The general player base needs to improve

[Gleipni]

The more you build a rhythm to your keybinds through a general logic and muscle memory, the less you have to focus on them, too. Heck, the mechanics can often help in that regard; after some 10 attempts at a given piece of content, I can look at the mechanics to know how many seconds remain on my abilities.

AS he said,anyone who do savage regulary will tell you that at some point,you dont even think about your rotation you focus on mecanic and your muscle memory do the rest.

[Kacho_Nacho]

The more you build a rhythm to your keybinds through a general logic and muscle memory, the less you have to focus on them, too. Heck, the mechanics can often help in that regard; after some 10 attempts at a given piece of content, I can look at the mechanics to know how many seconds remain on my abilities.

I feel there is a middle ground. Not everyone has the same amount of muscle memory, thus, it is good to have a variety of complexity. At the same time, I think the best way to entice players to improve is to reward them for good play in a tangible way. Damage isn't tangible for many players. It's just a number which quickly scrolls away. But, make the spell effects flashier or change to a different color, and players will be falling over themselves to find out how to make it happen.

[Shurrikhan]

I feel there is a middle ground. Not everyone has the same amount of muscle memory, thus, it is good to have a variety of complexity. At the same time, I think the best way to entice players to improve is to reward them for good play in a tangible way. Damage isn't tangible for many players. It's just a number which quickly scrolls away. But, make the spell effects flashier or change to a different color, and players will be falling over themselves to find out how to make it happen.

True, true.

Is it time to start a #ProportionateSpellVisuals or the like?

[NovaLevossida]

A large problem is the general difficulty of the dungeons. Your "expert" dungeons are fairly hard to die in, but somehow people still do outside of pulling too many mobs. There's a large problem when a healer can somehow die in the boss fight (no sarcasm, that's hard to do) and the tank and the two DPS without heals/rez can finish the last 50% of the boss. That's a ridiculous lack of difficulty.

The penalty for playing poorly in most of the content in this game is not failure but rather taking a bit longer. This is why people never improve. You'd think if you do something often enough, you'd get better at it, but that's clearly not the case.

[Miggs]

Hmm....so, I'm curious about something. Is this your first class, or is this an alt that you're replying on?

I'd have thought join date and post count would have answered that for you

Been playing a fair bit of Wildstar and quite liked their system. You have a lot of skills to choose from but can only load out 8 at a time.
Even I could manage that!

[KaivaC]

I'd have thought join date and post count would have answered that for you

Been playing a fair bit of Wildstar and quite liked their system. You have a lot of skills to choose from but can only load out 8 at a time.
Even I could manage that!

There's a quite a few forum members who log into the forums with their alts, rather than their mains, so usually, I try not to assume when responding.

Now with that being said, not to scare you or anything, but the class you chose is probably amongst the most complicated once you unlock your job - thankfully, there's no button overload, but it does take time once you get your full tool kit as a summoner, if you stick down the DPS path. Aside from that, there's really no complexity with the jobs (especially with the streamlining that came with Stormblood). We're probably sitting at a point where rotations are as simple as they can possibly be without neutering the job any more than they are at the moment, so I don't really think that's one of the major issues (it's an issue nonetheless with players not knowing how to do their rotations well past level 60 for whatever reason).

[Kamatsu]

The idea of AI squadrons in Coils and Alex sounds good, but ...you know...mechanics. Admittedly, I haven't touched squadrons since the first couple of weeks afte rit came out so I have no idea how much the AI has improved. I imagine that T9 would be incredibly difficult to program - for one, who the meteors target is not exactly set, plus the AI would have to be able to compensate for the player's position as well as the other AI...coordinating meteor drops is already rough with just a few players if they had never done it before, and then having the golems intentionally eat a meteor...then there's the next phase with the tower...

That said, if the devs could make AIs competent enough to allow players to be able to go through old content with their squadron, I'm for it.

Squadron AI hasn't been touched very much, apart from improving the Tank's AI (ie they seem to use their emnity skills more appropriately). They still very much completely ignore mechanics in dungeons - they are so OP as it stands that they don't need to worry for a whole bunch of the games mechanics. For instance in Stone Vigil's 2nd boss there's no need to use the canon's to ward off the flying dragon, just keep attacking the boss and ignore the frost-balls that the flying dragon attacks with. Or in Dzmeal Keep on the 1st boss you don't need to worry about trying to slow the boss down, avoid the fire on the ground it spawn's, etc... just attack and kill it.

And as it stands, unless they massively change T9's mechanics specifically to be able to ignore the mechanics, or changes to work with braindead AI... I don't see how you could do it with a GC Squadron, even as OP as they are it would still be a wipe due to the mechanics. They would likely need to make a completely separate T9 dungeon just for GC Squadron's that don't use the standard mechanic - so when you queue up for it the game would have to detect whether you're there with other players (so get the current version), or with GC Squad (so get the mechanics nerfed version).

But that said, I do agree that it would be great to be able to do old content with GC Squadrons. Let people get the story from them, without having to rely on PF for it (if they don't have a FC to help them). PF is good for the most part, but you still get elitist jerks on there (who bitch & moan if you don't already know fights 100% & have issue's with mechanics now and again, even when the PF specifically says you don't and have medical disability which effect's performance.. pfft!).

Problem is while gC Squadrons do let you experience content, they don't help you play better. For that there needs to be other in-game things.. like greater focus on Novice Hall, SSSS, etc and making these things mandatory to do at least once. Teach players more about the different types of AoE that happen, the stuff like tail attacks that happen in some fights, teach what the boss-fight indicators usually mean (ie the 'orange plus for stacking to mitigate damage).

[Kacho_Nacho]

True, true.

Is it time to start a #ProportionateSpellVisuals or the like?

Why not? Let's do this!

#ProportionateSpellVisuals2018

[RiyahArp]

ah...well keep in mind a lot of people don't actually like over the top spell effects, and some even turn them off. The worst example id the RDM level 3 limit break, it actually is blinding.

[Dzian]

ah...well keep in mind a lot of people don't actually like over the top spell effects, and some even turn them off. The worst example id the RDM level 3 limit break, it actually is blinding.

I think most people turn a lot of the effects off simply because there ends up being so many flashes bangs and sparkles every single second. players just can't see what the he'll is going on..