Why do people avoid getting better at the game?

[Menriq]

Neither am I. I'm more than happy to pull him or anyone else into an instance and toss zero heals their way for them to put their money where there mouth is. The condition however, is it will be a dungeon of my choosing.

I'm fully aware that there are plenty of dungeon bosses that can be done without heals. It's one of my biggest gripes as a healer as it can be demoralizing if you die as a healer and the group beats the boss anyway. However the trade off for having bosses that will wipe the group if the healer falls is the wipe is on them. It's a very tricky situation so I understand why the dev team uses both approaches with dungeon bosses.

That's a little beyond my point though. The poster I called out gaslights into dungeons being like this in general, which is not true, and I'm willing to back that up. In short, his statement is not a testament to how easy dungeons are. Some players actually do struggle with this content, and players like him don't help.

TBF, just this morning I was in DF for 90 dungeon and we 3 manned it when the healer D/C and never got the healer replaced. WAR absolutely does not need a healer in any of the 90 EW dungeons and can go 1 tank / 3 DPS pretty easily. This isn't a brag, just that any tank with a basic understanding of their toolkit can probably do without a healer if they were so inclined.

[CrimsonThunder]

Spoiler warning below

As someone who's played since closed beta and finds enjoyment in challenge & constantly improving I do believe the game has gotten significantly easier since Stormblood. There are reasons for it and some of these are understandable while others are questionable at best.

I could make sweeping comments about Savage and Extreme being easier than they've ever been but just to highlight some recent examples as a tank Rubicante EX virtually never auto attacks and his puzzles were interesting in blind but after that he's pretty pathetic for an EX with very little damage and while you could certainly argue about his line puzzles most will just follow the group as with many group based puzzle mechanics so in that vein he still has no ground due to a notable lack of personal responsibility.

For Savage any veteran raider will tell you that P7S is such a joke of a fight that it was clearly designed by someone with no sense of pressure or pacing, it's astonishing how bad of a fight this really is and I challenge you to find a veteran raider who thinks P7S is a good fight.

Besides these examples there is also the homogenisation of jobs and burst; the latter of which especially makes skill expression difficult as it makes crit RNG in a 2 min window more important than it's ever been. The post-SHB potency spike furthers this issue. I'm not saying jobs shouldn't be accessible but dammit let us have a real curve for those of us who enjoy a sense of personal growth and mastery.

As for dungeons I just wish they weren't afraid to push the players on occasion. There are some good dungeons out there with good pulls and bosses like Bardam's, Mt Gulg and Hermes in Ktisis and then there's rubbish like the second boss of Alzadaal's. They gave us these ridiculous tools so why aren't we being encouraged to use them?

There will always be lazy, dead weight players but part of the problem is the huge issue that FFXIV does nothing to encourage it's players to improve while it continues to make sweeping simplifications, some of which they hide behind the notion of accessibility. I consider this an insult to all players as it means the devs literally do not trust you to think or improve. Are they wrong though?

FFXIV needs both ends of the spectrum to thrive so a line needs to be drawn somewhere or something will give eventually. At the very least encourage your player base to try and improve but for those who simply can't or are unwilling well that's why we have duty support and echo scaling.

If I had to describe it as a long time player it's like a feedback loop of them making the content more "approachable" with the knock on effect of many players putting in less and less effort which performance numbers reflect thus they double down harder. It just gets worse and people don't get better.

"It doesn't matter how idiot-proof they try to make the game, the game will always produce a better idiot."

[Yukimin]

Nerfing this guy was the beginning of a series of disappointing changes throughout the game development.

[Gemina]

Well if we are talking any dungeon shb and endwalker, ill gladly jump in with 3 dps and a tank, Since endgame is relevant.

The damage and general tankiness of players at level 80+ is far beyond what it should be, warriors especially can almost solo dungeons with their self healing and mitigation

I have soloed Delubrum reginae as a warrior, a raid that scales from 8 to 24 people. This should not be possible but unfortunately the way tanks are designed is beyond stupid.

There is a video of a group AUTO ATTACKING a normal mode raid boss to death in 6.1. (Yes it took over an hour, but that is the level of difficulty that the game is throwing at people)

And the worst thing is that i actually main healer....

It isn't your choice which dungeon. I'll be on between 830-930 gmt. Hit me up and we'll set it up in PF. It's also not a 3 dps/1 tank party either. I already stated that I will be going as heals and not healing the tank whatsoever. Having a 3rd DPS defeats the purpose entirely. Don't try to change the conditions to make it more possible

[DixieBellOCE]

It isn't your choice which dungeon. I'll be on between 830-930 gmt. Hit me up and we'll set it up in PF. It's also not a 3 dps/1 tank party either. I already stated that I will be going as heals and not healing the tank whatsoever. Having a 3rd DPS defeats the purpose entirely. Don't try to change the conditions to make it more possible

Having a third DPS is the EXACT purpose of this, if you do not require a healer you bring another DPS.

But sure, jump over to Materia with your level 90 healer and lets do this.

[R041]

It isn't your choice which dungeon. I'll be on between 830-930 gmt. Hit me up and we'll set it up in PF. It's also not a 3 dps/1 tank party either. I already stated that I will be going as heals and not healing the tank whatsoever. Having a 3rd DPS defeats the purpose entirely. Don't try to change the conditions to make it more possible

It's kinda funny that you need to pick a specific dungeon. Why not just do a few different ones? Finding a diamond in the rough won't prove that the rest of the 40 dungeons don't suck ass.

And what you're doing is just making it slower, but it's still doable. The point is that Healer doesn't matter, not that solo is an enjoyable experience.

Doing Variant as WAR was especially babytown, didn't need heals whatsoever. lol

[Raven2014]

Having a third DPS is the EXACT purpose of this, if you do not require a healer you bring another DPS.

No, rather I think you just entirely missed the purpose of the experiment. It's meant to replicate the condition of an "average" party, not to prove something possible or not possible with an elite party. Samething if you put together a raid group of 8 among the best players and do something really crazy and absurd thing, what would you prove? Absolutely nothing.

This is the dissonance between your side and the other side of the argument. I said it's a few page back, the point people like you are missing is if all contents is made challenge enough to entertain people at your level, those content will also become prohibited difficulty for the casual players. At the end of the day, you might take some pride in being a skill player, but to the game and developer, you're just another player that are no better or worse or different than the less skilled-players you're looking down to.

The whole "people need to learn to get better" is just a window-dressing for your desire of you simply want everyone to play in a way that will please you and you only. The game has already tried to give everyone a fair share of contents on different skill level. You're free to cross over into the content made for players in a different (lower) bracket than yours, but you don't get to dictate content at all bracket level have to cater to your desire.

[Gemina]

Having a third DPS is the EXACT purpose of this, if you do not require a healer you bring another DPS.

But sure, jump over to Materia with your level 90 healer and lets do this.

I'm the third DPS. Its just going to be a healing class. It should be pretty obvious why a 3rd DPS cant be used because we still have to do the dungeon under normal requirements. Not undersized. Dont worry, I'm not just going to be standing there watching. Don't like it. Too bad. I'll be on soon.

[DixieBellOCE]

No, rather I think you just entirely missed the purpose of the experiment. It's meant to replicate the condition of an "average" party, not to prove something possible or not possible with an elite party. Samething if you put together a raid group of 8 among the best players and do something really crazy and absurd thing, what would you prove? Absolutely nothing.

This is the dissonance between your side and the other side of the argument. I said it's a few page back, the point people like you are missing is if all contents is made challenge enough to entertain people at your level, those content will also become prohibited difficulty for the casual players. At the end of the day, you might take some pride in being a skill player, but to the game and developer, you're just another player that are no better or worse or different than the less skilled-players you're looking down to.

The whole "people need to learn to get better" is just a window-dressing for your desire of you simply want everyone to play in a way that will please you and you only. The game has already tried to give everyone a fair share of contents on different skill level. You're free to cross over into the content made for players in a different (lower) bracket than yours, but you don't get to dictate content at all bracket level have to cater to your desire.

And what if an 'average' player wants to obtain some glamour from last expansion savage fights.

They wipe the group multiple times due to not understanding the basic mechanics of the game, or do not meet the DPS check to skip mechanics that would wipe the group.

Do these players need to get better, or should they just continue to be a burden on everyone else.

Because this happens far more often than you think.
People join older content with no fight knowledge or job knowledge and perform horribly, with the expectation that everyone else will just carry them, they will get their glamour and never do it again.

Even just a small ammount of effort to learn a fight, or learn a basic rotation is all that is required to get better at the game, if 5 minutes is 'a waste of time' to people, then they are hopeless.

[Gemina]

It's kinda funny that you need to pick a specific dungeon. Why not just do a few different ones? Finding a diamond in the rough won't prove that the rest of the 40 dungeons don't suck ass.

And what you're doing is just making it slower, but it's still doable. The point is that Healer doesn't matter, not that solo is an enjoyable experience.

Doing Variant as WAR was especially babytown, didn't need heals whatsoever. lol

Sure. We can even do a dungeon from each expansion. "A diamond in the rough" as you say is still a valid dungeon. And a little slower isn't the point either. The tank should pull as normal, otherwise they concede that heals are needed.

Variants are also designed so players can do them solo. You don't need to be a WAR. I've done them as MNK and NIN