We Need to Start Expecting Mid-Level Sprouts to Play Better

[Larirawiel]

The problem is, if people fail too much, they complain about the game being too hard. A good example is Shinryu close to SBs launch. It wasn't long before people complained the fight was too hard and they wanted SE to make it easier. Luckily they didn't but this didn't stop people from complaining about it.

The point is, even if they were to make the game harder, people wouldn't get better to compensate, they would just complain it is too hard and this is the mentality that needs to stop.

True. But if a fight is mandatory to the MSQ then it is wrong to make the fight very hard, i think. Because this fight could turn into a huge wall, which the players cannot overcome. And not be able to play the MSQ would make many players upset because the game would be literary over for them.

The other problem is, the player power scales almost exclusively with the itemlevel. The game mechanics are too simple and too binary. If a fight is too hard then buy a new weapon with more itemlevel and this "hard" fight turns into freeloot. I experienced it with my dragoon very often. You have too few possibilities to turn a fight from a almost sure loss to a victory. I have read, that it was different in the earlier versions of the game.

There is also another observation I would like to make, and whilst it is purely based on what I have witnessed, I'm sure it happens across multiple DCs. If you do a fight within the first few days, people expect you to go in blind, if you wipe, no problems, you tend to discuss what went wrong and how to deal with it, we are all learning after all. However, give it a little while and people start to not listen. You can wipe, someone explain the mechanics and they ignore you. It is a weird shift in mentality which does almost seem close to, I don't want to learn the fight, I want you to carry me through it.

This is also true. But i have also experienced it in other games very often. So it is not a FF14 exclusive behavior.


Cheers

[Mikey_R]

True. But if a fight is mandatory to the MSQ then it is wrong to make the fight very hard, i think. Because this fight could turn into a huge wall, which the players cannot overcome. And not be able to play the MSQ would make many players upset because the game would be literary over for them.

That's the thing though. Shinryu wasn't hard. Every mechanic you had seen before so it was just a case of recognising it and dealing with it but that was the problem, people didn't pay attention and rather than bettering themselves a little, they blamed the game for their own shortcomings. The fact recognising certain mechanics is a useful skill meant Shinryu was a test of their fight perception rather than job skill. (There was a DPS check, but that is just the add phase, I don't think I saw anyone wipe to that).

The other problem is, the player power scales almost exclusively with the itemlevel. The game mechanics are too simple and too binary. If a fight is too hard then buy a new weapon with more itemlevel and this "hard" fight turns into freeloot. I experienced it with my dragoon very often. You have too few possibilities to turn a fight from a almost sure loss to a victory. I have read, that it was different in the earlier versions of the game.

This is one of the issues I have with some fights, or more specifically, anything that isn't a dungeon. Just looking at level 60 content, all trials, 24 man and Alexander do not have an ilevel sync, but the dungeons do? I know the sync for dungeons is to prevent people from plowing through them, but what about the trials? Everyone knows by now that Thordan is really easy, but back in the day, he did have more going on. Did you know before the knight onslaught he has 3 phases? The first is just AoEs, the second where he starts using Knights of the Round, of which he has 2 variants, he then has the Dragon eye as the last phase, where he can still use the Knights of the Round, but there is another 2 variations. He then goes through the add phase, and after that you get the last phase which literally just involves him swinging his sword wildly for pitiful damage, showing that he has severely weakened himself in an attempt to kill you. This has all been lost to a lack of ilevel sync and I would be an advocate for adding an ilevel sync into the trials/raids so that they can still hold onto some semblance of difficulty.