Suggestion: Party Finder "Practice Mode"

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Suggestion: "Practice Mode" in Party Finder for high-end duty.

In this mode, if you die you will automatically be rezzed, immediately. If the raid wipes though, it's over.
Rezzing this way will incur no sickness debuff, but you will get a buff which counts how many times you died.

If you clear a boss using this method, you will receive no rewards.
Furthermore, to balance this, it can be considered that tokens earnable, exchangeable or buyable will need to be spent for every auto-rez you use in this mode.

Reason for Suggestion:
Most people that I know agree the party finder experience for high-end content is extremely unsatisfying. Some people take hundreds of pulls, dozens of hours, wiping a whole week from Tuesday till Sunday, before they can clear a boss. And even if they clear a boss, many people have received but a single piece of actual gear since week 1. One person received not even a single piece of actual gear, but had to buy all their gear with books. Jealousy, despirit, confusion, many negative things come with this. SE should stop pretending this is normal, and acknowledge that this is not the way the game is meant to be played and experienced, and that this is mostly their fault in design.

Practice mode enables efficient practice and first-hand experiencing of the whole fight, from start to finish, without interruption. I personally believe this is the most efficient way to practice a fight possible.

While it can be argued "Practice Mode" is not immersive, etc. I think it is infinitely more preferable than millions of minutes of millions of players' time wasted, and their immersive experience ruined anyways.

"Practice Mode" is only a single suggestion, and does not address problems such as
Healers and tanks being tools and not fun to play and even less fun to experience through the party-finder experience.
It does not address the limitations in the design philosophy for current savage raids and other endgame content.
It does not address class balance and party composition philosophy.
It does not address playability and accessibility concerns of gameplay.
Etc.

So future and continued in-depth discussion is necessary.
Also please find my suggestion for advanced PF tools below. Thank you.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...y-Finder-Tools

[Vidu]

No. Just no.

Seriously, this game doesnt need to be even less punishing to people who mess up mechanics. We dont need even more hand holding, specially not in content thats supposed to be a challenge.
Is it frustrating when people die to simple mechanics? Yes, yes it is. Frustrating and annoying as hell. But this isnt going to lead to them learning to do those mechanics well - this is teaching them that hey, it doesnt matter if they mess it up, they'll get raised straight away! Oh, we're not in "practice mode" anymore? Well, we got two healers, a summoner and a RDM! One of those can just raise the dragoon who didnt bother to move because thats what they learned during practice!

Sorry... no. It doesnt enable "efficient practice", it would only give people a wrong idea of how the fight works. If they cant do the mechanics (and/or keep everyone alive, when being a healer) they dont deserve to clear the fight under any circumstances. Not even without loot.
The issue that people dont manage to clear those fights with pugs is that a lot of people who are pugging this content actually shouldnt, at least not until they get a better grasp of their job and how those fights work. "Practice mode" will do nothing to fix those issues, because those people who arent good enough to clear this without wiping 50 times wont bother with it - we have Stone, Sky, Sea for people to practice their rotations and check wether or not their damage output is good enough. Do you believe that those 4k-BLMs went over their and parcticed? (If they did, they surely didnt do the decent thing of not subjecting other people to their subpar-performance)
I'd also like to point out that you mentioned something about the books - so... would a practice-mode-kill reward those? Or am I missunderstanding something...?

Bottomline either way:
This would accomplish nothing - at least nothing good.
Those people who need more practice and are dragging down PF-clear-groups wont bother with it, because they're not self-aware and reflective enough to realise that they would need more practice.
And those who'd genuily try to use would get a wrong idea of those fights and potentially learn harmful "strategies" or the mechanics incorrectly because "Hey, it doesnt matter, I'll get a raise straight away!"

As far as SE is concerned the way Savage-content is meant to be played is in a static - or at least in a group that communicates well with each other. While pugging surely is possible, its not the intended way so...

[Raqrie_Tohka]

If savage raids aren't meant to be doable in Party Finder then they should outright say so. Perhaps my solution is not the best solution, but having o solution is not right either. I have FC members who are good people but are softcore raiders, they are just starting savage modes right now, and are wiping every night in inefficient party finder groups. I wish I could help, but the awful 2-chest lockout system means I cannot help without reducing their rewards, and as I mentioned, rewards factor in a long way to motivate people to clear.

So the problem isn't just party finder groups being inconsistent, and one person's mistake can set back party progress to the beginning again and again before people quit and leave and hours are wasted just sitting around waiting for more people and doing nothing. It's the inconsistency of getting loot, the bias against "underpowered" classes, being unable to just get some quality practice in so everyone can be good at the fight.

I plowed through week 1 clears and even E4S prog in PF, before finally deciding I've had enough of it and finding myself a static on discord. Supposedly, consistency will be preferable over flexible time raiding from PF, and the joy of helping other people out. But it's still sad to hear elitists claim "bad people deserve to be bad and suffer inconsistency/ inefficiency" because "the content isn't for them". It's the same type of attitude as "poor people are poor because their own fault".

I look forward to hearing actual solutions and discussion. If not, I take solace in that SE is probably better at this than us players.

[DrWho2010]

This is why there is a 6 month gap between savage raid tiers and a catch up patch. it helps people who are less inclined to get better gear to help them as time goes on. as for player skill well that's always a crap shoot.

[Mhaeric]

I personally don't think it needs to be changed, but if they do a practice version then a better option would just be to allow starting the fight at the transition points in the fight. This would let your group practice each phase in chunks without needing to start from the beginning. No rewards, obviously. That said, there's definitely something to be said for having to repeat earlier phases in order to reach later phases to practice them since it provides additional practice at those earlier phases making it easier to get to the later phases over time.

[Vidu]

I mean... it was more or less the playerbase who "requested" to have this stuff put into dutyfinder - and with that into partyfinder. Back in Coil-days you had to assemble a party yourself and could only enter through the gate... So I consider it a bit shady by you to argue that they should outright say that its not meant for PF when the truth is that those fights can be cleared in PF (specially after the content is out for a few months) but is designed with a static in mind. Just because the main-focus of this content are well organised groups and not stumbling-through-mechanics-PFs doesnt mean that PFs cant clear it.

I also cant agree with your argument that you cant help them without deminishing their rewards - yes, thats true at first sight. But if you think about it for a second two things become clear:
1) They dont gain anything - no chests, no tokens, specially no experience - if they just sit it out because they'll lose a chest. If you can help them thats the way better alternative, that way they might get a chest less this week, but at least they'll get more experience for the next one and might not require your help again.
2) Even if they'll lose a chest, they'll still get the token - not as good, but still better than nothing.
In addition to this: If gear, aka ilvl is the main motivation for people who are not that intrested in challenging content, I'd like to remind everyone that we have several months with catch-up patches that will allow everyone to get ilvl470 gear before the next raidtier hits. Even without struggling through Savage-PFs.

I'd also like to adress the issue of "the content isnt for them" - to which I have to say: Yes, maybe thats the case. Before you call me an elitist, hear me out!
The difficulty of Savage can be above the difficulty of a dungeon, trial or ex-primal because the team works with the assumption that they're creating content for dedicacted players who are willing to put in the hours of learning the content and maintaining a static. To keep those entertainted they have to increase the difficulty, which in turn means that people who dont fullfill those requirements will struggle. But as far as I'm concerned thats okay - not every content has to be designed for everyone and sometimes pleasing one crowd will lockout another because not everyone likes the same stuff or has the same abilities.
Most of the game is fairly casual so I can understand any confusion when it comes to Savage where you're suddenly faced with not being able to do it whenever and with whom ever. Doesnt mean that has to change though - specially not because most of those changes would most likely effect the difficulty of the content... and at least I dont want that, since I like having this challenge.

I do agree with Mhaeric - most fights seem to have a natural "pause" or a first and second phase. I could imagine setting a checkpoint that allows you to start from that checkpoint, under the condition that you reached it before during the encounter.
Example: Lets take E1S and set the checkpoint after beating the adds and the cutscene. Once you've reached that with everyone alive you'll get the option to start at that point. Skills wont reset, though, to prevent you from cheating any mechanics. Having everyone alive is a condition to trigger the checkpoint, again to avoid cheating mechanics.
That would be a way in which I could see the difficulty not compromised but practice made a little less frustrating.

Still... I dont think that the most challenging content in the game needs any form of hand-hold-mode, sorry. Not everything will be for everyone.

[JWag12787]

{| Practice Run |}


Drop that into Party Finder and you're good to go. Roulette shouldn't exist for it, because it throws people not ready for it into the mix, but it's a feature people requested. Now that it's there, the hardcores are wishing it wasn't. It's a lose lose.


But I disagree with a need to add a practice run to the duty roulette. Party Finder exists for things like that.

[Khalithar]

I like your idea, a lot. +1 from me.

[KalinOrthos]

This...isn't how raiding works. Not in FFXIV, not in WoW. This is silly.

[reckless76]

Well, I wouldn't mind some system to help practice specific mechanics. E2S for instance.. All the mechanics are spread through the fight and don't repeat much, so my skill level drops as we get further in. I've only done Quietus a handful of times and can barely keep my DPS up through it. I don't really see how that's going to change much since I have to go through a 10 minute fight to even see it.
This actually makes me appreciate E4S more, since all the hardest mechanics are front loaded. On the other hand, I've never even seen P2 of the fight..