How Do You Feel When Old Content Is Made Easier?

[RiyahArp]

If the rewards are going to be the same from the roulette, then the difficulty should be the same as well.

So you are annoyed at them from wiping by doing mechanics wrong, and the solution is...to make those mechanics harder so they can wipe legitimately from them, got it. And you're not going to be just as frustrated when they wipe from failing a mechanic then as you are now. Because you know, the amount of wipes are not really going to change, except to get worse since making it close to their original level means its easier to fail.

The problem is you have no actual evidence to back up your claim since it would require access to information we just don't have. The truth is that the only evidence that leans one way or another here is the circumstantial - SE keeps making Savage so they have to be seeing enough people do it to justify the investment.

They keep boosting feast, too. But where is the evidence people want casual content to be harder? I don't see it. You're assuming your own evidence is ironclad, when its not too.

[Vidu]

So you are annoyed at them from wiping by doing mechanics wrong, and the solution is...to make those mechanics harder so they can wipe legitimately from them, got it. And you're not going to be just as frustrated when they wipe from failing a mechanic then as you are now. Because you know, the amount of wipes are not really going to change, except to get worse since making it close to their original level means its easier to fail.

I think you're missing something here: one reason people fail mechanics is that for most fights they actually dont matter. You actually wont wipe, because someone failed a mechanic. So what people learn is: Mechanics dont matter. You probably could and should do them, but why bother if the end result is the same?
So they dont learn how to deal with certain things. We tell newbies in Copperbell NM to ignore the adds and then we wipe at the first boss in Copperbell HM because they're doing excatly that - because thats what they learnt: Adds dont matter, burn boss.

Personal example: I started the game as gld/pld and had a hardtime moving out of AoEs. Eventually I noticed that they didnt kill me, so I stopped trying - why bother?
The answer to that presented itself with Brayflox and Titan - because suddenly it DID matter. Today not even that holds true - I saw tanks eating every dragon breath in Brayflox and getting knocked off in Titan and the duty still being cleared.

I am NOT talking Savage-like mechanics - just mechanics that actually matter and are worth following. If a frontal-cone AoE deals 8k damage and my paladin has 60k with a regen ticking for 2k... why should I bother to move out of that?

Some people might legit struggle with real simple mechanics like moving out of an orange circle already, yes - but the game gives them almost no reason to improve upon that, work on themself and actually try. So they dont and their skill doesnt increase.
People struggle and wipe, because they never learnt, because they were never taught. The game really needs to do a better job at that - and I doubt that it would actually cost them any subscriptions if they tuned it the right way by making mechanics meanigful enough that following them is actually worth it outside of Savage-content.

[RiyahArp]

I am NOT talking Savage-like mechanics - just mechanics that actually matter and are worth following. If a frontal-cone AoE deals 8k damage and my paladin has 60k with a regen ticking for 2k... why should I bother to move out of that?.

There's nothing they can do short of instant death or severe, uncleansable debuffs to make that paladin move. The effective HP a tank with healers backing them is too high. They do make DPS take severe damage if they fail to dodge an aoe in many trials, to the point of two-shotting; Castrim Flummins last phase is essentially "dodge the mechanics perfectly and stack, or die." Look at Construct 9's dispose, you can take all of one hit.

I mean, the mechanics for nontanks already hurt a decent amount. A lot of times you can and do lose 75% of your health. They already stack you with things like a really nasty slow (gigas boss in lighthouse) vuln and damage down stacks, paralyze, etc. If you push that back to older content, you just make it a pain for vets to do. The chimera relic boss for example has a horde of "don't stand here" mechanics...can you imagine having to face those with half effective HP?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I think you're missing something here: one reason people fail mechanics is that for most fights they actually dont matter. You actually wont wipe, because someone failed a mechanic. So what people learn is: Mechanics dont matter. You probably could and should do them, but why bother if the end result is the same?
So they dont learn how to deal with certain things. We tell newbies in Copperbell NM to ignore the adds and then we wipe at the first boss in Copperbell HM because they're doing excatly that - because thats what they learnt: Adds dont matter, burn boss.

A perfect example of this is HoH. Friends and I reached floor 50 before wiping. I was one-shot by the boss there whose cast is much faster than his dungeon incarnate. Mayhaps with a much higher aetherpool level, he'll be easier but going back, we're going to play it much safer as a result. In general, we treated floors 31-50 with some measure of respect; small pulls, tank stance and etc. Compare that to Swallow's Compass, where I charged in blind and wall pulled everything then immediately switched to Deliverance. Why? The damage is completely trivial, so I have no reason whatsoever to play safe or worry about mechanics. When something actually hurts, I'm forced to play less aggressively not by arbitrary but due to things actually hurting.

Apply this to all levels of content and you will see far less tanks throwing caution to the wind and everyone demanding mass pulls, healer DPS and tanks in DPS stance.

Edit: An addendum to my above mentioned point. Let's assume 4.4 reveals Sephiroth as the concluding tier of Omega. We have two scenarios of potential boss mechanics.

Scenario A: Standard array of mechanics which place a vulnerability stack in you, however it takes several before they beginning to cause much hindrance.
Scenario B: His sword slash cleave places a significant bleed on its target; another aoe causes paralysis; if too many players take avoidable damage he summons Jevona spawns; upwards of only two vul stacks are enough to nearly kill a tank.

In scenario B, I am making a point to dodge every aoe because they impact how I play and cause a great deal more hindrance, especially if tuned better. On the contrary, in scenario A, I'll scarcely pay any attention as I'm not even remotely at risk. I certainly cannot speak for everyone but the scenario B sounds far more interesting even if it results in more wipes.

[Vidu]

There's nothing they can do short of instant death or severe, uncleansable debuffs to make that paladin move. The effective HP a tank with healers backing them is too high. They do make DPS take severe damage if they fail to dodge an aoe in many trials, to the point of two-shotting; Castrim Flummins last phase is essentially "dodge the mechanics perfectly and stack, or die." Look at Construct 9's dispose, you can take all of one hit.

Then they should do that - give more AoEs debuffs that actually matter. Not everything needs to outright kill me, but things like paralysis, heavy, mini, sleep... are all annoying enough to get me out of an AoE.
Make vul-stacks "strong" enough that having one or two of them actually matters! (The third boss in Rabanstre has this mechanic that deals damage based on distance - you need to be far away to take less damage, but everyone can actually survive that even when they stay more close-ish as long as they dont have any vul-stacks. Was always a huge motivation to NOT fail previous mechanics and avoid getting them if that meant I was able to keep attacking during that - not as paladin this time but as bard)
Add damage-down debuffs for dps-AoEs - any decent dps will care about their numbers enough to move out of those!
Give the healer a healing down debuff and pair it with a tankbuster that follows after that mechanic.
Let adds appear if you fail a mechanic - adds that hit hard enough or are annoying enough that you want to kill them.

...there are ways outside of an instant wipe to punish you for failing mechanics - and we need more of those instead of the kind that deals so little damage that two regen-ticks will take care of it.

Edit: Or do it the other way around and reward people for doing a mechanic the right way! Not by not dying, but by giving them a buff, restoring TP/MP... Construct 7 is a good example of that: succeding at the math-mechanic gives you a damage-up-buff (and if you fail, you're more likely to die later...).
But we need to see all of that way, way before endgame-content.
Mechanics need to matter in Sastasha NM, so a new player understands right away to pay attention to them instead of developing the bad habit of not caring and thus failing "easy" mechanics later when they do matter and that catched them by surprise.

[HyoMinPark]

There's nothing they can do short of instant death or severe, uncleansable debuffs to make that paladin move. The effective HP a tank with healers backing them is too high. They do make DPS take severe damage if they fail to dodge an aoe in many trials, to the point of two-shotting; Castrim Flummins last phase is essentially "dodge the mechanics perfectly and stack, or die." Look at Construct 9's dispose, you can take all of one hit.

Actually, Construct 7's Dispose, if you're at full health, you can survive up to 2 or 3 hits (more if you have tank privilege)--and it gives you Damage Down if you manage to dodge enough more to survive.

But Vidu's point is, is that the lower level content teaches players bad habits that carry over into higher level content. Hence why people cry for things like Castrum Fluminis, Royal Menagerie, and Final Steps of Faith to be nerfed. Because finally mechanics punish them for failing. Same thing with some 24-man mechanics (when current, though some in older 24-mans still kick your teeth in for trying to cheese them). I truly do believe if players were taught from lower levels that things cannot be ignored or cheesed, there wouldn't be the issue if them even trying to do that in higher level content. Which goes back to Kisai's post about restoring difficulty of older content that people now just try to barrel through and cheese (like Labyrinth of the Ancients).

Why does everything have to be so easy all the time? Why do vulnerability stacks have to be so meaningless? Why can tanks in Kefka normal mode eat up to 8 stacks of vulnerability before they finally get bested by the boss?

We get it: you don't like hard content and you don't want content to be difficult. That doesn't mean that others want everything to stay faceroll easy all the time.

[Vidu]

Why does everything have to be so easy all the time? Why do vulnerability stacks have to be so meaningless? Why can tanks in Kefka normal mode eat up to 8 stacks of vulnerability before they finally get bested by the boss?

We get it: you don't like hard content and you don't want content to be difficult. That doesn't mean that others want everything to stay faceroll easy all the time.

To add to this: I'm not even asking for content to be made more difficult as in: have more mechanics added.
I'm asking for the mechanics that are already present to matter in every content. To have mechanics that people actually want/need to follow in order to avoid death, debuffs or adds - or gain buffs, I'm totally onboard with rewarding good play instead of punishing bad aswell.

The current state of most content is: There might aswell be no mechanics, because there are no consequenses to failing them. Yet the content was clearly designed with those mechanics in mind, so enforce them! From Ifrit NM (...hey, the nail there actually DOES wipe you if you ignore it... good job, Ifrit!), to Final Steps of Faith, to Kefka NM... make mechanics matter and people understand that they need to follow them.

Content wouldnt get more difficult if you actually played it correctly already.
You wouldnt have to remember wether thunder and blizzard are truth or lie in Kefka and perform both correctly like you in Savage. You just had to follow that one mechanic thats happening right now - as you should already be doing.
I'm not asking for Savage-mode mechanics in normal content.
I'm asking for normal content mechanics to matter.

[Zojha]

Some people might legit struggle with real simple mechanics like moving out of an orange circle already, yes - but the game gives them almost no reason to improve upon that, work on themself and actually try. So they dont and their skill doesnt increase.

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...39865858396162

But let's go with the assumption people do indeed rise to the challenge: In that case, you should be happy people are struggling and wiping, because that is precisely what the learning process looks like. You get to see and experience it live. The people who do so should end up becoming better players for it, because the mechanics apparently DO matter right there and thus, people should improve their skills through it.

Personally, I doubt the effectiveness of it. And truth be told, I am not overly hyped about "mechanics that matter" either, because of how powerful healers in this game are.
The crux of healers as a design lies in the following: The win/loss condition of a fight hinges on health and the lack thereof. Whoever gets the other party to 0 HP first wins. That means the only thing that truly matters is damage and thus death, because it progresses the win condition. CC, vulnerability, damage down, healing down debuffs... they're all inconsequential if they don't lead to damage/death (e.g. via enrage/follow-up mechanic), because a delay as such does not affect the win/loss condition.
Since healers undo damage (and death), damage get more trivialized the more powerful healers are. In turn, mechanics get trivialized, because they use damage/death as punishment. To make them matter again, you need to crank up the damage to compensate. And with as powerful as healers are in this game, it's typically gonna end up as insta-gib, which in my opinion is not very fun.

I'd rather we just nerfed healers until taking 70% of your HP as punishment is actually meaningful instead of a slap on the wrist. As it stands, reducing the entire raid to 1 HP is an easy and inconsequential normal mode mechanic. But that's just me.

[fumofu]

If I know that content, I have some interest in, gonna be made easier in a future, I simply postpone it until it becomes easier and then do it. That's ofc if I feel it's currently too hard and not really worth the effort. That applies both to ex raids and crafting/gathering.

I feel it's a good thing, cos otherwise i'd be left with less things to do and might even consider quitting this game.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I don't mind old content becoming easier. In fact it benefits the game as a whole for it to do so. When content is too difficult for someone to engage in, it might as well not exist. But when that content becomes easier (say through out leveling it), then that content becomes something to do. When players go back to do old content SE is getting more "bang for their buck" as far as development time and dollars goes and that's a good thing for the game overall.

I'll never understand why some people feel that someone getting something easier than the guy before somehow devalues the first guy's accomplishment.

No matter how easy it gets for the guy after you, nothing will change what YOU did and how much effort and/or skill it took for YOU to do what YOU did.

Don't base your self worth by comparison to others, because what they do and however easy or difficult it was for them has nothing to do with you and what you accomplished.