Parsing? Drama? ToS? Solution!

[Hyrist]

I'm not saying you're wiping parties but there are plenty sadly plenty of people who used the same *I play for fun* as an excuse to not pull weight in runs.

This is something in Dungeons, EX trials, Savage, it's so common place now that it's sad. So again I don't see why it's fair for people in content that's meant to be a challenge to have to regularly see people not pulling their weight, say *I play games to have fun* and be the first ones who bitch about not being able to do savage yet have literally the rest of this game dumbed down for the sake of their inability to put together 2 braincells.

It might sound odd, this might come as a surprise but I have fun in ff to, but when a 15 min is turned into a 35 min run, because people can't be bothered to learn the basics, it's get really fucking old really quickly.

Then it's on you to do better recruiting, be quicker to dismiss those you feel aren't improving or co-operating in a civil manner. It'll be on them to find a party that'll tolerate their performance or work with them to improve. Again, finding people that work well with you, is part of the game.

[Angus-Beef]

Then it's on you to do better recruiting, be quicker to dismiss those you feel aren't improving or co-operating in a civil manner. It'll be on them to find a party that'll tolerate their performance or work with them to improve. Again, finding people that work well with you, is part of the game.

See I have the luck of not dealing with the pugs most of the time if at all, but it doesnt take away from my points given there are many of us who do.

But this isnt about my runs or Arthars, This is about people learning that making others do work for you is toxic in it of itself. This game needs something for people to weed out those who do not perform and the community should make sure those who do not seek to improve dont go in runs for Savage or EX trials.

DF is a mixed bag but thats solved by joining and or creating communities of competent players so you can avoid dealing with them. And yes while others and myself are capable of being civil and usually the ones being civil and offering help its usually met with some sarcastic remark or outright rudeness and then a 30 min penalty due to it not being worth the trouble.

And yet more and more content gets dumbed down, the people who do savage and ultimate only have around 5% of content in this game thats geared towards them, the people who want a challenge. Yet, at every turn there are people who want content to be dumbed down, classes to be dumbed down, runs to be dumbed down. This does affect the community at large. Again why should other give up what they find fun when all others have to do is Improve. That question is never answered. The defence is always made for those who dont consider others play styles or forms of fun, yet we always consider others and leave them be.

[Hyrist]

See I have the luck of not dealing with the pugs most of the time if at all, but it doesnt take away from my points given there are many of us who do.

But this isnt about my runs or Arthars, This is about people learning that making others do work for you is toxic in it of itself. This game needs something for people to weed out ...

Stopping you there. It's your responsibility to find people who work well with you. No one else's. You and I both reach the same conclusion in that method from opposing view points - play with people you know, limit your interactions with those you don't.

Another thing we can agree on: Toxicity is an attitude. Both extremes are complicit and implicit in this, and there are players of all performance levels that are toxic. You don't get to blame one group or another for that trait.

A toxic player who performs well is useless and painful to a group who's struggling and learning as they'll ridicule, posture, and waste everyone's time arguing.

A toxic player who performs poorly is useless and painful and wastes everyone's time by arguing and not seeking to improve.

The dominating majority of players are in-between these two extremes and are just frustrated by their experiences with these extremes. In the typical bad situation they'll see these extremes in normal, every day people, who are just trying to get by their day with a little less stress.

So, try being human with one another first, and see if that makes headway. If not, then find someone closer to your needs for enjoying the game.


As far as accusations that people 'dumbing down the game' in the face of those who seek a challenge - I'll be blunt. You're in the minority, and this is a number's game. The decisions made as far as the performance levels and content difficulty are made by the designers of the game and not us - and dollar signs will always hold greater weight than your or my opinions. They'll go with what keeps the game healthy from their perspective - regardless if one or both of us agree.

As far as skill goes. I tend to prefer more reaction based gameplay than rotational. I have attention maintenance issues I struggle against which does not serve me well for long rotation cycles, so I try to maintain a rhythm and fit it within the context of a fight. That's my compromise. I can't speak for others, nor should you. Most players I've encountered on all ranges generally do try to improve without added pressure, but will hiss and spit under scrutiny. Seeking to understand your peers is part of that networking skill that players seem to think they don't need in social games anymore.

[Angus-Beef]

Stopping you there. It's your responsibility to find people who work well with you. No one else's. You and I both reach the same conclusion in that method from opposing view points - play with people you know, limit your interactions with those you don't.

Another thing we can agree on: Toxicity is an attitude. Both extremes are complicit and implicit in this, and there are players of all performance levels that are toxic. You don't get to blame one group or another for that trait.

A toxic player who performs well is useless and painful to a group who's struggling and learning as they'll ridicule, posture, and waste everyone's time arguing.

A toxic player who performs poorly is useless and painful and wastes everyone's time by arguing and not seeking to improve.

The dominating majority of players are in-between these two extremes and are just frustrated by their experiences with these extremes. In the typical bad situation they'll see these extremes in normal, every day people, who are just trying to get by their day with a little less stress.

So, try being human with one another first, and see if that makes headway. If not, then find someone closer to your needs for enjoying the game.

I enjoy the game, but It'll be more fun when people take more self responsibility and learn which content for them, if they can't then I hope one day the those who do not seek to improve themselves never see a savage or EX trials until they do.

[Hash_Browns]

It's your responsibility to find people who work well with you. No one else's.

This comment is such a non-point.
It's not my responsibility, when I go into a PUG - to make sure each and every player is pulling at least the basics of their class in level 80 content.

That's on them.

It shouldn't be my job to call them out/kick them - it should be their job to join in the content when they understand the basics of the class they are playing.
Hell, you can't even call people out most of the time because you get put on blast.

Even attempting to kick AFKers in a MSQ roulette has gotten me attacked by people.
God forbid running into a DF couple.

[Angus-Beef]

Wow can we please talk about the topic and not how to treat others. There are plenty of other threads on ToS.

This is about conditions for entering the hardcore end game content raids and/or trials. Please can we talk about this I think the OP gave up on this already on this thread at least but my opinion this is a good topic and should bring some attention to the devs.

Qualifying for Savage, EX, and ultimate is great idea imo. Not just for the sake of keeping people out, but also keeping people in. Look I admit as some others have stated that this isn't for everybody. Some people like a more difficult challenge and should not be penalized for it. An instance qualification could render or at least give an idea to a player like me who wants to do the hardest content possible and gauge what I need to do to get better so I don't pug it up and create df drama and resentment.

AS far as the other stuff....No one can control other people only yourself and how you react..no more debate there...

Anyone else have a solution?

The devs should kindly reinforce what is and isn't casual friendly content and start adding more difficult content back into the game.

If the game itself is enforcing the need to self improve to progress, then people will naturally adjust to the ever growing difficulty and competency should naturally reassert itself amongst those who want to see all the content.

This is the most non invasive way to force it without out right gating people out of savage and EX. It's fair and realistic and something this game used to do very well until SB. When MMOs set the bar low it only allows people who don't try pass through with their hands held.

Edit: I'll even further Elaborate.

If Sastasha is the easiest dungeon in the game the lvl 80 dungeons of Shadow Bringers should be the hardest. The game should naturally be building off the difficulty from dungeon to dungeon and the beginning of each expansion should be reinforcing that difficulty from the last dungeon in the previous expansion in the first dungeon of the current expansion.

If you regularly normalize the difficulty one should expect from content through out the game people (NOT ALL) but most people will naturally improve. It creates a situation where your body naturally creates muscle memory over time and allows you to adjust. FF doesnt do that anymore. It normalizes the bare minimum and people skirt by without actually improving over time.

[Hyrist]

The devs should kindly reinforce what is and isn't casual friendly content and start adding more difficult content back into the game.

If the game itself is enforcing the need to self improve to progress, then people will naturally adjust to the ever growing difficulty and competency should naturally reassert itself amongst those who want to see all the content.

This is the most non invasive way to force it without out right gating people out of savage and EX. It's fair and realistic and something this game used to do very well until SB. When MMO set the bar low it only allows people who don't try pass through with their hands held.

I get your approach, but the problem you run into that, from the business perspective, is falloff. Even before the 'casualization' of the game, you have a very small percentage of people completeting harder content, so them adding more of it, that players won't enjoy, will cause friction.

This friction is what caused Normal Raids to exist.

Also, I'm confused as to how you are thinking to accomplish reinforcing the non-casual content. Anything on the level of Extreme Trials and above is already gated by requiring you to use Party Finder. A pop-up disclaimer is just going to go ignored with all the rest of the help text. And trying to tilt the game to be 'more difficult' means you're going to bleed people if you put it in there way.

So, let me suggest some groundwork barriers for the suggestions.

1. We have to recognize existing trends and elements in the game - so, while fights in the story defiantly had more mechanics, they did make the fights through the story overall more easy to get into thanks to Trust System.
2. We're on restriction on manpower, so to add something, we must take something that could be updated and/or added away. SE's current trend of already doing so has sort of dictated that rule to us.
3. We have to keep in mind the expected participation limits when adding this content. Are we expecting to sacrifice potentially 95% of the player base enjoying another piece of casual content for 5%? Is that a wise decision for a company that's already showing strains of development time and manpower to make?
4. What sort of reward system for this new content do we add in? We're already enticing more powerful gear rewards across the board when it comes to Ex and Savage content, how do we entice players to do this content if our existing system already covers the essentials through multiple means?

Angus, I'm not saying your ideas are wrong off the bat, but there's a lot to consider here when you make a broad statement to say "Make the game harder/make more hard content." We're no longer in an era where people will tolerate needless difficulty for its own sake. Make the game too unappealing to casuals and you'll loose them. And like it or not, even with the staggered subscriptions, they're holding up the game. SE needs to (and will) make those decisions carefully and I would like to make suggestions with the same considerations in mind.

Edit About Dungeon Diffiuclties:

Gating people on story won't work. It was attempted by putting story in raids and the backlash was catastrophic. We're already adding mechanics into each dungeon and building off of already existing concepts. (Stack Mechanics, unique mechanics, indicators for common actions to be done within the raiding scene. Even soft enrage mechanics in dungeons made a return with Amarot.) So, how further do we educate them on basics they've already been shown repeatedly? If you overtune the basic dungeon fights people will just use Trusts to bypass that, and they have to be passable by Trusts or that system they've created is useless. You'd have to individually tune each dungeon to correspond requirements for each role to increase the difficulty and that's a huge amount of manpower to tune something 4 different ways for each dungeon. Do we restrict it to non-trust dungeons?

No I think if we're going to encourage the building of skills more than we do already, we're going to have to come with a better intermediary than simply tuning the storyline harder. We're already getting more mechanics there, and people are pushing through.

Given this I am leaning more towards gating.

[Angus-Beef]

I get your approach, but the problem you run into that, from the business perspective, is falloff. Even before the 'casualization' of the game, you have a very small percentage of people completeting harder content, so them adding more of it, that players won't enjoy, will cause friction.
This friction is what caused Normal Raids to exist.

[~]

Angus, I'm not saying your ideas are wrong off the bat, but there's a lot to consider here when you make a broad statement to say "Make the game harder/make more hard content." We're no longer in an era where people will tolerate needless difficulty for its own sake. Make the game too unappealing to casuals and you'll loose them. And like it or not, even with the staggered subscriptions, they're holding up the game. SE needs to (and will) make those decisions carefully and I would like to make suggestions with the same considerations in mind.

Look at my edit, I'm not saying to give needless difficulty, I'm saying naturally enforce and reinforce it through out the game so that by the time you reach max lvl things a lot of people might find harder will be second nature. While yes I do know SE is limited on Man power(That in itself can be a whole thread) I feel it is possible for them to do that going forward into 6.0 over redoing how every dungeon works from 2.0 on. I'm not saying we should sacrifice 95% of the player base for the 5% who do savage and ultimate. But the fact that the game doesnt build upon its own difficulty in an intuitive way is the issue ShB as a whole is facing.

[Hyrist]

Look at my edit, I'm not saying to give needless difficulty, I'm saying naturally enforce and reinforce it through out the game so that by the time you reach max lvl things a lot of people might find harder will be second nature. While yes I do know SE is limited on Man power(That in itself can be a whole thread) I feel it is possible for them to do that going forward into 6.0 over redoing how every dungeon works from 2.0 on. I'm not saying we should sacrifice 95% of the player base for the 5% who do savage and ultimate. But the fact that the game doesnt build upon its own difficulty in an intuitive way is the issue ShB as a whole is facing.

I disagree with that. Again. Look at the number of mechanics introduced and reinforced in the existing dungeon content, and compare it to our previous content. Amarot far harder in comparison to Sastasha, and comes with a soft-enrage, a mechanic we haven't really touched on in quite a while. Tuning that more difficult isn't teaching so much as frustrating, and as I said before, DPS checks are usually the last problem

The real issue isn't the difficulty of the dungeons itself, but in the ability of someone to be carried through a dungeon. Personal skills are not tested when a group of 3 can usually clear. To make mechanics hard requiring all 4 to be on point would tilt those scales too far.

I think instead we need to focus on building the individual, rather than on Trust/Group content. I like the idea of leading into stronger and harder mechanics, and we used to have a system that, on the rudimentary level, was trying to teach that. One we might be able to purpose in 6.xx.

I'm referring to Guildhests - more specifically.

If we could make a line of more extreme-based (possibly solo-only) Guildhests, and put enticing rewards for entering, we can isolate and focus in on specific skillsets for each role that would enable them to learn and refine. We can even create a scaling reward system that encourages them improving their performance.

It'd be easy to tune those to scaling difficulty, and there we can even control what mechanics need to be most reinforced with each role. Wouldn't take much manpower for something so short and sweet, and it would both not be a gate, and not be over-pressuring the storyline. For validations sake, you could even tie a title/achievement to conquering each difficulty to see if someone's gone through their paces.

It might work.

[Angus-Beef]

I disagree with that. Again. Look at the number of mechanics introduced and reinforced in the existing dungeon content, and compare it to our previous content. Amarot far harder in comparison to Sastasha, and comes with a soft-enrage, a mechanic we haven't really touched on in quite a while. Tuning that more difficult isn't teaching so much as frustrating, and as I said before, DPS checks are usually the last problem

The real issue isn't the difficulty of the dungeons itself, but in the ability of someone to be carried through a dungeon. Personal skills are not tested when a group of 3 can usually clear. To make mechanics hard requiring all 4 to be on point would tilt those scales too far.

I think instead we need to focus on building the individual, rather than on Trust/Group content. I like the idea of leading into stronger and harder mechanics, and we used to have a system that, on the rudimentary level, was trying to teach that. One we might be able to purpose in 6.xx.

I'm referring to Guildhests - more specifically.

If we could make a line of more extreme-based (possibly solo-only) Guildhests, and put enticing rewards for entering, we can isolate and focus in on specific skillsets for each role that would enable them to learn and refine. We can even create a scaling reward system that encourages them improving their performance.

It'd be easy to tune those to scaling difficulty, and there we can even control what mechanics need to be most reinforced with each role. Wouldn't take much manpower for something so short and sweet, and it would both not be a gate, and not be over-pressuring the storyline. For validations sake, you could even tie a title/achievement to conquering each difficulty to see if someone's gone through their paces.

It might work.

I would love a system like that. But would SE make it Mandatory if they put something like that in?