Redesigned Test/Practice Mode for harder fights

[Corfish]

Wiping and restarting is part of progression. Don't want to wipe on phases you already cleared? Then don't lose concentration and make silly mistakes. The end game is easy enough, no need to make it easier.

Easy enough solution to your issue - Don't use it.

The game relies on all 8 people being at their peaks, meaning you can wipe even if YOU are spot on. After awhile you just want to practice another Phase so you can join an advanced group. I really, honestly don't understand why some people find a beef with a way to help people improve lol.

[DeathFiend]

How would this work anyway. You need 8 people to progress to the next phase. If someone is struggling in the first phase, how would you get to the next phase to practice it?

[Corfish]

How would this work anyway. You need 8 people to progress to the next phase. If someone is struggling in the first phase, how would you get to the next phase to practice it?

The group would queue up for specific phases I would assume. For those of us who don't run with statics (but don't like to crash Kill Parties), this would be crazy useful. I know I can do phases 1 - 3, but I always seem to get tanks/healer/DPS who mess up this particular part. So I'll queue a Test Trial for Phases 4 and 5. There would be no rewards, you would simply get the practice you need to join a group that isn't always going to fail at similar spots. It's just practice. A lot of people learn by practicing the pieces first, and then putting them all together. Dancing is like this, as is language. By learning the pieces, it's easier to move and connect them together, instead of just trying to force yourself to continuously go on from beginning to end every time.

[skaterger]

Easy enough solution to your issue - Don't use it.

The game relies on all 8 people being at their peaks, meaning you can wipe even if YOU are spot on. After awhile you just want to practice another Phase so you can join an advanced group. I really, honestly don't understand why some people find a beef with a way to help people improve lol.

You wipe and win as a team. If you want to die 1000 times solo without anyone knowing about it, might I suggest dark souls? A raid is a team effort and thus requires everyone to perform reasonably well (not even at their peak). A raid is only as good as it's weakest member. Brutally candid I know, but true nonetheless. Don't understand why that is such a hard concept to grasp.

[Corfish]

Snip

Then why not include a mode to actively practice the parts you can't get down? I just honestly don't see why people are so against an option to help people improve.

"Oh my god, everyone at end game sucks!"
"Oh my god, you want to include a mode to help people improve? You suck!"

Learning parties suck because everyone expects to learn it in one run, you can't learn because everyone bales after a wipe. You join an advanced party because you just want to move on with the fight, one wipe, everyone bales.

A dedicated practice mode would fix some of this.

But no, this isn't hardcore enough for some people so it's a horrible thing to include.

[Kat_Manx]

Haha, this is great. Everyone complains about people being bad at endgame, then they complain when people want a way to get better at endgame.

I had this problem on Titan EX, no matter how many training parties I joined, I never got to see what happens after heart phase even though I PERSONALLY knew the other phases well.

I'd even suggest a dummy mode that you can train solo, but can't win. Like an Allagan Primal Simulator or something, haha.

[skaterger]

snip

Learning parties suck because raids are not designed to be done with a pug. Just because the feature is added to pf does not mean it's the ideal way to do so. That's not to say that it can't be done, but by going down that route people need to accept that there are potential pitfalls like the ones you mentioned.

Another alternative would be going down the LFR route that WoW took and faceroll everything. But even there the loot quality is lower than normal and heroic raids and people would not be happy either.

Edit: To be clear, I'm okay with this being implemented for bcob and ex primals. More players need to be able to progress to end game. I just think it's a terrible idea for current end game i.e. scob

[Dano]

I think people forget that in a fight you might carry over parts/items/adds from the first phase to the last phase, you can't just seperate the phase as if they're their own fights. For example, T5's neuro-links has a important placement requirement throughout the fight, or T6 feeding honey glazed players before you transition into the last phase, or T9 stardust placements before going into golems phase or as far back to even T4 back then when players would leave the first dreadnaught alive and carry it into the next phase for feeding..etc. Wouldn't this have an impact on raid design? as in you can't design the fight as a continous one in order to make this practice skipping phase thing work.

[Crevox]

Too much work and effort for something unneeded. Learn the fight by doing the whole thing. Even if you're struggling only a certain phase, you're still getting better and more practice at the previous phases as you go.

It's just not necessary.

[Kyana]

I like the idea of creating a "taining mode" for endgame content.
The current state is that people watch videos to see the whole fight and get an idea of what's going on in different phases.
Being able to just go in and try for yourself would be a cool thing, especially if you have players who just need more practice to get comfortable with a mechanic.

It would also help if SE increased the number of waymarks we can set, or a "party map" where everyone sees the same map and where people can place markers and draw lines on it to explain tactics.

I think people forget that in a fight you might carry over parts/items/adds from the first phase to the last phase, you can't just seperate the phase as if they're their own fights. For example, T5's neuro-links has a important placement requirement throughout the fight, or T6 feeding honey glazed players before you transition into the last phase, or T9 stardust placements before going into golems phase or as far back to even T4 back then when players would leave the first dreadnaught alive and carry it into the next phase for feeding..etc. Wouldn't this have an impact on raid design? as in you can't design the fight as a continous one in order to make this practice skipping phase thing work.

Good point.
There are 2 ways to approach this.
a. Instead of splitting the fight into phases, let people select specific mechanics to experiment how to handle them.
b. A "Continue" system. Your progress is saved everytime you manage to get to a new phase. If you wipe you can continue from one of the "savepoints".

I'd prefer b.