Would you like an in-game parser?

[Dzian]

This is exaggerating again. Sus is not faceroll. All it takes is one DPS to misplace a lighting marker and you need to hope your healers are on the ball, or its a wipe. It's a pretty strict pattern that can be recovered from easier than other fights, but its not faceroll. You're dialing difficulty up..

That's exactly why Susan ex is face roll easy. Because that lightning marker is an incredibly easy mechanic to do. There's no precision required no difficulty involved it's literally just step across the platform. It doesn't even matter where on the other side you stand.

It only ever happens to one player at a time so you don't even need to worry about over lapping with other players. The only way you can really get that mechanic wrong is if your eyes are closed and don't see the big marker above your head. Or you just deliberately ignore it.

You really can't get much simpler mechanics than that.

[akaneakki]

This is exaggerating again. Sus is not faceroll. All it takes is one DPS to misplace a lighting marker

What? Even my friends who barely do extremes or raids said its faceroll. C'mon, did you seriously say that susano is NOT faceroll because of one of the easiest mechanics in the game?????????? LIke lighting placement is extremely easy, explain why it's hard.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The raiding crowd said Zurvan EX was easy to skip soar so long as you knew a basic opener. They tend to be weirdly two faced-apparently raids are easy yet no one can do them.

Skilled people underrate their talent's factor in doing something.

Perhaps the playerbase can't do a basic opener because the game does absolutely nothing to explain what those are and never actually encourages you to experiment through trial and error. Zurvan Normal is so laughably easy, many casual players stepped into the Extreme version thinking it wouldn't be too much harder and they can just do what they always did since it worked in all the dungeon and normal modes. Therein lies the problem: spamming Full Thrust or being an Ice mage shouldn't work yet it will in dungeons.

Are we born with said talent? Because I distinctly recall making silly mistakes back when I first started EX Primals with Nidhogg. I even thought Sophia was harder when I first stepped in. As I learned and bettered myself through harder content, I, in turn, became a better player. Why can't someone else?

Yes, you can ignore them. The issue with ultimate is not the casuals, but that virtually none of the raiders will clear it themselves. It also was just bad timing in that it was the only thing released in a patch during a content drought. The same "it's a waste" applied to bard songs, too.

Only a fool ignores valuable criticism. Now that doesn't mean you take raider's advice wholesale since, yes, there needs to exist casual content and whatnot. But only listen to the casual playerbase and you'll inevitably lose your raiders. Sure, only 7% have cleared Neo, however the trickle down effect means you lose all the guide makers, crafted gear loses value and etc.

This is exaggerating again. Sus is not faceroll. All it takes is one DPS to misplace a lighting marker and you need to hope your healers are on the ball, or its a wipe. It's a pretty strict pattern that can be recovered from easier than other fights, but its not faceroll. You're dialing difficulty up. And in general, the ex and savage stuff tends to be hard enough to exclude a bunch of players, but with a pretty clear limit now. Gordias and Ultimate for 99% of them, and the other in a sliding scale down. Making everything hard doesn't change this, it just ends up creating what happened in Gordias; a lot of people just opt out.

No, it isn't.

Susano and Lahskmi are by far the two easiest EX Primals this game has ever released. The moment 320 gear became available—in the same patch cycle no less—parties were already running 5-6 DPS. They couldn't even last through 4.0 before getting rolled over. Hell, even 310 Verity gear was enough to push multiple skips. Lakshmi, you can ignore practically everything she does with properly timed Vrill. One very predictable pattern from Susano does not make him a difficult encounter. He simply asked you to have a pulse, which frankly, the normal mode should have done. That's what we're arguing against. You call them a chore yet I adored The Royal Menagerie. Shocking, isn't it? I, a raider with multiple Neo clears, liked an "easy" fight. It's almost like I can appreciate good design when it does come around. Shinryu Normal was a good fight for where it sat, Susano, Lakshmi and Alte Roite Savage (because I will never not mock that fight) aren't.

And for reference sake. Multiple casual groups streaming Susano and Lakshmi on either Twitch or later uploading it to Youtube were amazed they one-shot them. These are players who have typically taken a few hours on EXs yet one-shot the initial two in Stormblood. I wonder how. :thinking:

[HyoMinPark]

The raiding crowd said Zurvan EX was easy to skip soar so long as you knew a basic opener. They tend to be weirdly two faced-apparently raids are easy yet no one can do them.

Skilled people underrate their talent's factor in doing something.

An anecdote, I know, but I wasn’t actively raiding at the time I was farming Zurvan. I did not find his fight challenging. And I would have hardly called myself a skilled BRD at the time; even now, I’m more on the average side.

In terms of raids, the difficulty has gotten easier; I’ve never said that they are “easy” the way I say dungeons are easy (well, except for maybe Alte Roite...he’s debatable, in my personal opinion). And while I did not raid until the very end of Creator (after the weekly lockouts had been removed, and I never did clear A12S until after SB came out, and that was an unsynced clear), the shift can be seen in clear rates. Gordias was impossible to clear without gear, it took 5 weeks for a clear (of course, it was poorly tested and tuned). Midas took 2 weeks. Creator took ~34 hours. Neo was downed in ~20.

The current state of Savage is that it is easier than it used to be, and I think that’s probably a combination of the developers wanting to avoid a repeat of Gordias (which they openly admitted was so hard to clear due to their own poor tuning/testing of the content, not because it was overly difficult in terms of crazy mechanics, with probably the exception of Living Liquid) and because they would like to make raiding and Savage more accessible to more players—hence why Creator was easier than Midas, which a lot of raiders deem the “perfect difficulty” in terms of raiding content. But, accessibility does not always have to correlate with ease of content. Things can be accessible without being super easy.

Yes, you can ignore them. The issue with ultimate is not the casuals, but that virtually none of the raiders will clear it themselves. It also was just bad timing in that it was the only thing released in a patch during a content drought. The same "it's a waste" applied to bard songs, too.

No, you cannot just ignore a portion of your playerbase when trying to decide how to tune and balance content. Especially when it comes to building up to harder tiers because the casual playerbase aren’t doing those, so how can they offer insight into balancing it (other than just saying “nerf it so I can do it”)? And while the clear rate of Ultimate is very very low (0.02% as of LuckyBancho’s last census), there are still clears. I think this release of Ultimate will help developers in developing future Ultimate content (which they have already hinted that they will do), because they are getting feedback from players, even if it’s a small percentage. The casual playerbase offered nothing in terms of constructive criticism about the fight, where as some of the people who have been in there or who have cleared have.

More and more people are getting into Extremes and Savage. And while I’m happy about the accessibility because there’s nothing wrong with people challenging themselves, when they go from Expert Roulette to Shinryu Ex, they are not prepared because this game does nothing to ease them into hard content. Even with Expert Roulette to Rabanastre, you see people complaining and struggling because they actually have to pay attention. It’s easy > easy > easy > okay, I kinda need to pay attention now > oh my god this fight hurts. And what happens when people are met with a challenge? One of two things: they seek improvement (and to direct this thread back to the original topic—parsers—a lot of people turn to parsers to try and improve, or to people they know have parsers and ask for a detailed analysis and constructive criticism) or they come here and make “Please nerf [content]” threads. The latter appears to be a far more vocal portion of the playerbase. I honestly would not be surprised if the developers listened more to the cries of nerfs than they would to more constructive feedback about changing the difficulty curve of this game. And that’s a very sad state of affairs, in my opinion.

Why does everything have to be so easy? Why does every dungeon have to be so easy? Why do people have to cry about nerfing every 24-man? Or every mildly challenging Extreme primal? The Shinryu nerf thread that’s been floating around here, if I recall correctly, the OP asked for nerfs specifically so they could farm for the mount easier. If people want the shinies, they should have to put in work towards them. A reward that is just handed to you loses all sense of pride and achievement, in my opinion. A better difficulty curve would subsequently make mount farming in challenging Extremes easier because people would have built more awareness of mechanics over the course of their playtime. But, again, as it stands now, this game doesn’t have that. It doesn’t even have any guides to help you learn a proper rotation at any of the level roadblocks: 50, 60, or 70.

If content continues to remain so easy that, as Dzian put it, a chore becomes nothing more than a meaningless chore, then this game will fail to retain players.



But none of this really has anything to do with parsers or having a built-in parser. Unless you want to correlate it back to the fact that a lot of people are never properly prepared for harder content, and when they go into said harder content completely unprepared, and someone mentions how they aren’t doing as well as they should, they take it immediately as a personal attack. But I’ve digressed into probably just rambling at this point....

So, I just happen to read a lot of your comments when I'm researching stuff here and EVERY TIME I see you say something, it's constructive and detailed. Keep being awesome! (I hope you see this cause I don't know if forums notify people of replies haha)

Awh, thank you. <3 I try to be as objective as possible in my posts, though it can prove difficult sometimes when I try to separate my own experiences from those of others—I still try though, because I do remember what it was like when I first started playing and everything was new and different and I was a really, really god-awful bard who didn’t know what they were doing. XD I try to see all sides of an argument, and formulate my own responses in a way so as to not be overtly condescending or rude, because I really do enjoy constructive discussions, and by being rude or abrasive, you lose points in your argument that way.

But I’m glad that you find what I have to say constructive. Hopefully some of the posts I have read have helped you out in some way! :3

[HoodRat]

Perhaps the playerbase can't do a basic opener because the game does absolutely nothing to explain what those are and never actually encourages you to experiment through trial and error.

Let's not forget that people who try to help are usually met with a less than reasonable attitude. There was a reddit thread devoted entirely to skipping that first soar. It had detailed openers for every job specifically made to do as much damage before you fall down. But when you scroll through the comments down past the ones up top that are giving the OP the different openers, most of the comments you see are along the lines of, "just stop whining and learn how to do soar!"

Players who usually farm mounts and I mean like a large population of players who currently farm old mounts, is because they could never do it at that level it was at. The issue is still there, at lvl 70 people can still not do mechanics right and wipe a group. And the ironic part? They do it because they know they can skip mechanics to make it easier, which is where damage comes in.

I joined an unsynced zurvan ex pf near the beginning of SB to help a friend get her first clear. The damage was so low that not only were we unable to skip soar with a full party of 8 level 70s, I was able to hold aggro perfectly fine with broken gear in dps stance without shadewalker/shirk. I don't even know how that's possible unless they were only hitting one button every 10 seconds or something.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Let's not forget that people who try to help are usually met with a less than reasonable attitude. There was a reddit thread devoted entirely to skipping that first soar. It had detailed openers for every job specifically made to do as much damage before you fall down. But when you scroll through the comments down past the ones up top that are giving the OP the different openers, most of the comments you see are along the lines of, "just stop whining and learn how to do soar!"

Remember though. Only raiders are toxic.

I joined an unsynced zurvan ex pf near the beginning of SB to help a friend get her first clear. The damage was so low that not only were we unable to skip soar with a full party of 8 level 70s, I was able to hold aggro perfectly fine with broken gear in dps stance without shadewalker/shirk. I don't even know how that's possible unless they were only hitting one button every 10 seconds or something.

Oh, I know this pain. I once joined a six DPS party and not only did we not skip Soar, we saw the first Demon's Claw. The DPS was that abysmal. I'm still baffled how that even happens.

[akaneakki]

I don't even know how that's possible unless they were only hitting one button every 10 seconds or something.

TBH, I've been in zurvans recently and nobody seems to know how to do towers or people who join and claim they know fight, then 10 wipes later saying they need practice.

[AphraelAmarantha]

I love how everyone is saying "Its easy!" and then list all these issues that people seem to have with end game content. All of you seem to be contradicting yourselves.

Just to contribute to the current discussion, yes I've farmed Susano'o quite a bit, both as RDM and as WHM. I know the fight pretty well. However, that doesn't make it easy. I still think it's a considerable challenge and i still see wipes all the time, even when everyone knows what to do. Even if they are the "easiest" EX primals, the fights themselves are not easy. This is why people get mad and start calling people like the ones here elitists as well because they don't get it.

No seriously, you people don't get it.

For people like them or me for that matter, these fights are difficult, even if we know the mechanics like the back of our hands. The only reason you guys call the fights "easy" because of your skewed perspective based upon having far better skill than the rest of us, hence why you get called elitists. It's like a girl who learns things easily talking down to a person who is having problems learning the same subject. The girl thinks its easy to learn and do while the other person thinks its the hardest thing in the world even though they are trying their hardest to learn the subject at hand. Maybe once in a while consider that not everyone has the same concept of easy or difficulty that you guys have, just maybe consider it.

[HoodRat]

It's like a girl who learns things easily talking down to a person who is having problems learning the same subject. The girl thinks its easy to learn and do while the other person thinks its the hardest thing in the world even though they are trying their hardest to learn the subject at hand. Maybe once in a while consider that not everyone has the same concept of easy or difficulty that you guys have, just maybe consider it.

But according to you

For people like them or me for that matter, these fights are difficult, even if we know the mechanics like the back of our hands.

The other person in your example, while thinking the subject is the hardest thing in the world, will still be claiming they know it like the back of their hand...

Which is exactly how it happens in this game. Like that one pld who was complaining about getting kicked from Shinryu Ex for not having high dps. "I have 9 weapons I've cleared multiple times I know exactly what I'm doing," yet their best was gray iirc, so clearly they didn't know what they were doing.

And as I said earlier, even if people attempt to help people learn/do better/whatever, the helper is usually attacked. So you can say all you want about how people don't learn as easily as others, it doesn't matter at all if they don't even want to learn in the first place.

[akaneakki]

I love how everyone is saying "Its easy!" and then list all these issues that people seem to have with end game content. All of you seem to be contradicting yourselves..

Way to make things out of context huh? Anyways, since you say its hard/difficult, can you explain why? We also compared susano/lakashmi to other primals they previously had from heavensward/arr and most agree think they are easy. Like I really would like to know why YOU think it's hard. There are issues with end game because people can't do either of following:
Enough dps
Doesn't know mechanics
or both.

Example 1 of a healer: Just because you healed the fight 1000 times, doesn't make you a good healer. Far from it. I've seen healers medica 2 in susano when there is no aoe, I see healers heal something that doesn't exist. I see tanks only save cooldowns for tank buster when you only need 1 per buster, so why not just mitigate some auto attacks so healers can dish out more dps? Example of a tank: Just because you can mitigate a damn tank buster doesnt make you a good tank. What makes you a great tank is to mitigate things the best way possible, where the boss is located at and dish out good amount of damage. I can't count how many times I've asked tanks to put susano on the edge of the black line in the middle so the melee can hit the boss from opposite side with thunder mark. Why is that so extremely hard, I mean.. why is it so extremely hard to do such an easy thing? So again, please explain why susano and lakashmi is hard.

I
For people like them or me for that matter, these fights are difficult, even if we know the mechanics like the back of our hands. .

If its still difficult, then you clearly don't know the fight. It's like saying you ride on a bike for the first time, which can be hard, but after weeks, months even years of riding on a bike you think it's hard. In most scenarios, it's not.