Yuweyawata Field Station is so wrong

[Arohk]

Have you ever spoken to players who find dungeons hard? I have. They read guides and their tooltips, watch videos, observe cast bars, and pay attention. And they struggle.

Yes i have tried that, but it is really difficult when everyone feels personaly attacked on the slightest mention that they do somethng wrong, also most people are not aware that they are doing things wrong because the game doesn't teach you.

[Carin-Eri]

Have you ever spoken to players who find dungeons hard? I have. They read guides and their tooltips, watch videos, observe cast bars, and pay attention. And they struggle.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, because I was wary of posting in this thread - I'm all too aware of how disapproving some forumites can be toward the sort of player you describe.

But... you just described me.

I mean, at my best I'm on the low-end of mediocre at the game and tend to 'scrape through' the more difficult content. I've tried Ex/Savage content and found that I was a burden to the team I was with and, both due to having enough insight to realise I wasn't suited for it and on advice from another player, decided to stick to Normal content.

Even so, I'll confess I struggle like hell with Jeuno: The First Walk any time my friends want to play it. And I daresay, if the currently difficulty curve continues, I'll struggle with the 7.2 content too.

And it's not as if I don't try - whilst I'm told that some of it may be down to poor ping (from my perspective I'm outside an AOE but get hit anyway) it does seem as if my reaction speed is lacking and, try as I might, I don't seem able to improve on it.

[Mawlzy]

Yes i have tried that, but it is really difficult when everyone feels personaly attacked on the slightest mention that they do somethng wrong, also most people are not aware that they are doing things wrong because the game doesn't teach you.

Strange, I find most people receptive to suggestions of how they might improve. Maybe you should avoid telling them to quit watching Netflix.

But we do agree on one thing. The game is lousy at explaining to players how to play their job well.

[Mawlzy]

I'm going to go out on a limb here, because I was wary of posting in this thread - I'm all too aware of how disapproving some forumites can be toward the sort of player you describe.

But... you just described me.

I mean, at my best I'm on the low-end of mediocre at the game and tend to 'scrape through' the more difficult content. I've tried Ex/Savage content and found that I was a burden to the team I was with and, both due to having enough insight to realise I wasn't suited for it and on advice from another player, decided to stick to Normal content.

Even so, I'll confess I struggle like hell with Jeuno: The First Walk any time my friends want to play it. And I daresay, if the currently difficulty curve continues, I'll struggle with the 7.2 content too.

And it's not as if I don't try - whilst I'm told that some of it may be down to poor ping (from my perspective I'm outside an AOE but get hit anyway) it does seem as if my reaction speed is lacking and, try as I might, I don't seem able to improve on it.

Don't tell a soul, Carin, but on NA/EU players like you and me are in the majority. Unlike us, however, most have the sense not to wade into these forums.

Oh and in before "anticipating snapshotting on high ping is easy, stop watching Netflix."

Solidarity and gl/hf.

[Arohk]

And it's not as if I don't try - whilst I'm told that some of it may be down to poor ping (from my perspective I'm outside an AOE but get hit anyway) it does seem as if my reaction speed is lacking and, try as I might, I don't seem able to improve on it.

That is (mostly) not a ping issue, the game uses snapshot mechanics, that means when you are inside an AOE when the boss finished casting you are hit, not matter where you run afterwards, and because some animations takes 1-2 seconds before you take damage it APPEARS that you get hit outside of an AOE, you simply ran out too late.

But that also means that you can run into AOES the moment they resolved, you dont need to wait for the animation to happen.

[Valence]

Seems to me that answer to "I cannot/will not perform basic tasks in a combat setting and demand to complete the story anyway" is the Trusts system that the devs have spent the last few expansions expanding. As has been pointed out in this very thread, you can press no buttons other than those needed to reach the next fight (and maybe avoid death) and the NPCs will clear the duty for you, short of buying a story skip it really doesn't get any easier than that. But that begs the question "why would you play what is clearly marketed as an 'Action RPG' if you're not able or willing to do the action part of the action RPG?". I don't play competitive shooters because I'm not competitive in that setting and I have no particular interest in becoming competitive, I don't play ranked RTS because (again) I'm not good enough and I know it.

FF14 does not present difficult mechanics in dungeons, it never has and it probably never will.

I'm sorry if I understood something wrong, but are you saying that you cannot enjoy something if you're bad at it, and should instead either git gud or refrain from playing?
What are all those players ranked in bronze doing in said multiplayer games then?

I do agree though that since we have duty support, a case can be made for it, but they are kinda beyond the point since this is about roulettes anyway.

I don't play that much anymore and even I still see level 100 players not using AoE on 5+ mobs. WHM spamming either Cure 1 or Cure 3. People running with/from stack markers. People standing on top on the tank with a buster marker. So yes, there are people that just don't want to learn even the basics of the combat.

It has everything to do with it. Launch any DT dungeon with Trust and don't attack a single time. NPCs are still gonna clear. Then again, how much easier do you want it to be ?

Does this prevent dungeon completion or are we moving the goalposts?

[Deifact]

I consider myself to be a mediocre player, I don't really play difficult content. My only advice really is just to practice. I think everyone has one or two mechanics they struggle with!

It took me a long time to be able to do the six half-room cleaves in The Gilded Araya trial for example, until I practiced it enough I understood how it worked.

If you can enter a dungeon or trial with NPC's you can practice as much as you want, and usually lots of fights use the same mechanics, so once you get it down you'll find it easier if it comes up again in future. Also my performance is garbage if I'm tired, so try coming back to try something again after some rest.

[Valence]

^ This, many times over.

Additionally, I think what we're seeing from these players being walled by 'supposedly easy' mechanics are the consequences of removing too much job difficulties. For players (at least on paper) to stay 'engaged', that missing difficulty had to be moved elsewhere. Encounter design becomes the next logical 'lever' to be pulled further down. But given how they design modern encounters, how far can they really use the same template before everything starts turning from "Stand on X or get slapped" to "Stand on X or explode, Idc"?

If the job also shares that burden of complexity, at the very least SE can once again have the option to tone the encounter difficulty down. This way even if players are bad at playing their fave job, the worst they could do is playing their rotation not optimally, but still able to stay in the fray not getting one-two shot if they make mistake(s).

I'll bounce back on that, because when I do compare with HW/SB runs, but especially HW, we sure had more dungeon failures and struggles but they were due to the battle system that was a lot more demanding (tanking positioning properly, not taking crits from behind, not running out of MP because tank isnt mitigating and/or healer/both not managing MP well and being wasteful, DPS too low running the party resources dry over time, losing aggro, etc), but the thing is, sometimes people died, sure, but it was rarely due to encounter mechanics themselves. No binary "you didn't stand on X so you explode idc". I actually don't remember a lot of actual walls and blockers for people, even though they could struggle a lot more throughout the dungeons comparatively to today.

For instance in comparison, I've stumbled in the Cenote dungeon with a healer that kept dying to all the boss mechanics, all three of them (I think this is the most challenging dungeon of leveling in DT). Always the same mechanics got them. Told them to follow me/us, they tried, sometimes it worked out but sometimes not. They were just too busy healing or dealing with their own things. Most of those mechanics oneshot them, or damaged/vulned them enough that the next one would kill them. Since the tank was barely better, sometimes they also died to things that can actually kill a tank (like knockbacks off the platform, etc). That was one of the few runs that I notice that it actually walled/blocked people with DDR mechanics.

And in their case, nobody can look me in the eye and tell me they were watching netflix, when they were acutely aware that they kept wiping the group again and again, and literally crying in chat and apologizing. Actually amazed they stuck to the end, because when this happens more often than not, people just silently leave the run in shame.

[Arohk]

It took me a long time to be able to do the six half-room cleaves in The Gilded Araya trial for example, until I practiced it enough I understood how it worked.

you just dodge left/right/left/right behind her and ignore the frontal cleave, no thinking required.

[Alice_Rivers]

I'm sorry if I understood something wrong, but are you saying that you cannot enjoy something if you're bad at it, and should instead either git gud or refrain from playing?
What are all those players ranked in bronze doing in said multiplayer games then?

Speaking only for myself, I don't tend to enjoy things I'm bad at, no. I tried playing SGE recently, tried really hard to get any level of good at it and while I could reliably clear content with minimal risk to other players, I hated it, so I stopped and went back to playing things I like and have some measure of skill at. In the context of this thread and my opinion on the matter though, I'm not going to go about complaining that SGE is incompatible with me and has to be changed, I'll just play WHM or AST or SCH instead.

I'm glad you raised the point of bronze ranked players in competitive games, to them I say "if you're having fun, more power to you." I don't mean to exclude people for not being amazing at a game, I'm not the best in savage or Chaotic for example, I've done my share of fails and wiped my share of parties because I wasn't quick enough or I prepositioned too early or in the wrong place or I misjudged the healing requirement - it happens, it's not the games fault, it's not a problem functionally with the game (I have my issues with balance, as can be seen from my post history and I'm quite vocal about that) and the content shouldn't change because I'm bad at it - It should change for a slew of other reasons.

I draw the line at "I am bad at game and not having fun (anymore), so game should change", no, you should change or change your choice of game. Just to reiterate - Being bad at a game is fundamentally okay, particularly if you are still having fun - as a healer main that's all the better for me as it gives me actual gameplay.