The general player base needs to improve

[Lord_Zlatan]

To put shortly: you don't know we we need easier content, cos you don't enjoy it. And i don't know why we need harder content, cos i don't do savage and I don't need more of content I'm not gonna do.

so if savage is the only type of hard content in the game, why does there need to be more easy content?

Every dungeon, normal primal, and Delta/Sigma normal, are by all accounts, easy content.

[Tridus]

I think we need more easier content. It's not fun wiping at ex primals and 24 raids. And wipes happens, because it's too hard.

But if it's so easy that failure is impossible, what's the point of doing it? There's no sense of accomplishment or progression in that.

I find expert so unsatisfying to run because it's so easy. Rabanastre, wipes and all, at least makes me pay attention and try.

Ex primals are also supposed to be hard content. So they should be hard.

[KarstenS]

I think we need more easier content. It's not fun wiping at ex primals and 24 raids. And wipes happens, because it's too hard.

Then just don't do this content?

Issue solved and this would be btw. the intended solution for it.

The game doesn't tell [...] you're doing your rotation correctly,

Maybe lock the cool special effects behind a correct rotation and let it look weak (as it is), when done wrong?

[Kacho_Nacho]

Maybe lock the cool special effects behind a correct rotation and let it look weak (as it is), when done wrong?

That is a brilliant idea! Players may not always care about their damage; but, by god, they will jump through hoops to get the coolest visual effects. I know because I worked as the Asst. Mgr. at an arcade for three years.

The kids were always searching online for information on how to perform the flashiest combos or enable a hidden character. I really hope someone at S.E. sees this suggestion because it's a winner!

[Shurrikhan]

Maybe lock the cool special effects behind a correct rotation and let it look weak (as it is), when done wrong?

Yeah, that'd be disgustingly helpful to many.

[StragoMagus]

Yeah, that'd be disgustingly helpful to many.

Reminds me of how freemium games operate yet it’s the most effective way to get players to “follow the way that’s intended”. Really good idea to implement but might be too late?

[Shurrikhan]

Reminds me of how freemium games operate yet it’s the most effective way to get players to “follow the way that’s intended”. Really good idea to implement but might be too late?

The simplest implementation would be simply to reduce the graphical (revealed) level on it if its conditions haven't been met. Chaos Thrust without combo, no glowing purple flower-sparks.

The only issue would be when someone has already left their animation particle effects settings at minimum, or would misconstrue it to mean that everyone else is failing their combos all the time when they have party animations limited, but that should only be for one mistaken comment per player, and leaving those settings at full would give a better picture of who's at least not clipping their combos.

But then again, you'd think damage could tell us all this already, at least in regards to our own attacks...

[Tridus]

The question, to me, is just how big of a spread in player skill is acceptable to you, Kaiva? It's impossible to get everyone on an equal footing, so there will always be good players and comparatively bad players. The only question is how wide the gap is between them.

It's pretty wide right now. But the game is designed to tolerate that. I mean, expert and the 70 dungeons (with a couple of exceptions) don't punish failure at all. Being "bad" by the standard of the playerbase is plenty good to clear that content, and with a name like "expert", that must mean you're not that bad, right? Even if you eat absolutely every mechanic on every boss in Kugane castle, an awake healer will get you through it.

The game doesn't tell you what your DPS is or if you're doing your rotation correctly, and technically someone else telling you is against ToS. The message being sent there below Ex/Savage tier is that it doesn't matter a whole lot if you are using skills effectively or not.

Lots of content puts two healers in it but only really needs one. Then you get runs where both get killed and the tank can heal it long enough for someone else to bring them back up, so no real consequence there (except the tank getting to show off).

Tanking is extremely forgiving if you don't care about DPS, with enmity being easy to generate and more than enough defensive cooldowns to mitigate everything in the vast majority of content.

And I mean... that's deliberate. They don't want story content gated behind hard content (aside from Shinryu at release, although people outgear it so much now that it's kind of a joke since it oddly has no item level sync), and they want people to have something to do weekly to gear up. So none of that stuff is very hard, aiming at the wider demographic of people who don't care about the game enough to want to invest a lot of effort into learning how to do difficult content.

These things are hard to get right, because having the playerbase improve means slowly cranking up the difficulty such that people will adjust and learn without hitting a wall of frustration and quitting in response. If wipes and failure are more frequent, is that a thing we want? Look at how often Rabanastre comes up as a problem, when the "problem" is that failure actually happens there? Do we want EVERYTHING to look like that, with the risk that the bottom 20% might quit the game entirely as a result (and the revenue implications that brings)?

I don't know. I do know that right now the game is very forgiving to people who don't want to invest a lot of effort into learning how to play better, to the point that it doesn't even give you the tools to do that effectively (which is why everyone keen on self improvement is using third party tools/sites). How much harder should it be before it's hard enough and we're all content with the skill gap as being acceptable?

[KaivaC]

snip

I'd say the gap is pretty big, though perhaps not as bad as it was back in HW (I glimpsed a little bit of it in 3.56). I do feel like the last two dungeons ramped up the difficulty a little bit. I think the highest that the bar should get for casual players should be Shinryu. Anything higher than that would be hitting Savage territory, and that would do more harm than good, I feel. Fractal and Hells Lid are a pretty good step-up I think, because while they are still not absolutely dangerous, they will still punish you if you mess up. Byakko felt like an appropriate difficulty from Lakshmi (the orbs and dealing with Leg Sweep can be nasty if one doesn't pay attention). I've said it before, but rather than having mobs consisting of 5-6 enemies, I'd like to see unique mobs with mechanics. Something that actually requires more than just the same old stuff.

Of course, it has to be balanced, and ideally if Fractal and Hells Lid were to be the dungeons that started the trend of scaling difficulty, then it should continue into 5.0. Maybe by the end of that expansion, optional dungeon content can start to be tuned towards Shinryu (with balance in mind...don't want the devs to overtune the enemies.)

[Tridus]

I'd say the gap is pretty big, though perhaps not as bad as it was back in HW (I glimpsed a little bit of it in 3.56). I do feel like the last two dungeons ramped up the difficulty a little bit. I think the highest that the bar should get for casual players should be Shinryu. Anything higher than that would be hitting Savage territory, and that would do more harm than good, I feel. Fractal and Hells Lid are a pretty good step-up I think, because while they are still not absolutely dangerous, they will still punish you if you mess up.

Seems reasonable. I find Hells Lid better than Fractal on that, though, probably because they use vuln up more liberally and the bosses have attacks that punch back harder. Fractal doesn't feel like much is a threat to kill me. But conceptually I do think expert is the place that needs the difficulty boost, so I'd go for that plan.

I've said it before, but rather than having mobs consisting of 5-6 enemies, I'd like to see unique mobs with mechanics. Something that actually requires more than just the same old stuff.

Remember the old days when trash required stuff like CC and was more than "round up 3 packs and AoE it?" Good itmes.

Of course, it has to be balanced, and ideally if Fractal and Hells Lid were to be the dungeons that started the trend of scaling difficulty, then it should continue into 5.0. Maybe by the end of that expansion, optional dungeon content can start to be tuned towards Shinryu (with balance in mind...don't want the devs to overtune the enemies.)

Sounds good. I think we're largely on the same page. I don't want to chase people out of the game, but expert really shouldn't be named that if it's sleepwalk content.