Prog skipping/lying is going wild this tier.

[Chiru_Kai]

I feel that it should be easy enough to register a datapoint: the longest time a player did a certain fight without a damage down or death debuff.
Can be expressed in boss HP percentage, or in fight time.
So it can be "prog point: 20%" or "prog point: 2m10s". Something like that.

This is with the moderate assumption that if you get a damage down or death, you failed the mechanic and that is your prog point.
I know in some cases you will get a damage down or death from other players but this is not meant to be entirely accurate.

With this datapoint per player, per fight, allow party finder groups to set a minimum prog point in the fight. It will exclude people that are before this prog point. They just can't join the party, period.
And when making a PF, you can't put a prog point further than your own.


It won't be a perfect mechanic, but it can weed out a bunch of prog liars right away.

[Kuroka]

6. Yep. Duty Complete adds its own level of toxic and unhealthy, useful as it might be.

Start PF progging? Well you better death march that stuff because if you take a break and the others clear in the meanwhile, you can forget about continuing with them because they'll put up the Duty Complete wall so you're forced to put up "fresh prog" once more to actually get fills and your entire efforts have gone to waste, the way FFXIV mechanics work these days (in WoW this is more tolerable for various reasons).

I recall old fights with perma deaths, was really fun when you could just wipe >_>

Somewhat it got more stressfull overall... you used to have time, but now its like, day two of an ex trail and its 95% "watch guide/look at raidguide" or "prog till xyz"
...personally i barely manage the ex trials due work and whenever i get there i either dont get blind groups or ppl lie on both ends, demanding enrage while failing phase one or say blind and half the party immediately places makers/use macros...

Idk it used to be more chilled...

[Amarande]

I feel that it should be easy enough to register a datapoint: the longest time a player did a certain fight without a damage down or death debuff.
Can be expressed in boss HP percentage, or in fight time.
So it can be "prog point: 20%" or "prog point: 2m10s". Something like that.

This is with the moderate assumption that if you get a damage down or death, you failed the mechanic and that is your prog point.
I know in some cases you will get a damage down or death from other players but this is not meant to be entirely accurate.

This enshrines a mindset of "Play perfectly or else." which further enhances issues already mentioned (performance anxiety is detrimental to the game, especially when you consider MMOs have a playerbase that is getting older, works full time, and frankly, most real world jobs are getting a lot more demanding about pulling your weight ultra-perfectionistically THERE. I've lost count of the number of times our team manager at work goes "WE NEED ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!" The only grades anymore are A+ and F. Do we really want to just be told "Sorry, it's time to go, this game is for the Gary Gamerfuels of the world now"?)

And it doesn't matter if it was other players' fault, we have WoW to show us that this kind of at a glance rating thing will get taken as gospel by enough players to force anyone without a complete static bubble to hide in to go along with it (eg how many people are in Mythic+ dungeon runs they don't want to do, just because they need the oh so sacred SCORE from doing that dungeon at that level to get invited to the stuff they are actually interested in?).

Idk it used to be more chilled...

Yeah. It needs to get back that way.

But these days this perfectionistic hardcore "only your first mistake counts, anything you did after that you didn't actually learn" faction seems to control dang near every watering hole, PUGs are hardly worth the stress anymore, and I'm not sure if anything short of a political grade campaign is going to change things when anyone who pipes up too much can be taken care of at the press of a Ban button ...

[Volgia]

I feel that it should be easy enough to register a datapoint: the longest time a player did a certain fight without a damage down or death debuff.
Can be expressed in boss HP percentage, or in fight time.
So it can be "prog point: 20%" or "prog point: 2m10s". Something like that.

This is with the moderate assumption that if you get a damage down or death, you failed the mechanic and that is your prog point.
I know in some cases you will get a damage down or death from other players but this is not meant to be entirely accurate.

With this datapoint per player, per fight, allow party finder groups to set a minimum prog point in the fight. It will exclude people that are before this prog point. They just can't join the party, period.
And when making a PF, you can't put a prog point further than your own.


It won't be a perfect mechanic, but it can weed out a bunch of prog liars right away.

I can see tons of issues here, from people getting gated despite knowing a fight cuz they got damage downs, to horribly insane gatekeeping and toxicity.

[Taranok]

I recall old fights with perma deaths, was really fun when you could just wipe >_>

BA and DRS are good examples of permadeath fights. They're very fun because the mechanics are overall much more relaxed compared to modern fights.

As for the rest of the discussion, well. If the devs stop designing toxic fights, the playerbase stops being as toxic. It's really that simple. EW+ design is extremely toxic from a fight design perspective. They're making more frustrating, less satisfying content overall without making the difficulty truly meaningful. Worse than that, they're doing it in a way that's killing job design and breaking their own garbage netcode. Reverse course, make simpler fights, make classes more complex at the ceiling, everyone wins.

FFXIV is a better game when the content isn't overtuned and overly precise. And when people can self-select into difficulty via class selection. A case in point is stormblood BLM vs SMN vs RDM. RDM was for more movement and an easier caster experience, SMN for a little of both, BLM for a hard caster experience, mostly because of sitting still and casting. So RDM would do STB very easily, but god kefka would hit BLM like a truck every forsaken, and required very fun optimizing.

If 7.2 is indicative of future fight design, the devs need to reverse course immediately, because this current design philosophy will sink the game.

[Teno]

For a game that prides itself in removing all kinds of points of friction to reduce toxicity and soothe down its social experiences, it sure does manage to turn every other player into a potential hurdle or enemy. It certainly doesn't seem to foster a spirit of "we're in this together" kind of vibe.

The game does remove friction in most aspects, ie pretty much anything that's casual. But this conflicts with savage+ so here we are...

[Kohashi]

BA and DRS are good examples of permadeath fights. They're very fun because the mechanics are overall much more relaxed compared to modern fights.

As for the rest of the discussion, well. If the devs stop designing toxic fights, the playerbase stops being as toxic. It's really that simple. EW+ design is extremely toxic from a fight design perspective. They're making more frustrating, less satisfying content overall without making the difficulty truly meaningful. Worse than that, they're doing it in a way that's killing job design and breaking their own garbage netcode. Reverse course, make simpler fights, make classes more complex at the ceiling, everyone wins.

FFXIV is a better game when the content isn't overtuned and overly precise. And when people can self-select into difficulty via class selection. A case in point is stormblood BLM vs SMN vs RDM. RDM was for more movement and an easier caster experience, SMN for a little of both, BLM for a hard caster experience, mostly because of sitting still and casting. So RDM would do STB very easily, but god kefka would hit BLM like a truck every forsaken, and required very fun optimizing.

If 7.2 is indicative of future fight design, the devs need to reverse course immediately, because this current design philosophy will sink the game.

Not sure I agree with that. Savage should not be an insurmountable wall to climb, but it should still be difficult with tons of personal responsibility. It should feel satisfying to clear and be able to execute the fight. You shouldn't just be carried or expected to be carried.

As for netcode discussion, I feel it's already pointless to beat a dead horse. They had 11 years to get a better engine/code or just adopt/convert to an already available one.

[Taranok]

Not sure I agree with that. Savage should not be an insurmountable wall to climb, but it should still be difficult with tons of personal responsibility. It should feel satisfying to clear and be able to execute the fight. You shouldn't just be carried or expected to be carried.

As for netcode discussion, I feel it's already pointless to beat a dead horse. They had 11 years to get a better engine/code or just adopt/convert to an already available one.

Honestly, if you played or remember stormblood fight design, it's the perfect mix of stress-ish free raiding while still being challenging. As a bonus, you can have absolutely wild recoveries that feel absolutely amazing to pull off in that style of raid design. And you can still do it while having hello world, a mechanic substantially harder than TOP's hello world, and feels much more satisfying even on casters.

[UkcsAlias]

It's really that simple. EW+ design is extremely toxic from a fight design perspective.

I think the biggest hazard was the wow exodus. Getting a huge bunch of players from a game which is already more toxic will cause a long lasting effect acros the entire player base.

Some of these players will stick, and newer players will copy that behaviour over. Which once its learned, is hard to unlearn as you dont notice the downsides yourself (as no one is going to tell you that, because it risk them getting banned instead).

So on that, i think SE should realy find some tools to make it easier to block unwanted players in content. It should be impossible for a fresh player to get into an enrage party (unless its a party deliberately made to carry). Practice, or duty completion are not enough as flags to the party. As a toxic player will always try to go for duty completion in their mind.

And the last problem: people cant/dont read. Even players that can clear the content dont read things like raidplan/hector/yuki etc. So even if you type enrage, there are plenty of people that just dont read and join anyway.

I think the best way to avoid toxicity is by making sure it cant happen. Sure, it sounds harsh to lock out a player from a PF. But its better for both sides, you wont be anoying 7 others, and you get motivated to join a party closer to your level.

Also, for savages the entire model of unlocking and getting loot does need a change. The forced 'in order' restriction is good for just unlocking, but disrupts when you want to help or have a static that is behind. If they are at m5s and close to clearing, while you prog m6s already, you are disrupting their loot drops. If you could go for m6s directly and prog there, and later with the static clear m5s, thats much better. We have a mentor roulette that is targeted at helping (by filling slots), yet in savage we get a model that does the opposite by punishing that same help.

[Jamini]

I think the biggest hazard was the wow exodus.

With respect, the most toxic people I've personally met have been players who were here since HW and StB.

Your milage will vary. In my own experience the oldest players (XI players and ARR players) are extremely team-oriented and positive, HW and StB players tend to be extremely negative and commonly refuse to accept responsibility for wipes, and ShB/EW players tend to just shrug and move on when something goes wrong (and just pull again)

I cannot comment for the community as a whole though.