Example of a Prog-Checkpoint System for PF

[Hastatus]

The current Savage Raid system in PF is an entirely-honor-based system: it requires all eight players to be honorable. The biggest detractor is prog-lying, whether it be to others intentionally or to themselves: seeing a mechanic once doesn't mean you know how to do it, especially when some mechanics have multiple patterns/variations. There really needs to be a prog-checkpoint system that can be manually selected when creating PFs.

I suggest making the system simple. Divide every Savage fight into 10 and give players up to 10 points each time they are alive upon completing a mechanic AND they have not been dead for any previous mechanic.

M9S as an example:	Player A	Player B	Player C
Vamp Stomp 1   		10		10		10
Sadistic Screech 1
Crowd Kill 1		10		10		10
Aetherletting		08		10		10
Vamp Stomp 2		08		10		10
Sadistic Screech 2
Crowd Kill 2		07		10		10
Hell in a Cell		03		10		10
Undead Deathmatch
Sanguine Scratch 1	01		09		10
Vamp Stomp 3		00		09		10
Sanguine Scratch 2	00		08		10
Crowd Kill 3		
Finale Fatale		00		00		03

All three players have 'mastered' up to Crowd Kill 1 and if a player had set a PF to Aetherletting prog, all three players would be allowed to enter and no fresh players would be allowed in. If a PF were set to Sanguine Scratch 1 prog, only players B and C would be allowed to enter. If a PF were set as a clear party (using Finale Fatale) the creator could choose to only allow Player C in. Ensure that the PF creator cannot select prog points further than the earliest non-10 point for pre-existing team members: e.g. If a premade of Players A, B and C made a party in PF and Player C were the Lead, Player C could only set the maximum prog point to Aetherletting.

Teams could no longer furtively try to speed prog their friends using the time of random players. If you are the sort that likes to help clear parties up their DPS and you see a C41 set to Finale Fatale you will know you are dealing with a group of players that have learned and practiced the entire fight. If it took an hour to fill a party and players knew the level of experience others in the party have, maybe they would not be so prone to giving the group only three pulls before bailing. Maybe prog points would be reached with much more consistency and no one would feel like their time is suspiciously being wasted. Start with Savage and then if the system works, it could be scaled to Extremes and Ultimates.

If the Devs are going to continue to require time-consuming, complicated eight-person body dances, multiple times per encounter you need to give players a way to gauge familiarities of others with the various dances. Such a system is exclusionary, but it would only exclude the dishonorable. The honorable already know what they know and do not know. Such a system would protect the honorable from people trying to take shortcuts they have not earned (or those who simply have trouble reading PF descriptions). It will enforce upon everyone that you need to practice some mechanics before moving on to the next mechanic too soon and wasting seven other players' precious time. In the long run I think it would make prog less contestatious and flow more efficiently for anyone who takes prog seriously in PF.

[Jeeqbit]

From a design perspective, they'd likely need to make it require no additional work for each new boss they add, and that would mean doing it by boss HP %, which isn't exact but at least it's something.

It needs to require that all party members are alive without deaths, damage downs or vulns. The reason for this is because you could get up to a prog point consistently, but this might be by sacrificing someone every time by placing your AoE on them. ... The other person loses out so that you can cheat the system.

[ACE135]

Since it would be required to save those several points for every boss or instance, it seems like a lot of data that needs to be carried around by every player which raises the traffic significantly.

What I don't understand about your explanation is why there would need to be points between 1 and 10 when it's only relevant if you have 10 or not at any given mechanic. You say people with 8 points can't joyn someone with 10. But what's the matter if they have 8 points or just 1. And how is it determined if you get 1 or 8 points?

[Hastatus]

... it seems like a lot of data that needs to be carried around by every player which raises the traffic significantly.

What I don't understand about your explanation is why there would need to be points between 1 and 10 when it's only relevant if you have 10 or not at any given mechanic. You say people with 8 points can't joyn someone with 10. But what's the matter if they have 8 points or just 1. And how is it determined if you get 1 or 8 points?

I would have thought such data would be insignificant compared to glams, colors, materia, equipment health, strategy boards, et al. A string of ten values out of ten shouldn't require much space. They could also choose 8-8 if it saves space for base-8 programming. 8)

The actual values need not even be visible to players. Players might only see a list of red X's (<10) and or green Checkmarks (10 or >10). The numbers just mean how many times you successfully passed a mechanic. 1 means you 'succeeded' once. 8 means you succeeded eight times. I suggest having succeeded 10 times as opening access to the next mechanic: i.e. once you get 10 you have earned your green Checkmark and are considered having Mastered the mechanic. The values are what the programmers would see in an invisible spreadsheet; how they visually represent the sheet to players could be very different. They could choose to only show the furthest mastered mechanic.

How many times does it take the average player to execute a mechanic before one can assume they understand a mechanic and will have a good chance of doing the mechanic consistently? My choice of doing a mechanic successfully 10 times is to account for various factors. Above Jeeqbit suggested players could find a loophole: the higher the value, the less likely people will be using an exploit; anyone able to figure out an exploit to achieve 10 completions at the expense of others is probably good enough to simply do the mechanic correctly. Intentionally doing a mechanic wrong over and over isn't going to help you in the long run. It's unlikely that all 10 mechanic checkpoints in a fight will be exploitable in such a manner.

A higher number is better because there are mechanics with many variations: e.g. in M10S Insane Air 2 you might start on 1 of 2 sides; you can get 1 of 2 different debuff colors; and the 3 mechanics to solve can occur in different orders of four (one repeats) and the same job might resolve in a slightly different order (due to where tank resolves); one of the orders (spreads first and last) is sometimes called a cursed pattern if the fire melee does not know how to aim their first fire cone. You can go many pulls before seeing that pattern.

You do not want it too low because players can get lucky: I've seen groups get to a mechanic once and quicky restart the PF at the next prog point after someone leaves and then they never even get back to the previous prog point. I also chose 10 because it would be easier to use the same values for every fight, because copy-paste tables are more efficient than having different values for different fights or different parts of the same fights. Ultimately the choice of 8, 10, or something else would have to be determined by the Devs using their internal metrics. Over time they could tweak the values as they see fit.

[ACE135]

A string of ten values out of ten shouldn't require much space. They could also choose 8-8 if it saves space for base-8 programming. 8)

And that multiplied with the number of bosses and/or dungeons can get quite a lot I think.

[Jeeqbit]

If it's just HP %, it couldn't be much more than the Duty Complete data held for each duty. Moreover, it could replace the Duty Complete data, because 0% would indicate Duty Complete.