Old content has become so easy that it is no longer fun

[NanaWiloh]

But that's the thing, I'm not a veteran. I started playing mid-2019.

The reason you're dying and screwing up is because you're new to the game. You also might not be watching a guide or hearing about mechanics, so they take you by surprise (note: I do not think you should NEED to watch a guide to join a raid, just that obviously if you do you have an advantage). Maybe you're too focused on your rotation so you miss it when everyone runs to a safe spot; this is something that absolutely happened to me when I first did them.

How many of your deaths were to things like Curtain Call or Ancient Flare? Those are instadeath mechanics. Once you learn how to avoid them... that's it. You run to a thing, and then do nothing for a bit as the mechanic resolves. Syrcus is supposed to require a bit more coordination and respecting of mechanics, but you can ignore most of them now. "Now" meaning "since way before I joined".

You probably didn't realize how many times you completely missed something you were supposed to do, and just got healed up.

Also, you don't need to do Crystal Tower for MSQ until Shadowbringers. Not even 5.0, but 5.3. You're gonna complain about being "stuck" in the best-received expansion ever? Considered by some even as what makes FFXIV the best Final Fantasy?

You wouldn't be stuck, anyway. You'd be fine. You'd learn from your mistakes, you'd watch from the ground to figure out what was going on. Maybe it'd take more than 1 try. The majority of people in Syrcus aren't even new, so some confused people would just make it a bit more interesting. Right now, everyone is just asleep.

Coils are at a higher difficulty than other "normal mode" raids and are not part of roulette, so they're a completely different conversation.

As veteran who started in 2015. CT had addtional mechanics at release but was nerfed later on. The current CT is post nerf the way the bosses are now, is how they were the first time ran it. Only difference they didnt die as fast.

[Cubsbane]

The exaggeration does not do your argument favors, it just makes it very confusing to understand, and it's not clear if you're just out of touch with a chunk of the sort of people who play games or what.

I need to emphasize here that I'm very much a Casual here. I play a lot of games, but I am by no means a hardcore gamer. I am squarely in the "mediocre" box, and my performance when I started playing FFXIV was as impressive as you would expect (not very)(lol I was so confused in Labyrinth I died to Ancient Flare both times).

A training raid should not be your definition of hard. And since this appears to be the first alliance raid series people get, yes, it's effectively a training raid.

You are ignoring what has been stated again and again, which is that nobody is asking for hard. Nobody is asking for difficulty. We are just tired of stuff releasing, being at an acceptable difficulty (which is: not very, but also you need to do mechanics, and you need to heal), and then later come back to it and find that everything has become much more trivial. Mechanics can be ignored or skipped and minimal healing needs to be done.

The point is that if you make it more difficult, people like me will probably start causing total wipes, which will result in people very angry at new people / bad players / whatever.

No. If damage is increased, and you're not a healer, you don't need to worry about it. You'll have to do mechanics, which people can help with. You or even a few sprouts won't cause wipes on their own.

The only way you can singlehandedly wipe an entire alliance raid is if you are actively refusing to do your job; a tank who doesn't split or take adds even when asked. A healer who just does nothing.

Crystal Tower is required for ARR progression right now. ARR is not where you want your playerbase to get stuck, given that a lot of us struggle to not fall asleep there, and the hook of the "great amazing story" is not yet present.

Oh, wow, I actually had no idea about that bit. I just knew that you couldn't progress in 5.3 if you hadn't finished it when it dropped.

I will say, though, I am absolutely certain that if we let Syrcus be a little harder at least, nobody would be trapped in ARR no matter what. Why? Because World of Darkness is more difficult than Syrcus.

As veteran who started in 2015. CT had addtional mechanics at release but was nerfed later on. The current CT is post nerf the way the bosses are now, is how they were the first time ran it. Only difference they didnt die as fast.

When was it nerfed? Was Glasya allowed to do his platform mechanic? Did Scylla actually kill people who didn't stand in puddles? Or was that gone by then also?

[MidnightEquinox]

You are ignoring what has been stated again and again, which is that nobody is asking for hard. Nobody is asking for difficulty.

Perhaps not yourself, but the OP and a few posters here imply content needs to be made more difficult to facilitate increased learning for players, via a higher chance of wiping when people do things wrong. So most of my "concern" is about that. Forcing people to wipe to learn in MSQ required early (ARR) activities.

Changing the stats to make the fights a bit longer to see more mechanics would be fine by me.

I think I start to object when all this "it's baby difficulty!" keeps being thrown around, it's good to keep some perspective.

I will say, though, I am absolutely certain that if we let Syrcus be a little harder at least, nobody would be trapped in ARR no matter what. Why? Because World of Darkness is more difficult than Syrcus.

I guess so. WoD kicked my ass the first time I walked in there. Lack of interrupts (in my defense, my class had no interrupts, lol) wiped our entire raid in the beginning. The eye was so confusing haha. Cool raid tho. After reviewing the wiki it became fairly straightforward in my head, and next time I think I died only once. Though I may be confusing Syrcus Tower with Labyrinth tbh. One of the raids seems to have a set of them "if you are on the wrong platform at the wrong time you die".

[Cubsbane]

Perhaps not yourself, but the OP and a few posters here imply content needs to be made more difficult to facilitate increased learning for players, via a higher chance of wiping when people do things wrong. So most of my "concern" is about that. Forcing people to wipe to learn in MSQ required early (ARR) activities.

Honestly, one of my biggest issues going into Alliance Raids (I was in ARR, but before the requirement) is how unprepared for it I was. I got the idea of "it's like 3 full parties in a big dungeon" part pretty quick. But because almost nothing I did beforehand had real mechanics to speak of, I was confused the few times I was required to do something (standing on the pad, for one). Would I have magically known what to do every time if ARR was "harder"? Well, no. Plenty of new mechanics, and also this is before things like stack markers were made universal, so you still get people with the shadowy AOE markers in Xande's fight running away because why would you think it'd work differently from any other AOE? But I think I would have adapted much quicker if this was something the game had been building up to beforehand.

Also they need to edit and expand Hall of the Novice and make it mandatory please.

And if earlier things were harder, it could lead to sprouts also being ready for a harder Crystal Tower.

(I'm using "harder" here to mean comparatively.)

Changing the stats to make the fights a bit longer to see more mechanics would be fine by me.

They'd be slightly longer, and you wouldn't be able to "ignore" mechanics like you can right now, is what I'd want. By "not ignoring" I don't mean that you'd wipe the raid if a few people failed, I mean you couldn't do what people do now, which is most of the raid knowing the mechanics and not doing them anyway because hey why bother? I can't even blame them most of the time.

I guess so. WoD kicked my ass the first time I walked in there. Lack of interrupts (in my defense, my class had no interrupts, lol) wiped our entire raid in the beginning. The eye was so confusing haha. Cool raid tho. After reviewing the wiki it became fairly straightforward in my head, and next time I think I died only once. Though I may be confusing Syrcus Tower with Labyrinth tbh. One of the raids seems to have a set of them "if you are on the wrong platform at the wrong time you die".

Oh, yeah, Syrcus is the blue one where there are only two really important mechanics to know as DPS now: when Curtain Call is being cast, hide behind ice, and when Ancient Quaga is being cast, get on the floaty circles.

The no interrupts thing hurts because there's almost always at least 1 tank that does nothing, and sometimes it's incompetence but sometimes it's because they made it so interruptible casts glow but never added anything that teaches you that inside the game.

[LuciaMirain]

Haven't read all comments but when I was doing mentor roulettes I ran into a group that had queued up for thordan ex, so I joined them in voicechat and they were so excited to do it "synced" because they wanted the "real experience". I had to tell them that queueing up in DF to do it synced still meant they missed half the fight. And it was just a bit sad really. I remember clearing Thordan Ex when it was relevant. The tankbusters were crazy, the dps needed to take the dives far away during adds. There was coordination in the end with towers and moving away from eye as aoes filled the floor and killed you if you got a bit of damage on you.

I think also an issue with the way it is handled now is that new players basically get led through everything up until the last expansion without having to actually learn their job or mechanics since everything can more or less be facerolled.

[MidnightEquinox]

Tbh I've played like 4 MMOs + Destiny at this point and I'm still going to be dazed and confused the first time I walk into a new raid, even if I see other people execute mechanics. That's just how my brain be, I'm not really ever going to quickly figure it out on the fly. I think that's true for a lot of people.

I wouldn't mind dungeons being tougher, though, but I'm not sure I can be an arbiter of that, since my idea of good dungeon design is WoW Classic, where you do careful pulls, count your stuns, interrupt, LOS, hamstring stragglers so they don't pull the whole dungeon, DISMISS YOUR PET BEFORE YOU JUMP, and 3 mobs may be a lot. :P Ultimately, it seems SE mostly know what they're doing in this balance here, as far as their resources allow.

But the elements that are UI stuff definitely belong in some sort of HoN or such. Stack markers? Buffs do what? Damage only lands while telegraph is present, but animation is executed after the telegraph is gone (damn this one took me a while lol)? Instant AoE is invisible? There's also non-telegraphed AoE because reasons (it's pretty, I guess)? I heard something about stun resistance (???)?

There's a lot of random stuff that seems... not very obvious. And that's why I feel strongly about not berating players. If someone is outright trolling, that's one thing. But people can miss things, and "should know by now" or "well I quickly figured it out, so everyone else should" is not how reality actually works.

they made it so interruptible casts glow but never added anything that teaches you that inside the game.

Fffff I legit thought you just had to, idk, memorize which casts/bosses are affected by stun and interrupts and which are not... I've been rolling my eyes on the "Interject has no effect!" message so much...

[kpxmanifesto]

You nor I have nothing to say about whom this game caters to. It's the game owner decision and that's their decision as of now.

You literally just said "Not everyone will want to learn things or improve and games won't reject them." That's saying that the game finds it acceptable for someone to not learn or improve.

As this isn't fun beginners and casuals would quit and tryhards like you would move out of random duty finder because you would not want them to "learn" on your expense so PF would be used and only "experienced" players would be allowed to join in.

I never said any of that. Good job, man. Now you're just making false assumptions.

[NanaWiloh]

I need to emphasize here that I'm very much a Casual here. I play a lot of games, but I am by no means a hardcore gamer. I am squarely in the "mediocre" box, and my performance when I started playing FFXIV was as impressive as you would expect (not very)(lol I was so confused in Labyrinth I died to Ancient Flare both times).


You are ignoring what has been stated again and again, which is that nobody is asking for hard. Nobody is asking for difficulty. We are just tired of stuff releasing, being at an acceptable difficulty (which is: not very, but also you need to do mechanics, and you need to heal), and then later come back to it and find that everything has become much more trivial. Mechanics can be ignored or skipped and minimal healing needs to be done.


No. If damage is increased, and you're not a healer, you don't need to worry about it. You'll have to do mechanics, which people can help with. You or even a few sprouts won't cause wipes on their own.

The only way you can singlehandedly wipe an entire alliance raid is if you are actively refusing to do your job; a tank who doesn't split or take adds even when asked. A healer who just does nothing.


Oh, wow, I actually had no idea about that bit. I just knew that you couldn't progress in 5.3 if you hadn't finished it when it dropped.

I will say, though, I am absolutely certain that if we let Syrcus be a little harder at least, nobody would be trapped in ARR no matter what. Why? Because World of Darkness is more difficult than Syrcus.


When was it nerfed? Was Glasya allowed to do his platform mechanic? Did Scylla actually kill people who didn't stand in puddles? Or was that gone by then also?

Both scylia and Glasya had pad style mechanics at release they are currently not active. Scylia has a spell called daybreak that she would cast sub 50% hp and Glasya has death flame that required the outer platforms to avoid after he his first cast which was not lethal but all casts after are. The nerfed happened before World of darkness I think not to sure. Mizteq guides on youtube for lab and Sycrus show the raids in their pre-nerf state.

[sharknado]

You literally just said "Not everyone will want to learn things or improve and games won't reject them." That's saying that the game finds it acceptable for someone to not learn or improve.

It does - it doesn't ban, it doesn't require it to progress MSQ and doesn't allow others to shame/call out/kick for that. You can do logs/parses/optimize but on your own responsibility which may be bannable in the future and it requires third party apps. You can't grade people based on their performance and at max you can only suggest them do X or Y... and on top of that it's rather easy to carry people through a dungeon or an 8-man trial assuming few are good. Even dungeon with singular tank and healer can be carried if only one of them is good.

This isn't WoW where player/third party performance rating is the norm and where content scales up for higher and higher brackets of players. MSQ or instances for the lowest in the barrel is more than braindead and Blizzard doesn't really care if someone gets kicked or told to die of cancer due to their bad performance. And most of the content is sensitive to people staying alive and performing.

I never said any of that. Good job, man. Now you're just making false assumptions.

You directly or indirectly assume people play similarly to you or that they would do so given proper guidance and thus the content is either to easy at that level or must be changed to a better one to be that perfect guidance/learning process that make players play in a specific way/on specific level.

[kpxmanifesto]

???

Not everyone will want to learn things or improve and games won't reject them.

I have nothing to say about whom this game caters to.

Do you not understand you're contradicting yourself here? First you say that the game accepts players who aren't willing to learn or improve, so you're acknowledging that the game appeals to these sort of players. Then after that you promptly say you "have nothing to say about who this game caters to" even though you just said that the game accepts those who aren't willing to learn and improve. It's honestly hilarious that you can't comprehend that you're immediately negating your points after you bring them up.

You directly or indirectly assume people play similarly to you or that they would do so given proper guidance...

This is just putting words in my mouth again. What I actually said, in case you didn't remember, is that overpowered tanks can just carry the entire party through the dungeon because they can solo the bosses so new players aren't given the opportunity to at least learn the fight properly. Not anywhere did I say/assume that the content is too easy because new players would play similarly to me or that they would even do so given proper guidance. We don't even know if a new player would play properly with guidance. But yeah man, you go ahead and keep on twisting what I say and what my intentions are in commenting in this thread. That's the spirit.

tryhards like you would move out of random duty finder because you would not want them to "learn" on your expense so PF would be used and only "experienced" players would be allowed to join in.

Also, you're really gonna pretend you didn't just make this false assumption that "I would move out of random duty finder because you would not want them to "learn" on your expense so PF would be used and only "experienced" players would be allowed to join in?" Why even try to mischaracterize someone like this? This assumption of yours was made completely in bad faith and it was an awful attempt at trying to paint me as some kind of elitist.

Ok, but if this ability to solo a boss carries over into duty finder, where people might actually want to do and learn the fight properly...

Like I'm literally arguing in favor of having new players learn the mechanics of old content as opposed to being carried through the dungeon by overpowered tanks because tanks can solo the content.

You contradict yourself, you go off on tangents either unintentionally or deliberately as a red herring, and you try to put words in my mouth or falsely assume what my intentions are. It's entirely dishonest of you at this point and there's really no reason for me to continue on with this conversation. Have a good day.