Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[shibeouya]

There is no real incentive to actually master your job, since you can be really bad and still do 99% of content.

Gating a lot of content behind skill is exactly what caused so many MMOs to go poof. FF is and has always been casual friendly and this is where most of their revenue comes from. Changing that philosophy would be a sure way to kill the game.

[Dirwen]

Gating a lot of content behind skill is exactly what caused so many MMOs to go poof. FF is and has always been casual friendly and this is where most of their revenue comes from. Changing that philosophy would be a sure way to kill the game.

The few elitists will always think their opinion matters more than the majority of casuals. So few actually have savage and ultimate clears only proves the point. The thing that baffles me is PvP not many enjoy it but SE keeps forcing people into it by adding rewards to it constantly.

[JunseiKei]

The thing that baffles me is PvP not many enjoy it but SE keeps forcing people into it by adding rewards to it constantly.

It's a niche thing that people enjoy. The FFXIV team caters to niches; that's why we're getting "higher end crafting", why we have /gpose, perform, mini-games like mahjong, the Gold Saucer in general, ultimates, savage, Diadem, treasure maps, etc. There's a little bit of something to be had for everyone.

Also, the FFXIV team aren't forcing you into it. They're not holding a gun to your head saying 'do it now or die.' :v

[HyoMinPark]

The few elitists will always think their opinion matters more than the majority of casuals. So few actually have savage and ultimate clears only proves the point. The thing that baffles me is PvP not many enjoy it but SE keeps forcing people into it by adding rewards to it constantly.

On the other hand, it’s an equally elitist mindset to say that content and jobs need to be reduced to such a simplified state purely because “the majority of the playerbase is casual”. Casual players were still able to enjoy their content(s) of choice with higher-end content (sans Ultimate) being more challenging than it is now. Even the state of Extreme primals is laughable now: 13 deaths and still clearing before enrage for Innocence or Titania in minimum item level gear is kind of silly, to be honest. I miss the days of Sephirot EX... (even though Sophia EX is still my fav EX to date, and she was relatively easy).

This is a theme park game. I don’t see the problem with high-end content being more difficult/having a higher amount of skill needed to clear. The difficulty doesn’t negatively affect those who don’t actively pursue it, and it returns a sense of accomplishment and prestige to those who do.

[JunseiKei]

Savage, as it stands now, doesn’t hold much accomplishment or prestige for the high-end outside of clearing Week 1/Week 2 in near minimum item level gear. But this is just my opinion.

:thinking:

When has clearing anything by the higher-end player taken longer than a month? Gordias Savage being gear gated. The Coil of Bahamut Turn 5. Hell, clearing PotD solo took longer than the savages and ultimates.

[HyoMinPark]

:thinking:

When has clearing anything by the higher-end player taken longer than a month? Gordias Savage being gear gated. The Coil of Bahamut Turn 5. Hell, clearing PotD solo took longer than the savages and ultimates.

Midas took 2 weeks and UCoB 13 days. Even if it’s not a month, that’s better than 18 hours (all of 4.0’s raids) and 14 hours (Eden). I’d say Gordias is a very poor example given how it was poorly tested and blatantly overtuned—as admitted by the developers—and its my understanding that T5 was bugged to all heck when it dropped. Not belittling any accomplishments here, but is it fair to compare tiers like Midas to two that had other confounding factors to them?

I also don’t hear people questioning the accomplishments of soloing PotD—especially considering there’s currently a thread complaining about an individual selling Floor 200 runs—so I don’t know what point you’re actually trying to make there. Savage, as it stands now, is a shadow of what it used to be. There’s no denying that. I’d personally prefer it if the tiers lasted longer than half a day.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Midas took 2 weeks and UCoB 13 days. Even if it’s not a month, that’s better than 18 hours (all of 4.0’s raids) and 14 hours (Eden). I’d say Gordias is a very poor example given how it was poorly tested and blatantly overtuned—as admitted by the developers—and its my understanding that T5 was bugged to all heck when it dropped. Not belittling any accomplishments here, but is it fair to compare tiers like Midas to two that had other confounding factors to them?

I also don’t hear people questioning the accomplishments of soloing PotD—especially considering there’s currently a thread complaining about an individual selling Floor 200 runs—so I don’t know what point you’re actually trying to make there. Savage, as it stands now, is a shadow of what it used to be. There’s no denying that. I’d personally prefer it if the tiers lasted longer than half a day.

The reset of cool downs definitely had a large impact on this.

You may look at it and see a lot of cool downs with lowish recast times, but I remember having to wait upwards of 5 minutes in coil on bahamut cuz of a wipe just after hallowed use. I had a very strict CD rotation back then, and it forced us to wait the duration until it would be up when I needed it.

During prog, this can happen a lot. When the need to wait goes away, you progress wayyy faster.

You can get way more pulls when you aren't waiting for cool downs, especially when said cool down has a longer recast than 3 pulls when you are learning a fight (can you imagine waiting for cds after wiping in e4s early? The hardest parts of that fight happen less than 3 mins in from what I've seen so far.)

[Gemina]

Even the state of Extreme primals is laughable now: 13 deaths and still clearing before enrage for Innocence or Titania in minimum item level gear is kind of silly, to be honest. I miss the days of Sephirot EX... (even though Sophia EX is still my fav EX to date, and she was relatively easy).

Really? I couldn't get any clears on either of those two with less than half of those deaths, decent gear, and in normal mode. I don't do savage, but in both SB alliance raids and ex trials, if there were too many DPS players down during the timer, chat logs would get filled with one word: "Reset". I couldn't even imagine a savage clear ever happening under the same circumstances where bosses have enrages between phases. Is it fair to say you might be exaggerating, maybe just a little bit?

If this thread applies to only savage clears, and a concern that they are becoming too easy, then I will humbly say that I don't have much place to contribute to the thread. However, I will agree that players who seek to be pushed should continue to have content that pushes them. If it applies to casual content though, I'll take those skill ceilings, chew 'em up, and spit them right back out.

There seems to be this notion that most content being able to be cleared despite multiple missteps and derps makes it too easy. Many also feel it is a growing trend when this isn't anything new to ShB. If anything, I would think most would be content (and perhaps most are) that optimization in casual content translates to faster clears. Trust me on this, requiring more optimization and tossing out more Mist Dragon and Cid type bosses will lead to more frustration - not less, from all ranges of skill types in the playerbase.

Don't get me wrong though. I believe the game needs more bosses like those in casual content, and I will never be ok with how great we overgear content as an expansion progresses. To standardize it though would unquestionably kill the game. I believe for the sake of longevity, encounter design will have to eventually change and adapt to today's standards. But casual content very much needs to stay casual. This does not equal catering to the lowest common denominator, as many would have us believe.

[Hanayumi]

Feel like skill trimming is also becoming a factor in this as well, devs seem keen on keeping the amount to a certain number prolly for controller users, but... that in turn simplifies the jobs a tad. I'm sure they're going to continue doing it every expac as well so there may be a day where things end up being like single button combos and such. Also got to keep in mind that devs try to please as much as possible but when push comes to shove, they'll almost always go for the larger group of folks in need, and the number crunching hardcore players are fairly small compared to the rest, not to mention western mindsets can be pretty different to the JP community, so it's a very difficult job for the devs.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Feel like skill trimming is also becoming a factor in this as well, devs seem keen on keeping the amount to a certain number prolly for controller users, but... that in turn simplifies the jobs a tad. I'm sure they're going to continue doing it every expac as well so there may be a day where things end up being like single button combos and such. Also got to keep in mind that devs try to please as much as possible but when push comes to shove, they'll almost always go for the larger group of folks in need, and the number crunching hardcore players are fairly small compared to the rest, not to mention western mindsets can be pretty different to the JP community, so it's a very difficult job for the devs.

It's not any easier to have more than 30 skills on a keyboard either. Especially if you want them to be accessible to use.