Mediocrity should NOT be the standard for players in any content.

[Valic]

Holy necro batman

This has been on the front page since it's creation 4 days ago. Bruh, your comment history i s everything necro'ing old threads lol.

Why?

I don't mean that as an attack, more a genuinely curious question. You're paying a sub and burning your own spare time to play this game, but don't want to participate beyond the minimum. What keeps you playing instanced content here when you have no goals of improvement, no accomplishments worth anything and won't ever be a valued member of any team? Is it simply the participation rewards?

I mean, you've stated you do the bare minimum, not that you can't perform better. What blocks your motivation to push further or give more than that minimum?

I feel lke this is a much more genuine way to ask what I've been wondering. Despite this, it still comes off as "oh no, this elitist is attacking me, a casual player".

[Melichoir]

No. No it really shouldn't.

Think about what you are saying. You are saying the game should continue to get harder throughout its lifespan. That's an inbuilt self-destruct button right there that no developer would consider for a second. Nothing in life works that way for goodness sake.

I'm a writer. I started writing as a child and it was hard for a long time. But I worked at it and I improved and it started to get easier. Now I make money out of it. I continue to improve even now because I love writing and it matters to me. But if it had continued to get harder every time I went up a level, even though I was trying to improve, I would have given up.

Yes, yes it should if the goal is to push the player base to improve. You cant get around making the player base improve skill wise unless you put obstacles in their way that they must overcome. The only way to do this? Put in harder content meaning dungeons.

The self destruct concept is, by and large, a silly point. A few things: How long do you expect this game to go on for, how much more difficult do you expect the final and first dungeon to be, and what is the skill limitation, particularly if content gradually ramps up over a long period of time. By what youre suggesting, youre assuming that the first dungeon is gonna be 'sastasha' and the final dungeon is gonna be 'UCoB', when in reality itd probably be more like sastasha to AV at most, but the progression in difficulty would be there. This doesnt even consider that rebalancing lower level dungeons to keep them in line with leveling curves along introducing new mechanics, remaking classes, and etc would also affect difficulty overall.

Beyond this, your writing anecdote undercuts your whole point. Ill put out my own anecdote to show you the issue. I am an artist. I do art for a living and get paid for it, much like you and writing. But I am not done improving. There are always new challanges, new difficulties, new disciplines to master. Even when I think Im a master at something, I find there is more to it, slightly more nuances to address. I seek to improve every day to be better, and to do that I do it by challenging myself. I will not improve treading the same waters over and over. The problem with your own anecdote is you willingly acknowledge that you continue to improve, but that improvement only comes from adversity to something. Every time youve 'gone up a level' it has only occured because you got good at what you were doing and went to improve yourself by taking on new challenges. Growth requires challenge and adversity.

This is a GAME. People play it to have FUN. Some are a great deal better at it than others, and they're playing in the Championship League. The folks who play in the Sunday League know they'll never make it to the Championship and they're happy with that. They work on their skills and improve to the level that they're capable of. Telling them they're not allowed to play anymore because the game got made harder, telling them Sunday League play isn't allowed anymore and they have to quit, that's really what you want? Do you not grasp the concept that people are different, and the vast majority have a skill ceiling that keeps them in the Sunday League?

This is handwaving. It's the proverbial "It's a Game" argument to dismiss challenge being introduced into a game through increasing the skill floor. It's the "I play this game to have fun! Not as another job!" Also including the "Ive reached my skill ceiling" argument to round this out and yeah, this is why people dont improve. It's a lot of mentality issues regarding improvement. Again, you say that people work on improving their skills. Why? If theyre content where theyre at and will never be in the champs, why improve. Whats the point? It might be because people actually enjoy challenging themselves and improving and seeing hte rewards of those improvement. But if you offer nothing for them to improve on, and dont even try to nudge people to say "Hey, standing in pancakes isnt great" or "You didnt know how to play your class to do even moderate damage so you hit enrage", then how do you expect people to improve. We're up to 5.2 almost here and yes, I see people spamming 1 or two of their skills, or not even bother to move out of AoEs. I see the issues a lot of raiders complain about. It is an issue, and unfortunately when people point them out, what do we get: Its a game, You dont pay my sub, Im not a raider who cares, Its casual Content - I dont have to try. This mentality of not giving 2 cents is toxic to the game, as much as being overly elitist can be.

Much like anyone else who is opposed to increasing the skill floor, it is always assumed that its gonna go from 0 to 100 in the course of 1 patch. Thats not what is being advocated for. Whats being advocated for is some level of punishment for players who just coast. Any moderate player who has a basic understanding of rotations and mechanics that have been in the game since 2.0 should not have any trouble adapting to the new dungeons if they were harder than currently. Might die once or twice before going "Oh yeah, I remember this," or "Oh, it works like that," but thats ok. Heck, SE is softballing mechanics as it is. A lot of mechanics dont outright kill you if you mess it up, They give you a vuln stack, which is a soft way of saying "Hey you messed this up" and that kills you if you do it to often when a raid buster goes out.

The MSQ part of this game should be available to everyone who pays a sub. Nobody should be locked out of progressing through the MSQ because of difficulty that increases relentlessly, unceasingly, for as long as the game expands. Optional content, fine. Gate that all you want. Make it as hard as you want. Insist that people have to be a certain standard to get into that optional content.

You need to understand that most people - contrary to what this forum seems to think - are trying hard. They want to improve. They work on their skills and learning mechanics and everything else. BUT THEY ARE INHERENTLY NOT AS SKILLFUL AS YOU AND THEY NEVER WILL BE. SE knows this, and they have no intention of abandoning 80% of their player base and subs based upon your reasoning.

edit: I'm not saying there aren't trolls and bad eggs out there, but they are in the minority. Sadly people - like me - who try hard and want to improve are put off from doing anything that might be considered 'harder' content by the way we get spoken to in (for example) alliance raids because we're still learning mechanics and we mess up.

It's wierd that you bring up the MSQ when that MSQ clearly ramps up difficulty through out it, 'unceasingly, relentlessly' as you put it. That is until you hit level cap then it caps off in the more recent xpacs, if not getting easier cause people complain it was to hard. It's wierd, because people complained how hard the final boss on the Burn was, yet the mechanics from that boss were in HW, and arguably dungeons from HW and ARR 2.1+ had harder bosses. Dont misunderstand, the fight is a bit hectic, but reading what people were saying about it, people were behaving like they just got dumped into UCoB or 012S and told to learn it.

Finally, I think you do a great disservice by assuming most people will never 'be as great' as most raiders and theyre at the best theyll ever do. Its patronizing. I dont parse purples. I parsed greens or blues on average at best, but I cleared Omega 9S-12S. It wasnt cause I was 'that much better'. It was cause I didnt give in to the idea of "this is the best I can do." I practiced, I played, I asked for help, I read guides, I memorized mechanics. And like I said earlier, you dont have to improve overnight. Improve in very small bits and peices and yes, eventually most players can do savage. The fights are choreographed. Short of maybe a slight bit of RNG with maybe where a dot may go or RNG, the boss fights will play out the same way. And I can tell when people are trying. They dont say "this is as good as Ill ever do." They dont give the "You dont pay my sub argument." They ask questions. They create learning parties. They pug stuff. I dont see them fail the same mechanic over and over and over and not say anything or ask a question. I see them try to improve, even in one dungeon run. I have 0 problem with these players personally. I think it's cool theyre looking to improve. And I think it would be better for those players if we had dungeons that had difficulty curves built in to help them improve gradually and get into expert, savage, and ultimate content more easily. Im very cool with these people and have no problem doing content with them. And to be frank, I think this group represents a fairly large chunk of the player base and wouldnt be opposed to stepping up the difficulty over time in a small way.

I dont have patience, however, for players who say "Who cares," plays terribly, and then gets mad about things being locked behind savage or talks down to players looking for more challenge. My complaint is that SE may be catering to the lowest common denominator (which is the smallest group IMO) to often which keeps dropping the skill floor lower and lower. This doesnt help people who want to improve, and creates a bigger divide between the hardcore and the casual base. Particularly if the vocal voices within the casual base are the "Who Cares" crowd. This has a wierd knock on effect because SE wants more players to get into savage and ends up making it easier, which annoys the hardcore crowd because its cutting into what they're passionate about and the perks associated with it. That is the issue from my perspective.

Snip

Typically, when I see someone say things like the Hardcore crowd is toxic AF and bringing up strawman arguments, I assume they themselves dont raid and have limited (if no) experience in that scene. It's one thing to disagree with me on concepts by suggesting what would be more important, but another to resort to using broad strokes labeling the hardcore crowd in pretty negative terms.

This ain't it chief. SE caters to the "hardcore" players just as much as the "casuals". The game has content and will likely always work to please everyone they can in their player-base. Like someone pointed out, ARRs Steps of Faith was nerfed because the average player could not clear it, regardless of our perspective of "how high or low the skill bar is set" if players want to challenge themselves they can do so by going out of their way to do said optional content, not to always have a hurdle after the other because reasons.

Yoshida has come clean btw that they don't design any "difficult" content in favor of it being streamed so please abandon said rationale that hardcore content is some form for advertisement. It "working" (debatable) as such doesn't mean it was intended as such. By contrast if it was an intent in design I think with how they want the PVP in this game to be a thing they would invest more into it but I digress.

They've found a reasonable balance as of late that favors anyone who wishes to try anything above "MSQ level". Otherwise, you're asking for something they will other overtune and we'll see Steps of Faith/Gordias Savage problems or back to this same dog and pony show.

Again, missing hte point: You dont jump the difficulty up to much in a short span of time or that is also a problem. Nor does the difficulty from the end of an xpac have to be worlds more difficult than the beginning. It's good that you brought up A3S. That raid broke statics and was waaaay over tuned, even for the hardcore crowd. Yes, there is a flip side to the "Increase difficulty" argument which Ive been clear on. To much to soon or done poorly is just as bad. Im not advocating for that. Dont think anyone is save a few crazy people. Asking for gradual increase in difficulty over a two year period through numerous dungeons, Trials, Raids, and even MSQ content is not the same as going from "Eh, this is ok" to "Oh GOD, What is this hellscape?!"

Secondly, YoshiP has said quite a lot of stuff and not done it, or said he wouldnt do things but ended up doing them. So that's not a lot to go on. Not calling him a liar, but it's stupid to assume that one question asked is the definitive answer for all time. Furthermore, based on what youre saying (as I dont know the exact quote) youre fundamentally misunderstanding things. There's a difference between designing things to be streamed in mind, and people playing things that they stream. God, O12S is in many ways a crappy fight to stream. Hell, FFXIV with it's spell effects in general is pretty bad for that. However, streamers and what not showing off fights, being enthusiastic about content and raids, talking about loot, strategy, gearing, rotations, all of that is stuff that gets written up in blogs, streamed, youtube videos, discussion boards, etc. generates a lot of interest. And SE in no small terms is stopping any of that, cause simply itd be bad for the game. Again, A hardcore enthusiastic base makes a huge difference in a game's overall health. If it was strictly about appeasing your largest demo, youd nix the savage and ultimate content all together as that is a money sink, and invest in creating tons of casual events and dungeons where you just gotta grind mindlessly to get the goodies. Not that savage doesnt have grind, mind you, but that there is reward in the challenge as well as having specific gears and mounts that cant be obtained otherwise.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

PVP/Frontlines

This is not always what you think. I once got accused of going AFK while I was camping at a cliff overlooking where a major Ice was going to spawn. This is a legit strategy but more and more I see people quick to point the AFK finger.

With that said, I understand your frustration OP but thats the drawback of an MMO. You're playing with a large group of people with different levels of committment and different ideas of what constitutes skill or even totally different reasons for playing that have little or nothing to do with the core game. Your best bet is finding an FC that has like-minded people and a large enough member pool to keep you from pugs. Otherwise if you chose matchmaking then you should know what you signed up for and either work with what you're given or remove yourself from the equation because otherwise you're asking everyone else to change and I think we know just about how likely that is.

I do not, nor will I ever support content gating. The difficulty is its own gate. On one mouth people are screaming that the game is too easy while also screaming that the game is too difficult and that SE should provide training. Unfortunately thats what the Smith/Mentor/Free Company systems are for but are unfortunately not used for such. :\

[jameseoakes]

Typically, when I see someone say things like the Hardcore crowd is toxic AF and bringing up strawman arguments, I assume they themselves dont raid and have limited (if no) experience in that scene. It's one thing to disagree with me on concepts by suggesting what would be more important, but another to resort to using broad strokes labeling the hardcore crowd in pretty negative terms.

The hardcore crowd paints itself in negative terms, all the treads trying to get SE to push out everyone who does play the same way they do, the obsession with parse colours the whole thing with Arthus. The Hardcore you hold up does a terrible job with how it presents itself, the constant attempts to punish anyone who does play the way the want them to isn't a good look. I haven't done much with raiding since mid Stormblood as pugging was a miserable experience and I've enjoyed my play time more since I stopped and threads like these don't make me think I'm missing out.

[Mahrze]

Again, missing hte point: You dont jump the difficulty up to much in a short span of time or that is also a problem. Nor does the difficulty from the end of an xpac have to be worlds more difficult than the beginning. It's good that you brought up A3S. That raid broke statics and was waaaay over tuned, even for the hardcore crowd. Yes, there is a flip side to the "Increase difficulty" argument which Ive been clear on. To much to soon or done poorly is just as bad. Im not advocating for that. Dont think anyone is save a few crazy people. Asking for gradual increase in difficulty over a two year period through numerous dungeons, Trials, Raids, and even MSQ content is not the same as going from "Eh, this is ok" to "Oh GOD, What is this hellscape?!"

Secondly, YoshiP has said quite a lot of stuff and not done it, or said he wouldnt do things but ended up doing them. So that's not a lot to go on. Not calling him a liar, but it's stupid to assume that one question asked is the definitive answer for all time. Furthermore, based on what youre saying (as I dont know the exact quote) youre fundamentally misunderstanding things. There's a difference between designing things to be streamed in mind, and people playing things that they stream. God, O12S is in many ways a crappy fight to stream. Hell, FFXIV with it's spell effects in general is pretty bad for that. However, streamers and what not showing off fights, being enthusiastic about content and raids, talking about loot, strategy, gearing, rotations, all of that is stuff that gets written up in blogs, streamed, youtube videos, discussion boards, etc. generates a lot of interest. And SE in no small terms is stopping any of that, cause simply itd be bad for the game. Again, A hardcore enthusiastic base makes a huge difference in a game's overall health. If it was strictly about appeasing your largest demo, youd nix the savage and ultimate content all together as that is a money sink, and invest in creating tons of casual events and dungeons where you just gotta grind mindlessly to get the goodies. Not that savage doesnt have grind, mind you, but that there is reward in the challenge as well as having specific gears and mounts that cant be obtained otherwise.

I'm not missing the point. You are repeating the same concept of stating how a "hardcore base makes games amazing" when its just not the case. Game right now is doing really well and its not because Eden Savage was the best thing. Its because the feedback it has gotten regarding the story. There is no "largest demographic" just because 90% (assumed) of the player base don't do one content it means they oppose it.

Again, there is no hierarchy in terms of which base is worth more to SE because they care about everyone playing their game. Disregarding Yoshida just because "he flipflops on what he says" doesn't mean that what has been asked is not on record. He was literally asked if the fights are catered to be streamed and he said no, memes aside. A good health indicator for a game is when the "average" player (and by this, I mean the player who plays this game a few times a week, regardless of their play activity) gives good word of mouth and the community echoes this enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm can be for more than JUST Savage/Extreme/Ultimate/Hyperbole.

Again, I'm not missing the point. I think you simply grossly over estimate one fraction of the community when its clear that every niche in this game matters since they release content for everyone, regardless of play style.

[Elladie]

Yes, yes it should if the goal is to push the player base to improve. You cant get around making the player base improve skill wise unless you put obstacles in their way that they must overcome. The only way to do this? Put in harder content meaning dungeons.

The goal isn't to push the player base to improve. People will improve if they wish to whether you push them or not. If they don't wish to, your pushing will make no difference. In fact I would argue to pushing creates toxicity. And people most certainly can improve without obstacles in their way. You said that the last dungeon of an expansion should be 'much more difficult' than the first; how do you suppose most people would feel about a dungeon - we're talking the MSQ here, right? - much more difficult than Amaurot? How long before SE had to nerf this 'much more difficult' dungeon because it was stopping people progressing? You are living in some fairy tale land if you think that wouldn't be necessary.

The self destruct concept is, by and large, a silly point. A few things: How long do you expect this game to go on for, how much more difficult do you expect the final and first dungeon to be, and what is the skill limitation, particularly if content gradually ramps up over a long period of time. By what youre suggesting, youre assuming that the first dungeon is gonna be 'sastasha' and the final dungeon is gonna be 'UCoB', when in reality itd probably be more like sastasha to AV at most, but the progression in difficulty would be there. This doesnt even consider that rebalancing lower level dungeons to keep them in line with leveling curves along introducing new mechanics, remaking classes, and etc would also affect difficulty overall.

You defined the difficulty level already. As before I will direct you to the statement that the last dungeon of an expansion should be much more difficult than the first.

Beyond this, your writing anecdote undercuts your whole point. Ill put out my own anecdote to show you the issue. I am an artist. I do art for a living and get paid for it, much like you and writing. But I am not done improving. There are always new challanges, new difficulties, new disciplines to master. Even when I think Im a master at something, I find there is more to it, slightly more nuances to address. I seek to improve every day to be better, and to do that I do it by challenging myself. I will not improve treading the same waters over and over. The problem with your own anecdote is you willingly acknowledge that you continue to improve, but that improvement only comes from adversity to something. Every time youve 'gone up a level' it has only occured because you got good at what you were doing and went to improve yourself by taking on new challenges. Growth requires challenge and adversity.

Growth does NOT require challenge and adversity. Growth requires self-motivation and willingness to learn. It is perfectly possibly to grow in skill and ability without challenge or adversity. Challenge can certainly provide a spur, but adversity is just as likely to have the opposite effect to the one you are anticipating. And it is possible to challenge oneself in order to learn without artificial difficulty being imposed externally in order to force someone to 'git gud or quit'.

If you read my post again, you will perhaps notice this time that at no point did I mention I have stopped trying to improve in either my writing or my gameplay. I am self motivated and proud of my accomplishments and the constant exercise of my skill in order to produce the best work I can in itself causes me to improve. I don't require some arbitary barrier to be imposed in order to motivate me, and nor do most other people, I imagine.

This is handwaving. It's the proverbial "It's a Game" argument to dismiss challenge being introduced into a game through increasing the skill floor. It's the "I play this game to have fun! Not as another job!" Also including the "Ive reached my skill ceiling" argument to round this out and yeah, this is why people dont improve. It's a lot of mentality issues regarding improvement. Again, you say that people work on improving their skills. Why? If theyre content where theyre at and will never be in the champs, why improve. Whats the point? It might be because people actually enjoy challenging themselves and improving and seeing hte rewards of those improvement. But if you offer nothing for them to improve on, and dont even try to nudge people to say "Hey, standing in pancakes isnt great" or "You didnt know how to play your class to do even moderate damage so you hit enrage", then how do you expect people to improve. We're up to 5.2 almost here and yes, I see people spamming 1 or two of their skills, or not even bother to move out of AoEs. I see the issues a lot of raiders complain about. It is an issue, and unfortunately when people point them out, what do we get: Its a game, You dont pay my sub, Im not a raider who cares, Its casual Content - I dont have to try. This mentality of not giving 2 cents is toxic to the game, as much as being overly elitist can be.

People don't improve because they don't want to improve. The kind of player you want is going to want to improve regardless of the skill floor or ceiling, and they will continue to work on that as long as they play. And when they reach their skill cap - which people do and certainly will if the game difficulty keeps increasing in the way that you suggest - if that blocks their progress, they will stop playing. Since, yes, it IS a game. I'm not sure you understand the term 'hand-waving' but calling a game a game certainly isn't it.

Much like anyone else who is opposed to increasing the skill floor, it is always assumed that its gonna go from 0 to 100 in the course of 1 patch. Thats not what is being advocated for. Whats being advocated for is some level of punishment for players who just coast. Any moderate player who has a basic understanding of rotations and mechanics that have been in the game since 2.0 should not have any trouble adapting to the new dungeons if they were harder than currently. Might die once or twice before going "Oh yeah, I remember this," or "Oh, it works like that," but thats ok. Heck, SE is softballing mechanics as it is. A lot of mechanics dont outright kill you if you mess it up, They give you a vuln stack, which is a soft way of saying "Hey you messed this up" and that kills you if you do it to often when a raid buster goes out.

Again, you're the one who said 'much more difficult'. If you don't mean 'much more difficult' but only 'slightly more difficult' you could just have said so instead typing an essay to rebut what I was saying. I mean, if you mean 'slightly more difficult', fair enough. But that is NOT what you said.

It's wierd that you bring up the MSQ when that MSQ clearly ramps up difficulty through out it, 'unceasingly, relentlessly' as you put it. That is until you hit level cap then it caps off in the more recent xpacs, if not getting easier cause people complain it was to hard. It's wierd, because people complained how hard the final boss on the Burn was, yet the mechanics from that boss were in HW, and arguably dungeons from HW and ARR 2.1+ had harder bosses. Dont misunderstand, the fight is a bit hectic, but reading what people were saying about it, people were behaving like they just got dumped into UCoB or 012S and told to learn it.

The MSQ ramps up the difficulty slowly, it doesn't go from - for example - The Aetherochemical Research Facility (last dungeon of 3.0) to 'much more difficult' by the end of HW. Yes, it's more difficult but the difficulty spike isn't huge. Again, you said 'much more difficult', I am not putting words in your mouth.

Finally, I think you do a great disservice by assuming most people will never 'be as great' as most raiders and theyre at the best theyll ever do. Its patronizing. I dont parse purples. I parsed greens or blues on average at best, but I cleared Omega 9S-12S. It wasnt cause I was 'that much better'. It was cause I didnt give in to the idea of "this is the best I can do." I practiced, I played, I asked for help, I read guides, I memorized mechanics. And like I said earlier, you dont have to improve overnight. Improve in very small bits and peices and yes, eventually most players can do savage. The fights are choreographed. Short of maybe a slight bit of RNG with maybe where a dot may go or RNG, the boss fights will play out the same way. And I can tell when people are trying. They dont say "this is as good as Ill ever do." They dont give the "You dont pay my sub argument." They ask questions. They create learning parties. They pug stuff. I dont see them fail the same mechanic over and over and over and not say anything or ask a question. I see them try to improve, even in one dungeon run. I have 0 problem with these players personally. I think it's cool theyre looking to improve. And I think it would be better for those players if we had dungeons that had difficulty curves built in to help them improve gradually and get into expert, savage, and ultimate content more easily. Im very cool with these people and have no problem doing content with them. And to be frank, I think this group represents a fairly large chunk of the player base and wouldnt be opposed to stepping up the difficulty over time in a small way.

A small way? So NOT 'much more difficult' then? Really you could just have redefined your original argument and apologised for the misunderstanding and we wouldn't have needed this discussion. And I'm not being patronising. I make no assumptions about anyone's skill level, and they are welcome to improve or not as they choose. I'm all for them improving. But I'm not going to start demanding artificial increases in the difficulty curve of the kind you first proposed to force people to 'git gud or quit'. You are saying now that isn't what you meant, but you are the person who asked for 'much more difficulty' in the MSQ in the space of one expansion.

[Rydia_Misuto]

the absolute worst thing is when people are aggressively bad and absolutely refuse to try to improve, and then argue that they shouldn't need to

there's nothing wrong with being new and nothing wrong with having to learn but yelling at people for giving you calmly-worded advice (which is incredibly common, and I'm talking stuff like "hey [RED MAGE] you can use verraise to rez the healer" -> "plz rez the healer" and then they don't and have the gall to yell at you when there's a wipe

I loathe getting people who clearly have no idea what they're doing and absolutely refuse to listen

"The inward arrows mean the damage is split and we have to stack or you will die"

'too much effort! too hard to do that. AOE means run away from party, and the fact I've died four times to that MUST be the game's fault!'

I just want people to try. There's no reason not to try. This game is not difficult and it is not complicated and I am confident that if anyone puts at most an hour of effort in, they can learn any job they know absolutely nothing about if they're familiar with the role AT LEAST well enough to do fine in a dungeon. And I am confident that anyone can learn any role well enough by the time they reach EX Roulette. There's no excuse for it. It's incredibly frustrating. It's so bad that it's why I switched to maining tank, because I was tearing my hair out at tanks who would pull a single pack, never use mitigation, and yell at everyone else in the party if anything went wrong. If I'm tanking, then I know at the least there'll be a competent tank in the dungeon.

I don't do Savage, I don't do high-end stuff and I'm sure my parsing numbers wouldn't be amazing if someone recorded them, but I'm not asking people to use food and pots and CD alignment in Sohm Al, I'm asking them to press the right button every GCD and use their defensive cooldowns and pull more than one mob at a time and heal with bigger spells than Cure 1 when called for and actually use their OGCD heals and OGCD attacks.

It's not hard. Just put a tiny bit of effort in. It's okay to be bad. It's okay to be new. But there's no defense for refusing to try.

[Packetdancer]

I feel like the issue is less 'the game's content is not hard enough to force people to learn to play their class effectively and figure out mechanics'. I think the issue is more 'the game's content is really bad at instructing players in their class/job and role'.

The Hall of the Novice is great for teaching the absolute basic concepts of a role. If you rely on it and your class/job quests to learn how to tank, however, you're probably going to be a mediocre tank at best. Not through any direct fault of yours as a player, but because the game has not really given you the tools to learn to do better. That tank you had who isn't holding aggro well? What content in the game taught them how best to hold aggro on multiple mobs? What content actually demonstrated to them that single-target rotations without AoE are going to potentially backfire if DPS rips the mob away from the tank? What content even taught the them the appropriate use of cooldowns?

For that matter, what content even taught them how to read the aggro table? I've taught that one to at least three sprout tanks in the past month, all of whom were like "this is a revelation and makes my life so much easier".

To use an analogy, imagine you want to bake a cake. It's your very first cake! You have an Easy-Bake Oven with little packets of cake mix, and you put that into a pan and it goes through the little oven, and you have a cake! It's not a great cake, but it's a cake you made. Now you want to make a better cake. A real cake.

You'd go use a real oven to make a real cake, right? Maybe later an industrial kitchen oven if you wanted to get into making those spectacular cakes they show on the Food Network. The problem is, the game doesn't give you those. In fact, the game doesn't even tell you other ovens exist. Some folks go out and find better ovens anyway; they hit up the Balance, they ask experienced players in their FC for advice (finding guides for 'how to tank in Heavensward content as of patch 5.1' isn't really easy), and so on.

But for the folks who don't have that network? Who don't even know the Balance exists to go look at it? They don't even know that other ovens exist. They just know they're trying to make a nice normal chocolate cake in this Easy-Bake Oven, which can be really hard, and sometimes other people go "Your cake really sucks. How does it suck this bad? It's a simple recipe."

Turning up the difficulty of MSQ content and disabling the 'Very Easy' mode on solo duties will not appreciably improve the skill of players, merely frustrate them further. (And it will block folks with legitimate handicaps from progressing as easily to enjoy the story, which is an entirely different topic to discuss, but one worth noting.)

If you want to change things, I think you're starting in the wrong place. Address the game's woeful lack of any really good instructional mechanism for players who want to learn and improve, then consider tackling increasing the complexity.

[linay]

I feel like the issue is less 'the game's content is not hard enough to force people to learn to play their class effectively and figure out mechanics'. I think the issue is more 'the game's content is really bad at instructing players in their class/job and role'.

Keep in mind that, in a multiplayer game, it does not depend solely on the content to teach you how to play, but players should be helping each other. What the content needs to ensure is consistency in how it displays tells for mechanics such that people can learn more easily from content to content. I think FFXIV has been doing an adequate job in that department, for the most part, especially with newer contents.

In terms of how to do your job well, while there may be an optimal way, reading the tool tips should get you to be able to perform adequately as well.

[Packetdancer]

Keep in mind that, in a multiplayer game, it does not depend solely on the content to teach you how to play, but players should be helping each other.

I'm sick and too lazy to bother going to use the Will Smith 'tada' meme generator, but imagine one of those right now with "the thread about the mentor system being broken" as the target of the 'tada'.

I mean, you're 100% right on this point, but there's literally a thread even longer than this one talking about all the reasons people don't help each other as easily/smoothly/often as they could in the game. People don't accept advice readily so it's not given, people are rude so folks don't ask for advice, mentors are terrible, players are terrible to mentors, it's Tuesday, etc. So, yes, point entirely conceded, but it only raises another potential place things could be smoothed out and improved a bit.

And even still, I feel that adding content that helps with, say, the slightly more advanced concepts of tanking—or at the very least explains the aggro table—would not hurt the situation, even if there's other ways to address it.