Thank you for increased difficulty

[LauraAdalena]

Here's a clue: Not everybody even WANTS to do raids, or higher "endgame" content.

SOME people only want to see the story. Should we deny them too?

Should we deny the people who just want to craft and keep the MSQ current so that they can actually participate in the next expansion when it comes out?

Again, we have PLENTY of side-content to give you the challenge you want. Why aren't you content with that? Why do you have to force people to go through such challenge in something that is REQUIRED for just about every aspect of the game?

At that point you're basically saying "beat this or just quit because you can't do anything after it".

You have yourself at a logical fallacy here that needs to be adressed. People who are the crafters and such don't want difficult content... because they get tomes faster. That's not the fallacy, I just wanted to point that out.

The fallacy is that you are saying that these people want this content... but at the same time arguing against people that wanted this content to improve player skill and improve their overall experience. I'm not going to give you some attitude, but I'd like to point out that just because someone "wants" something doesn't mean they should get it. I'm not here to say your points don't have any merit, I do agree that the 2 second aoes can be unfair for more casual players because more casual players may not have as good internet connections because of monetary restrictions. But I'm not saying others have no merit either, giving more difficult content can in fact increase the skill of the playerbase since the game has basic expectations of its players instead of just giving 3 bosses that basically don't do anything in terms of damage and mechanics are as lacking of punishment that it's the teacher not laying down the law when their students aren't obeying the rules.

Want =/= need. Just because someone doesn't want something doesn't mean it's the content the entire community needs to make it bigger/more sustainable in the long run. This type of content is exactly how you do that.

[RiyahArp]

Want =/= need. Just because someone doesn't want something doesn't mean it's the content the entire community needs to make it bigger/more sustainable in the long run. This type of content is exactly how you do that.

There's two flaws with this.

1. You assume players will eat their veggies, i.e. do the content they need but don't want.

2. You assume they can successfully raise their skill by doing it.

People tend to take these things for granted. The 1st part can mean the player just puts off the story to work on crafting or pvp and gets their tomes some other way, or it could mean they put the game down some. The second is a little more dire; the simply can't raise their skill to the desired outcome.

Like I can't see as a healer casual content getting any harder. A lot of the attacks really rely on the healer not getting killed way too much, or people not taking any damage; some of the bosses now have two damaging attacks in a row that can happen faster than a gcd. Like if they get hit by a boss aoe and then the targeted thunderbolt or whatever, you can only save them with OGCDs; i can't hardcast cure fast enough. Any harder and you run the risk of winnowing a lot of healers out of content; this was the issue with Feast early on in HW I think.

[Dualgunner]

There's two flaws with this.

1. You assume players will eat their veggies, i.e. do the content they need but don't want.

Plenty of people did Eureka, yes.

2. You assume they can successfully raise their skill by doing it.

You assume that people are incapable of improvement.

[RiyahArp]

You assume that people are incapable of improvement.

People can improve to a point, then it gets incredibly hard to go further. And the threshold varies from person to person. At some point you just hit your wall, and its up to you if you want to invest so much in climbing it. And then there comes the cliff, where no effort will ever help. I don't think people here have discussed what they think everyone playing the game can reach, or how realistic is its. I mean, there's never going to be a time in this game where 50% of players complete ex trials when relevant, short of the game shrinking to the hardcore players.

[Dualgunner]

You and I will have to agree to disagree. I'll cede that a person's disabilities, or life circumstances will limit their skill in a video game. Beyond that, though, a person's only limit is how much they themselves want to improve. Two years ago, I could barely handle an Extreme primal. Today, I'm an Ultimate clearer. If I just pretended I hit my limit two years ago, I never would have pushed myself to find this new peak.

For the sake of argument though, I don't think anything outside of Savage is any kind of cliff that can't be scaled.

[Lambdafish]

People can improve to a point, then it gets incredibly hard to go further. And the threshold varies from person to person. At some point you just hit your wall, and its up to you if you want to invest so much in climbing it. And then there comes the cliff, where no effort will ever help. I don't think people here have discussed what they think everyone playing the game can reach, or how realistic is its. I mean, there's never going to be a time in this game where 50% of players complete ex trials when relevant, short of the game shrinking to the hardcore players.

- Hard content may not improve player skill, but it would be designed to facilitate improvement, even if not successful.

- Faceroll content not only lacks the facilitation of improvement, but also encourages complacency, laziness, and the expectation of more faceroll content (plenty of evidence of this in the community).

You choose which is preferred.



Edit: Actually... You know what, I'll elaborate and add more variables into the discussion. You talk about ex trials, and how people won't do those, but then we are talking about the difference between 4 and 8 man content. When you up the player count to 8, that's 3 more players who have their own need from the fight. When you have a smaller group of 4 in a dungeon, if the expectation is difficulty and a few wipes, then there is a higher chance of teamwork and individual contribution. Move this over to a real-world example where you are collaborating in a team of 4, and a team of 8, the dynamic is different, and it is arguably easy to learn in a group of 4 than a group of 8.

So ultimately, shouldn't difficulty be taught and experienced in 4 man instances to teach players how to handle 8 man instances? Rather than throwing them into ex trials with faceroll 4 man content being their main experience up to that point. If players experience difficulty in an easier environment, wouldn't it make the ex trial and raid scene more healthy because people have been conditioned to the challenges available there without the pressure of being in an 8 man team?

[Eloah]

It took me and my FC until late Thursday/early Friday to finish Alphascape. We cheered so much. There were major tears of joy. I'll admit, after a while you wanna "pause" for a bit, but beating it felt so much more satisfying, it felt like we worked for it. I jokingly said, "I can't wait to play normal mode", lol. I love this patch so far.

[RiyahArp]

So ultimately, shouldn't difficulty be taught and experienced in 4 man instances to teach players how to handle 8 man instances?

No, because in theory the 4 man stuff is harder than the 8 man. When feast first came out, the practice mode was 8 man and ranked 4 man, for example. This is because its harder with only one healer, one tank, and two dps than with double it. There's less margin for error. It's just SE hasn't made much hard 4 man content much yet. The one they did, Rath EX, they completely randomized the mobs actions, and had a second phase where healing and tanking didn't matter as much. The story mode trials are what teaches you to play harder 8 man content, not the 4 mans.

[Maeka]

The Mist Dragon was a nostalgia throwback towards the ACTUAL Mist Dragon from Final Fantasy IV. Literally, they are both very similar minus the "swooping" that it does from XIV. You're not suppose to attack it when it turns into Mist, if you did....you got thoroughly rekt.

That is the point of him/her/it (I don't know what gender a Mist Dragon would have) being that difficult. It was actually difficult back then, and that was when they first introduced the ATB system too!

The mist phase is the easiest phase in the fight, other than the ridiculous DPS check to kill the heads before the AoE spreads all over the whole ground.

The part that wipes groups is the dive-bombing (it doesn't help that you get an unavoidable DoT and the group is encouraged to spread out against the edges of the arena making AoE heal impossible, not that standing still to cast is safe by any means) and the ludicrous damage of the targeted line AoE that targets one person. I hate it when melees don't realize this, and I try to avoid them (if I notice one of them has the marker; it's hard to see on a melee right up against the dragon because the marker is blue and the dragon is white with all the other blue and white going on), but sometimes they dump the line AoE right on me and I get stunned... 60% of my health missing, and a powerful dot that does 20% of my health per tick.

If I don't get a heal or a DoT remove in 3 ticks, I am dead wholesale. Because of something I had no control over and very little way of knowing was coming.

Oh, and that stupid Star-Shaped AoE.... the marker displays, and disappears a second later as someone else mentioned above. Got clipped by that a couple times today, it's really cheap. Especially when the dragon puts down TWO of them and the AoEs overlap each other and you really have no time to react to it. You don't have time to study the star and know which way the lines are going to fall. When the lines do fall you are not given enough time to move out of it.

And again... 60% health + stun+20% DoT is just cheap.

And let's not forget the cheapness that is the dragon laying a DoT zone on the ground, going into mist form, then one of the heads appears above the DoT zone and you've got a melee-heavy group.

GG.

You're just done at that point.

[Miziliti]

I welcome the difficulty increase in contents outside of daily roulettes. Alphascape is harder but not frustrating. Mist dragon itself is another story. I'm done with expert roulette as healer until The Burn is out of expert's rotation. This patch brought back and recolored perhaps the most ugly glamour sets of all dungeons sets. People will soon realize there is no motivation to do them and there are alternatives to cap Genesis.