We are missing Content between Normal and Extreme. Wrong Audience for Chaotic

[UkcsAlias]

Chaotic was an experiment. I'm sure they'll take feedback. If there is a next time, we'll see if there is an easier version or not.

I suspect that power creep will make the current one easier over time. 735 ilvl capping doesnt mean the cappting truly stops at 735, it goes on for quite a while as its a per stat cap. This should later on make it a lot more like a regular extreme in difficulty.

The real problem however is finding 24 people to know the mechanics well enough, there are a lot of body checks in this, and even just 1 or 2 deaths can quickly result in wipes.

[Gurgeh]

...No, one tower does not wipe the raid, and 2nd, why is anyone who is in a kill / clear / farm party even dead at that point? The towers are a body check for correctly executing the previous mechanic, people need to actually learn the previous mechanic! Not 75% of the time, 99%! The add is indicating the mechanic slowly, with enough time to preposition (which could also be used for after the swaps, but can't expect people to think on feet, right?). One could just stop dpsing for those few seconds to concentrate on the movement, but nooooooooooooooo, it's the "mechanic that is hard".
....

First of all Allen, your kind of a legend, and your so indiscriminate with your judgments that the biggest offense would be being found unworthy of having you descend to correct our thinking. I kind of mean that, I don't see how people can take offence. The statements are either bombastic or just shave so much conviction.

That said, I do think you are being entirely serious above. But I also really think that being consistent probably comes easy to you, and that you don't understand the degree to which other people will always make mistakes in a way that you just outside of understanding of the differences between people? I think if everyone actually kept themselves out of kill parties in the way you say they should, that there would be some people (like me) that effectively banned from kill parties for life. It might even be that you'd answer "well maybe then? Yes?" But that's not practical. I'm quite confident that no matter how slow the boss is at telegraphing, that I will always be capable of suddenly getting distracted, or having a 'moment' and screwing up. I could believe that they way you are put together, that just can't happen.
But it is totally impractical to expect people to keep themselves out of kill parties, once they've cleared, and once they've got about as good as they think they can get.
Take Chaotic dooms. When I get tired, and I'm not always aware of when that is, my memory goes. It becomes impossible for me to tell if the hand I'm remembering a few seconds later is the hand from this pull or the previous one. I'm not sure if that is going to get better as I play more. And its not something I am aware of. A memory is a memory, correct or incorrect.

I've said it in this forum before, some people have what it takes to become a fighter pilot that can fly sortie in a warzone for 8 hours and then land back on an aircraft carrier in a storm, while other people will keep denting their hatchback run-around in the supermarket carpark their entire lives.

[AllenThyl]

Good grief. Are you familiar with the saying "mileage may vary"? Just because you don't see one tower wiping the raid doesn't mean the people who have seen it are exaggerating.

A single exploding tower does not deal enough damage to just outright wipe everyone. Which is in stark contrast to some towers in savage fights, which in fact do immediately wipe the raid, because they explode for <max damage number>, cannot be mitigated and go through invuln. People dying to a single tower means they were too low on health. As I said, the towers are a check for properly executing the previous mechanic. That includes mitigating and healing the phase transition raidwide as well as the one 15 seconds after that, and the following add mechanic.

You're not in every run to ever be ran, you cannot speak for everyone. Why is anyone dead in a party that's trying to clear? Do you actually want a full list of reasons or is that rhetorical?

The Chaotic Alliance Raid is a pretty difficult combat duty. The boss is there to kill all the players. Apart from disconnects, dead people are the result purely of failed mechanics on the player side. The boss doesn't have a "randomly kill someone" mechanic when every mechanic was properly executed. If someone has connection problems, then they need to abstain from joining a duty that requires them to have a stable connection. If someone cannot reliably do a mechanic, they need to join a practice party and practice this one mechanic. All the excuses you could list are just that, excuses. Again, this is hard combat content. Successful completion of said duty requires successfully resolving all mechanics until the boss hp drops to 0. Not half of them, or a third, or 4/5th, or any of that. All of them. Every single attempt.

One could just stop dpsing for those few seconds..., raiders who don't make it their life, people who are trying to get into raiding, and people who simply don't raid hear about how big of a deal uptime is, and how important it is to keep uptime up as well as "always" be casting. So, which is it? Are you going to complain about people for casting too much? Or when they stop to actually do the mechanic are you going to complain because they stopped casting?

DPS optimization only matter if the mechanics can be correctly resolved and the raid ends because of enrage. Uptime means nothing if the raid is dead. There is no contradiction here. That's why people greeding during prog is so annoying. Melees have to do brambles and can at best do their ranged pewpew, but so what? That's what's required to correctly solve the mechanics, so that's what needs to be done. A single person dying is more of a dps loss than if some people on the platform don't dps for 4 gcds. I mean, do you even raid, or are you just here to stir the pot? Because this all sounds like the blind talking about colors.

Yes. "Following the guide". The main mode of the raiding community, the main mode endorsed by the raiding community, the main mode I have seen shoved down my raiding friend's throats, new raider's throats, and people who refuse to raid without a guide. Typically, according to the typical raid, you watch the guide, you understand the guide, that's all that is required other than proper gear and food. What's your point? Why mention this? Complaining to complain? If you actually took a moment to think through anything you said you would realize that: firstly, none of this is new. Secondly, you're not actually saying anything at all.

The question is more, what are YOU even here for? Judging by your words, you don't raid, so why are you talking about the raiding culture as if you actually know what's going on? Or are suffering from it? You don't have to jump into the fray and fight for non-existent people just to make yourself feel better.
Everyone is free to make their own parties. If a party says "we are doing plan A", then the people who join should then follow plan A. If someone doesn't want to do plan A, don't join that particular party. The same goes for prog point. Being honest about one's own progression and skill doesn't get anyone in trouble. What does cause friction, is people joining a kill party, but failing repeatedly on mechanics in phase 2. That's what "prog lying" means. That's what "entitlement" looks like. And that's precisely what this encounter has exposed of the community.

[AllenThyl]

First of all Allen, your kind of a legend, and your so indiscriminate with your judgments that the biggest offense would be being found unworthy of having you descend to correct our thinking.

You accused everyone who was able to craft practically anything of cheating / using ToS violating 3rd party addons, including just using a macro. Your "thinking" doesn't justify just outright making up falsehoods. It's not a difference of "opinion" when talking about verifiable facts, and this is a synthetic game, which follows programming logic implemented by humans.

That said, I do think you are being entirely serious above. But I also really think that being consistent probably comes easy to you, and that you don't understand the degree to which other people will always make mistakes in a way that you just outside of understanding of the differences between people? I think if everyone actually kept themselves out of kill parties in the way you say they should, that there would be some people (like me) that effectively banned from kill parties for life. It might even be that you'd answer "well maybe then? Yes?" But that's not practical. I'm quite confident that no matter how slow the boss is at telegraphing, that I will always be capable of suddenly getting distracted, or having a 'moment' and screwing up. I could believe that they way you are put together, that just can't happen.
But it is totally impractical to expect people to keep themselves out of kill parties, once they've cleared, and once they've got about as good as they think they can get.
Take Chaotic dooms. When I get tired, and I'm not always aware of when that is, my memory goes. It becomes impossible for me to tell if the hand I'm remembering a few seconds later is the hand from this pull or the previous one. I'm not sure if that is going to get better as I play more. And its not something I am aware of. A memory is a memory, correct or incorrect.

I've said it in this forum before, some people have what it takes to become a fighter pilot that can fly sortie in a warzone for 8 hours and then land back on an aircraft carrier in a storm, while other people will keep denting their hatchback run-around in the supermarket carpark their entire lives.

Or as I put it:

This raid exposes a few problematic behaviors that the community at large has simply normalized, but shouldn't have.

If you find 23 other people who are fine with you messing up again and again, good for you. Everyone was in agreement about that, and you are all adults, you can all do what you want together. If you join a kill party of strangers while being the person who consistently messes up but expects everyone else to "just deal with it" as if you aren't replaceable at short notice, you are simply entitled and selfish. You expect others to do more of the work, than you yourself are willing of providing. That's what "progging" means. Not just reaching a point, but acquiring the skills necessary to reach this point consistently.

[Ravennes]

The question is more, what are YOU even here for? Judging by your words, you don't raid, so why are you talking about the raiding culture as if you actually know what's going on? Or are suffering from it? You don't have to jump into the fray and fight for non-existent people just to make yourself feel better.
Everyone is free to make their own parties. If a party says "we are doing plan A", then the people who join should then follow plan A. If someone doesn't want to do plan A, don't join that particular party. The same goes for prog point. Being honest about one's own progression and skill doesn't get anyone in trouble. What does cause friction, is people joining a kill party, but failing repeatedly on mechanics in phase 2. That's what "prog lying" means. That's what "entitlement" looks like. And that's precisely what this encounter has exposed of the community.

i fully agree with that, the community is what makes this fight hard and unbearable,
Sad to say... prog lying only gives benefits and never gets punished enough,
prog lying will give you further insight on the run... meaning you can learn faster and past your point at the expense of honest people's time..
yet those who are honest and join practice parties get absolutely overwhelmed with wipe after wipe after wipe... and even those people have literally said to me... "idc anymore... i just want to clear" and they too join kill parties..
this raid Truly exposed the community for how it is when playing together, a driving dumpster fire heading towards a cliff edge.

i think the devs will need to actually head on address this, and figure out a way to ... prevent this, personally unsure what to do.. but i take it devs are experts on the community and gaming so they can figure something out right?
i fear for the next choatic... it will probably be a kick fest like FRU in PF xD

[Gurgeh]

i
i think the devs will need to actually head on address this, and figure out a way to ... prevent this, personally unsure what to do.. but i take it devs are experts on the community and gaming so they can figure something out right?
i fear for the next choatic... it will probably be a kick fest like FRU in PF xD

Not a dev. But this isn't really a technical problem unless you say we'll everything is technical because you need to code it.

But the only thing to do is remove trust as element, which reduced down means to move it from client to server.
Every instance has flags. Your character gets that flag for reaching that point, or seeing that mechanic. Now you have encode all those flags for all those instances for everyone's characters. Now you select in pf which mechs for an instance a char must have seen. 'asking the server to award points for competency or style is too much'. Those flags though are a lot or too much extra data per char. Or it's not trivial anyway.

I think the much simpler solution is to have the game store how many times you've cleared. Actually this is not necessary. You could just say 'only players with 30 totems in their inventory. Or 'only players with 30 demimateria in their inventory'
That will greatly reduce getting people who got their completed flag via a KFF.
I dint think people should ever join KFFs.
Be as greedy as you like, but if you ask for people with 98 totems, it might take you a while to fill.
The technical benefit, is you don't add any data to the character beyond what's already there.
You could even make it really toxic and say WARs need 30 tokens, DRKs needs 60!

I'm a grey parser (when I've looked at other people's logs) and I wouldn't object to this. It would mean I can join a party without feeling guilty, which at the moment just stops me joining. So I get my clear, don't hope for 99, and at present just unsub, because Allen doesn't want to 'play' with me and I don't want to deal with an Allen.

[Lilapop]

snip

I... do raid, though. Shocking for not every raider to be totally into the current level of content, I guess? I also enjoy content in this game that isn't raiding, however. Literally nobody is refuting following the clearly displayed plan on a joined Party Finder, but pop off, man. Strange, assuming every raider follows the same experience you have, tunnel vision is awful to bring into a fair debate, methinks. Hoo boy, even ignoring you blatantly assume I don't raid because we are at odds... nobody claimed the boss randomly kills anyone first off. Second off, while I agree, prog lying is already an issue an "actual raider" like yourself would know about, so I don't have to tell you how that makes finding even a decent PF is, yes? I have listed zero excuses whatsoever, though. You disagreeing doesn't make them any less valid. The successful resolution of all mechanics even in harder content isn't nearly as required in many other fights compared to the 24 person body check that is this one.

As for your blatantly ignorant view of "connection problems," I don't think anyone plans to disconnect mid raid and inconvenience 23 people? If this is an issue you're commonly running into, that's unfortunate. But I don't think anyone who regularly plays at the local McDonalds is attempting this raid. People disconnect all the time, their wifi goes down, their ISP is facing an issue, the servers get a hiccup, among other things. Definitely not fair to say everyone who has connect problems is instantly to blame for their own issues, if they are at all.

You said a lot of words that basically summed up to "we have differing experiences and opinions, therefore you dont raid and have no clue what ur saying." Mileage varies, just like individual parties can vary too. Hope I was able to clear up the obvious misunderstanding you displayed.

[Gurgeh]

You accused everyone who was able to craft practically anything of cheating / using ToS violating 3rd party addons, including just using a macro. Your "thinking" doesn't justify just outright making up falsehoods. It's not a difference of "opinion" when talking about verifiable facts, and this is a synthetic game, which follows programming logic implemented by humans.
.

It's so funny watching you pink parse for the number of replies you get from people when you quote them, that I feel obliged to take the bait myself. Although I don't think your baiting, you just value shooting from the hip. Still it's entertaining so I'm going to put something back into the community myself.

The cheat thing on crafting. Yeah that was me just being 'wildly' hyperbolic. It's not cheating the wider game or the system, it's just cheating/bypassing the 'fun engagement' part if you will. It seems to really have struck a nerve with lots of people that I dint understand. I also dint get why people are so offended that even though I used to play about 14 - 28 hours a week , and had loads of fun doing so, that I didn't manage to have enough Gil to buy crafted gear.

But... I didn't at all understand your last bit, what falsehoods did I make up? And the stuff after it? (I believe everything I say, at least at the time that I say it.)

God I hope neither of us runs out of post allowances.

---
Square Enix. I've got spare money from my sub, I'll pay you a retainer a month to increase Allen's posting limit.
(Maybe I'll make that my signature)
Allen give me an outrageous quote to use as my signature.

[AllenThyl]

The cheat thing on crafting. Yeah that was me just being 'wildly' hyperbolic. It's not cheating the wider game or the system, it's just cheating/bypassing the 'fun engagement' part if you will. It seems to really have struck a nerve with lots of people that I dint understand. I also dint get why people are so offended that even though I used to play about 14 - 28 hours a week , and had loads of fun doing so, that I didn't manage to have enough Gil to buy crafted gear.

In other words, you don't grasp the gravity of your statements. The usage of cheats / 3rd party plugins is a bannable violation of the ToS, people might lose their account over this. How can you not understand why such a serious accusation would not sit well with people? Do you also just randomly accuse people of having committed crimes in real life? And then go "just a joke bro, it was just meant as hyperbole bro"? When I said I wish you well on your journey, I meant that, but not for FF14. And you really do need that.

[AllenThyl]

Literally nobody is refuting following the clearly displayed plan on a joined Party Finder, but pop off, man.

Your words:

The main mode of the raiding community, the main mode endorsed by the raiding community, the main mode I have seen shoved down my raiding friend's throats, new raider's throats, and people who refuse to raid without a guide.

If "literally nobody is refuting following the clearly displayen plan on a joined Party Finder", how can a raidplan then be "shoved down your raiding friends' throat"? If they don't want to follow one, they can make their own, or join a blind party. I know 2 people who prog every raid completely blind. They are all very good players, but it takes them significantly longer than the average PF. So what? That's how they want to do it, that's how they do it. Everyone is happy when they clear, they are happy when others clear. So what kind of situation do you actually have that justifies a "shoving a guide down someone's throat"?
Context matters, and the 2nd part ("instead of understanding the fight / mechanics and why the solution in the guide is the solution to the mechanic") is the important one of that sentence in question.

nobody claimed the boss randomly kills anyone first off.

"A single tower wipes the raid". With that same logic, the two "consecutive" (15 seconds) raidwides can also "wipe the raid". I mean, yes, if no one bothers to mitigate / heal. As I said, the boss is there with the aim of killing all player characters. Not as a passive set piece for some fashion show. That's the whole point. It's whole reason for having been created by the developers. To provide exactly that.
Allow me to be frank here, this whole "it was never stated exactly like that" rhetoric is unacceptable for any adult. Words have meaning and connotations, sentences and paragraphs have implications and messages beyond the literal layer of what was said. For starters, I recommend Paul Watzlawick's theory on communication. It should frankly be taught in schools around the world at 7th grade. "This content is only for 1% of gamers". Then when one shows statistics, it's "oh I didn't literally mean only 1%, more as an idiom". This is nothing but the typical "it's just a joke bro" after saying something wildly offensive.

Second off, while I agree, prog lying is already an issue an "actual raider" like yourself would know about, so I don't have to tell you how that makes finding even a decent PF is, yes?

In other words, it's the community that makes the experience of this fight so much worse than it would actually have to be. Which was exactly my sentiment from the get-go.

I have listed zero excuses whatsoever, though. You disagreeing doesn't make them any less valid. The successful resolution of all mechanics even in harder content isn't nearly as required in many other fights compared to the 24 person body check that is this one.

The successful resolution of all mechanics is even more required in much of the current and previous savage content. As I said, there are towers instantly wiping the group. Or getting any damage whilst having a certain debuff. Or moving too much. Or not moving enough. Standing too close to each other, standing too far from each other, looking away, not looking away enough. I mean, afaik the brambles do actually wipe the raid like that, when they overlap each others hitbox.

As for your blatantly ignorant view of "connection problems," I don't think anyone plans to disconnect mid raid and inconvenience 23 people?

There is quite the difference between having a single disconnect due to e.g. the router resetting, or their gaming hardware crashing, and having connection problems. No one can foresee if they will be having connection problems, but the important thing is having the attitude of not making that other people's problem when it occurs. Yes, it is indeed everyone's responsibility to ensure that they have a stable connection. If raiding from the free WiFi of <favorite fast food join> is known to be unstable, than joining with such connection is irresponsible behavior. It's like showing up drunk to work. There is nothing wrong with being drunk (let's not debate that here), but context matters, and drunk at work is for good reasons not an acceptable state of being.

You said a lot of words that basically summed up to "we have differing experiences and opinions, therefore you dont raid and have no clue what ur saying." Mileage varies, just like individual parties can vary too. Hope I was able to clear up the obvious misunderstanding you displayed.

This isn't about differences in opinion, it's about perception of reality. Words matter. "Shoving a raidplan down someone's throat" is quite a bit different from "pf description contains a raidplan". "The hardcores are excluding anyone they deem lesser" is quite different from "pf group has 725 min ilvl". Over-dramatization and constant hyperbole that regularly ends in factually wrong statements is dishonest. Simply dishonest. It's deception at best, and an outright lie at worst. Prog lying is an activity that poisons the well. Just because people have "reasons" to do it, doesn't mean that it doesn't poison the well. Or that it's not making everyone else's experience miserable, because, well, it is.

As I said, this raid exposes some of the worst flaws of the community, both ingame and in this forum. Flaws that shouldn't have been normalized, because they are detrimental to the health of the game and the community. Yet here we are.