Would you like an in-game parser?

[AphraelAmarantha]

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Knowing how to do something and screwing it up is not mutually exclusive. People aren't perfect and mistakes will happen. To me it sounds like that tank was having a bad day. It happens.

I do agree with you about people who aren't willing to learn. The question though is what can a game developer do to force people to learn, even if said people don't want to learn? You can't stop them from buying the game and screwing people over with their bad attitudes.

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Let me list the things that I think make the fight a challenge for people like me.

1) A ton of mechanics happening all at once like aoes with dice and thundercloud. Especially if I am also trying to heal the tank but my oGCD are on cd and so I cant cast a quick spell to heal them. Or I am trying to get Medica II back up but i have to keep moving and I don't have an available quickcast. this is particularly difficult near the last 10 percent of Susano's health bar.
2) The purple marker for the lightning when you have to dash across to the other side. It's too small and I can barely see it past the other stuff that is going on. I have to be constantly looking at the party to make sure hp levels are good and no one is dying and the battlefield making sure I don't have the stupid marker on.
3) Same with the dice, I cant see the marker until almost too late. When grouped together with other people, it cant be seen very well.
4) Tank busters. These come out very fast and I don't see them coming because I'm not looking at the cast bar when they pop up because I'm paying attention to health levels. It's usually when I'm dpsing is when I usually see it coming.
5) I understand that most fights are scripted but I cannot memorize all of the events that are going to happen in the fight and when they occur at what minute or second. I would write them down but I don't have time to look down from the screen for a second before someone is eating an attack that needs healed through and if I do have a moment, I'm not going to be looking down because everyone expects me to be dpsing at that point.

Those are the main issues, if I think of more I will let you know. Yes I know the mechanics but it doesn't make the fight any easier.

[Miste]

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.

Wait...wait....

Let me get this straight.....

People are elitists now just because they hold the opinion and/or have the skill to find a particular piece of content easy and if they dare share that opinion?

You always think you've seen everything....

It is fine if you (and others) hold the opinion that a piece of content is difficult for you, but just because some people find that same content easy does not make them elitist and they have just as much right to share their opinion as you do. Drift back down to earth and realize you shouldn't be calling people negative terms like elitist just for simply sharing their opinion on the difficulty level of a piece of content.

[akaneakki]

Wait...wait...You always think you've seen everything....t.

Same, I'm still surprised these days on the forum xD.

[AphraelAmarantha]

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Not calling you elitist, I'm just explaining why others would call you elitists.

It's fine that you have a different opinion. My problem is that you aren't understanding that people may have difficulty with content that you may find easy. For example, Akeneakki just said:

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.

For them they think its an easy thing. For others this is probably extremely difficult. However, their post comes off condescending and not at all attempting to think that "oh, maybe its a little difficult for them to set that up"

[akaneakki]

Yes I know the mechanics but it doesn't make the fight any easier.

Honestly that makes no sense. Why doesn't it make it easier? Doing it over again and again and again makes it easier? Isn't that how you master something? Like education, you need those things stuck in your head till you can do it without an issue. I'm not saying to treat the game as university, all I'm saying is, you make it sound like it's random mechanics dishing out everytime they happen or you barely have time to react, which you do have time to.

1: There is a mechanic where thunder cloud on a random corner happens, which you need to dodge away from the group, however, that thundercloud mechanic doesn't happen with dice. So you can move to a side that makes it less walk back to boss, aka you do it in the front of the boss. Like first one as a melee, I get pushed in front of the boss, so I don't need to walk all the way back from the entrance to the boss, so I have more uptime. You don't need to medica 2 asap either, you have time to heal them before anything happens, if they get hit by dice that's their own fault and honestly standing still shoulnd't even be a issue at all. With the current gear, you don't even die from it.
2: Thunder marker with the dash is so easy to see, honestly you don't even need time to see it. Because if its not in the front, its mostlikely on the side which you should also see easily and if it's not there, its behind you, so you have time. There is aboslutely no mechanics that happens that fast in that fight for you to need to react with lightingspeed, so no.
3: When dice you don't even need to be stacked, the aoe heals reach easily, so why are you stacking yourself up? There are many fights in this game like teathers where you want to split with the other player, which you don't want to stack on top of each other to make it easier to go on a direction you both go on opposite side. .
4: Tank busters are SCRIPTED. They are SLOW cast and you can easily excog as a sch on a tank before it happens and they get healed fast. Honestly this is why I KNOW you don't know the fight as you claim. The fact you say the tank buster is fast, makes you not as good as you think you are in the fight. The fight is so extremely scripted, there is no excuse for not healing the tank in time or even react to the buster.
5: same with 4 pretty much. Honestly.... if you done a fight many times it should be stuck in your head, that's how it is for me at least. Like this game has a lot of fun fights. but for some people like myself they get boring after a while, if you farm them at least, because it's the same thing over again and again.

There is a difference knowing the mechanics than remembering when they come and why they even exist.Just because you know the mechanics doesn't mean you know the fight . There is a difference there, like a big difference. If a great healer knows the fight in and out, he wil be avaible to push 2k easily there, while a healer who knows mechanic but not the fight woulnd't try to push as high or not even avaible to, because they have the same mind as yourself; aoe is random, tank buster is too fast etc etc. which they are not.
Example is when a person comes to a group saying they know the mecanics, yet they join and can't do the fight. That means they don't know the fight, sure they know mechanics, well how it works in some sort of way, but the fight? Nope. That's what makes the difference between good and bad players. Good players know WHY and how a mechanic work aka know the fight, while a decent player or a bad one knows the mechanics but doesn't know how the fight itself is.

Edit: Like O1s, why does a whm do benediction on tank or fully heal the group when charbydis is happening right after aoe? What's the point to full up a group of hp when the healers know they will be at 1 hp again?

For them they think its an easy thing. For others this is probably extremely difficult. However, their post comes off condescending and not at all attempting to think that "oh, maybe its a little difficult for them to set that up"

It's a tanks job to move the boss, so it should be easy. Moving it slightly to the left for them shouldn't be a issue at all. And how on earth is that elitist? Please explain.

[AphraelAmarantha]

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Unfortunately, doing it over and over again isn't productive for me and thus why it doesn't make it easier for me. Not everyone learns the same way.

Never said I was a good healer and all I said was that i knew the mechanics. Not for sure why you think that I believe myself a good healer when I know I'm not. That's a pretty big assumption you have going there lol.

I do agree with you that there is a difference in knowing the mechanics and knowing the fight. I do know the fight is scripted, and as I told you before, I can't memorize that kind of timing, usually I have to write things down. For me though, this game moves pretty fast, faster than I can analyze what is going on at a given moment in most ex battles and that doesn't give me time to look at my sheet and go "uhm what comes next again?" for the next ten seconds.

Also, you think it shouldn't be an issue to move the boss but maybe some tanks do have issues getting a boss to move. If this wasn't an issue, I doubt you would even come across this problem unless they were trolling.

[RiyahArp]

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.

If you don't find it challenging, its either too easy, or you are too good. I don't know why the latter option isn't a factor; keep in mind, it was hard to optimize DPS jobs in HW, especially bard. If you underrate yourself, you kind of have a skewed perception of content. God I hate editing.

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.

It was difficult with crazy mechanics.

I mean, they spent some time trying to slowly adjust the jobs over the lifespan of HW, as well as the raid encounters, before more or less junking it with SB's class revisions. The thing about HW was that hard is, well hard. It was very hard to do well as a 3.0 BLM; the timers were very tight overall, and the burden on skill was just a bit too much. When you combined it with hard raids, people just noped out. It was hard to do well with many classes, especially dps, because timers and general rotations were hard for people/

The raiders...they just keep not understanding that stuff is hard. The default tends to be instead "people aren't trying enough."

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.

You're kind of agreeing with me here. I meant casuals really shouldnt have input in raids, because they don't do them or care to. If you opt into a raid, you more or less accept it the way it is. The only time we should criticize is if they try and make raiding mandatory.

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.

Rab is unique because it's something designed to be done once a week. Rab becomes easier when you do it a lot, but the incentive is not to do it a lot. It also doesn't become more fun when you do it a lot (I wound up doing it a lot. Heaers don't have the luxury dps do of dying often). It's a special thing.

As for nerfing, well the issue with nerfs tends to be "reduce the difficulty so people don't vote abandon or ditch it as soon as they get it." There's a threshold for casual tome content that people don't like going beyond.

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.

Because you keep assuming people will rise to the challenge, solely because you did. FFXI had a ton of the things you'd like, but all it did was winnow people out. There's no better "git gud" mechanism than deleveling if you die enough, after all. They had gatekeeper solo fights you had to pass just to get your last level tiers, and they were a huge pain. Look up the promyvions sometime; they were the first instances in one quest line, done at level 30, and were easily harder than any 24 man here.

What you are asking for winds up being "please make things hard to cause everyone who stays to be good." For some reason, the idea that people might not rise to the challenge never seems to occur to people, but it happens a lot.

[akaneakki]

Also, you think it shouldn't be an issue to move the boss but maybe some tanks do have issues getting a boss to move. If this wasn't an issue, I doubt you would even come across this problem unless they were trolling.

Well I'm only going out by what you said, you said you know the mechanics, which often for so many people means they know the fight. As for the tanks who cant move the boss, they just cant seem to read the chat or even try. The main issue is what we just talked about, they don't know the fight, which is a often issue with many players in this game along with not doing good enough dmg. Hence why threads like this exist.

[AphraelAmarantha]

Well, I wonder, what can the devs do to help make it easier for people to actually know the fight (not just the mechanics but the sequence of events), especially for people like me who can't memorize all the stuff that happens in a scripted battle like this or doing things over and over doesn't help them? I write things down after watching vids but that doesn't help me if I don't have enough down time to look at my sheet. Actually, maybe this question should be saved for a different thread.

[akaneakki]

Well, I wonder, what can the devs do to help make it easier for people to actually know the fight (not just the mechanics but the sequence of events), especially for people like me who can't memorize all the stuff that happens in a scripted battle like this or doing things over and over doesn't help them? I write things down after watching vids but that doesn't help me if I don't have enough down time to look at my sheet. Actually, maybe this question should be saved for a different thread.

Well I will make it simple, not everyone learns fights as good as others or evem memorize them as easy as others. I know this is true, but that's not the case in most scenarios. Most people claim they know but they don't. Example is when you said people know the fight back of their hand but yet they cause wipes or near wipes or even close to enrage to fights because they can't deal with both doing damage and mechanics. The game is already so madly scripted, there is nothing the devs can do to make them easier besides less punishment, but they already did that in ex, both lakashmi and susano. If someone goes wrong way with thunder mark, it's easily doable to recover. Honestly I wouldn't even mind doing duties with you or ever raids whatever with you, to help you out, however we are on 2 completely different data centers. I believe many people can get better if they are willing too. I have honestly met so many players who was very bottom players and now avaible to clear or have cleared fight slike ultimate coil. It's just the part you are willing to listen and take tips from players, much as many in here wants to help people improve their dps. Nobody can improve their gameplay when the person who needs help find it as harrasement. To me when you said it's kinda elitist to make someone do something in a certain fight, didn't bother me, what bothers me is that's all they can come up with, because it shows we are right about them and they don't give a rats ass about trying to improve.