Yuweyawata Field Station is so wrong

[Mawlzy]

I think you're underestimating how hard a good player team outperforms current dungeon design. Our characters are tuned to be able to take on and complete Ultimates, which require you to bring your classes to the edge of their capabilities. If you bring those same capabilities to bear against a dungeon, you are never under any point in danger.

A harder dungeon will never be interesting enough to queue for its own sake until it reaches Criterion level, and those take significantly more resources - they won't make Crit versions of all the MSQ dungeons. If they did I would certainly give them a shot. Those wouldn't solve the tomestone issue though, since I wouldn't want to do them 5 times a week like Expert roulette asks.

Even if they did that, though, I would do the easy version to progress story. There's competing motivations here. I want the story done because it's generally required to continue moving onwards with the game. I've lost interest with the visual novel contained with FFXIV and I just want to continue down the excellent raiding track. At least personally, content loses a lot of points when it's required for me to do it. A brutal recent example is that they released an excellent new content type - CAR - which I should have loved, but then they released it on Christmas eve for god knows what reason and also gave it pieces that significantly outperformed the healer 730 which had mandatory piety beforehand.

There certainly seems to be a fundamental problem when the top 5% (?) of the player base (ultimate raiders) has to run the same required content as players who have no interest in even attempting extremes.

Maybe the issue is the way this is all wrapped with the gearing system.

[Supersnow845]

There certainly seems to be a fundamental problem when the top 5% (?) of the player base (ultimate raiders) has to run the same required content as players who have no interest in even attempting extremes.

Maybe the issue is the way this is all wrapped with the gearing system.

It’s not the gearing system, the problem is the fact that the modern jobs have almost identical ceilings and floors

Back during the Midas days when Midas was basically ultimate level difficulty in savage on an arbitrary scale of 0-100 a dungeon might only ask 20 out of 100 from you while A8S asked 95 out of 100 from you. The same job could handle both ends because a person who had the skills to put out 95 out of 100 in A8S could still express that level of skill in a dungeon

Now the jobs exist on a far smaller scale as the ceiling has been chopped off and the baseline has been bought up that just randomly throwing out buttons does about 80 out of 100 on the old scale

So the jobs are now hilariously overtuned for casual content because the ceiling is so much closer to the floor the floor has to be good enough to do almost all of an ultimate and the closer ceiling to floor ratio means that it’s far less interesting to optimise content you are overqualified for as you are only getting like 10 arbitrary point improvements rather than 70

[Valence]

Frankly it's still a problem that you can't get more tomes by just clearing your savages and other challenging modes to be honest. They give almost nothing, because SE actually hopes that good players run their low end dungeons 1) to keep queues alive and 2) to eventually carry.
People should be able to earn their gear and currencies with the content that they enjoy doing. I can certainly farm tomestones with my ranked pvp alone (I overcap it more than ten times a week during peek seasons), so why not raiding too? And it's not like I actually NEED any gear in pvp...

[Carin-Eri]

I can see how getting slowed down might be irritating if you're running through the daily roulettes in order to get tomes. Such players are not doing the content because they like it, they do it because it provides something they feel they need, and some like to do it as fast as possible.

But one would hope mentors in particular would relish the chance to mentor when they're grouped with a struggling player.

Honestly I think what a lot of it boils down to is ego investment in a video game. If one's self-worth is determined by proficiency in FFXIV PvE, the effect is magnified by telling less-skilled people how incredibly bad they are.

Agreed.

I'll admit, my goal is usually just to make sure I do my best to pull my weight. And maybe I fail at that sometimes - but it isn't for lack of trying.

Heck - I queued Trial Roulette this morning and 'The Final Day' popped. Was playing as Sage and worked my butt off healing and shielding the team and only 'died' once due to being just a little too slow avoiding Endsinger's planet hurling antics!.
And when the instance was completed both myself and the Scholar were thanked for "great healing" and I, for once, got this:

Which I guess isn't really a big deal - but I'll admit, it did actually mean quite a lot to me!

[Sorabaka]

Your ability to be both insulting and wrong within a single, badly-punctuated declarative sentence is phenomenal.

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 used to play a game for a living. Literally my only source of income. I was much better at it than most people who played. At no point did I assume that those less skilled than me were stupid or lazy.

Excuse me, but if you need a guide for a dungeon at lvl 100, then you've been doing something very very wrong for the past 400 hours you spent reaching that point.

I'm playing since ARR, and i've been very very casual until Shadowbringers. And even then i still put some effort into doing content past dungeons and alliance raid. Was it difficult for me? Yes, it was. Was i complaining because it's difficult? No. Because if you have time to complain, you better spend it on learning the damn fight.

No mechanic in dungeons is difficult in this game. You also have literally zero consequences for fucking up the mechanic except dying. And even then most mechanics in dungeon don't kill you and you can eat 3 or 4 of them until you die.

Also if you are struggling with dungeon-level mechanics after watching guides, tooltips and paying attention to cast bars, then i'm sorry, but you're just outright stupid, or you didn't even try to understand and learn in the first place.

I'll ask you for who knows which time in this thread : what damn difficulty do you want for this game? Do you want to face tank everything and press one button to win? Then there's no point in even making the damn battle content.

Also it's always western players who complain, always. The biggest problems JP complain about are minor UI issues and skill animations they don't like. You know why? Because they actually play the damn game. And you can say all you want about "nolifers" or anything, but everybody knows JP work culture, they have almost no time to play. And they still clear more content than any western DC. While having less players, btw.

The current dungeon difficulty is great. It doesn't need to be harder, but also SE shouldn't make them easier. Alliance Raids i'd personally prefer to be just a little bit more difficult.

[Carin-Eri]

Excuse me, but if you need a guide for a dungeon at lvl 100, then you've been doing something very very wrong for the past 400 hours you spent reaching that point.

I'm playing since ARR, and i've been very very casual until Shadowbringers. And even then i still put some effort into doing content past dungeons and alliance raid. Was it difficult for me? Yes, it was. Was i complaining because it's difficult? No. Because if you have time to complain, you better spend it on learning the damn fight.

No mechanic in dungeons is difficult in this game. You also have literally zero consequences for fucking up the mechanic except dying. And even then most mechanics in dungeon don't kill you and you can eat 3 or 4 of them until you die.

Also if you are struggling with dungeon-level mechanics after watching guides, tooltips and paying attention to cast bars, then i'm sorry, but you're just outright stupid, or you didn't even try to understand and learn in the first place.

I'll ask you for who knows which time in this thread : what damn difficulty do you want for this game? Do you want to face tank everything and press one button to win? Then there's no point in even making the damn battle content.

Also it's always western players who complain, always. The biggest problems JP complain about are minor UI issues and skill animations they don't like. You know why? Because they actually play the damn game. And you can say all you want about "nolifers" or anything, but everybody knows JP work culture, they have almost no time to play. And they still clear more content than any western DC. While having less players, btw.

The current dungeon difficulty is great. It doesn't need to be harder, but also SE shouldn't make them easier. Alliance Raids i'd personally prefer to be just a little bit more difficult.

I get the distinct impression that you didn't read most of this thread and instead focused on the one post you replied to.

[Sorabaka]

I get the distinct impression that you didn't read most of this thread and instead focused on the one post you replied to.

I did read the first 5 pages and the dude just ignores every argument thrown back at him.

[Sorabaka]

There certainly seems to be a fundamental problem when the top 5% (?) of the player base (ultimate raiders) has to run the same required content as players who have no interest in even attempting extremes.

Maybe the issue is the way this is all wrapped with the gearing system.

That i kinda agree with. I wish they gave more tomes from savage weeklies. 100 from each for example, and then we'd have to get only 50 more which is easily doable by doing something quick and easy.

Gearing system is another issue worthy of its own topic...

[Sorabaka]

We are then told that players who don't reach some arbitrary gaming standard should quit the game.

You know what? At this point, yes, you should. Let's take Dark Souls for example. If you suck at it so much you can't beat prologue boss, you only have two choices : persevere and eventually learn it well enough to kill it or just delete the game. And it's true for every game, not only for Souls. Every game have some sort of basic level you should reach to play it comfortably. And it doesn't mean that every game should be designed for those who can't reach even that floor level.

I spent 40 hours on my first playthrough of Lies of P. I was frustrated and angry, but still persevered and finished it eventually. Since then i cleared the game a dozen more times and SURPRISE, it suddenly isn't that hard anymore. And if i fail somewhere, it's usually my fault, i'm not getting angry and screaming that the game is shit and unfair.
And before you say that it's stupid to compare souls-like with MMO, no, it's not. Because XIV had the same design philosophy since ARR. If you fail the mechanic, you analyze what happened, formulate potential solution and try again. And at some point any person SHOULD be able to learn how it freaking works.

If you make the game difficulty cater to the lowest possible skill level, everybody gonna hate it. Including the people with lowest possible skill level. Because it will be boring. And your solution will not work, because high-skilled players will run this easy mode too, making the normal one obsolete, unless it will offer more rewards. And SE will never do that, because then you'll complain that this GOD TIER SKILL PLAYERS get more than you. Also the XIV team is already struggling with content, they don't need more workload for something like this.

[Valence]

The usual analogies with dark souls or any solo game are moot by definition of said solo games not condensing dozens of different kinds of content attracting dozens of different kinds of players. Also you read very angry for some reason?
I also think that people tend to mix up battle content difficulty and encounter mechanical difficulty, the former which has been made totally irrelevant by job design and battle systems, and the latter still however, being at least a minimum relevant even in dungeons.