Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[Tridus]

You wouldn't be allowed to make any mistakes, mostly. You answered yourself. The healer gets caught by a ghost, you wipe because he can't kill it fast enough before people die.

All tanks in Stormblood have some way of self-sustain and some way of buying more time with a cooldown. While a PLD would clearly be in the best spot because Clemency and Hallowed can buy all kinds of time (I mean, I've flat out healed O8N for almost a minute alone as a PLD after both healers got knocked off at the same time and needed to recover), all the tanks have something to do that isn't "just keep DPSing until I die and blame the healer." They can buy time for a healer to get out from the ghosts, as it doesn't take that long to kill one. DPS can actually avoid stuff until the healer is out, and if you've got a RDM who realizes they have Vercure, you're fine anyway.

The healer makes any mistake at all, and you are all dead. Essentially we are talking landsides and being knocked off arenas, but one person getting such would just make it a fast wipe instead of a slow limp to the finish. If you get nailed once, game over.

I don't know why you like to exaggerate, but there's a gap between "everything instagibs you and wipes the party" and "it's literally impossible to fail this boss if you are awake."

Yeah you probably suck, with that attitude. And you like to berate non raiders about being elitist.

Classy.

[MoroMurasaki]

Yeah you probably suck, with that attitude. And you like to berate non raiders about being elitist.

So to be clear because I think other people play poorly you believe I play poorly, that's the gist of it? Since you're judging someone's skill level with whom you've never even played how bad must that make you?

I feel like this gets thrown at you a lot and I never see you respond to it, likely because you know you're a hypocrit, but "pot, meet kettle!"

As far as "liking to berate non raiders for being elitist"... huh? What does that even mean? I haven't even cleared o7s, I'm not some hardcore orange-or-bust bleeding edge person (because yes, despite what your treatment of them might make people believe raiders are people too) I'm pretty casual.

The fact that I can have purple and orange parses at all in anything with little to no mmo experience, poor skill at action-based video games in general and relatively little time invested here is a source of confusion for me. The only thing I have going for me is that I'm dedicated enough to not want to be a buden on any parties I join or form. When someone like me is beating a significant portion of the playerbase in any content I'm sorry but that means they're lazy (haven't put in research to understand how their class plays, aren't trying to keep their CDs and GCDs rolling constantly, etc.) or bad (know what they should be doing but can't manage to keep gcds rolling/appropriate buffs up/etc.) and saying those things might hurt some feelings but, a favorite quote of mine recently, "facts don't care about your feelings."

I commented on a post that said most people "expexted perfection" which is what I took issue with. If most people expected perfection the only people playing the game would be those orange+ players. Most people accept mediocrity without batting an eye and won't say anything to any level of play above "literally afk" outside of EX/Savage.

To tie this back around to the purpose of this thread originally - these people who are catapulting me into orange parses on a class I can name several people who outplay me on have a ton of content. All dungeons, 24 mans and raids can be completed with more than half a party of people who are playing like they've set their cat on their keyboard. Sadly this statement is hardly hyperbolic.

The only content that requires any amount of attention or care is EX/Savage and the extreme difficulty curve scares people away from it. They're used to participation trophies and you drop them in the olympics. Rapid-fire mechs that kill the party when failed instead of just hurting you, incoming damage that can actually press a healer's mp and all that on top of an enrage timer that requires at minimum pretty good play from everyone in the party.

It's no wonder people aren't participating in Savage - the game breeds a playerbase that thinks it's okay to screw up about as often as you get anything right and lets them do that... right up to the end where, yes, people start expecting something much closer to perfection if they want to clear.

So yes - I could not possibly support some difficultly in optional dungeons more. It would do nothing but good and would maybe teach people a bit more about how to play the game they've been mashing buttons in.

[Kewitt]

I'm all for harder content if the reward is there.
I would soon hope into a dungeon and have 2 paths, easy patch with 2x trash, or boss with harder less forgiving mechanic.
Then the party could chose which way to go.

To 1st boss normal
Let's people in DF know what party can do.
Then it would be a door all 4 members interact with the door pick easy or hard path, if tie random, if wipe hard path closed.

[KisaiTenshi]

I'm all for harder content if the reward is there.
I would soon hope into a dungeon and have 2 paths, easy patch with 2x trash, or boss with harder less forgiving mechanic.
Then the party could chose which way to go.

To 1st boss normal
Let's people in DF know what party can do.
Then it would be a door all 4 members interact with the door pick easy or hard path, if tie random, if wipe hard path closed.

That was FFXIV V1.0. Parties could be up to 16 players, and each dungeon had like 4 bosses, of which you got different rewards depending on which ones you defeated, how fast you defeated them, and how fast you cleared everything in the dungeon.

What we got in V2.0 are versions of these dungeons with portions blocked off (In fact only Total-snore (Toto-rak) even has two paths still) and difficulty scaled down. Everyone's hated dungeon, Aurum Vale, also comes from V1.0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs8nEtHrCr8

[Lynde]

I'm all for harder content if the reward is there.
I would soon hope into a dungeon and have 2 paths, easy patch with 2x trash, or boss with harder less forgiving mechanic.
Then the party could chose which way to go.

To 1st boss normal
Let's people in DF know what party can do.
Then it would be a door all 4 members interact with the door pick easy or hard path, if tie random, if wipe hard path closed.

That suggestion reminds me of a similar mechanic in another game. In Elsword there were Dungeons that you ran mid to late game called Secret Dungeons. Sometimes during the run, an NPC called Luto would randomly appear on a section. Then a vote would start. If the vote was passed, the dungeon would restart from the beginning in a harder difficulty called "Luto Mode". There were perks for the added difficulty, mainly being higher drop rate and TRIPLE EXP on kills. It was a good difficulty spike, but oh man did it suck when you didn't want to do it. XD

[StarRosie]

"Luto Mode". XD

Oh heavens I remember those...they were fun but gods above one serious screw up could mess the whole thing up. Luto mode made me completely rethink my opinion on Void Princess' Aging skill. Elsword had such fun ideas and gameplay, just sucks its bogged down (Even more now) with their cash shop BS...

[Brill_]

To accomplish this you need to change the mentality of most of the community. Right now, people expect perfection and they expect speed runs. If that doesn't happen, they rage quit. Making content harder will result in wipes and it will result in runs taking longer. This would require the dev to dig their heels in and say "this is the bar, we're not going to lower it"

Personally, I feel the normal mode raid is what should fill the gap between faceroll and savage. At one of the sessions at fanfest in 2016 they mentioned expert dungeons would stay like they are. They are meant to be something that can get done in about 20 minutes. Using the current ilvls, they should make tome gear 350, obtained by faceroll content. Kick up the difficulty on normal mode raids a notch and have it drop 360 and then have savage at 370.

[MoroMurasaki]

To accomplish this you need to change the mentality of most of the community. Right now, people expect perfection and they expect speed runs.

Based on what I've seen from pugs and PF I walk into everything expecting to wipe until we disband because people are bad and lazy. I don't think I'm alone in this sentiment. The idea that people expect perfection in a game where 0 dps healers are clearing endgame/tanks who don't leave tank stance are common is laughable.

[KaivaC]

I think what's being lost here is that the idea behind this post was to get 4mans to start pushing towards savage mechanics. Within the game system, you can introduce difficulty within doing savage stuff. Quite easily in fact. I'm saying this from a non raider perspective too. Again, within the game engine, the devs can easily make an entire dungeon nerf healing and tanking through persistent debuffs, just lower the damage that mobs do overall.

I would love to see a gimmick dungeon that is like ff9s Ipsen's Castle, in that lower ilvl makes it easier to actually get through the dungeon

[Camiie]

If the general dungeon difficulty were to be raised, would those who desire such be willing to be more patient with other players and more accepting of the potential for mistakes and failure? It seems like you'd almost have to be, but then again I'm not sure it's safe to presume how others will act or react in an online game setting.