The general player base needs to 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.

[akaneakki]

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

As much as I would love that, most of the FFXIV playerbase wouldn't pass it or wouldn't bother because it's something they are forced to do. I mean a propper gate in this game is absolutely needed, but at the same time we need to be realistic about how they can do it.

[RiyahArp]

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

Ma'at sucked. I went through him too, but he seriously sucked. His difficulty varied a lot depending on what job you challenged him at (I think RDM was the hardest) and what he taught had zero to do with your job, as opposed to reading a walkthrough and praying to god RNG wouldnt screw you. You actually didn't need him in that game; just surviving the leveling process alone made you skilled enough. Ma'aat was more like those BCNMs that seemed impossible to do but could be done only with fairly precise strategies, and relied on a fair bit of luck too.

[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.