Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

All I want, honestly, is to be able to perform in a way that when other players see me they can easily come to the opinion that "Hey, that player is really good." As it stands, I think it is difficult to do that because the performance of an average and skilled player is very similar(from a strict gameplay perspective not encounter mechanics etc.). I think that the gap between the average player and a skilled player is very narrow and I wish the job gameplay design allowed more reward for those who pursue mastery.

The only ones who will notice, since parsers aren't technically within the rules, are those who are already good themselves. Its pretty easy to notice when people aren't doing things correctly, if you know what to look for. Its also pretty easy to tell when stuff is dying slower than normal, or when a healer is just standing there, or just spamming cure.

On the flip side, those who don't really know what they are doing will often mistake average play for "wow, that went really smooth, dps was amazing" on runs that some of us will find awful. I've seen it happen in raids fairly often.


The thing to me is... If you need other people noticing how good you are to make you feel like you are accomplishing something, then I think you aren't setting goals right. You should set goals for yourself, and pat yourself on the back if you accomplish said goals.

[SerLuke]

All I want, honestly, is to be able to perform in a way that when other players see me they can easily come to the opinion that "Hey, that player is really good." As it stands, I think it is difficult to do that because the performance of an average and skilled player is very similar(from a strict gameplay perspective not encounter mechanics etc.). I think that the gap between the average player and a skilled player is very narrow and I wish the job gameplay design allowed more reward for those who pursue mastery.

The problem in the past when the skill gap was larger people would insist that everyone play towards the higher end of the skill gap calling everyone who doesn’t bad, the devs saw that and thus we are in the situation we are in now.
Ideally I agree, people who play great should have much better performance the, it shouldn’t however become an excuse for looking down on others and even excluding them from casual content.

[DinahDemiurge]

The problem in the past when the skill gap was larger people would insist that everyone play towards the higher end of the skill gap calling everyone who doesn’t bad, the devs saw that and thus we are in the situation we are in now.
Ideally I agree, people who play great should have much better performance the, it shouldn’t however become an excuse for looking down on others and even excluding them from casual content.

Perhaps the solution should be gatekeeping then. Have a quest that requires multiple trials to be able to unlock a savage dungeon. I think it's ridiculous that the only thing you need to attempt the hardest content is ilvl which is obtained from faceroll content(outside of ultimate which is every 9 months if we're lucky). But I digress, I am not a game designer, I am only a player. But it seems to me that the skill ceiling needs to go up, and there needs to be more pre-savage content that is actually challenging in order to allow players to reach a certain skill threshold before attempting savage.

[SerLuke]

Yes, tank dps (proportionally) has fallen by about 10-15%. The tank mastery trait changes how STR/Attack power scales for tanks, making each point of STR worth less per point than other jobs. The only reason you didn't notice it at the beginning of the expansion is due to the fact they slapped roughly an extra 500 STR onto your accessories. (each accessory was around 51 STR pre-expansion (without str meld), each of the i400 accessories now has 171).

If tank mastery wasn't affecting damage output, all the tanks would be doing an extra 1-2k dps than they are now given their current STR value at 470. Its a super oversimplification of it, but think of tank mastery as giving you both the defense buff and damage penalty of old tank stance, only its constantly on, which doesn't surprise me much that they reduced the max HP of the first raid tier's bosses by 15%, since they were probably seeing how tank & healer dps would play out given the overhauls they did to both.

The deception in game for the tank mastery trait actually says it gives “a bonus to damage dealt based on your strength attribute” are you saying this is a mistranslation or a typo?

[Dadbod]

It seems to me as a newer player... A large part of the problem of no "difficulty" comes not from the fights themselves... Savage raiders, parsers, and elites die and wipe on savage raids all the time.. The thing that makes them easy is death has no penalty whatsoever...

I often watch high end raiders on twitch wipe a fight they already completely know 4+ times and then clear. The problem is that dying 4 times in a row does nothing to you except make the fight take 15 minutes longer because you'll just jump off the platform as soon as a clear looks unlikely.

4 man dungeons are entirely too easy though and there is no fear of death (which is incredibly rare anyways) through any point in the game at all...

[KageTokage]

It seems to me as a newer player... A large part of the problem of no "difficulty" comes not from the fights themselves... Savage raiders, parsers, and elites die and wipe on savage raids all the time.. The thing that makes them easy is death has no penalty whatsoever...

I often watch high end raiders on twitch wipe a fight they already completely know 4+ times and then clear. The problem is that dying 4 times in a row does nothing to you except make the fight take 15 minutes longer because you'll just jump off the platform as soon as a clear looks unlikely.

4 man dungeons are entirely too easy though and there is no fear of death (which is incredibly rare anyways) through any point in the game at all...

Dying = less DPS from weakness debuff, which means a higher chance of wiping to the enrage timer. This naturally becomes less of an issue as time goes on and gear gets better. Early in the tier even a single death is enough to deny a clear.

XIV is actually stricter then a lot of MMOs with how handles death as the nature of several of its mechanics require that the entire team be alive for them be executed properly, otherwise it'll snowball into even more deaths or a wipe.

[Samsta]

It seems to me as a newer player... A large part of the problem of no "difficulty" comes not from the fights themselves... Savage raiders, parsers, and elites die and wipe on savage raids all the time.. The thing that makes them easy is death has no penalty whatsoever...

I often watch high end raiders on twitch wipe a fight they already completely know 4+ times and then clear. The problem is that dying 4 times in a row does nothing to you except make the fight take 15 minutes longer because you'll just jump off the platform as soon as a clear looks unlikely.

4 man dungeons are entirely too easy though and there is no fear of death (which is incredibly rare anyways) through any point in the game at all...

1 death can absolutely ruin a first week savage run. Weakness is a huge debuff that cripples your dps severely. As time goes on and people get better gear yeah it becomes less of an issue. I dunno what penalty you want on top of healer having to spend mana and gcd and swiftcast to ress, player having his dps ruined and some mechanics wiping the party if everyone is not alive.

[Krotoan]

It seems to me as a newer player... A large part of the problem of no "difficulty" comes not from the fights themselves... Savage raiders, parsers, and elites die and wipe on savage raids all the time.. The thing that makes them easy is death has no penalty whatsoever...

I often watch high end raiders on twitch wipe a fight they already completely know 4+ times and then clear. The problem is that dying 4 times in a row does nothing to you except make the fight take 15 minutes longer because you'll just jump off the platform as soon as a clear looks unlikely.

4 man dungeons are entirely too easy though and there is no fear of death (which is incredibly rare anyways) through any point in the game at all...

Dying loses you time which is a HUGE penalty, are you suggesting we should have permanent penalties beyond this?

[MariaArvana]

The deception in game for the tank mastery trait actually says it gives “a bonus to damage dealt based on your strength attribute” are you saying this is a mistranslation or a typo?

I think its a super badly worded description than anything to be honest, especially when you consider how bad some of the other descriptions in the stat menus are (and how badly worded some tooltips in general are). I dunno Japanese so can't comment if its a bad translation though.

"A bonus to damage dealt" I believe is just a badly worded description for "Your Strength affects your attack power at a certain rate."
Considering it also states "Conveys a bonus to your maximum health based on your Vitality attribute" when there was no change to Maximum HP when SHB dropped despite an alleged 'bonus'. I believe the wording on the trait is simply a bad choice to say "Tanks's stats scale differently than other jobs."

But hard math that groups like the Theoryjerkers have done doesn't lie. Tanks are scaling weaker on STR now than before SHB. Which given statements Yoshi-P has said in the past where he's mentioned he feels tanks are doing way too much damage in SB, doesn't surprise me much they nerfed tank damage.

Another super quick example to highlight the nerfed damage from tank mastery is compare Afflatus Misery and Inner Chaos. When AM crits + DH, it does nearly 10- 20k+ more damage than IC, despite IC having even more potency than Afflatus. (920 vs 900, even without factoring in SE's 10% damage bonus pushing IC into the 1000 potency range before the auto crit + dh factors in.)

[Saintly]

Even tho I have given up hope on jobs feeling unique again and balancing them accordingly to their skill floor/ceiling.

I just wish they removed rewards/achievements from uncynced content.

Mounts/top tier equipment/tittles are not required to complete MSQ anyway.