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

[Kacho_Nacho]

Being a tank can be useful if you are handicapped, because tanks can survive mechanics that other players can't. They can usually just rack up at least 4 vuln stacks without any problem. Whereas other roles will die to those mechanics. Of course, the tanks should do mechanics, but frankly they are fine if they don't a lot of the time.

That thought has already crossed my mind. I'm already planning for Dawntrail to be my tanking and painting expansion. LOL

It's not as niche as you think. In fact, most people (at least older people) probably have one. It's just not necessarily severe enough that it affects them in a noticeable way. For example, they might be color blind or get pain in their hand or arm from playing too long or suffer from an injury, while for others it's more severe like limited hand movement, not being able to keep their hands still, only having one arm, or memory disabilities.

Exactly. There are a lot of us disabled players in FFXIV.

Think about it for one second.

Individuals who are disabled are often stuck at home. They want to interact with people. So, they join MMOs like FFXIV to have that social interaction and also the opportunity to do something enjoyable.

Unfortunately, they sometimes struggle with things other players do with ease. This causes frustration on both sides.

But, I do think there is a lot of middle ground. It's just that, well, people are taking extreme positions on the issue of how challenging the game should be and how well should your average player be. It's the old Casuals versus Raiders dynamic.

Thoughts:

FFXIV does need another overhaul to adjust the slope of difficulty. There should be a smooth curve in the challenge of the content with each duty/raid preparing you for the next step.

There should also be better education within the game to teach individuals how to play. For example, the Training Grounds could be expanded to prepare players for the mechanics they will be facing soon and their telegraphs.

Have it be required content for levels 15, 30, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90 with the reward being a certificate required to get into the appropriate duties and raids. It's similar to the idea of having gear level requirements but relies more on the player's effort to learn rather than their luck with gear drops or skill at making gil.

Just my 2¢s...

[strawberrycake]

Exactly. There are a lot of us disabled players in FFXIV.

Think about it for one second.

Individuals who are disabled are often stuck at home. They want to interact with people. So, they join MMOs like FFXIV to have that social interaction and also the opportunity to do something enjoyable.

Unfortunately, they sometimes struggle with things other players do with ease. This causes frustration on both sides.

But, I do think there is a lot of middle ground. It's just that, well, people are taking extreme positions on the issue of how challenging the game should be and how well should your average player be. It's the old Casuals versus Raiders dynamic.

Thoughts:

FFXIV does need another overhaul to adjust the slope of difficulty. There should be a smooth curve in the challenge of the content with each duty/raid preparing you for the next step.

I also feel like a lot of people assume so much with terms and phrases when it comes to changing the game. Making the game difficult or making it harder. If I say It I don't mean Touhou Bullet Hell levels of difficult or hard. But adding enrages back wouldn't hurt, making it so Alliance raids feel like a step up from dungeons so they can ease you into extremes isn't bad either. You have some who will assume that creating a guiding line with the difficulty of content means you wanna force people into harder content, railroad them even, But thats not the case at all.


What XIV needs, like you said, like so many of us have said, is a better way to show and teach and prepare people for and with it's difficulty curve, instead of raising or lowering the skill floor and ceiling forcefully or mechanically, do it naturally by creating a way in which players are not only progressing through the games world and narrative, but as they lvl progress into being better overall players.

[CidHeiral]

If you die to a mechanic or get a damage down due to struggling to avoid mechanics, yes! Also means you can greed for longer because it takes less time to navigate out of an AoE.

I don't personally agree. I used to do Savage in Heavensward with standard and I could do all the mechanics, but I was just barely achieving them all and it was very last moment stuff, very tense. It's comparatively braindead with legacy and not really tense at all.

Well it's good you found a workaround. Like I said, some people prefer it or find a way to make it work.

I've used the standard control scheme in MMOs for 20+ years, including various high end content, and have never had a single issue. It's absurd to write off the entire control scheme as inferior just because you personally struggled with it.

[george357]

i speak for myself my first final fantasy game was ff7 my second was ffxi played that for 11 years then started ffxiv at the start of arr/2.0 and have been learning ever sense the trouble with players is they need to learn their jobs the best gear/weapons and how to run dungons/raids for me its doing the best i can to win.

[SailorCeti]

Average players aren't bad. They're average. It's in the name. Bad players are bad, however, for many reasons, including physical and mental hinderances. But I can forgive that if announced at the beginning of a run. What gets me the most are the boosts! People end up not knowing their job or the mechanics.

[Lyth]

I don't think that any of these fights are designed to be mechanically difficult from a reaction time/finemotor precision perspective. You're generally solving a series of movement puzzles. Fights start with a mechanics showcase where they teach you the 'vocabulary' for that fight. The latter part of the fight involves you applying that 'vocabulary' to progressively more elaborate mechanic strings in order to find the safe spot. That's also why a lot of recurring mechanics (Stack/Spread/Protean/Shakers/Chariot/Dynamo/TB) have very standardized signposting so that they don't have to waste too much time reteaching those things individually. Harder fights just tend to give you longer mechanic strings, less time to resolve the safe spot, and have a longer duration.

This also means that having completed more content will help you learn subsequent fights a lot faster. The reason why there are some significant skill gaps between players is because some people have been playing across many years and have seen a lot of these patterns many times before, while others are completely fresh. There's also a degree of fear around moving up into harder content types, in part because seeing multiple mechanics intersect at the same time can be daunting when you first see it. But when you actually make that jump and clear a harder fight, everything pitched at the previous difficulty seems trivial, to the point that you can't remember how it ever challenged you in the first place. I think you can teach most people how to do the content in this game with some guidance and patience, but there definitely are some barriers built into progression that prevent people from doing so.

[ThaCa]

A big number of these issues stems from the changes brought by later expansions. The potency creep is real, even basic hits from players melt things compared to ARR days and the amount of stats your character gets fairly quickly and easily makes even Healers able to tank some things for a while.

With all the changes, removal and addition of skills - players have a lot fewer buttons to press on lower levels and their power is absurd. If this keeps happening, the early game boredom keeps getting stretched further and further.

There have been a lot of good suggestions including introducing weaker versions of many later skills throughout ARR section just to get people used to their buttons and in turn also allowing them to spread the power from few buttons to multiple, making the game more interactive and less insanely bursty in favor of players.

The updated dungeons actually improved a lot of them mechanically, while gutting few on the progress, but they ended up very undertuned for most part.

Another common topic is how big the jump of difficulty between normal content and something like extreme and savage is, the game should be bit more linear in difficulty. As it is aside from few outliers, players go from baby mode to slightly less so to eventually somewhat easy standard difficulty. Even some notorious Alliance and Normal Raids have been neutered by now as to not wall people.

[Jeeqbit]

I've used the standard control scheme in MMOs for 20+ years, including various high end content, and have never had a single issue. It's absurd to write off the entire control scheme as inferior just because you personally struggled with it.

It wasn't so much that I struggled with it... it is just that when you see how much better legacy is, how much time it saves and how you can do it one-handed, it's a degree of advantage that is hard to ignore.

When I see other players struggling to do a mechanic in time, sure, I'll write it off and say they would probably benefit from this much better control method.

[CidHeiral]

It wasn't so much that I struggled with it... it is just that when you see how much better legacy is, how much time it saves and how you can do it one-handed, it's a degree of advantage that is hard to ignore.

When I see other players struggling to do a mechanic in time, sure, I'll write it off and say they would probably benefit from this much better control method.

The two are identical in performance for those who know what they're doing. You happen to have an easier time with legacy. I have the exact opposite experience and find legacy obnoxious to use, so my performance would suffer. It's just personal preference.

[Vandso]

Average players aren't bad. They're average. It's in the name. Bad players are bad, however, for many reasons, including physical and mental hinderances. But I can forgive that if announced at the beginning of a run. What gets me the most are the boosts! People end up not knowing their job or the mechanics.

Nah, average players are bad, they have no idea what they're doing. Throw them in an EX trial and see for yourself. Midcore content should be the actual level of average.