This game prepares no one for raid/hard content

[KitingGenbu]

Threads like these have to be made since it is Sunday, I just wish they were more ignorant than this. OP plays for a few months, does 'raids' of varying difficult then says none of the mechanics of these various raids were ever in the game.

First off, I'll welcome you to the community. At its core, its an amazing game.

With that out of the way, the short way to address this is that every 'hard' fight has a 'normal' version. Now if you're considering 24-mans as hard....well, I feel bad for you. But every extreme/ultimate/savage, has a weaker version (ultimate is pretty much just a fight of bosses that were already fought on extreme/savage, just on crack).

Inside of all of these encounters have been mechanics you've at least experienced once in some form or fashion. They might LOOK different, but they honestly operate in the same fashion (like Zurvan's ground-pound thing that might knock you off the platform is honestly the same as Leviathan's boat-rocking thing). There will always be certain expectations (I'm sure someone can list/has listed/honestly didn't read enough to care); however, part of 'belonging' in higher end content is having the ability to adapt.

This isn't always the case since most fights are just patterns at the end of the day that look more complicated than they really are after you've done them enough, but if you've honestly experienced EVERY mechanical pattern on a lower difficulty as you did in the higher one, it would lose its appeal since the only difference would be damage. Now if you need a game that spoon feeds every single thing to you, there are other options, like WoW which has about 3+ modes for almost every instance content or one of those f2p games.

[VenKitsune]

Dungeons - Something basically everyone does. Some dungeons teach you basic and recurring mechanics such as stack marks, towers, eye marks etc.

Story Trials (Formerly Hard mode trials) - Again, something everyone does because of story. Tests you for if you paid attention to mechanics in dungeons or not. Usually, the leveling dungeons of an expansion share some mechanics with the "final boss" after reaching the max level of said expansion.

Normal mode "Raids" - I admit, i do think these are too easy....but all content considered i dont think it affects the difficulty curve all that much.

24 man raids - Difficulty is cranked up, but usually doesn't feel like it because there is 24 players, and so you are less liable. Usually attempts to teach group-based mechanics more than individual mechanics...Though i admit, the only one that did this truly all that well was the original LoTA.

Extreme trials - The first proper midcore content you'll encounter - All previously mentioned content is possible by a casual player but is gradually increasing in difficulty, this content meanwhile is where there is a bit of a spike. Extreme trials serve as a means for players to improve in a full party environment, and also teach some mechanics that might be useful in savage. This serves as a stepping stone, the one you're looking for. I do think this game need more strictly midcore content though like extremes.

Savage - Hightier midcore and hardcore "Raids" - Extremes are the stepping stones and mechanics are usually ambiguous but not all too unfamiliar, the fun is learning the fights, not rolling your face on the keyboard and clearing it without even trying every week.

And then Ultimate...Super hardcore stuff, not really intended to have a stepping stone, but with it being gated behind Savage, i suppose that'll do.


E1S especially is, i think atleast, easier than hades extreme. Savage isnt just one big hard difficulty, the fights get harder as you get through the tier.

[Rongway]

Just for the sake of argument, the stack marker indicator has also changed over time.

It's been consistent since the introduction of the orange arrows, though. Were there any other non-standard marked stack mechanics besides Five-Headed Dragon's (WoD) purple lightning marker, the Avatar's (SCOB3) painting laser for Gaseous Bomb, and Harmachi (ARF)'s imitation of the Avatar? I struggle to recall any others.

[Kleeya]

For stack markers i did see some people answer very seriously "better have 1 death than risking to have several of them" when asked why they were fleeing from other players. I don't know when and why it did happen, but a part of the community, who is level 80 with plenty of experience and know very well what a stack marker is, has switched from "all players have to stack together" to "i am so nice to go suicide myself alone with the stack marker so that you can stay alive, and in return i will not stack with a marked player because he has to kill himself alone as well with it". Maybe it is because they have seen too much cases where only 2 people were stacking and getting killed for doing the mechanic properly, while the ones who dont were staying alive. Or because they have become traumatized from debuffs where you can not stack a second time (like the S Rank Gunitt).

That being said i feel like the game indeed lacks something between the normal and casual content (24 raids are included in it), and extreme/savage/ultimate. We switch from something :

- where not knowing your rotation and being a jolt RDM is fine ;
- where dying several time to obvious mechanics is fine ;
- where there is no true time limit and where fights can be win even if everybody is underperforming by turning them in a loooooong war of attrition ;

to :

- something where not knowing your rotation is not fine if the other players can not compensate for your weakness ;
- where dying several times, or even once is not fine when it kill at least half of your group with you ;
- where there is a short time limit that makes you wipe if everybody (maybe minus one) is not performing properly.

I find this too much of a difference. Between the two it lacks something like a kind of content where knowing your rotation is required, but not with all the one shot mechanics at the same time. And something where mechanics are heavily punishing, but an optimal rotation not required. Once you can do the two separately then you can try to mix the two by going into extreme trials.

[Hasrat]

It's been consistent since the introduction of the orange arrows, though. Were there any other non-standard marked stack mechanics besides Five-Headed Dragon's (WoD) purple lightning marker, the Avatar's (SCOB3) painting laser for Gaseous Bomb, and Harmachi (ARF)'s imitation of the Avatar? I struggle to recall any others.

I may be remembering wrong, but Myath, midboss of Sohm Al, I think uses now-non-standard stack/spread markers. At least, that's always the one that comes to mind for me.

But, taking a step back, and looking at the core of this argument, I'd say there's room for debate on how well the game actually "teaches" players anything. The current-standard stack marker is possibly the only mechanic indicator that I can think of at this moment that seems like it ought to be fairly intuitive. And that's a maybe. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I question how intuitive it is to have that marker try to say "this attack will hurt this player a lot, but the damage can be spread out to other players that stand in proximity."

For context, I'm trying to consider this side of the argument as a completely fresh group of players, completely blind run, no research, no foreknowledge. In order for any of these indicators, not just stack, all of them, to do their job well, that is, to clearly teach players their meaning, I think all of what we have are missing some important elements. I suppose really, they don't all need to immediately visually indicate how the mechanic should be handled. Most of them can't really even do that visually alone, it's up to the player to learn and understand and interpret. So I think part of what would make a well-designed element is how failure of the mechanic will teach players how to handle it in the future. Going back to the stack marker, completely fresh party, does failing the stack mechanic adequately communicate to the players that they handled the mechanic incorrectly, and guide them towards correct behavior (at least in the earliest encounters of the mechanic)? It seems, especially judging from stories I'm sure we all have experienced or heard, that there are some players that see the marker as simply "this player is going to die." It's a giant target, showing where the big attack will land, but doesn't really do much to communicate the shared damage aspect.

I'm picking on the stack marker a lot, but this applies to just about any of them. Surely everyone has popped into some fight or raid that they haven't seen in a while, either been on break, or haven't run the content, or whatever, and they've had that moment of "oh, I have this marker over my head, but I can't actually remember what I'm supposed to do with this mechanic."

Idk. Late night thoughts. Just wondering, how much of what this game "teaches" might rely heavily on the experienced players passing on their knowledge, rather than the game using the tools needed to communicate new elements to players in a fashion that can lead to intuitive learning.

Gaming psychology is actually kinda fascinating to dig into, I think.

[Dadbod]

As a newer player trying to learn...

My issue is the difficulty in getting people to run extreme primals as a leveling player to learn in the “middle core” difficulty to prepare for savage... you can try for days just to get a group together for a synced extreme.

So yes that content exists.. but trying to do get people to do that content without being unsynced (which kind of defeats the purpose for the new people learning) is hopeless most the time.

[linay]

As a newer player trying to learn...

My issue is the difficulty in getting people to run extreme primals as a leveling player to learn in the “middle core” difficulty to prepare for savage... you can try for days just to get a group together for a synced extreme.

So yes that content exists.. but trying to do get people to do that content without being unsynced (which kind of defeats the purpose for the new people learning) is hopeless most the time.

You cannot unsynced content from current expansion, so you shouldn't have a problem there. If you're talking about past expansion content, even savage raids are done unsynced, let alone extreme trials, unless you have a dedicated group that wants to do it synced, and sometimes you can have such a group, even going as far as doing min ilvl.

[Endariel]

Savages and extremes very often use attacks from normal mode but without indicator.

[Khavir]

I think what baffles me the most is why there isn't an easy mode

Normal mode is easy mode. Maybe just get better?

[TalithaSolarien]

You cannot unsynced content from current expansion, so you shouldn't have a problem there. If you're talking about past expansion content, even savage raids are done unsynced, let alone extreme trials, unless you have a dedicated group that wants to do it synced, and sometimes you can have such a group, even going as far as doing min ilvl.

There is a discord called Starbreakers Network for exactly that reason (running stuff synced and/or at min ilvl).

That being said, getting learning/clear groups for actual Ex Primal content gets harder the older the content is (this usually happends around 4-6 weeks after release). Hades Ex is an outlier, most PUGs (at least on my DC) have abandoned trying it already.