Thank you for increased difficulty

[Vaer]

An interesting look back at when WoW: Warlords of Draenor came out, was that Heroic Dungeons (kind of like our Expert) were capped behind reaching a silver or higher rank in a solo trial challenge of sorts. You'd go to the Proving Ground (kind of like Hall of the Novice) but with mobs you had to interrupt, sometimes have particular kill orders in, dodge mechanics - everything that a real dungeon would have more or less). If you couldn't get silver, you were locked from the content. I don't know if it would work here. But boy, I sure knew people in WoW who literally couldn't do silver to save their lives and had others do it for them. But WoW classes are far more varied and generally broken than what XIV has, period.

Hard to say. Putting a requirement in front of people may just make them quit. The capable players will go through it. But it's that middle-ground that's tricky to get. But agreed, some kind of higher difficulty "Hall of the Expert" or a Primal simulation or something would at least help in assisting players with harder mechanics than in dungeons. Create a reward for doing it too and that is at least one method of incentive. That or some awesome solo-challenges would be great.

I don't think they will do this. They don't even force the novice hall even though it's supposed to be a tutorial. They could use SSS requirements to gate as well. They have a "hands off" approach so the chance they will actually gate anything like this is near 0.

They used to gate things like the raid, you had to clear the earlier stuff (last tier and the ones before it in the series [i.e you had to beat T5 to do T6+]) to get access to the new one, or you would have to clear older EX primals to get access to the newer ones, but they stopped doing it. I'm assuming it's because it split the player base and it made returning a pain since people would have moved on from the old stuff and getting a learning/clear group when a new tier is out was awful.

That spinning monkey throwing bananas stage on gold as a mage was annoying though.

[Melichoir]

It was an interesting experiment. Many claimed their class was unbalanced and it was unfair/impossible on that class and not a true test of player ability. Meanwhile I got the dps Proving Gold as a tank. Silver dps was very basic and you were only locked out from heroic dungeons. Some classes did have it easier than others though and it could have been adjusted a little, but then if you choose a difficult to play class, you should be willing to make the effort to learn to make it moderately effective in group content.

I actually liked the idea, it basically said "you can't step into a harder dungeon unless you're capable of contributing the absolute basic minimum to your group". Which is perfectly fair. What was amazing was the sheer number of players who literally couldn't contribute the basic minimum. So many they had to scrap the idea and continue hoping the skilled players would compensate for them.

SE has teh ability as it is right now to make it tailored to roles pretty easily. A system like how had it would not be to difficult. Healer DPS checks would be lower, of course, but they could have mechanics that require healing (there are boss mechanics in the game that require you to heal them to defeat them). Beyond that, having fight mechanics (dont stand in the pancakes) and other basic factors would go a long way in sorting out players. As an example, DPS who enter the trial would have to meet a certain DPS check (lets say 3k) while avoiding aoe mechanics and needing proper positions. Tanks will have a lower check, but deal with Tank busters and will have to CD properly. Heals will also have a low DPS output but need to have a solid uptime on heals.

And of course, it can be used to explain mechanics and things to players so they understand what theyre supposed to do. Make it a training daily for experience or poetics or something to push newer players into it.

[van_arn]

An interesting look back at when WoW: Warlords of Draenor came out, was that Heroic Dungeons (kind of like our Expert) were capped behind reaching a silver or higher rank in a solo trial challenge of sorts. You'd go to the Proving Ground (kind of like Hall of the Novice) but with mobs you had to interrupt, sometimes have particular kill orders in, dodge mechanics - everything that a real dungeon would have more or less). If you couldn't get silver, you were locked from the content. I don't know if it would work here. But boy, I sure knew people in WoW who literally couldn't do silver to save their lives and had others do it for them. But WoW classes are far more varied and generally broken than what XIV has, period.

Hard to say. Putting a requirement in front of people may just make them quit. The capable players will go through it. But it's that middle-ground that's tricky to get. But agreed, some kind of higher difficulty "Hall of the Expert" or a Primal simulation or something would at least help in assisting players with harder mechanics than in dungeons. Create a reward for doing it too and that is at least one method of incentive. That or some awesome solo-challenges would be great.

If you have no desire to improve, you've already quit even if you won't admit it to yourself.

So basically, let me be there first to ask those players: can I have your stuff?

[Nixxe]

An interesting look back at when WoW: Warlords of Draenor came out, was that Heroic Dungeons (kind of like our Expert) were capped behind reaching a silver or higher rank in a solo trial challenge of sorts. You'd go to the Proving Ground (kind of like Hall of the Novice) but with mobs you had to interrupt, sometimes have particular kill orders in, dodge mechanics - everything that a real dungeon would have more or less). If you couldn't get silver, you were locked from the content. I don't know if it would work here. But boy, I sure knew people in WoW who literally couldn't do silver to save their lives and had others do it for them. But WoW classes are far more varied and generally broken than what XIV has, period.

Hard to say. Putting a requirement in front of people may just make them quit. The capable players will go through it. But it's that middle-ground that's tricky to get. But agreed, some kind of higher difficulty "Hall of the Expert" or a Primal simulation or something would at least help in assisting players with harder mechanics than in dungeons. Create a reward for doing it too and that is at least one method of incentive. That or some awesome solo-challenges would be great.

I'd be very hard pressed to argue that the WoD PG silver requirement for LFD actually improved anyone's experience. I cleared Endless 30 in MoP as DPS and never had difficulties getting silver, so it wasn't an issue for me personally. I can say though that I still ran with terrible players that were supposed to be kept out by this requirement, but heroics were easy enough from day 1 that it really didn't matter anyway. PG had individual mechanics found in dungeons, but as a whole didn't reflect a dungeon environment at all, making it poorly suited for testing aptitude for dungeon clearing. It then eventually became more difficult than the dungeons it was acting as a gatekeeper for, as it scaled and the dungeons did not. As you mentioned, many people still got around it by having others do it for them, but it definitely left them with a bad taste in their mouth regardless. I think the only people who actually enjoyed that arrangement were the low end elitists who both lacked the skill to actually make up for poor play by their group and tend to enjoy harassing players who don't meet whatever arbitrary standards they impose on them.