Would you like an in-game parser?

[RiyahArp]

Things can't really be that much worse than they are now. Looking at various data for example this game has something like 800k active players.despite having over 10 million played the game.

Um..Dzian, it's not players, it's accounts. Ten million people created an account to play this game, including free trials and bots. MMOs do this kind of number fudging all the time; WoW claims to have reached 100 million lifetime accounts, for example.

Even “non-raiders” said that Susano and Lakshmi Ex were easy. It wasn’t just the raiding crowd that said that.

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.

So, then should we ignore the casual playerbase when the raiders want something tuned to their level? Because remember what happened when Ultimate was released and all the non-raiders came forth saying that it was a waste of resources? How is it fair that raiders get ignored in terms of discussion for 90% of the content in this game, but one thing comes up for them and the non-raiders are allowed to complain about how it’s a waste of resources and how raiders don’t deserve the content?

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.

Extremes aren’t even geared towards raiders; they are the content that is supposed to be the segue into raiding, which is largely shifting towards the more midcore content that Extremes used to be. Ultimate is becoming the new “hardcore” difficulty. Yet when there is such a discrepancy between the difficulty and design of the Extremes (again, see Lakshmi/Susano to Shinryu), there is a problem. And that probably boils down to the developers either trying to cater to both groups, or just failing to know how to properly balance and tune a fight.

I didn’t raid in Heavenward until the very end of Creator’s lifecycle. Even then I did not think that Thordan was so challenging that he demanded a nerf—I enjoyed the level of difficulty he posed even when I was outgearing his fight. Same with Sephirot. It’s not just the raiders that welcome challenges sometimes. Some people who do not raid would like for Extremes to be not-faceroll.

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.

[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:

[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.

[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

[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.