I might of figured something out today. Game too easy for leveling duties?

[Ama_Hamada]

I am not sure if people experience this and I have a concern in general with the players who just play the game and typically do not come here or read up on the game in general. Some people call them "casuals" but I am not sure if they all play little bits at a time. Anyway it has to do with what I just ran into today, leveling queue for Aery.

So we get to the first boss, and I tell the new person to move to statue when he got tethered the second time. (Due to fast pull and well geared I thought maybe the new person was just an alt or something) So he did not move. I was like, okay maybe he will know better for next time. He got tethered again, and I said much sooner to move to statue, he did not.

So after the fight I ask why did they ignore me in saying anything and the mechanic, no answer. "don't worry about it person is new" I was told, and my reply to that was being new has nothing to do with being ignored? and we continue.

second boss idk what was going on, I had to focus on more healing then normal, all I know is a 3 stack poison is a pain. Never had trouble on it before.

Then finally near the end I see this after asking if someone can explain the fight to them because they are ignoring me throughout the entire run for some reason: "oh im reading just more important things going on then typing to you" so kick passed, I can't do a boss where you need to listen to pass it or wipe (and interesting enough the 3 where a premade, could easily revenge kick me too if they read it wrong.)

So the point of this story is to ask this, is this game too easy, so easy it provokes to bread toxicity? "Oh it is only xxx it does not matter" is something I hear a lot. How come there isn't more mechanics that basically kill you if you fail? Why does a healer have to carry so much when things are ignored, and people ignore you when you tell them how to do the fight? I also had a comment in the past "someone is dying why aren't you healing?" when they do not take account getting hit by A leads to getting hit by B and that B kills you no matter what.

I just want to see what people thought of this, and if they have ideas if something being too hard or too easy can be toxic encouragement. There has to be a balance somewhere i think, where people feel challenged but not so hard they enter the mentality of "skip soar or be kicked"

I know this is not an "easy fix" and your entering grounds of programing a game such a way to curb people's psychology. I have my own issue with that, as people should take some responsibility and simply try their best making me confused why I see this behaviour a lot in the first place.

[Rufalus]

Yeah, the entry level stuff is probably too easy and resulting in people going semi afk to watch a movie, expecting others to carry them to a win. There's a lot of fairly useless mobs or "trash pulls" that have no chance against you, just waiting around to be killed. Slows you down a little but is not memorable due to effort or thought not being needed.

[Kaethra]

Again, its not new players that are the problem. Its lazy players. Sometimes they are new too, which can make things, interesting.

I had an issue in the Aery about 2 months ago. Literally the only issue I've had since I came back. Except I was the new player and the healer. I made sure the group knew that fact. They seemed fine with it.

First boss, no one tells me the mechanics. I don't remember getting tethered, and well I just did what every healer should do, keep everyone alive and dodge AoE's. Fight was uneventful. Course I didn't learn anything since no one explained it (that was another run later that someone told me the mechanics).

Second boss. That got interesting. I stayed out of the poison clouds and like before. Kept everyone alive. As best I could. For some reason one of the DPS was stepping in poison. To this day I dunno how a machinist does that. I couldn't keep him alive. He kept standing in poison. So he died. The mechanics were screwy because of that so stacks went out. I kept the tank and other DPS alive and we got the boss down.

No big deal right? The dead DPS went on this ranting tirade about how the fight went slower than it 'should have', simply because I didn't rez him during combat. Well because of him damage was stupid and I had to work to keep the tank up, I didn't have the time nor the MP to rez him. He also went on another rant about how I didn't cure the poison (poison was incurable, disease wasn't, which I was curing off as soon as it popped up).

From that point onward, he complained. Didn't do any damage and let the other three of us carry him. We get to Nidhogg and he goes on about how we're going to wipe on the boss because of me. At that point my patience, which was unneccessarily lengthy that day, had run out. I told the group, "I'm booting this jerk." Vote kick immediately goes through and he's gone. Tank says something along the lines of "finally someone booted him."

Issue there wasn't the new player (I was effectively new since I hadn't played since 2.4 and didn't know the HW fights). But a lazy vet who was an absolute screw up, inept, and used new players as a scapegoat to hide their own weaknesses. When I read these forums and some players complain about newbies, you can see there are others like this. Not saying anyone in this thread so far is like that. But its sometimes easy to lose track of the real issues.

Simply put new players aren't always bad players. They simply don't know the mechanics. Many are easily instructed and become vets instantly thereafter once they get the hang of things. 2 months ago I didn't know any of the HW content. Now I can speed run with the best of them and quickly getting some of the raids down pat.

With that said though. I do support making leveling content more challenging. Baptisms by Fire do work. So long as they are in group oriented content and not brick walls for people to get stuck in Solo content. I don't really care how easy Solo content is. It teaches nothing for group stuff. People go on and one about how we need class quests to teach people stuff. You're not going to learn anything in a solo duty. Just memorizing keypresses, but not application. In groups you have to be able to react intuitively, not through muscle memory like in solo content. That only comes with experience from grouping with others.

[Gemina]

When I was new to the Aery, almost the same thing happened. I got tethered and I had no idea what to do with it other than wait to see what happens. However, since the mechanic is similar to one of the bosses in Amdapor Keep HM, and enemy tethers tend to mean focused damage is coming towards that players way, I was familiar with it and able to muscle through it. However, the point being is that I can read a guide or be told how to do a certain mechanic, but something just clicks when you learn how to handle it, or predict when it is coming. Basically, I learn mechanics best by failing them. Until that time, any mechanic I get through unscathed is pure luck of being in the right place at the right time.

As for being ignored, this person could be using a controller and has no keyboard. But again, I am guilty of this too despite having a keyboard. Sometimes I am just really nervous, and my brain tells me to type, but my hands ignore it. It isn't anything personal, but I feel like I am in the spotlight when such things happen, and it makes me really uncomfortable, and I would really rather just continue. Especially if the fight is already over. If the result was a wipe, then I am more likely to talk and respond.

I honestly don't mind healing new players. I tend to look after them in duties, and it is unfortunate if they are DPS and I am forced to prioritize my heals for the tank. This sometimes means I have to let them die, and in the worst cases, I have to leave them down because the MP they are costing me is not balanced with their outgoing damage.

The challenge of DF content is fine as is. One-shot mechanics are present in them that is no one's fault but the player themselves if they fail it. That is as challenging as it will ever get. It really isn't stressful to just heal. New players that require special attention usually means you can't DPS as much. This is not your primary duty as a healer, but you did try and take to time to explain things. Not much more could be asked of you, but cases such as these are rare in my experience. I don't think you fix it by making casual content more difficult.

[HyoMinPark]

I've noticed that nowadays, people tend to ignore the tether mechanic in that boss, which is mildly annoying, because, if you're a caster, you have to continuously keep interrupting your casts to avoid the lightning AOEs, or else eat the damage and make the healer hate you more than they hate the person ignoring the tether. Unfortunately, I see this more with people who are not new to the instance, and less with the newbies, most of whom tend to listen when I tell them what to do with the tether (most, but not all, sadly).

I was actually in a run where this same thing happened, except the machinist decided they didn't need to move out of the lightning AOEs, and eventually died. I raised them twice, and they didn't seem to understand what they were doing wrong, so the third time they went down, I just left them there. Then, for the second boss, both the tank (mentor, PLD) and DPS (machinist) would pop the poison bubbles. I was on AST, and I politely told them not to pop the poison clouds, because I can't esuna that poison stack off of them. I was then told to "shut it" and that I didn't know what I was talking about. I responded with "Uh, yes I do. The mechanic here is that you let the Bomb add eat two poison clouds, and then kill it." Again, I was told that I was "wrong" and to "shut up" because the actual mechanic was "you don't want that add getting big at all because it will explode." I replied with "Yes, it will explode, if you don't kill it."

Anyways, long story short, I stopped healing both of them, and focused on keeping my friend alive. I was then threatened by the tank, and the machinist told me that they "weren't going to give me MP turret." I just laughed at them because really? They honestly think that's a threat to me? They eventually just kicked me out of the instance (my first ever kick from a duty!), but honestly, I was relieved. I didn't even want to think how terrible Nidhogg would have been with those two.

I genuinely don't know if that was a case of just laziness, like most that I see, or just pure stupidity. Or maybe a combination of both. Both players had Padjali weapons equipped, and their gear was a mismatch of gear ranging from level 50 NQ white gear to level 57 Vault gear. I honestly think that, with so many people using PotD to level, they sincerely don't think that they have to follow actual mechanics when they enter other duties, because they were able to level all the way to 60 in PotD barely having to follow any at all.

I really think that this game needs to provide more duties or more leveling activities of some sort (more Guildhests maybe?) to promote learning and following mechanics. People harp about insta-kill mechanics, but sometimes I wonder if that would be the best way for people to learn to follow them, if mechanics weren't that forgiving if failed. I know some duties have mechanics of their own, but so many people find ways to just cheese them, I don't know how effective they are at teaching players "Hey, you need to do [mechanic] when the boss does [move], otherwise, bad things happen."

[bardaboo]

For the gas cloud boss... the more clouds that are up the more damage the boss does as he gets a damage stack for each cloud. So as a dps and as a healer i will eat one cloud just to make things easier on the healer. The first stack of cloud dmg is easily cured with a second wind. But eating a second cloud and getting 2 stacks is painful

[HyoMinPark]

For the gas cloud boss... the more clouds that are up the more damage the boss does as he gets a damage stack for each cloud. So as a dps and as a healer i will eat one cloud just to make things easier on the healer. The first stack of cloud dmg is easily cured with a second wind. But eating a second cloud and getting 2 stacks is painful

In my case, both of these players had way more than 1 stack each; try upwards of 3-4. I've never ran the Aery with a group before that eats any of the clouds, as we usually let the Mustard Gas take care of the majority, and by the time that any excess clouds remain (that would give the boss too many damage up stacks that it would start hurting the tank), the boss is usually near dead.

[bardaboo]

Yeah that seems counter productive, as there is a lot of leeway in that fight for healer to dps. Now you have to heal all the dot dmg, plus now the bomb will agro you. I would've been upset as well.

[Gemina]

I really think that this game needs to provide more duties or more leveling activities of some sort (more Guildhests maybe?) to promote learning and following mechanics. People harp about insta-kill mechanics, but sometimes I wonder if that would be the best way for people to learn to follow them, if mechanics weren't that forgiving if failed. I know some duties have mechanics of their own, but so many people find ways to just cheese them, I don't know how effective they are at teaching players "Hey, you need to do [mechanic] when the boss does [move], otherwise, bad things happen."

I'm on the fence with more punishing mechanics in casual content. The problem I see with making content more punishing is it also punishes the game's healers. On one hand, I am perfectly fine with more one-shot mechanics and increased healing activity. OTOH though, it would likely result in more raises/MP spent during duties. I lean towards the former though because when players die, they tend to gain awareness opposed to a punishing mechanic that doesn't kill them because the healer got them through it. I am just not sure the increased healing that would result in making casual content more punishing would result in closing player skill gaps.

[Gemina]

Yeah that seems counter productive, as there is a lot of leeway in that fight for healer to dps. Now you have to heal all the dot dmg, plus now the bomb will agro you. I would've been upset as well.

Yup, this is a stack management fight and it's just a LOT easier to let the mustard bombs eat a cloud and then kill it. They immediately go after a cloud when they spawn unless picked up. DPS should continue to focus boss until a bomb eats a cloud, and special attention given if it grows in size. Done this way, your healer will not be stressed and have plenty of time to add in DPS. This boss goes down really fast with coordinated effort, but I suppose the same is true for most bosses.