Endgame Post from a JP PlayerFollow

I did T5 PFs all weekend on SCH with complete strangers.

One of the attempts, both tanks died to a divebomb or got hit by one (but lived). One of the attempts, 2 DPS died to short conflag. We still cleared it in the end. Many of those attempts usually had at least one DPS death to twister.

And you know what? We recovered just fine. Even with the DPS weakened, we still managed to down the big snake and easily meet the DPS check till she enrages.

Just man up. You got hit by a divebomb? You were slow to move. Vie is smug but he is also right: a quality I value more in someone compared to another who blames everything else on everyone and anything else they can but themselves.




K. I'm talking to you right now. I'm telling you that 3 people died on a divebomb when I was on my alt's i90 SCH and we still recovered and won.



1) This demonstrates just how little you know about turn 5 2) tanks do not need to enter neurolinks anymore due to the echo buff 3) healers are not always chosen for conflag



Why the @#%^ would it matter if a twister targets the MT? It's a simple circle. It kills the OT? Guess what the MT can do? Stun. Guess what the melee DPS can do? Stun. Guess what your BLM can do? Lethargy. Guess what your SCH and SMN can do? Miasma. Guess what your WHM can do? Stone 1.



There are a lot of bad players in this game.



Please, please, please realize that Twin has been on farm for many people since November (and earlier), Twin is 5+ month old content, there are a multitude of addons and videos that can assist you with the fight, and that you actually need to admit when you lack the skill to complete the encounter.

What separates good players from mediocre ones is the fact that they do not panic when someone dies. They do not just give up when the MT dies or the other healer dies. They think fast, stay calm, and recover.

If you were talking about Titan Ex, then that's fine: I agree. When you speak as if you know turn 5 to people like Vie and myself who have cleared it since November when you clearly do not know it, I have no problem reminding you of this simple fact. Turn 5 took most of us 25+ hours to learn. I'm not talking about putting a few hours in there here and there: I'm talking about putting 5 hour raid sessions into it until we got it down. Our groups were usually the hardcore ones: it takes others a lot longer.

People go into turn 5 thinking that it is the same difficulty as turn 1-4 and get their sh*t handed to them because, in reality, turn 5 is the first time your skill will ever truly be tested.

People clear the second coil turn 6-8 and enter 9 thinking it will be a walk in the park. Know what? It's not. It took us even longer to learn T9. We went for 10 straight hours on the day we finally killed it. When did we kill it? On the very last pull. In fact, on our kill we were JUST about to call it until I requested one more attempt. Do you have that level of dedication? I don't think so.

If people like my group struggled on T5 and struggled on T9, what makes you think you will be able to waltz right in there and learn it? Be held accountable for your actions instead of blaming the game. That is something a child would do.

Turn 5 and the second coil are meant for the most dedicated. My GM put it best: "If people want to raid and be successful, they will do whatever they can to make that happen." I guess you just don't want it bad enough or you have obligations that make you unable to commit enough time. If either are the case, why are you surprised that you are not downing it? Yoshi did a great job in that he at least lets you try the content without putting it behind some ridiculous gates.

But please, by all means, go back to whining about the injustices in the world/game and how PF runs that clear T5 don't exist because you've never been in one despite others on this board telling you that we have actually downed it just like that.



Since when was T5 meant to be accessible to casual players. If anything, the echo gave people who were working on T5 prior to the buff the much needed push to clear it. T5 is not a casual encounter. Titan Ex is not a casual encounter. T7, T8, and T9 are not casual encounters.

Yes: it was hell learning the fight but somehow a lot of us made it through it and have become better players as a result.





I'm just going to use this opportunity to bid farewell to ZAM. I enjoyed it immensely during the 11 era and even during ARR's 'prime'. I love this game and I love talking with people who also enjoy the game just like I like to talk with people who dislike the game so I can see where it needs improvements. However, this whiny sh*t that has been rampant in many threads over the past few weeks regarding difficulty of the game are just irritating. It's no better than the OF. The game needs a lot of improvement but people also need to realize that they have limitations. As an officer in my FC tasked with managing new recruits and monitoring groups within our FC outside of our own main group, the attitudes I see here are reflected in the mediocre members that I have to manage on a daily basis.

You may think it's OK to not bring your A game, not do your research, not eat food, and not do everything within your power to make sure you are ready for a particular encounter. But in reality, if my members aren't doing everything within their power to become better raiders, they don't deserve the raid slot since they're basically telling everyone else, "***** you. My time is more valuable than yours." If you find that you fall into one of those categories, you really don't deserve to clear this content just like my members do not deserve the raid slot.

See ya.

Edited, Jun 24th 2014 9:38am by HitomeOfBismarck

I'm scared of Turn 5 now.

The devs are aware of the problem. I don't see these kind of issues popping up in the future, the devs messed up and now they know better for the next time. /EchoON isn't always enough.

I hope so. There are some people who will NEVER be able to beat Titan EX either because they lag too much, are bad at dodging, or just plain don't have the patience to deal with so much random.

There's a guy in my FC who has lag issues and is terrible at dodging. He's been stuck on Titan EX for ages and unfortunately his inability makes it so no one really wants to help him. He asks if anyone wants to do Titan and we all hem and haw and try to come up with a polite way of saying "not with you." Hopefully letting people in that situation skip it will make it slightly easier for everyone else.

Maybe I'm weird, but I tend to find most endgame guides aren't very good and videos themselves might not cover the person's role relative to the person recording, or worse, sped up with stupid music playing over everything. So, I see it more as leaders failing and being unwilling to teach their minions, but are quick to pass the blame just because. Not much different than those that demand voice chat, really. Experience will always be the better teacher, and that'll inevitably come with failures even with guides and instructions.

Oh well.

Edited, Jun 17th 2014 3:30am by Seriha

While I agree with you, because I've seen some ****** guides to end game content, Mr. Happy's guides on you tube are actually super informative and easy to watch.

Experience will come with failure, and maybe I'm just in the minority, but I will never Que up in a random DF for something like Ultima HM with out at least watching something (or reading) about the mechanics of the fight before hand, and I personally don't feel that its wrong to expect the same of others.

Now if its a preformed group with some asshat who is unwilling to be patient and explain things, that's a different story, and I am totally willing to help people through content, but I don't feel that its wrong to expect people to have done some small amount of research before attempting 8 man content.




All of this is really 100% true and the best way to go about something if your learning.

The most frustrating part about the group I was with last night is that it was obviously 4 or 5 peoples first time in that raid and none of them had any idea about what to do. One of the tanks was experienced and just pulled right off the bat so its not like there was much time to explain anything, but then again, I still feel that for something like that, I shouldn't have to give half the group a walk through when I Que up. Then after the first wipe, the main tank kept begging for someone to kick him from the group, while yelling at the other tank for not knowing what to do, which just made everything that much more frustrating.

Shurg.

Sorry to see Hitome go. But again this comes with the quintessential problem of forum boards. People interject in to conversations outside of context, and become enraged/dejected/upset to the point of insanity.

I have no problem with an event, or even a battle, tuned for the hardcore. Hell, when it comes to execution of fights, I treat myself with the decipline of a hardcore player.

Did we ever quit Twintaia because we were frustrated and thought the one hit mechanics are bullsh*t? No. It is, and remains, a complaint not a gamebreaker. What I am upset about, and what I continue to feel is a problem in this game - is that instant death seems to be the only source of impending fear, and that strikes me as cheap and frustrating. I remember the strongest moves from the final bosses and even the hidden dungeons of so many Square Enix games not designed to cheap out and kill your alliance, but leave your characters scrambling to try to recover and often not so. But at the very least the door for recovery was left open.

As far as arguments of calling Twin on farm for weeks for many FCs, I'd love to see a demographic of just what percentage of the playerbase is actually past five. We're halting on Twin, same as we've always done with difficult bosses and fights, getting the fight on farm, likely on farm without the echo before we progress on to second coil.

And one thing I'm going to say, right here: I'd never turn around an spit on the achievements of someone who sticks it out. Wether they were the first person to clear world content, or had to wait until echo 50% to clear it. I can argue the design of a fight without telling someone they have no business playing a game or their content, and when the conversation gets to that point. I draw the line. That's where I take a hard stance against attitudes of that nature - attitudes that were presented in this conversation more than once.

There's no problem saying you want to advance, screen people, and work as hard as you can to advance content. I do that myself, and have for years. Ever since after I left FFXI the first time, actually. I can disagree with a fight or a design's basic premise and still enjoy conquering it. That comes for a division between a designer, and a gamer. But I have no tolerance from the top-down mentality progression raiders inevitably develop because players not of their caliber question the design concepts of a fight they conquered.

Back to my center point. No, the Echo does not makes up for the glaring instant-kill mechanics laden in many fights. Comparatively, however, Twintania is a soft example of this compared to Titan. To compare the two, I actually enjoy fighting Twintania, frustrations at all. I liked fighting Twin even when I was bashing my head against it watching my fellow players hit on it. For the instant kill mechanics I disagree with, they did make the fight fun.

Titan, not so much.

The Echo does next to nothing against these issues, except allow mages to recover the dead post-mistake to salvage a raid, as they can heal more from less MP pretty significantly.



Hio, I know you're not paying attention. I make those complaints after we downed twintania.

And, if the content itself was irrelevant to the game's story, or if Yoshida didn't already imply that he wants players of all walks to be able to catch up and clear this content? I'd be silent on the matter. But the core of the discussion was whether or not the Echo does a proper job softening the gated mechanics in this game and I flatly made the observation that it does not make up for the overuse of instant kill mechanics. Everything around it? It aids. But tell me from your honest perspective, How effective is the Echo going to be against Turn 7's mechanics? It WILL help Turn 6, but I don't think it's going to be all that helpful on Turn 7, and I really hope our group can do it without thinking to rely on it.


So let's conclude.



I've a standing thread open on guides posted from 1-9.

I've got the stat weights for ALL classes sitting in a notebook right next to me. I micro what gear I have access to me for its stats to try to glean as much performance out of it as possible. I have a rotation, from start to finish, on how my group was fighting Twintaia down to muscel memory.

So I think it's clear that I don't fall into the catagories you're trying to pin me and my crew into.

But when we busted our heads against five month old content for as long as we have. We're going to pick apart everything, our connections, our execution, the guides we're reading even the design of the fight itself. Why? Because as frustrated as we are we're looking to better understand what's frustrating us, what's tripping us up. When people on these forums have a fit at me and essentially **** on my groups accomplishment by calling it ease, I'm going to retort. Any fight in hindsight is easy. Twin, comparatively, will get easier each time we get the practice down.

Sorry to see you go Hio. Not sorry for my stance on the matter. If Yoshida wants to loosen the gate for content to make it progressively easier for players, or at the very least not frustrating - there needs to be some design philosophy changes going into future fights. Which, I suppose, puts me square in the 'mainstream' perspective predicted by the JP players blog post.



Don't be. If anything, be scare of @#%^s not tolerant enough to stick it out with you to learn the fight because they think it's easy. I could have left behind my crew long ago to take a hard-core static up coils. I don't because they're my friends and I want to see them advance. Find some friends you're willing to commiserate with in the long term and you'll do fine.

My advice - just keep at it. For as much as I complain here on this site, which to me is little more than a venting board, in FFXIV, it's the Game of Puns. We joke, we chuckle, we discuss tactics and execution and we have a good time. Because we know if we stick it out we'll get there. That's the best way to approach this sort of stuff, IMO.


Edited, Jun 17th 2014 10:53am by Hyrist

The Divebombs are the big frustration of Twin, at least from my perspective. After that, it's just getting your ducks in a row for evading Twisters. The problem with doing it with complete stranger is, if one of them doesn't have the evasion pattern down and they get targeted, they can wipe your party right quick. Voice Chat did a lot to help speed up our execution development as we started figuring out who was the best shot caller and got everyone to follow those calls.

Not so much in a random group. Good if they've all got it memorized. (... I'm picturing Axel now.) Not so good if they've not beaten it yet.

All I can say about finding a static is check the Official Forums Server forums or check your party finder. Wish you luck man. Just once you get past Twin, maybe stay a while and get yourself able to do it without it? - will help soften the blow for Coil 6, IMO. That's where my group is at right now. That, and we realize with lockouts, we won't be able to do what we did with First Coil and rotate people into multiple groups.

Edit:

Too be fair. Hitome reacted to a post I redacted and toned down. If he does decide to return, I'll be a bit more careful about what I let slip past the reply button.

Edited, Jun 17th 2014 11:07am by Hyrist

It's not quite that simple though. You need to know ahead of time where to stand so that everyone is in range of healing, so that mobs are in range of DPS, so that both tanks can play spiny tennis, etc. You need to know when and when not to DPS spiny. You need to know to stand where you kill spiny (immediately after avoiding an AoE). Sure, anyone can avoid tornadoes, but simply avoiding tornadoes and AoE cones isn't enough to come close to winning. Each fight has unique gimmicks that must be memorized and practiced.

EDIT: UNLESS you have a dedicated static, in which case everyone can learn (and wipe) together with no hard feelings.

Edited, Jun 17th 2014 9:03am by Thayos

I think a lot of people mess up on the basic mechanics of things like plumes, landslides, etc., because they haven't memorized the orders, and not because they're not trying to get out of the way. Even the slightest delay (from not having the fight completely memorized) means instant death for someone with even a small amount of latency.

That's not to say it's impossible to win these fights... but some people (myself included) simply need actual in-game practice to really memorize the flow of fights. I can't get that level of memorization just by watching YouTube videos over and over. Plus, being successful in a game shouldn't depend on watching lots of YouTube.


Edited, Jun 17th 2014 9:15am by Thayos

It's like a PF Titan EX group I was in the other day. Went in, stacks for plumes were sloppy but people straightened that out after the first wipe or two. Then we lose someone and have to exit out to find a replacement. And what happens when we go back in with basically the same group? People are everywhere for plumes yet again. It boggles the mind.

This tells me that battles designed to spam players with insta-death mechanics (requiring memorization, not skill, to complete) is poor game design.

Good game design for very difficult content can be winnable even with a death and loseable even when you do everything right.

We were spanning some Very Difficult "Tails of Woe" in FFXI last night. VD bunnies is as miserable as it sounds. 30 minutes for the time limit to mow down ten bunnies with about fifty thousand hit points apiece. We wiped the first time, adjusted our strategy (well, really just my bard songs) and our position a bit, and tried again. We won the next three times, but DAMN that fight was rough. No dodging mechanics, just trying to get placement exactly right without the super tank paladin dying or the three monks dying or the WHM and BRD dying. Quite a few times the super tank dropped to under 200 HP before we could get cures off - lots of close shaves.

Can you imagine a single fight in XIV taking 25 minutes to complete? Even Titan Ex only takes ten minutes from start to finish if you don't ***** up.