Anyone else concerned by the extremely low skill ceiling?

[monk-dps]

There will always be bad players in any game, but if we had harder content that forced people to learn how to play their class at an average level, they would strive to improve instead of facerolling the content.
Otherwise we will never have players that actually care about the gameplay of FFXIV, but rather just the story or the glamours.

I don't think it would honestly. I just see them making fights harder and people quitting over being hard locked out. Maybe I'm that jaded but right now I can't even get into the best raids in the game - the lastest 24 mans- because people cheese them so they don't have to fight thundergod. Who isn't even that hard. But he's hard enough that people instant quit or cheese their ilvls so they never get it. Because of things like that it's hard for me to see the playerbase getting better when actual hard content gets drops. Maybe that 1% of the playerbase will but chances are the 99% will cry for nerfs like they always have and continue to do. Hell we got people saying the one extra combo on gunbreaker is too hard. Pressing buttons has gotten too hard.. we have reached THAT low now. So I guess I'm jaded, I wish I could go - the playerbase will improve with harder content- But I can't.

[Wegente]

So I guess I'm jaded, I wish I could go - the playerbase will improve with harder content- But I can't.

That's what happens when people get spoiled after years of being able to faceroll the content without putting effort into it.
Imagine if you could get away with only putting 10% of effort into your real life job. It would be really annoying to have to start committing to it eventually. Yet sacrifices must be made.

How does this prove the average raider beats savage in a month? Do you mean to say you assume that every pug is an average skilled player? I have met everything from the truly horrendous to the mindblowingly outstanding while pugging. It isn't only average skilled or less players who pug.

It's harder to clear stuff in pugs obviously, but i'm using statics as a metric because it's easier to gauge their performance since you have the same 8 people who play together on a regular basis.
What I'm saying is that if the average group took 500 hours to clear the raid back in pre-Creator days, nowadays it takes them 100. And that's proven by the fact that we have thousands more clears than we did back then, meaning the content DID get way easier and more accessible to everyone.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That's what happens when people get spoiled after years of being able to faceroll the content without putting effort into it.
Imagine if you could get away with only putting 10% of effort into your real life job. It would be really annoying to have to start committing to it eventually. Yet sacrifices must be made.



It's harder to clear stuff in pugs obviously, but i'm using statics as a metric because it's easier to gauge their performance since you have the same 8 people who play together on a regular basis.
What I'm saying is that if the average group took 500 hours to clear the raid back in pre-Creator days, nowadays it takes them 100. And that's proven by the fact that we have thousands more clears than we did back then, meaning the content DID get way easier and more accessible to everyone.

FFLOGS was a lot less used back then.

[Wegente]

FFLOGS was a lot less used back then.

Are you implying there were way more clears back then as well? Are you saying that official data like this one is all false then?

[MariaArvana]

Are you implying there were way more clears back then as well? Are you saying that official data like this one is all false then?

I wouldn't exactly count Gordias as some kind of shining beacon of difficulty when one fight's dps check was severely overtuned to a good 80% of the player base at the time, and the other was mathematically impossible to beat in entry level gear if you executed the fight the intended way. (Several of the world first raiders on Mainpulator were mentioning seeing enrage cast as early as 30s into final phase on the 1st/2nd weeks before weapons were available, or something to that effect.) Midas is a better representation of the post-coil, pre-creator era, and even then it was only a little over two weeks.

Honestly though, the clear times would be much different if those fights were released today. On top of many, many QoL changes that helped speed up progression (Cooldowns resetting every wipe that was implemented in Creator so you no longer had to do nothing but wait for literal minutes at a time.) better standardized markers (most mechanics that do certain functions (stack, spread, etc.) tend to have standardized markers now, whereas back in the old days it was a relative free-for-all and groups would have to spend more time arbitrarily discerning what certain markers did.) On top of all of that, just plain experience. When Gordias came out, there was only ARR's raid fights worth of experience to build up against. Now, most of the top raiders have been in the game across multiple expansions, having experienced the full spectrum of raid tiers since then.

Outside of creating complex puzzle mechanics, there's not much you can do to slow down the best raiders in this game outside of a large overhaul of the combat system.

Also, all the recent bfa raids took less than two weeks, most of them took less time to beat than UCOB did as a note.

UCOB - 11 days.

Uldir (8 days), Dazar'alor (7 days), crucible (9 days). Only Palace has lasted longer than UCOB at 12 days.

Savage is fine where it is. If people want more challenge Ultimate will keep groups occupied for long periods of time. Even my own group, which had 5/8 people already cleared Ultima Weapon, still took well over three weeks to get our first clear, and we're currently working on week 4 of our UCOB prog.

[Wegente]

I didn't realise we talking about the progress of literally a handful of guilds in the entire game. I thought we were talking about how hardcore guilds in general fare in progression, given that was what was being talked about when I entered this conversation

I used the world first clears as an example because that's how you evaluate the difficulty of a content. When Gordias was cleared by Elysium after around 1 month, most of the playerbase couldn't clear it even several months afterwards.
Because if the world first players took that long, then the more casual playerbase wouldn't have a chance of clearing it before the next raid tier came out.

On the other hand, if the world first is claimed only 12 hours after the tier release, like what happened with Eden, that means the tier is going to be very easily approachable even by the casual playerbase, especially after they get more gear.

What this means is in FFXIV you're far less likely to waste several minutes on a pull only to call for a wipe, because you usually res and just keep going, mechanics permitting. You can even res multiple times and keep going, and even still get a kill.

That's because the DPS checks have become a joke nowadays, and you can clear most fights on the first week even with multiple deaths.
This wasn't the case in Gordias and this wouldn't be the case if the bosses had more HP. If Titan had had its HP buffed by 15% or even just 10%, I'm sure nobody would have cleared the first week, and maybe even the second.

Yet, if the tuning is so lenient, you're going to see clears very early on because you can just ignore mechanics and healer LB3 for example, to get through them.

Honestly though, the clear times would be much different if those fights were released today.

They would, but they would definitely not take just one day to clear.

The CD resets only affected the time you had to wait between pulls when you finally reached enrage, because before that you would chain-pull regardless since DPS was not the concern before reaching the end of the fight.
And defensive CDs like Hallowed could just be swapped around if they weren't ready yet.

The DPS checks and healing checks were harder, mechanics were more punishing and insta-wipe most of the time, like with bosses getting damage up stacks if you failed them.

Also, all the recent bfa raids took less than two weeks, most of them took less time to beat than UCOB did as a note.

That's still more than a week longer than what Savage clears take today, which is one day or two at most. And I'm pretty sure WoW has been out for a bit longer than FFXIV, so people know how to play that game.

[Penthea]

That's because the DPS checks have become a joke nowadays, and you can clear most fights on the first week even with multiple deaths. This wasn't the case in Gordias

I don't know why you are using Gordias as an example of "better" raiding. It was a mistake. SE even admitted this. The release of content as difficult as that was severely mistimed with Gordias. Coils was no walk in the park but it didn't prepare you for Gordias. None of the HW pre-Alex content prepared you for Gordias. It was so highly tuned that killing one of the bosses was literally impossible without farming for gear first.

It's not good design to be unable to beat a boss with entry level gear even if you're among the best players in the entire game. It really cheapens the idea of a challenge when the wall isn't skill based, but is instead ilvl based. If you lack skill you can keep trying until you improve. If you lack gear then you need to stop, go elsewhere, and come back later. Take a guess as to which one competitive raiders tend to prefer.

But SE didn't completely abandon difficulty and requirements as high as Gordias. We see it with Ultimate now. However unlike Gordias Ultimate is gated behind content that legitimately trains you to be good enough for it. It's in a place in the progression ladder that actually makes sense.

I understand wanting content to be more challenging, and I'm not against this idea, but if you want to be taken seriously by both other players and SE, stop using Gordias as a reference point for good content. It is widely regarded as poorly balanced by both players and the devs.

Midas is a better representation of the post-coil, pre-creator era, and even then it was only a little over two weeks.

Pretty much.

Honestly though, the clear times would be much different if those fights were released today. On top of many, many QoL changes that helped speed up progression (Cooldowns resetting every wipe that was implemented in Creator so you no longer had to do nothing but wait for literal minutes at a time.) better standardized markers (most mechanics that do certain functions (stack, spread, etc.) tend to have standardized markers now, whereas back in the old days it was a relative free-for-all and groups would have to spend more time arbitrarily discerning what certain markers did.) On top of all of that, just plain experience. When Gordias came out, there was only ARR's raid fights worth of experience to build up against. Now, most of the top raiders have been in the game across multiple expansions, having experienced the full spectrum of raid tiers since then.

Cds resetting is a serious game-changer on its own. No more standing around waiting for them to reset for several minutes, even after an ill-fated pull that ended early. Less guesswork due to standardised markers saves a tonne of time as well. These may seem like small things to some players, but they're actually significant changes that eliminate a lot of wasted time.

[Wegente]

It's not good design to be unable to beat a boss with entry level gear even if you're among the best players in the entire game.

Being able to clear the second or third turn, with multiple deaths, on the first week with no gear is not good design either. It's just a sign of poor tuning.

I know of a group that cleared the second turn of Creator with something like 11 deaths, and they still managed to beat the enrage.
And I've beaten the third turn with 4-5 deaths in Creator and Deltascape as well, in the first week.

I think DPS checks should be a little bit more unforgiving than this, at least in the first week. I'm asking for a middle ground here.

[Penthea]

What I'm saying is that if the average group took 500 hours to clear the raid back in pre-Creator days, nowadays it takes them 100. And that's proven by the fact that we have thousands more clears than we did back then, meaning the content DID get way easier and more accessible to everyone.

You're leaving out some very important points here. Pre-Creator days were totally different to now.

Back then actual raiders were not as common because the game was relatively new so the player population wasn't huge and typically in new games you don't have a wealth of experienced players. I wager most players who raided pre Creator had not raided at that level of difficulty before.

Fast forward to today, more expansions have passed since. Players have had far more time and opportunities to gain raid experience, the player population has risen significantly, and we also have an influx of WoW refugees potentially bringing 5+ years of raid experience with them into the game. On top of that SE have gotten better at making introductory raid content that eases players into the raiding scene, instead of something as overtuned as the first tier of Alex which must have fooled a lot of players into thinking they could never be raid material.

I don't think anyone should be surprised or dismayed that kill rates have increased when there are more players playing, more experienced players playing, and content is balanced in such a way that it draws in more potential raiders. It's a logical progress.

The way you talk reminds me so much of how I have seen many veteran WoW players talk. So many have this idea that the original raiding scene was incredibly difficult, when the fact is it was not compared to now. It was back then because most raiders never raided before WoW, and the idea of playing in such a way was not common in gaming at the time. When WoW's population was growing steadily with each expansion, the kill rate of bosses grew despite the fact that the content became more difficult.

An increase of kill-rate isn't necessarily a sign of content not being difficult enough. Sometimes it's simply a sign that the average skill of the playerbase has risen. Which is a perfectly normal thing to happen if enough time passes.

(and no I'm not saying Vanilla WoW raiding is comparable to Coils, because it is not. I am just pointing out that despite the fact that top-end content became far more difficult in WoW since Vanilla, kill rates increased as time passed)

[Wegente]

I don't think anyone should be surprised or dismayed that kill rates have increased when there are more players playing, more experienced players playing, and content is balanced in such a way that it draws in more potential raiders. It's a logical progress.

Raids in WoW still take a few weeks to complete nowadays. Sure, they're not taking months as they were back in the day and that's because, as you said, people have gotten better over the years, the game mechanics are better understood by the playerbase, etc.

Still, fights can be made harder regardless. Look at UCOB for example, the first group to clear it took 2 weeks, and that fight came out after Creator and Deltascape which both took less than 48 hours to clear.

What I'm asking for is a slight increase in difficulty, so that the more hardcore players can complete the raid in a week or so while the rest of the population can still clear before the release of the next tier.
That way we wouldn't have a huge population of raiders who only log in for their Savage clears on Tuesday and then log out for the rest of the week, or worse, unsub until the new patch get released, making SE lose potential money.