Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[aiqa]

With questions like this I always feel like the people asking for a higher ceiling are only looking up, while they should also be looking down.

The DPS spread as shown on fflogs suggests there already is a very significant skill ceiling.
Even on savage (which already has the best players) there is a very significant difference between a 50th percentile and a 9-th percentile player.
And that is not even counting the players that are not skilled enough to do savage content.

[Wegente]

To the people who were discussing on the Savage difficulty changes over the years, you can look at the wipe count for each turn instead of the time it took to clear them, so you can compare them even after the CD resets changes.

For example, Gordias A3S and A4S and Midas A8S all took more than 1000 wipes each or very close to it to clear, while O4S, O8S, O12S and E4S didn't take more than 200-300. I think E4S might have taken less than 200 wipes even.

[Samsta]

But that's the point of Skill Ceiling.

Take a look at Bard in 4.X.
It was one of the (if not THE) best designed job. It had a really nice flow in all content, and pretty much everyone could grasp the song and proc system.
But a VERY GOOD bard had quite a lot more to do than keeping songs up and DoTs, HyoMin's first post in the topic covers it perfectly.

Skill Ceiling is the difference in the range of players playing a same job with different results. That's quite interesting, it gives you motivation to do better if you want to, while it allows casual gameplay for those not into that type of playstyle.

I haven't maxed out all jobs in ShB (only Ranged, Casters and Healers), and I've only raided a bit of Savage with RDM and SMN, but I can confirm that I feel healers, BRD, RDM (and BLM to some extent) have been simplified.
SMN has been turned into a buggy busy class, and MCH went from buggy to a different playstyle so it's difficult to judge.
DNC is a new job, but it feels quite straightforward in its gameplay.

RDM has been simplified? They are exactly the same as in SB but they have scorch in their rotation and some extra situational skills. Really peculiar way to simplify a job.

[Mansion]

RDM has been simplified? They are exactly the same as in SB but they have scorch in their rotation and some extra situational skills. Really peculiar way to simplify a job.

I was referring to the loss of Impact in the proc management.
(Arguably, Displacement-risk management can be avoided through Engagement)

[Liam_Harper]

With questions like this I always feel like the people asking for a higher ceiling are only looking up, while they should also be looking down.

The DPS spread as shown on fflogs suggests there already is a very significant skill ceiling.
Even on savage (which already has the best players) there is a very significant difference between a 50th percentile and a 9-th percentile player.
And that is not even counting the players that are not skilled enough to do savage content.

That doesn't necessarily mean the ceiling is high as much as expectations and accessibility of most content is very low.

It's a side effect of the game teaching you nothing and giving very little indication of performance. Most players have no idea they're 9th percentile. They're fairly sure they're doing "fine". They've sailed through the MSQ, beaten everything on normal and even been carried through a few EX trials. In their eyes they're doing well. The concept of uptime, correct rotation, melds, food, actions-per-minute, weaving, clipping are all foreign to them. Since everything is easy they don't have to try that hard. Nothing tells them they really aren't prepared for Savage, naturally they'd expect it's the next step, so in they go.

For a good player, I imagine they hit the ceiling too easily. Once you have the fight mapped out in your head, you get to a point very fast where the content is on farm and you're just trying to squeeze 1 or 2% more on your logs. A healer for example, has their heals planned for the raidwides then the rest is 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1

Tanking too is a good example, I remember years ago when WoW was still decent, I had such a wide tank toolkit that every time I died, even in a complete messy disaster of a situation where someone accidentally pulled 2 extra trash packs or all the healers died, even when I'd done far more than the average tank already, I could look back and say "I still might have lived if I'd rotated this, this and this cd, used that self-heal there instead of there, held this for this point, remembered and used that more". And I enjoyed that, there was always room for improvement. It was so rewarding playing well, you could do amazing things.
In ff14 it's. I died, but I did use a tank cd. The healer fell asleep/someone failed a mechanic. There is nothing I could have done. Oh well.

[Melichoir]

i want to agree but its really not the case. Midas did the whole "harder mechanic dance with easier dps check" and yet the fights were still harder and more punishing than creator-onwards. even ex primals have gotten easier ever since sophia. thordan extreme on release was pretty challenging, sephirot and nidhogg were punishing even if the mechanics werent too hard (remember fang & claw?). fast forward to stormblood and lakshmi was absolutely brainless, byakko ex could be cleared blind on the first run, etc. over the years, mechanics HAVE been getting easier and less punishing, and dps checks more lenient.

I dont agree. I think true complexity has increased per xpac, and the difficulty back during midas was a mix of player inexperience and overly punishing design due to lack of dev team experience. I think it seems easier now because of a wider variety of factors - better encounter design, increased player base skills, more resources on hand to get through fights and game/class mechanics, and the skill ceiling not increasing as fast as the player base. Simply saying everything is easier now I think is a 'rose tinted glasses' effect, where people are remembering the highlights of a tier rather than the reality of it in context to the game at the time.

This all being said, If we wanted to increase the skill ceiling more to keep it at relative pace with the player base growth, we would have to address the skill floor first. Hyper disparity between the top and bottom tier players is just as bad as their being a skill ceiling to low that top and bottom players is almost indistinguishable. If we want to make Savage and EX harder, then I would propose that Regular Trials and Dungeons need to start being scaled up in difficulty. Dungeons are a joke because it is almost impossible to fail them. I love Nier but within a week itll most likely be easy mode afk farm status once people learn the single gimmick per boss fight. Hard mode dungeons are just the same dungeon at a higher level and just as easy. The issue isnt the skill ceiling IMO. It's teh skill floor. Raise the floor, youll have more room to raise the ceiling.

[Payotz]

I wouldn’t say that MCH is overly complex now either—I never played it much in HW or SB, but things like Ammunition management added something to the job that you had to manage, I felt. I don’t think there’s much to Overheating anymore: it’s basically use Hypercharge at 50 gauge; make sure you have enough for Wildfire every 120s; and press everything else on CD as it comes up.

It actually got a lot more thinking involved now compared to the SB version. SB version is just pure muscle memory so once you learn a wildfire and a midfire, there's really no optimization whatsoever.

ShB, on the other hand, has a tiny bit of optmization due to how Battery gauge works, like if you summon queen too early, a punch might land in raid buffs rather than a piledriver.

There's also stuff like banking ricochet for add phases and for things like front healer gaol, and I guess Queen AI during uplifts cause pet AI sucks in this game.

[starburns]

use ACT for any amount of time and you'll see the massive difference between a good player and a bad player. Also e4s did require mastery of your job to clear in the first couple weeks but as people get to higher ilvs content gets easier to do. Savage isn't really THAT hard, and it hasn't been since midas, its ultimate that is going to require mastery of your job, not savage. And even though classes are generally easier to play, the skill gap between a 99% parser and a 75% parser is still huge.

[ForteNightshade]

I don't get why you only list things that they lost, when the fact is they actually also gained things. Take blm for example, yeah the Blizzard IV refreshed enochian back then, but as you said that wasn't hard to keep up, and your overall rotation was actually simpler back then, they gained polyglots to use and despair, both which actually make you press more buttons now on your rotation. The only thing I can say is that they raised the skill floor by making it so when you mess up you aren't punished as heavily as before, but that is raising the skill floor, playing the job as it's meant to be played involves more abilities now and the gameplay feels pretty much the same, thus the ceiling hasn't been lowered. Same with many other jobs, dragoon gained life of the dragon etc. I fail to see how losing something but getting something else in it's stead isn't retaining complexity for the most part, only thing they did was they brought the floor up so when you fail you aren't punished that much, but honestly that is irrelevant, you still have to play the job near it's potential to clear harder content, the ceiling of jobs is pretty much the same.

You actually don't, especially not on Black Mage. An average Black Mage will boast higher damage than any other job outside the melee. Regardless, simply gaining a new ability or gauge does not inherently make the job equally complex.

Since you mention Dragoon, I'll use it for such an example. In Heavensward, management of BotD was far tighter and more punishing. You needed to know when to maximize your gauge because Geirskogul drained BotD, thus you could unintentionally ruin your own buff through mismanagement. The Eye system is significantly more straight forward as you simply used your Jumps and activated it through Geirskogul, which no longer drained your gauge. This was simplified even further in Shadowbringers where now only Jump/Hi-Jump grant an Eye, Nastrond guarantees a full 30 second duration; increased from 20 previously. You also had maintenance management in Phleebotomize and Heavy Thrust—both of which were removed in the subsequent expansions they were introduced.

Put simply, the newer systems designed for Dragoon were easier than Heavensward. That isn't to say they were necessarily bad but the job has, indeed, been simplified, especially going from Stormblood to Shadowbringers.

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?

She is not. My static cleared Innocence EX with 11 deaths while in a hodgepodge of i430-i440 gear. Back in Deltascape, Alte Roite was cleared in a single pull by the WF team. I know several groups that had 10+ deaths and still beat his enrage. These fights are simply that undertuned. What you're experience is players with no concept of improvement or optimization attempting content that isn't entirely brain dead, and their inexperience/lack of skill being put on display. This isn't necessarily their fault either. The game gave them no intention whatsoever they would actually have to pay attention because everything prior barely tickles—which is part of the problem.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

You actually don't, especially not on Black Mage. An average Black Mage will boast higher damage than any other job outside the melee. Regardless, simply gaining a new ability or gauge does not inherently make the job equally complex.

Since you mention Dragoon, I'll use it for such an example. In Heavensward, management of BotD was far tighter and more punishing. You needed to know when to maximize your gauge because Geirskogul drained BotD, thus you could unintentionally ruin your own buff through mismanagement. The Eye system is significantly more straight forward as you simply used your Jumps and activated it through Geirskogul, which no longer drained your gauge. This was simplified even further in Shadowbringers where now only Jump/Hi-Jump grant an Eye, Nastrond guarantees a full 30 second duration; increased from 20 previously. You also had maintenance management in Phleebotomize and Heavy Thrust—both of which were removed in the subsequent expansions they were introduced.

Put simply, the newer systems designed for Dragoon were easier than Heavensward. That isn't to say they were necessarily bad but the job has, indeed, been simplified, especially going from Stormblood to Shadowbringers.

Heavensward was basically the epitomy of punishment for jobs though. For example, A1S. Boss random turns for mechanics. Back then, drg did not get heavy thrust buff if you didn't meet the positional. This was incredibly punishing. I don't think you even got the activation of impulse drives combo if you missed the positional. It was awful. This wasn't complex, this was terrible class design.