Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[RiyahArp]

Exactly what would change about like, Phantom Train or Chadarnook, if we made that a 4man...If tank is caught in a ghost, you wipe, because you failed the mechanic and you should wipe

You wouldn't be allowed to make any mistakes, mostly. You answered yourself. The healer gets caught by a ghost, you wipe because he can't kill it fast enough before people die. The healer makes any mistake at all, and you are all dead. Essentially we are talking landsides and being knocked off arenas, but one person getting such would just make it a fast wipe instead of a slow limp to the finish. If you get nailed once, game over.

I don't think a lot of people would be into that kind of content. If its decently hard, combined with no real redundancy, its going to be worse than ex trials. I mean, at least in them you can recover from a mistake either with your cohealer or cotank, or 3 dps can cover for a fourth. It's not easy, and may not always be possible, but you can. In 4-man, healer missed the mechanic? wipe. Healer dies to a specific mechanic but gets the rest? Wipe, instead of being able to finish.

I mean, everyone here talks a lot of junk about wanting hard content, but noone here is going to love 45 min dungeons or 20 min vote disbands because no one can drop the meteors correctly.

Based on what I've seen from pugs and PF I walk into everything expecting to wipe until we disband because people are bad and lazy. I don't think I'm alone in this sentiment. The idea that people expect perfection in a game where 0 dps healers are clearing endgame/tanks who don't leave tank stance are common is laughable.

Yeah you probably suck, with that attitude. And you like to berate non raiders about being elitist.

[HyoMinPark]

Yeah you probably suck, with that attitude. And you like to berate non raiders about being elitist.

That’s uncalled for. Moro has a point—just today there was a tank in the Aery (I had queued in to help a friend level their SCH, which was level 56) that was wearing i90 green gear (not the AF gear) and was using an item level 45 (level 45) NQ greatsword. When it was said that they could go to Mor Dhona and easily buy an i120 weapon that would make their holding aggro much easier (because everyone was tanking the trash mobs, including the SCH just from ripping hate through sheer healing, not DPS), they responded with snark. No one was even rude about it either. And the sad thing was, they had a level 70 job, and multiple level 60s. They weren’t a new player, and they probably knew that what they were doing wasn’t a good thing.

I did a God Kefka clear tonight, and the MNK in there with the i375 Diamond weapon could not deal more damage than a RDM, and were barely doing more damage than me, a BRD that is still wearing an i350 body piece and didn’t have a DRG. The SCH also had extremely low HPS, rarely made use of their oGCD heals, and when we pointed out that they needed to time some Indoms for when the DPS had to eat skulls during First and Third Forsakens (this was after the 6th wipe to God), they tried to blame the AST for not healing, whom had almost double the HPS they had in the previous pull, and almost as much DPS.

There are plenty of people in all forms of content that do not play at any level of perfection. To insinuate that everyone calls for perfection is proven wrong just by the existence of people like the two I have described here.



Aside from pointing out this uncalled for comment, I also want to point out the irony of you calling someone elitist when your comment is far from nice, and it has its own type of elitism built into it.

You wouldn't be allowed to make any mistakes, mostly. You answered yourself. The healer gets caught by a ghost, you wipe because he can't kill it fast enough before people die. The healer makes any mistake at all, and you are all dead. Essentially we are talking landsides and being knocked off arenas, but one person getting such would just make it a fast wipe instead of a slow limp to the finish. If you get nailed once, game over.

It’s my opinion that the Landslide mechanic (and any other mechanic that knocked you permanently off an arena and out of the fight for the rest of its duration) is an excellent mechanic because it teaches you that, if you fail, you’re going to be punished for it. The story mode (and Hard Mode) of Titan have more forgiving/less complex landslides, corresponding with their intended difficulty. Titan Extreme, by comparison, has far less forgiving Landslides in that they happen faster, more frequently, and, later on, more than one landslide occurs at once.

The mechanics can be slowed enough to give people time to react in easier forms of content. But they should still be punishing if the individual fails, so that they can learn “Hey, I probably should dodge that, because this 90% Damage Down is awful” or “I should move faster out of that Landslide, because it sucks to be knocked off the platform for the rest of the fight”. Again, see what I said before in that there are tanks in Kefka Normal Mode that get up to 8 Vulnerability Stacks, are finally one-shot by a tankbuster (with AND without a cooldown being used, save for an immunity), and then opt to cry to the healer about dying as opposed to accepting responsibility for the fact that they failed mechanics 8 times, and got 8 stacks of vulnerability that essentially sealed their demise when Kefka decided it was time to Hyperdrive them again.

It’s already forgiving enough that it takes multiple stacks of Vulnerability to even make something tickle in normal mode, much less it finally taking 8 to do a tank in.

[Sebazy]

I honestly don't remember people complaining about the difficulty of AK in 2.0, rather that it was simply faster to grind WP mainly due to the ease of which you could skip large swathes of trash via boss lockouts.

Demonwall was great because you couldn't rely on simply zerging your way through it, the Bees acted as a great DPS check usually making things rather messy if you couldn't dispose of them quickly with early groups usually LBing the first set then aiming to kill the wall before the second set wiped you.

Pharos Sirius was a different kettle of fish. I'll go out on a limb and just say that the first boss was outright lame. The adds and stacking bomb mechanic were fine, the super fast ground aoes tipped it over the line though and whilst it didn't really cause me trouble as a healer, I can imagine that it must have been horrible as a melee.

The bird boss was a great example of a difficult 4 man boss done right. Whilst the mechanics were a little confusing at first glance, paying attention to debuffs, tooltips and animations cleared things up pretty quickly and the fight was actually pretty easy going if you did the mechanics right. Ignore them and it would quickly punish you by way of a thorough curb stomping that hasn't been seen in a 4 man since.

Not really sure what the deal was with the 3rd boss with the zombie adds, even early on with a sub par group it typically died before enough adds spawned to cause any real trouble. /shrug.

Siren was another great boss too IMO. Choreographing her divebomb/circle aoes would have been the perfect fix to tone her down rather than the outright neutering that SE eventually settled on.

It’s already forgiving enough that it takes multiple stacks of Vulnerability to even make something tickle in normal mode, much less it finally taking 8 to do a tank in.

I really cannot +1 this point enough. The biggest problem with end game 4 man content isn't that the mechanics are too simple, but that you can safely ignore almost everything with little to no risk. Even when you do step over the line and actually manage to get yourself killed, the only real penalty is a chunk of your healers MP to get you going again (Which is only really a penalty in itself if your healer is DPSing fairly hard). Whilst proceeding to kill the boss that bit slower can be an annoyance, it's certainly not going to cause a wipe on the current crop of bosses. I'm fairly confident the current crop of expert dungeons could be cleared by a Warrior and WHM or SCH duo with relative ease with the only question marks being the particularly generous DPS checks on both final bosses.

We don't need to see ultimate grade mechanics or even the return of the likes of Pharos Sirius to be honest. Rather I suspect most would be happy with dungeons that actually legitimately punish you when you repeatedly sit in the fire/cleave/spinny death thing. People can and will adjust to stuff like that, they managed it with AK in 2.0, they managed it with Garuda HM and most even managed it with Titan HM.

Healers messing up or sleeping up might cause a wipe? Good. Healer's shouldn't get an easy ride because they are special snowflakes. On the contrary, whilst I think it's fair not to expect huge DPS out of the average healer if they have mechanics or legitimate damage to keep an eye on, they should still be tested and made to work all the same, be it via forcing them to heal or move.

I did a God Kefka clear tonight

I got curious and stalked the log

That SCH was pretty much flogging themselves to death by way of frighteningly excessive succoring coupled with missed potential out of Lucid Dreaming and Aetherflow. They flatlined in MP 5-6 times in that clear. No surprise they had no mp to do much of anything else. Madness.

[Tridus]

It’s my opinion that the Landslide mechanic (and any other mechanic that knocked you permanently off an arena and out of the fight for the rest of its duration) is an excellent mechanic because it teaches you that, if you fail, you’re going to be punished for it. The story mode (and Hard Mode) of Titan have more forgiving/less complex landslides, corresponding with their intended difficulty. Titan Extreme, by comparison, has far less forgiving Landslides in that they happen faster, more frequently, and, later on, more than one landslide occurs at once.

It's funny because I loathe that mechanic. As a healer main, I'm... irrelevant. The game forbids me from doing my job. Not only can I not prevent it (which is the point), I also can't recover it. Whoever failed it gets to watch the game for a few minutes and do nothing (or more likely: get up and get a drink) and I get to not do what I'm there to do. It's not fun for anyone.

The revised version on something like Ravana/Bismarck (or Hashmal's tower crushing) are IMO far better. They clearly punish anyone who fails tremendously, but not in a "you're watching the rest of the fight and I'm powerless to do anything about it" way.

[Tridus]

You wouldn't be allowed to make any mistakes, mostly. You answered yourself. The healer gets caught by a ghost, you wipe because he can't kill it fast enough before people die.

All tanks in Stormblood have some way of self-sustain and some way of buying more time with a cooldown. While a PLD would clearly be in the best spot because Clemency and Hallowed can buy all kinds of time (I mean, I've flat out healed O8N for almost a minute alone as a PLD after both healers got knocked off at the same time and needed to recover), all the tanks have something to do that isn't "just keep DPSing until I die and blame the healer." They can buy time for a healer to get out from the ghosts, as it doesn't take that long to kill one. DPS can actually avoid stuff until the healer is out, and if you've got a RDM who realizes they have Vercure, you're fine anyway.

The healer makes any mistake at all, and you are all dead. Essentially we are talking landsides and being knocked off arenas, but one person getting such would just make it a fast wipe instead of a slow limp to the finish. If you get nailed once, game over.

I don't know why you like to exaggerate, but there's a gap between "everything instagibs you and wipes the party" and "it's literally impossible to fail this boss if you are awake."

Yeah you probably suck, with that attitude. And you like to berate non raiders about being elitist.

Classy.

[MoroMurasaki]

Yeah you probably suck, with that attitude. And you like to berate non raiders about being elitist.

So to be clear because I think other people play poorly you believe I play poorly, that's the gist of it? Since you're judging someone's skill level with whom you've never even played how bad must that make you?

I feel like this gets thrown at you a lot and I never see you respond to it, likely because you know you're a hypocrit, but "pot, meet kettle!"

As far as "liking to berate non raiders for being elitist"... huh? What does that even mean? I haven't even cleared o7s, I'm not some hardcore orange-or-bust bleeding edge person (because yes, despite what your treatment of them might make people believe raiders are people too) I'm pretty casual.

The fact that I can have purple and orange parses at all in anything with little to no mmo experience, poor skill at action-based video games in general and relatively little time invested here is a source of confusion for me. The only thing I have going for me is that I'm dedicated enough to not want to be a buden on any parties I join or form. When someone like me is beating a significant portion of the playerbase in any content I'm sorry but that means they're lazy (haven't put in research to understand how their class plays, aren't trying to keep their CDs and GCDs rolling constantly, etc.) or bad (know what they should be doing but can't manage to keep gcds rolling/appropriate buffs up/etc.) and saying those things might hurt some feelings but, a favorite quote of mine recently, "facts don't care about your feelings."

I commented on a post that said most people "expexted perfection" which is what I took issue with. If most people expected perfection the only people playing the game would be those orange+ players. Most people accept mediocrity without batting an eye and won't say anything to any level of play above "literally afk" outside of EX/Savage.

To tie this back around to the purpose of this thread originally - these people who are catapulting me into orange parses on a class I can name several people who outplay me on have a ton of content. All dungeons, 24 mans and raids can be completed with more than half a party of people who are playing like they've set their cat on their keyboard. Sadly this statement is hardly hyperbolic.

The only content that requires any amount of attention or care is EX/Savage and the extreme difficulty curve scares people away from it. They're used to participation trophies and you drop them in the olympics. Rapid-fire mechs that kill the party when failed instead of just hurting you, incoming damage that can actually press a healer's mp and all that on top of an enrage timer that requires at minimum pretty good play from everyone in the party.

It's no wonder people aren't participating in Savage - the game breeds a playerbase that thinks it's okay to screw up about as often as you get anything right and lets them do that... right up to the end where, yes, people start expecting something much closer to perfection if they want to clear.

So yes - I could not possibly support some difficultly in optional dungeons more. It would do nothing but good and would maybe teach people a bit more about how to play the game they've been mashing buttons in.