[Feedback] We need a solution to help players improve... Simple Idea.

[Phoenicia]

FF14s difficulty spike is ridiculous.
...
We need a middle ground! And motivate players to improve so they can beat said middle ground difficulty instances.

While you're right as to why people are bad. SE can't really back track and up-tune that content sadly. The best we can hope for is in upcoming dungeons and through the leveling experience in 4.0, SE raises the line up a bit. Up enough that 4 average players can clear, a "good" player can carry and make up for a below average one, but an average party can't carry a below average player. Then you know the line is set "just right".

Actually The Vault was a good instance. I wish more were that "difficulty".

[OmegaStrongtan]

Actually The Vault was a good instance. I wish more were that "difficulty".

Why not have some special 'Ex' dungeon to act as gate for the new primal? For Thordan it would have been the Vault EX. Just up the numbers, reduce trash and add new mechanics to Bosses and big adds like ponies and Knights. Bonus points if said mechanics give you a clue about what awaits you in Thordan EX.
If they feel super generous the can even add ilvl 195 versions of Vault gear on weekly lockout so you are encouraged to come back.
BÄM fun content with 'little' work from Dev side.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

Fooling me into thinking there is "more content" by recycling older content? why not? SE proved to be actually good at this. Nice idea. (I'm not sarcastic btw).

But there is also this point, SE stopped gating newer content by older content. There was a time when you had to kill every ex primal in order to get to the new ones. Now Thordan Ex needs you to just clear the story and spend more than 5 weeks gearing a certain job.... Or 3 weeks + some no-longer-on-a-lockout Alexander Normal pieces.

I understand that it's business and that there is a bar SE needs to keep relatively low to keep the average Joe interested in their game. But that bar has to be near a middle ground so the Above-average Joe stays interested. On my server, people I NEVER expected to stop playing dropped out of the radar after clearing A4S. The top FCs stopped raiding after they got their weapons... and their alt weapons... Now they're left with nothing to do.

thing is i do always strive to improve, i just don't use numbers. I try use my skills, skillfully. Lancer has a debuff of slow, i try to plant it on all the mobs at start. which helps tank get hit less.
as a monk i tried to put both my dots on all mobs this helps mobs get base damage.

and pheo, how are you giving advice?? are you asking like "hey want some advice?" or are you just giving out the advice?

oit does matter cuz some ppl will think its rude to be force fed advice. Some people like to figure out stuff on their own.

for me i prefer to be asked if i want advice, i much more prefer open communication then any thing.

Well, usually, I subtly do it. Sometimes, I'm more "direct". In the scenarios in my earlier posts, I'll quote:

The BLM case, "Hey <name>, have you tried using Fire instead of Fire 2 when fighting 2 targets? you last longer in Astral Fire, casts 5 fire 1s instead of 3 fire 2s, and you also trigger Firestarter this way. Will probably increase your overall encounter DPS." Then I got the "You don't tell me how to live my live, you're not my real dad!" reply.

In the tank case: "Nice aggro and CD usage mate. But the mobs spin a little bit more than necessary making the melee miss positionals which causes us to lose some DPS." (It was a 2 melee party btw, me as MNK and a DRG). "I have to dodge AoE, you know?" said the tank. I said: "Well, do you mind stepping back as soon as the AoE marker disappears and before the animation ends, you avoid the damage but the mobs and boss don't move." Then the "what do you know? You're not the tank!" reply.

In the first case I was providing advice without being rude. In the latter I gave compliments of what he's doing right before pointing out what was not done right and how it could be fixed. In neither case did I belittle or "harass" the 'target'.

Most times, I just ask "Would you like some advice to improve so and so?" or something among those lines. With friends and acquaintances, I get positive reactions, but that is not the general populace reactions.

Thing about not using numbers to improve your skills, how do you know you're doing better then? I do not claim you're not good. You probably are. Since you "care enough", you should know what you're doing. But how do you measure how well you improved? I'm interested for personal gain as well. ^^

Yes, at lower levels you can get away with applying the slow on everything. I do not mean to criticize you at all. On the contrary, I want to be objective with you and think about this from both perspectives, yours as a DPS, the tank and healer's perspectives. If I'm looking at this wrong, let me know so I can also improve on myself.

So let's think about this together, on 4 targets that 320 TP you just unloaded on "lower damage" when your main role is doing damage. It is nice that you want the tank to take less damage by slowing the mobs, but the tank can do just the same by just using the short cooldown (or no CD in the last case) Rampart/Shadowskin/Inner beast. You can add 120 more TP total to apply a whole lot more damage in the same amount of GCDs (4) which causes the mobs to die faster (probably within the duration of Rampart) and have the tank take less damage overall. It's not complex math either, just basic 160 potency 4 times on 4 targets (totalling 2,560 potency) is better than 120 once on per targets (totalling 480). Also mobs dying in 20 seconds instead of 30. Also when the tank uses Rampart, he gets an instant 20% less damage over 20 seconds. Instead of 1 target doing 20% less damage (by being slower) while the 3 others still doing full damage, then 2.5s later, the next one, then 2.5s later you have 3 mobs doing less, then 2.5s later you have 4 mobs doing less damage. Only to find out that 10 seconds later the first mob is doing full damage again. And due to diminishing returns on debuffs, reapplying the slow would have less benefits per TP spent.

All the while, being with an arcanist based job at 50, Sacred Soil does a flat instant AoE damage reduction of 10%, and Shadowflare is a 250 potency AoE DoT that also slows all targets by 5% while spending 1 cast affective unlimited number of mobs as long as they are in the circle. Yes it's not 20%, but considering the resource and time cost vs the DPS gain/loss? It is "better optimized" to leave the AoE slow to the SMN/SCH and focus on Heavy Thrust > Ring of Thorns x1 > Dragonfire Dive > Doomspike spam.

Not to mention as I said earlier, it falls mainly on the tank to reduce the damage they take. Helping the others do their job is great and all! Yes, it is also team play and good thinking, but only if it's not detrimental to your performance. Remember the SMN casting Physic vs SCH casting DoTs example in my first post?

[Delmontyb]

Why not have some special 'Ex' dungeon to act as gate for the new primal? For Thordan it would have been the Vault EX. Just up the numbers, reduce trash and add new mechanics to Bosses and big adds like ponies and Knights. Bonus points if said mechanics give you a clue about what awaits you in Thordan EX.
If they feel super generous the can even add ilvl 195 versions of Vault gear on weekly lockout so you are encouraged to come back.
BÄM fun content with 'little' work from Dev side.

I like this idea, I don't like how they call "hard mode" dungeons "hard" as they are different dungeons all together, but bumping up the difficultly of the dungeons as they exist now would be awesome. Anyway, that's just IMO. I'd also like more 8 man dungeons, but that's just me and a topic for another day.