Regarding Dungeon Feedback: Don’t Listen to People Who Don’t Know How to Play

Reposting my comment here because Jaxtaro's comment about anxiety further confirms my suspicion:


I read through some of the comment of the 1000000 threads about dungeon diffuculty and I have the suspicion that most of the people who complain about the difficulty are
- older gamers
- gamers with some kind of disability/handicap
- gamers with low self-confidence/anxiety

Those people don't have the reflexes and learnability of young healthy people and/or the mental resilience against "dying very often", it just stresses them out.
They do want to learn, but their bodies and brains say no.
The controversy came about because they identify themselves as "average casual player", but they're actually not the typical "healthy" casual player (not meant offensively).
All people who say "just get better"/"skill issue" probably think they're talking with "normal healthy" people and this is the misconception.

So I would suggest some easy-to-implement mechanism to aid those people but without changing the difficulty for the normal healthy player.
It's not about making the MSQ fights easier for casuals, it's about making MSQ fights barrier-free.
The easiest way I can think of is adding a voluntary echo option for duty support in MSQ fights. So if you enter with Wuk Lamat + Scions with this option, you still see the same mechanics with the same speed, but you won't die so easily.

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Originally Posted by Riotas

Reposting my comment here because Jaxtaro's comment about anxiety further confirms my suspicion:


I read through some of the comment of the 1000000 threads about dungeon diffuculty and I have the suspicion that most of the people who complain about the difficulty are
- older gamers
- gamers with some kind of disability/handicap
- gamers with low self-confidence/anxiety

Those people don't have the reflexes and learnability of young healthy people and/or the mental resilience against "dying very often", it just stresses them out.
They do want to learn, but their bodies and brains say no.
The controversy came about because they identify themselves as "average casual player", but they're actually not the typical "healthy" casual player (not meant offensively).
All people who say "just get better"/"skill issue" probably think they're talking with "normal healthy" people and this is the misconception.

So I would suggest some easy-to-implement mechanism to aid those people but without changing the difficulty for the normal healthy player.
It's not about making the MSQ fights easier for casuals, it's about making MSQ fights barrier-free.
The easiest way I can think of is adding a voluntary echo option for duty support in MSQ fights. So if you enter with Wuk Lamat + Scions with this option, you still see the same mechanics with the same speed, but you won't die so easily.

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Age isn't a matter. FF14 fights are about pattern recognition not about twitch dodging.
Disability isn't a matter. It might be harder for you, but most people with disabilities (basically everyone I know at least) prefers to overcome their disability rather than get an easy mode. In any case, it feels disrespectful to use disability as a point if you aren't disabled yourself.
Low confidence and having anxiety aren't a factor either. A video game is the perfect environment to (for want of a better term) overcome these things in a controlled environment, and here I am speaking from personal experience.

If you want to experience a story without playing the game, watch a stream.
If you want to play a game, but not actually be challenged, do not expect to always have this as an option.

A huge core theme especially earlier in the ff14 story is overcoming adversity and rising to the occasion. I'd argue it's a core element of EW too. Perhaps some people could take a leaf out of this book. And if somehow this casual content is as hard to a person as savage is to me, then like... isn't that kind of hype? You can hack away at it on your own time with trusts, eventually beat it, and then get the same sense of satisfaction out of something that requires coordinating the schedules of 8 adults.

Idk, food for thought?

I can't believe what I'm even reading here. First you tell someone that their experience (and queue times) are "anecdotal" then from the same perdon "All the disabled people I know..." How many disabled people do you know...2? 3 tops? Have they confided in you their view of content difficulty ramp up in Dawntrail as it relates to their disability?

Furthermore, what do you even know about aging and it's impact on gaming? You speak of these things as though you actually have experience, but you don't...it's pretty gross actually.

Don't you have a post somewhere to argue for wheelchair ramps to be removed from buildings because all the disabled folks you know crave the challenge?

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Originally Posted by VioletCatastrophe

Age isn't a matter. FF14 fights are about pattern recognition not about twitch dodging.

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Gotta second this emphatically. I'm older... I hope I don't count as OLD-OLD, but I started playing games on the Atari 2600 years before the NES came out. For all the jank of the netcode and snapshotting, it is still miles more responsive than just about everything on the 2600 (and frickin' Ninja Gaiden on the NES).

You can (provided you're not playing from the other side of the world) compensate with proper pattern recognition, timing of motion, and pre-positioning/early-predictive-movement.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

I can't believe what I'm even reading here. First you tell someone that their experience (and queue times) are "anecdotal" then from the same perdon "All the disabled people I know..." How many disabled people do you know...2? 3 tops? Have they confided in you their view of content difficulty ramp up in Dawntrail as it relates to their disability?

Furthermore, what do you even know about aging and it's impact on gaming? You speak of these things as though you actually have experience, but you don't...it's pretty gross actually.

Don't you have a post somewhere to argue for wheelchair ramps to be removed from buildings because all the disabled folks you know crave the challenge?

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It say here your main job is Blacksmith, but with a bait that big I would assume you somehow managed to get your fisherman over the level cap.

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Originally Posted by Riotas

I read through some of the comment of the 1000000 threads about dungeon difficulty and I have the suspicion that most of the people who complain about the difficulty are
- older gamers
- gamers with some kind of disability/handicap
- gamers with low self-confidence/anxiety

Those people don't have the reflexes and learnability of young healthy people and/or the mental resilience against "dying very often", it just stresses them out.
They do want to learn, but their bodies and brains say no.
The controversy came about because they identify themselves as "average casual player", but they're actually not the typical "healthy" casual player (not meant offensively).
All people who say "just get better"/"skill issue" probably think they're talking with "normal healthy" people and this is the misconception.

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Do I count as an older gamer being 40? You youngsters don't know what patience or mental resilience is. Try waiting for cassettes to load up a game for several minutes after every death .

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

Don't you have a post somewhere to argue for wheelchair ramps to be removed from buildings because all the disabled folks you know crave the challenge?

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Is it too much to ask that people argue in good faith without resorting to crass hyperbole? There is a world of difference between something as essential as wheelchair access to a building that without it means someone can be legally liable, and the idea that a luxury product like a video game may be a little too difficult for people of unspecified types and severity of disability.

I sympathise with disabled players whose impairments adversely affect how well they can play. And I deeply respect those who give it their all to try and overcome and clear content even with the disadvantage.

But if you're a game designer you need to make some decisive calls with regards the current game design philosophy you're running with. If the vast majority of your audience is relatively young and able-boded, that's who you chiefly aim to appeal to for a commercially viable product. Unlike films, TV shows and books, video games as an active medium need to cover a broad enough spectrum of audience of varying skills and abilities, but they cannot reasonably be expected to cover every type of player encompassing every possible type of personal ability. What people can ask for is greater breadth of meaningful accessibility options to aid improved engagement with the game, which is not the same thing as requesting the core of a game be reduced in difficulty to account for the possible lowest of skill floors.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

Don't you have a post somewhere to argue for wheelchair ramps to be removed from buildings because all the disabled folks you know crave the challenge?

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Are you going to keep using disabled people as if we are just a tool to be used in your arguments? I can't believe you'd even say something like this and still think you are in the right. The difference between being able to enter a building without being ambulatory (like I have needed accommodations for when I was a child) and being too damn lazy to put in a modicum of effort to improve in content that really is not hard is so night and day. Just stop. You are making yourself look horrible by using this point.

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"big tent" game that tries to support all playstyles

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Except that in terms of difficulty, it's not really possible to respect that. Dungeons are content in their own right, and the whole community spends a great deal of time on them, both in terms of quests and roulettes There's no real in-between here: the content is aimed at both players with little skill (< that's said without judgement) and players who are used to ultimate. It seems to me that DT's dungeons, as well as the challenges, are just right in that they manage to be interesting for HL players (more reactivity), while being enjoyable if a little more complex for ‘casu’ players. As a Midcore player, that's how I see them: easy but interesting instances.

And perhaps we should stop exaggerating: to hear you tell it, DT's dungeons are dens of death, requiring a mad mastery of the game to be successful. But that's not the case. As it happens, for a player who's struggling a bit, a few wipes are enough to learn the mechanics, despite the more nervous battles, and after that it becomes just like any other ff battle, an anticipation of the boss's future technique.

As far as special cases are concerned, I'm sorry, but they need to be aware that they are special cases. It's not possible (I'm repeating the analogy I used on another topic) to do away with all the steps just because some people have a slight limp. The overwhelming majority of the playerbase is perfectly capable of doing these dungeons without a handicap; the trusts and rez are there to compensate for the others (here are your wheelchair ramps). That's more than enough. As an aside, I sometimes play with a friend who has a problem with his right hand, and he's the first to be annoyed by this type of ‘defence’, which mostly comes from people who are perfectly healthy but who are trying to be moral... Without ever asking the people concerned, of course.

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Originally Posted by VioletCatastrophe

Are you going to keep using disabled people as if we are just a tool to be used in your arguments? I can't believe you'd even say something like this and still think you are in the right. The difference between being able to enter a building without being ambulatory (like I have needed accommodations for when I was a child) and being too damn lazy to put in a modicum of effort to improve in content that really is not hard is so night and day. Just stop. You are making yourself look horrible by using this point.

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Perhaps paying attention to the context of the discussion would be in order. I was literally responding to the argument that disabled people want things harder to "overcome the challemge". It was the topic at hand, and the paragraph was relevant to show the absurdity of that claim, which was the actual subject.