Why do people avoid getting better at the game?

[AnotherPerson]

Dungeon difficulty has slowly gone up in terms of mechanics, but the overall difficulty has gone down based on the maximum survival threshold of our job's toolkit went up in a party setting. Look no further than how tanks improved from Stormblood's dungeons in a 4-man / Shadowbringers' dungeons during Shadowbringers expansion and Endwalker dungeons in a 4-man currently.

The dungeons in Stormblood actually required a healer to power through it because tanks didn't have natural self sustain. The amount of sustain they had was a lot lower that they can die to bosses from unavoidable damage.

In Shadowbringers expansion, tanks have gotten better mitigation. PLD and WAR in particular went crazy strong in terms of self-sustain when push comes to shove. WAR can now use Nascent Flash (HP recovery per enemies hit) over Raw Intuition (flat damage reduction). PLD being able to keep one to 2 other players alive during Malikah's Well Final Boss even if a healer is dead purely from the lowered MP cost of Clemency being able to keep up with their MP generation (4000 MP -> 2000 MP) and Atonement. That being said, tanks still mostly relied on healers. Healers were still pretty important when things go south, but the amount of healing tank can start being able to cover gave a LOT more room for error in terms of finishing a duty - thereby drastically reducing the difficulty of the dungeon.

In Endwalker, every tank has the ability to self-sustain and can do dungeons without bringing a healer (which only speaks volumes to how much extra room for error that healers -- whose entire toolkit is basically healing now-- can provide to prevent a wipe when in the past, they were a necessary component). Parties even sub in a third DPS if they are premade for that reason because the innate self sustain of a tank is enough to offset the total amount of unavoidable damage in most cases. WAR had their Raw Intuition reworked so it will now recover HP in dungeons starting from lv 56 onwards rather than wait until they get Nascent Nascent Flash at lv 76. PLD gained healing on both Sheltron (Now Holy Sheltron applying both mitigation + regen effect) and in 6.3, PLD got another rework where they have healing attached to every Divine Might combo/Requiescat usage.

A more extreme and easier to see example of Dungeon's mechanical difficulty versus overall difficulty would be the Lv 47-49 dungeon Aurum Vale. If you compare Endwalker dungeons and then you look at dungeons like Aurum Vale, you can see the difference easily. You can say Aurum Vale is much easier mechanically in terms of simplicity (especially after the telegraphs are now visible nerf), but the dungeon itself is much more difficult in relation to that level because of both a stat limitation and skill limitation required players to perform a lot better than what is demanded -- the party themselves couldn't greatly exceed the difficulty of the dungeon. There's a lot less room for error. Aurum Vale is a 4-man party where you actually needed a tank, a healer, and DPS to do the dungeon.

A more mild example would be Bardam's Mettle (Lv 65 dungeon). That dungeon's mechanics are very straightforward. However, the mobs themselves can hit very hard and wipe the party if the tank and healer are not up to par with their mitigation and healing. There's room for error and mistakes, but it's one of those dungeons that really encourage all players to use all of their toolkit or they won't have a very easy time. This was especially the case with the gear spike in the past (ILV260 Shire gear and ILV274 HQ gear had a huge gap in defensive scaling in the past, but I'm not sure if it's still there in Endwalker after stat squish).

There's a huge reason why people say healers feel very superfluous in dungeons for that reason, and would rather have more engaging DPS gameplay when they are stuck pressing 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 in Endwalker -- and is magnified even more than Shadowbringers now that tanks no longer require as much attention on external healing with each passing expansion. Between big differences in maximum ILVL sync through gear and lots of skills, there's so much leeway that the difficulty feels like it has gotten lower, especially with how predictable mechanics are once you seen them enough times.

[Jojoya]

Dungeon difficulty has slowly gone up in terms of mechanics, but the overall difficulty has gone down based on the maximum survival threshold of our job's toolkit went up in a party setting. Look no further than how tanks improved from Stormblood's dungeons in a 4-man / Shadowbringers' dungeons during Shadowbringers expansion and Endwalker dungeons in a 4-man currently.

A lot of players are reaching their effective skill cap after a decade of content difficulty growth. SE has to be cautious about increasing difficulty in the MSQ as s result. They're going to have performance data they can analyze to see where players start having difficulties.

That's going to disappoint those seeking increasing challenge, especially if SE doesn't increase the amount of side content with higher difficulty.

There's a huge reason why people say healers feel very superfluous in dungeons for that reason, and would rather have more engaging DPS gameplay when they are stuck pressing 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 in Endwalker -- and is magnified even more than Shadowbringers now that tanks no longer require as much attention on external healing with each passing expansion. Between big differences in maximum ILVL sync through gear and lots of skills, there's so much leeway that the difficulty feels like it has gotten lower, especially with how predictable mechanics are once you seen them enough times.

I rarely feel superfluous as a healer but then I stick to the more casual friendly content where we're more likely to run into players who are skill challenged.

That's where SE starts having problems when it comes to healer design. Too many abilities overwhelm healers who are better off in casual content. Not enough abilities and you bore healers in high end content.

Makes me wonder if MMOs should add in horizontal progression with respect to abilities within content. I'm thinking in terms of something like Duty actions but with a more general use within an encounter compared to the Duty action very specific use. But that also edges dangerously toward the borrowed power systems that WoW was using and which were ultimately leaving players unhappy.

[Shinkuno]

A lot of players are reaching their effective skill cap after a decade of content difficulty growth.

People are at lv90 content spamming cure 1. They havent reached their skill cap, the content is just so easy that they get carried through it

[Carin-Eri]

It isn't necessarily avoidance in all cases.

I've been playing since December 2021 and whilst I'd say I've probably improved over that time, I'm still not where I feel I should be for someone who has been playing for as long as I have.

And I will say that it's NOT for want of trying. I've worked my ass off learning rotations with the jobs I've chosen and have a fairly good grasp of the ones I've learnt (still haven't really tried healing and have only dipped my toe into Tanking) but despite that I seem to have an absolutely appalling memory for mechanics. No matter how many times I've played *enter name of content here* I either forget the mechanics, make stupid mistakes or simply react to them too slowly and end up tanking the floor.

I don't know - perhaps one of these days something will click and I'll suddenly stop being so useless where those issues are concerned, and again - it isn't that I don't try - but I do still feel like my performance shouldn't really be where it is at this point and I could understand if someone were to think that I fall into the subject category of this thread.

[kaynide]

It isn't necessarily avoidance in all cases.

I've been playing since December 2021 and whilst I'd say I've probably improved over that time, I'm still not where I feel I should be for someone who has been playing for as long as I have.

And I will say that it's NOT for want of trying. I've worked my ass off learning rotations with the jobs I've chosen and have a fairly good grasp of the ones I've learnt (still haven't really tried healing and have only dipped my toe into Tanking) but despite that I seem to have an absolutely appalling memory for mechanics. No matter how many times I've played *enter name of content here* I either forget the mechanics, make stupid mistakes or simply react to them too slowly and end up tanking the floor.

I don't know - perhaps one of these days something will click and I'll suddenly stop being so useless where those issues are concerned, and again - it isn't that I don't try - but I do still feel like my performance shouldn't really be where it is at this point and I could understand if someone were to think that I fall into the subject category of this thread.

As someone who followed your initial thread/journey into the game I would say this: you are the target audience- you aren’t expected to be the best and have been able to clear a lot of the games content by doing your best. Sometimes you got frustrated, but you could get through it.

I would even argue you are above average because you have put a lot of effort into being better and trying harder content. So from me to you, in my humblest opinion, I think you are doing fantastic.

Remember: the devs collaborated to make a TV drama about an older man playing this game and essentially being carried through binding coil by his son. They appreciate effort, gumption and individual accomplishments over actual big-picture player-wide skill levels.

[Carin-Eri]

As someone who followed your initial thread/journey into the game I would say this: you are the target audience- you aren’t expected to be the best and have been able to clear a lot of the games content by doing your best. Sometimes you got frustrated, but you could get through it.

I would even argue you are above average because you have put a lot of effort into being better and trying harder content. So from me to you, in my humblest opinion, I think you are doing fantastic.

Remember: the devs collaborated to make a TV drama about an older man playing this game and essentially being carried through binding coil by his son. They appreciate effort, gumption and individual accomplishments over actual big-picture player-wide skill levels.

Wow - thank you so much!

[Rithy255]

I think Endwalker msq, trials, dungeons are actually pretty fine in terms of difficulty, I know on patch day when it was all new people seemed to have to learn somethings and the pulls were generally pretty hard as a tank/healer (if you didn't have a warrior) for a lot of the msq 6.0 dungeons, Not to say a lot of it is difficult but I don't really think it needs to be, it teaches you the basics its a decent challenge where you need to be aware, Although my main complaint is that tanks should be punished a bit more from taking a vunstack from failing a mech (increased damage on tanking classes specifically would be nice).

I wouldn't mind more midcore content though, I feel like theirs not a lot in-between dungeon level content and Savage content. It would be nice to have more things around slightly below EXT trial levels in general or a system to replay dungeons but made harder or something? like adding more damage and having less obvious mechs, I do feel like its too much of a Jump to get into EXT from normal duties I remember doing one of the SHB EXT and being told to watch a guide by a friend and all of it seemed intimidating at first.

[Avoidy]

There are far fewer opportunities to have that "oh, I've been doing things wrong. I should change my playstyle" moment. Between duty support npcs and the terms of service scaring real players from speaking up, it's no wonder that we get people at 90 who don't know what they're doing and make things take way longer than they should. Some of the people playing this game today would have meltdowns if they had to exist in the mmo communities of the mid 2000's, where people would just flame you until you got better or left their group. Not saying we should go back to that, just that it used to be the opposite end of the spectrum.

[Leifei]

The answer is simple. There is no reason to get better at the game.

XIV offers such a casual experience that the player base has never had a reason to actually get better at game mechanics outside of those who wish to participate in Extreme/Savage/Ultimate content.

The player base get babysat through the entire game, even get difficulty DROPS in MSQ instances because.. it is too hard?

There is no reason to babysit people. People adapt and become better players by being challenged, even if it is only a small challenge.

There will always be that crowd that shouts for nerfs to content because they don't want to actually have to learn to play the game, Those players will complain about everything that makes them have to actually think while playing.

Content does not have to be 'Extreme/Savage' level of difficulty to be challenging. The final duty in 6.0 was a good example of this. It was not hard, but it DID challenge people and they learned from their mistakes and eventually cleared it.

What could change?
What incentives would be required to get people to try out new content?

Who knows, Discuss below.

Incentive? I'd say glamour locked behind savage fights. Put a lot of options in there. Everyone loves to glam. I think that would increase the participation rate for endgame content. This would indirectly increase the average skill level of players. Also, the glam drops would need to be locked behind an Item level range when doing the content so people cannot cheese the content for drops later.

[Xaphire]

I'm sorry if I am repeating other people's points but I haven't had time to read the whole thread.

FFXIV, in my experience, has a terribly large gap between the skill floor of the player base and its skill ceiling and the primary reason for this to exist, in my opinion, is that most content in the game does not require a player to be performing at even 50% of their ability.

Healing in dungeons is relatively easy thanks to how powerful tank self-healing is and how low damage output of monsters generally is. I can't think of a time I've used a hard-cast heal in dungeons this expansion.

Alliance raid content and normal trial content don't have hard enrages and you can limp through the encounters with dozens of deaths.

These two things combined has lead to a group of the player base that wants to perform well and clear things as quickly as possible and a second set that is just fine pressing one-button and getting their clear. It's easy to see how the former would resent the latter and feel that they're carrying their dead-weight. I personally feel my time is being disrespected by players that put in the minimum effort. The game isn't *that* complex and it's pretty easy to sort a single- and multi-target damage rotation. Your hotbar even lights up, yet I've still come across players obviously not even doing their 1-2-3 combo.

It's frustrating, and I would like to see content be more difficult in the future - not significantly so, but enough that players need to learn the basics of the game.