Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[MPNZ]

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.

That's the skill floor. The skill ceiling is how high a player can push a job or certain aspect of it (mastery). Having a low skill floor means the the gateway skill level to entry decent/passable performance is easy and accessable

[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.

[Sloprano]

I am just thinking back to 2.x and 3.x (and to an extent 4.x) content and I am worried about this trend...not only about the design of the extreme/savage encounters but more-so the job player skill ceilings. It seems to me that the difference between a poor to average skilled player compared to a skilled player is minuscule performance wise. There is no real incentive to actually master your job, since you can be really bad and still do 99% of content. Is this the design style going forward? If so, is anyone else concerned? Higher end content should require near-mastery of your job, shouldn't it? Or am I crazy?

While I'm less concerned about skill floors, ceilings, basements and chandeliers, Extreme or Sensible, Savage or Civilized, Ultimate or Introductionary, I'm all about of finding joy in the base of the a class then going into different situations with it , but for SCH I'm worried like a fussy mother waiting on her child to get home late at night, worried they are hanging with bad crowds that go for cheap thrills daring each other to see how many Broil III each can cast before falling asleep, neglecting and forgetting the ardous hours of training piano lessons to play classics like Cleric Stance pedal, Bio 2, ED, Miasma cast, Bio 2 into Bane, hold Shadowflare 3s to cast, run to the other piano and play Miasma 2, before going back and playing Aero on each scale. Ruin is there, but it's one small key you only use to keep the beat while waiting on the tones to fall off. While this is going on you have a keytar with notes on each side to play the songs of Eos and Selene you play while holding a key. And at any moment drop the pedal to play the healing songs of Adlo, Lustrate, Succor and Physick and the Symphony of Support, composed by Arcanist. All the while different parts of the floor is on fire. When they finally come home turns out they've learned to play a lot more on the Healing keys, but have forgotten everything else. Had to train hard to re-remember Miasma 2, before forgetting that and Energy Drain all over again and instead of doing them in succession it turned into a off-note chord.

3 expansions and 4 years worth of major patches and the SE's seemed to have strained themselves adding 20 potency to Broil and haphazardly removing other spells each time. I'm all for something that is easy to pick up and play, difficult to master, but now it's easy to pick up and you mastered it because they're all the same for 80 levels. Isn't the entire point of having all jobs on one character so they could make each and every one of them stand out on their fantastical own feet like peacocks in mating season. Each one in unique brilliant colors and come-hither-looks and screeches, but also sufficiently different: One of them might like pasta like I do, but is more fan of contemporary industry-folk music while I'm into electro swing, it'd never work out. Other likes pasta and jazz, but insists on bringing their pet if we move in together. We have something in common, but can also learn to live with our differences and might even go on to apriciate them. Making each and everyone act the same but only with a single characteristic trait stapled to their forehead (likes stars, has fairy, enjoys nature) is going out of your way to appease everyone, but then blandness sets in and there is nothing else to learn or apriciate about them since after introducing they just sit in the sofa and never show emotion.

If they'd tell us why sandblasting all personality of the Scholar's skillset was necessary to make the job work was because they have no clue, the Yakuza came with threats or to appease Ngg-Y-Tyotith of the Coffied Cup I could've maybe come to understand, at least get closure, but they never do and interest in the game I fell oh so in love with is starting to vain in accordance with how little they seem to care to explain. After doing the story bits and doing stuff with friends, it just drops. Combat is just a small part of the game at this point, but it's still pivotal, in the center and what we are required to participate in all the time to unlcok new stuff. Why Scholar and it's brother's in alms is barely a footnote any more is something I have to stop scracthing my head for in fear of reaching bone.

[FFgame]

Gating a lot of content behind skill is exactly what caused so many MMOs to go poof.

Which mmos would those be?

[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.

[JunseiKei]

[snip]

The fact that they were over-tuned or bugged isn't really of consequence for what I was trying to point out. The time investment to clear in this game is fairly minimal while also not discounting other outside factors (IE: Midas was the tier before CD resets upon wipe. It cannot be overstated just how much that cut down on progression time). To say this tier is this much easier because it was killed faster, since you took the liberty of posting Eden's clear time, or because the jobs became less convoluted seems insincere as all previous tiers of Creator were bloated by CD timers waiting to be ticked off.

Also, a correction to your all of 4.0 raids took 18 hours: I have to point out that O12S did take 41 hours to clear while A12S took 50 hours. If the clear time in savage, or that it seems easier by a select bunch of individuals that are, indeed, a niche, is simply unacceptable, it begs me to question why ultimates were created if the difficulty change to savage is still being pushed. It comes off as a blatant case of trying to have your cake and eat it too.

As far as PotD being sold, to say it's taken this long, if that is a new offer, is quite surprising as ultimates have been on sale for quite some time if party finder is any indication. Again, it just strikes me as you're being really insincere with certain things to simply push a narrative.

My point here was what is in an accomplishment when things are cleared quickly by the overachievers? The difficulty has been first figuring out the fights, not actually doing them since you can pre-plan everything before stepping into an encounter if you know what's coming up because someone else has actually done the hard work (and yes, I understand there is still a difference between knowing and execution). Also, to point out, I've never seen a group of random people die 13 times and still clear Innocence or Titania. I could certainly see that with a bunch of high-end raiders that do things together and still learning the fight, or even a couple of high-end players with some randoms, still clearing. I think, when comparing the entirety of the game and problems going on at large, people tend toward something out of proportion to what is more likely to occur to exacerbate their point.

EDIT: If people are really wanting a challenge, FFLogs Challenge is a thing.

[Siete]

I am just thinking back to 2.x and 3.x (and to an extent 4.x) content and I am worried about this trend...not only about the design of the extreme/savage encounters but more-so the job player skill ceilings. It seems to me that the difference between a poor to average skilled player compared to a skilled player is minuscule performance wise. There is no real incentive to actually master your job, since you can be really bad and still do 99% of content. Is this the design style going forward? If so, is anyone else concerned? Higher end content should require near-mastery of your job, shouldn't it? Or am I crazy?

You see, there's a slight issue and it's called lag/ping.
If endgame content requires mastery of a job, then many people would be excluded immediatly not because of their skill but of their distance to the server, it would require them to jump continents to play.
I have 300-340ms ping, I can never get to "near mastery" and the best I could get to was 74%youknowwhat with that lag.
I did play with 180ms-200ms once and it felt like FAAAAAAAAAAAST. I didn't check percentile back then but I felt almost twice as strong.
And that is still considered high ping.

[Liam_Harper]

I'm fine with casual content. I think skill level varies significantly and what a handful on the forums might proclaim is trash tier easy mode, a large majority might struggle to beat even when they try their best and that's fine.

However, I think there needs to be challenging content too, a goal to reach or progress to strive for. It has sort of started a downwards spiral where people put in less and less effort and take content less seriously the more accessible it becomes. It's very hard, they complain, it gets nerfed, they put less effort in, it's still hard, they complain, it gets nerfed, they wipe 3 times on Bone Dragon (3 wipes on an endgame dungeon should be normal), nope waay too hard don't repeat that. Now we have people putting in so little effort they vote abandon on titania normal (literally just tank trees and only half the group needs to know puddles) and complain the NPC controlled battles with 3 buttons are too hard. And it'll only get worse as they keep trying to get those players through content.

Nowadays we expect everything to be accessible. It's bad if we wipe more than once.

I notice too a lot of non-savage players who used to run EX and such are less into it. They're no longer capping phantasma, getting the gear, practicing, prepping for Hades. I don't blame them, because they rolled Titania EX in a week or two and bumbled through Inno blind first run and what's left after that? What do you use that gear for? There's no motivation to master your class either because no one will ever see your performance outside Savage. It depresses me how many EX groups don't realize they're being hard carried by 2-3 individuals and might even flame those individuals for "not healing" a one shot or giving advice.
In WoW as a casual (before they ruined WoW) I had those big 15-20 man Normal raids with guild. They were the big social event, you could take a month progressing, sometimes you'd get stuck on a hard boss for the week. Then you had heroic after and better gear. Then Mythic+ for the in-between that was always a challenge. You always had goals.

As for Savage, some people seem to treat that as a weekly chore for loot. You see it when there's threads discussing adding difficult mechanics. "That'd suck in my weekly pug run, someone who puts in zero effort would drag us down".

I don't mind easier content, but I think there's limits to accessibility. People just start caring less and less the more it's handed over on a plate.

[Videra]

I miss heavensward class design on the whole. Everything was so much better back then.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I miss heavensward class design on the whole. Everything was so much better back then.

Bard is casting "Hello".