Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[CookiesNCreams]

There is Never a Middle Ground Friend
Either you are Left, or you are Right.

From what it seems like people are saying either “screw the raiders they are just elitists!” Or “screw the casuals they are just bad” are there any kinds of changes that can be made to the game to satisfy both parties?

It’s absolutely possible. Look at what they are doing to crafting in 5.1. Ishgard restoration looks like a great way for newer crafters to have fun, while also understanding crafting better in the process...with the addition of the new UI and cross class removal. As for hardcore players, they stated they’ll be making balanced changes to actions to make it less easy to HQ endgame recipes. In turn, both players getting what they want.

I don’t know why people have this “you’re either team casual or team hardcore!” mindset. It’s really silly. We are all in this together, we all pay for the game, so we shouldn’t dismiss one another like that. This forum is to help make FFXIV the best mmo out there, not the worst.

Geez, reminds me of the Twilight movie days. Fan girls constantly going “TEAM JACOB” nonstop.

[monk-dps]

Low skill ceiling? This is the first patch of the expansion. The devs outright admitted that they cut savage boss HP by 15% for this first tier instead of the usual 10% in prior expansions to see how the playerbase handles the job changes/new boss mechanics (and it might be a good thing that they did because E2S is considered the major wall this expansion). I'd wait a bit until 5.1/5.2 before passing judgment.

Either way, raising the ceiling up won't kill the game either. The community survived Ozma and Nidhogg. The community survived Shinryu, Hashmal, Tsukiyomi, and Thunder God Cid. All of those were considered hard by normal community standards back in the day, and yet the community was able to adapt to them. To think otherwise is a bit telling about how little we trust other people on this side of the ocean.

I want to debate some of those sense a good chunk of the playerbase cheeses the que for some of those to not fight them. My debate? That people didn't get used to them and just does everything within their power to not deal with those bosses.

[DinahDemiurge]

All I want, honestly, is to be able to perform in a way that when other players see me they can easily come to the opinion that "Hey, that player is really good." As it stands, I think it is difficult to do that because the performance of an average and skilled player is very similar(from a strict gameplay perspective not encounter mechanics etc.). I think that the gap between the average player and a skilled player is very narrow and I wish the job gameplay design allowed more reward for those who pursue mastery.

[SerLuke]

All I want, honestly, is to be able to perform in a way that when other players see me they can easily come to the opinion that "Hey, that player is really good." As it stands, I think it is difficult to do that because the performance of an average and skilled player is very similar(from a strict gameplay perspective not encounter mechanics etc.). I think that the gap between the average player and a skilled player is very narrow and I wish the job gameplay design allowed more reward for those who pursue mastery.

The problem in the past when the skill gap was larger people would insist that everyone play towards the higher end of the skill gap calling everyone who doesn’t bad, the devs saw that and thus we are in the situation we are in now.
Ideally I agree, people who play great should have much better performance the, it shouldn’t however become an excuse for looking down on others and even excluding them from casual content.

[DinahDemiurge]

The problem in the past when the skill gap was larger people would insist that everyone play towards the higher end of the skill gap calling everyone who doesn’t bad, the devs saw that and thus we are in the situation we are in now.
Ideally I agree, people who play great should have much better performance the, it shouldn’t however become an excuse for looking down on others and even excluding them from casual content.

Perhaps the solution should be gatekeeping then. Have a quest that requires multiple trials to be able to unlock a savage dungeon. I think it's ridiculous that the only thing you need to attempt the hardest content is ilvl which is obtained from faceroll content(outside of ultimate which is every 9 months if we're lucky). But I digress, I am not a game designer, I am only a player. But it seems to me that the skill ceiling needs to go up, and there needs to be more pre-savage content that is actually challenging in order to allow players to reach a certain skill threshold before attempting savage.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

All I want, honestly, is to be able to perform in a way that when other players see me they can easily come to the opinion that "Hey, that player is really good." As it stands, I think it is difficult to do that because the performance of an average and skilled player is very similar(from a strict gameplay perspective not encounter mechanics etc.). I think that the gap between the average player and a skilled player is very narrow and I wish the job gameplay design allowed more reward for those who pursue mastery.

The only ones who will notice, since parsers aren't technically within the rules, are those who are already good themselves. Its pretty easy to notice when people aren't doing things correctly, if you know what to look for. Its also pretty easy to tell when stuff is dying slower than normal, or when a healer is just standing there, or just spamming cure.

On the flip side, those who don't really know what they are doing will often mistake average play for "wow, that went really smooth, dps was amazing" on runs that some of us will find awful. I've seen it happen in raids fairly often.


The thing to me is... If you need other people noticing how good you are to make you feel like you are accomplishing something, then I think you aren't setting goals right. You should set goals for yourself, and pat yourself on the back if you accomplish said goals.

[HyoMinPark]

Uhm Do you guys remember 2.x jobs? They were the simplest iterations of the jobs ever. Some nostalgia speaking here surely. DPS jobs have pretty much retained their complexity from heavensward for the most part, just some pruning here and there of weird and unnecessary skills. Say what you will about the current healers though.

This is false. BRD has zero complexity in ShB compared to how it was played in SB. Alongside its complete lack of being a BRD, the lack of complexity and rewarding nature of the job has been a complaint from those who enjoyed optimizing it in SB.

[Schan]

Wait then for liquid man from alexander, this guy will deliver you a proper pain. xD
Just one thing, do him without watching youtube guide.

I think you need to realize there are several degrees of difficulty and we are dangerously close to only having extremes. either extremely easy which is slowly seething into savage or extremely difficult which is what Ultimate is.

And I don't really do the whole watching Youtube guides. I like to do things blind. It's part of the fun, not to mention the first "editions" are usually crap.

[MariaArvana]

I don’t run a parser(PS4 player) but are you sure about this? I remeber logging in the moment 5.0 hit and going to a striking dummy and going more Holy Spirits/Royal Authories over 10k than I ever did before antedoctial for sure but meh

Yes, tank dps (proportionally) has fallen by about 10-15%. The tank mastery trait changes how STR/Attack power scales for tanks, making each point of STR worth less per point than other jobs. The only reason you didn't notice it at the beginning of the expansion is due to the fact they slapped roughly an extra 500 STR onto your accessories. (each accessory was around 51 STR pre-expansion (without str meld), each of the i400 accessories now has 171).

If tank mastery wasn't affecting damage output, all the tanks would be doing an extra 1-2k dps than they are now given their current STR value at 470. Its a super oversimplification of it, but think of tank mastery as giving you both the defense buff and damage penalty of old tank stance, only its constantly on, which doesn't surprise me much that they reduced the max HP of the first raid tier's bosses by 15%, since they were probably seeing how tank & healer dps would play out given the overhauls they did to both.

[SerLuke]

Yes, tank dps (proportionally) has fallen by about 10-15%. The tank mastery trait changes how STR/Attack power scales for tanks, making each point of STR worth less per point than other jobs. The only reason you didn't notice it at the beginning of the expansion is due to the fact they slapped roughly an extra 500 STR onto your accessories. (each accessory was around 51 STR pre-expansion (without str meld), each of the i400 accessories now has 171).

If tank mastery wasn't affecting damage output, all the tanks would be doing an extra 1-2k dps than they are now given their current STR value at 470. Its a super oversimplification of it, but think of tank mastery as giving you both the defense buff and damage penalty of old tank stance, only its constantly on, which doesn't surprise me much that they reduced the max HP of the first raid tier's bosses by 15%, since they were probably seeing how tank & healer dps would play out given the overhauls they did to both.

The deception in game for the tank mastery trait actually says it gives “a bonus to damage dealt based on your strength attribute” are you saying this is a mistranslation or a typo?