A Change to Phoenix Downs

[ty_taurus]

I mean you're supposed to do mechanics properly. If you are constantly making the same mistake you try to improve. If you can't, then that content isn't for you. Simple as that.

Sure but DPS can die 1000 times and not throw the fight in casual content. Healers typically cannot die even once unless you have a RDM or SMN (or you now have a WAR and they just carry on without you).

[Yeastyloins]

Sure but DPS can die 1000 times and not throw the fight in casual content. Healers typically cannot die even once unless you have a RDM or SMN (or you now have a WAR and they just carry on without you).

Sure....in normal content and alliance raids. Extreme maybe you can kinda get away with that with gear but that doesn't fly for Savage or Ultimate. The issue is that people are supposed to learn and refine how they play the game in that content and completing mechanics in a clean manner is a part of that. Adding something like this would invalidate the need for mechanical play and thus further the gulf between Normal and Extreme, let alone Savage and Ultimate. You're not cultivating good habits.

Mind you, this is a small portion of the player base that this would functionally be an issue for, but we don't need to increase the difficulty spike between casual content and hard content. The game should not be solely designed for people who cannot understand basic pattern recognition and understand moving away from the fire while casting spells. There are enough concessions in gameplay in normal content for players to be able to see the story.

[ty_taurus]

Sure....in normal content and alliance raids. Extreme maybe you can kinda get away with that with gear but that doesn't fly for Savage or Ultimate. The issue is that people are supposed to learn and refine how they play the game in that content and completing mechanics in a clean manner is a part of that. Adding something like this would invalidate the need for mechanical play and thus further the gulf between Normal and Extreme, let alone Savage and Ultimate. You're not cultivating good habits.

Mind you, this is a small portion of the player base that this would functionally be an issue for, but we don't need to increase the difficulty spike between casual content and hard content. The game should not be solely designed for people who cannot understand basic pattern recognition and understand moving away from the fire while casting spells. There are enough concessions in gameplay in normal content for players to be able to see the story.

Damn, if only I said something like "4. Add a new restriction to high-end duties that makes Phoenix Downs unusable and add this as a DF option alongside things like minimum ilvl and silence echo." in my initial post.

[Yeastyloins]

Damn, if only I said something like "4. Add a new restriction to high-end duties that makes Phoenix Downs unusable and add this as a DF option alongside things like minimum ilvl and silence echo." in my initial post.

Damn, if only you understood that I was talking about having Phoenix Downs in Casual content (I.E normal raids, trials, and dungeons including roulettes) would lead to bad habits within the playerbase.

[ty_taurus]

Damn, if only you understood that I was talking about having Phoenix Downs in Casual content (I.E normal raids, trials, and dungeons including roulettes) would lead to bad habits within the playerbase.

I think your logic is inherently flawed. First and foremost, you can't possibly prove that to be true or false regardless because it's not something we can currently test. Moreover, in what way does casual content currently do anything to teach good habits as it is? Jumping into hardcore content is like learning a new game mode, and you'd need to overhaul the entire game in order to change that. Whether or not Phoenix Downs became usable in those casual aspects of content would make absolutely no difference in how poorly casual content sets you up for hardcore content.

The reality is, getting into savage requires an entirely different mentality, and the fact that you couldn't be able to use them in hardcore content would at most force you to learn to deal. Additionally, raising isn't really that powerful in hardcore content anyway because you can't really afford many deaths in savage anyway, assuming someone's mistake doesn't just wipe the whole raid with the snap of a finger.

Everyone should be avoiding mechanics. The healer isn't there to "heal stupid".

Then delete raising from the game entirely. People aren't allowed to make mistakes.

[Eorzean_username]

Adding something like this would invalidate the need for mechanical play and thus further the gulf between Normal and Extreme, let alone Savage and Ultimate.

I'm not sure about this assertion, but I'm also not sure if I understand which point you're trying to assert, so I'd like to clarify those details before writing an actual response.

Are you asserting that 'Normal'-tier content won't properly prepare players for entering Extreme+ if everyone in a randomly-matched Duty Finder party can Raise?

Or are you asserting that having more distributed Raising capability inside an Extreme+ environment would damage the sense of accomplishment in Savage/Ultimate by removing what you're terming 'mechanical play'?

[Yeastyloins]

I'm not sure about this assertion, but I'm also not sure if I understand which point you're trying to assert, so I'd like to clarify those details before writing an actual response.

Are you asserting that 'Normal'-tier content won't properly prepare players for entering Extreme+ if everyone in a randomly-matched Duty Finder party can Raise?

Or are you asserting that having more distributed Raising capability inside an Extreme+ environment would damage the sense of accomplishment in Savage/Ultimate by removing what you're terming 'mechanical play'?

I'm just saying it cultivates bad habits for players entering Extreme+ content where not paying attention can either hinder group or prevent groups from completing content. The way I see normal content is a place to either leisurely experience the story or to practice a new job while challenging yourself to not mess up mechanics. But it still should teach players to shore up their play and if the punishment is significantly invalidated by the fact that every player can raise, then it turns it becoming a norm of failing mechanics to not be a punishment other than slowing down how fast the duty is finished.

An anecdotal experience I can give for myself that happened a few days ago was doing O10n the second time ever on my WHM which is the first healer I am playing. We had a situation where the other healer died, massive damage was out on the whole group and Swiftcast still had a 14 second CD on it so I couldn't quickly the other healer. We also did not have a SMN or a RDM so I was the only one who could do it. I was running low on MP and it was a high stress situation to keep not only the tanks up but everyone healthy. In that moment I remembered I had my Planetary Indulgence and using that plus trying to make good use of a thin air stack and my lilys I was able to salvage the situation long enough for swiftcast to come up and raise my other healer while avoiding mechanics. I found it to be an informative experience for myself to learn how to play my WHM but also how to reactively play better.

All of that experience would have been taken away if some other DPS just immediately picked them up while I cast medica 2 then spam medica at will with no regard to my MP and then immediately went back to spamming Stone.

[Eorzean_username]

I'm just saying it cultivates bad habits for players entering Extreme+ content where not paying attention can either hinder group or prevent groups from completing content. The way I see normal content is a place to either leisurely experience the story or to practice a new job while challenging yourself to not mess up mechanics. But it still should teach players to shore up their play and if the punishment is significantly invalidated by the fact that every player can raise, then it turns it becoming a norm of failing mechanics to not be a punishment other than slowing down how fast the duty is finished.

Okay, I get what you're trying to say now. But, I think you're arguing for a figurative ship that disappeared over the horizon in FFXIV a loooong, long time ago.

Normal-tier content currently doesn't even require the entire party(s) to be standing up to be able to clear it. And even if everyone has Brink of Death, there's no relevant Enrage (if at all), so the only way that KOs matter is:

a) It's boring to be on the floor and not pressing buttons
b) It's annoying to spend 32 minutes clearing a single boss
c) If everyone is on the floor, then you have to start all over again, which is even more annoying

In my own experience, very few people don't try to do mechanics. Everyone just learns at a different pace, and a lot of people don't prioritize FFXIV enough in their life to bother watching videos before entering new content (and/or they don't want to be spoiled).

If you have a comp that can chain-raise, then people learn mechanics a little faster and spend less time tabbed out.

If you have a comp with few raises, then you just outright wipe more, or you spend more excruciating pulls watching the 2 tanks, 1 raiseless DPS, and 1 healer that understand what's going on slooooowly pull everyone else back up.

As far as I can tell, putting people back on their feet doesn't really trivialize the encounter nor discourage learning, any more than the preexisting habit of deliberately wiping and repulling fresh once it becomes clear too many people have KO'd or that you're out of Raisers, etc.

An anecdotal experience I can give for myself that happened a few days ago was doing O10n the second time ever on my WHM which is the first healer I am playing. We had a situation where the other healer died, massive damage was out on the whole group and Swiftcast still had a 14 second CD on it so I couldn't quickly the other healer. We also did not have a SMN or a RDM so I was the only one who could do it. I was running low on MP and it was a high stress situation to keep not only the tanks up but everyone healthy. In that moment I remembered I had my Planetary Indulgence and using that plus trying to make good use of a thin air stack and my lilys I was able to salvage the situation long enough for swiftcast to come up and raise my other healer while avoiding mechanics. I found it to be an informative experience for myself to learn how to play my WHM but also how to reactively play better.

All of that experience would have been taken away if some other DPS just immediately picked them up while I cast medica 2 then spam medica at will with no regard to my MP and then immediately went back to spamming Stone.

Alright, you felt proud for that opportunity to learn how to stretch your WHM resources. I'm not trying to invalidate or dismiss that you had a positive learning experience from that, because that can certainly happen in strained circumstances. And I've had plenty of my own experiences like that in my time learning various Jobs and roles in FFXIV, so I understand how satisfying it can be.

But, now imagine someone playing Dragoon instead. "Oh, both Healers KO'd and the other surviving DPS is a Black Mage." So now you can... uh... what? Hit buttons harder, to try to win before the chained raidwides uncontrollably KO you?

Players in that situation realize that they're better off just mercy'ing themselves by running into a death wall. There's not much learning opportunity.

And... that's kind of the pattern in DF parties: "Oh, all Raisers are KO? Time to voluntarily wipe."

To be honest, I think that there's a bizarre variation in experience between parties that randomly end up with multiple extra Raisers, and parties with only 'mere mortal' DPS: "unending pull with slooooow grindy victory" vs. "well, we're definitely going to die soon, let's jump off and try again".

In fact, it's kind-of humorous how fast a Normal mode can sometimes change from chain-wiping to one-shot-clear as soon as even one person leaves and gets replaced by a Red Mage.

...Actually, I guess it's currently pretty consistent with endgame, then: sometimes in your Savage Prog PF you randomly get Raisers in your party that are good at staying alive, and pulls can go on forever and see a lot of mechanics. Other times, you get 2 healers with, er, "bad luck", alongside SAM RPR BLM MCH... and pulls end quite abruptly and keep looping the same early mechanics.

[Yeastyloins]

Okay, I get what you're trying to say now. But, I think you're arguing for a figurative ship that disappeared over the horizon in FFXIV a loooong, long time ago.

Normal-tier content currently doesn't even require the entire party(s) to be standing up to be able to clear it. And even if everyone has Brink of Death, there's no relevant Enrage (if at all), so the only way that KOs matter is:

a) It's boring to be on the floor and not pressing buttons
b) It's annoying to spend 32 minutes clearing a single boss
c) If everyone is on the floor, then you have to start all over again, which is even more annoying

In my own experience, very few people don't try to do mechanics. Everyone just learns at a different pace, and a lot of people don't prioritize FFXIV enough in their life to bother watching videos before entering new content (and/or they don't want to be spoiled).

If you have a comp that can chain-raise, then people learn mechanics a little faster and spend less time tabbed out.

If you have a comp with few raises, then you just outright wipe more, or you spend more excruciating pulls watching the 2 tanks, 1 raiseless DPS, and 1 healer that understand what's going on slooooowly pull everyone else back up.

As far as I can tell, putting people back on their feet doesn't really trivialize the encounter nor discourage learning, any more than the preexisting habit of deliberately wiping and repulling fresh once it becomes clear too many people have KO'd or that you're out of Raisers, etc.

To your second paragraph (still figuring out the forums :P) you just reset, easy. You do that for extreme and up in that situation anyways. And it's not like its the end of the world where you take a huge hit to gil/experience/or anything. Or a punishment of time like in WoW where you need to Rez, run back to the instance if you don't a have healer soulstoned/ahnk to mass rez, even worse if you are in classic. You just pull again OR god forbid, you get the opportunity to learn from an experience by asking a question. That very same fight I mentioned, we wiped and I just asked how to tell which AoE is going to come out based on his movements. Somebody told me and provided me an additional tip that let me optimize my movement and I thanked them. We killed and I thanked the person again for the tip and we made a joke or two. It was a positive and satisfying social interaction that came from a wipe and minor inconvenience coupled with an opportunity to improve my play instead of indolently spamming Medica, Medica 2, and Stone. Because of a fail state.

As to your first paragraph, why is it good to reward bad play? If the answer to that is: well people just don't want to have to learn mechanics or have to attempt to improve and learn or socialize with other players by conversing about a pull and learning from it, why even have normal group content then? Why even have a death state? Why even weaken people upon rez? Why even have vul stacks/damage down mechanics? Why even have mechanics then?