The general player base needs to improve

[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.

[KaivaC]

I think the first dungeon of each expansion should be a challenge dungeon that throws ALL the mechanics learned up to that point at you(and I'm not talking savage/ultimate stuff, but things that have been seen in any of the regular dungeons/HM dungeons to date - stack markers, look away prompts, stand still and don't do anything, anything that actually requires you to do specific actions to negate/lower damage taken/not get debuff)

Sorry...meant to reply to this. Well...we are lvl 70...ideally, players should be able to handle it. Not a bad idea...or better yet, why not just have challenge dungeons, period? I would like something like that.

[Avatre]

Sorry...meant to reply to this. Well...we are lvl 70...ideally, players should be able to handle it. Not a bad idea...or better yet, why not just have challenge dungeons, period? I would like something like that.

Ideally, yes, players should be able to handle that. But how many times have you ran into a level 70 fight, or even a level 60 one that EVERYONE is synced down to, and people run away with the stack marker. Or ignore the look away mechanic, or ignore the meteors/whatever? I find way too often that people run away with those, and I end up just ignoring them if they start moving away from the group.

[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.

[SavageCipher]

The major problem is the lack of research done. If you want to hit the dungeon all cowboy style, then do so. But if we're talking about raids. You need to be well informed on the mechanics. This is nothing new of course...MMO's have existed since the 90's, if you're still in the dark about how to do anything, you've either been living under a rock, or don't know how to use a search engine. There literally is only one excuse you can have for being bad at a game. And that's lack of actual, practical, skill. I'm still surprised to see either dps doing horrible rotations (late game) and healers not dp/dot-ing.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Maybe lock the cool special effects behind a correct rotation and let it look weak (as it is), when done wrong?

That is a brilliant idea! Players may not always care about their damage; but, by god, they will jump through hoops to get the coolest visual effects. I know because I worked as the Asst. Mgr. at an arcade for three years.

The kids were always searching online for information on how to perform the flashiest combos or enable a hidden character. I really hope someone at S.E. sees this suggestion because it's a winner!

[DreadRabbit]

So I've read the thread, and as someone who readily admits they're a casual I kind of just want to toss my two cents. This post is gonna be long, so this is the TL;DR version of it:

This is both a developmental and a community problem. Just one side isn't going to help raise the skill level of the player base. SE bends too easily and needs to put its foot down, but there's a lot of entitlement on the part of the players (both the folks wanting skill improvement and those vehemently against it) that really needs to be set aside if we're going to get anywhere.

Why do I think this is a developmental problem?

Because there is a huge difficulty gap between MSQ content and raiding. I'm a firm believer in that a good game with good design choices will have everything you need to learn about the game within the game itself. FFXIV, as much as I love it, doesn't do that.

They've tried with Hall of the Novice and other similar stuff, but it falls short. Hall of the Novice, for example, claims to teach players how to play in a group. In reality it just teaches you how to handle those solo instances with a bunch of NPCs better. Because yeah, in those you better take mobs off the healer for yourself as a DPS because the NPC tank sure as heck won't.

But in a group with other people? That's terrible advice. And nowhere during the DPS hall of the novice are you told to stand near your healer. Nowhere are you told what keys/buttons to press to target the same enemy as your tank (I know there's a hotkey for that on keyboard, but can't seem to find it on controller). And by the time you get there some folks don't have their AoE yet, so there's nothing in there about "It's best to AoE at #of enemies" etc. etc.

But worst of all is that it's optional. A tutorial is pointless if you can let brand new players skip it. I don't think it would be that hard to add a trigger in the game that says "we see you have a level 50 character on your account already. Would you like to skip this tutorial?".

On the flip side SE also needs to put its foot down on the difficulty they want their game to be. Being wishy washy only makes the issue worse. No: as a casual I don't want Dark Souls levels of difficulty in the content I want to play, because I don't find that fun. However I don't want my game to be a walk in the park either.

And believe it or not, that's most casuals. The players people in this thread are talking about are (usually) just plain selfish and bad players. You won't change those people no matter what SE implements.


Why I think it's also a community problem:

This is the problem with forum discussions on this stuff. The average forum goer is not the average player. Lots of players who have a significantly lower skill level and find this stuff difficult are barely represented here at all, while the high end skill level is vastly over represented. That skews things towards "everything is easy and everyone's bad!" when maybe the real answer is "it's not as easy as you think, and you're better than you think you are."

The above quote really can't get enough likes from me. People online are incredibly narrow minded (myself included). That's due to our ability to see people being taken away. We're all a bunch of avatars behind a screen. It's real easy to fall into the mindset that how you like to play and how you see the game is what most other people see or should see.

This next bit is not a response to any one person in particular. It's more to just help frame where I'm coming from:

Just because I'm casual doesn't mean I spend less time on this game than a raider or care less about this game and its community than a raider. Video games are my hobby. I play a wide variety of genres on multiple platforms and probably spend more time than I should on them, have since I was a child. I'm in FFXIV a ton. I just don't like grappling with the "hardcore" aspects of games.

I find them boring, believe it or not. The final boss of a Final Fantasy or similar game? I'm down for that. I'll gladly spend an entire weekend trying to figure out how to beat a classic SE boss. Constantly doing the same one or two end game dungeons, fighting the same bosses, for weeks on end? That's horribly boring to me. At least while doing the MSQ I see different locations and meet people along the way (not saying you don't meet folks while raiding. You clearly do, but it's a lot more organized and thought out rather than just casual/random happenstance).

That's not a slam against any raider here. That's just me stating why I, and a lot of other casuals, don't personally enjoy raiding.

I bring this up because a lot of people's view on what a casual is or isn't is heavily skewed, and as has been said, not many casuals come to the official forums to provide the other side of the coin to look at.

The people players in this thread want to change, frankly, never will. The people who straight up don't care if they stand in the bad. The people who snap back when they're given good advice. Like I already said: those aren't casuals (in the sense you're thinking), those are just selfish players. You're better off either ignoring or kicking those players than trying to make them better (of course try giving advice first. If they ignore you after that, that's their problem).

Which is why I can't understand why people get offended when they're told "play with your FC or a static." That's the point of guilds/free companies/statics in MMOs. To find people who enjoy playing in a similar fashion that you do so that you don't have to deal with random people that may disagree with you and how you play. If you willingly step into a dungeon pug you're going to be playing with anyone of any age and skill level. And you're far more likely to run into the community's bad eggs because, not surprisingly, they don't make the same effort to meet folks to form FCs and statics like you do.

To end this already long post, it's vitally important to remember that all kinds of people play this game. When housing was opened for this patch I saw one guy post on Reddit that he was really excited to tell his 11 year old sister he got the house she's been wanting for years for her.

That bears repeating: 11 years old. And I'm sure that's not the youngest person who plays this game or attempts higher difficulty stuff.

Unless you do get on Discord or Skype to personally get to know who you're playing with, you don't know if the people in a PUG with you are 5 or 50+. You don't know if they have disabilities or not. So simply just assuming bad play or lack of achievements is due to laziness is terribly narrow minded. It's just as bad as that player we all hate that cries "I'll play how I want" and not bother to improve.

Now should that hamper your gameplay? Well no, ideally it shouldn't. However that's the risk you take when you interact with a bunch of strangers on the internet at random.

So while I am all for folks asking for harder content or for SE to settle on a distinct difficulty curve for their game, I also think this game's community really needs to keep an open mind. We no longer live in an age where only folks of certain age groups and demographics play these games. If you're not willing to be open minded about that, then no amount of changes SE makes is going to help you deal with randoms better.

That said I'm overall actually pretty happy at quite a few of the responses in this thread, because most of you (including OP) have shown that you are open minded. That last bit was more for the large number of posts I've seen that indicate otherwise.

[Shurrikhan]

Maybe lock the cool special effects behind a correct rotation and let it look weak (as it is), when done wrong?

Yeah, that'd be disgustingly helpful to many.