We Need to Start Expecting Mid-Level Sprouts to Play Better

[Carin-Eri]

Here's my question to statements like this: Did you ever look up a guide, a video, or check a resource such as the balance for any of the jobs that you play or any of the fights you struggle with after running into issues? Did you ever try to sit and practice rotations in stone, sea, sky to get rotations down then test out doing rotations then put them in practice in a fight you are familiar and comfortable with? Did you ever think to yourself "Im having a hard time tanking and/or healing, maybe I should look up some guides to play those roles" or "I never seem to put up my buffs when everyone else does, maybe I should see what people are doing at the start of a fight/pull for [insert job]"?

This isn't a "Have you tried gitting gud?", but rather a question of when faced with difficulties or problems did you attempt to try and figure out what was going wrong with your gameplay or attempt to adjust what you are doing?

Firstly yes - in fact The Balance is probably the one reason I've gotten mostly to grips with RDM. Sadly, I still can't quite make head nor tails of their advice pertaining to Bard!

Secondly, again yes - in fact, after guides and LOTS of practice, I rarely 'die' when playing what is probably my favorite piece of content, Alzadaal's Legacy (which I know isn't the most difficult, but that's beside the point). However, again, guides can prove a lot to remember for some and I do find it difficult to recall said advice in longer content, such as Aglaia for example.

[Illmaeran]

This isn't a "Have you tried gitting gud?", but rather a question of when faced with difficulties or problems did you attempt to try and figure out what was going wrong with your gameplay or attempt to adjust what you are doing?

Yes, I have. Unfortunately they're of limited help due to cognitive damage that's killed my memory. In order for guides to get me to the point of Optimal, I'd have to run the multiple times, stopping before each boss to read it before engaging; every time. They're also not much help when a roulette tosses me into something for the first time on a new role and I haven't seen that dungeon since the one time I did it for the story.

When I say optimal, I mean *optimal*. Too many times here and in other places I get the message that a tank is either Perfect or Shit, with no in-between. I know my limitations and stick to roulettes, never going near even EX dungeons, let alone savage+ grade content. I'll never have rotations down perfectly/optimally, but I'm generally proficient enough to do well in normal roulette stuff as long as it's not the first time I've been there in a long time or on a new role.

[Larirawiel]

Mhhh ... i do not think, that the players will get better in this game. Because 98% of this game are so easy, that it is almost impossible to fail. The game protects you from failing almost everywhere. And if you cannot fail, you do not learn. So, lower your expectations and you will not be disappointed. ^^


Cheers

[Mikey_R]

Mhhh ... i do not think, that the players will get better in this game. Because 98% of this game are so easy, that it is almost impossible to fail. The game protects you from failing almost everywhere. And if you cannot fail, you do not learn. So, lower your expectations and you will not be disappointed. ^^


Cheers

The problem is, if people fail too much, they complain about the game being too hard. A good example is Shinryu close to SBs launch. It wasn't long before people complained the fight was too hard and they wanted SE to make it easier. Luckily they didn't but this didn't stop people from complaining about it.

The point is, even if they were to make the game harder, people wouldn't get better to compensate, they would just complain it is too hard and this is the mentality that needs to stop.

There is also another observation I would like to make, and whilst it is purely based on what I have witnessed, I'm sure it happens across multiple DCs. If you do a fight within the first few days, people expect you to go in blind, if you wipe, no problems, you tend to discuss what went wrong and how to deal with it, we are all learning after all. However, give it a little while and people start to not listen. You can wipe, someone explain the mechanics and they ignore you. It is a weird shift in mentality which does almost seem close to, I don't want to learn the fight, I want you to carry me through it.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

There is also another observation I would like to make, and whilst it is purely based on what I have witnessed, I'm sure it happens across multiple DCs. If you do a fight within the first few days, people expect you to go in blind, if you wipe, no problems, you tend to discuss what went wrong and how to deal with it, we are all learning after all. However, give it a little while and people start to not listen. You can wipe, someone explain the mechanics and they ignore you. It is a weird shift in mentality which does almost seem close to, I don't want to learn the fight, I want you to carry me through it.

While being anecdotal myself, I also witnessed something similar on where I'm playing. First week of patch implementation has always been the golden period. As time goes by, there goes people's patience against the newcomer AND the newcomer's receptiveness against advices as well. Things like "this fight sucks :/" gets thrown a lot in the chat, sometimes even after being told how to perform certain mechanics.

[Bukachu]

The problem is, if people fail too much, they complain about the game being too hard. A good example is Shinryu close to SBs launch. It wasn't long before people complained the fight was too hard and they wanted SE to make it easier. Luckily they didn't but this didn't stop people from complaining about it.

The point is, even if they were to make the game harder, people wouldn't get better to compensate, they would just complain it is too hard and this is the mentality that needs to stop.

There is also another observation I would like to make, and whilst it is purely based on what I have witnessed, I'm sure it happens across multiple DCs. If you do a fight within the first few days, people expect you to go in blind, if you wipe, no problems, you tend to discuss what went wrong and how to deal with it, we are all learning after all. However, give it a little while and people start to not listen. You can wipe, someone explain the mechanics and they ignore you. It is a weird shift in mentality which does almost seem close to, I don't want to learn the fight, I want you to carry me through it.

Its possible to make game harder without changing any existing content, you just add a new, harder content.

that's it really. people who want harder content will go and do it, people who dont can do lower difficulty content.

[Deceptus]

Its possible to make game harder without changing any existing content, you just add a new, harder content.

that's it really. people who want harder content will go and do it, people who dont can do lower difficulty content.

That doesn't help the lower skilled people get any better. You teach them to be better by providing small difficulty increases gradually through the MSQ.

[Larirawiel]

The problem is, if people fail too much, they complain about the game being too hard. A good example is Shinryu close to SBs launch. It wasn't long before people complained the fight was too hard and they wanted SE to make it easier. Luckily they didn't but this didn't stop people from complaining about it.

The point is, even if they were to make the game harder, people wouldn't get better to compensate, they would just complain it is too hard and this is the mentality that needs to stop.

True. But if a fight is mandatory to the MSQ then it is wrong to make the fight very hard, i think. Because this fight could turn into a huge wall, which the players cannot overcome. And not be able to play the MSQ would make many players upset because the game would be literary over for them.

The other problem is, the player power scales almost exclusively with the itemlevel. The game mechanics are too simple and too binary. If a fight is too hard then buy a new weapon with more itemlevel and this "hard" fight turns into freeloot. I experienced it with my dragoon very often. You have too few possibilities to turn a fight from a almost sure loss to a victory. I have read, that it was different in the earlier versions of the game.

There is also another observation I would like to make, and whilst it is purely based on what I have witnessed, I'm sure it happens across multiple DCs. If you do a fight within the first few days, people expect you to go in blind, if you wipe, no problems, you tend to discuss what went wrong and how to deal with it, we are all learning after all. However, give it a little while and people start to not listen. You can wipe, someone explain the mechanics and they ignore you. It is a weird shift in mentality which does almost seem close to, I don't want to learn the fight, I want you to carry me through it.

This is also true. But i have also experienced it in other games very often. So it is not a FF14 exclusive behavior.


Cheers

[Mikey_R]

True. But if a fight is mandatory to the MSQ then it is wrong to make the fight very hard, i think. Because this fight could turn into a huge wall, which the players cannot overcome. And not be able to play the MSQ would make many players upset because the game would be literary over for them.

That's the thing though. Shinryu wasn't hard. Every mechanic you had seen before so it was just a case of recognising it and dealing with it but that was the problem, people didn't pay attention and rather than bettering themselves a little, they blamed the game for their own shortcomings. The fact recognising certain mechanics is a useful skill meant Shinryu was a test of their fight perception rather than job skill. (There was a DPS check, but that is just the add phase, I don't think I saw anyone wipe to that).

The other problem is, the player power scales almost exclusively with the itemlevel. The game mechanics are too simple and too binary. If a fight is too hard then buy a new weapon with more itemlevel and this "hard" fight turns into freeloot. I experienced it with my dragoon very often. You have too few possibilities to turn a fight from a almost sure loss to a victory. I have read, that it was different in the earlier versions of the game.

This is one of the issues I have with some fights, or more specifically, anything that isn't a dungeon. Just looking at level 60 content, all trials, 24 man and Alexander do not have an ilevel sync, but the dungeons do? I know the sync for dungeons is to prevent people from plowing through them, but what about the trials? Everyone knows by now that Thordan is really easy, but back in the day, he did have more going on. Did you know before the knight onslaught he has 3 phases? The first is just AoEs, the second where he starts using Knights of the Round, of which he has 2 variants, he then has the Dragon eye as the last phase, where he can still use the Knights of the Round, but there is another 2 variations. He then goes through the add phase, and after that you get the last phase which literally just involves him swinging his sword wildly for pitiful damage, showing that he has severely weakened himself in an attempt to kill you. This has all been lost to a lack of ilevel sync and I would be an advocate for adding an ilevel sync into the trials/raids so that they can still hold onto some semblance of difficulty.

[Stanazolol]

If a tank is saving mitigations for bosses, he must not be wall pulling. If he knows enough to wall pull and still doesn't use cds, something is wrong because there's no way he's surviving much of that. If a tank single pulls and is never told differently, they may in fact save cds for bosses though, as that seems logical to a noob and the healer can easily mask how much damage they are taking. And mid level tanks casually playing the main story might not know how to play the role optimally, since ARR dungeons are so awkward to wall pull much of the time, fewer people are gonna tell them to do it until HW. It's not unreasonable to think a level 60 tank playing casually might not fully know these things. If they know all of this stuff and still don't do it, they're basically saying they're bad players without saying they're bad players.