When do the training wheels come off?

[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]

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.

Because it was overkill even in ARR. It was an archaic gaming practice that somehow survived in FFXIV, but the only thing it actually did is make the game take longer while allowing, even encouraging, the entire group to contribute less. It was a casual practice for inexperienced casual players.

[Hawklaser]

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.

I don't think anyone looking for more difficulty is looking for it to go to the Cuphead or Dark Souls levels outside of savage/ultimate content. As much as I hate FPS games, they make the best examples for difficulty curves, they have the easy, normal, hard, you gonna die, etc difficulty modes you set at the start akin to normal, extreme, savage, ultimate content in XIV, but as you progress through their stages things gradually get harder too. In theory, if you enjoyed the game enough to beat it, then replay it, if the devs did the difficulty well you could often bump it up one setting and get a ways before ran into issues.

If was to liken XIV to a Mario game, ARR felt more like an 8 world mario game progressively getting slightly harder. And the hard mode primals and post MSQ dungeons felt like the start of world 1 hard compared to the MSQ Praetoriun clearly being 8-4. The expansions have all felt like still stuck in world 2 or 3 for the difficulty progression, and then jumping to extreme, savage, and ultimate with the lack of 5 worlds worth of gradual difficulty and complexity to create a smoother transition.

[Hawklaser]

Because it was overkill even in ARR. It was an archaic gaming practice that somehow survived in FFXIV, but the only thing it actually did is make the game take longer while allowing, even encouraging, the entire group to contribute less. It was a casual practice for inexperienced casual players.

So communication and coordination is for inexperienced casuals? Right.. I'm sure the top end raiders don't use those skills at all.

The numbering of mobs by the tank was just simple and quick communication of which mobs were going to get agro built up first allowing single target dps to safely focus on a target and go to town. The one marked 1 often was a priority target anyways. And the 2nd told the same dps which mob was going to have more agro built up on it so they could continue at full speed. Plus during all of that a good tank also probably built up more than plenty if agro on everything so that healers and aoe dps didn't pull hate either.

But then again, tanks got it easy now and can just spam a single low potency aoe and not worry about anyone pulling hate so long as tank stance is on instead of actually having to build and manage agro across the whole enemy group by using multiple abilities.

[Nixxe]

So communication and coordination is for inexperienced casuals? Right.. I'm sure the top end raiders don't use those skills at all.

The numbering of mobs by the tank was just simple and quick communication of which mobs were going to get agro built up first allowing single target dps to safely focus on a target and go to town. The one marked 1 often was a priority target anyways. And the 2nd told the same dps which mob was going to have more agro built up on it so they could continue at full speed. Plus during all of that a good tank also probably built up more than plenty if agro on everything so that healers and aoe dps didn't pull hate either.

But then again, tanks got it easy now and can just spam a single low potency aoe and not worry about anyone pulling hate so long as tank stance is on instead of actually having to build and manage agro across the whole enemy group by using multiple abilities.

I find it really funny how quick people are to rationalize the "training wheels" when they were the ones benefiting from them. Be good and AOE them down. Don't act like ARR was difficult just because you had no idea what you were doing. Coming from WoW, ARR felt like the Little Tikes version of an MMORPG.

[Forever_Learning]

I don't think anyone looking for more difficulty is looking for it to go to the Cuphead or Dark Souls levels outside of savage/ultimate content. As much as I hate FPS games, they make the best examples for difficulty curves, they have the easy, normal, hard, you gonna die, etc difficulty modes you set at the start akin to normal, extreme, savage, ultimate content in XIV, but as you progress through their stages things gradually get harder too. In theory, if you enjoyed the game enough to beat it, then replay it, if the devs did the difficulty well you could often bump it up one setting and get a ways before ran into issues.

If was to liken XIV to a Mario game, ARR felt more like an 8 world mario game progressively getting slightly harder. And the hard mode primals and post MSQ dungeons felt like the start of world 1 hard compared to the MSQ Praetoriun clearly being 8-4. The expansions have all felt like still stuck in world 2 or 3 for the difficulty progression, and then jumping to extreme, savage, and ultimate with the lack of 5 worlds worth of gradual difficulty and complexity to create a smoother transition.

Here, you win my support.

It takes a fairly long bit of time to reach level 80 and they have made the journey somewhat painless to the extent that you don't bother to do things because there doesn't seem to be a need to do so. Even with the badly geared tank expressed by the OP, they still got through it.

The end result is that people can make it very far into the game, basically everything but savage maybe, playing their job incorrectly.

However, to what extent is that also a reflection of this game's age? Isn't it normal that when an MMO has multiple expansions, they make the previous content easier to complete in order to reach the current expansion? Nevertheless, I'm quite supportive of better progression curves and additional resources for people who want to learn how to play their job better. Like, I just realized there is NOTHING in this game that tells you to weave your spells.

Ultimately, when it comes to new players (or returning ones like me), I think it often has more to do with ignorance than attitude. You don't want to know for how long I had no idea about the saddlebag!

[linay]

Training wheels are there as backup to help you when you fail. You can easily tell when they can come off when you no longer "activate" them.

The topic of this thread doesn't actually fit the title. This game actually needs more training wheels, like preventing you from queueing to a certain duty unless you've equipped your job stone, etc.

[SturmChurro]

Here, you win my support.

It takes a fairly long bit of time to reach level 80 and they have made the journey somewhat painless to the extent that you don't bother to do things because there doesn't seem to be a need to do so. Even with the badly geared tank expressed by the OP, they still got through it.

The end result is that people can make it very far into the game, basically everything but savage maybe, playing their job incorrectly.

However, to what extent is that also a reflection of this game's age? Isn't it normal that when an MMO has multiple expansions, they make the previous content easier to complete in order to reach the current expansion? Nevertheless, I'm quite supportive of better progression curves and additional resources for people who want to learn how to play their job better. Like, I just realized there is NOTHING in this game that tells you to weave your spells.

Ultimately, when it comes to new players (or returning ones like me), I think it often has more to do with ignorance than attitude. You don't want to know for how long I had no idea about the saddlebag!

Newer players I'll have a lot more patience with, but I see players in 60-80 content with trash gear, not doing aoe, not using dcd, etc. Like, by then they should know how to play their class at a good enough level to not have to be carried through content. If you ever decide to say anything to these players, if they have a buddy, half the time they will kick you, the other half they ignore you and keep playing badly, or start insulting you.

[Forever_Learning]

Training wheels are there as backup to help you when you fail. You can easily tell when they can come off when you no longer "activate" them.

The topic of this thread doesn't actually fit the title. This game actually needs more training wheels, like preventing you from queueing to a certain duty unless you've equipped your job stone, etc.

Yes, exactly.

I know when I qued without my stone it was because of the gear recommendation button.

But the real question is why are they even letting me enter as a level 50 CNJ with basically no spells at all?

It's not like CNJ is a class and white mage is a spec I chose - CNJ basically just evolves into white mage.

Furthermore, why do we even need the stone to be equipped? Why can't that job just become white mage permanently?

[Moonlite]

Slightly off topic, but relevant to a few posts/comments here and in general forums. People aren't AoEing enough. The people getting upset about this, have you not been playing this game very long? Any time something lets the dungeon runs go faster and you force it onto other players, what happens?



Just a couple examples off the top of my head speed runs, SE nerfs those. MSQ skipping cs SE nerfs that, that fate in N Than where you could just kill the mobs for 15 mins SE nerfs that. I am not saying that you guys are going to lead to some new type of nerf. But forcing a higher/different level of game play onto others really hasn't worked in the past.