Garuda after patch

[Meatdawg]

I'm not so sure how accurate this statement is. Truth be told, most skills that you need to learn to use are North of level 40 or obtained in the first 10 levels. Also keep in mind that many skills are learned via the job quests. This means that there is a gap of 30 levels or more.

So I am not so confident that people don't learn how use/play jobs without grinding them forever. A more accurate statement would possibly be that people who respond to /sh are less likely to be heavily involved with static groups and therefore will have less experience on that specific content.

Just because you obtain the "useful" skills from 1-10 or 40-50 doesn't mean you understand how to use them in a group setup. There is nothing hard from 1-50, or that you can't do solo.

Finding a wolf party at level 40 so 5 hours later you can ding 50 doesn't help the problem either.

There needs to be way more mid-low level dungeons to encourage small to full parties to group up and play together. (And no I don't mean run it solo on your level 50 one time to get an achievement).

Content should be level capped, or scaled (50 joins and is scaled to level 30) so that team mechanics are being developed at early levels.

I have done a few PUG's to help some people get there AF armor in Darkhold and I have never seen such horrid play by level 50's before. No idea what the concept of "hate" control is, no idea how to dodge or position themselves in mechanics where you cant stand still and spam WS A-B. This isn't a leve... You cant just rush in and spam WS over and over and have a total disregard for your actions.

Normally they will die in under 10 seconds on ogre while the 3 of us that understand concepts kill it and raise them up. Even explaining the tactics doesn't help.

This system allows players to create an account today, and have a 50 with full AF by the end of the week who could have spent as little as an hour actually Playing his class. (PL anyone?)

Then they join and Ifrit/moogle/garuda/darkhold party and are floored that an encounter takes actual skill, attention, patience, teamwork, effort..... and promptly run to the forums to qq about lag (god forbid you prepare for a plume, astral flow, etc), difficulty, class stacking etc etc

This is my main issue with the game atm

[Yves]

Just because you obtain the "useful" skills from 1-10 or 40-50 doesn't mean you understand how to use them in a group setup. There is nothing hard from 1-50, or that you can't do solo.

Finding a wolf party at level 40 so 5 hours later you can ding 50 doesn't help the problem either.

There needs to be way more mid-low level dungeons to encourage small to full parties to group up and play together. (And no I don't mean run it solo on your level 50 one time to get an achievement).

Content should be level capped, or scaled (50 joins and is scaled to level 30) so that team mechanics are being developed at early levels. Conversely, by your reasoning every player who doesn't possess this "skill" would never succeed until they learned the job better. In reality, most players can beat CC/AV/DH/Ifrit/Moogle after one or two tries with voicechat. Moreover, those players appear "skilled" once they understand the fight.

I have done a few PUG's to help some people get there AF armor in Darkhold and I have never seen such horrid play by level 50's before. No idea what the concept of "hate" control is, no idea how to dodge or position themselves in mechanics where you cant stand still and spam WS A-B. This isn't a leve... You cant just rush in and spam WS over and over and have a total disregard for your actions.

Normally they will die in under 10 seconds on ogre while the 3 of us that understand concepts kill it and raise them up. Even explaining the tactics doesn't help.

This system allows players to create an account today, and have a 50 with full AF by the end of the week who could have spent as little as an hour actually Playing his class. (PL anyone?)

Then they join and Ifrit/moogle/garuda/darkhold party and are floored that an encounter takes actual skill, attention, patience, teamwork, effort..... and promptly run to the forums to qq about lag (god forbid you prepare for a plume, astral flow, etc), difficulty, class stacking etc etc

This is my main issue with the game atm

Get them on voicechat. We do that and it alleviates the problems you are talking about to a large extent. Again, this is a function of familiarity and not actual skill. I've seen great players fail in the same ways when content is new to them.

If what you are talking about was a function of skill then every top player would succeed immediately which isn't the case. Conversely, every player who didn't grind by your standards would fail until they "learned the job" which is also highly untrue. After one or two tries on voicechat they succeed and appear to be "highly skilled."

This isn't XI - there is minimal complexity to this game.

[Enfarious]

Just because you obtain the "useful" skills from 1-10 or 40-50 doesn't mean you understand how to use them in a group setup. There is nothing hard from 1-50, or that you can't do solo.

Finding a wolf party at level 40 so 5 hours later you can ding 50 doesn't help the problem either.

There needs to be way more mid-low level dungeons to encourage small to full parties to group up and play together. (And no I don't mean run it solo on your level 50 one time to get an achievement).

Content should be level capped, or scaled (50 joins and is scaled to level 30) so that team mechanics are being developed at early levels.

I have done a few PUG's to help some people get there AF armor in Darkhold and I have never seen such horrid play by level 50's before. No idea what the concept of "hate" control is, no idea how to dodge or position themselves in mechanics where you cant stand still and spam WS A-B. This isn't a leve... You cant just rush in and spam WS over and over and have a total disregard for your actions.

Normally they will die in under 10 seconds on ogre while the 3 of us that understand concepts kill it and raise them up. Even explaining the tactics doesn't help.

This system allows players to create an account today, and have a 50 with full AF by the end of the week who could have spent as little as an hour actually Playing his class. (PL anyone?)

Then they join and Ifrit/moogle/garuda/darkhold party and are floored that an encounter takes actual skill, attention, patience, teamwork, effort..... and promptly run to the forums to qq about lag (god forbid you prepare for a plume, astral flow, etc), difficulty, class stacking etc etc

This is my main issue with the game atm

And while alot of people don't want to admit it, the old school FFXI leveling system provided just that kind of time to experiment/learn/develop skills on a job before you wandered into EG content. Soloing/PLing/100k xp per hr pt spots from WARs Steel Cyclone spam doesn't make for great players. It doesn't make them bad, but it certainly leaves them under skilled and not 100% on how to play any job in a full party where it counts.

[Hachi-Roku]

There is pretty much no MMO that gets this right. Levelling content, be it grinding mob camps or quest chaining simply doesn't prepare one for endgame content, because the composition for both is radically different. Levelling can be done solo or in a large group, but the latter isn't necessarily reliant on a party balance to make bars fill up. Endgame material is not only almost entirely group-based, but you enter situations that you simply don't see outside of it, such as the poison areas in Aurum Vale or monsters that prepare special AoEs under certain conditions, like the Darkhold Ogre doing Elbow Drop if he's hit in the back by melee.

Players by and large don't know how to immediately react to unknown situations in games, and it's kind of unfair to ask them of perfection on a first run. That being said, there's also a fair amount of people who don't do any kind of research into what the endgame activities are and how to complete them. I was once in an LS run of Aurum Vale where we had to PUG an 8th member who was all too happy to help us. Great DD, but he didn't know how the poison fields worked at all, and didn't speak up that he didn't know about it, either. We were fine about telling him what the deal was, but the truth is that the more proactive players, whether it be through research or disclosure, are typically the better ones.

[Zaaku]

So what happened to the players of FFXIV? Where has teamwork gone ? What about mutual aid? Maybe you are done with Garuda, but can you not help other people with it ? Now almost everyone plays for his own interest.

When was it there in the first place?

People wanted casual play and we got it
People wanted to be able to cap with little to no effort and we got it
People wanted everything to be near soloable so you hardly ever needed a full PT and we got it

This is the bed casualization has made and now we all get to sleep in it.

[Yves]

When was it there in the first place?

People wanted casual play and we got it
People wanted to be able to cap with little to no effort and we got it
People wanted everything to be near soloable so you hardly ever needed a full PT and we got it

This is the bed casualization has made and now we all get to sleep in it.

There is no rewarding content that is "near soloable." AC/CC/Garuda/Ifrit/Moogle - all the content that has tangible and relevant rewards requires at least 6 people for a speedrun or a realistic win.

Here are some examples to help differentiate between "skill" and familiarity.

Ifrit - requires familiarity - watch for swipes and don't WS, time your abilities. This isn't skill. And avoiding plumes just requires players to DPS from a specific spot and maybe move a tiny bit depending on tank positioning.

Moogle - requires familiarity - if anyone think that this fight requires skill they are mistaken. Moving when you see Flare and killing in a specific order is all about awareness/familiarity.

AV/CC - requires familiarity - There is no skill needed to stand in one spot and nuke while counting down 60 seconds before a guard pops. Being mindful of hate as a BLM isn't a skill thing since everyone can figure that out in about 10 seconds.

Soloing Sentinel Celata and low-manning these require skill since your MP/HP will be taxed. If anything, these are functions of skill regarding your tank and healer since even average tanks can keep hate held. Sometimes you will get DD that push DPS into upper tiers but they will usually be part of a static group.

Again, this isn't XI - there is no complexity.

[Estellios]

For anyone having trouble in the first phase and getting behind rocks when she teleports, you get a pretty large warning before she actually does it. If you are targeting her you will lose target a good second or so before she disappears, you can start running behind a rock immediately as you lose target then fine tune when she actually appears. You can even watch the mini-map to see where she is slightly before she appears too.

For the 2nd teleport + Mistral Song phase, there are tricks to how it works. She will either pop north/south/east/west or at the tank. If she pops at the edges of the arena you can run away from her to the very edge of the Tornado to avoid damage (once again, if you watch the mini map you get a good amount of warning). Your tank should be fighting her at the edge of the tornado so if she pops at the tank, they can run as soon as she disappears and she will reappear facing the wall still and won't hit anyone if you are gathering at the center when she teleports.

This fight just takes a lot of practice, efficient DPS (and gearing heavily for Accuracy), and smart use of combos. Our big breakthrough was not holding TP for AOEs and instead initiating combos on Garuda when she returned from Mistral Song/Shriek and closing the combo with AOE moves on clusters of Plumes after they spread out, with Bards picking up any stragglers. Doing it that way you still are able to AOE but also do extra damage to Garuda through the starter combos. We regularly do the fight with 1 WHM, 2 WAR, 2 BRD, 2 DRG (or 1 DRG 1 MNK), and 1 BLM and have no issues anymore getting past Aerial Blast. A WAR tank won't be necessary either once PLD gets fixed.

[Zozma]

Yeah I do know what proxy trace means. But my regular tracert gives me a jump to Dallas, Texas before jumping to Japan. I clearly just wanted to simplify the idea with a picture for forum users with less network knowledge.

I'd imagne Australian players route via singapore or something then going to Japan.




Lag is no excuse for not being able to do content, it just adds some slight extra challenge and kills some of the game experience.
When I look at gameplay from JP players on youtube, my gaming experience is nowhere close as smooth as their. I dont expect SE to move servers or anything like that just maybe turn more stuff client based or something. There is a fine line where you decide what goes server side and whats client side.

[Enfarious]

Yeah I do know what proxy trace means. But my regular tracert gives me a jump to Dallas, Texas before jumping to Japan. I clearly just wanted to simplify the idea with a picture for forum users with less network knowledge.

I'd imagne Australian players route via singapore or something then going to Japan.
....
Lag is no excuse for not being able to do content, it just adds some slight extra challenge and kills some of the game experience.
When I look at gameplay from JP players on youtube, my gaming experience is nowhere close as smooth as their. I dont expect SE to move servers or anything like that just maybe turn more stuff client based or something. There is a fine line where you decide what goes server side and whats client side.

I assume that your using a router that has some configurable settings, have you tried setting a static route in it's routing table to give yourself a minimal hop count, it might cut out some of those 250+ms hops your getting. You may be able to do this in windows too but having it in the hardware might make it a little faster.

[Zozma]

I assume that your using a router that has some configurable settings, have you tried setting a static route in it's routing table to give yourself a minimal hop count, it might cut out some of those 250+ms hops your getting. You may be able to do this in windows too but having it in the hardware might make it a little faster.

I doubt I can tweak it any further. I'm on fiber optics all way to Oslo where the traffic jumps all way to Texas. Even tho I have many jumps most of the on the start and end of the route are just local switches. Apart from that I only have 2 big jumps;
Norway>Texas 160ms
Texas>Japan 130ms

Too bad the programmers and testers are JP ONRY and they don't experience the network stuttering others do. I bet JP casters never need to stop and pause 500ms before casting spells...