Do you know why the average pf player is so bad?

[Sylvain]

For two reasons

First would be the basic game has become too easy.

It simply starts with dungeons.

Dungeons overall are not punishing enough. If you make a mistake, the healer can fix it because nothing hurts remotely enough. If you're self aware of your own mistakes, that's fine, but if you aren't, you may (as way too many) fall into the trap of "healer didn't heal me". It's easier to understand that you massively failed when something litterally OS you, or if you get a un dispellable doom. Currently, you can finish most dungeon by standing in about half the ground marker.

The lack of healing, dps and tanking check during dungeon bosses is also a problem. You could do a boss with tank and dps only doing their basic 123 and you'd still be fine. The issue is that, without a dps check, you do not teach tank, dps and healer that they must do enough damage or else. I'm not talking about tough dps check here. You take the minimum ilv, you assume basic rotation, no 2min burst or anything, just "basic" rotation. and reduce that amount by 10-15%. Any group, even with 1 death, having 4 players doing a normal rotation would NEVER see an enrage. However, a very bad player (like a very bad dps), especially if they're playing with the AI, would notice because they'd keep seeing the boss enrage. At least when playing with the AI, the boss resets if you die, that's good.

Regarding healing, it is kind of the same. A dungeon boss should require more than 1 ogcd a min to be healed. The last dungeon does not require a healer, and if you are, assise is enough, the fairy can soloheal any boss, like... the healing required is SO low (assuming people dodge) that healer are unnecessary. How do you expect a healer doing that, feeling "this is normal" to handle an EX trial? You go from "maybe think of doing one AoE heal once a min" to "Okay here, it's gonna hurt real bad because 3 aoe will hit bakc to back, be sure to have 1 mitigue and some CDs"

A tank are thought to use their CD on the trash (rightfully so) but then can face tank anything the boss throws at them without breaking a sweat... Guess what happens when they encounter a boss that has 2 TB close together... they die on the second.


So dungeons, and normal raid and 24man being too easy are a first. But it all starts with the dungeons as this is where most casual stays if they don't feel they can tackle harder stuff.

And then there's the new trend of "entitlement".
Basically, people do not take advice, they do not want advice, they want to play the way they want. Fine, but not really...
This leads to entitled bad players falling into desillusion believing they're doing fine when they're really just extremely bad.
I've met a RDM in dungeon who spam verthunder/aero "because it has higher potency" (but like, the long cast) and he wouldn't budge from it.

If the game itself show entitled people that they're bad, they might get better (or stop playing).
But if the game tells them "you're doing just fine", well obviously, if we're wiping, it's everyone else's fault.

Like, when farming EX, I've seen a few dps, sometime lower than healers, comment on the dps being too low. You obviously can't tell them because it's against the TOS, but god. (altough simply looking at the aggro list is often enough)

[Jeeqbit]

First would be the basic game has become too easy.

No, people were always as they are now. Even when the game was "harder". I mean, dungeons were never hard in the first place, even in Heavensward. The worst was like... The Vault? But once you got used to it and synced down, it was trivial.

People didn't become better at the game "because there were tank stances", for example. They just simply did stuff like staying in tank stance always, or spamming an enmity combo instead of other combos such as DoTs. I remember we had some SMN join Heavensward savage parties who like didn't... summon anything.

If you're self aware of your own mistakes, that's fine, but if you aren't, you may (as way too many) fall into the trap of "healer didn't heal me".

It's really always felt that way though. Healers exist to heal the mistakes of people who can't do mechanics... and occasionally raid-wides. So if everyone can do mechanics they are mostly just spamming broil and supporting the tank with big pulls. It wasn't really that different in the past.

The difference now is that mechanics are better telegraphed, so people are less likely to be unaware of mechanics such as in Lost City of Amdapor HM, where nobody knows the clone mechanic anymore, and therefore the healer isn't going to need to heal the results of that. The other difference is tanks can handle healing up or shielding mistakes a lot of the time. But the dungeons themselves weren't really massively more difficult, and felt like they killed you in 1 hit about as often as they do now.

The lack of healing, dps and tanking check during dungeon bosses is also a problem.

Two things that have changed, for sure, are tanking (because in ARR you just had to mitigate autos constantly and tank busters weren't necessarily these telegraphed casts), and the removal of DPS checks (but for context, the enrage on O1 normal is like 14 minutes so it's not a serious DPS check and may as well not exist).

Now, although I'm arguing these things were never that much different in the past, that doesn't mean I wouldn't be happy with things being tougher. I personally would see EX1 difficulty as a fulfilling normal difficulty. When it was current, if 1 person was missing from the Ahk Morn, you had to mit really hard or it was over, and that sort of consequence with the ability to try hard and overcome the consequence is what I like.

24man being too easy are a first.

I think they just shouldn't care too much about making alliance raids hard. There are 6 healers and most of the alliance is a SMN or RDM anyway. They will rez through any amount of difficulty. So what's the point in making them easy when resurrection already has that covered?

I like the CLL and Dalriada concept of 8 people doing a separate battle that is harder, so the less confident players can do the easier fight and then it's both a choice and teamwork.

And then there's the new trend of "entitlement".
Basically, people do not take advice, they do not want advice, they want to play the way they want. Fine, but not really...

Can't agree with that though. People play for many different reasons: story, roleplaying, raiding, social interaction. They may also be fine with advice, just not from a stranger who they don't know/trust.

I've met a RDM in dungeon who spam verthunder/aero "because it has higher potency" (but like, the long cast) and he wouldn't budge from it.

If the game itself show entitled people that they're bad, they might get better (or stop playing).

It would be good if the game could at least prove to them that this part is wrong by having some sort of check in the MSQ, item level synced, that is a different check depending on your role, that way the DPS check doesn't have to account for tanks/healers. Or do it in a role quest and require the role quest.

[Sebazy]

No, people were always as they are now. Even when the game was "harder". I mean, dungeons were never hard in the first place, even in Heavensward. The worst was like... The Vault? But once you got used to it and synced down, it was trivial.

Eh big disagree there.

If the vault was trivialised down the line, why was it still the subject of healer's struggling with it multiple years and expansions after it's release? (eg- https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/383897 )

Even with a decent group, original Vault would swiftly punish a napping healer. With a bad group that was sleeping on chains? It could be legitimately rough even for a experienced and capable healer.

Besides the Vault, dungeons *were* categorically harder than they are now and critically, they absolutely did put more pressure on players to perform to a base level than they do now. Remember when dungeon bosses would routinely have enrages? Remember when they had adds that would merrily wipe the group if they weren't swiftly controlled and taken out? Remember when dieing in certain ways would prevent you from being raised and effectively eject you from the boss room until the rest of the group cleared/wiped?

[Nyarlha]

Eh big disagree there.

If the vault was trivialised down the line, why was it still the subject of healer's struggling with it multiple years and expansions after it's release? (eg- https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/383897 )

Even with a decent group, original Vault would swiftly punish a napping healer. With a bad group that was sleeping on chains? It could be legitimately rough even for a experienced and capable healer.

Besides the Vault, dungeons *were* categorically harder than they are now and critically, they absolutely did put more pressure on players to perform to a base level than they do now. Remember when dungeon bosses would routinely have enrages? Remember when they had adds that would merrily wipe the group if they weren't swiftly controlled and taken out? Remember when dieing in certain ways would prevent you from being raised and effectively eject you from the boss room until the rest of the group cleared/wiped?

I kinda remember 2.0 Amdapor fondly. The bee adds on the Demon Wall boss were just wrecking people.

Overall, I think I had more tolerance for people messing up back then. I didn't mind wiping on a dungeon boss and go again. Now the difficulty floor is so incredibly low that when you get that ice mage or that DPS that keeps dying on dungeon boss mechanics (you don't wipe, it just makes it waaayyy slower), it just feels frustrating.

[Shialan]

why was it still the subject of healer's struggling with it multiple years and expansions after it's release?

You answered this question yourself. The healers and or the group were bad and didn´t care about mechanics. But that didn´t make this dungeon hard.

I don´t get how people say that dungeons were harder. People just had to do mechanics.

[Sebazy]

I don´t get how people say that dungeons were harder. People just had to do mechanics.

When was the last time you saw a legitimate DPS check in a dungeon?

When was the last time you saw a dungeon boss that could genuinely snowball a fight into a full team wipe if someone was caught napping?

When was the last time a healer (Or even DPS) was genuinely at risk of running out of MP/Resources/Cooldowns in a dungeon which would invariably lead to a wipe?

When was the last time you actually had to watch your positioning for fear of agroing more trash mobs than the group had any chance of handling?

When was the last time you went into a DF dungeon knowing full well that a few wipes on some bosses were almost an inevitability?

Granted, some of these you can blame of Job power creep and the current wild abundance of resources, but some aspects of some dungeons were just undeniably so much rougher than the hand held by numbers garbage we get today. We see the occasional gem like Peacekeeper, but those are by far the exception and generally only in tightly synced dungeons.