Friday, August 04, 2017

FFXIV's Unfortunate Dungeon Meta

I've complained a few times that I don't like the way the dungeon "meta" in FFXIV has turned out. Here's a good Reddit thread discussing the issue.

Basically, many players expect the tank to pull "wall-to-wall". Basically run through all the mobs from the start to a gate, where they are all then AoE'd down.  It's the most efficient method of clearing a dungeon, but it also requires the players in the group to be geared and on point. Essentially it's the most fragile method.

As an aside, I've noticed the North American players in almost all games will gravitate towards the most efficient and most fragile method, which require the highest level of personal performance. Even in WoW raids. Apparently, Japanese gamers don't do this, and tend towards more fool-proof strategies even if they take more work.

There's a lot of tanks and healers in that thread who are unhappy about the meta. Perhaps a backlash will develop, and it will become okay to pull single-packs at a time. But I doubt it. Doing that would add 5 to 10 minutes to the clear time, and that is clearly a deal-breaker to impatient players.

Personally, I've just given up on tanking, and am leveling a Red Mage damage dealer. This way it doesn't really matter to me. If the tank pulls "wall-to-wall", I'll use AoE. If she pulls a single pack at a time, then I'll use a regular rotation.

12 comments:

  1. Sounds a lot like the way it's been in WoW for years (or at least it was still that way last time I played). Or do you think this is different?

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    1. Hmm, I have to think about this. It's different than WoW, but I can't quite put my finger on what specifically is different.

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  2. When I was tanking the leveling dungeons in SB and no one had gear, I'd single-pull. And it doesn't add 5-10 minutes to the length. MAYBE 3-4, but definitely not 5-10. Now that I've capped out at 70 and have some decent-to-nice gear for the level and sync'd down, I'm at the ilvl cap and I tend to pull bigger, but I'll always examine the healer's gear at the start of the run and if they look like their gear's not so great, then I'll pull small anyway.

    Occasionally impatient dps will run ahead and pull the next group back, which annoys the hell out of me, but a threat to kick if s/he does it again (and/or the resulting wipe for when the healer gets overwhelmed) is usually sufficient to get them to stop.

    And as dps... I'm same as you. AE if they pull big, standard rotation if they don't. I'm playing to enjoy myself not to rush through as "efficiently" as possible.

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    1. FWIW, I recently started healing the SB dungeons also and since I've picked up so much gear fro mall ym tanking runs I'm usually fully kitted out in the dungeon set as I step in (or maybe missing 1-2 pieces) and I've found even big pulls pretty easy to heal, so either gear makes a massive difference, I'm a better healer than I think I am (I think I'm average at best), or a lot of people paying healers actually really suck at it.

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    2. I think healers have the added issue that everyone insists that healers have to dps in FFXIV. A lot of them have trouble juggling healing and dealing damage, especially when they're new. One of the advantages of small pulls is that it's "safer" for a healer to dps. Of course, if you have a healer that doesn't want to dps, then big pulls are usually fine.

      Also gear does make a big difference in Stormblood. As RDM, I accidentally went into Susano wearing the 60 white gear. (I had just hit 64 a minute or so before the queue popped, so I hadn't had a chance to buy new gear.) I have never died so many times in a fight before. Pretty much every mechanic knocked my health down to a sliver.

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  3. I just pull single packs. DPS can whine all they want. They want to pull all the things, they can tank it. I'd rather spend the extra 3-4 minutes doing doable pulls than losing 3-4 minutes because we wiped.

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    1. Heh. I don't really have a thick enough skin to go that route.

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    2. Totally fair :P For the most part, it really comes down to queue time. Do the DPS want to sit in queue for 40 minutes again? Healers also have nearly instant queues right now so I can't leverage that, but I can let them die if they decide to pull for me.

      Maybe it's not fair that I leverage that ability to enforce my own standards of etiquette, but frankly, my game time is limited enough that I don't really care to deal with other people's egos.

      Honestly, though, this expansion I think I've had to deal with it maybe twice so far. Hasn't actually seemed to be THAT big of a problem from my end. I'm probably just lucky, but eh.

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  4. You've often mentioned FFXIV's "slower" pace, usually in a complimentary fashion. And I agree that there is something to be said for it. But if the game is so slow that most players aren't willing to play it at the "correct" pace, isn't that a design flaw?

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    1. That's a fair point. All I can say is that the game wasn't always like this. After all, I've been playing a tank since ARR launched. This current meta really developed over the last expansion.

      Maybe it is an inevitable conclusion, though.

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  5. This is not the case at all. Massive pulls have been common since at least the beginning of ARR (can't speak for 1.x because I didn't play back then). Speed runs of Wanderer's Palace and Amdapor Keep were the most common way to cap weekly currency back then. So much so, that in one of the first patches after 2.0, the devs introduced the doors and walls that now limit pulls in WP, and have been in use for every dungeon since then.

    At any rate, I also disagree with single pulls being more "correct" than big ones. According to whom? The devs have stepped up to limit the size when it got out of hand, but they are clearly OK with what we can do now, otherwise they would restrict them even more.

    I also don't understand what the big deal is. As I see it, there are two perceived advantages of single pulls: more relaxed gameplay, and lower chance of failure. On the other hand, the advantages of bigger pulls are more engaging gameplay (making it necessary to pay attention to what players are doing and using all tools in their kit), and of course faster runs.

    The thing is, the chance of "failure" is already insignificant. If you happen to wipe during a big pull, it's no big deal. You lost maybe 1 or 2 minutes, which is probably still less than the difference between doing the dungeon with big pulls or single ones. And this does not happen that often if people are doing their jobs properly (I can probably count in one hand the number of times I've wiped in my more than 100 SB dungeon runs as tank, always pulling multiple packs at a time). If people are not doing their jobs (tanks not using proper cooldown rotations, healers don't using their healing cooldowns and/or not DPSing, DPS not using their AoE abilities), then maybe they should start doing them? Otherwise they are wasting the whole group's time. By the way, some of the comments in the reddit thread you linked in your previous post showed some cases of this: healers complaining about having to "spam heals" on their tanks, without any reference to their cooldowns (Eye for an Eye, Larguesse, Synastry, Presence of Mind, Quickcast + Holy, Shadowflare, etc).

    As for the "relaxed" vs "engaging" gameplay argument, who is to say who is right? Sure, your game time is limited and you should spend it how you see best, but the same goes for me. I find it more fun to do big pulls, and it is also more time efficient in the vast majority of cases, so why shouldn't I? Why would I spend 25 minutes of my limited play time when I could spend 15? There is definitely a conflict of interest here, but taking the moral high ground because "the devs intended single pulls" is complete bullshit. If a tank decides to pull one at a time against the wishes of the rest of the group, they are just abusing their shorter queue times, and I feel the group is entirely justified in kicking them out. Even the devs allow this, justifying kicks under the unofficial "different playstyle" rule.

    Anyway, in an attempt to turn this back from rant territory, how am I wrong in the eyes of proponents of single pulls? Are there any benefits I'm not considering? Are my arguments against them not valid in some (or all) cases?

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    1. I never said "single-pulls" were more correct. I said they were less fragile and I preferred them.

      My solution was to was stop tanking, and switch to DPS.

      Also, maybe it is unfair, but generally the role that is the most in-demand has all the power. If you don't like the way the tank is playing, you can always kick her. You'll just have to eat the queue time waiting for another tank.

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