now THIS sound greatFollow

Next up is the previously named Beginner's Hall. It's official name is now Stone, Sky, Sea and they are battle challenges for solo players. You can challenge any content solo in these battle challenges including the Savage raids. This will allow players to practice content before going in with a party and that includes the new 3.2 content.


Though I hope the content is completable solo too. The way it should be is the DPS check should b scaled for one person and the HP or what not should be scaled for solo play too so that you can practice the mechanics plus do the required DPS and win the fight... but you get no rewards (obviously) an if you can successfully win the practice fight solo, then when you go to do the real thing with a party, youd already 100% know what to do and know ahead of time that youll meet the DPS requirements (as you met them in the solo version).. the solo and party DPs requirements will obviously be different but the difference will be 4+ ppl hitting it instead of 1. So if everyone in your group did the practice and beat it then their combined DPS in a party will match whats needed to beat the REAL raid thus... youd win... if it works like that that would make this the best feature EVER added in this game and finally end the "must have experience/completed" parties.


Now THIS im looking forward to

Would be awesome if you can skip around to different phases of fights -- that way you could start learning fights easier without needing to find seven other people who are also capable of clearing earlier phases.

Considering the typical player of this game (that it's targeted to) can't even dodge AoEs or still says Cuch's barf is "too quick to dodge" would find something like that too demanding.

I think this could be successful if you're allowed to jump around to different mechanics within fights. For example, my FC could use this by more knowledgeable/experienced people taking groups of people through each stage while explaining mechanics over teamspeak. Explaining mechanics is one thing, but being able to experience mechanics is so much better. This way, people could become familiar with all phases of a fight without having to be able to master each phase first. It would make learning much more efficient. And, as I said earlier, experiencing each phase of mechanics wouldn't have to depend first on finding seven other people who could master all the previous mechanics.

What it comes down to is there's not a good reason to leave up barriers.

It's helpful if you just want to practice later phases without silly mistakes/deaths/wipes getting in the way. Those are the kinds of things that happen more often when you don't have a dedicated static.

Edited, Feb 4th 2016 6:03pm by Thayos

In reality, Raids are 90% awareness than anything.

For example you have people who find content "too hard" that isn't hard at all (Bismarck, Ravana, Coils, Regular Alexander, Void Ark) because that have zero raid awareness and have no idea to adapt to situations. This is why training will only do so much in the long run. If you're forced into doing this before you can enter a raid, it's good and people can NO LONGER ***** ABOUT "WAH I DON'T WANT TO WATCH A VIDEO" and thus do what the Japanese do - actually a bit of research before going into a raid."

I see that being one of the main benefits of this. I mean, just going into Void Ark you can see how people mess up the easiest mechanics because they either are lazy or simply don't care, like Cetus's dive bombs. You had to deal with dive bombs in previous content, no excuses. You know not to stack on people..yet you're guaranteed to have people run INTO EVERYONE with it..and you have people NOT MOVE OUT OF THE GOD DAMN WAY because they can't take a second to look at the incoming water death. (Awareness.)

It's much more fun to run into the fight blind and adapt as you go. Guides and videos completely rip the soul and fun out of the game.

Because to simply step into these fights and expect to read/react your way to a win is very inefficient. In fact, I don't think anyone in the history of FFXIV has read/reacted his way to a win. These fights require repetition and memorization (which I would term under your designation of "knowledge"). There is some reading/reacting that occurs within certain mechanics (such as placing meteors), but winning these battles relies far more on memorization than reacting. I call the ability to anticipate and navigate each mechanic "execution," and if you're being honest with yourself, then you'd acknowledge it's incredibly difficult to execute if all you're doing is reacting. That's why sports teams practice game plans and don't just run onto the field hoping to react their way to victory.



I totally agree. That's exactly why I hate pickup parties, and why I don't see the point in doing these raids unless I have either a static or some other form of more reliable help. Pickup parties tend to be disasters, and if even one person is clueless, then it's pretty much a giant waste of time. There's no way for me to learn State 2 if even one person in the group isn't prepared for Stage 1, and that happens All. The. Freaking. Time. (Or, it did when I raided more often.)

With help from my FC mates, a Beginner's Hall with the ability to skip around would greatly alleviate that stress and allow me to practice beyond the capacity of most pickup parties. Yes, the ability to jump phases wouldn't be necessary, but it would be immensely helpful if I'm trying to learn a later stage of the fight, considering one mistake usually results in a wipe and the need to do everything over again.


Edited, Feb 5th 2016 3:31pm by Thayos

True reading/reacting was much more possible in FFXI, because battles weren't so heavily scripted and jobs had more unique tools at their disposal to deal with various situations. There were often several ways to win fights, often depending on your unique party setup (or you could read a guide and go in with a cookie-cutter group).

Agree about newer players not using the hall. I think that will be used more by more tenured players who have in game social groups.

While true, however, if I go into 7 month old content now (Alexander Normal, Ravana, Bismarck Ex) or 2-3 year old content (Coil, older Ex primals) and you're constantly wiping the party, there's no excuse to not have did research. It's not a problem to research in the Japanese community even if you still need to get in there and figure it out, I have no idea why the NA/EU population have such a resistance to not want to waste people's time lol.

Going in blind and such is fine with your friends, but once you join someone's PF or join the DF, you're not simply just "on your time" anymore, you're on 3-23 other people's time at that point and suffice to say, not every one, especially healer/tank want to deal with constant wipes on something they've been clearing endlessly. It's fine to be new but being entirely clueless when there's resources available to you is no excuse. That's why the absolute only benefit to this would be to get an idea of what you'd be in for.



Edited, Feb 6th 2016 4:28am by Theonehio

You sy that like its a bad thing. I mean what ELSE would people expect to get out of it? >.>

I'm with Filth in that I'd rather them spend time developing some kind of alternative endgame content, given the small percentage of players who have the time to commit to raiding and all that entails.