Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Turtledeluxe]

As a former min-maxer, I quit min-maxing after ShB, EW just made everything worse. What's the point of trying so hard to optimise when the guy spamming Dragon Kick isn't far behind you? Why try so hard to align everything when the other guy can do just as well with Yukikaze spam? No one who enjoys min-maxing wants low skill ceilings and easy jobs with automatically aligning buffs. Most of the fun of min-maxing comes from playing around the content using your experience and skill on the job, it's not fun when the job basically plays itself and alignment is never an issue because everyone delays buffs together if the fight requires it.

I said before in a different thread, but I'm fairly sure that these changes only benefit the people who want to min-max but aren't good enough or don't want to try as hard. People who want all the rewards without putting in as much effort, they like simplified rotations, they like having all their buffs align without thought.

I guess we may need a new term for it because I understand where you're coming from in terms of people who genuinely have a passion for optimizing when presented with a set of challenges or options. Imo that is not the same as the commonly used phrase now, at least for me, as I moreso think about people whose feedback gave us things like the two minute meta in the first place, because it's theoretically ideal for maximum output. It refers to people who crave balance because x job wasn't preferred for raiding 7 years ago. Lots of feedback aimed at "balance" and equalization have, imo, led us to this place we are now in terms of encounter and Job design, where devs are quite allergic to creativity or risk.

[Aravell]

I guess we may need a new term for it because I understand where you're coming from in terms of people who genuinely have a passion for optimizing when presented with a set of challenges or options. Imo that is not the same as the commonly used phrase now, at least for me, as I moreso think about people whose feedback gave us things like the two minute meta in the first place, because it's theoretically ideal for maximum output. It refers to people who crave balance because x job wasn't preferred for raiding 7 years ago. Lots of feedback aimed at "balance" and equalization have, imo, led us to this place we are now in terms of encounter and Job design, where devs are quite allergic to creativity or risk.

We do have a term for these people, meta slaves. Fun is not their primary concern, they only care about rewards, the easier they get their rewards, the happier they are (whatever rewards they're looking for, could be easier clears of content, getting good logs easier, etc.). It's these people who lock jobs out of their PF for a 100-200 dps difference. If another job has an edge over theirs, they will ask for their job to get the same tool without a care that this causes homogenisation. These are the type of people that the dev team shouldn't listen to, they'd suck any fun out of the game if it meant they get their reward easier.

[Turtledeluxe]

We do have a term for these people, meta slaves. Fun is not their primary concern, they only care about rewards, the easier they get their rewards, the happier they are (whatever rewards they're looking for, could be easier clears of content, getting good logs easier, etc.). It's these people who lock jobs out of their PF for a 100-200 dps difference. If another job has an edge over theirs, they will ask for their job to get the same tool without a care that this causes homogenisation. These are the type of people that the dev team shouldn't listen to, they'd suck any fun out of the game if it meant they get their reward easier.

I was thinking after I posted what really defines this type of player is someone who wants the meta of any given aspect of the game to be the default experience for everyone. Hence, the state of jobs and the meta. Makes sense. But these are players who are inevitably min maxers imo because your casual joe player who wants rewards quickly doesn't necessarily understand the two minute meta or rotation theory to begin with. It's worth denoting the difference though because of the way they're applying their findings.

And the reason I say this is because some of the two minute metas biggest defenders are people who have played since 2.0 and do understand job evolution over time etc., they're not just people who are beholden to whatever a given meta is at the time. It can potentially take away their agency to reduce them all to people who wantonly submit feedback with a singular goal-- I think a lot of them know exactly what they're doing and simply want the game to be this way.

[Colt47]

I was thinking after I posted what really defines this type of player is someone who wants the meta of any given aspect of the game to be the default experience for everyone. Hence, the state of jobs and the meta. Makes sense. But these are players who are inevitably min maxers imo because your casual joe player who wants rewards quickly doesn't necessarily understand the two minute meta or rotation theory to begin with. It's worth denoting the difference though because of the way they're applying their findings.

And the reason I say this is because some of the two minute metas biggest defenders are people who have played since 2.0 and do understand job evolution over time etc., they're not just people who are beholden to whatever a given meta is at the time. It can potentially take away their agency to reduce them all to people who wantonly submit feedback with a singular goal-- I think a lot of them know exactly what they're doing and simply want the game to be this way.

Discrimination is two ways. In truth, everyone has a goals they want to achieve, and hypothetically those goals should be achievable when they are made available to people who play within a reasonable amount of time. Savage is never going to be accessible to every single individual, and neither is the zodiac weapons grind or even the bozja armor, because as individuals we are all different people, stubbornly living within a world full of black boxes and unknowns. But when someone who normally does content successfully has trouble with the given content because of changes made to the game, that feedback has meaning and should be taken into consideration. I never completed a zodiac relic, and probably never will because it isn't content that I partake in, but I do partake in savage and have successfully completed multiple tiers since shadowbringers. It has been a downward spiral of frustration and a feeling of the rewards not being worth the effort. Again, we have to be able to live through something to learn from it both in real life and in game. If fights are built where a single person can wipe everyone because they are not at the same point as the rest of the group, they will hold the group back under this system.

Do people really want to live in a game that rewards discarding others, simply because they are not quite at the same point? In Ultimate, it is the expectation that this is how it should work, but savage should not be a place where this occurs. There are better ways to punish getting hit then to instantly wipe the entire group and they already have these methods in the fight, such as damage downs preventing clearing the boss fight.

[Aravell]

I was thinking after I posted what really defines this type of player is someone who wants the meta of any given aspect of the game to be the default experience for everyone. Hence, the state of jobs and the meta. Makes sense. But these are players who are inevitably min maxers imo because your casual joe player who wants rewards quickly doesn't necessarily understand the two minute meta or rotation theory to begin with. It's worth denoting the difference though because of the way they're applying their findings.

And the reason I say this is because some of the two minute metas biggest defenders are people who have played since 2.0 and do understand job evolution over time etc., they're not just people who are beholden to whatever a given meta is at the time. It can potentially take away their agency to reduce them all to people who wantonly submit feedback with a singular goal-- I think a lot of them know exactly what they're doing and simply want the game to be this way.

You misunderstand, I didn't say meta slaves are all casuals. I said that they're people who aren't good enough to hit the peak or they can't be bothered to optimise to that point, the simplifications and homogenisation benefits them and only them. Even the casuals hate the loss of identity and flavour in between jobs.

The people I'm describing are at the level of around 50-90% performance, they're on the entire spectrum of average to above average. They do understand the basics of combat and some do enter into discussions of optimisation mechanics. The key difference between them and the min-maxers is that the meta slaves want things to be easier for them, the min-maxers work around the weaknesses of their job, the meta slaves pick the path of least resistance and they get annoyed when other jobs have advantages over theirs.

[ty_taurus]

You misunderstand, I didn't say meta slaves are all casuals. I said that they're people who aren't good enough to hit the peak or they can't be bothered to optimise to that point, the simplifications and homogenisation benefits them and only them. Even the casuals hate the loss of identity and flavour in between jobs.

The people I'm describing are at the level of around 50-90% performance, they're on the entire spectrum of average to above average. They do understand the basics of combat and some do enter into discussions of optimisation mechanics. The key difference between them and the min-maxers is that the meta slaves want things to be easier for them, the min-maxers work around the weaknesses of their job, the meta slaves pick the path of least resistance and they get annoyed when other jobs have advantages over theirs.

Misshapen Chair kind of went off on this archetype of player in the last FFXIV video he did not long ago. Someone who feels the need to be the best, to always win, and that anything shy of that is anti-fun and unacceptable, and yet at the same time, sees any effort into reaching that status as work and cannot be asked to put in any additional effort to better their performance. They don't want to learn the game, they just want to jump in and win.

[Absurdity]

Misshapen Chair kind of went off on this archetype of player in the last FFXIV video he did not long ago. Someone who feels the need to be the best, to always win, and that anything shy of that is anti-fun and unacceptable, and yet at the same time, sees any effort into reaching that status as work and cannot be asked to put in any additional effort to better their performance. They don't want to learn the game, they just want to jump in and win.

I usually just called them tryhard-wannabes. People who only pick whatever is the current meta, without even understanding why it is the way it is, and just expect that to solve all their problems, who throw a fit when they wipe and their immediate assumption is that it's because someone isn't playing whatever job is the theoretical best, the kind of people that were still kicking Samurais from their party finder groups in 4.3 because they read on The Balance that it's not very good at some point.

Who think of themselves as a 99th percentile player when they're actually only ~50th percentile but of course they could totally be the best if it weren't for this system or that job mechanic and of course it's not because of them, it's the game holding them back.

[ty_taurus]

I usually just called them tryhard-wannabes. People who only pick whatever is the current meta, without understanding why it's the meta, and just expect that to solve all their problems, who throw a fit when they wipe and their immediate assumption is that it's because someone isn't playing whatever job is the theoretical best, the kind of people that were still kicking Samurais from their party finder groups in 4.3.

Who think of themselves as a 99th percentile player when they're actually only ~50th percentile but of course they could totally be the best if it weren't for this system or that job mechanic and of course it's not because of them, it's the game's fault.

It's nicer than Chair's name for them. "Shitters"

[Turtledeluxe]

You misunderstand, I didn't say meta slaves are all casuals. I said that they're people who aren't good enough to hit the peak or they can't be bothered to optimise to that point, the simplifications and homogenisation benefits them and only them. Even the casuals hate the loss of identity and flavour in between jobs.

The people I'm describing are at the level of around 50-90% performance, they're on the entire spectrum of average to above average. They do understand the basics of combat and some do enter into discussions of optimisation mechanics. The key difference between them and the min-maxers is that the meta slaves want things to be easier for them, the min-maxers work around the weaknesses of their job, the meta slaves pick the path of least resistance and they get annoyed when other jobs have advantages over theirs.

Yes, I totally agree that their motivations and inclinations are different and that minmaxer wasn't the ideal word to use in my original post. It's hard to convey over a forum-- maybe "optimizers with an /s" is really what I'm trying to convey here. Regarding the meta they are interchangeable effectively however I am indeed referring to people who strictly have it out to make jobs/combat as streamlined as possible which is taking us down a road of homogeny

You mentioned these people don't want fun and again that is who I am speaking to but I wouldn't say they don't want fun. I'd say there are two sides of the player base like left brain and right brain. Some people have a balance so many it's three sides. In any case the side that is over optimizing everything regardless of their play style or intentions are making the game their own idea of fun. Players that want more creativity find it boring. Etc.