When do the training wheels come off?

[Nixxe]

The game literally has a quest at the begining that won't let you proceed if you don't reach certain ilvl. Quests and dungeons give you gear that has tags indicating that it's suited for certain jobs. Upon reaching Garuda, you've done plenty of quests and dungeons already.

Garuda is still low enough level that dungeons are dropping combined tank/drg gear that's a complete trap, as well as gear with randomized stats that may actually be a downgrade if it rolls poorly enough. Accessories are not limited by DoW/M at that level, let alone by role, and thus give no indication who they're intended for if you don't understand how stats work in this game.

[Lilseph]

Garuda is still low enough level that dungeons are dropping combined tank/drg gear that's a complete trap, as well as gear with randomized stats that may actually be a downgrade if it rolls poorly enough. Accessories are not limited by DoW/M at that level, let alone by role, and thus give no indication who they're intended for if you don't understand how stats work in this game.

I understand your point with mixed DRG/tank gear. Accesories are good at that level, but not gamebreaking. However, allow me to correct you on something: Garuda is more than 110+ MSQ in, you probably did 8 obligatory dungeons (Not counting the ones you unlock with your GC) and both Ifrit and Titan, though the later don't drop gear. Also, don't you receive a message when you reach level 30 that you can finally unlock your job? The randomnized stats of pink gear are secondary, the main stats (STR+VIT) remain the same in accordance to the gear's ilvl. This is not a concern for the new player: Better gear -> it has my job's tag on it = Should use that one.

[Hawklaser]

Well on ARR initial release the training wheels pretty much were fully off by Hauke Manor and Brayflox Longstop. 28-36ish if remember right. The mechanics in those two tended to weed out the lazier ones a bit, and required knowing job basics and such then.

With all the rebalances and expansions, I'm not sure where it moved to. Depends on how far vets are just willing to carry people.

[Forever_Learning]

Well on ARR initial release the training wheels pretty much were fully off by Hauke Manor and Brayflox Longstop. 28-36ish if remember right. The mechanics in those two tended to weed out the lazier ones a bit, and required knowing job basics and such then.

With all the rebalances and expansions, I'm not sure where it moved to. Depends on how far vets are just willing to carry people.

I'm getting the impression that there's a general consensus that things were more difficult in ARR?

I played during that time and I don't remember it being harder.

Things were sometimes harder for the WRONG reasons - like the fact our cooldowns didn't reset after a wipe!

My team and I spent most of the night chatting frankly since the time between pulls was always a couple minutes.

People also weren't exactly sure how to play their job back then - healers were hitting enemies with their books (that's stopped, right?)

Rather than the current mantra to avoid macros, they were being used all over the place.

There were also teams reporting they were having an easier time because their healer did a lot of DPS (with their books), while other teams said healers priotizing DPS was silly . . . some things never change.

Hauke - people maybe wiped at the last boss due to the lamps, but that still happens. People unaware they should click return after the second boss was a bigger issues, and remains so. The ease of brayflox largely depended on how much your tank wanted to pull, which I think remains the case.

I always felt the only difficult dungeon pre-50 was Stone Vigil. The challenge with level 50 dungeons like Wanderer's palace was trying to get it done in under 10 minutes.

I don't know if anyone was carrying anyone back then, but there wasn't much communication, and it was mostly just wiping over and over, which also happens now.

If you have been playing consistently since ARR, the increase level of experience may make those dungeons seem really easy now, or they seemed really hard in ARR, because you were new.

As someone who played and raided in ARR, I haven't seen this disparity in difficulty level that I often see mentioned.

We also lacked the third party programs that "help with your rotation" nor the ones telling us when certain actions happened. Dive bombs, you just counted in your head and hoped for no lag!

It reminds me of Classic WoW, which people said it was so much more difficult because it took so much longer to complete, but now that they have released the original content, people are realizing that they were hard for reasons unrelated to the game and that outside Naxrammas, they are possibly the easiest and most casual-friendly raids in WoW ever created.

At any rate, that's my memory of ARR.

P.S. People were totally pugging coil and beating it. I saw someone post that no pug was ever able to beat Coil, which is very far from the truth.

[HakaseNyan]

stuff

Here's a short and quick refresher:

WAR didn't get tank stance until 30, and PLD didn't get tank stance until 40 (the struggle was real). SCH also didn't get an esuna for Brayflox, which had a lot of poison during final boss. (Antidote cooldown didn't help) Jobs also required leveling a sub-class to 15, and any tank without a job stone was basically useless for holding enmity.

Compared to now - ARR was much more difficult. The messed up part of all this is I didn't run into as many facerollers in ARR as I do today. Perhaps because the population is much larger now, but does that excuse work when things have been made so much easier?

[Nixxe]

Here's a short and quick refresher:

WAR didn't get tank stance until 30, and PLD didn't get tank stance until 40 (the struggle was real). SCH also didn't get an esuna for Brayflox, which had a lot of poison during final boss. (Antidote cooldown didn't help) Jobs also required leveling a sub-class to 15, and any tank without a job stone was basically useless for holding enmity.

Compared to now - ARR was much more difficult. The messed up part of all this is I didn't run into as many facerollers in ARR as I do today. Perhaps because the population is much larger now, but does that excuse work when things have been made so much easier?

ARR played differently, but it wasn't noticeably more difficult for leveling content. Players were just overall newer and more incompetent.

[Forever_Learning]

Hauke wasn't just the void lamps. The patroling maidens with their aoe terrorize could easily wipe groups as well. Not everyone would stun that cast or realize to focus them down. Brayflox was more just about being up to date and paying attention, more for healers as some nasty poisons there. Qarn's bees with final sting which could wreak a tank, as well as its crocs with their rear cone attacks. Dzamel where need to fight in specific locations for the first portion, and not get knocked over a ledge in a later one. Stone vigals delayed spawn ice sprites. Aurum Vales fruit mechanic. Each added a small degree of challenge to their respective dungeon, either by adding a little more complexity or a little more difficulty. Not enough to really be much of a hurdle to most, but enough to catch those coasting along as well as be appreciated by others. Just enough of a change of pace to be noticed but not also warrant going up a full difficulty setting, as they very carefully built up the difficulty across the dungeons in ARR much like one would expect from a single player game. ARR's MSQ expected more out of the player as they progressed through it.

The expansion dungeons and MSQ have not felt that way yet. Having to prioritize specific trash mobs for stuns/kills is rare, and instead we just mass aoe them all. Very few twists are applied to any mechanics. In short, very little in the new content tries to get the player to step outside of normal play. So once see and understand the gimmick, its easy. As the gimmick is usually just an odd aoe pattern.

Yup, I recognize everything you are discussing, and I’ll add the doom floor in Qarn, which made us go up the hill on the side of the floor to just avoid it. I can also agree with argument that it was more difficult in ARR, but you also acknowledge that the difficult wasn’t exactly cuphead or dark souls difficulty. There were bad players back then too, and people didn’t exactly spend hours getting through these dungeons like a savage raid.

Here's a short and quick refresher:

WAR didn't get tank stance until 30, and PLD didn't get tank stance until 40 (the struggle was real). SCH also didn't get an esuna for Brayflox, which had a lot of poison during final boss. (Antidote cooldown didn't help) Jobs also required leveling a sub-class to 15, and any tank without a job stone was basically useless for holding enmity.

Compared to now - ARR was much more difficult. The messed up part of all this is I didn't run into as many facerollers in ARR as I do today. Perhaps because the population is much larger now, but does that excuse work when things have been made so much easier?

I know, I was there! It’s the reason when I returned that I had all these classes at various levels in addition to my main job because I levelled them for the cross talents. I had so many things greyed out when I return.

On the topic of gear, I'm sure anyone looking at me that day were amazed to see a white mage with a shield!

I also played Scholar and Brayflox was fine, seriously. What I remember more than anything is tanks having no idea where to go and pulling the entire swamp. We NEVER got Esuna, we had leeches, and the reason we could heal Brayflox is that the healing arsenal of Scholar was kinda OP. Maybe I was an amazing player in ARR, but it’s also possible some of your are being hyperbolic regarding the difficulty level of ARR.

Are we not even going to discuss that the primary way to level up was also fates rather than dungeons? So, how do dungeons serve as some great filter when most people are doing fates unless it’s roulette or a required dungeon? People didn’t dungeon spam from 1-50 like today.

[HakaseNyan]

I know, I was there! It’s the reason when I returned that I had all these classes at various levels in addition to my main job because I levelled them for the cross talents. I had so many things greyed out when I return.

On the topic of gear, I'm sure anyone looking at me that day were amazed to see a white mage with a shield!

I also played Scholar and Brayflox was fine, seriously. What I remember more than anything is tanks having no idea where to go and pulling the entire swamp. We NEVER got Esuna, we had leeches, and the reason we could heal Brayflox is that the healing arsenal of Scholar was kinda OP. Maybe I was an amazing player in ARR, but it’s also possible some of your are being hyperbolic regarding the difficulty level of ARR.

Are we not even going to discuss that the primary way to level up was also fates rather than dungeons? So, how do dungeons serve as some great filter when most people are doing fates unless it’s roulette or a required dungeon? People didn’t dungeon spam from 1-50 like today.

I dunno, dude. I remember FATEs having real awful exp rewards, and Leves were the better alternative, and dungeons being the best exp. I leveled everything to 50 back then, and that started with Levequests + FATEs until 15 and then dungeons until 50.

I know SCH never had esuna specifically (leeches = esuna), and that's not really the point. Brayflox's final boss could stack poison on the tank, and toss out toxic vomit puddles that could hit multiple players grouped together. So, you have AoE damage + poison stack added to anyone hit, with addition to the tank having a possible stack of 4 poison going continuously. I think it's fair to say that you had to be a good SCH to get through that fight without someone ending up on the ground. It was stressful back then.

The point, if I am allowed to make one, is there was less room for error. Now? Tanks shouldn't have difficulty holding enmity ever, and the content is a breeze for healers. Heck, I remember tanks would number mobs to attack like 95% of the time. It was like everyone learned to do it, so they had less stress of keeping enmity on everything. I haven't seen that in years.

[Nixxe]

I understand your point with mixed DRG/tank gear. Accesories are good at that level, but not gamebreaking. However, allow me to correct you on something: Garuda is more than 110+ MSQ in, you probably did 8 obligatory dungeons (Not counting the ones you unlock with your GC) and both Ifrit and Titan, though the later don't drop gear. Also, don't you receive a message when you reach level 30 that you can finally unlock your job? The randomnized stats of pink gear are secondary, the main stats (STR+VIT) remain the same in accordance to the gear's ilvl. This is not a concern for the new player: Better gear -> it has my job's tag on it = Should use that one.

I do not know of any such message, but I haven't unlocked a job in a very long time. It's possible that if such a message exists, it was added after the last time I unlocked a job or I forgot about it. Also, that the primary stats are fixed doesn't necessarily mean it's better. I've definitely had god-tier rolled gear that was a lower level and had a few less dex or whatever that was obviously superior to a trash-tier rolled piece that was a couple levels higher.

At any rate, my point isn't that it's impossible for new players to figure this out, only that it's reasonable some of them will not and not because they're just egregiously lazy or stupid. Such players are best dealt with by giving them polite guidance, as they usually want to do well and simply don't know better and it will prevent them from becoming reflexively defensive in future situations if more correction is needed.