Adding attack-or-take-damage/die mechanics to end-game dungeons

[Supersnow845]

I wouldn't call it a double standard, more someone not realizing or accepting what FFXIV is about. If someone is purely interested in combat, why play a game that straight-up markets itself as primarily a story-based MMO (one of the reasons it's frequently called an RPGMMO instead of an MMORPG). There are other games that heavily emphasize endgame raiding and see the story as just something to blow through as a means to get you to endgame. FFXIV isn't that game. It would be like playing an FPS set in WWI and being disappointed that it doesn't include modern tanks and jets.

Remember, when WoW was far and away the "best MMORPG on the market," it attained that status precisely by being more casual-oriented than other MMO's at the time. And end-game raiding at that time was practically nothing more than tank-and-spank with occasionally one other mechanic at most involved. The "hardest" part of combat was actually just managing to get 40 people together to do a raid.

There's also a direct link between WoW shifting to a "raid or die" mentality focusing on ever-more-difficult combat and eSports, and it's loss of that "best MMO" status. Put quite simply, the unofficial "best MMO of the moment" title has a long history of going to the game that is most casual-friendly and doesn't focus on "harder" normal content.

WOW is still the largest MMO, we are close but WOW still holds it, and WOW maintains that title partially because they balance their casual and endgame content and have a decent difficulty levelling curve

14 just jumps from “cure 1 spam is fine to 99% of your GCD’s must be glare or we will enrage” with absolutely no middle ground and it’s a big part of why we have such poor capped population retention

[Jin-]

Maybe they never learn since the game never tests them. Resulting in piss poor players which isn't entirely their fault but game's. If the game grew naturally harder, like any other game there would be also a natural improvement in player skill. Casual doesnt mean lazy and poorly skilled player.

[MaeveHatesHousing]

So again, a mechanic that requires movement and actions at the same time to avoid damage, kind of like the "ice" mechanic on some trials, would probably be a good addition to the game's end-game dungeon encounters, if only to get players thinking about how to do that.

ah yes, what we really need is more ways to make Black Mage feel like they cant play their job because every mechanics requires they stop turreting and run around being unable to cast or using triplecast until they are out.

[Hyrist]

Magikazam, and for those that agree with them. I'm going to try to be gentle, but the truth is pretty blunt here.

There is no double-standard. There is one standard: This is a story-focused game. Extremes, Savage, Ultiamtes are given pretty much the same treatment as any other piece of non-combat or casual combat content in this game. Just because the difficulty is tuned higher and requires more investment does not make it more valid - in terms of team focus and development.

The story, however, is an entire tier above this group of content. It is THE focus of the game, and it's tailred to be wide reaching. That's why you have to sit there and go through the story content to unlock other content. People who skip story are bypassing the primary content focus. There's a reason why all of the story dungeons are getting touched on first when it comes to the dungeon revamps. There's a reason why they've made efforts to streamline MSQ in ARR twice. It's not a double standard, it's a clear standard. I know it's hard to hear that beacuse people don't like their interests are being treated as second-class, but that's really not how the developers see it. It's a matter of proprities and how things work together, not how one outclasses the other.

So when someone tells you that a piece of story content can't be harder, because then it would alienate it's wider casual base - that's not a double standard. That's the pecking order.

It's not meant to be determental to your favorite piece of content. But at the same time while the game introduces mechanics to get accustomed to, sotry is not designed to fully groom the player to be completely raid ready. That's why Alliance, Normals, Extremes, Savages, and Ultimates are tiered as they are - those are the pieces of content designed to train a person to get more accustomed to raiding.

The priorities here are clear. While story can be used, to accustom people to seeing certain types of raid mechanics. Introducing Raid Mechancis to the game, cannot come at the determent to the story experience. That's the clear priority list that's been established to this game, and both history and current events support that.

Now there's some interesting ideas in this thread to mull over, but the air needs to be pretty clear of where the bar will be made. I don't think, overall, we'll get more difficult than we got in Endwalker dungeons in terms of story dungeons. I am, highly interested, in seeing how these new harder dungeons work as side content plays out and how they introduce mechanics there.

[vetch]

Isn’t that what trusts are for

What’s the point nerfing the jobs into the ground and spending development time future proofing old content just to then make the new content a joke anyway

Either make the content harder but let it work with trusts, make the jobs harder but keep the content the same and work with trusts or do both but make trusts better, but spending all this time simplifying the content and making it trust accessible just for the content to still be a joke is starting to contribute to the greater proportion of people dropping the game at capped level

I think it's important to point out that trusts are actually quite bad at assisting low-skilled and/or disabled players, to the point that I would not be comfortable saying that the system is for their benefit. Trust NPCs, with their barebones programming, do things like drag spread markers to pre-determined positions and, in the case of my friend who has bad arthritis and can't dodge AoEs very well, this was often right where they were already standing, so they would eat dirt and have to restart fights over and over.

[RobynDaBank]

WOW is still the largest MMO, we are close but WOW still holds it, and WOW maintains that title partially because they balance their casual and endgame content and have a decent difficulty levelling curve

14 just jumps from “cure 1 spam is fine to 99% of your GCD’s must be glare or we will enrage” with absolutely no middle ground and it’s a big part of why we have such poor capped population retention

Have you played WoW? Levelling for instance is in no way balanced because they don't have level sync - if you get put in a dungeon below your level your power is so awfully gimped you do less damage than an equal-level healer as a DD. And no, you can clear a dungeon with people helpless like that in the party. It sounds like you're thinking only about Mythic+ and raiding, which is ironic when you say the game is balanced for both casuals and endgame runners.

[Sunhwapark]

Black Mage feel like they cant play their job because every mechanics requires they stop turreting and run around being unable to cast or using triplecast until they are out.

Why do people keep saying this? BLM at Lv.90 has access to plenty of stuff for moving around atm.

• 2x Polyglot Stacks (3 If we count the use of Amplifier too) - for Xenoglossy/Foul
• 2x Sharpcast Uses (Forced Thunder proc/Firestarter)
• Paradox (Umbral Ice)
• 2x Triplecast Uses (6 GCDs total)
• Swiftcast

That's at least 9GCDs being instantly cast at minimum and that's only counting all uses of Triplecast & Xenoglossy w/ Amplifier, while it's true that in order to get 2x Polyglot stacks you would have to maintain Enochian for a total of 60s beforehand it's unlikely to force movement to such a degree before that point, I also can't think of many occassions where players are expected to continually run for that long and in any case a BLM can plan what resources to use for it, provided they're doing a fight more than once a lifetime.

[Rilifane]

Why do people keep saying this? BLM at Lv.90 has access to plenty of stuff for moving around atm.

• 2x Polyglot Stacks (3 If we count the use of Amplifier too) - for Xenoglossy/Foul
• 2x Sharpcast Uses (Forced Thunder proc/Firestarter)
• Paradox (Umbral Ice)
• 2x Triplecast Uses (6 GCDs total)
• Swiftcast

That's at least 9GCDs being instantly cast at minimum and that's only counting all uses of Triplecast & Xenoglossy w/ Amplifier, while it's true that in order to get 2x Polyglot stacks you would have to maintain Enochian for a total of 60s beforehand it's unlikely to force movement to such a degree before that point, I also can't think of many occassions where players are expected to continually run for that long and in any case a BLM can plan what resources to use for it, provided they're doing a fight more than once a lifetime.

And in addition to that, there's also a fast cast for every switch which is usually possible to get off. Something like B3 > Icedox > Swift + B4 > F4 works fine during mechanics that require more or less continuous movement.
BLM is a far cry from being a turret, it's very mobile for a caster. All it requires is occasionally holding on to cooldowns which is a lot easier since the 2 charges on Triple and Sharp. It doesn't even require fight knowledge, just holding on to Triple and Sharp until you're about to reach 2 charges again works or Poly until almost overcapping.

[LittleImp]

Why do people keep saying this? BLM at Lv.90 has access to plenty of stuff for moving around atm.

• 2x Polyglot Stacks (3 If we count the use of Amplifier too) - for Xenoglossy/Foul
• 2x Sharpcast Uses (Forced Thunder proc/Firestarter)
• Paradox (Umbral Ice)
• 2x Triplecast Uses (6 GCDs total)
• Swiftcast

That's at least 9GCDs being instantly cast at minimum and that's only counting all uses of Triplecast & Xenoglossy w/ Amplifier, while it's true that in order to get 2x Polyglot stacks you would have to maintain Enochian for a total of 60s beforehand it's unlikely to force movement to such a degree before that point, I also can't think of many occassions where players are expected to continually run for that long and in any case a BLM can plan what resources to use for it, provided they're doing a fight more than once a lifetime.

To add to this, I've seen more RDMs struggling with solving for uptime than I have BLMs in EW. A mechanic like Wroth Flames in p6 of DSR is a decent example; It's a continuous movement mechanic, with a 1/3 chance you will be forced to disengage out of melee range while performing it. BLM can effectively manage their mobility the same way for both permutations, but RDM is punished on the 'far' pattern because a lot of their continuous mobility is tied to being in melee range.

[Striker44]

WOW is still the largest MMO, we are close but WOW still holds it, and WOW maintains that title partially because they balance their casual and endgame content and have a decent difficulty levelling curve

14 just jumps from “cure 1 spam is fine to 99% of your GCD’s must be glare or we will enrage” with absolutely no middle ground and it’s a big part of why we have such poor capped population retention

It's honestly hard to respond to a post when nothing in that post seems connected to reality. WoW is probably still the largest in terms of pure players, but the trajectory it's going on is abysmal compared to FFXIV. It's not really considered the "best MMO" at the moment; it's just desperately hanging on to the small % of its original playerbase, which was plummeted, while FFXIV is enjoying its most played expansion to date.

Someone else already covered the lack of "balance" in WoW, and it's very well known for its "raid or die" mentality at end-game. There's practically nothing for the casual player there, compared to the veritable mountain of non-raid side content available in FFXIV.

And what's that about "poor capped player retention"? Frankly, I haven't seen that at all. You get the natural mid-to-late patch population dips that happen in _every_ MMO in existence, but in EW even those troughs maintain a significantly higher playerbase than similar troughs in past expansions. That "poor retention" simply doesn't exist relative to any other game in the genre.