Thank you for increased difficulty

[Dualgunner]

I feel like you are the type that has a girlfriend/wife that plays FFXIV and is just as arrogant you, or you are the type that would look at your girlfriend/wife trying to play FFXIV with you, and when she doesn't cut it, you break up/ask for a divorce. Reminds me of the League of Legends mentality, and how it ruins friendships cause your friend - who lives off the game - is diamond, and you are gold.

Gold 3 Friend: "Hey, wanna play LoL? I'll support."
Diamond 2 Friend: *briefly has visions of his rank dropping from Diamond 2 to Gold 3. Makes decision.* Man, you know I like you and all, but I like my rank more. Git gud, then we can be friends again.

Give this man a medal, I don't think I've ever seen such a brazen ad hominem before.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

I think it's less about content that forces people to get good and more about content that forces people to get literally at all competent at the game.

If there was a fight in the msq that actually required an optimal rotation to beat it I would be alongside what I imagine are the vast majority of players asking for nerfs. Perfection is not something that happens over night and I agree that some people are just plain not as naturally talented at certain aspects of the game. I consider myself one of them.

The issue right now is that no one seems to be able to agree where this line actually exists. To me I think expecting people to dodge repeated AoE while still putting out some damage is fine. Tanks and healers have beaten the Will of the Moon battle that people are complaining about, if a dps can't put out enough damage to do the same thing I think it's reasonable to wipe them until they learn that they need to do some more damage.

I'm not talking about a lot of damage, I'm talking about more than a healer. If a dps can't do that then I think they should have a roadblock to conquer before progressing their msq. If that's evil or toxic or whatever so be it.

This is a game where we have to play together to progress. If someone is going to get into Tsukuyomi story mode doing sub2k as a RDM (which I have seen more times than I care to count) then the game has utterly failed them and left them to exist as a burden on other players. That is not okay.

I'm no one's mom, it is not my job to carry pugs through every bit of content that they do because they can't be bothered to Google a rotation or even read their tooltips much less dodge the orange circles on the ground.

People need to think about the impact they are having on their parties. If you can't be confident that you are a net positive to the majority of groups you find yourself in then perhaps you need to do something about that to change it for the better. Having a gradual upswing in the difficulty of the msq seems like the only way SE has seen to make people evaluate that.

If only there was an objective indicator of how well they were playing...
Shame.

I guess people will just have to be ignorant of their level of performance.

[RiyahArp]

Wouldn't it be nice if Leg Sweep actual had a use?

No, it wouldn't, especially on trash. Isolating the one mob you need to stun is not fun. Maybe on bosses, but you can't really react fast enough if the stunner fails to do so. The more tactics you add, the more ways players can fail, and apparently you can't trust the players to do well with easy content now. Why on earth add more?

As for the forums claiming everything is easy. You're inferring nonsense. Thordan, Sephirot and Nidhogg are all talked about as fairly challenging EX Primals; the former two being highly praised.

3 fights out of how many?

And a lot of ex primals are considered easy by forums, and some savage tiers. Thordan ex is a high bar to not be considered faceroll.

Have you considered, you know, not doing that? Everything you described is easily remedied by adapting to the situation and learning.

Yeah, I have. The problem is they increased the speed of incoming damage, so when i try to slowball it, the dps can now die from an attack that they could survive if topped off. And the mechanics that affect us all are now faster and rely on greater raid positioning and awareness, so they take hits more often. The bosses feel slightly tuned a bit more, so they also take more damage with more spent in mp. I'm generally aware of overhealing and stuff, but when attacks now start doing 26k damage or more stacked, when it was 14k, you're gambling a lot more on raid members keeping themselves up. If i gamble wrong, and they die to damage they could survive, it doesn't matter if i did 500 more dps when they do 500 less due to raise penalty.

And honestly, the least appealing thing in the world are this game's ex trials. By the time I've cleared, I'm so sick of the thing that I don't even care about the mounts. The idea that casuals are just chomping at the bit to get into them is hilarious to me, how you feel about pagos is how some feel about them.

If everything stays easy, people become complacent, which is what results in the sudden shock when you try moving up a tier and nothing you've done works. This is why we see people whine about Shinryu normal.

No, shin was just a jump up. I usually compare it to nid story, especially the add phases. I mean, 3 mobs with one wandering for Nid, 3 sets of adds with 3 meteor drops that can easily kill players with shin. But this is the faceroll thing again, you can't even say it was harder, because peopel jump on you over it.

And it doesn't matter if gradual, you still reach a point where you bow out. Its just better that its in ex content than in story, because the former doesn't gate content for people.

[Dualgunner]

No, it wouldn't, especially on trash. Isolating the one mob you need to stun is not fun.

Fun police Riyah at it again. If you like something she doesn't you're objectively wrong.

3 fights out of how many?

And a lot of ex primals are considered easy by forums, and some savage tiers. Thordan ex is a high bar to not be considered faceroll.

In Heavensward alone?
Bismarck EX
Ravana EX
Thordan EX
Nidhogg EX
Sephirot EX
Sophia EX
Zurvan EX

So...7. 3/7.

[RiyahArp]

Fun police Riyah at it again. If you like something she doesn't you're objectively wrong.

Oh hush, bourne asked me specifically if it would be fun if i could stun things. I said no, it wouldnt. If i tank, (which i do rarely) i can stun bosses if need be, but it's never particularly fun because of the short window to do it.

[Dualgunner]

Oh hush, bourne asked me specifically if it would be fun if i could stun things. I said no, it wouldnt. If i tank, (which i do rarely) i can stun bosses if need be, but it's never particularly fun because of the short window to do it.

Fair, but you made a declarative (X is not fun) not a personal (I don't find X fun) answer. That was where the confusion came from, my apologies.

[KaivaC]

Oh hush, bourne asked me specifically if it would be fun if i could stun things. I said no, it wouldnt. If i tank, (which i do rarely) i can stun bosses if need be, but it's never particularly fun because of the short window to do it.

...I have a crazy idea. What if I transferred one of my characters over to your server, and we partied together for a little bit? I'd like to see things from your perspective. I'm not as good as most of the folks here on the forums, so you wouldn't have to worry about 'raider mentality'. Honestly, I want to understand your perspective on things - there's only so much words can tell.

[Jojoya]

And sending people unprepared into other content where they'll hold back 3-7 other players is somehow better?
The MSQ being accessible is the reason why now when you load into O12 you'll have people who don't know how proximity markers work, people who don't know what their kits do, people who can't handle more than one mechanic at a time...
I had a DRK in O2 the other day who used GCDs so infrequently that you could actually see him auto attack 2 or 3 times in-between each one, and my only thoughts were "how the hell did he manage to get this far" and "him and his party are not going to have a good time by the time he reaches the higher Omega floors"

This is, first and foremost, a group game and if your performance isn't good enough to get through what the MSQ throws at you then you're most likely holding back anyone that plays with you, directly making the game more frustrating for them.

As was pointed out earlier, the MSQ isn't there to prepare someone for raids. It's there to prepare them for the next stage of the MSQ.

It doesn't matter how hard SE makes the MSQ, those players will never be prepared for the difficulty of the optional content. But making it difficult will discourage them from continuing to pay for the game and help fund that optional difficult content you do want.

If you end up with someone in the group that can't handle things, then remove them from the group. Be polite about instead of being a jerk but remove them.

This is a game where we have to play together to progress. If someone is going to get into Tsukuyomi story mode doing sub2k as a RDM (which I have seen more times than I care to count) then the game has utterly failed them and left them to exist as a burden on other players. That is not okay.

And yet it's SE that sets the difficulty level for the MSQ content. The question becomes if that difficulty level is reasonable when it is their game design funneling players of all skill through it together.

Getting players invested in a story then telling they they can't continue with the story because they've hit their personal skill cap or comfort level for difficulty is a pretty crappy way to design a game that survives on subscription retention. All you do is turn away people who were otherwise happy to support the game financially.

If only there was an objective indicator of how well they were playing...
Shame.

I guess people will just have to be ignorant of their level of performance.

Why I wish damage meters were a base part of a game UI. People need to have an objective measure so they'll know if they need to improve to enter into certain content. They can then choose to work to improve or accept that more difficult content is not right for them. Most people will understand they're holding a group back when presented with an objective measure of their performance.

It doesn't change that I don't feel that the MSQ is the appropriate place for skill tests to be implemented since it's mandatory for all character progression, even for players only interested in crafting and gathering.

The skill tests should come with the first encounter of the optional content. If you can't defeat the first, then you can't continue to the second and so on. Another option would be to expand Stone, Sky, Sea and The Circles of Answering into scored proving grounds. If the player fails to perform to a set standard there, they can't queue for the related duty. Groups created through Party Finder instead of Duty Finder are always free to remove a player at any time. You just can't be a jerk about doing it.

[Jellybums]

Why I wish damage meters were a base part of a game UI. People need to have an objective measure so they'll know if they need to improve to enter into certain content.

Totally agree. But probably just a visual personal gauge, no numbers, just to tell us how smashing or lacking our DPS is in an instance. There's no harm in seeing oh, the needle on the meter's always between red and yellow or it hardly goes to red when I'm in X instance. Noticing something like that makes one rethink play style without having to be told.

Personally the content isn't harder in nature, just busier, like nobody can get past the content by just standing still and every movement has to have purpose, kills the mindless grind honestly.

[Vaer]

As was pointed out earlier, the MSQ isn't there to prepare someone for raids. It's there to prepare them for the next stage of the MSQ.

It doesn't matter how hard SE makes the MSQ, those players will never be prepared for the difficulty of the optional content. But making it difficult will discourage them from continuing to pay for the game and help fund that optional difficult content you do want.

And yet it's SE that sets the difficulty level for the MSQ content. The question becomes if that difficulty level is reasonable when it is their game design funneling players of all skill through it together.

Getting players invested in a story then telling they they can't continue with the story because they've hit their personal skill cap or comfort level for difficulty is a pretty crappy way to design a game that survives on subscription retention. All you do is turn away people who were otherwise happy to support the game financially.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't echo applied if you fail too many times in MSQ? I think they have it for the job battles, too. So really if you can't do it with echo which already nerfs it by a large amount other than technical things like Return of the Bull but that's a one off so far, I'm not sure how they can accommodate people other than adding a "Skip battle?" button. So they already somewhat accommodate people that can't do it.

Honestly, considering the MSQ has trials and dungeons sometimes, it's more like they are preparing you for those so you have some idea what you are doing in actual group content since they are eventually part of the MSQ. The amount of times I've seen people run away with a stack marker and die in a corner by themselves has decreased since they started adding those to the solo battles.