Can one truly be "carried" in an Ultimate Raid?

[Kraniel]

Jeez people really like drama don't they.
Obviously he got carried in the sense that he was able to get together a static with top tier players instantly and learn faster than the average player.
But in the end he cleared the content like anyone else, and that's all that matters.

As for the original question, i don't think you can really be 100% carried through any of the endgame content, as most of it has insta-wipe mechanics that need to be understood by the whole party.
So yeah ... carried to an extent ? Sure. But you can't just afk through the whole thing and let your party do the work for you.

[Vyrerus]

This pretty much highlights the truth about any live content. If you don't do it when it's brand new to everyone, then you have an ever growing pile of advantages that first goers do not have.

On top of having easy access to an incredible group and leader, they also have access to all of the knowledge that everyone has built for the fight, in addition to whatever third party tools said group is going to use on top of potency lifts and job changes.

Basically, he was escorted through the content, which has only gotten easier with age. MMOs change and grow, and FFXIV is no exception, however much the devs want to maintain the efficacy of each fight. It's most comparable to an early MMO escort mission. You're tasked with walking beside an NPC with the condition that they not die, and that you meet the demands of the mission, such that you succeed in spite of their blunders/tomfoolery/weakness.

Just ask yourself, could he have succeeded as quickly as he did, without having the mechanics dictated to him? Could he go into a clear group that's close but still hasn't cleared, and help them to clear?

He was the passenger car of a train, pulled along by the engine, and monitored by the caboose.

[Nethereal]

Old ultimate, is what it is.

Some people/groups have to suffer more than most. Him being a popular streamer is an advantage and he also had 7 other people who already cleared the fight so it wasn't a genuine prog experience.
That said it's an old ultimate, they're not balanced for new patches, uwu is basically a long extreme at this point.
So imo unless you've cleared said ultimates when they were relevant content in their current expansion you have no right to complain, and going off logic the vast majority definitely haven't cleared it when it was relevant.
Just hold it in until new ultimate drops then you can be judgy.

[Kolsykol]

I just really don't get why people care so much about this.
Lets just for the sake of the argument say that he got carried.
He's not a douche about it or anything, Rich is very positive and loves the game.

If he was a douche about it or didn't like the game and got carried and was using it to be all like '' the game sucks u guys '' then that'd be different.
But he's just having fun and having a good time.

[Neotempest]

Wow, there is a lot of pettiness being shown in this forum about Riches clear. A lot of generalizations and assumptions about content so that way they don't have to give details about their opinions and has everyone else fills in the blanks for them. So lets start poking some holes into their ego since it's extremely inflated at the moment about Ultimates and the clear.

**"Carried"** Anyone want to be specific about this instead of just dropping this word and walking away and expect everyone else to fill in the blanks?
"Call outs are carries" Always calling out or some call outs? Is 99% callouts only a clear? 90%, 80%, how often are players allowed to call out in an Ultimate run for it be considered a "clear" in your eyes? That way we can tell others who didn't meet these conditions that they also were carried. "He had veteran players" Are you assuming that the only veteran players of ffxiv that exist are the streamers? You think other vets don't go out of their way to help players in ultimates? This is some small little world you live in if you assume there are no clears that happened in UCOB that are similar to Riches. Chances are Riches type of clears happend with vets who have the time to help new players into ultimates.
"7 man ultimates" Okay cool, how easy is that to do? I see vids of people beating every dark souls-esque game naked and with a basic weapon, does that mean just anyone can do it or does that mean patience, luck and skill to do? Is doing UCOB as a 7 man easy or did they practice the fight so much that just doing it 1 time is enough and don't want to do it again? There is all this assumptions about Riches clear by very petty and salty people for no reason. Rich got the clear, get over your ego about Ultimates cause they are still the hardest content available in ffxiv and that hasn't changed.

[CKNovel]

Wow, there is a lot of pettiness being shown in this forum about Riches clear. A lot of generalizations and assumptions about content so that way they don't have to give details about their opinions and has everyone else fills in the blanks for them. So lets start poking some holes into their ego since it's extremely inflated at the moment about Ultimates and the clear.

There is 6 pages that clearly explains the situation. A few of them make good use of space to make a wall of text breath a bit!

To make it easier for you:
-Rich had specifically made call out. It's as if your car would tell you to stop at red light or would read traffic sign for you and would correct your trajectory if you go deviate too much on left or right.
-His group was half filled with monsters, not veteran. World first raider and 8 tank RL, that's more than a veteran group.

No matter which angle you attack the problem, Rich always had a different situation which resulted in the easiest UCOB clear that isn't someone piloting your account.

In my own opinion, claiming Rich did not get carried is the same as saying he doesn't deserves the clear. Both are extreme black and white views without looking further than your nose.
Because both answers are "No". The problem is jumping on the "No" and the "Yes" while what should interest everyone is the "Why".

Hating RichCOB or not is another question. With a simple answer: Keep it to you.

[Driavna]

If others are willing to carry you, what's the problem? He is not even flexing about it.

Salty people being salty because others won't do that for them pretty much. With ZeplaHQ something similar happens "streamer privilege" (and other misogynistic stuff).

No one it's a fault that some has the charisma of a rock.

[Ranaku]

Wow, there is a lot of pettiness being shown in this forum about Riches clear.

I love these mental gymnastics.

One person has a problem with it -> Everyone else calls it a carry (or not) and says that is alright and cool -> THE FORUMS ARE A CESSPOOL OF TOXICITY! EVERYONE JUST HATES HERE! HOW DARE YOU!!!!1111!!! SO MANY HATERS! YOU ARE ALL HATERS!!!

I really love this and it repeats itself so well in all the different threads. As soon as someone has a different opinion someone like the quoted person up there just shoots into a thread and screams that it's infested with so many toxic people. xD

[EaMett]

There is 6 pages that clearly explains the situation. A few of them make good use of space to make a wall of text breath a bit!

To make it easier for you:
-Rich had specifically made call out. It's as if your car would tell you to stop at red light or would read traffic sign for you and would correct your trajectory if you go deviate too much on left or right.
-His group was half filled with monsters, not veteran. World first raider and 8 tank RL, that's more than a veteran group.

No matter which angle you attack the problem, Rich always had a different situation which resulted in the easiest UCOB clear that isn't someone piloting your account.

In my own opinion, claiming Rich did not get carried is the same as saying he doesn't deserves the clear. Both are extreme black and white views without looking further than your nose.
Because both answers are "No". The problem is jumping on the "No" and the "Yes" while what should interest everyone is the "Why".

Hating RichCOB or not is another question. With a simple answer: Keep it to you.

I saw his clear video and he had very few personal callouts, half of which were late anyway and he was already in place for, and the other half being pretty insignificant buff calls towards golden. Besides, let's not pretend like a vast majority of legends don't have ACT do personalized callouts for them on every mechanic lol).

It looked real legit. And his clear time was somewhere between 20-30h which is in the ballpark of what you'd expect from a higher tier team. Aka he learned the fight about as fast as a good veteran player (people forget how long he spent studying the fight out of raid).

The only ultimate experience he missed out on was watching other people wipe him for a few more hours (probably no more than an extra day of raid). But that was the point of him going in there with 7 cleared in the first place. So that he'd be the only bottleneck.

I think people are either respecting the content too much (it's an old fight with no DPS check and where healer/tank LB can be abused over and over again). Or really struggled through it (content drought = more people got to try it who otherwise wouldn't have found the time) and are salty that he didn't struggle as much.

Honestly, it was going to be lose-lose. He goes in with top world players > carry. He goes in with 7 cleared randos > carry. He goes in with one cleared doing shot-caller > carry. He goes in with 7 sprouts > nobody watches his stream. I would've done exactly the same as him.

[CKNovel]

I saw his clear video and he had very few personal callouts, half of which were late anyway and he was already in place for, and the other half being pretty insignificant buff calls towards golden. Besides, let's not pretend like a vast majority of legends don't have ACT do personalized callouts for them on every mechanic lol).

Honestly, it was going to be lose-lose. He goes in with top world players > carry. He goes in with 7 cleared randos > carry. He goes in with one cleared doing shot-caller > carry. He goes in with 7 sprouts > nobody watches his stream. I would've done exactly the same as him.

About the first one...
A prog is not just the run that clears, that's only the last step.
A lot is done and learned on the previous wipes. In a... "normal" group let's say, each member is expected to learn themselves and fix their mistakes themselves.

Was it because Rin was a great teacher? I'd argue about that.
More than anything, the answer and the how was handed to Rich. I'm not talking about the mechanics and strategy you can find in numerous guides but the execution.
You need to learn the execution yourself, that just comes back to the RL focusing entirely on Rich during the prog. That last clean clear is the result of that process repeated again and again. The opposite result would've been strange.

He still did many progging mistakes on previous runs, but that one was clean for sure.

As for the second, yes. It's a lose lose situation but I have a different opinion about that.
Rich is a streamer, if he took too long to clear he would've lost viewers. Streaming is his job, progging UCOB would've been a loss for his job. Progging while being heavily handheld was a much better option as a Streamer.

His haters will be shut down anyway and the fact that he's carried or not is irrelevant for his viewerbase and streaming career.
This is an important part everyone needs to understand, he's not playing XIV, he's streaming XIV.