Keeping Content Hard and Helping People Learn

[Altina_Orion]

Ok then, fair enough. It's very possible that both "sides" are also fighting windmills and have more common ground in reality.

Certain words can be triggering. Or at least, I know some like "putting in effort" and "pulling one's own weight" certainly are for me, I'll freely admit.

If this is in reference to me, may I ask how you know how much effort I have put in?

Mawlzy has openly stated earlier in this thread that they only run the story dungeons and trials once. Meaning they won't even run normal content more than one time. This is the BARE MINIMUM amount of effort to complete the story. So I understand that that term may be triggering, but it's absolutely apt in this case.

Edit: Correction, it was another thread. Here is the quote

More evidence that the game needs skill sliders or a dual-track.

You don't want to play with the babies. They do not want to play with you.

Incidentally, if one accepts that skill is something one gains through practice (which I do up to a point; there are also massive intrinsic skill variations in a MMO player pool), you might solve your puzzlement by realizing how little instanced PvE one is compelled to do in this game. For those of us who play each MSQ dungeon/trial once, we get hardly any practice at all.

This is also why I would like to see Duty Support extended to all required content. I don't want to be a burden on the players who are good at PvE, yet I am compelled to play those awful 8-man MSQ things with other players.

[Mawlzy]

Mawlzy has openly stated earlier in this thread that they only run the story dungeons and trials once. Meaning they won't even run normal content more than one time. This is the BARE MINIMUM amount of effort to complete the story. So I understand that that term may be triggering, but it's absolutely apt in this case.

And I've have also solo run unsynched a vast number of EXs and other content to farm mounts and to complete bits of story that interested me such as Eden. And I learned the following...

My reactions are not fast enough to avoid getting hit by AoEs and accumulating vuln stacks. Fortunately WAR exists.

Edit for your edit: I was pointing that out in the context of advocating for skill sliders. In practice, I have to do MSQ dungeons more than once to complete the damn things with NPCs. I try not to impose my incompetence on others. I used to also run roulettes to level, but around mid-EW I was simply becoming a burden to others.

I have had plenty of time to assess my abilities. I am uniquely qualified to do so, unlike you. My experience also conforms to those in my FC, which has now been dissolved since everyone has quit.

[Altina_Orion]

And I've have also solo run unsynched a vast number of EXs and other content to farm mounts and to complete bits of story that interested me such as Eden. And I learned the following...

My reactions are not fast enough to avoid getting hit by AoEs and accumulating vuln stacks. Fortunately WAR exists.

Yes we get it, you one shot level 50 primals and ran eden once for the story unsynced. You aren't proving me wrong here.

[Mawlzy]

Yes we get it, you one shot level 50 primals and ran eden once for the story. You aren't proving me wrong here.

Good grief. Speechless.

[Shistar]

Lmfao, oh I do miss the condescending attitudes. Just dripping with ableism LOL.

It's not condescending or ableist in that message, but read it however you want if that makes you happier... much like Cid before, I am done trying to have a discussion with people who feel like they're just looking for a word to get triggered by, ignore the entire message, and get hung up over hypotheticals and assumptions.

It's ok, you tried your best, it's not the games fault for being to hard on you, omg.

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Cid, Altina and I have said it a bunch of times already. If you wanna do something, cool go do it, believe in your dreams, you can make it. If you don't wanna, then don't do it, no one's pointing at you with a gun to play the game. You guys complain about being targeted and treated a certain way, but you will do the same immediately after seemingly without seeing the hypocrisy of it all.

I am genuinely mystified at how you could extrapolate all of that from what was basically "good job, believe in your dreams.".

I mean, you literally said "everybody can achieve anything if they put their mind into it", which you'll excuse me sounded pretty much differently, but if that was just about believing in one's dreams and have confidence, then I guess this is a storm in a kettle then.

lol

[Chocochic]

I genuinely do not understand how saying "You can achieve your goals if you keep practicing and reach out for help, because people are willing to aid you to help you improve," gets labeled as ableism, condescending attitude and "dripping with narcissism". Can someone explain this to me, please?

[Carin-Eri]

Edit for your edit: I was pointing that out in the context of advocating for skill sliders. In practice, I have to do MSQ dungeons more than once to complete the damn things with NPCs. I try not to impose my incompetence on others. I used to also run roulettes to level, but around mid-EW I was simply becoming a burden to others.

I have had plenty of time to assess my abilities. I am uniquely qualified to do so, unlike you. My experience also conforms to those in my FC, which has now been dissolved since everyone has quit.

I feel the same way about Dawntrail endgame content - I'm generally pretty disappointed when a piece of DT content pops from a roulette queue.

[Shurrikhan]

I genuinely do not understand how saying "You can achieve your goals if you keep practicing and reach out for help, because people are willing to aid you to help you improve," gets labeled as ableism, condescending attitude and "dripping with narcissism". Can someone explain this to me, please?

Depends entirely on how it intersects with other conversations. In many cases, though, it's just the other side of the coin from an equally common talking point:

"I'd like content more like X?" --> "Why? You already have all this other content (that doesn't particularly match what you just said you're looking for) if you'd just play it."

Here, it's coming from someone who'd like something more in the realm of dungeons and similarly "casual" content, but with less of the growing focus on DDR mechanics, since they've said they're bad at them and some hundred different runs of such hasn't shown any improvement (making it seem to him more than just a matter of "putting in the effort")... who is then promptly reminded that there's tons of Extreme, Savage, Ultimate, etc., content to play if they just "actually tried".

Elsewhere, it comes from those who want their Ultimate raid and feel there's nothing (enjoyable) for them to do... and are then told that there's tons of achievements, collectables, beastmen reputation ranks, etc., to get if they just "stopped being so damned narrow-minded".

They're simply opposed desires. Some need a difficulty of at least X to feel engaged. Some need a difficulty under Y to feel engaged.

Granted, sometimes a given piece of content can allow for both at minimal increase to development time, hence...

• the nearly every-expansion requests for Savage dungeons as a simple variant (rather than needing entirely new content that is then almost never run due to being relegated to side-content that a large portion of players haven't unlocked even at level cap),
  
  
• the frequent requests for Minimum Item Level runs and/or variants in general to be to use matchmaking and additionally option syncing to have rewards increased proportionately to stats thereby lost (far higher mount drop chances completing a level 60 Extreme at level 60 than at level 100, making old content that much faster a grind and that much more worth stopping by for new players with each additional expansion)... and some skill shuffling to make the 1-70ish experience more engaging for all,
  
  
• the occasional requests for further improvements to High End Duty Finder (and perhaps even the occasional reward bump to briefly push players towards it so it isn't DoA) to remove the step of waiting so long for a party, for getting past people lying about their progress, disincentivizing early disbandment, etc., and/or to be able to queue as multiple jobs to shorten said queue times for all, helping for whom each minute of waiting for content feels so much more annoying than any minute of actual content,
  
  
• the occasional requests for the option of combo consolidation even while making rotation less rigidly linear (so that a DRG's 1111122222 would be non-optimal but better than what would be lost to distraction for a particularly undexterous or anxious player),
  
  
• etc.

...but other times, there's going to necessarily be a bit of butting heads, especially when the pickings seem to keep getting slimmer.

[Frizze]

I genuinely do not understand how saying "You can achieve your goals if you keep practicing and reach out for help, because people are willing to aid you to help you improve," gets labeled as ableism, condescending attitude and "dripping with narcissism". Can someone explain this to me, please?

Because another way to read that quoted text is "I know better then you what you are capable of". I believe 100% that there are players who are able to do more and harder things then they think they are, and are just afraid to try for fear of failure and potential mockery. I also believe 100% that there are players who know exactly what they are capable of, and anything harder is only possible if other players drag their corpse over the finish line - which doesnt feel good and thus isnt really incentive. And at least one person in this thread is 100% in the 2nd category, knows it, and admits it.

[Shurrikhan]

<Mawlzy doesn't play enough content to have even tested out whether she can learn; she said she typically only plays through MSQ dungeons once each.>

<I play quite a lot of other content with similar "move here"/"don't be here" mechanics and, between the lot of them, there's more than enough evidence to suggest that I'm not improving at that kind of thing and am not likely to improve even with dozens more hours of practice. I'll see this problem even when farming unsynched EXs.>

Yes we get it, you one shot level 50 primals and ran eden once for the story unsynced. You aren't proving me wrong here.

Why assume that they were level 50s and one-shot rather that that they may indeed have had some mechanics before going down??? Eden, for instance, is level 80. This is solo. It's not going to die before a single mechanic goes off.

And all this just to, what, try to refute that another player has already has actually seen enough dynamo/chariot/grid/tower mechanics to know informedly that they're bad at said mechanics?

____________________

I mean, look at where this convo began...

I think part of the problem we're facing is that a single mechanic now dominates fights: responding rapidly to (often obscure) tells and moving to the safe spot.

Anyone playing a game will instinctively try to resolve that mechanic. In that sense they are trying their best. But it's also a mechanic that is difficult for a subset of players (for multiple reasons).

Many "good" players seem genuinely baffled by how "bad" some others are in PvE in this game. I'm convinced it mostly stems from this DDR trend.

...only to then prove Mawlzy's point: It is so baffling to some players that anyone could be bad at DDR that they'd rather narrowly construe and thereby dismiss other users' entire span of experience with the game. (And for what? Just to defend mechanics becoming increasingly reduced to DDR?)

(No, I'm not including Shistar, etc., in that. They've been fair with this.)