Easing of old content for new/casual players

[Zirael_Foxfire]

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...short_summary/

Despite the introduction of Echo and other measures, many players are still having problems clearing due to the instant death mechanics in many of these fights. Changes/modifications to these mechanics are now being considered for at least some of these contents.

Being in the situation where I would like to help few casual FC members with Titan EX and Coil T5 clear, but not being able to muster 8 competent and non-raging people to help them with training and win, I had a thought on what and how developers could resolve in regards to especially Twister, Dreadknight and Landslide insta-gibing people on PS3 or not perfectly familiar with the fight and multitasking.

My idea is a Free Company action (24h buff) that makes characters affected take damage instead of instant death (T5) or knockback (Titan Ex)

Company Action v1 would change instant death/knockback to heavy damage, Company action v2 would make that damage lower.

Why Free Company action?
At first I was thinking about a potion you buy from a NPC for gil, then use that potion when you enter fight to obtain the buff.
I also thought, that instead of just buying the buff from NPC for gil, you could craft the potion using drop from the dungeon/fight (for example http://xivdb.com/?item/6163/Crag-Heart) - this way peopleable to clear the fight would be able to help with it also by going in their spare time and farming up items for newbies (either as friends farming for friends or people getting drop to sell it).

But the problem with potion is that it would probably last for only one instance and wear off when you exit, or even wear off when you die. Also, when gathering few players needing the clear, you'd have to make a potion for every single one of them. Or make so that the potion, when used, grants the "Dodge Insta-Gib" buff to the whole party. In short, it might be difficult to implement system wise.

But Free Company Actions - they are in game already, provide 24h time of buff for the whole group of friends, require the whole Free Company to work on ranking up and earning points together.
You could even make so that in order to purchase those "Dodge Insta-Gib" buffs you need to trade in an item obtained from the fight, so that there is still purpose in doing the fight normal way.

A side effect of using the buff is that developers don't have to totally water down and nerf the fight itself, so that you can come back to it later with more experience and confidence and try it out the normal way. Also, new players in few months can still try out the full version of the fight, not the castrated afterglow. When I run Amdapor Keep and reach Demon Wall, I remember good old days of bee paralyse fest and think to myself that these guys with me might not even know they miss out and the battle was more exciting in the past.

I think working on getting buffs could bring Free Company members together, or in case of very small Free Companies, could lead to members teaming up and going in together.

[ClaireAbigail]

I disagree, echo is enough. Heck, echo can be counter productive since when your dps is too high, it messes up to conflags and fireballs. I believe t5 still doesn't count as "old" content. Think about it, if they can't survive divebombs and twisters what makes you think they will survive t6 and above? Do you really want people who can't down t5 in scob? For Titan the thing I would agree upon is maybe to ease it up by increasing titan's cast time by 1 sec or half a second but that's it. They still have to learn the mechanics. For t5, probably instead of instant kill walls maybe like make it do 2k dmg per second but even I think that's pushing it.

[Avarghaladion]

Like Claire said, everyone still needs to learn the mechanics. I'm not saying this to come off as an elitist or a douchebag or anything but once you know the song and dance of fights like ex primals they're dirt simple. That's a big factor in why weekly clear parties usually demand people with experience since you can clear them reliably on the first or second attempt with people who know the fights, regardless of ilvl for the most part.

I think the real issue here is that instanced, mechanics based combat just isn't casual friendly. In contrast, iin FFXI, virtually all content could be done by as many people as you wanted to bring. More casual group? Hell, bring a friggin army and have fun with your friends. Hard core? Low-man ftw. That kind of system also meant that your gear and skill both played very important roles. In XIV, a DPS, for example, who's mediocre at their job but amazing at dodging mechanics is better than the best DPS in the world if they can't dodge. Sadly, this means the only way to make mechanics driven endgame content more "casual friendly" is to increasingly nerf the absolute crap out of it. I think even casuals can agree they'd like a sense of accomplishment when they finish something.

[Zirael_Foxfire]

Like Claire said, everyone still needs to learn the mechanics. I'm not saying this to come off as an elitist or a douchebag or anything but once you know the song and dance of fights like ex primals they're dirt simple. [...]

What planet do you live on? Go join one of those "weekly Titan Ex clears" without your buddies to back you up and let me know how it went.
Do you know how people with 300ms+ lag or on PS3 without SSD 'learn' the fight?

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ers_for_titan/

This! I'm from Australia (but play on American server with friends) and I play on Wi-fi. I can do titan HM so easily now that I know the rotation and am able to move before it happens. But now that I'm in EM, not only do I have to learn a full new rotation so I can dodge ahead of time, but the punishment for any one mistake is death. Makes it so hard to learn! And it's super discouraging with every group I try kicking after someone makes 2 or even 1 "mistake". (I'm on PC with wi-fi just to clarify)

I'm wi-fi on pc. And it's all I got where I am atm. Yep, it'll just take me a while to get the fight down as opposed to being able to react in real time to the mechanics

Yeah I totally get that. But I feel they should at least appreciate that some people cannot afford ideal conditions and maybe give us latency-troubled people a chance (and it's not like I try this fight on high latency days, anything above 1 second delay I don't trouble groups with). I just don't think it should be an exclusive fight for those who have perfect setups. But I do know with enough practice I can predict it all. It's not so much what I "chose", just what I have. (Also I am on PC, not PS3)

Not long ago I was helping out someone with TitanEX and dodged every single weight and landslide for at least four hours. But it means jack sh!t, because the fights in this game are well balanced, sometimes too well, and you need output of 8 normal people to clear the fight and about half of that of overgeared and skilled people.

Echo and any other buffs and nerfs aren't for you or me, because we're done with the content and tossed the gear long ago in favour of i100/110. They're for people who don't have my ping, software, hardware and time to overcome landslide, snakes, twister, dreadknight and so on.

[Avarghaladion]

What planet do you live on? Go join one of those "weekly Titan Ex clears" without your buddies to back you up and let me know how it went.
Do you know how people with 300ms+ lag or on PS3 without SSD 'learn' the fight?

I do appreciate that internet and hardware considerations are present but I don't believe nerfing content to the point that people with a reasonable system and connection find it utterly banal is the solution. I don't think it's fair to expect SE, or other gamers, to be responsible for a lack of good internet in a customer's area, or their choosing a high-latency server for themselves, nor do I believe they should compensate for self-imposed hardware limitations. I do feel for people who can't afford to play on anything but a clunker of a PC but at the same time, if the company nerfs content with players in mind who game at a super low framerate due to their own hardware limitiation it doesn't leave much to excite your average gamer.

I feel that echo is a sufficient crutch. No, it won't let people win Titan who don't otherwise understand the mechanics very well but it does add a little forgiveness in that you can start to eat a few WotL hits if you don't quite make it out of all of them. Echo straight up gives Garuda/Ifrit Ex wins away as long as people sorta know what they're doing.

Edit: I pretty much only pug/df my ex clears. If I'm not pug/dfing it it's to boot camp FC friends. People with bad but stable connections seem alright as long as they don't freeze/stutter but not amount of nerfing will empower someone with -that- bad of a connection to win pretty much anything.

[Zirael_Foxfire]

I do appreciate that internet and hardware considerations are present but I don't believe nerfing content to the point that people with a reasonable system and connection find it utterly banal is the solution.
[...]
I feel that echo is a sufficient crutch.

My argument, and producer's argument is that echo does nothing for someone who physically doesn't see landslide or divebomb marker on their screen in time. If you're on PS3, divebomb marker just straight doesn't get drawn on your screen (albeit, half of the time it does, but half of the time doesn't). You get carried if the rest of the party is overgeared enough even if you know exactly that you need to run up hill when you see the green marker. SE have released the game on PS3 (which I think was a mistake, just like keeping FFXI on PS2 for 12 years was) and they need to constantly take responsibility for that. I've seen them say "PS3 limitations" way too many times when refusing to add some features.

[...] Echo straight up gives Garuda/Ifrit Ex wins away as long as people sorta know what they're doing.

And that was the dev's intention.
As long as you sorta know how to play your job and as long as you sorta know what to do, you have a chance to win.

The fight was added almost exactly 7 months ago. Everyone who knew exactly what to do is long done with the fight. Hell, I'm long done with Levi and Moogle already. Those who aren't bacause they missed the boat or play too casually; can log off or pay someone for win/loot.

I'd rather them have a fighting chance themselves than farming gil and ending up without any sense of achievement.
Landslide, weight of the land, divebomb and twister are not fair mechanic for a casual player. And at this point it is only the casual player that has any real need to play 2.0-2.1 content, so Devs should evaluate that content from those players' perspective and assess the barriers in it from the perspective of those players.

This discussion and announcement that Titan and Ifrit wins won't be needed any more to access Leviatan and Moogle EX started after producer Yoshida went to Australia and tried playing Titan Ex from there. Apparently he sucked at dodging. Who knows, maybe he even got kicked from party after two 'mistakes'. I'm sure when he plays in Japan he has no problem perfectly executing the fight.

[MeganLynn]

What I don't understand is why people that have end-game content on farm even care about SE making old content easy for those that continually fail at it. It in no way affects you, so in my opinion, you don't have the right to complain about SE giving everyone the chance to enjoy all the content. People need to calm down and remember its just a damn game.

[Avarghaladion]

What I don't understand is why people that have end-game content on farm even care about SE making old content easy for those that continually fail at it. It in no way affects you, so in my opinion, you don't have the right to complain about SE giving everyone the chance to enjoy all the content. People need to calm down and remember its just a damn game.

Just because some people only need weekly clears doesn't mean they want the clears handed to them. They're still fun fights, especially if you're pugging them. I feel that echo is a good balance for most people. They can't make content 100% accessible for every handicap and skill level or they'd be neutering essentially everything but SCOB. This would, in turn, force them to add wave after wave of grind-heavy content to add the illusion of depth to the game. I'm totally on board with making things more accessible though:

This discussion and announcement that Titan and Ifrit wins won't be needed any more to access Leviatan and Moogle EX started after producer Yoshida went to Australia and tried playing Titan Ex from there.

and that sort of thing is the perfect way to do it, in concert with echo.

My argument, and producer's argument is that echo does nothing for someone who physically doesn't see landslide or divebomb marker on their screen in time. If you're on PS3, divebomb marker just straight doesn't get drawn on your screen (albeit, half of the time it does, but half of the time doesn't). You get carried if the rest of the party is overgeared enough even if you know exactly that you need to run up hill when you see the green marker. SE have released the game on PS3 (which I think was a mistake, just like keeping FFXI on PS2 for 12 years was) and they need to constantly take responsibility for that. I've seen them say "PS3 limitations" way too many times when refusing to add some features.

I believe they have said that they won't be letting that same mistake happen again in XIV. It was a big factor in my choosing to come back to the game as I really didn't want to suffer through them coddling a decade old console until the end of time again. I can't remember when/where but I'd swear that they've stated they will drop PS3 like the plague if it starts to hold the game back. Personally, I feel like we're getting pretty close to that time already but I'm sure they'll want to extend the life a bit more.

As long as you sorta know how to play your job and as long as you sorta know what to do, you have a chance to win.

The fight was added almost exactly 7 months ago. Everyone who knew exactly what to do is long done with the fight. Hell, I'm long done with Levi and Moogle already. Those who aren't bacause they missed the boat or play too casually; can log off or pay someone for win/loot.

I'd rather them have a fighting chance themselves than farming gil and ending up without any sense of achievement.
Landslide, weight of the land, divebomb and twister are not fair mechanic for a casual player. And at this point it is only the casual player that has any real need to play 2.0-2.1 content, so Devs should evaluate that content from those players' perspective and assess the barriers in it from the perspective of those players.

I disagree that a player would be unable to complete these if they're casual, especially in the case of Titan. Twintania is likely to be a bit more challenging but Titan can be reduced to a memory game that one can augment with irl visual aides if needed and unless you're suffering from PS3-itus or bad connection you do have a lot of time to react to LS/WotL even if you're completely disinclined to remember the rotation and refuse to use an aide memoire. Personally, I don't like that non-randomized mechanics driven combat makes it possible for us to know exactly what's going to happen every time before it happens but it does enable the casual player to perform if they simply write out the attack order.

If SE starts handing people these wins on a silver plater they're not really doing them any favours, especially if they grant full access to extreme fights like you mentioned they will be. I don't think someone who couldn't clear ex primals or twintania with echo would have very much fun in SCOB. Nerfing the only fights that they can feasibly complete, with difficulty, would eliminate any semblance of challenge or accomplishment from the game until waaaayyyy down the line when SCOB got echoed/uber-mainstreamed. Everyone, even casuals, would quickly find it pretty boring and they'd be just as frustrated by the next wall they hit. It's just the nature of the fights in t his game, sadly. There's no way to make them seem challenging without silly mechanical one-shots so people without the time to wipe to the mechanics for hours a day naturally fall behind in the Simon Says style reactionary memory game we play in endgame. I think the main issue here is that it's very difficult to adjust mechanics based combat in the instanced environment and unlike in XI players can't develop casual strategies to adapt to different enemy tactics. We're forced to fight the way the mechanics dictate we fight the enemy. There's no wiggle room. It's a big challenge trying to maintain a semblance of balance in these mechanics driven fights. When it comes to completion when things are nerfed for casuals, the gamer and the content have to meet each other half way otherwise there's no real point to the game anymore.

[Lemon8or]

I think working on getting buffs could bring Free Company members together, or in case of very small Free Companies, could lead to members teaming up and going in together.

And in the case of medium or big Free Companies, people would either constantly fight over which buff to have/not have cause you know some people in the same FC may want to beat it without the help. And then, there's the people that benefit nothing from those buffs (like say they're on SCoB) and want something like back on your feet or reduced wear. Free Company's buff is not where you should look to implement this kind of buff. Echo is enough. It makes it so people would still have to relatively handle mechanics.

[Nicobo]

...
Company Action v1 would change instant death/knockback to heavy damage, Company action v2 would make that damage lower.
...

I think this action (buff) should affect the enemy (like foe), so everyone in the party will have the benefit.