Slightly Increase Crystal Tower Series Difficulty

[Aidorouge]

And if Crystal Tower being mandatory is the real concern, SE could easily remove that requirement or offer an alternative through the Trust system for players who prefer to complete it alone. But that’s another point I find confusing — this is an MMORPG, not a single-player RPG. Playing with other players is part of the core experience.

Problem there is that "other players" in this case are largely comprised of people who are parser-brainded and want everything to be a speedrun or a Savage, and get rude and hostile when anyone refuses to play the way they want to, or otherwise drags them down in even the smallest way.

Frankly I don't WANT to play with most of FF14's community because it's nowhere close to being as "nice and welcoming" as the internet memes make it out to be. There might be nice INDIVIDUALS, but I would not call even half of this game's playerbase pleasant to be around, and I don't want to deal with their attitude any more than they want to deal with my incompetence so it's better to just keep both groups separated and not impacting the other one's progress. It would been objectively better for all players involved if I could have just done Ivalice and Seat of Sacrifice with NPCs. Other players would have got somebody who would stop dying in their queue so they could break their previous speed record with a flawless run, and I could have dealt with the fights without harassment because how dare I fail at "brain dead" content.

[Veritas-Ancora]

Frankly I don't WANT to play with most of FF14's community because it's nowhere close to being as "nice and welcoming" as the internet memes make it out to be. There might be nice INDIVIDUALS, but I would not call even half of this game's playerbase pleasant to be around, and I don't want to deal with their attitude any more than they want to deal with my incompetence so it's better to just keep both groups separated and not impacting the other one's progress.

Well few things to note:
- The forums do not reflect the overall playerbase. At all. This place is very niche and people come here to complain 9 out of 10 times.
- The playerbase has been dwindling so it's not as robust as it used to be.
- The casual players definitely add a strong level of kindness. If you're playing with min-max raiders, yeah it's not as fun.

I'm hoping for another ARR 2.0 revival to bring players back and fulfill the memes, because they used to be 100% correct.

[Catwho]

I went in to Syrcus Tower and World of Darkness with a MINE group on Saturday.

When the group knows what they are doing, even MINE isn't enough to cause chaos in those raids. As it should be. Just like its possible to do a clean Savage run, a group that knows the mechanics in the CT raids can do a clean MINE run.

That said, I've been with groups of newer players who manage to screw up both Syrcus and WoD horribly even at max iLVL because they don't know the mechanics!

The problem isn't that CT raids are too easy. It's that 99% of the players know what they are doing, aside from the occasional newer player who will inevitably die to a mechanic.

[Supersnow845]

The problem isn't that CT raids are too easy. It's that 99% of the players know what they are doing, aside from the occasional newer player who will inevitably die to a mechanic.

99% of people wouldn’t even know you can jump to glasya’s outer platforms or why you are supposed to drag the lightning orbs to skylla’s towers because they have literally never even come within 2 minutes of those mechanics actually triggering

MINE doesn’t accurately represent what it was like in ARR either because of potency creep. Even at MINE we are still doing 30-50% more damage than a true ARR group

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]The problem isn't that CT raids are too easy. It's that 99% of the players know what they are doing, aside from the occasional newer player who will inevitably die to a mechanic.

I think it also needs to be said that the state of current job is to blame to some degree.

Back in older expac, you will not be doing so much potency per GCDs so easily with this many potency creep we have on our today’s earlier lv kits (i.e. Ruin I on SCH used to be 80p per cast). Additionally, nowadays it's harder to mess up because how far the jobs has been watered down (another SCH example: with no other dps option we have today, all those dps they used to have from having multiple DoTs are now slapped into a single cast of nukes & 1 DoT; no more management required).

[TheGrimace]

Square-Enix re-adjusted the difficulty of all sub 50 dungeons. They must now revamp Crystal Tower and the Binding Coil of Bahamut with modern potency and HUD elements in mind. These raids have been left to languish for too long.

[TeresaFortell]

Since it is a mandatory AR for many players, I would suggest keeping the difficulty as it is. In that way, they would be able to prepare for harder ar raids aftewards.

[Aidorouge]

Well few things to note:
- The forums do not reflect the overall playerbase. At all. This place is very niche and people come here to complain 9 out of 10 times.
- The playerbase has been dwindling so it's not as robust as it used to be.
- The casual players definitely add a strong level of kindness. If you're playing with min-max raiders, yeah it's not as fun.

I'm hoping for another ARR 2.0 revival to bring players back and fulfill the memes, because they used to be 100% correct.

I'm at my wit's end regardless where between playing on Dynamis and Primal there just isn't anyone to actually play with. I don't do high-end raids and I don't roleplay, so that seems to remove 90% of the possible playerbase that one might interact with, and then said majority of the playerbase is always traveling to Aether and Crystal anyway, addicted to their PFs only, so its nigh-impossible to do anything unless you travel too and feed into the problem that NA created for its self and is determined to maintain while hoping and praying for a cross-DC party and & duty finder that will likely never happen or is still several years away AT BEST.

A hypothetical revival would need to convince me that the game is an actual MMO again, or failing that, give me an all encompassing Trust system where I can do anything I want by my lonesome. The game just isn't playable for me anymore in its current state whether trying to play single player or multi player.

[GraceHorizon]

- The casual players definitely add a strong level of kindness. If you're playing with min-max raiders, yeah it's not as fun.

This, ever so much. I would rather play with mediocre casual players and sprouts who fail mechanics than with hardcore raiders, because casuals and sprouts are actually pleasant company. I will carry you without complaint if you act like a decent person.

[AlliciaCapulet]

This, ever so much. I would rather play with mediocre casual players and sprouts who fail mechanics than with hardcore raiders, because casuals and sprouts are actually pleasant company. I will carry you without complaint if you act like a decent person.

I’ll be honest: hardcore raiders themselves usually aren’t the issue. Many of the players who go for the first clears or so (usually streamers) — people like MrHappy, for example — tend to be very chill with others and won’t rage at someone for failing mechanics. Over the past 13 years of playing, I’ve met some truly hardcore raiders, and most of them were not toxic at all.

From my experience, the real problem tends to come from the “wannabe hardcore raiders.” These are the players who rely entirely on guides because they can’t figure out strategies on their own, but still believe they’re playing perfectly. When something goes wrong, they immediately blame someone else instead of considering that they might be part of the issue. They are also impatient to get their clear to brag about it. That’s usually where the toxic behavior comes from.

I’ve had a few bad experiences with players like that in the past.

That said, the vast majority of players in FFXIV aren’t toxic. On my side, I’m always happy to help someone who is new or struggling with mechanics, and I’m glad to take the time to explain things if someone asks.