A Change to Phoenix Downs

[Eorzean_username]

I'm just saying it cultivates bad habits for players entering Extreme+ content where not paying attention can either hinder group or prevent groups from completing content. The way I see normal content is a place to either leisurely experience the story or to practice a new job while challenging yourself to not mess up mechanics. But it still should teach players to shore up their play and if the punishment is significantly invalidated by the fact that every player can raise, then it turns it becoming a norm of failing mechanics to not be a punishment other than slowing down how fast the duty is finished.

Okay, I get what you're trying to say now. But, I think you're arguing for a figurative ship that disappeared over the horizon in FFXIV a loooong, long time ago.

Normal-tier content currently doesn't even require the entire party(s) to be standing up to be able to clear it. And even if everyone has Brink of Death, there's no relevant Enrage (if at all), so the only way that KOs matter is:

a) It's boring to be on the floor and not pressing buttons
b) It's annoying to spend 32 minutes clearing a single boss
c) If everyone is on the floor, then you have to start all over again, which is even more annoying

In my own experience, very few people don't try to do mechanics. Everyone just learns at a different pace, and a lot of people don't prioritize FFXIV enough in their life to bother watching videos before entering new content (and/or they don't want to be spoiled).

If you have a comp that can chain-raise, then people learn mechanics a little faster and spend less time tabbed out.

If you have a comp with few raises, then you just outright wipe more, or you spend more excruciating pulls watching the 2 tanks, 1 raiseless DPS, and 1 healer that understand what's going on slooooowly pull everyone else back up.

As far as I can tell, putting people back on their feet doesn't really trivialize the encounter nor discourage learning, any more than the preexisting habit of deliberately wiping and repulling fresh once it becomes clear too many people have KO'd or that you're out of Raisers, etc.

An anecdotal experience I can give for myself that happened a few days ago was doing O10n the second time ever on my WHM which is the first healer I am playing. We had a situation where the other healer died, massive damage was out on the whole group and Swiftcast still had a 14 second CD on it so I couldn't quickly the other healer. We also did not have a SMN or a RDM so I was the only one who could do it. I was running low on MP and it was a high stress situation to keep not only the tanks up but everyone healthy. In that moment I remembered I had my Planetary Indulgence and using that plus trying to make good use of a thin air stack and my lilys I was able to salvage the situation long enough for swiftcast to come up and raise my other healer while avoiding mechanics. I found it to be an informative experience for myself to learn how to play my WHM but also how to reactively play better.

All of that experience would have been taken away if some other DPS just immediately picked them up while I cast medica 2 then spam medica at will with no regard to my MP and then immediately went back to spamming Stone.

Alright, you felt proud for that opportunity to learn how to stretch your WHM resources. I'm not trying to invalidate or dismiss that you had a positive learning experience from that, because that can certainly happen in strained circumstances. And I've had plenty of my own experiences like that in my time learning various Jobs and roles in FFXIV, so I understand how satisfying it can be.

But, now imagine someone playing Dragoon instead. "Oh, both Healers KO'd and the other surviving DPS is a Black Mage." So now you can... uh... what? Hit buttons harder, to try to win before the chained raidwides uncontrollably KO you?

Players in that situation realize that they're better off just mercy'ing themselves by running into a death wall. There's not much learning opportunity.

And... that's kind of the pattern in DF parties: "Oh, all Raisers are KO? Time to voluntarily wipe."

To be honest, I think that there's a bizarre variation in experience between parties that randomly end up with multiple extra Raisers, and parties with only 'mere mortal' DPS: "unending pull with slooooow grindy victory" vs. "well, we're definitely going to die soon, let's jump off and try again".

In fact, it's kind-of humorous how fast a Normal mode can sometimes change from chain-wiping to one-shot-clear as soon as even one person leaves and gets replaced by a Red Mage.

...Actually, I guess it's currently pretty consistent with endgame, then: sometimes in your Savage Prog PF you randomly get Raisers in your party that are good at staying alive, and pulls can go on forever and see a lot of mechanics. Other times, you get 2 healers with, er, "bad luck", alongside SAM RPR BLM MCH... and pulls end quite abruptly and keep looping the same early mechanics.

[Yeastyloins]

Okay, I get what you're trying to say now. But, I think you're arguing for a figurative ship that disappeared over the horizon in FFXIV a loooong, long time ago.

Normal-tier content currently doesn't even require the entire party(s) to be standing up to be able to clear it. And even if everyone has Brink of Death, there's no relevant Enrage (if at all), so the only way that KOs matter is:

a) It's boring to be on the floor and not pressing buttons
b) It's annoying to spend 32 minutes clearing a single boss
c) If everyone is on the floor, then you have to start all over again, which is even more annoying

In my own experience, very few people don't try to do mechanics. Everyone just learns at a different pace, and a lot of people don't prioritize FFXIV enough in their life to bother watching videos before entering new content (and/or they don't want to be spoiled).

If you have a comp that can chain-raise, then people learn mechanics a little faster and spend less time tabbed out.

If you have a comp with few raises, then you just outright wipe more, or you spend more excruciating pulls watching the 2 tanks, 1 raiseless DPS, and 1 healer that understand what's going on slooooowly pull everyone else back up.

As far as I can tell, putting people back on their feet doesn't really trivialize the encounter nor discourage learning, any more than the preexisting habit of deliberately wiping and repulling fresh once it becomes clear too many people have KO'd or that you're out of Raisers, etc.

To your second paragraph (still figuring out the forums :P) you just reset, easy. You do that for extreme and up in that situation anyways. And it's not like its the end of the world where you take a huge hit to gil/experience/or anything. Or a punishment of time like in WoW where you need to Rez, run back to the instance if you don't a have healer soulstoned/ahnk to mass rez, even worse if you are in classic. You just pull again OR god forbid, you get the opportunity to learn from an experience by asking a question. That very same fight I mentioned, we wiped and I just asked how to tell which AoE is going to come out based on his movements. Somebody told me and provided me an additional tip that let me optimize my movement and I thanked them. We killed and I thanked the person again for the tip and we made a joke or two. It was a positive and satisfying social interaction that came from a wipe and minor inconvenience coupled with an opportunity to improve my play instead of indolently spamming Medica, Medica 2, and Stone. Because of a fail state.

As to your first paragraph, why is it good to reward bad play? If the answer to that is: well people just don't want to have to learn mechanics or have to attempt to improve and learn or socialize with other players by conversing about a pull and learning from it, why even have normal group content then? Why even have a death state? Why even weaken people upon rez? Why even have vul stacks/damage down mechanics? Why even have mechanics then?

[Liam_Harper]

People complain about healers being useless and having nothing to do but then want to take even more use from them. Pick a lane.

I'm a healer main and strongly disagree with this. It would enable the devs to give us more fun things, because currently they've outright stated we can't have harder 4 man content because it's stressful on the healers as the group will wipe if they die.
Channeling Raise for 8 sec over and over because the dps fell asleep is not exciting fun gameplay either.

If everyone having a Raise is considered too good, then limit the number of Raises per fight. Let's say everyone can Raise but you only get 4 uses per pull. That makes the game both more challenging AND puts less pressure on the healer at the same time.

[Yeastyloins]

I'm a healer main and strongly disagree with this. It would enable the devs to give us more fun things, because currently they've outright stated we can't have harder 4 man content because it's stressful on casual healers that don't use the full kit, don't mitigate, or fail to properly do mechanics as the group will wipe if they die.
Channeling Raise for 8 sec over and over because the dps fell asleep is not exciting fun gameplay either.

If everyone having a Raise is considered too good, then limit the number of Raises per fight. Let's say everyone can Raise but you only get 4 uses per pull. That makes the game both more challenging AND puts less pressure on the healer at the same time.

Fixed your post.

It's literally more optimal to do expert roulette with 3 DPS and a Tank because the content is already brain dead. It's honestly more fun because you have to crank damage and play creatively because one person making a mistake means the whole group is done. So if you're having to raise the same DPS over and over again, its not a failure of healing design, it a player being a failure. What you're asking for is to reward failure.

Going with your suggestion though, I'd say it would have to 4 per dungeon, as in from start to finish you only have 4 and this number only resets if you have a total party wipe with you only get. So if you have a DPS that dies each trash pull, you're out of raises until you have a full party wipe, and even then I think you should only get 1 raise back from that point on. Or do what WoW does for battle rezs where you have 1 at the start then you don't get to do another one at all until after a certain allotted time.

Also here's a wild thought: Maybe don't waste MP on raising somebody who is dying to each pull in a dungeon? Unless you are contending with a mechanic that requires all 4 or 8 people to be up (which don't exist in normal content), you can afford to not pick up the person failing every mechanic every single time they die. If you and the other 2 (or 6) players are playing competently, then ensuring those individuals and yourself staying alive is 100% more important than the person who is standing infront of the boss getting cleaved to death despite dying to it already.

[Kazimere]

I imagine that'd tick some people off, but I'd be fine with that, yeah. It'd mean no rezzes in a fight with a dps check hard enough to want potions for, but... honestly, a death that non-rezzer would need to Phoenix Down in that case would probably have cost them the clear anyways? (Per OP's point #4, Down would be unusable in most such content anyways.)

I never did DR Savage, but how were the rez potion things in there?

[GarretStrongstaf]

i think if each person had multiple phoenix downs content might be a bit too easy
but the ability to use them in combat instances would be great

I agree with the OP that they could be implemented. I like the idea of them being consumable items that are difficult to use but can be used by everyone. Maybe limit them to party-wide, single uses with a long cast time. This could prevent these items from nerfing content.

I could also see them made into a limited duty item like the "Vril" in Lakshmi. This option could be toggled on/off in the duty finder for some content. This would be less fun but better than nothing I suppose.