Why the hate with endgame fights?

[Sebazy]

I think the problem is rather simple really.

There is literally no difficulty curve in this game and hasn't really been since ARR's launch.

In 2.0, the last few dungeons all had teeth and would happily punish you if you disrespected them and many of the mechanics used were lightly toned down versions of what you'd later see in the hard mode primals. By doing your end game dungeons, you were pretty much training yourself for hard mode primals. Thus the populace in general was reasonably prepared for the end game's gatekeeper aka Titan HM.

By comparison, recent Expert Roulette dungeons have been face rolls across the board with the vast majority of mechanics being entirely ignorable currently, yet the entry primals are significantly more complex and are a pretty solid challenge when tackled in ilvl appropriate gear.

In some respects, O1S is actually a pretty good lead on from dungeons and rabanastre. The problem is, it's the right sort of encounter in totally the wrong place, it really should have been the very first Primal of the expansion, with a more complex encounter taking it's place as the first Savage step.

The other approach of course is the have the Expert dungeons throw watered down primal and savage mechanics at you. Of course this requires tighter communication and planning within the encounter teams and might not be reasonably feasible in mid tier patches.

I do think it's something that needs to be addressed tho, the current design philosophy is just making significant swathes of the community complacent and lazy in their play style which leads to a horrible culture shock when they try to dip their toes into the raid scene. That in turn leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths on both side of the coin which in turn helps reinforce the whole casuals vs raiders thing.

[RiyahArp]

In some respects, O1S is actually a pretty good lead on from dungeons and rabanastre. The problem is, it's the right sort of encounter in totally the wrong place, it really should have been the very first Primal of the expansion, with a more complex encounter taking it's place as the first Savage step.

If you think people would enjoy "ice floor, the boss," you'd be in for a big disappointment. I can't think of another duty people would abandon more in roulette.

[KaivaC]

If you think people would enjoy "ice floor, the boss," you'd be in for a big disappointment. I can't think of another duty people would abandon more in roulette.

Aurum Vale...Steps of Faith...Pharos Sirius...Royal Manageries (though, admittedly, not nearly as bad)...sometimes Thornmarch...Urth's Font...Emanation...

[Sebazy]

If you think people would enjoy "ice floor, the boss," you'd be in for a big disappointment. I can't think of another duty people would abandon more in roulette.

I probably should have been clearer as I meant an EX tier primal aka not in the roulette.

It could be watered down very easily for normal mode by just adding a barrier to the edge tho. Even if in it's current form, it's a very forgiving fight and it was common place to see first clears within the first week with 20+ deaths. It really isn't a difficult encounter but it does require people to have a solid grasp of their core rotations and abilities.

[Dzian]

If you think people would enjoy "ice floor, the boss," you'd be in for a big disappointment. I can't think of another duty people would abandon more in roulette.

Thing is Sebazy is right. there is no difficulty curve in this game. at expert level you can just ignore so much of it. yojimbo in kugane castle. you can literally stand there go make a coffee while you let daigoro get ALL THE GOLD. and you still will NOT die. It's essentially impossible to fail that mechanic.

There is no difficulty curve in this game its just one great long horizontal line. that is then met by a sheer vertical cliff when it comes to savage / ultimate. and I thinks that's where the hate comes from. players clear normal and think they're ready for savage but they're a million miles away.

what makes it worse is yoshis attempt to close the skill gap between players was done backwards.. instead of bringing the skill floor up what Yoshi did was lower the skill ceiling by making creator and omega easier. this didn't work though cos those top players just punched straight through the ceiling and kept going up...

If they raised the floor as the game progressed you'd likely find more people willing to take on harder contents as they'd feel more prepared for it. and also likely find player retention is better because clearing things would actually feel more satisfying and rewarding. where as clearing a fight its actually impossible to fail. doesn't really feel satisfying at all.

Here's a thread I did ages ago with some really cheesy mspaint charts to illustrate

I think it highlights the rather large issue the game has with its current difficulty curve or rather lack of. and also shows why so many players are always crying for nerfs on even the simplest of things.

the menagerie for example was never hard. the main problem people had was they hadn't done there 70 quest and got there 290 gear. some i'd seen in there were still in 270 with a few random dungeon drops in odd slots..

so imo one of the biggest problems with hard (high end) content is not the difficult of it. but rather the absolute lack of difficulty everything that leads up to it is.

the other issue is powercreep. and rewards being outdated so fast it just isn't worth getting them. but that aain also factors in the difficulty curve.. my i330 samurai is more than geared enough to clear everything escept maybe ultimate so there's just no need for 340. especially when 4.2 will have 350 entry gear.

I generally think if the difficulty curve was actually a curve and promoted player growth and improvement then a lot of people would find the endgame fights a lot more approachable and fun. instead of finding them like basically smashing there face against a brick wall

[KaldeaSahaline]

I would love to see all the hate if SE ever makes every savage,ex as hard as ultimate.

Would make for a nice Sunday afternoon with popcorn.

What exactly is the purpose of this post? I don't think a single person has advocated for anything of the sort.

[RiyahArp]

I generally think if the difficulty curve was actually a curve and promoted player growth and improvement then a lot of people would find the endgame fights a lot more approachable and fun. instead of finding them like basically smashing there face against a brick wall

I want you to imagine susano ex, but with the following differences.

-everyone is forced to do him if they want to do something as simple as access tomes or the 24 man raid.
-he pops up randomly in trial roulette and gives you all of 60 tomes and no weapon for a reward.
-half the people don't watch a video, and every trial is a learning party.

What do you think would happen, given how much people complain about him when he's completely optional and doesn't gate content? Think about that when you talk about difficulty curves.

Right? Cause getting 4 wins for enough to earn a body piece or weapon (at 4000 Wolf Marks, the most expensive the gear gets now) is like, impossible. /s

except it costs something like 16k to get a set of garo glamour. One set, with something like ten sets that are unique total. And because of that, garo gear is also in the gold saucer, surprise surprise. The original pvp armor only escapes this because after i110, they forced it to all be archetypes instead of jobs with the exception of DRG. If you have 3 or more jobs leveled, we're starting to talk a serious amount of matches.

[KaivaC]

snip

Again, you are taking things to the extreme. Why do you keep on doing this? From a purely casual perspective, how do you justify going from Ala Mhigo to Susano Ex? A lot of us have done this...but regardless of Susano Ex being literally one of the easiest Ex trials (certainly easier than Lakshmi Ex released with him, mostly for tanks), that's still a fairly significant jump in difficulty because casual players need to pay attention so they don't end up killing the entire party. Shinryu is enough of a gate as it is. I don't want to speak for Sebazy, but I believe the point he's getting at, hopefully, is that the prior dungeons leading up to here should've been slowly increasing difficulty, slowly and gradually introducing some of the mechanics you will see in the high end duties.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

except it costs something like 16k to get a set of garo glamour. One set, with something like ten sets that are unique total. And because of that, garo gear is also in the gold saucer, surprise surprise. The original pvp armor only escapes this because after i110, they forced it to all be archetypes instead of jobs with the exception of DRG. If you have 3 or more jobs leveled, we're starting to talk a serious amount of matches.

18K. 19 if the belt counts, and you only need the left side to get a Garo title. Most regular PvPers are almost always sitting on 20K marks with little to spend it on. And no, Garo gear is in the Saucer, undyeable, as a means to still allow the gear to be available to players who don't PvP. It was implemented AS rewards obtainable through PvP, FIRST, per the Garo creator's wishes. i100 and i110 wasn't shared by anyone. Those were the "beast" themed sets, and each job had one. The Heavensward 3 also got their own, largely reskins, but still only for that job. AND all the older sets were cheaper than current ones. That was true even when a body piece cost like 12,800.

As for PvE content, the whole point of a difficulty curve is to ease someone into being ready for later content, which XIV's done a poor job of even since ARR. Crystal Tower was supposed to be a primer for Coil, but they tested it internally, felt it was too hard, and toned it down. . . and people STILL struggled with it at times. Syrcus Tower was such a joke as a result. XIV's problem is indeed that it gets players too used to the comfort zone of being able to faceroll content even at minimum ilvl, then when a real challenge pops up, people are unready and cry for nerfs. I can never forget watching most of my original FC fail Sastasha HM when it was new, and shy away from running it because they couldn't pass the first boss - the first boss that actively engaged all roles in the fight, and in my opinion, the only real challenge of that dungeon. That was an absolute sad sight to see.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I want you to imagine susano ex, but with the following differences.

-everyone is forced to do him if they want to do something as simple as access tomes or the 24 man raid.
-he pops up randomly in trial roulette and gives you all of 60 tomes and no weapon for a reward.
-half the people don't watch a video, and every trial is a learning party.

What do you think would happen, given how much people complain about him when he's completely optional and doesn't gate content? Think about that when you talk about difficulty curves.

You cannot just place existing content forms in random positions in the game's progression flow and expect good results. Not a single person here is advocating that.

You need dungeons to actually force you to not watch netflix. Punish tanks for not using cooldowns or keeping threat. Punish healers for trying to afk heal. Punish DPS who cannot switch targets or press buttons on a near GCD basis or AOE. It doesn't need to be hard, but you should not be able to ignore an entire dungeons set of mechanics nor should damage be so trivial I can outheal it on my PLD and DPS irrelevant to the point where I can solo entire dungeon bosses. Dungeons should be TEACHING players how mechanics work and EX's and Savage should be making you think about how to handle multiples of them simultaneously with other complex interactions.

Reinforce these systems across all content forms, and then build on them. That's what we mean by a curve.