The general player base needs to improve

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Unpopular opinion: I enjoyed Gordias. It took us months but we cleared it just after Thordan came out. It was way too hard for a starter raid into a new expansion but it was good none the less. We busted our asses and I cried when we cleared 4. I wish we got a title for it. Midas was the right balance I thought..

Although before my time playing, I actually agree, if only based on hearsay and video clips. I suspect with minor tweaks to eliminate gear checks and maybe ease Digititis a touch, A3S would have been a perfect fight... as the last tier. Frankly, the loudest complaints I hear in regards to Gordias is how utterly boring and poorly designed Manipulator was; primarily due to the insane gear check, lack of interesting mechanics and, of course, Nisi.

I agree, but unfortunately, we'll still get those players who seem to think that the only way to increase difficulty is by taking it to Savage levels...which is not what is suggested. I wouldn't mind starting to see some open-ended dungeons, with mobs having varying degrees of difficulty. Lock the best type of loot behind more difficult mobs. The devs could just make one of these dungeons and tie it into the lore by the WoL missing the adventure...this was alluded to in the quest line for Skalla.

I repeatedly turn to the higher floors of PotD as my go-to example. Running with friends several weeks ago, we did aggressive chain pulls to speed through 50-100. That reckless play caught up with us around 110-120 and resulted in a wipe due to hitting a trap and being stun/sleep locked. I was honestly more impressed than disappointed because it was entirely our fault and the game slapped us for it. Now imagine if Expert dungeons worked in a similar facet—with priority mobs to focus down, traps and even patrol packs that could result in high outgoing damage. In many ways, PotD 101+ accomplished what dungeons rarely have: a solid difficulty curve.

Now, we're finding "savage" in stormblood pretty tame. Week one / two clears. I understood they were pretty scared of making the same mistakes as Gordias but I thought they would turn it up a little for Sigma :/ In fact I'm sure they said the raids would scale up in difficulty so it's a little disappointing that they haven't.

I'm glad they're doing the Ultimate's. At least that's something to prog on while Savage has become the weeklies.

They did. Yoshida changed his mind due to Ultimate; preferring to keep Savage as "mid-core" content more or less.

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?

To be fair, those failure lessen if the game encouraged better play beforehand. Some good examples were The Aery and Vault, which hit particularly hard prior to Stormblood. As stated above, I feel higher floors of PotD are perfect benchmarks for what Expert dungeons ought to be. Not only does it offer a reasonable challenge, it helps break up the monotony a bit since certain mobs need to be focused down quickly, thus AoE spamming won't necessarily work. I wouldn't be opposed to them steadily testing things throughout the expansion but they seem entirely averse to the idea yet remain at a loss why player skill just doesn't improve.

[RiyahArp]

Although before my time playing, I actually agree, if only based on hearsay and video clips. I suspect with minor tweaks to eliminate gear checks and maybe ease Digititis a touch, A3S would have been a perfect fight... as the last tier. Frankly, the loudest complaints I hear in regards to Gordias is how utterly boring and poorly designed Manipulator was; primarily due to the insane gear check, lack of interesting mechanics and, of course, Nisi.

You're hearing only the survivors; a lot of people left over it, and don't really show up when we talk about it. This game actually has some seriously massive turnover.

To be fair, those failure lessen if the game encouraged better play beforehand. Some good examples were The Aery and Vault, which hit particularly hard prior to Stormblood. As stated above, I feel higher floors of PotD are perfect benchmarks for what Expert dungeons ought to be. Not only does it offer a reasonable challenge, it helps break up the monotony a bit since certain mobs need to be focused down quickly, thus AoE spamming won't necessarily work.

They aren't a challenge. The only challenge is from roaming mobs, if you get two or more on you. When POTD came out, you didn't really spam aoes and ignore stuff, because you didn't have +99/99 gear that doubled your attack pool, nor did you confine yourself to the easiest floors to grind and ignore the tougher ones. You died then the same way you die at 101+, going too fast for random traps and getting too many adds on you.

That's not hard in any sense that it will teach you to play a class better, it's just now "standing in the fire" ends the run, so to say. And even it can be cheapened a little by the classes you take; get rid of DPS and its much easier, since tanks and healers have much more survivability.

Idk what people want, really. You'd need to make savage-styled content to teach people to be good at savage level play, because you can't learn to be good at a harsh dps check without a harsh dps check. You learn not to fall off platforms in titan or rav by being out the whole fight and dealing with the shame of it.

[akaneakki]

Idk what people want, really. You'd need to make savage-styled content to teach people to be good at savage level play, because you can't learn to be good at a harsh dps check without a harsh dps check. You learn not to fall off platforms in titan or rav by being out the whole fight and dealing with the shame of it.

Making hard checks from the beginning is not a solution either, the gap from doing nothing to something making everything as hard from the beginning wont change anything. What this game need is a checkpoint in the game where you need to rotations a certain amount of times on dummy strike with mechanics and forfil the dps check. And also make fights slightly harder in dungeons as well, because it's just too much of a faceroll tbh.

[Lord_Zlatan]

Making hard checks from the beginning is not a solution either, the gap from doing nothing to something making everything as hard from the beginning wont change anything. What this game need is a checkpoint in the game where you need to rotations a certain amount of times on dummy strike with mechanics and forfil the dps check. And also make fights slightly harder in dungeons as well, because it's just too much of a faceroll tbh.

If you ever played FFXI, a better suggestion would be to gate your level 70 quest behind a Maat fight.

Maat was an NPC that basically gated you from levelling your character to the cap. In this game, you could still be level 70 when fighting whatever iteration of it, but it would gate you in some other way (to lazy to think about a fair/balanced way right now). He was basically a clone of you, and used all the abilites plus some others of the class you were fighting him with. To beat him, it was a test of whether or not you knew how to adequately play the class at a high(er) level.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

You're hearing only the survivors; a lot of people left over it, and don't really show up when we talk about it. This game actually has some seriously massive turnover.

Because Gordias was not properly balanced. Shifting Living Liquid to the fourth fight allows for an easier boss to precede him, thus better preparing players for the upcoming difficulty. I also specifically highlighted tweaking him a bit for balance sake. Regardless, you're also neglecting to mention 3.1 offered no content whatsoever. I would argue people quit more due to the fact outside of Savage you had the following...

Thordon EX
Void Ark
Diadem
Lord of Verminion

This content drought lasted for eight months. Considering Diadem and LoV were universal flops, it's far more likely people left the game due to the utter lack of content, especially since Savage has always remained somewhat niche.

They aren't a challenge. The only challenge is from roaming mobs, if you get two or more on you. When POTD came out, you didn't really spam aoes and ignore stuff, because you didn't have +99/99 gear that doubled your attack pool, nor did you confine yourself to the easiest floors to grind and ignore the tougher ones. You died then the same way you die at 101+, going too fast for random traps and getting too many adds on you.

That's not hard in any sense that it will teach you to play a class better, it's just now "standing in the fire" ends the run, so to say. And even it can be cheapened a little by the classes you take; get rid of DPS and its much easier, since tanks and healers have much more survivability.

Idk what people want, really. You'd need to make savage-styled content to teach people to be good at savage level play, because you can't learn to be good at a harsh dps check without a harsh dps check. You learn not to fall off platforms in titan or rav by being out the whole fight and dealing with the shame of it.

Ironically, you just described difficulty scaling. PotD got easier as you gained strength until it increased again to compensate. If dungeons followed a similar trend, Leveling would be the initial 1-100 floors that eventually get out-scaled while Expert compensates. Unfortunately, the latter has been rendered so braindead easy you scarcely require a pulse.

Actively punishing players for failing mechanics is teaching them—in the same sense making it devoid of any risk inventives ignoring them entirely. When I can get 2-3 vulnerability stacks as the MT in Kefka normal, why do I care to dodge his mechanics? They clearly aren't going to kill me. Now if after a single stack I took substantially higher damage—perhaps being forced back into tank stance—I'll care a whole lot more to avoid them.

You do not require Savage level content to learn the basics. A difficulty curves to steadily increase the challenge at a reasoned pace and can be seen utilized in numerous games. For example sake, let's grab Seymour from FFX. He becomes increasingly more challenging with each encounter assuming you don't overlevel, yet at no point is he ever unbeatable. DPS checks aren't what you need to learn going into Savage, especially as they aren't "harsh" by any standards. You need to learn mechanics and how to properly perform your job—all of which can be readily taught as early as dungeons. Alas, FFXIV refuses to relay any information towards the player and instead hopes better players just pick up the slack.

[weedlord]

bads gonna bad

[Chortle]

I honestly think they should implement a mechanics-only solo instance that increased in difficulty the more successful you got.

Each stage could be different and have different obstacles with no actual combat.

Thinking more like fighting Bardam in Bardam's Mettle, but on a larger, solo instance scale.

[Kazgrel]

I’m of the mind that it’s not exclusively a lack of skill, but also a lack of effort.

[RiyahArp]

We already have rab and shinryu, and on release they really weren't all that fun content to do the few times they popped up after, with appropriate ilvl. I really don't want launch rab and shin to be the standards for experts i have to do once per day. The easy content is nice because you aren't spending 45 min to an hour because your party keeps wiping at a particular boss. And apparently, even that level of content doesn't breed good players, since we still get all the complaints.

If you constantly get annoyed by others, just get a good FC and do everything in a static. Because I really don't think making this game harder will make players better.

[MoroMurasaki]

If you constantly get annoyed by others, just get a good FC and do everything in a static. Because I really don't think making this game harder will make players better.

The "if you dont like x about the general population you should only do things in a static" argument is a little dated at this point don't you think?

Don't like zero-DPS healers? Only use a static.

Don't like tanks that pull big? Only use a static.

Don't like wiping over and over to content of trivial difficulty? Well clearly the problem is not the people subjecting you to their poor play - it's you expecting them to be considerate of others! Use a static.

What's next? Don't like Miqo'te? Use a static.

God, it's so tiring explaining the same things to the same people over and over again.