Are we going to keep pretending that PC and console players are the same?

[Jojoya]

Pretty much, ultimates are like progging the hardest savages but you have to wait 10+ min between each pull to see the next 10s you're actually progging. It's difficult, but it just stretches progression thin over thousands of minutes of filler testing your team's willpower to get back to the prog point again and again and again.

Artificially inflated difficulty at its finest.

Time investment is not the same thing as difficulty.

The idea is to complete the fight within a time limit using a restricted set of resources that regenerate at a set rate. There wouldn't be much challenge to it if the encounter could be defeated one tiny section at a time, pausing the timer to let resources completely regenerate before continuing to the next tiny section.

If the group was then challenged to do the entire encounter without stopping after completing it one section at a time, they would fail because they wouldn't have worked out their resource management. Proper resource management is only going to be learned by repeating from the start so you'll know what's available at what points in the fight, what is best used earlier and what is best saved for later.

Having to restart a fight doesn't make it more difficult. Technically the difficulty remains the same. If anything, each new attempt should be just a little bit easier because you've mastered earlier parts.

If willpower becomes an issue, it's because your group is pushing itself harder than it should. Or because some or all of the group won't acknowledge that it's a challenge that just isn't enjoyable to them.

If you're not having fun, don't do it. Developers watch what players do far more closely than they listen to what players say when it comes to making changes or creating future content designs. If large segments of the player base keep forcing themselves to do what they don't like, they're going to get a whole bunch of the same in the future.

[Valence]

I don't disagree with the idea but if you genuinely believe that any ultimates actually asks you to manage your team's resources that much except for TOP perhaps (I haven't tried TOP, that's just what I've constantly been told), than we must have progged different ultimates altogether.

This is exactly why I said it's artificially inflated difficulty, and this is not enjoyable much to me. I'd actually appreciate it more with actual resource management, which is kind of a joke in the current ShB/EW battle system tbh.

[AmiableApkallu]

One could imagine a world where longer fights worked like this: The party enters the instance. There are several checkpoints scattered throughout the fight. When the party wipes, it starts from the most recent checkpoint that they passed. Everything resets if you have to re-instance. Most importantly, reaching the end of the fight counts as a clear only if the party manages it one unbroken, wipe-free pull.

By analogy, for a deep dungeon run, this is like keeping a save running for as long as you want, but you only get the achievement for the solo clear if the save has zero KOs on it.

[Bonoki]

I know this isn't the point of the discussion but I would genuinely like to know this - are people actually impressed by shiny weapons and titles? The only time I even notice them is when an Ultimate Legend tank gets too confident and goes splat on the first pull of something like Pharos Sirius because it gives me a giggle, but that's about it.

Some people are still impressed by shiny weapons and titles, though this group is shrinking over time. This decline is largely due to the game becoming easier and achievements losing their integrity with the rise of third-party tools. The meaning of these rewards hasn't diminished because people chose to stop caring; it's a consequence of the game's simplification. For example, the Necromancer title was once arguably the most prestigious achievement in the game, sought after by many players. Today, however, it no longer impresses most people.

Furthermore, the value of a title is heavily influenced by the player demographic. If many raiders value a raid title, it holds considerable weight. Conversely, if the larger casual audience dismisses it with a "Who cares" attitude, the title loses its significance. Ultimately, the prestige of any achievement is driven by the community's perception.

[ZiraZ]

I don't disagree with the idea but if you genuinely believe that any ultimates actually asks you to manage your team's resources that much except for TOP perhaps (I haven't tried TOP, that's just what I've constantly been told), than we must have progged different ultimates altogether.

This is exactly why I said it's artificially inflated difficulty, and this is not enjoyable much to me. I'd actually appreciate it more with actual resource management, which is kind of a joke in the current ShB/EW battle system tbh.

Resources only exist when ultimates are brand new, once the bis gear gets better and patches start rolling they go out the window very quickly.
I mean TOP was basically a completely different beast before the heal and buff range increase, the dps checks are so lenient now the healers can GCD heal all they want, they're gonna get told to stop dps for half of the fight anyways.
That's just the sad reality of most themepark mmos, if you don't get into the rides early you get stuck with a watered down version.

[HyperiusUltima]

Grouping for Ults, hop into discord and get cactbot blasting through the channel. God forbid you get asked if you are on console as well because some people find that to be a very large detriment to one's ability.

Queuing for pvp in CC and once you reach one of the top tiers of ranked you start...."noticing" things that just seem a bit odd and too fast to happen by normal people.

It really is time (and has been for years) to put a valid anti cheat in the game to stop players from making content far too easy and/or cheating to get one up on other players in pvp.

Console players have pressure to stay more casual just because they can't use the same "enhancements" that PC players can and it is tired and sad at this point. Why even come out with the xbox version if you are going to second class citizen them out of the gate?

Anti-cheat software already is a Kernel Level Process - I believe they don't want to do that since they don't want to be able to dig into people's computers like that considering Privacy Laws outside of the US.

[Azureskies01]

Anti-cheat software already is a Kernel Level Process - I believe they don't want to do that since they don't want to be able to dig into people's computers like that considering Privacy Laws outside of the US.

The "They don't use an anticheat because japan laws" is a fiction. PSO2 uses now two different anticheats, granted one is Wellbia which is terrible but the other is Gameguard. Now there are probably other games from japan that use some form of anti cheat like SF5 and 6 and Tekken or whatever but all I needed is one to prove that way of thinking wrong. Anyways gameguard is the same thing in Helldivers 2 and no one cares about that one.

Also there are anti cheat services that are in fact not kernel level processes (VaC for instance). The more ya know.

[Azureskies01]

Because the value does not come from other people. It comes from yourself.

Bs. The fact that every person I talked to and brought up the fact that I find their ult weapons worthless because they cheated, or someone they were with cheated, then they get super pissed off and offended tells me you are as incorrect as someone can be. They have something they feel others (the majority) don't/won't have so they flaunt it. It isn't enough that most of them look terrible compared to the relics, now you can buy the things for gil... and if you wanna go against ToS buy runs with real money. Thing is most people doing ults have AM or some other form of cheats which is already against ToS so why not sell weapons too?

This is why a game can not put up with cheaters in pve, pvp, pvrpep. It is all the same, some people just making the game worse for everyone else.

[Valence]

Resources only exist when ultimates are brand new, once the bis gear gets better and patches start rolling they go out the window very quickly.
I mean TOP was basically a completely different beast before the heal and buff range increase, the dps checks are so lenient now the healers can GCD heal all they want, they're gonna get told to stop dps for half of the fight anyways.
That's just the sad reality of most themepark mmos, if you don't get into the rides early you get stuck with a watered down version.

I progged DSR at release. Beyond the usual mit and heal plans you already find in savage (just more stringent here), there was very little to manage. Burst and damage being delayed at the end of Thordan (p2) for example but to me that's nothing more than downtime management.

[Somnolence]

The "They don't use an anticheat because japan laws" is a fiction.

Yes, and SE deliberately is ignoring this because it would just negatively impact subs/player retention therefore does not make financial sense.

Especially raiders using fflogs during content drought to do fights for community made up rankings and RPers using appearance etc. mods are playing the game by making up their own content which is very nice for business perspective.