TL;DR of live letter

[Shurrikhan]

I am not a big fan of boss timers however, whats the difference between, a divebomb marker and divebomb timer? In the interest of fairness, there shouldn't even be a marker at all and every one should look at twintania in this example. The player is still getting a handholding in this respect.

One you use (waste) additional time to set up, and, if depended on, screws over non-PCs. The other still basically comes with the countdown ringing "2"; it just skips the integers before and after it. /shrug

To be honest, if it weren't for the painfulness of spinning that camera upward while in the hole (where 90% of all parties went), I'd be fine with that. But a clipped floor and near completely blocked view makes me really appreciate that the marker's there. And when you're not using the hole strat, it's not like the marker does you any good, anyways. It's often on someone else, out of view, and either way you have to check Twintania's position to get clear. (For which reason I enjoyed it when I wasn't in the hole.)

Long story short, a lot of the hand-holding makes sense. Could you imagine if there was a "Prey" mechanic after a large, (dispellable) infirmity-causing AoE that was just a red line sent out from boss to the target to be affected just once, and the target were crippled in 6 seconds if the damage wasn't shielded? Or a random target nuke with a marker than only appeared for half a second, and required stacking or shields to survive when targets are potentially forced out of a range in which they could just run back into the raid to compensate for chance? Or if Swindler only showed how many players to a circle for 1s? These could all be dealt with with call outs and quick responses, but they leave you largely dependent on predetermined systems and/or voice chat. There is a point where it can be too much. Truly zero hand-holding can sabotage as much fun as it might first seem to provide, because we can then be distracted from the more interesting complicators of a fight just to keep our eyes ever vigilant for the finer signs within smaller mechanics. I don't think there's any chance of SE doing that, whereas they're likely to caution towards the opposite (too much hand-holding), but just for hypotheticals' sake.

[Krissey]

I just think that the amount of hand-holding being asked for here is pretty far out there. I mean, when you have an experienced player call out the raid, that's at least a player that's sharing their experience and helping others with the timing. That's someone that took the time to learn the fight helping others do the same, not the computer reading the files clientside and calling out every skill 10 seconds in advance.

You'd be surprised how many learning parties I've been to where PEOPLE JUST DON'T LEARN. WIPE NUMBER 700 INC PLEASE PAY ATTENTION PLEASE. Nope. Always fail. Group breaks apart. People are dumb. They probably need this amount of hand holding to actually clear anything.

Try number 15 "Dive bombs get in the ditch, dive bomb get in the ditch!" "Huh? What? I wasn't paying attention" WHAM knocked into the fire ring dead. Wipe and restart...

[Kallera]

You'd be surprised how many learning parties I've been to where PEOPLE JUST DON'T LEARN. WIPE NUMBER 700 INC PLEASE PAY ATTENTION PLEASE. Nope. Always fail. Group breaks apart. People are dumb. They probably need this amount of hand holding to actually clear anything.

Try number 15 "Dive bombs get in the ditch, dive bomb get in the ditch!" "Huh? What? I wasn't paying attention" WHAM knocked into the fire ring dead. Wipe and restart...

One might as well play with AI teammates if it means that much to you.

[Krissey]

One might as well play with AI teammates if it means that much to you.

Actually my horrible experience with "learning parties" and party finder in general has lead me to just skip out on content altogether. I just can't suffer the headache. I have not cleared Bismarck EX, Ravana Ex, or even half of the Extreme Primals from 2.x...I have not done Alexander, Sephirot or anything actually other than 4 man dungeons. Why? Because I don't want to waste my time wiping all day, getting nothing done, accruing huge repair bills because people just can't seem to figure out exactly what going on - and sometimes that person is me.

So I think certain addons would help immensely reduce the head ache that comes with learning fights and party finder in general. Then maybe I would actually try and do a lot of content I just won't now.