Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[ForteNightshade]

Heavensward was basically the epitomy of punishment for jobs though. For example, A1S. Boss random turns for mechanics. Back then, drg did not get heavy thrust buff if you didn't meet the positional. This was incredibly punishing. I don't think you even got the activation of impulse drives combo if you missed the positional. It was awful. This wasn't complex, this was terrible class design.

Those are two different arguments though. Making it so Heavy Thrust's buff applies even if you miss the positional is QoL. Changing the entirety of Dragoon's job system to a more streamlined version is simplifying it.

[Melichoir]

Those are two different arguments though. Making it so Heavy Thrust's buff applies even if you miss the positional is QoL. Changing the entirety of Dragoon's job system to a more streamlined version is simplifying it.

I dont think its totally off base though and touches on a point: There are some views that everything in HW was harder, therefore better, without the context of why things were harder.
As an example, Lets say...

...a savage boss has a tank buster that has a debuff applied to it. You gotta use your 30% CD for it to barely survive it because it does 95% max hp after mitigation. If you die from the buster or die from the immediate unavoidable Auto attack that hits for 60% of your max HP, the debuff explodes doing fatal raid damage. Boss cant be taunted until after his first auto attack following this buster and taunting any time fore causes the taunt to miss, the attack hits through shields, and invulns do not work. This occurs every 1 minute 30. Furthermore, that unavoidable auto attack refreshes the debuff which takes a minute 20 to fall off, so a tank swap is then mandatory. Getting hit by another auto will be fatal. Lastly, the boss does a standard tank buster forcing a double CD for current tank. You gotta tank swap back to the original tank before the mechanic repeats or itll be fatal.

All the while, everyone else is being hit by heavy ticking dots, stack mechanics, blind mechanics, parts of the arena moving or disappearing. The enrage timer is so tight that if you do not have a perfect rotation and skill use, you will die. If anyone dies to any mechanic outside of the aforementioned tank buster, the entire raid takes 90% max hp damage. Lucid Dream must be used on CD, and any misspent heals could potentially be a wipe. Any over healing that occurs heals the boss.

But it can be done...if you and your static play near perfectly. This is also S2 of the tier, and every fight beyond here gets more broken.



This would be a hellish fight to play, extremely unforgiving, and push people to their limits and most likely break up virtually every static. Yet there are people who would say "Yes, this is how it should be." However, most people would look at this fight as being disgustingly broken and unplayable. While Im being hyperbolic in the example, the point is that some people are remembering poorly designed encounters or class mechanics as being better than they were.

[Crushnight]

I dont think its totally off base though and touches on a point: There are some views that everything in HW was harder, therefore better, without the context of why things were harder.
As an example, Lets say...

...a savage boss has a tank buster that has a debuff applied to it. You gotta use your 30% CD for it to barely survive it because it does 95% max hp after mitigation. If you die from the buster or die from the immediate unavoidable Auto attack that hits for 60% of your max HP, the debuff explodes doing fatal raid damage. Boss cant be taunted until after his first auto attack following this buster and taunting any time fore causes the taunt to miss, the attack hits through shields, and invulns do not work. This occurs every 1 minute 30. Furthermore, that unavoidable auto attack refreshes the debuff which takes a minute 20 to fall off, so a tank swap is then mandatory. Getting hit by another auto will be fatal. Lastly, the boss does a standard tank buster forcing a double CD for current tank. You gotta tank swap back to the original tank before the mechanic repeats or itll be fatal.

All the while, everyone else is being hit by heavy ticking dots, stack mechanics, blind mechanics, parts of the arena moving or disappearing. The enrage timer is so tight that if you do not have a perfect rotation and skill use, you will die. If anyone dies to any mechanic outside of the aforementioned tank buster, the entire raid takes 90% max hp damage. Lucid Dream must be used on CD, and any misspent heals could potentially be a wipe. Any over healing that occurs heals the boss.

But it can be done...if you and your static play near perfectly. This is also S2 of the tier, and every fight beyond here gets more broken.



This would be a hellish fight to play, extremely unforgiving, and push people to their limits and most likely break up virtually every static. Yet there are people who would say "Yes, this is how it should be." However, most people would look at this fight as being disgustingly broken and unplayable. While Im being hyperbolic in the example, the point is that some people are remembering poorly designed encounters or class mechanics as being better than they were.

Didn't even need to go to hyperbolic could just use Nisi + Royal Penticule as an example, the intended way was absolutely horrible so much so the community decided sack strat is preferable by far yet people wanted people's clears taken away because it wasn't the "intended way" to deal with it, sometimes there is a limit to what people will put up with and A4S when it was current content was one of them.

[Melichoir]

Didn't even need to go to hyperbolic could just use Nisi + Royal Penticule as an example, the intended way was absolutely horrible so much so the community decided sack strat is preferable by far yet people wanted people's clears taken away because it wasn't the "intended way" to deal with it, sometimes there is a limit to what people will put up with and A4S when it was current content was one of them.

People getting clever is an expected outcome to utterly overtuned fights. Problem with the current discussion is people forget the context of fights like that but remember the challange think "Ah yes, the good ol days." It's literally the "old man" syndrome - how everything was better before the modern era, but conveniently forgetting that people had shorter life expectancy, more disease, less food, crappier quality of life, and a lot more struggle. In here, people are forgetting all the garbage that people had to put up with. Never mind that for anyone who did clear that content and actively participated in it were literally trialed by fury and hellfire and therefor their standards are skewed as it were.

[Wegente]

People getting clever is an expected outcome to utterly overtuned fights. Problem with the current discussion is people forget the context of fights like that but remember the challange think "Ah yes, the good ol days." It's literally the "old man" syndrome - how everything was better before the modern era, but conveniently forgetting that people had shorter life expectancy, more disease, less food, crappier quality of life, and a lot more struggle. In here, people are forgetting all the garbage that people had to put up with. Never mind that for anyone who did clear that content and actively participated in it were literally trialed by fury and hellfire and therefor their standards are skewed as it were.

I'd rather have overtuned fights so that people have something to do in game for the months to come, instead of being able to clear the whole tier in a month at most if you have a decent static though.

I'm not saying that every turn should be like that, but at least the final turn of each tier should be something that can be only be cleared by the people who really put effort into the game and minmax their class, requiring the use of voice chat, very precise group coordination, etc. It should really feel like an achievement and it did back in the pre-Creator days, something that has been lost over the years.

[Penthea]

I'd rather have overtuned fights so that people have something to do in game for the months to come, instead of being able to clear the whole tier in a month at most if you have a decent static though.

The players who beat all savage content within a month are not average players. They are usually very noticeably more skilled than most raiders, and they often put in far more time in a single lockout. Competitive and/or hardcore statics often raid 12+ hours a week, whereas a more laid back team often raid 8 or less. Both types of teams could finish the content in the same amount of hours played, but of course the team that puts in more hours each week will finish it sooner.

No matter how difficult you make content, there will always be players who appear to kill it "too fast". Every game has exceptionally skilled and dedicated players with a lot of free time, who will do little other than raid until everything is dead.

Just because a small percentage of statics beat content within a month does not mean the content isn't challenging enough. You need to look at both the exceptional and average players to get a more accurate picture of the state of the content. And most raid teams do not have savage completed in a month. If it was that easy you wouldn't be seeing raid teams advertising paid savage boosts.

I'm not saying that every turn should be like that, but at least the final turn of each tier should be something that can be only be cleared by the people who really put effort into the game and minmax their class, requiring the use of voice chat, very precise group coordination, etc. It should really feel like an achievement and it did back in the pre-Creator days, something that has been lost over the years.

We have this already. It's called Ultimate.

[Wegente]

The players who beat all savage content within a month are not average players. They are usually very noticeably more skilled than most raiders, and they often put in far more time in a single lockout. Competitive and/or hardcore statics often raid 12+ hours a week, whereas a more laid back team often raid 8 or less. Both types of teams could finish the content in the same amount of hours played, but of course the team that puts in more hours each week will finish it sooner.

I've raided since 2.0 and back in the Coil days I used to play with what I'd call an average midcore static back then, we used to play 9 hours a week. We cleared First and Second Coil about 1 month before echo release, so we took around 5 months to clear.
The top groups back then on my server (Ragnarok) got their kill around 1 month after the content was released.

Nowadays I know a lot of midcore statics that play around the same amount of hours as I did back then, and even though their skill is average and I wouldn't call them good players, all of them got their clear in around a month at most.

If you want to check how high the clear rates are nowadays compared to pre-Creator days, just look at FFlogs.
Gordias for example was cleared by 44 people on Ragnarok before 3.1 was released.
Midas was cleared by 88 people on Ragnarok before 3.3 was released.
Eden Savage has been cleared by 2119 people on Ragnarok and 5.1 is coming out next week. Numbers speak for themselves.

[QooEr]

The players who beat all savage content within a month are not average players.

people pugged cleared titan week 1. the average raider really does get their clears on the first month