The time has come to get rid of enrage timers

[Kamatsu]

You're coming at it from the wrong angle. I'm not saying you just walk up to the closest newbie and flog them with a carp. That would be hilarious, briefly, but ultimately solves nothing. It's a gradual process.

You don't, for example, take Cutter's Cry Chimera and give him all of the mechanics from A Relic Reborn. Rather, you keep him the same mechanically while significantly increasing his outgoing auto-attack damage. You make it so that I cannot, regardless of my skill or gear, survive against him for long without my healer. On any tank job. You also add hard enrages on Titan HM and Ravana HM, in addition to their already existing DPS checks (which should be bumped up a bit more so that two competent DPS out of four total can't carry), so that people aren't sitting there for 10+ minutes waiting for another chance to do the fight and are actively encouraged to participate.

Would the game lose players? Maybe. Would people whine and rage quit more often? For a time. But let's be real here, if you willfully refuse to push your buttons and do even 60~65% of your job's full potential at any given level you're not really playing the game anyway. And that's why things like Final Steps of Faith and Royal Managerie were kind of awful experiences in DR Trials at first anyway; the game didn't provide stepping stones of difficulty to get people into shape and instead just threw them to the wolves after letting them be carried for ages (by nerfing anything with fangs previous into the ground)

Here's the thing a lot of people who push for harder content for everyone, or push's for EX/Savage mechanics be put into normal/casual content, seem to miss - most people who play this game (and most other MMO's for that matter) are casual players who don't have the time or inclination to 'git gud' or 'learn to be better'. These people have 30-90 minutes a day/2-days/week to play and just want to log in and play without having to stress, worry about hard-to-play mechanics or such. These are people that will leave a game if their casual content becomes too hard for them to casually beat, they won't go to forums, reddit, guides, etc to try and learn how to play better, they won't seek FC's / LS's / etc to try and improve... they will just up and quit the game.

I have seen what happens when an MMO game company listens to people calling for all content, including the main/casual story content to be made harder - the game had a population exodus. Classic example is Guild Wars 2 - many people claimed the base game was way, way too easy and cried and cried for the whole game to be made harder. ANet listened to the forum posters crying for everything to be made harder and made their expansion Heart of Thorns way, way harder - virtually everything was group focused, monsters were closer and had lots of CC... basically unless you travelled in a group / zerg you were not going to be able to get through the games base story, get hero points to unlock skills and classes, etc - if you were a casual player you were doomed. After the launch of the game the forums were filled with complaints about how hard the expansion was, how casual player unfriendly... and after a week or 2 the forums filled with threads complaining about how there was no-one on the maps, that people were struggling to complete events as no-one was playing the game anymore.

ANet suffered a 67% drop in revenue after the launch of HoT expansion. All because they made the casual / story content harder and more like what those wanting hard content wanted. After a while they came out and said this was a mistake, and that they shouldn't have made the casual / story / easy-to-access-parts as hard as they did and nerfed these parts quite a lot - so much so that most of the expansions zones, maps, hero points, etc could be done by a casual player.

Am I saying all content in FFXIV should be made casual? NO! There does still need to be harder-than-normal content for players who like and want to play content. Take the current-content Extreme & Savage fight, and tinker with their mechanics and such as needed to make the fight's harder/easier as required - ie if ppl are clearing the 'meant to be hard' stuff too quickler/easily then make it harder, and if no-one's clearing it even after weeks/months after launching then make them easier. However, leave the older and/or casual and/or story content alone - leave that to the casual's who want to play. Cuz if you make it harder, they will leave... they will not 'git gud' or 'learn to play'.

And as for the "if you're not doing the maximum dps/tanking/healing you're not really playing"... I'll use a FFXIV comeback - "you don't pay my sub". And they might not be playing to a min/max'ers standards, but they are still playing the game... they are playing to have fun, relaxe from their work/family/etc obligations and don't care about trying to maximize their classes potential.. as long as they can press buttons, do decently well, kill/heal/tank things and not die too much...then they are happy, havbing fun and will continue to play. Moment that stops, they'll move onto any number of other games that offer them easy casual fun.
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One thing that maybe could be done with the older content - such as ARR & HW dungeons & trials - is look at the level and gear synch settings. Because right now even with the synch'ing, these are all pretty much cakewalks due to overgearing... and it's usually only mechanics which kill people or threaten wipes. Maybe SE could look at tinkering with that so players stats and such are synched at a slightly lower level than they currently are - this would encourage better playing, while still not making the fights so hard as to discourage casual players from doing the content. They would likely need to keep tinkering with the stats & such till an 'optimum' level is found... but it's something I'd like to see them do

[Nhadaly]

snip

Raiding isnt meant for those kind of people, raiding EX/Savage requires time to learn your class(which isnt rocket science) and do mechanics while pushing out average dps at least to clear enrage, people whos mindset is "i dont have time to learn and work together with a group of 8" shouldnt be raiding, this isnt meant as an insult, but thats how raiding is, it requires effort(and not much) and some time, remember that you can clear that content anytime you want, you dont have to do it while its relavant, you can wait until you vastly overgear it.

[Kamatsu]

Raiding isnt meant for those kind of people, raiding EX/Savage requires time to learn your class(which isnt rocket science) and do mechanics while pushing out average dps at least to clear enrage, people whos mindset is "i dont have time to learn and work together with a group of 8" shouldnt be raiding, this isnt meant as an insult, but thats how raiding is, it requires effort(and not much) and some time, remember that you can clear that content anytime you want, you dont have to do it while its relavant, you can wait until you vastly overgear it.

Neither me nor the person I replied to was talking about RAIDS. He was talkign about upping the difficulty and including raid-like mechanics into normal DUNGEONS. He's was talking about making normal dungeons and casual play "harder" to try and 'encourage' players to play better - while all that would do is drive players away from the game.

Raiding is a completely different matter than making dungeons such as Cutter's cry harder, and it's something I agree should be hard. Raiding isn't for everyone, and raiding mechanics and difficulty should stay where they belong - in raids.

[Nhadaly]

Snip

Heres the thing tho, i see what ur trying to say, but people who have that casual "i only have x hours a week due to life" mindset also seep into raiding content which makes the quality of pick up groups in PF very low, so what im trying to advocate for right now, is for a well designed progressive difficulty curve in dungeon and trial content, if its well done then people will get better over time and will learn their class over time through playing the content while having fun instead of looking up guides on youtube or the balance discord which may look complicated to some, which will in turn, improve the quality of all PF groups overall, and those casual players that seep into raiding pfs wont be as bad, making the effort of trying to progress in pugs, or even trying to get weekly clears, less mind numbingly torturing.

[Darrcyphfeid]

And as for the "if you're not doing the maximum dps/tanking/healing you're not really playing"... I'll use a FFXIV comeback - "you don't pay my sub".

Do the words reading comprehension mean anything to you?

Try reading what I wrote again, friend. 60~65% of maximum potential =/= maximum potential.

I didn't read most of what you wrote, I just skimmed and saw that. If you can kneejerk, then so can I.

[Selova]

most people who play this game are casual players who don't have the time or inclination to 'git gud' or 'learn to be better'. These people have 30-90 minutes a day/2-days/week to play and just want to log in and play without having to stress, worry about hard-to-play mechanics or such. These are people that will leave a game if their casual content becomes too hard for them to casually beat, they won't go to forums, reddit, guides, etc to try and learn how to play better, they won't seek FC's / LS's / etc to try and improve... they will just up and quit the game.

This is something I've wanted to address for a while because it seems people like to toss around a certain word, and not only that but, twist it to fit their personal narrative. The term "Casual" in MMO's, only refers to the amount of time you are able to put into the game, It has absolutely nothing to do with what you do with that time or how you go about using that time.


Generalizing all players who can't put a lot of time into the game as players who are unable to complete endgame content because of a lack of skill and/or interest has nothing to do with being a casual player, all that is is a bad player or just someone that isn't interested in that type of content and has no relevance on how much time they can or can't spend on the game. There are plenty of endgame raiders that complete challenging content that have just as much time, if not less than your average casual player.


This is why this "casual player" argument holds no weight as a debate tactic. People constantly twist the word according to what their narrative is, instead of actually knowing what the word even means. Being a casual player doesn't mean that you are unable to complete content or push your character to it's maximum potential, all that is is a player who either has no desire to complete it due to lack of interest or someone that isn't good enough, both scenarios have nothing to do with being a casual player. Please stop using this word incorrectly.