and the general message, but don't think it necessarily has to be pass/fail to spark the will to improve. An impassable wall is a challenge for some, but for a lot of others it's the end of the road. They aren't willing to put in the effort to scale the wall, which ties into

Well, that's the way it is already. I mean, the game doesn't kick you out of it if you don't do savage or expert. Most people are going to make a choice, but if someone argues that the playerbase needs to get better, that means we get these kinds of walls.

The wall is higher than it needs to be. Most players just aren't going to do anything to improve that requires stepping outside of Eorzea and while that's certainly laziness on the player's part, the design is also to blame. There is a lack of meaningful communication when it comes to combat performance in this game that makes improvement unnecessarily roundabout. Many players opt not to improve because they don't even know where to start and are pissed off that they have to at all because they were all straight A students before they signed up for Byakko-sensei's class and got an F. They meld incorrectly because instead of percentages, we have arbitrary ratings that require a google search and calculator to make sense of. They do sub-par damage because knowing how much damage you do requires a third-party, ToS breaking app instead of a conversation with an NPC beside the training dummy. They fail basic mechanics because hall of the novice is an optional hut in the middle of nowhere instead of, you know, a hall novices have to go through.

I think if they really wanted to they could come up with pretty good ways to coax the general playerbase into getting better, but it's probably just not on the radar. Between 5.0 design, 4.x development, bugs, and drafting a statement that pretends to care about PvP, their hands might just be full.

The reason for obscured mechanic makes sense, but also is annoying as hell.

They do it to give the elite theorycrafters something to do, and those crafters form sort of a core to the MMO and create the whole community thing that makes games a lot stickier. It's one thing to know everything from the start, but when you are forced to ask someone in game, or receive advice, that really binds the players to the game. Like look at FFlogs; it's created a community around it, all due to the fact that its hard to actually evaluate damage in this game, and it has among the top players whose influence trickles down to everyone else by meta, by streaming, and other means.

It's annoying because it works so well. That core of knowledge-spreading players has a huge impact on a game. And they probably don't fix it because you'd end up isolating players even worse in their own worlds. you wouldn't need to ask anyone else for anything. I'm sure there are other reasons, but thats what i feel the stupid "hide all damage numbers" persists long after the intial reason-immersion-is dead in the water.

[Alien_Gamer]

And anyways, you truly only get better when you hit a wall and get mad/motivated enough to get over yourself and overcome it.

This is false. People get better by gradual increments in difficulty, not massive leaps. You may prefer that method personally but I can guarantee you never learned something hard by just throwing yourself at the most difficult part and overcoming it. Anything hard you learn, you do so by breaking it down into smaller parts, you learn those pieces and gradually build yourself up to the point where you can do something hard.

Where this game needs to improve is in providing that scalable difficulty and not provide sudden jumps in difficulty and pray the players will stick with it. Start with Sastasha, make the aoes there a little (25%) smaller and make the cast time a little (10%) longer and keep it that way through copperbell, basically enough time to get used to group dynamics and how your class plays. Thereafter, in each dungeon, increase the aoe size and decrease the cast time until castrum/praetorium where the aoes and cast times will be as they are now. In lv 50/60/70 dungeons decrease the cast time by another 1-2% and in current EX decrease it another 1-2%. This allows people to get used to harder content without overwhelming them with sudden spikes in difficulty. The best part is the ability to make bigger/smaller aoes or longer/shorter cast times is that the means already exist in the game engine; it doesn't require any special programming, just a retooling of existing dungeons slightly.

Sudden death mechanics are also bad for learning, all sudden death teaches you is that failing it kills you. It provides no opportunity to repeat and learn beyond a raise or reset. Instead of sudden death it should halt progress; you can't complete this fight until you do X correctly. This is effectively what a DPS check is, you can't proceed with the fight until you figure out how to do enough DPS and it lets you improve as you do it. Ultimately if the improvement takes too long, you'll fail and have to try again. Learn how to do your rotation right and you get to continue. Going hand in hand with this is the need for better feedback to the player, they need to know how and why they failed so they can do better next time. Sudden death tells you neither, just that you failed.

It wouldn't hurt to see more prevelant use of Trial/Savage mechanics in regular dungeons either. Players should have the opportunity to be introduced to those outside of savage where failing can wipe the group.