Keeping Content Hard and Helping People Learn

[K8erAide]

As someone who picked the game up before at Stormblood and then dropped it for awhile for various reasons and then came back in the middle of Endwalker seeing the changes made to the game was a little startling. I can honestly say the state of the game at the moment is lack luster to say the least. Changing the content to make it easier isn't the answer.

I am the trash tier player. I acknowledge this. I am the person you tell to "git gud scrub". I am the person the healer perpetually has to heal and curses under their breath repeatedly. I have had more concussions than any pro league anywhere would allow. Even the military doesn't want me back and they are the one who broke me. I have the reflexes of the 80 yr old person. I know this. I understand having anxiety or feeling the pressure to perform and not mess up in the dungeon in front of people.

The fix I have to this. A learner badge similar to like a sprout it just sits next to our names in dungeons that we can toggle on and off if we like and once we feel confident with the content. That way people understand the others are still learning the new and difficult content and give them grace or if they don't have the patience for it they can drop and someone else can take their place.

I usually have a small macro explaining that I suck and I am trying to learn the hard content. It's not anyone else's problem that I am a handicap. If they don't want to be in the party they leave and if the people are nice enough to stay, great!

The content shouldn't be dumbed down and turned into soggy milk toast for people because they don't want to try or because they are scared to try. I also know that there needs to space for people like myself that have limitations and need time to "git gud" with out having to out of their way their way to do party finder or grind with npcs or actively apologize in advance.

[Altina_Orion]

It you ever want to "git gud scrub", I'm happy to teach. I promise things are not as bad as they seem. Feel free to message me any time in game or message aorion on discord.

That said, super based take.

[Carighan]

I'll be honest, recently helping people re-run old content in unsync, if you think "stuff got dumbed down" you really need to re-evaluate your own bias in that.

Ignoring the whole HP/damage issue for a second, it's crazy how slow in particular fights used to be. Even just last expansion. There was sooooo much time to react to everything compared to the raid fights we got now where you are constantly handling the next element of the next mechanic with maybe 2-3 seconds in-between. Compared to stuff like the 20+ seconds of nothing in many fights even just in Endwalker.

The individual mechanics also usually erred much easier, except for some of them the original discovery (so tipping my hat to the blind runners here, definitely). We just re-did P8S, and High Concept - still the best mechanic they ever thought up - is quite simple due to how slow it is, how you got no boss to focus on, and how it is already solved for you. I dread having to be the one to solve it, sure, but with a raidplan or video it's far easier to pull off than current mechanics such as Disco Infernal or even the thunderstorm during M6S, both of which leave you extremely little time for anything.

There are exceptions on both ends, of course. Some older mechanics are difficult, though maybe not for the right reason. Natural Alignment and it's often pixel-decided clear-vs-wipe is one such bad-type-of-difficulty example. All of P3S is another. But there's also cool more difficult mechanics, like P5S' movement or P12S LC and Para 3, again just to name Endwalker. There's also of course easy mechanics in the current fights. But overall? Complex as some old mechanics might have been, the sheer lack of speed compared to Dawntrail is really something.

I mean don't get me wrong, I agree things should not be dumbed down, but I really don't feel they have, quite the opposite in fact, Dawntrail raids are fantastic and show a great direction, same for it's Extremes. M8S excluded of course, which is so aggressively mediocre that it almost feels like mockery.

[AmiableApkallu]

Encounters are "dumbed down" when they're reduced to a fixed script, proceeding along a fixed timeline, with perfunctory variations between runs.

Having mechanics thrown at you more quickly is certainly a form of difficulty, but that doesn't substantively change the intellectual challenge provided by an encounter. It just means you have to crank up the speed of your internal auto-pilot, or have twitchier reflexes.

Not-dumb encounters would entail there being significant amounts of on-the-fly decision making.

[Alice_Rivers]

I would prefer slower mechanics that involve thought rather than what we seem to be getting.

[K8erAide]

Hey thanks! I put a lot of thought into it! They have so many other little icons you can turn on and off next to names, why not one more? I appreciate the help offer to "git gud" as well.

[Valence]

I think it's a good idea.
I also have a wishful thought that maybe people need to learn that players don't necessarily want to "learn" but to "have fun" in casual content. I feel that the distinction is extremely important.

[Altina_Orion]

I think it's a good idea.
I also have a wishful thought that maybe people need to learn that players don't necessarily want to "learn" but to "have fun" in casual content. I feel that the distinction is extremely important.

I don't know how I feel about this one. It is an online game so there really is an acceptable level you need to play that some people truly don't care to play at. I see people with like 40% ABC, vipers with less emnity than the healer, etc. When you do group content and you are sandbagging, you're wasting some else's time who many not have fun spending 25 minutes in their roulette. In group content you should always try your best. Your best doesn't have to be good or perfect, but it should be your best. If you try your best, you will almost certainly improve.

TLDR: Playing bad ok, as long as you are trying your best. Learning is encouraged though, it doesnt just benefit you.

[Valence]

Then who defines that acceptable level?

The words people choose for this are very telling, and they do matter.

[Mawlzy]

I don't know how I feel about this one. It is an online game so there really is an acceptable level you need to play that some people truly don't care to play at. I see people with like 40% ABC, vipers with less emnity than the healer, etc. When you do group content and you are sandbagging, you're wasting some else's time who many not have fun spending 25 minutes in their roulette. In group content you should always try your best. Your best doesn't have to be good or perfect, but it should be your best. If you try your best, you will almost certainly improve.

TLDR: Playing bad ok, as long as you are trying your best. Learning is encouraged though, it doesnt just benefit you.

I think part of the problem we're facing is that a single mechanic now dominates fights: responding rapidly to (often obscure) tells and moving to the safe spot.

Anyone playing a game will instinctively try to resolve that mechanic. In that sense they are trying their best. But it's also a mechanic that is difficult for a subset of players (for multiple reasons).

Many "good" players seem genuinely baffled by how "bad" some others are in PvE in this game. I'm convinced it mostly stems from this DDR trend.

You can't teach speed.

And the side effect is a "good" player will see a "bad" one who is barely casting and assume they're just goofing off, whereas in fact that player is completely overwhelmed by simply avoiding the bad.