Garuda Normal Needs a nerf

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Anything is "hard" when you have new people that don't know anything about it. I attempted to heal for a SMN friend when he first got there. As it turns out, the other DPS, a NIN, was also new. I explained a few things, but there were things I naturally forgot with time. Needless to say, we wiped. Tank gets the Bunched Panties debuff, mouths off and leaves. We abandon. I switch to tank. Now the healer's new. I explain a few things, including what I forgot, we struggle a bit, I even made a mistake or two, but we cleared it.

Why? How? Because I - the experienced player - was patient enough to understand they're still leveling. I don't expect lv.50 badassery in a lv.44 instance, and certainly not from lv.44s. I expect a struggle, I expect mistakes, but if the baby birds are willing to listen and have the heart to give it their all, I expect to see them fly when it's all said and done.

I approach the game with a coach/sportsman like mentality (and sadly earned myself "The Coach/Endgame Sensei" as nicknames, lol), and while I understand I'm NEVER obligated to teach anyone anything, I do consider this: If someone new sucks and I don't even offer advice, then I am partially further reason they may continue to suck. . . Now multiply that number by a few hundred players, and the skill level of the community quickly drops.

We don't need nerfs to difficult content. We need to rise to the challenges, both new players and experienced ones. Only ways to do that is through patience, perseverence, communication, and cooperation. If you can't manage that, then MMOs might not be the right genre for you.

[DreadRabbit]

Honestly that's a problem with the community more than it is a problem with the game.

It is a difficult fight for first timers. I know when I went to clear it for the first time, even knowing what we were supposed to do, it took me and my friends a couple of tries to clear it. Watching a video only does so much. You have to actually physically practice.

So that being said...people clearing it for the first time need to speak up and admit it's their first time doing anything, and other people in the party need to be patient enough to spit out the key elements of a fight instead of blazing in head first without answering (not saying you and your party did that, but this is the main culprit as to why fights are so hard).

If they can't get used to normal Garuda then they'll cry at Ravana .-.

[Whiteroom]

Oh my, and here I thought this was one of those sarcastic joke threads. Thanks for the laugh though.

[Gunspec]

I'm pretty sure that everyone posting in this thread would quit the low level roulette duty after the first wipe. Definitely by the third wipe.

The reason Steps of Faith was nerfed wasn't because it was "too difficult", but due to a sizable population of players who were bad at playing the game causing wipe after wipe. You'd get steps of faith, see the bad players in the group, and drop group immediately. They nerfed it because duty finder groups never stayed together.

"Bad players don't deserve to progress" kind of hurts SE's business model, since expansion content requires clearing Steps of Faith, same as it requires clearing Garuda normal. They always need to make sure normal story content is beatable in some form, or they will lose customers. Bad dps, mechanic failing, poor playing customers... but customers none the less.

I imagine Garuda normal might be a nightmare right now. I mean, a majority of people starting 2.0 right now are probably casual players, and there will be a sizable percentage of them that don't use abilities properly, don't listen to mechanics, and generally spend more time on the floor than on their feet. And what difference does it matter to US if they nerf it? I haven't been in that duty in almost 2 years.

That being said, unsynced duties are your friend. Anyone having trouble with this sort of thing can probably find a level 60 or two who are willing to smash Garuda for laughs.

[DreadRabbit]

snip

While I agree completely with this post, at the same time newcomers can be just as bad when it comes to ragequitting if you don't get it right on the first try or two. They immediately think the group sucks, leave, try again since they have to get the clear. You're going to have those people no matter how easy or difficult you make the content. So once again, it's a community problem, not a game problem.

And how easy do you make stuff until it's just plain boring even for the new players? Half of the problem with the game right now is that it goes from easy to incredibly difficult with very little "medium" difficulty in between. The MSQ so far has done a great job in slowly phasing in encounters that require more mechanics.

What would be better is if they didn't make the storyline required for people not interested in fighting.

[Gunspec]

And how easy do you make stuff until it's just plain boring even for the new players?

I remember when there were some issues in dungeons in WoW several years back. It was casual content, but they kept flopping between two mentalities. The first was that one bad player can kill the group. The second is that one good player can save the group.

An example of the two mentalities would be a boss with an add that spawns that MUST die quickly, or it will trigger an attack that wipes the group.

In the first mentality, the add has so much health that all party members need to attack the add, or the group will die. Even one unaware player failing to attack the target will damn the group. In the second mentality, a single skilled dps focusing all of his damage on the add will be enough to kill it.

For most content outside of raid, FFXIV follows the second mentality. There is room for player error in most duties to accommodate the one bad player without punishing the rest of the group, and I think that is really all the MSQ content requires. One skilled dps can kill the bird add in Keeper of the Lake, a dps can take a dirt nap during Icecloak without killing the group, you can clear praetorium with a few people missing, Haukke manor is easy as long as one person can kill adds and/or turn off lamps quickly, and one dps can kill the tail in toto-rak before the others even notice it.

It's a good strategy to follow for mandatory story content. Sure, it doesn't satisfy certain players, but they've got weekly raids to geek out about.

Is this a serious topic?

All forms of garuda are ridiculously easy...

OP has repeatedly been stuck with Garuda normal as his daily low level roulette. His repeated RECENT experience is that everyone is wiping over and over, with no chance of success, and he has to consider wiping some more OR eating a 30 minute queue lock-out if he abandons.

Go single-handedly beat Garuda normal with three dead-weight players, and THEN tell OP he needs to get gud.

[DreadRabbit]

snip

And that kind of flexibility isn't bad at all. I'm just saying even with nerfs people still fail Steps simply because they refuse to communicate. Not because it's too hard. I went in to clear it after the nerf. My group wiped twice. Purely because the two people who said they would control the tethers flat out didn't. Either they forgot, couldn't find it, were preoccupied/etc. and didn't inform the rest of the party. At max we'd get one tether, people would tell me to shoot, only for me to remind them "it will miss unless we get the second tether and you all will eat damage if I do *proceeds to run back down to continue DPS-ing*." The third time we cleared it purely because something aligned right and the dragon got nailed by explosions properly so we could just DPS him down in the final stretch.


A lot of people come to this game because they have played the single player FF titles. Which is the exact same thing: there's a set difficulty, there's bosses. Said bosses have mechanics. Figure those mechanics out to win. In those games the bosses don't get nerfs (for the most part). They stay exactly the same till you figure out what you're doing wrong. Sometimes people will look up a guide. Others will go back and grind levels so they can zerg through the fight. Nothing wrong with either strategy.

The only difference coming into FF14 is now instead of controlling AI you're dealing with other people. I'm all for making stuff open to everyone but players have to be willing to communicate. If you can't you shouldn't play an MMO.

Edit: I liked your response to me, btw I agree, nothing in the MSQ should be raid level hard. But...where does the fault lie in the game versus the players trying to play, ya know?

[zcrash970]

Go single-handedly beat Garuda normal with three dead-weight players, and THEN tell OP he needs to get gud.

Back in the first month of 2.0, I completed the story way before my FC. I helped almost every FC member clear Garuda and most of the members are below average or average at best and they usually beat it in 1 or 2 pulls

The OP needs to git good...

[luciferbelmont]

this makes me happy that heavensward is gated

[Nestama]

Serious question for those having trouble with Garuda Normal... have you tried zooming your camera all the way out?

So an Australian who faces latency issues every day .. Practice can make anyone better so long as they learn from the experience.

As did I. Imagine being an Australian playing on the PS3 back in 2.0 when latency issues were a lot worse (there was a three second delay on character positions, I think?). I saw Titan HM to be almost impossible (since you needed to be out of the AoE before it appeared, otherwise it was too late) and joining a Titan party wasn't easy... I did complain for a bit, but then I decided to actually try the fight again and learn every single move he did. Once I got the pattern down, even an Australian playing on a PS3 without an SSD could beat him (I refused to do Titan EX until I got a PS4, though).

That aside, 2.1 did fix the latency issues and made Titan HM easier to deal with.