The general player base needs to improve

[Shurrikhan]

Again, one last time: what you say are only your ideal dream, a scenario that run in your head that completely detached from reality. We are spurred to do what necessary, but rarely beyond that, that's just our nature.

- The reason Optimization only exists in raid because not only of the need to clear, there are a level of competitive exists among the raiding community.
- That's why you don't see optimization in dungeon. Your example about healer DPS is completely superfluos at best. Between taking 1 hit or 3 hit make little difference to healer most of the time, since it'll take them one heal to top you off either way, factor in their OGCD and it's largely irrelevant. Source: I play all 3 healers.
- That's why you don't see optimization in 24 raid. 99% of time, the most accurate word to describe an alliance raid is "lazy". And the reason it's the case because you can be lazy and still clear.

Most people work because they have to afford their life somehow, you're talking as if we'll aspire to work to become a millionaire one day. Yes, some of us are, but most don't. Right now, the game is set up in a away that say "oh the only thing you need to do is to show up for work and put in minimal afford, and you still walk home with the pay". As long as that system exist, there is no reason for the majority to try any harder than minimum afford even if you have co-workers constantly tell them "hey, can you please put in some more afford?" You need the system itself shift to a mode where it raises the expectation that you MUST do better if you want the cake at the end of the day.

I see optimization even in leveling dungeons and exp grinds. The question is who is running it far more than what it is. When people want things done faster, they make the effort to do so, even in the absence of fixed challenges. The question is knowing how.

Fixed needs are not the only creator of improvements. Knowledge of the requisites for improvement, and finding the due efforts worthwhile, are every bit part of the equation.

And, for the third time now, again, I am not recommending that dungeons have such pathetic short-terms benchmarks than any amount of AoEs can just be soaked or where amount of DPS can pass through a boss fight. (Note also that these things didn't use to be case. Even our very first 60 optional dungeon, Amdapor Keep, had hard enrages upon release. Later, Pharos Sirius and even Copperbell HM likewise had borderline hard enrages. I can hardly go 3 posts in any relevant topic without lamenting this fact.)

But there is a difference between information given only upon death, and information given throughout against which that bimodal result can be compared. I am suggesting that the latter also be included.

Just as there is a difference between threat and risk. Threat of death risks nothing, and provides no real learning opportunity, if it is not staked against something that encourges that risk, such as uptime or throughput. Providing just half the picture, as per your suggested AoEs that should invariably force immediate movement due to their risk of one-shotting, with no counterbalance to make that threat and actual risk or danger, does little to force learning on anyone as it would apply to the end-goals of this game. And what possible reason would they have to learn difficulty steps A through F if it is irrelevant to or inverted within all sections further?

You continually mention "the system" or "that system" in a continually negative light, as if such were an opinion you need to impress upon me, and yet how are we (both) defining it?

• Too lacking in danger to force learning opportunities.
• In need of presented necessity of game sense to proceed.

The only parts we seemingly disagree on are these:

• I feel that the calculations we encourage onto players should draw them towards what we expect of them at the highest levels of play. It can take its time, but it should at least consider the whole picture and lead towards an actual benchmark of usage. Apparently I cannot understand your position in this respect; I can only guess that any visible improvement, even if derived from the same internal errors or similarly free of understanding, is a step in the right direction in your opinion. In contrast, I feel that towards the final destination or content group thereof is the only possible right direction.
• I think there should be further support tools. Why should the "Yes"/"No" of a fight's conclusion be the limits of information given? I cannot understand why you think the idea of their being useful to be "detached from reality". But alas, I guess that's just my insanity.

[Eisenhower]

Because there is a huge difficulty gap between MSQ content and raiding.[...]

I get the feeling this has been mentioned already - especially since you noted that others have asked for a distinct difficulty curve - so here's to reiteration (i guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯): XIV definitely suffers from the lack of a good difficulty curve. This encompasses everything from overworld, to levelling content, and up to raid/savage content.

When 99% of the things we fight are nothing more than damage sponges with a cleave or occasional area attack tacked on, what incentive could there possibly be for a player to improve their performance? As we make our way through the game and grow in strength, the amount of involvement when fighting monsters should grow in pace. Our skills as players are honed through use - a help text can only take us part of the way. Naturally, we should be rewarded in turn for performing well.

The point is not to populate the overworld with savage encounters that ruin our day at a glance. But if a player is eased into complexity over the course of 70 levels, it wouldn't be far-fetched to see more capable players on all levels as compared to getting to the level cap and getting a trial by fire through EX primals and Savage-type raids.

[KaivaC]

Before I get to responses...which is going to take me a while because I have quite a few posts to digest, I do want to say this one this: I think it would be helpful to have a perspective from someone experienced with an outside MMO. I've never played WoW, or SWToR, or BDO, or Everquest, or Lineage...I have no idea how content and mechanics run in those from their casual stuff up to their raid-level/difficult-level instances. Would love to hear thoughts from those Eorzeans who migrated from one of those games.

[StragoMagus]

Yeah, that'd be disgustingly helpful to many.

Reminds me of how freemium games operate yet it’s the most effective way to get players to “follow the way that’s intended”. Really good idea to implement but might be too late?

[Shurrikhan]

Reminds me of how freemium games operate yet it’s the most effective way to get players to “follow the way that’s intended”. Really good idea to implement but might be too late?

The simplest implementation would be simply to reduce the graphical (revealed) level on it if its conditions haven't been met. Chaos Thrust without combo, no glowing purple flower-sparks.

The only issue would be when someone has already left their animation particle effects settings at minimum, or would misconstrue it to mean that everyone else is failing their combos all the time when they have party animations limited, but that should only be for one mistaken comment per player, and leaving those settings at full would give a better picture of who's at least not clipping their combos.

But then again, you'd think damage could tell us all this already, at least in regards to our own attacks...

[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.

[Teiren]

Before I get to responses...which is going to take me a while because I have quite a few posts to digest, I do want to say this one this: I think it would be helpful to have a perspective from someone experienced with an outside MMO. I've never played WoW, or SWToR, or BDO, or Everquest, or Lineage...I have no idea how content and mechanics run in those from their casual stuff up to their raid-level/difficult-level instances. Would love to hear thoughts from those Eorzeans who migrated from one of those games.

Long story put extremely short with several short notes: The MMORPG community has changed. Mobile devices did a lot of damage in that regard. People are also stupid everywhere. FFXIV is the "Easy WoW," but I like that because I like WoW. If you want to focus super seriously on gameplay as your primary objective, WoW is clearly the better game. For storytelling and awesome gameplay presentation, FFXIV is your game. I have a ton I could say, but it would be an obscenely long post to detail the progression of dungeons & raiding in WoW. I actually did briefly put everything in this post, and I saw it was just going to be a disservice to the thread to make people scroll that much.

To be more specific, from someone that played WoW from nearly the beginning through all of Mists of Pandaria (2014):
WoW has 3 difficulties: Normal, Heroic, Mythic. Normal is something like all three Binding Coils in ARR. Heroic is roughly like Savage raids. Mythic is like Ultimate. Although the raid is the same in each difficulty, the difficulties surely change how it feels. Normal/Heroic are usually the same fight roughly, just different amounts of damage taken. Mythic difficulty, like Savage, completely changes the fight while retaining something of the original. Also, at least when I played, a couple things were exclusive to Mythic difficulty, similar to god Kefka being exclusive to Savage.
I would say WoW's LFR (Looking for Raid) difficulty is like FFXIV's 24-players', but LFR is so much ridiculously easier that that's not fair to say, though both are designed very similarly.

Oh, and I did play Legion, WoW's current era, for a few months when it launched. One really interesting thing they implemented was a Mythic difficulty for dungeons complete with a system where you can challenge a random dungeon on a Mythic+ difficulty that goes up one stage of difficulty for every Mythic+ dungeon you clear, rewarding better gear the higher the stage. The idea was to make somewhat parallel or alternative gameplay to raiding. While I think that'd be cool to see in FFXIV, I don't believe that fits the devs' vision.

[Shurrikhan]

Before I get to responses...which is going to take me a while because I have quite a few posts to digest, I do want to say this one this: I think it would be helpful to have a perspective from someone experienced with an outside MMO. I've never played WoW, or SWToR, or BDO, or Everquest, or Lineage...I have no idea how content and mechanics run in those from their casual stuff up to their raid-level/difficult-level instances. Would love to hear thoughts from those Eorzeans who migrated from one of those games.

WoW is my other major MMO. I've also played things like BDO, GW2, B&S, Rift, WO, NWO, and a bit of ESO, etc., but WoW is the only of those one similar enough to really make meaningful comparisons, imo.

WoW felt more lore-filled and certainly produced content at a significantly higher rate, but until this most recent BFA revision to leveling, everything short of the latest expansion was treated as disposable in terms of difficulty curve or gameplay-integrity, non-game before the real game so to speak, and could frequently leave a foul taste in the player's mouth that removed most semblances of it being a role-playing game with any real story. If you leveled all your alts up within a given expansion, so you only had the next to go, it felt great. But if you had something to level up from scratch several expansion in, you could scarcely even understand why people would pick up the game anymore outside of boosted characters.

Combat-wise though, I loved that CC and target-swapping beyond just target focusing or add-burns were real mechanics there, though. Utility was meaningful. Though you ultimately needed a healer and tank for maximum efficiency, your toolkits were strong enough to allow for a great deal of creative play, especially pre-streamlining (WoD-Legion). Though the game's obviously had more chances just due to sheer duration, super-speed Monk and maybe HW DRK are the only instances of gameplay that I'd call incredibly strong -- by my own tastes -- whereas WoW has had 10+ specs over time that were similarly brilliant, without even touching on the nostalgia of where they were used and what all they could pull off outside of normal play or as just a numeric thrill (e.g. 5-Hunter dungeoning, trio-plate DPS as swap-tanks, tank-dps WotLK Feral, or the ridiculousness of the most powerful form of Combustion or pre-nerf raid Sub Rogue).

[KaivaC]

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You realize that you are providing more of a perspective from a casual non-raider's side, and I highly appreciate that. I've often though about bringing this same discussion over to the reddit side of things, but...eh...I honestly don't know how that would go, but I do know it's a good resource for casting a net towards the casual side of the house and attempting to discuss it there as well. But it's also reddit, so it could result in the post being deleted, or bans, and for that reason, I'm thankful the mods have allowed this thread to continue.

True, a lot of people play differently. I find myself wanting to personally challenge Ultimate, but I'm not at that level. I'm also hyper-competitive if I don't check myself. It would be unfair to suggest that all players should aim to raid...it would be insulting if I ever suggested that. I agree about the tutorials...you end up having to do a trial-by-fire once you hit Satasha. I actually wiped my first time there, as a DPS. I do wish for something appropriately difficult, though, but only on an optional level. It'll do more harm than good, in my opinion, if a jump in difficulty with dungeons started happening with 4.3. I should've probably clarified my personal view on how I view players, which is casual, casual-midcore, and hardcore.

Thank you for posting that. As you may or may not see, it took me a while to respond because you make some really valid points.

[KaivaC]

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This could be a situation of what I'm suggesting not entirely matching up to the devs' vision. Either that, or they may feel the player base on a larger scale wouldn't be ready for the type of difficulty they had originally planned. But in their pursuit to keep as many combat-related things as casual as possible, it's created a situation where dungeons don't feel like they have that 'umph' any more. I kinda hoped that the progression we felt going through the dungeons from Satasha to Wanderer's Palace hard would apply to Heavensward and then to Stormblood. I am partial to the idea of having something similar to Mythic dungeons (sounds like Mythic+ would be raid-killers with the way GCDs work here, if their version of normal was equivalent of the Binding Coils).

It might be too late to implement CCs or 5-mans with the current engine. But surely there are other things that could be done in the future. It feels like the full impact of a class' utility is truly only felt in Savage. But messing with that would probably require a rework of the engine, I'm sure.