So, can we just ban damage meters already.

[Billythepancake]

I dunno, I think having steadily harsher and harsher enrage timers would be a good thing.
Having the first few dungeons/trials not have enrage timers, and then each dungeon boss/trial boss slowly getting stricter, and stricter - forcing players to actually do their part.

I wouldn't mind that, personally, but you have to consider the casual players who only see this as another final fantasy game, and not as an MMO. They don't have an interest in "gitting gud", they just want to experience the story and the world the game has to offer, which is fair for fans of the series. So I dont think normal content needs to be difficult, hell, when it is difficult *cough* *cough* aurum vale*cough**cough*, people complain about it being too difficult and beg for nerfs to it.

[Hash_Browns]

I wouldn't mind that, personally, but you have to consider the casual players who only see this as another final fantasy game, and not as an MMO. They don't have an interest in "gitting gud", they just want to experience the story and the world the game has to offer, which is fair for fans of the series. So I dont think normal content needs to be difficult, hell, when it is difficult *cough* *cough* aurum vale*cough**cough*, people complain about it being too difficult and beg for nerfs to it.

If putting an enrage timer on bosses makes the game too difficult then their is a problem.
Aurum Vale isn't even a difficult dungeon. None of the dungeons in the game currently have much difficulty to them.

[Billythepancake]

If putting an enrage timer on bosses makes the game too difficult then their is a problem.
Aurum Vale isn't even a difficult dungeon. None of the dungeons in the game currently have much difficulty to them.

For a lot of people, sure, I agree. Now I'd say aurum Vale isnt too bad, but I've also invested 3000 hours into this game and have progged ultimate fights as well as do savage content. But I remember my first run of bardams mettle, or Aurum Vale, shit was rough, I could barely keep up. I kept with it because I like a challenge though (clearly, right?) But not everyone does, and again, a lot of people only play this game for the story, which is completely fair, so locking the game away from them because they dont want to git gud hardly seems fair. Savage content is there for people who want to push themselves, normal content is meant to be for everyone, including the casuals.

[Hash_Browns]

For a lot of people, sure, I agree. Now I'd say aurum Vale isnt too bad, but I've also invested 3000 hours into this game and have progged ultimate fights as well as do savage content. But I remember my first run of bardams mettle, or Aurum Vale, shit was rough, I could barely keep up. I kept with it because I like a challenge though (clearly, right?) But not everyone does, and again, a lot of people only play this game for the story, which is completely fair, so locking the game away from them because they dont want to git gud hardly seems fair. Savage content is there for people who want to push themselves, normal content is meant to be for everyone, including the casuals.

I don't think expecting a certain level of play has anything to do with the "git gud" mentality.

Players wanting to experience the story, and not get into the end-game high level content, or just play casually? That's fine. But this is a two-way street. I'm not saying we should expect EX/Savage levels here, but their needs to be a point where you have to learn about your class rather then pushing buttons, and willing.

As it stands right now, why can someone know nothing about the class they are playing, go into a dungeon, and I have to deal with that hot mess, and I'm the bad guy for not putting up with it, and kicking them?

This falls even flatter on the fact that in any game you are expected to learn, and get better in order to progress. That's a single player thing - in this situation you are holding 3/7/23 other people back because "Lol, I just wanna experience the story, calm down, I play for fun."

End game dungeons, and content in general should require actual team play, not what it is now.
As it stands - as long as the tank can self-heal (PLD, WAR), they can clear level 80 dungeon bosses without a healer.

Go join Suzaku "farm" party in PF... as soon as Colour mechanics kick in and peole have to multitask, your casual level 80 DPS player drops from 6-7k, which in't good but more than enough to clear anyway, to 2-3k instantly lol.

Sad truth being that those players probably don't know they are pushing low numbers.

[SturmChurro]

I don't think expecting a certain level of play has anything to do with the "git gud" mentality.

Players wanting to experience the story, and not get into the end-game high level content, or just play casually? That's fine. But this is a two-way street. I'm not saying we should expect EX/Savage levels here, but their needs to be a point where you have to learn about your class rather then pushing buttons, and willing.

As it stands right now, why can someone know nothing about the class they are playing, go into a dungeon, and I have to deal with that hot mess, and I'm the bad guy for not putting up with it, and kicking them?

This falls even flatter on the fact that in any game you are expected to learn, and get better in order to progress. That's a single player thing - in this situation you are holding 3/7/23 other people back because "Lol, I just wanna experience the story, calm down, I play for fun."

Yep, you are the equivalent of an "elitist" for expecting the bare minimum of acceptable play from another player. It's actually ridiculous. Like, is it so hard to use aoe skills? It's brain dead easy, literally. You can even stand still in most situations. Just press that button instead of that one. Lordy lordy, it's not like expecting some sort of high level play here, every time I read coddle posts or see some trash in duty finder, all I do is roll my eyes.

Apparently, people think I'm a liar when I say I don't kick, but I totally understand where people are coming from when they don't want to put up with it and kick. Other players should be taken into consideration too - the ones who don't want to, or don't have the time to wait out the timer on someone who can't grasp the basics.

[RoyalBeef]

For a lot of people, sure, I agree. Now I'd say aurum Vale isnt too bad, but I've also invested 3000 hours into this game and have progged ultimate fights as well as do savage content. But I remember my first run of bardams mettle, or Aurum Vale, shit was rough, I could barely keep up. I kept with it because I like a challenge though (clearly, right?) But not everyone does, and again, a lot of people only play this game for the story, which is completely fair, so locking the game away from them because they dont want to git gud hardly seems fair. Savage content is there for people who want to push themselves, normal content is meant to be for everyone, including the casuals.

At some point we need some more gating tho. Ilevel requirements don't work at all, because you get "welfare" tomestone gear for trivial activities that is only slightly worse than top notch raid gear, and allows you to queue up for that endgame content. You could literally do MSQ roulette every day to hit level 80 with 450/460 gear, clear Eden by tanking the floor and having the other 7 ppl do it and then hop right into savage, wondering why people yell at you for doing 2k DPS.
Of course normal story content shouldn't be gated, problem is high end stuff isn't really gated either. As soon as people are able to queue up for it,they will. Put in a solo duty with a Boss that doesn't really do much damage but has an enrage timer, so you need to hit X DPS in order to clear and unlock the next Ex/Savage or something.

[Billythepancake]

At some point we need some more gating tho. Ilevel requirements don't work at all, because you get "welfare" tomestone gear for trivial activities that is only slightly worse than top notch raid gear, and allows you to queue up for that endgame content. You could literally do MSQ roulette every day to hit level 80 with 450/460 gear, clear Eden by tanking the floor and having the other 7 ppl do it and then hop right into savage, wondering why people yell at you for doing 2k DPS.
Of course normal story content shouldn't be gated, problem is high end stuff isn't really gated either. As soon as people are able to queue up for it,they will. Put in a solo duty with a Boss that doesn't really do much damage but has an enrage timer, so you need to hit X DPS in order to clear and unlock the next Ex/Savage or something.

Some sort of requirement for savage I'm fine with, I've certainly seen people hop in there that arent ready for what savage entails, but normal content I think is fine as.

[Raven2014]

For a lot of people, sure, I agree. Now I'd say aurum Vale isnt too bad, but I've also invested 3000 hours into this game and have progged ultimate fights as well as do savage content. But I remember my first run of bardams mettle, or Aurum Vale, shit was rough, I could barely keep up. I kept with it because I like a challenge though (clearly, right?)

That's misconception.

Bardams Mettle wasn't hard. The only two reason that it "felt" hard because of two things: skill and gears. I remember that speed bum at the beginning of SB inside Bardams too, but that's because:

- A lot of people were trying new roles in a new expansion, as well as adjusting to new change in their class. Also the "hardcore" people stick with their static early on in order to reach max level quicker leading to a reduced number of skill players in the pool. All of this combines always make contents "feel" harder at the beginning of an expansion.
- Gears: the main culprit of why Bardam felt like a jump in "difficulty" is because of the Shire gears. "New" players were given a set for free, which over geared them for the first 2 story dungeon, but Bardam is where it evened/fall behind. This is most noticeable with tank, and adding the fact that most people in Shire Gear are new to the classes and/or potion jump, you get a fairly potent combination of making things harder than they actually are. I had to heal a tank in Castrum Abania one (the last story dungeon in SB) who was in full lvl60 crafted gears. It was harder to keep him alive than healing freaking omega.

Dungeons has consistently becoming easier and repeatly, that's a fact. Even by the end of 2.0 you could still see people wiping in Stone vigil or AV. I still remembered sleep/fluid aura were still used in order to salvage a pull. These days the only struggle is at the first few weeks for reasons mentioned above, after that you hardly see any a party struggle any more unless they are "really" bad. And CC skills has been neglected to extinctions

[Melichoir]

That's misconception.

Bardams Mettle wasn't hard. The only two reason that it "felt" hard because of two things: skill and gears.

But isnt this the crux of difficulty? Essentially challenge will always boil down to limitations on skills/gear in relation to the content and how you overcome those challenges. Now how they up the difficult can vary, such as the cheap way is to just triple a monsters HP and Defense and tell you to 'kill it', but that only ends up padding the content. But difficulty is gonna be an issue of what you have on hand. So it's kinda wierd to say "It feels hard, but really wasnt cause we didnt have the max level gear or higher level stats and therefore were facing a challange that was adequate for the limitations we had." I feel this would be akin to saying Bahamut in synced CoBS isnt really challenging simply because we dont have our level 80 skills and gear. It's also saying the final boss of a game is not 'really all that hard' when you can just put in a cheat code and get godlike stats. The content isnt designed around being over leveled/geared, and the challenge is appropriate in that regards.

I remember that speed bum at the beginning of SB inside Bardams too, but that's because:

- A lot of people were trying new roles in a new expansion, as well as adjusting to new change in their class. Also the "hardcore" people stick with their static early on in order to reach max level quicker leading to a reduced number of skill players in the pool. All of this combines always make contents "feel" harder at the beginning of an expansion.

I would say the adjustment makes more sense at the lvl 60-63 dungeons, but BM is a lvl 65 dungeon smack dab in the middle of the xpac. Most people wouldve been more adjusted by that point. Also the hardcore static people stick together is a lot less a thing. Yes some of them will level together but most people at that point in the xpac were not part of solid statics - including players who did Alexander and as result were doing the content on their own term and time. Only the more hardcore statics looking for world first typically ran together because they had a roadmap planned out to get to max asap and gear up so when savage drops they can jump in immediately. Your point also argues that Savage Raiders were carrying non raiders through that content because non raiders are bad, rather than the content being difficult for the level/gear available at the time.

- Gears: the main culprit of why Bardam felt like a jump in "difficulty" is because of the Shire gears. "New" players were given a set for free, which over geared them for the first 2 story dungeon, but Bardam is where it evened/fall behind. This is most noticeable with tank, and adding the fact that most people in Shire Gear are new to the classes and/or potion jump, you get a fairly potent combination of making things harder than they actually are. I had to heal a tank in Castrum Abania one (the last story dungeon in SB) who was in full lvl60 crafted gears. It was harder to keep him alive than healing freaking omega.

This is a problem with Jump potions in general. they shouldnt have awarded 260 gear. 240 or 250 wouldve been more appropriate. That being said, new players also would not have proper understanding of mechanics, classes, or other things and would in hat sense struggle a bit in newer content. Yes over gearing would make those 70 dungeons easier, but not so easy that 75 BM wouldve been a spike. Remember that gear doesnt fall off a steep cliff. You started getting 276 gear in BM. Thats only 6 ilvls above the maximum HW gear. It is better, but not so substantially better that it would justify a sudden spike in difficulty. Beyond that, youre over estimating how many 'new players' there were too. Pretty sure most of the player base were semi or fully active by SB so there werent that many people with jump potions and using 270 gear and not knowing their class that BM would be difficult from that.

BM was a harder dungeon because it was a harder dungeon from skill limitations and stat limitations. Things at that level were hitting harder, and you didnt have a full kit. People had to pull smaller and be a bit more creative. As gearing got better, it became easier cause people were out gearing it. For what it was intended for, it had a decent difficulty to it.

Dungeons has consistently becoming easier and repeatly, that's a fact. Even by the end of 2.0 you could still see people wiping in Stone vigil or AV. I still remembered sleep/fluid aura were still used in order to salvage a pull. These days the only struggle is at the first few weeks for reasons mentioned above, after that you hardly see any a party struggle any more unless they are "really" bad. And CC skills has been neglected to extinctions

I dont think its a fact as an opinion. There is nuance here and I agree with some bits of it. Dungeons have changed and become more refined over time in certain ways. Stone vigil is hard at the end of ARR due to quite a few factors. It's not hard now because of changes in lower level content and overgearing. By the time you get to it, youre pretty much overleveled and geared. As a result in some degree dungeons are easier. This doesnt get any better as dungeons are streamlined in such a fashion where you just mass pull boss to boss almost and CC and management be damned. However bosses themselves have become more complex, and increased in difficulty. In ARR, bosses had maybe 1 mechanic you had to understand and the rest was tank and spank. It's not that way currently.

Furthermore, bad dungeon design was weeded out as well - design that made a dungeon more difficult due to cheesy factors than anything. As a point, CC was a double edged sword. If you design mobs that need to be CCed you need more in group coordination. And with people so spam happy on AoEs. Keeping a mob slept is almost a moot point. This also creates a situation where content becomes harder unless you have a certain class/role. So CC has to be on healer or Tanks role actions primarily because theyll be required, unless you just give it to everyone, and then its an issue of balance and having to much available CC on hand in things like 8 mans.

This being said, they could increase difficult by punishing mass pulling and forcing more tactical play. As I mentioned, this would be things like incorporating mobs that become stronger the more minions are around, or changing how CC operates where sleep doesnt break on any damage, but if they lose a % of their max HP. This allows for tanks to reposition mobs away from a slept target without them getting woken up by spam happy dps or tanks or healers. More enemies need interrupted skills, either with interject or stun and failing to do so would make things substantially harder. Also enemies get to resist CC faster, but for shorter duration. So more CC would be useful. It also means giving mobs Raid mechanics. Stack markers, Tank busters, Raid Busters, blind markers, etc. Enemies that do more damage the lower HP they get, enemies that need to be focused down, enemies that spam AoEs non stop. Enemies that pull you out of group and pop a quick buster, so if youre a squishy healer or DPS, youre gonna die if you are rushing along foolishly. Etc. Incorporating these mechanics on regular trash mobs and introducing new mechanics on bosses would go a long way to helping improve the player base skill floor. They do this in places like HoH to some extent, where things like the Gryphon in the mid floors has a hard enrage that will about wipe your group if you let it happen. This kind of mechanics need to be more incorporated into dungeons. You can keep dungeons the same length by cutting down the amount of mobs you have to fight.

This would require a lot of retooling of future dungeons because this requires players to change how they play. Most players have found it's simply easier to big pull and AoE things down. You have to craft dungeons to mitigate against that and introduce nuance. Not that you cant have mass pull, but create a flow where some areas you mass pull, some areas you move more cautiously. Mind you, the changes I proposed would be things that even ARR never incorporated.