The general player base needs to improve

[RiyahArp]

The expert roulette already probably doesn't get used as much as level and 50/60 dungeons. If you increase the potential rewards with harder experts, that's incentive for players to optimize themselves through these....

You're not really getting my point. I don't know how much clearer I can make it.

If you want to make the players better, and things like rabanastre and shinryu have failed at that, you can't do things that are less difficult than it. Even if it's harder than current expert, you will still have the same problems. To really make players good, you have to make them either perfect the mechanic or die and be unable to complete the instance. But current casual content really doesn't demand this, and only ex primals and up demand it consistently. So the changes you will make will need the teeth of mechanic or die gameplay to teach the players what you want, in the same way Shinryu or Rab teaches you to look for a target outside of the arena and run the correct way or die (although surecast or fully mitigating the attack prevents it too in shin's case.) But they must be harder than those two, and that's perilously close to an easy EX trial or very easy savage. Otherwise it's just bardem's mettle, where it doesn't teach anything and you can carry people through it.

I don't think people care enough about rewards to do hard content. Arguably people stop caring to even do easy content; people stop doing the 8 man stories once they get a weapon for their main, and 50-60 roulette is dead because poetics and creation is worthless to any vet in the game. Carrots only go so far; people aren't going to do an hour of wiping for a few tomes. You'd need the stick; if you don't be hard expert, you can't progress the story.

[KaivaC]

snip

What? No, they do not need to be harder than Rabanastre or Shinryu, nor should they start off at that level either. I swear, there is no middle ground with you. It's either this or that, never something in between. Bardams Mettle, at that point in the story, reinforces what you should already know. Maybe in later expert dungeons, you can have them at a few steps below the kind of difficulty you would face with Hashmal. I hear what you're saying quite clearly - but you keep going straight to "it must be at near Savage level" to be effective. No, it does not if Expert Dungeons start increasing difficulty. Nor do you need to have hour long dungeons. These suggestions aren't for vets that raid... This is something for casual to midcore as a buffer to the sudden difficulty spike in Savage, or really, something for other players not interested in raiding, but looking for something relatively challenging. Not everything difficult has to go straight to punishingly difficult. Just because you personally won't do it doesn't mean that there aren't other players who won't.

[RiyahArp]

What? No, they do not need to be harder than Rabanastre or Shinryu, nor should they start off at that level either.

Then it wont teach anyone anything. They'll release it, and you all will complain at how easy they are, because harder than current expert but weaker than rab or shin is still really easy. So you just wasted the devs time. The weaker players will just get carried through them like they get carried through rab. The actual difficulty needed to make an expert that can wipe people and not let dead weight be carried is harder than rab or shin, and closer to an ex trial like susano. And the only way you teach people is by things that challenge them and force everyone to do their roll properly. So it will be in between rab and the easiest ex primal or savage instance to be effective.

People aren't thinking that to teach players effectively, in a way current content doesn't, requires it to be harder for everyone. I think people tend to fixate on one word i say "savage" and don't get i am meaning only it will borrow techniques from it; it may still be easier than alte roite or phantom train, but it cannot be easier than rab.

[MoroMurasaki]

You're not really getting my point. I don't know how much clearer I can make it.

There is a large difficulty gap between Savage and the rest of the game.

There is an appreciable gap between EX trials and casual content.

There is apparently quite a gap between Rabanastre and the dungeoning/normal mode trials included in the main story.

Despite all these large difficulty gaps somehow you think there are only Savage mechanics and faceroll dungeons. You say you don't know how you can make your point any clearer, maybe instead of focusing on that you should focus on understanding what people are telling you.

[F_Maximillian]

I honestly don't remember the last time I've wiped in "casual content". I'm sure it has happened but I only remember vaguely complaining to friends about it after the fact not the incidents themselves. Not every run has been so horrible that it couldn't be completed and I don't think I've seen enrage on anything outside of an ex primal or savage if they do exist.

However, the amount of times I was the top damage in the group regardless of my role (tank healer or dps) or the last one alive that had to finish a boss myself in level 70 content is abnormally high. I'm not some god tier player in fact I'm probably average or less. However, it has definitely lessened the enjoyment for me when I feel like I'm dragging people kicking and screaming through content they voluntarily chose to enter when they could have simply finished whatever it is they were watching/doing before queueing up for the dungeon.

They could have taken the time to read their tooltips and better study their jobs, applied common sense on not standing around doing nothing or spamming heals on a full hp tank, done some quick math to see that aoe is better on large pulls than single target with nothing but their tooltips and a calculator, or saw that defensive cooldowns are not "oh shit buttons" for when things go bad but preventative measures to keep them from going bad.

However, I say nothing to these people. I say hello at the beginning of the dungeon and take care at the end because it seems pointless to say more than that. I did as others do and simply grin and bear it since I didn't want to sit around waiting for a fixed group for every bit of content I do because they aren't up to par. In the beginning I did try offering help and when the mentor system came out I was happy that maybe this would be the lead-in to people being more open to accepting advice (I truly enjoy helping people learn on mmos, it has always been one of my favorite things to do). However, we all know how that turned out and I took my crown off not long after and haven't put it back on since. I also haven't bothered offering advice since nobody seems to want it, as another poster in a different thread said "how dare I be so concieted to assume other people want my "opinion in a dungeon".

Now, I've taken to accepting and putting into practice other advice. I don't do roulettes anymore nor do I bother capping weekly tomes or doing normal mode omega for the weekly drops. I stick to playing only with people I know and trust to actually play the game when they're in a group with me. I login for savage and if I still feel like playing try to help some pug groups clear, usually with no success. I dread everything I do feeling like a slog because people would rather not put in the bare minimum effort to respect my time and the time of the others in their group. I don't expect top tier play but it is draining to see people obviously expecting someone else to pick up their slack and putting no effort in, especially when you get matched with multiple people who all had the same idea.

I've realized that this will never change and the game will simply keep changing to cater to those types of people until even they find it too easy and get bored/quit. For now I simply enjoy what I can with those I know but it's saddening because meeting new people and teaching are some of the things that got me hooked on mmos so long ago. It's a shame that people would rather promote that people exist within their closed circles and disregard those around them but times change and so the genre will change with it.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

Asking for better players without being a dick.

I agree with you. But I also see many, many posts about increasing difficulty on high-end content to widen the skill gap. Which is just selfish. I understand wanting more competence for these type of duties but creating a vacuum (when the hardcore players inevitably finish with said content then piss off to other games) is not the answer either. I believe the devs incorporated the mentor system for this but I think I've seen a Mentor explain something during a duty ONCE. And the game is crawling with them.

The short of it is that it falls to us to make those players better. You (and all of us) have to be part of the solution. Yes, you're still going to get the players that are just scraping by or want a carry but most players are willing to learn and telling them to 'go watch a video' isn't really the same as experience inside the duty. I've found most of the 'bad' players just lack a general understanding of the Job they are playing (rotations and such) and this is where FC's and the Mentor system are supposed to pick up slack but don't.

Or can't. I've seen seasoned veterans pick up a new job and to try to learn on their own and decline advice on how best utilize said job. I've seen this quite a bit actually. And then there are the Jumpers. Its a lot to contend with, but the only thing the devs can do at this point is update the Smiths to have individual job tutorials and have them for 50, 60, and 70 to cover all the rotations. Until then, if you see someone playing their job wrong, say something. If you have to be a dick, be a dick. (I've learned the most from straight up assholes--it was horrible but I learned). The only way we are going to improve the player base is to call it out when we see stuff obviously FUBAR. (I'm not talking parse. I'm talking obvious job mistakes). We might get kicked, but we might make a better player too. The risk is worth the reward IMO.

[Dzian]

It\\'s one Cure II either way, unless you need them to full right this second (which you usually don\\'t). That has lots to do with how powerful healer cures are, although if MP was scarce people would probably actually use Cure I occasionally at 70.

That\\'s kinda it they use cure 2 cos there\\'s no reason to use cure 1. It\\'s not like they\\'ll run outta mp.

Same thing with ale healing see whims toss out Medicas on entire party when maybe 2 got hit and the other 6 have full hp. But no is infinite so it doesn\\'t matter.

Having power heals isn\\'t such a problem. It\\'s having virtually Infinite amounts of them. It takes a pretty horrendous party to run a healers out of mp.

If that dps failed a mechs and lost 75% of his health but only got a cure 1 because mp was finite if he failed the mechs again he\\'s dead. But when they can just toss cure 2 or something with no consideration for there mp that\\'s an issue.

Kinda like I mentioned with raise. If your dead and takes 30 seconds to get raised 9 times out of 10 it\\'s not because of mp. It\\'s because swiftcast isn\\'t up.....

Players simply have to many resources. Tp and mp are both virtually infinite. Make them finite and add more mechs that drain them. Like those hammers that behemoth drops in library hard they hit you goodbye half your tp / mp. Trouble is you have so much of it anyway it just doesn\\'t matter

[Tridus]

That\\'s kinda it they use cure 2 cos there\\'s no reason to use cure 1. It\\'s not like they\\'ll run outta mp.

That is one end of the problem. But the other end is that I can burst people back up so fast that anything that doesn't kill them isn't that risky. It's even worse in full party content because there's two healers doing burst healing and the same amount of HP to fill.

And that's where the issue of "just stand in it, it's fine" comes from. If it takes more time/DPS loss for the DPS to move than it does for me to just heal through it, it's a net gain for the party for me to just heal through it. If it took 5 GCDs to recover from that, it'd be a different story because suddenly I can't get everyone back to full before the next mechanic, and now there's no choice but to dodge stuff.

You can see that on something like Hashmal vs Thadalfus. Thadalfus has lots of mechanics, but unless you get stacks high enough or run into the sides, you can eat a lot of what he does and I can save you. Hashmal simply flattens you and it's much harder (or outright impossible) to save you from it. The community considers one of these fights much, much harder than the other, and the fact that Thadalfus is only truly dangerous if you're not at full HP is a major factor in why.

The thing is, I don't think one shot everything is a healthy game design. Healers ultimately need stuff to heal to feel like they're making an impact as healers rather than Green DPS. That's where a design of lower power healing would help. If I need high HPS burst healing because everyone ate stuff, make that *expensive*. Don't make it so one heal restores half of an entire health bar when damage isn't coming fast enough to need that level of HPS, on my base healing. I'm missing stuff like high MP fast heals vs low MP slower heals that other games have and that make time vs resources a thing you have to manage, which was a skill required to do healing well.

None of that could happen until 5.0, but I hope they look at it.

[Ilyrian]

So - i'm really not in a place to call this...
i'm in no way part of the raid scene in this game - at all. But certain people in this thread - and I'm only mentioning this because there is a stupid level of arrogance on display here - post atrocious FFlogs - like really bad. So I would just suggest you get your own house in order before trying to assume you're not part of the problem you're all creating.

[Nhadaly]

So - i'm really not in a place to call this...
i'm in no way part of the raid scene in this game - at all. But certain people in this thread - and I'm only mentioning this because there is a stupid level of arrogance on display here - post atrocious FFlogs - like really bad. So I would just suggest you get your own house in order before trying to assume you're not part of the problem you're all creating.

While that may be the case in regards to their fflogs as ive checked myself, they do have a point, you can go to any pug for any type of end-game content (even stuff like rabanastre) and see for yourself.