So, can we just ban damage meters already.

[Melichoir]

How can one improve if they don't know they need to?

Simplest way? Tighter DPS checks and Enrages. Punish players in Normal content for having poor dps. While I wont say that this is always the case, Ive seen plenty of logs where players are in 450 gear doing 3-4k dps as a monk, RDM, BLM, etc. Mind you, with some of these classes, literally spamming one skill can net you higher damage. There is very little in the way of excuses for doing such suboptimal damage when you have this gear, and frankly the devs need to push normal content harder and force players to get better and understand their classes. It would honestly help a lot in many aspects of the game. Itd be tough on certain players, and possibly cause a few to quit, but many of the complaints we hear would end up resolved by allowing for more difficult and unique design in the game

[Gaethan_Tessula]

Simplest way? Tighter DPS checks and Enrages. Punish players in Normal content for having poor dps. While I wont say that this is always the case, Ive seen plenty of logs where players are in 450 gear doing 3-4k dps as a monk, RDM, BLM, etc. Mind you, with some of these classes, literally spamming one skill can net you higher damage. There is very little in the way of excuses for doing such suboptimal damage when you have this gear, and frankly the devs need to push normal content harder and force players to get better and understand their classes. It would honestly help a lot in many aspects of the game. Itd be tough on certain players, and possibly cause a few to quit, but many of the complaints we hear would end up resolved by allowing for more difficult and unique design in the game

I do not disagree, and would like to see normal content stress proper competence in role and actually doing mechanics instead of teaching players mechanics can be ignored if the healer can deal with it (while I don't disagree with alternative solutions to mechanics, pass the buck to the healer should not be the baseline).

However, the question then becomes this: how do we make it clear to poor players that it's their fault? How do we teach a bad tank that it wasn't the healer's fault they died, vice versa? How do we get a poor DPS to realize that they're the reason the party isn't getting past the enrage, instead of them projecting fault onto the rest of the party? Harder content stops poor players from coasting through, and I have hope that many people would realize a need to improve, but I also have fears there will be those who will never look at a wipe and say to themselves "I contributed to or caused that."

[Hyperia]

Simplest way? Tighter DPS checks and Enrages. Punish players in Normal content for having poor dps.

I doubt this will happen because SE is in business of making money and punishing players at every turn will get them to quit... which is very bad for business. Just look at what happened to Wildstar, they tried that... didn't end well for them. Like it or not, this is supposed to be a very accessible theme park MMO, SE's own words.

Even if meters were allowed, I don't think that will change very many people's DPS output. Yes, you can show them what they are doing wrong but more often than not, they will stick with what there used to. I accept that I am absolutely horrible at some jobs but thankfully, the Trust system exists so I can level my DRG and NIN and MNK and ETC to 80 without making others suffer.

[Liam_Harper]

I doubt this will happen because SE is in business of making money and punishing players at every turn will get them to quit... which is very bad for business. Just look at what happened to Wildstar, they tried that... didn't end well for them. Like it or not, this is supposed to be a very accessible theme park MMO, SE's own words.

You need a middle ground though. Wildstar definitely made the mistake of marketing too much to hardcore players. On the otherhand, WoW (among other issues) has made the mistake of making their game more and more accessible and have been on a steep decline in subscribers ever since WoD. Their classes simply stopped being fun to play, their casual content had less mechanics that mattered, loot rained from the sky and players got bored within a few weeks.

The middle ground ideally is accessible to all players, but has a high skill ceiling and lots of depth, with content on a smooth, consistent increase in difficulty the more you level and higher you go. Easy to learn, hard to master. This way there are always goals for players of every ability. There's always a next step just dangling almost in reach.
FF14 is actually quite good on some of this, but in other ways strays from the path. The gap in difficulty between some content is massive. Sometimes the depth and skill ceiling is removed. Not everything has to be beaten by everyone.

[Driavna]

You need a middle ground though. Wildstar definitely made the mistake of marketing too much to hardcore players. On the otherhand, WoW (among other issues) has made the mistake of making their game more and more accessible and have been on a steep decline in subscribers ever since WoD. Their classes simply stopped being fun to play, their casual content had less mechanics that mattered, loot rained from the sky and players got bored within a few weeks.

The middle ground ideally is accessible to all players, but has a high skill ceiling and lots of depth, with content on a smooth, consistent increase in difficulty the more you level and higher you go. Easy to learn, hard to master. This way there are always goals for players of every ability. There's always a next step just dangling almost in reach.
FF14 is actually quite good on some of this, but in other ways strays from the path. The gap in difficulty between some content is massive. Sometimes the depth and skill ceiling is removed. Not everything has to be beaten by everyone.

I going to disagree with you. The main problem with the current triple AAA industry is trying to make games for everyone instead of certain demographic and adapt the budgets to realistic numbers. The bigger FFXIV the worst is going to get.

[Melichoir]

I going to disagree with you. The main problem with the current triple AAA industry is trying to make games for everyone instead of certain demographic and adapt the budgets to realistic numbers. The bigger FFXIV the worst is going to get.

Theres a point when you go to broad it appeals to no one and no one doesnt get invested. I think thats the core issue - investment is probably down per player in the market, and game companies are relying on whales to heavily. In a nutshell, It's 'fast food' gaming. A game title might make more profit with a smaller but more heavily dedicated player base with a Trim but efficient budget, but theyre to caught up in this idea a game has to appeal to every single person ever.

[Liam_Harper]

I going to disagree with you. The main problem with the current triple AAA industry is trying to make games for everyone instead of certain demographic and adapt the budgets to realistic numbers. The bigger FFXIV the worst is going to get.

I'm curious, since this was upvoted I'm assuming players don't want a gradual difficulty curve or "easy to play, hard to master" classes. Since ff14 is marketed towards a casual playerbase foremost, being a theme park story-driven game at heart, if they chose to focus on a single demographic, they'd choose casual.

Does this mean the popular opinion is to delete EX, Savage and Ultimate entirely, make high skill cap classes like Ninja simple and focus entirely on the casual player? Genuine question, just unsure what you're disagreeing on specifically.

[Driavna]

I'm curious, since this was upvoted I'm assuming players don't want a gradual difficulty curve or "easy to play, hard to master" classes. Since ff14 is marketed towards a casual playerbase foremost, being a theme park story-driven game at heart, if they chose to focus on a single demographic, they'd choose casual.

Does this mean the popular opinion is to delete EX, Savage and Ultimate entirely, make high skill cap classes like Ninja simple and focus entirely on the casual player? Genuine question, just unsure what you're disagreeing on specifically.

Going to be blunt: casual does not equal to "ultra-easy mode" and/or lack of complexity (and no, not everything needs to be savage/ultimate). FFXIV at launch was a casual game regarding the time required but generally speaking, was more difficult/interesting (and I don't mean only raid content). Since then SE has been lowering the bar with no results (right now we have a topic about people lowering their ilvl to avoid certain content) outside annoying current players (in particular healers and probably tanks too). From my point of view, SE is following Blizzard footsteps with FFXIV.

I will also confess that my disagreement with you was mainly about Wildstar, but I just forgot to edit my post and add the extra information. Making it short Wildstar failed because of a rushed launch with bad performance, a lot of bugs and the game tried to pander to many playstyles (yep, only raids were aimed to hardcore). At launch, there wasn't enough content for anyone (plus the available one was buggy).

If instead of pandering to everyone Carbine decided to focus on one demographic and keep a realistic budget the game will have been probably alive today. You don't need millions of players to be successful and profitable.

Before finishing I have one question for you: why adapt FFXIV for solo players that only want to enjoy the story and do not want to bother learning the basics when SE can release another single-player FF title?

Edit: Once again I forgot about something! Ninja was not a hard class to play but after ShB became more awkward. Example: bushin has to be paired with trick attack but you are also required to use all your heavy hitters with includes ninjutsu that is not cloned by bushin and will delay your next weaponskill.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

FFXIV at launch was a casual game regarding the time required but generally speaking, was more difficult/interesting (and I don't mean only raid content). Since then SE has been lowering the bar with no results

I'm sorry, but that is just not true. Same thing as Classic Wow, in fact. Everyone claimed it was much harder than Normal WoW, while you got people running the latest raids naked two weeks after their release.

Bahamut is much, much easier than normal Eden. The only difficulty back then was servers at the other end of the world, and people being simply bad, both at playing their classes, and at doing mechanics.

The difficulty actually almost always went upwards, and right now, the game is not easy, the playerbase is just good. "gnngnn, but the dude I ran into in E11N last night", yes. There are bad players. That doesn't change the fact E11N is harder than Phenix, for example.

And your rant about ninja follows the same path. Actually, ShB Ninja is much less awkward that it once was, simply because of mudras, but yes, the burst window requires a lot of input. But it isn' t a bad thing at all, it only caters to people that like those sort of classes.

[RoyalBeef]

While I wont say that this is always the case, Ive seen plenty of logs where players are in 450 gear doing 3-4k dps as a monk, RDM, BLM, etc.

Problem is: They usually don't know that they're the problem. Best ase is they say nothing, worst case is they start blaming the party. Making the content harder would just lead to them blaming the party more, bc we know that in an MMO it's always everyone else's fault and everyone but they themself is toxic ^^