Does 14 Promote a Culture of Mediocrity?

[Repulse97]

Bring back Alexander-difficulty content. Who cares about the casual players? They can get an easy mode just as hard as current savage and they'll be happy. Just don't throw the competitiveness into the dumpster. People play this game for various reasons, and dismissing their obvious concern stating "this is a game, not a job" is honestly a sociopathic thing to say and you should definitely not be playing this game. I don't see how top level players who want something challenging can't also get something that caters to them. Current savage may as well be another normal raid.

[ApolloGenX]

Hydaelyn IS the goddess of mediocrity, after all....

[IdowhatIwant]

Premades don't need to meet role requirements, WAR + 3 DPS for Expert Roulette has been a thing for years now.

Check yourself.

Premade, and PF are pretty much the same thing.

[Alaray]

tbh I just can't be bothered to really care about dungeon performance. DPS low, I'll just DPS higher. Healer wants small pulls? I went warrior. 3 people afk or whining at each other? I'll take the 30m and play Master Duel or something.

but no, every MMO community has the same dichotomy of players who struggle heavily with the rudimentary stuff. And every MMO has people whose identities are so interwoven with their game that they take critique on play in content where performance matters a bit more, personally. And every MMO has people who tend to be a bit better than average, but think that it makes them Better Than Everyone(tm).

it's all the same, end of the day. And for the most part, it doesn't really matter unless you're weirdly obsessive over casual progress efficiency.

when it comes to Job design, I have my preferences, but if the boss design remains fun/interesting and there's still a variety of different offered playstyles to learn and get better at, I don't really feel like it affects me much. I can live with the tank changes if more fights like Phoinix come out, since that fight alone beat most fights from last expansion for me.

[SturmChurro]

You know what? I've changed my opinion. The way they enforce their ToS certainly gives off that impression.

[LittleChickenNugget]

To point an answer to the topic:

Yes. Easily.

You know what? I've changed my opinion. The way they enforce their ToS certainly gives off that impression.

Welcome back to the dark side Storm. It was always like this.

[Lieri]

Genuine question : how many in this threads that complained about the game being not hard enough or need harder contents have actually cleared all of the Ultimates?

Because you really shouldnt moan about Dungeons if your point is about difficulty or players skill. Harder contents are designed around higher players skills and you will find more skilled players playing those contents.

Moaning about normal dungeon is kinda weird. Almost in all MMO normal dungeons are supposed to be easy. Who in their right mind would want to grind and wipe 10 times in normal dungeon?

[MidnightEquinox]

It's also fairly difficult to balance content in such a way that it remains engaging under optimal play while still being reasonable under unoptimized play.

I'm not really sure I am buying the difficulty argument. Pretty much every game I played with more difficult content devolves almost immediately into meta obsession, streamer worship, BiS lists, rotations, 3rd party tools, parses, etc. For a lot of people these seem normal these days, but to me, they're not really how challenging activities are meant to be, and a lot of the fun aspects of a game are sucked out by them. As a result, more challenging cooperative content tends to come with a dramatic decrease in agency, and then all these various adaptations make it not as challenging.

I think what's actually happening is a lot of people want content that is flagged as difficult, so that they can clear it and point to themselves and say "I have cleared this difficult content". Which is not the same thing. That's why they get very angry at, say, off-meta play, because it affects their ability to clear the most difficult content, and why they don't seek out difficulty where it's available, because there's no cool achievement to wave afterwards. It gets extra bad when people start using clears or parsers against each other, since that just reinforces the behavior.

I have seen similar things around the Necromancer title. It seems people just want it for bragging rights, not as a fun challenge.

[Absimiliard]

Bring back Alexander-difficulty content. Who cares about the casual players? They can get an easy mode just as hard as current savage and they'll be happy. Just don't throw the competitiveness into the dumpster. People play this game for various reasons, and dismissing their obvious concern stating "this is a game, not a job" is honestly a sociopathic thing to say and you should definitely not be playing this game. I don't see how top level players who want something challenging can't also get something that caters to them. Current savage may as well be another normal raid.

You uh.. do realize they game needs to make money, right? Catering only to competitive players will doom the game, as we constitute a very, very small percentage of the overall population. The majority don't even set foot in normals, let alone savage or ultimate. Everybody loses if SE can't rake in enough cash for the game to be worth investing so much time, energy, and funding into.

As for Alexander; remember, SE themselves apologized for A4S being so ridiculously overtuned that it was almost mathematically impossible to clear at one point. Bringing back Alexander difficulty is fine, but I would hope you're not including the intentional overtuning of bosses in that equation as well. A3S was similarly overtuned but none the less (barely) passable earlier on with the right jank. Gear finally caught up and solved both problems, but by that point many progression statics had already imploded.

[Conundrum]

It's also fairly difficult to balance content in such a way that it remains engaging under optimal play while still being reasonable under unoptimized play.

I'm not really sure I am buying the difficulty argument. Pretty much every game I played with more difficult content devolves almost immediately into meta obsession, streamer worship, BiS lists, rotations, 3rd party tools, parses, etc. For a lot of people these seem normal these days, but to me, they're not really how challenging activities are meant to be, and a lot of the fun aspects of a game are sucked out by them. As a result, more challenging cooperative content tends to come with a dramatic decrease in agency, and then all these various adaptations make it not as challenging.

I think what's actually happening is a lot of people want content that is flagged as difficult, so that they can clear it and point to themselves and say "I have cleared this difficult content". Which is not the same thing. That's why they get very angry at, say, off-meta play, because it affects their ability to clear the most difficult content, and why they don't seek out difficulty where it's available, because there's no cool achievement to wave afterwards. It gets extra bad when people start using clears or parsers against each other, since that just reinforces the behavior.

I have seen similar things around the Necromancer title. It seems people just want it for bragging rights, not as a fun challenge.

Man discovers it's all about the epeen...film at 11

;-)