Well, they actually did it, the absolute madmen

[Nedkel]

Its not about average skill level going from decent to bad. Its about going from very bad to omegabad.

MSQ doesnt teach anything, true. However, at 70+, without skips, you should at least take a look at your skills and see what to do on your job. People dont do that, cuz "its elitist". And then they fail easiest possible instances because they dont know anything about what they are doing.

On the matter of skips, sqex really should just make a tutorial in one of the patches and force it on players who buy skips. At least players would clear solo content

And as i said before, you had to at least try normally for first several tries to get to meaningful echo buffs. You know, you dont get +100% from one fail. Here its just that, going 0-100, some people will fail, decide not to try again and just clear it buffed. And as i said before again, at least for me, doing that for important story fights will only make story bit underwhelming. Instead of "beating really powerful enemy that is used for your and story progression", its just "oh hi boss, rip boss"

But eh, its official forums. "elitist bad casuals good commend pls"

The change does absolutely nothing and has no effect on average player skill.
You re-learn everything at lvl 80 like it or not.

[FoxyAreku]

The change does absolutely nothing and has no effect on average player skill.
You re-learn everything at lvl 80 like it or not.

The only thing I've ever learned at max level is what my level 80 ability does.

Game isn't hard and it's very easy to learn 90% of your class as you go. Making it any easier just makes it impossible to take the game seriously and will for sure have an effect on the community.

[Goji1639]

The only thing I've ever learned at max level is what my level 80 ability does.

Game isn't hard and it's very easy to learn 90% of your class as you go. Making it any easier just makes it impossible to take the game seriously and will for sure have an effect on the community.

No one ever took the story mode seriously; it's the games "relax and enjoy a story" mode. No one learned anything in this games solo instances before this, and they won't learn anything in them after this. This change is for people who have no interest in taking all of this seriously, and the MSQ's normal difficulty wasn't exactly forcing them to in the first place. So, let them take things as easy as they want.

This games community might be the most insecure, tryhard group of people I've ever seen.

[MyakotApelsia]

The change does absolutely nothing and has no effect on average player skill.
You re-learn everything at lvl 80 like it or not.

I mean if you really think so.

So far every second or third expert or eden (or hell, even omega) run i see people just have no idea about what they are doing or what they can do. Healers not using their healing kit (im not even asking for them to dps at that point, my expectations are low); tanks doing 2-3 mobs at the time, doesnt aoe or even pop cooldowns; dps that doesnt aoe, does some 500 iq rotations.

It wouldnt be an issue if i saw them wearing entry 80lvl gear, but more often than not they wear deepshadow+crafted.
/rant
They dont learn. I got my mentoring status to help people with the game, they just ignore everything or start talking bad, which is why i wont renew my status in 5.1. To be mentor, you need someone that learns stuff. People only expect to get carried, spoiled by easy as hell story instances (which are hard for them nerf pleps) and community (like people on posts like this one) encouraging them to continue that.
/rantover
So no. "You re-learn everything at lvl 80" is not an argument. Game doesnt teach them how to play the game, they dont want to do it. Making story instances easier doesnt help it.

[Berethos]

I mean if you really think so.

So far every second or third expert or eden (or hell, even omega) run i see people just have no idea about what they are doing or what they can do.

Based on my experience in MMOs going back to 2006...

This would be the case regardless of the existence of any sort of solo instanced trial. In fact, it is the case - players that don't know what to do in level capped dungeons or the basic normal raids and have no real desire to improve will exist...and most of them almost certainly made it through those solo instance quest battles on the first try too.

And if they didn't? They almost certainly did by the third attempt, when the game starts to give the Echo buff anyway.

The solo instance battles have never been this grand gatekeeper to keep out the unskilled (and were never meant to serve that function anyway), so I truthfully have no idea why you and others are treating them like they are.

If the devs start making the entire game easy mode and eliminate all sense of challenge and meaningful achievements

They won't.

To repeat - this function of providing the player with the Echo Buff following failed attempts in solo instance battles has existed for years. This just adds menu control to that function, giving the player the ability to choose if they want the buff to apply at all, but only after a failed attempt at the normal difficulty.

Again, this is not some new difficulty setting or new philosophy toward difficulty settings of content, it is simply adding player control via a menu to a function that already exists in the game. Any concern that this will somehow lead to a shift where all game content suddenly gets similar difficulty settings to be chosen via a menu is, simply put, baseless.

The change will be both good and bad. There are always those who will just suicide just so they get the three options of difficulty. This being the bad.

They can already do this, they just have to suicide the instance battle more than once to get the full buff (which is equivalent to the upcoming very easy option). So "the bad" is already here...so what are worried about again with this change?