The general player base needs to improve

[Dzian]

I should've probably clarified my personal view on how I view players, which is casual, casual-midcore, and hardcore.

I think a big part of the problem is that these categories have pretty much been thrown around so much that they've lost all definition. Not aiming this st anyone particular but..
What is a casual player?
What is a hard core player?

There's so many answers for each of those that it becomes a meaningless
Term when used in discussions such as this.

"Ramping up the difficulty curve will push the casuals away"
Really. Who will it push away? I think a lot of players who would like to see an increased difficulty curve would actually consider themselves to be casual players for one reason or another.

I've never considered myself hard core. Even when I was doing coils in ARR I was a self proclaimed casual monkey That would do coil on an when I could be bothered basis. No static no raiding groups just set up a pf whenever I felt like giving it a go. Absolute minimum of dedication but at the same time the fact i cleared coil apparantly meant i was some hard core elitist jerk.

And while I never did savage in Alexander I did clear all the ex primal and farm various weapons and stuff but again on the same casual monkey when I can be bothered attitude but running around with primal weapons apparently meant I was hard core....

It's only got worse over time as well. It's practically impossible to accurately describe a casual / hard core gamer these days. To some people just being a raider makes you hard core even if you enter savage like once a week and it takes you several weeks to get a clear....

He'll people even said potd 101-200 was hard core content and impossible for casuals. Yet you could quite literally get 3 friends and spend 20 minutes a week doing it. 10 floors here and there as casual as you liked

[Senliten]

I think a big part of the problem is that these categories have pretty much been thrown around so much that they've lost all definition. Not aiming this st anyone particular but..
What is a casual player?
What is a hard core player?

Hilariously enough, this was just talked on about over at the EQ boards, but i'll be honest to say a few answers over there feel like a common staple that would be a general concept of what the two and how the two are differed from.

Hardcore... learns to actually play the characters they play and utilizes all of the abilities the class has to offer. This doesn't just apply to their main, it applies to most of their alts as well. They will get good gear, good augs, max out all of the GOOD AA's for the class first and then just max out the AA's. Get all heroic AA's even though it's going back to old content.

Casuals... generally don't care about most of the above. As long as stuff dies, and things are enjoyable - all is well.

Note... neither is a negative. It's simply how the game is played by different people. The negativity comes into play with some people jump from EverQuest to Forum Quest and start making silly demands.

The item bolded is something I feel resonates heavily back over here, and where I feel the current situation stems from, especially with the usual posts of crying to "nerf content that requires some mental concepts of how to play the basic concept of this games mechanics." (i.e ShinEx, Rhabanastre, Amdapor Keep, back when it was one of the first few 50 dungeons we could do, etc..). As someone previously stated, this is an issue that must be resolved from both ends. Dev's need to stop catering to every single posts about crying to make content easier and take a firm stance to tell people to 'learn, contribute, and play'. And players need to learn that this game is not 'netflix fantasy' and it is an MMO that requires you to work together with other players and do what is expected of your class and of the game at the most basic of levels (dodge the pretty lights, stack with stack markers, place markers, do whatever visual or sound que that is given by the content which is more generous than other MMO's and its content out there, etc..), but because players have to go and do this, they want to cry that they have to move more than 2 feet and can't simply mash until it works, hence the 'silly demands' we see to 'nerf this or that.'

I'll be honest, I am still to this day wondering why SE even nerfed AK, the day I first saw the Bee's no longer spawning for burn i had a complete WTF moment and asked long and hard how was it even hard, when it was simple situational awareness and knowing the basics, be they obtained from learning the dungeon or just reading up on it somewhere.

[RiyahArp]

This is false. People get better by gradual increments in difficulty, not massive leaps. You may prefer that method personally but I can guarantee you never learned something hard by just throwing yourself at the most difficult part and overcoming it.

No, people generally don't improve that way, or desire to make improvements. People naturally coast on their level of skill unless forced by something beyond it to finally change, be it a hard college class or what. You can argue after they have different learning styles, but this game really just has one, repeat the dumb thing until you mastered it.

As for percentage increases, most people wouldn't notice a 1-2% variation or even 10%. You also have more of a balanced difficulty spike; hard content is hard because they pile on everything at once i think.

[Gleipni]

Maybe what we need,is dedicated world (for RP....joke) depending what kind of community you want, for exemple:
Sephiroth world:"by entering this world,you agree to enter in an environement that will ask you lot of commitment,and we are not responsible for any harassment due to performance"
Chocobo world:" by entering this world you agree to enter in an environement where people do no want to be harassed over player performance,anyone violating this rule can be sentanced to ban"

Like this,people who wants good level go to hardmode world,and people who want to play chill go to the chill one,everyone is happy.

Cause you have to be honnest,FF comunity is mostly bad,youc annot deny it,when the community start to say "farm parties are trap,you may have more chance with kill group" there is a big problem going on.
And one other tool would be hard solo content,that you MUST beat to acces savage and stuff,like a mini solo savage as a failsafe

[Squintina]

I have mixed feelings about this, probably because I main as a healer.

Bad players are very frustrating because they put a lot more stress on the healers to make up for their mistakes (by rezzing, pushing out more heals, and probably pushing out more dps and mechs that are generally done by the dps).

But at the same time, they provide extra challenge to a fight, which if I can make up and still succeed makes me feel like a goddess.

Like one week I did o7n and o8n with a half-premade party and we had some people who were doing the ? wrong (on purpose lol, some people in the pre-made were drunk and getting hit or jumping off "for fun") and others who just weren't paying attention (one pug had SIX stacks of vulnerability), and somehow us 2 healers who were actually trying managed to make up for all of it, and it was both very frustrating and yet so much fun because of the challenge.

Similarly Rabanastre became filled with people who just don't know how to play well once they stopped capping the coins, and I've been in a lot of boss runs where people were not taking on adds (first boss) or not dodging right (Mateus and other bosses) and we somehow still made it through mostly because of healers and tanks and the good dps-ers making up for the rest of the party. Frustrating yet a real sense of accomplishment afterwards.

[Soupa]

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Yoshi has addressed this before, the argument is while this is a good idea they don’t want players bullying players off the server because they won’t adhere the what the server is labeled as.

[Ayer2015]

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I really like the idea of difficult solo content gates into top tier content actually.

[Gleipni]

I really like the idea of difficult solo content gates into top tier content actually.

And we would avoid people going in savagethat only use 2 skill or just faceroll their keyboard,there would be way less toxicity at higher tier,less strees to get group and overall better environement

[DreadRabbit]

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No sweat Everyone's got lives outside of these forums so I don't expect anything immediately (or ever really. I figure if I don't get responded to people just don't want to. And that's fine).

But I do want you to know that I think these discussions are important to have, and I hope that I didn't make you feel you were wrong to bring the topic up (because I don't think that at all!). Games should provide a challenge for its players, no matter what skill level they are at.

The point is not to populate the overworld with savage encounters that ruin our day at a glance. But if a player is eased into complexity over the course of 70 levels, it wouldn't be far-fetched to see more capable players on all levels as compared to getting to the level cap and getting a trial by fire through EX primals and Savage-type raids.

I agree with you.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

No, people generally don't improve that way, or desire to make improvements. People naturally coast on their level of skill unless forced by something beyond it to finally change, be it a hard college class or what. You can argue after they have different learning styles, but this game really just has one, repeat the dumb thing until you mastered it.
As for percentage increases, most people wouldn't notice a 1-2% variation or even 10%. You also have more of a balanced difficulty spike; hard content is hard because they pile on everything at once i think.

Psychology studies argue otherwise. If people perceive something nigh impossible from the onset, they are significantly less inclined to bother; the "I can't possibly do this, so why even try?" effect. Conversely, gradual increments fuel endorphins due to people seeing actual results, even if only slight. Provided they remained engage, people will absolutely notice 5-10%. They may even notice just 1-2% with high enough adrenaline. This is why gradual difficulty curves are used in all forms of activity not just video games. You wouldn't expose someone to advance computer science without starting from the basics. In the same sense, fights in FFXIV shouldn't follow a pattern of: "Easy -> Easy-ish -> Hard -> Very hard -> OMFG"

Better even. Let's look at the Primals since they're more "Casual" content.

Susano -> Easy
Lakshmi - Very easy
Shinryu - Hard
Byakko - Easy

Difficulty assessment is relative only to each respective primal not overall content

The problem isn't Shinryu's difficulty per se, but the sudden leap with little to no preparation. Unfortunately, this inconsistent scaling can be seen across multiple tiers of content. While not the sole contributor to people's lackluster skill, it does play a noteworthy factor.