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

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Originally Posted by Alyx-Greywind

You cannot just ask the dev team to ignore one side of the feedback, that's simply not how it's going to work. If you ask the Devs to completely ignore one side of the community then the game won't have a future either, like it or not there is a need for casual players too. There can be easy content in this game as well as challenging.

Like it or not there has to be accomodation for both casuals and raiders alike. If that means slightly tuning down the Story/Narrative modes of Raids and making MSQ accessible to a majority of players regardless of skill? Sure. Yoshi-P once famously said if you want harder content go do Ultimates. Yes Endwalker was easy but that doesn't mean we bring up the Story Content progressively until it's near Extreme.

If anything we should be asking for content such as Criterion, the Eureka/Bozja type content to fulfill the midcore jump.

Funnily enough I'm happy for more content to be difficult but I want it to be placed appropriately. If the direction is this for the foreseeable future then I'm fine with that but I won't ever endorse outright ignoring other players.

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There has been more than enough accomodations for the "other side". The game has constantly been streamlined, simplified, and homogenized for years. We have one tiny bit of a scrap of content for midcore players and people already want to complain and have it removed. The difficulty increase in EXPERT dungeons and raids has been good.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

I don't agree with your foil hat summary. People that are making the argument are saying in essence that content which is going to pop up in their daily roulette shouldn't make them regret having joined it.

It seems that a viable solution could be found by redefining things...make a normal roulette that has the content tuned in line with how the game has always scaled...

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That's fair, it's why it is admittedly a tin-foil hat theory.

The problem with this is you're asking the devs to make the game twice.

I'm willing to admit that this is my preference and not an objective truth, but I think of it kind of like a restaurant: I'd rather have a smaller menu of extremely well executed dishes that does not allow for substitutions or modifications than go to some place where with a gigantic menu of 'build your own' dishes which all just end up being mediocre because the chefs are just not allowed to cook.

As for 'How the game has always scaled.' I really don't think you actually want that. Shadowbringers was the advent of simplifying and homogenizing everything to make things more accessible. Many, many players were incredibly dissatisfied with this, but the changes were not so egregious that it made the game absolutely boring. Endwalker was really where we saw the changes, especially in raiding content, that were absolutely bad.

What we are experiencing now, speaking as someone who has played since 1.0 beta, is probably somewhere between Shadowbringers and Stormblood in difficulty and complexity, with significantly less jank than there used to be. If we return to 'how the game has always scaled' we would have to consider Heavensward, Stormblood, and A Realm Reborn, which averaging out through Endwalker and Shadowbringers, would still be significantly harder and unforgiving than what we have now.

I'm not saying this as a refute or argument of any kind, just that Shadowbringers and Endwalker is not as representative of the difficulty scaling of this game as you seem to think it is.

I am personally appeased with the current level of complexity (pending savage release of course) because though it's very much still accessible and approachable for newer players who are paying attention (for context on why I think this is: My girlfriend plays as well who has a condition that prevents her from using her keyboard effectively so she MUST click cast and we have had deep discussions about the accessibility of the current game.). It is still engaging enough and forces enough attention be payed to the game that I, as an admittedly extremely sweaty endgame player, can stay engaged and actually have to pay attention. I still think the game could stand to be harder, but leaving it where it is is something that's more or less the compromise and I'm willing to accept that.

I don't think you're being unreasonable, and I also don't necessarily agree with your conclusion to some degree. For instance, you say that "they would have to make the game twice,". Well, not necessarily, it isn't necessary to make it from scratch, it's the same content, just tuned and duplicated. There is precedent for this, This is already done with savage and ultimate raids.

Also, I do not include Arcadion in the discussion (even though I think that the timer of the back to back lariats on bomber may be a tad harsh). There is no way you can conclude that something as new as the raid content that everyone is pretty new at can be adequately defined as in need of adjustment.

My sole concern is daily roulette content and MSQ and it isn,'t even that much that needs adjustment, but it could use a slightly liwer tier than current. It isn't a Herculean effort.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

I don't think you're being unreasonable, and I also don't necessarily agree with your conclusion to some degree. For instance, you say that "they would have to make the game twice,". Well, not necessarily, it isn't necessary to make it from scratch, it's the same content, just tuned and duplicated. There is precedent for this, This is already done with savage and ultimate raids.

Also, I do not include Arcadion in the discussion (even though I think that the timer of the back to back lariats on bomber may be a tad harsh). There is no way you can conclude that something as new as the raid content that everyone is pretty new at can be adequately defined as in need of adjustment.

My sole concern is daily roulette content and MSQ and it isn,'t even that much that needs adjustment, but it could use a slightly liwer tier than current. It isn't a Herculean effort.

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Though it wouldn't be a Herculean effort by any stretch of the imagination, mostly just numbers tweaking, I think my opinion on this is that, to use corporate terminology here: The juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

Savage and Ultimate probably aren't the best examples of 'retuned' however since they are redesigns of a fight.

The best precedence of 'retuning' would probably be the Unreal fights, and there's a reason that there's only one of those per major patch. Even if it wouldn't be a difficult thing to do, fine tuning numbers and potentially having to redesign things like timing and telegraphs is an incredibly time consuming thing to do. It's not like they can just throw something together and get it out the door. They have to tweak, test, tweak, test again, and so forth. Ultimately this pulls development time away from a plethora of other things. There would have to be something given up somewhere in the development process to accomplish something like this and I honestly just don't think it's worth it from a business and development standpoint.

The other big problem is difficulty progression. Like it or not, the last MSQ dungeon of any patch is included in the Expert Roulette, and if the intent is to tune up the optional expert dungeons and make Expert Roulette a bit of a challenge, there needs to be a gradual increase of difficulty leading up to the final MSQ dungeon, which requires that everything preceding that has to be slightly more difficult. Personally I think that the progression of difficulty leading into Alexandria is appropriate. There is a bit of an incline at Alexandria, but it's more of a speedbump than an actual wall thanks to how the preceding dungeons scale.

If you are implying that all the levelling dungeons are far too hard for the average player, and to be clear I am talking about the large majority of players 70% or more as form a business standpoint this is going to be a developer's primary concern and would warrant an immediate change, then I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree.

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Originally Posted by Post

but unfortunately those daily experts are tuned to be the most rewarding in weekly tomes, even a decade of alternate content later.

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Actually not true, hunt trains are.
If you can't stand expert dungeons and want a more efficient method of farming all 3 tomestones (once the weekly capped version comes out), combat materia and hunt currency at the same time, join a hunt discord for your data center.
They're technically just as boring as most dungeons but at least you get more out of your time investment.

No, I'm not at all, but I'm saying that the population is probably sustantial enough to justify it, and that considering how popular MSQ roulette still is, as mentally punishing as it is with cutscenes and repetitiveness, but how important it is to get people through it, that given a decent enough reward, it's worth keeping the population around, and would end up being consumed, and have a decent chance of people then moving upwards as they get more comfortable.

I tend to have a pretty high tolerance for peoples' different learning curves, and many, many years ago during the height of Everquest's popularity was exactly the opposite, having fairly high level of influence to the heads of design, I learned just how wrong I was in being protectionist about my playstyle and how a healthy population at every level was crucial to the long term success of a franchise, so much so that when Cataclysm beta came around in WoW, the fragrance of this disaster permeated, and I kind of watched helplessly as the same ballet played out...people acting as I had were influential and the kind of exclusion occurred and the game had, to this day, the most disastrous mass exodus in MMO history. I see similar dynamics here...not identical, but similar, and the toxicity and intolerance of people attacking players less competent than them is the biggest risk the game currently faces. During the age of ShB/EW, the game had two things happen... first was it had a population renaissance, and second, the community was recognized as standing out in its welcoming, tolerant nature.

A month into Dawntrail and that has evaporated. The venom and targeted attacks in this very forum, the "those people aren't worth it" has harmed the very soul of this community, and pulled back the curtain on the fact that they were never as good as they got the credit for being, they were just untested and when thevtest came, they failed.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

During the age of ShB/EW, the game had two things happen... first was it had a population renaissance, and second, the community was recognized as standing out in its welcoming, tolerant nature.

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The only real issue with this is that at came at the expense of what the large majority consider entertaining and engaging gameplay mechanics. At some point something has to break. This community is more than welcoming and tolerant for people willing to put in effort, and over the past few days I have seen that even the casual community is dissenting to the opinion that gameplay content is 'too hard.' Many people with disabilities are also coming forward saying that despite their challenges, they find the content enjoyable and engaging. The people that the community is extremely intolerant of are people that try to represent a voice or large subsection of the community without their consent. No one really likes being spoken for, especially when the person doing the speaking is not accurately representing them.

I have seen you also saying that the subsection of the community is large enough that it warrants change. However, after scouring many of the posts here I really only see a small handful of the same faces recurring over and over again. Small enough of a number that I can count them on my fingers. I think that if the community subsection demanding a difficulty decrease is as significant as you say that it is, a bigger effort to actually organize those voices should be made. Many of us in-game are encouraging other players that enjoy the difficulty level to go post on the forums about it in order to make sure that the changes are not needlessly reverted.

If the voices that are really affected by the difficulty that badly remain silent, like we who have wanted difficulty increase to happen for half a decade, nothing will ever happen.

To be clear, the subject of difficulty has always kind of been a problem, the people that are for making the game unilaterally more challenging and engaging are just making their voices heard now.

I feel as though we are talking in circles. I know and fully acknowledge that there was a substantial portion of the playerbase who didn't get, and deserved the content they needed. This isn't a new point, it's just kind of becoming a Pavlovian response while justifying the inverse denial of content, a concept that I find abhorrent, especially when combined with the toxicity, bullying, and piling on that is accompanying it.

Not necessarily you. I think you're trying to at least engage in a decent discussion, and agreeing or disagreeing is a reasonable exchange of opinions, but you have to at least acknowledge that the atmosphere throughout the community is one of intimidation into silence and that isn't the earmark of a world class community, and is a big part of why you tend to see more support for one side...the hostility ensures that is the outcome.

Also, to be clear, my version of "change":is additive, not a replacement.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

I feel as though we are talking in circles.

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I agree. At this point, I just don't feel as if there's a large enough portion of the community that's affected heavily enough to reasonably push for the additions and the extra development work that such additions would require. That is a point that I could concede on if, again, it were demonstrated that it was a large chunk of the community as you claim, but that has not been demonstrated clearly enough and the people voicing pushback against the idea seem to just be more sizable. It's especially damning that the very people that the ones complaining about difficulty claim to be defending have come forth to explain that they disagree. Until such a point that the chunk of community you claim to be representing comes forward in a larger volume, it kind of calls into question whether or not such a community is not more than a small handful that are being particularly loud. I won't deny that such a group could exist, but the evidence just doesn't support the claim adequately, which is where the hesitation stems from.

My fear is that we will push more work onto the devs, delaying content and other much more needed quality of life changes for a group that numbers in the hundreds as opposed to the multiple millions that play. On that particular point is where we are having a disagreement.

I can also agree that there are some less than savory intimidation tactics going on from this side of the conflict, which I am heavily disappointed in, but I also can't really blame the people doing it either because they feel like people are attempting to rob them. On the same token though, neither side is really innocent of unwholesome tactics. People claiming that the difficulty is too much are VERY quick to label the opposing viewpoint as elitist, uncaring, and selfish even when reasonable arguments, though sometimes poorly worded, are presented and I can't really blame people too much for that either. Someone that has only experienced Shadowbringers or Endwalker might feel like they are being robbed as well. You are definitely one of the more reasonable ones I think, I have seen you conceding points where they make sense to concede.

I don't think there's any more fruit in further discussion though, I think we've both done an adequate job explaining the viewpoints of both sides at this point.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

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I'm almost 40 years old, I've played this game for 10 years, and I haven't seen my capability to play it go down. It's my patience, focus and time that did. If anything, I play a lot better than when I was in my late 20's ?
My brother is late 40's, and he still games as well, plays shooters like destiny even. Like, my early 70's father is still agile and like, sharp enough to play this. I wouldn't put him through 100's of hours to learn though, he never gamed his whole life. :P
Not saying someone can't be handicapped by age, but if we're gonna like... assert that age makes you a poorer gamer conclusively for a majority, I'm not so sure about that.

About the population/community, surface level, sure, I guess it's pretty great ? Depends on how much you engage with it. Like, the reputation of its community soured a lot once it got more popular and started getting more content made about it. I've had some of the nastiest drama ever on ffxiv.
And concerning a population renaissance, it was covid, wow was bad at the time, wow streamers decided to try ffxiv. Context matters here before saying it was the content. :P
Game bled population at about the midpoint of endwalker, Yoshi P himself said the content made him sleepy, and they wanted to reintroduce tension into the game.
Look at the result of that, and this is a quote from Yoshi P: "With your support, we were able to reach a record number of concurrent users we’ve not seen since the release of A Realm Reborn in 2013."
Safe to assume part of that was these changes ?

I also really don't think there's a significant enough number of people that need changes to be made at all anyways. Once you get used to the better pacing, it feels like good ol ffxiv again.

I also addressed adding another tier of content in another post:
Let's suppose they make expert a new tier above current expert, and they create another tier of content that is endwalker difficulty under it, it's pretty clear to me that Dawntrail difficulty is where the average of the playerbase is, so players will start seeing it as the "default, average difficulty", what's under it will be considered "easy mode", so we find ourselves into a situation where the game is telling these players they're subpar. I don't think you would mind, you're probably playing this to destress and you don't need it for your dopamine rush. Try telling a younger, fiery lad prone to fomo that they're not as good as the majority of the playerbase, and they don't deserve the same rewards. He doesn't want that, he wants to be able to do the same content most can, and I don't think the team would want to send that message either. That's why other people are asking for nerfs to the content, not another tier. To be clear, I wouldn't mind it, I just don't think it would solve the issue.

Adding my name here for no changes, leave it alone. The content and even the whole expac hasent even been out for a full month (barring early access). Nor do we have the full suite of content yet in 7.0, people need to adapt to the new content Yoshi P said was going to come for many many months now.

If your new welcome and if your an older player, also welcome. If your a player that wants this content braindead, watered down, and all round boring then please understand your the minority here, and we have been asking for content to be engaging again and fun to play for a while now.

I could keep writing more but honestly I'm tired of the turbocasuals trying to make the game braindead again so I'm leaving it at that.

Honestly it is mostly the midcore players who are ignored in this game. this game has become to easy to the point that i had to leave this game to get content that i crave

I agree also that there has been unsavory tactics, mostly what in negotiation training which is referred to as "bleeding" or magnifying the negative ramifications of an action for dramatic effect and to try to use that to their advantage, as well as some nasty name calling, although it is less intimidating than the inverse, it contributes to the uncivil atmosphere.

Since none of us have any ability to actually do anything, the next step is clearly to go and have fun and see if either people adapt or something gets done.

I appreciate the interaction, and hope that at least you'll recognize that not everyone on this side is braindead or screaming for everything to be dumbed down.

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Originally Posted by Alyx-Greywind

Sure. Yoshi-P once famously said if you want harder content go do Ultimates.

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Oh my god, I am so sick of seeing this line repeated over and over. So many people act as if it's this stupid dichotomy where you either have babymode easy content or hardcore content. Not everyone wants to dedicate the time or effort to clearing ex/savage/ultimate. Some people just want a reasonable challenge and not feeling like they're going to fall asleep at their keyboard.

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Originally Posted by Alyx-Greywind

You cannot just ask the dev team to ignore one side of the feedback, that's simply not how it's going to work. If you ask the Devs to completely ignore one side of the community then the game won't have a future either, like it or not there is a need for casual players too. There can be easy content in this game as well as challenging.

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to be absolutely brutally honest, you can beat any dungeon with duty support as DPS while literally doing nothing but dodging while the npc's do damage. if you legitimately cannot clear a dungeon, there's a significant problem with your gameplay, and the devs should respond to that feedback by either discarding it or adding better non-mandatory tutorials.

People complaining about difficulty is the reason why Bozja was abandoned and that we had what might have been the worst relic questline since ARR in Endwalker. It also didn't help with the content drought.
Leave the midcore playerbase have their fun, the hardcore player have it, the bad players have it, now its our turn thank you.

The real takeaway the devs really need from all of this is that the game they made has failed to teach players how to play the game.

Hall of the Novice is woefully out of date, with outright incorrect and harmful advice, and the difficulty of the average content in the game has failed to increase with the expected experience of players (I have a feeling them selling story skips has a lot to do with this).

(1/2)
I am not replying to anything specifically. I just want to drop an experience I had at the 97ID in US server...
Was tanking as Drk, pulling slow, but the walls are closed off mostly in the 97ID, so I can't pull too much anyways.
Used my cooldowns methodically, having 2 cooldowns on at most times, and with TBN and reprisal on whenever I am pulling.
(You guys can call me elitist if you want, but I clear some savage before and I did the extremes this tier in JP-Meteor, so I just want to express I know my cooldowns to certain extent)
The issue is, I still felt the damage, and this isn't an overtune problem, because this hardly happens in JP server...
The scholar in the party...was giving me shields after I have received damage...and healer cooldowns were hardly activated...
Maybe they are trying a job they never did before, or maybe they main this job, I have no idea.
This is not common, but often enough to feel the difference between the player culture in JP vs US.


Don't get me wrong, I don't want to target healers or any server for hate, I am sharing this,
because I want to share my experience to bring up the question : Even if the devs are listening to all comments,
which comments are more valuable or which comments gives them a better and fuller picture of the whole situation?

When people on forums players claims who plays for long time, know their jobs and knows how to play the game
How do we know if this is factually true? I am not claiming people are lying but every comment on the forums is subjective.
What % of these players actually do know their jobs,
but just need to learn mechanics, or need simpler tells and/or longer time to digest what's happening?

And what % of players actually don't know their job? Or isn't really used to mechanics? Specifically new style of mechanics
(If people still do lv50MSQ dungeon/raid will notice they changed a lot of mechanics there and
they do stack and teach you you can move into aoe as long as you leave before it explodes)

Don't get me wrong, casual battle contents should still exists for those who enjoy it,
and there is no doubt the game has got more "difficult"(engaging) and I understand their standpoint because everyone wants more content for them.
I have friends who used to do savage with me, who we did M1-4 together, felt normal M1-3 were slightly "harder" than P1-3.
Not an issue but it is true that it got a lil' busier, and it does cause them more stress too, and we also have day jobs, so yea...

(2/2)
I acknowledge that with a vase player base, there will be a huge spectrum, but we as players have no data whatsoever on how able the players are in the whole spectrum,
and the devs may have more data, but I doubt they have ALL the data. You can't make a game for everyone, otherwise it will be for no one.

There are always options, but all options has trade offs:

1) Make MSQ slightly more engaging or harder (depends how you view it) to help players get accustom to mechanics in normal
(what they have picked, I am personally enjoying it, but it creates the current problem.)
OR
2) Make MSQ the way it used to ,then make hard mode dungeons(with more rewards) using more resources (Not criterion, but more like ARR hard modes)
(older players who actually knows how to play jobs and mechanics will get bored easily and it takes more SQEX resources to do so)
OR
3) Make trust system even easier than it is for players who only wants to clear story.
(this means every one can clear, and it becomes a choice, seems all good, except this will never improve the player base and will make it even less of an MMO)


But the ultimate question is this:
How do we cater to players when we don't exactly know which players are at which level of game play?
The easiest player to understand are the hardcore players, and sure they have been catered and "eating good"
But the real question now is how do we distinguish players who are mid core, casual who knows how to play and those casuals who are here for story?
From reading most of the post lately, the real arguments are now between these groups here.

What every one should try to understand is the fact that not all players who are arguing for harder content are that hardcore.
The midcore players want content for them too, that doesn't mean that if they think normal MSQ is too easy, then they should just jump to savage or ultimates.
And every one should also understand that the current MSQ is not as casual friendly as it was, this is true.

This is going into philosophy territory...but yea,
how can the devs create content for people who wants to bath in lukewarm bath, while still wants to keeping self-esteem in front of others in an MMO?
Would be it condescending to make a mode so easy for players to just stroll through with zero stress?
Or is it possible to make players step up by encouraging them to improve?
That is a question that is unanswerable in all multiplayer games, because all of these problems are completely subjective.

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Originally Posted by Puyocha

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I mean, we don't have to "know" anything, we can express our opinions and throw it on to the pile.
Ultimately, I don't think the reason they made dawntrail more dynamic is only because players have been actively asking for it.
These companies gather data while you play, they know on what people die, they also know how much.
They know what people clear, what they don't.
They can probably go as deep as comparing how much each individual player died in X expansion compared to W expansion.
They also like... Play the game. Yoshi P plays a Lalafell, and you better not talk against lalafell to him, he will send you to WoL heaven.
They looked at the feedback they get, put it against their own experience, and then put it against the data they have.
That's how they come to their own conclusions before making changes.
That's why I defer to the team, I wouldn't have been here saying the content should be harder in endwalker, I would've just left if it hadn't changed, but am certainly gonna defend this new direction in Dawntrail, it's in my interests and it's what CBU3 wants and thinks is best for everyone.
1- It's the decision the people the game belongs to made. Doesn't matter if you paid for it, it's not yours. You paid for a license.
2- Dawntrail being more dynamic suits my interests. Like Yoshi P, I was sleepy during EW lategame dungeons. ;o;
3- Because I know they made this decision in full knowledge of what's up, because they most likely have infinite data about how we engage with the game, and they came to the conclusions that led to Dawntrail being more dynamic with that. People often assume they know the full reality when they comment on topics like this, but they only have data on their own experience and a couple of others. Square has data on how everyone engages with the game. :P

Like, let's be real, people who are having trouble haven't even given themselves the chance to learn the new content, soon as they felt a little bit of resistance, they came to the forums in all their entitlement. Once you learn it, it doesn't feel harder at all.
Concerning data, it's so valuable to these companies, you can be absolutely 100% certain that they're collecting all the data they can about your usage. I don't think you all need to worry about security, they're not selling it, they're using it to tailor the experience to the silent majority. Indirect way to make sure they keep getting your money, but it's also in your (or at least most people's) interest. Square "hears" the silent majority through this, something we don't have to properly judge the whole situation.

And like, this is a bit more personal, am a producer, I make music, like, imagine going on spotify, listening to an artist's song, and not liking it.
Instead of going to listen to another artist, you petition the artist for them to change their style because they got paid royalties for you listening, therefore they have to cater to you. It makes -NO SENSE AT ALL- in this context, and just about every other context, but with video games, a lot of gamers do this for some reason ? I'm here to experience CBU3's creative vision, not the creative vision of some random dude who can't clear M2, sorry. ;o;
If their creative vision stops aligning with what I like in a game, I speak with my money, I don't ask for it to change, I let the artist come to that decision.
If they don't want my money, it's fine, I won't twist their arm to take it, they've made a choice, and I respect that, I will move on.

Also am not targeting you directly, these are general statements. ♥

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Originally Posted by Jukebox12

Honestly it is mostly the midcore players who are ignored in this game. this game has become to easy to the point that i had to leave this game to get content that i crave

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exactly, normal raids are way too easy , the gap between a normal raid and an EX trial is way too large, especialy the older normal raids are an absolute joke beside some janky mechanics here and there.

Normal raids should be way way more difficult, about half of an EX trial.

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Originally Posted by Puyocha

(snip)

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I think that the SCH that you had may have either been unfamiliar with either the dungeon or the job - especially on SCH, where they might have leveled SMN before. In addition to that, I think some of these 'lower-skill' players (not meant to be said derogatorily) may have gotten complacent with the difficulty of normal content in 5.x and 6.x, so this jump in difficulty comes out of nowhere and demands more than they're used to giving.

I think this can be solved with more detailed tutorials per role, let it be a revamped Hall of the Novice, an addition to Stone Sky Sea, or something to help players learn what the content demands of them before they get put into content they may struggle with. If a player is dead-set on it being an easy zero-stress experience, I can envision a "story mode" being added in the future, which limits you to Trusts in dungeons, removes item drops and EXP gains, and vastly improves the party damage output while vastly reducing incoming damage.

That aside, I think this difficulty is what I would expect after 10 years of the game being out - if the content difficulty continued to increase from expansion to expansion, this is around the difficulty I would anticipate. However, the 4.x -> 5.x -> 6.x difficulty was a downwards curve instead, so the expectation was that this content would be *less* difficult again, rather than a spike in difficulty. This isn't to say that I think the content is difficult, but the difference in the necessary skill floor has increased against expectation.

It could also be a difference in regional culture, but as I can't read Japanese a lot of what I've heard on Twitter is that the JP forums have also been upset with the difficulty of normal content, with a non-negligible amount of players struggling to proceed past the Lv 94 solo duty. From that, I would anticipate that this is not a difference in culture, but a matter of unfamiliarity and a mismatch of the player's expectation against the content of the game.

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Originally Posted by jdtuggey

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I mean yea I agree with you, I love the current difficulty too.
I am just concerned with people who complain with the difficulty...I want to know where they are actually coming from.

As an artist who draw to earn a living, I understand what you said. But I also listen to my clients and editors, but that doesn't mean I budge.
I try to understand where they are coming from, and find other ways to satisfy those things.
As we all know, their feelings might be valid, but their suggestions for change could be bad.

The reason why knowing is important is, others get to judge for themselves if those sentiments are true or not.
I understand their feelings, but I also wonder what sort of "sacrifices" they are willing to make to get what they want. (goes back to the art and music part)
Because we all know to achieve anything, one needs to commit to it.
And from what I see, they are more commit to complain about the game than actually learn about the game...
And I am fully aware I might be wrong on this, hence I want to know what level do they actually play.
And if they are avoid learning the game, why?
I wonder if they will get bored with the same gameplay, or same tells every time, or jobs getting the same.
Which is exactly what the healer strike was about...
I guess my question is, where is the middle ground?
And have they considered the midcore player's position, instead of just pushing everyone who thinks normal is easy as elitest?

ps I also don't want to just say casual is bad, thats no my point. But there is a difference between an actual bad player and a casual player.
would be helpful if the casual players actually distinguish this, so we can separate the wheat from the chaff.

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Originally Posted by Puyocha

As an artist who draw to earn a living, I understand what you said. But I also listen to my clients and editors, but that doesn't mean I budge.
I try to understand where they are coming from, and find other ways to satisfy those things.
As we all know, their feelings might be valid, but their suggestions for change could be bad.

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Of course there's nuance to that, if I'm doing a commission, it's another story entirely, for example.
I also listen to feedback from people I trust a lot, but these people tell me "oh god this definitely sounds like you", and this part is so important to me.
Usually the feedback I take is "this instrument is too loud", but then again I wouldn't listen to an isolated voice in dozens of voices telling me it's fine ?
I also have data to guide me, some styles and sounds I tackle get more hits than others, it gives me a general sense of where to go, moreso than feedback.

I'm speaking more about a particular entitlement I see in gaming communities that like...
They feel it's okay to ask the devs (ie: the artist) to accommodate subjective changes to make the experience palatable to them, regardless of the consequences on the rest of the playerbase and with no respect for this "It's their game" part.
I hear people say "This game is for everyone", like no, I wouldn't play a game like that. Just like I don't make or listen to music that is made for everyone. Immediately, you see that "This game is for everyone" is an oxymoron. :D
Making something "for everyone" makes it stale and generic, and there's people that don't like that, therefore, it's impossible to make things for everyone. :P

When an experience is not palatable to me to the point of saying things like "I might as well stay dead and leech my clears from you all", I don't ask for change, I just don't engage rofl.
If a majority of people agree with me and decides not to engage anymore, the devs will feel the consequences of these changes, and we've respected their artistic integrity and the "It's their game" part.
We're also respecting the experience of a majority of players here. If you turn out to be in a minority, sucks for you, but it feels reasonable for everyone involved that you seek an experience that checks your boxes.
The "but endwalker worked for me!" argument doesn't work, because I can reverse that argument as a veteran and say that HW/StB difficulty worked for me, and Dawntrail is a step towards a return to form.

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Originally Posted by jdtuggey

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Yup yup, that is why I think knowing is important too, gives a better general sense, I think this general skill helps us critically think, and think about the feedback, to get what is important and get rid of the noise.
And like manga, if you put everything into one manga, it loses it's identity and uniqueness, so it is impossible to make something for everyone.
There is this trend as of late where people complain about a protagonist in a certain anime, but those who complain didn't actually put themselves in the character's shoes...which kind of baffles me.

I think the nuance lies in example like this: people need to be able to distinguish if something is bad because it really is bad? Or it is just "not their taste / habit". I don't wanna go into the MSQ story here, but it is divisive and mixed. I don't like it, but I don't hate it. If anything my personal opinion is, there are some really really good parts, but there are some really weird misses, which makes the good parts contrast with these parts...and becomes mixed. But enough of that here.
I guess a good discussion is that we can be in good faith and actually see if the problem is the game or the player.
As for normal difficulty, I think as many have point to, the problem is that we have been on a downward difficulty and most players are accustomed to the difficulty of EW, for better (if they just casual) or worse (if they felt bored) and the sudden spike up while good for those who want something engaging, maybe a bit of a steep curve for those who are fine with the difficulty before.

Another personal experience: I have been doing some M1-4 with my friends, we wiped a lot but we learnt and got past it in 1 night.
They do feel that the mechanics are generally faster, so in that sense it is more "difficult"
So from that perspective, maybe i would consider the cast for mechanic 1 gcd longer (its a bit too long, maybe 1.5sec)
But the mechanic doesn't need change, so people have slightly more time to read and understand.
As a tank, I feel that the damage is not harsh for normal, in fact it is probably a bit more generous than before.
So players can make more mistakes, but only up to a certain point. (not for extreme, extreme still requires good mitigation)
M2's hearts mechanic is annoying, I didn't like it, but its funny because we joke that savage would probably be strict,
and the patterns becomes clearer, then it may actually become more easy than normal.
But aside from that, the 3 hearts on the head, that is a really good way to teach players too.

I definitely think this is going in the right direction, but it is hard to change player habits.

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Originally Posted by Puyocha

There are always options, but all options has trade offs:

1) Make MSQ slightly more engaging or harder (depends how you view it) to help players get accustom to mechanics in normal
(what they have picked, I am personally enjoying it, but it creates the current problem.)
OR
2) Make MSQ the way it used to ,then make hard mode dungeons(with more rewards) using more resources (Not criterion, but more like ARR hard modes)
(older players who actually knows how to play jobs and mechanics will get bored easily and it takes more SQEX resources to do so)
OR
3) Make trust system even easier than it is for players who only wants to clear story.
(this means every one can clear, and it becomes a choice, seems all good, except this will never improve the player base and will make it even less of an MMO)

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Dungeon difficulty options where they scale up the difficulty by scaling up the numbers and offer better rewards for higher difficulties. The difficulty can scale infinitely, but the rewards only scale to a point.

This can be done more programmatically, which means they can set up the system once and maintaining it becomes a relatively low-cost way to massively increase the amount of content available to players at all skill/difficulty levels.
It also eliminates the problem of dungeons becoming trivial once people get a little bit of gear.

When another MMO did this, it was so massively popular that it created an entire new pillar of the game.

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Originally Posted by Alyx-Greywind

You cannot just ask the dev team to ignore one side of the feedback, that's simply not how it's going to work. If you ask the Devs to completely ignore one side of the community then the game won't have a future either, like it or not there is a need for casual players too. There can be easy content in this game as well as challenging.

Like it or not there has to be accomodation for both casuals and raiders alike. If that means slightly tuning down the Story/Narrative modes of Raids and making MSQ accessible to a majority of players regardless of skill? Sure. Yoshi-P once famously said if you want harder content go do Ultimates. Yes Endwalker was easy but that doesn't mean we bring up the Story Content progressively until it's near Extreme.

If anything we should be asking for content such as Criterion, the Eureka/Bozja type content to fulfill the midcore jump.

Funnily enough I'm happy for more content to be difficult but I want it to be placed appropriately. If the direction is this for the foreseeable future then I'm fine with that but I won't ever endorse outright ignoring other players.

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Yet the Minority of players complain on here saying they are the majority and the push back that is happening is proving that. He has a point.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

The problem with your position is multifold.

1.First and foremost, people who don't like the difficulty know exactly how to play the game as it was designed and has existed for every single expac until this. You are asking them to play a different game.

2. No one is asking for content which is set aside to be challenging to be not available to you. Everyone wants you to have content for you. These folks want content for them consistent with the entire game up to this point, and your position seeks to deny them of that.

3. People aren't queuing for daily roulettes for multiple reasons related to Dawntrail dungeons.

A. Toxicity is much higher with votekicks, performance pressure and impatience.

B. Performance anxiety demotivates people from queuing with jobs they aren't comfortable with, and especially those with cast times.

Finally, and probably most important, FFXIV has a reputation for being a "big tent" game that tries to support all playstyles, andvthis is a drastic deviation from thst.

Older players, non gamers, disabled players, those who have any kind of challenge are being told "you and your subscription are not wanted".

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1. They have had from level 1 to 100 to learn to play if content becomes too hard because you didnt learn how to play that is on you not the game.
2. They are actively wanting the majority of the content in the game dumbed down so they can continue to not learn to do mechanics and be carried passed the finish line.
3. thats on them. I dont do it for reasons i have limited time and put that to other things over the roulettes.
A never been kicked in a dungeon or roulette in my entire time playing even when i was performing bad.
b. If you have anxiety in a game That is something you should deal with why should everyone else try to help your anxiety if you refuse to deal with it?

A game you try to make for everyone ends up being a game for no one. That is the path the game will go down if they bend the knee to everyone. Devs are making the game more entertaining games don't have to be for everyone and that is okay.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

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.

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And your comment was braindead. You 100% knew there was a difference between what he said and what you said but you said it just to try and "prove" your point you don't care about disabled people you want to use them to push your own narrative

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

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

I mean who's exaggerating now? At no point was this ever a position that I took. My position is that it's simply not worth joining daily roulettes, that it creates too much stress for normal content, and that they aren't even THAT much overtuned, that most of the mechanics are pretty good and that the content is overall pretty fun, but they could use tuning on specific encounters.

This is a LONG, LONG way from how you describe it.

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If the content stresses you out. then don't play it.

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Originally Posted by Vocal_Night

How dare you.

You seem to forget that one side of the feedback was ignored for nearly 3 expansions
I will agree that we need to try (important word here), try to have content for everybody in this game, but there comes a poiint where something has to give.
The content we've had since stormblood was, for the vast majority of the playerbase, mind numbling boring, specially in EW. I had to take a 1 year break from the game and was seriously considering skipping DW because i couldn't, i just couldn't take the content anymore.

Now in Dawntrail we get a crumb, a crumb, of engaging dungeons and boss fights, a raid tier that dosn't put me to sleep and dosn't make me dread getting it in roulettes because the bosses are utterly BORING damage sponges, (especially P8).
I finally get a raid tier that i'm actually queing more than once even after i got my daily rewards to practice my rotations and help people.

I've actually spent an entire afternoon grinding a single dungeon for a set, because i enjoy the dungeon and the combat, do you have any idea when was the last time i did this? In stormblood launch, 6 years ago.

And now, just because the content is a bit more engaging, now that the content is 2 cm up in the difficulty scale, we have to listen to a minority of individuals that are complaining and losing their minds?

Please, no. I understand, i really really do, some people have problems, but we can't keep the game at such a low baseline that we need shovels to find it.

This has been going on for nearly 3 expansions now and it is actually insulting for people to come here and say they are being ignored, because i and a vast majority of midcore players felt ignored for 6 years now.

You also seem to not understand what the word casual means, the people complaining about the difficulty are in no way or shape casuals, we need to stop using the word as a blanket pejorative word. Being casual dosn't mean you are bad at the game.

We need options for the outliers yes, but please. The games combat team has done a wonderful job this expansion, don't bring us back to EW, i beg of you.

To YoshiP and team, and to this thread OP, i agree with you. THANK YOU for this expansions battle content. Me and many others are enjoying it.

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I stand by my view the majority of people complaining are the ones that AFK in limsa all day and don't do much passed that once they are done with content of MSQ or the people that only sub for a few weeks every new expansion and don't pay the rest of the time till next expansion.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

This isn't a "crumb", and no one at any point advocated for you to not have access to challenging content anywhere. Seriously, it's time to come down off that cross.

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I went through the entire story ARR to EW in 2020 it progressively got easier and easier i was getting bored. Now in DT it is actually better and more entertaining. And it is just a small change of making content more engaging is what was changed. It literally was a crumb

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Originally Posted by Mlem

Or go the other direction. Have an extremely casual, 0 stress MSQ experience that unlocks some optional dungeons as it goes. Then there wouldn't be any constraints as to how hard they could be.

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Pls no....i dont want a game like WOW else id go play WOW

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

I don't agree with your foil hat summary. People that are making the argument are saying in essence that content which is going to pop up in their daily roulette shouldn't make them regret having joined it.

It seems that a viable solution could be found by redefining things...make a normal roulette that has the content tuned in line with how the game has always scaled, including all the dungeons and then change expert to be essentially the current content or tuned just a bit harder and you've now covered what everyone wants, and not engaging simply becomes a choice. If it's too boring for you, you don't have to do it (although since MSQ is still the most popular roulette, I doubt too many folks'll avoid it), and if expert is too stressful, then the other folks won't have to do it.

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The Dailies aren't FOR you. Its meant to filling dungeons and trials in lower level instances so people can get through the story. You are given an incentive to do them

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Originally Posted by Alyx-Greywind

Sure. Yoshi-P once famously said if you want harder content go do Ultimates.

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Really that is what your argument is? That doesnt mean we can't have content scale up in difficulty over each expansion

i agree with the points you're making here for the most part but that's like nine pots in a row homie you can just put the quotes in one post

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Originally Posted by EiraWoqiso

i agree with the points you're making here for the most part but that's like nine pots in a row homie you can just put the quotes in one post

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im at work and was reading fourms and replying as i got to each post. That is why they all ended up like that

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Originally Posted by MegaOddly

The Dailies aren't FOR you. Its meant to filling dungeons and trials in lower level instances so people can get through the story. You are given an incentive to do them

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You got almost all the way there, but choked at the last step. The entire point of invoking dailies is the incentive, not the intent. In order to fulfill the intended purpose of having enough churn to have a group available when someone working their way through content. That requires a large enough population to want to participate, and if you don't have that, the system falls apart.

The entire point is that the incentive to queue must be there across the board, nothing in this game, because of its linear, story based MSQ is as important as a healthy population to select from in daily roulettes to ensure that downtime is minimized. The overwhelming majority of dailies are done by groups which don't have a single player doing story progression, precisely because they need people incentivized to queue up so that when it is needed, there will be a ready made group waiting for them. If a sizeable enough number of people feel the incentive doesn't justify the stress, then the experience of the people it's aimed at, those consuming the story suffers.

Furthermore, that isn't even entirely accurate. The roulettes are to fill the queue of anyone who needs to do a specific piece of content, not necessarily just low end story based. So if you queue up to do a specific dungeon, the system draws from the roulette pool regardless of whether or not you are going through story based content or not, and the same is true for frontlines. Basically, it's just a system designed to match need (demand) with available players (supply).

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

You got almost all the way there, but choked at the last step. The entire point of invoking dailies is the incentive, not the intent. In order to fulfill the intended purpose of having enough churn to have a group available when someone working their way through content. That requires a large enough population to want to participate, and if you don't have that, the system falls apart.

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Yes, if the game keeps bleeding veterans, it will be hard to get in queue to clear story indeed. It will be hard to learn it too.

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Originally Posted by Jaxtaro

The entire point is that the incentive to queue must be there across the board, nothing in this game, because of its linear, story based MSQ is as important as a healthy population to select from in daily roulettes to ensure that downtime is minimized. The overwhelming majority of dailies are done by groups which don't have a single player doing story progression, precisely because they need people incentivized to queue up so that when it is needed, there will be a ready made group waiting for them. If a sizeable enough number of people feel the incentive doesn't justify the stress, then the experience of the people it's aimed at, those consuming the story suffers.

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Yes, I need to be incentivized to queue up. I had no incentive to queue up for large swathes of time in Endwalker, cause I didn't really need tomes or xp, and the content was boring.
I was doing roulettes in endwalker only to play with my friends in the latter half. That means I wasn't contributing to the queue, because I didn't like the content all that much. I like gaming with friends tho. ;o
Like, there's always two sides to a coin. When the game is interesting to me, am incentivized to be online, and through just that, I find sprouts to help in novice network and in dungeons, and I try hard in dungeons, making them runs smoother, which might offer someone who's not willing/can't put the average amount of effort a little bit of breathing room. I'm not willing to believe people only run queues because they're incentivized to do so. I know I don't.
What can I say, I like playing the game. ;o; Not saying removing the incentive would work, rather saying that it's more nuanced than "I queue to get tomes". :P

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Originally Posted by jdtuggey

Yes, if the game keeps bleeding veterans, it will be hard to get in queue to clear story indeed. It will be hard to learn it too.



Yes, I need to be incentivized to queue up. I had no incentive to queue up for large swathes of time in Endwalker, cause I didn't really need tomes or xp, and the content was boring.
I was doing roulettes in endwalker only to play with my friends in the latter half. That means I wasn't contributing to the queue, because I didn't like the content all that much. I like gaming with friends tho. ;o
Like, there's always two sides to a coin. When the game is interesting to me, am incentivized to be online, and through just that, I find sprouts to help in novice network and in dungeons, and I try hard in dungeons, making them runs smoother, which might offer someone who's not willing/can't put the average amount of effort a little bit of breathing room. I'm not willing to believe people only run queues because they're incentivized to do so. I know I don't.
What can I say, I like playing the game. ;o; Not saying removing the incentive would work, rather saying that it's more nuanced than "I queue to get tomes". :P

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One of the problems with these kind of discussions is that we are so accustomed to taking "good guy/bad guy" sides that it makes real interaction impossible. There is no part of my post that you responded to which warrants an argument over who is being served or not, because that wasn't the intent of the response, but if you want to go there, fine, let's go there.

People are willing to queue for content which is "too easy" and always have been, and always will be as long as they stand to gain something from it. For evidence, I only need point to the continued popularity if MSQ dailies, which are not only completely braindead content, but are often more time consuming and full of long, unavoidable cutscenes. Your argument in the face of that is literally invalidated.

There were no lack of queues in ShB or EW, both cited as gouge out your eyes boring easymode. The existence of all of these eliminates the notion that daily content being "too easy" drives people away or has a negative impact on queue times.

You have a lot stronger arguments you can use to advocate for more challenging/engaging content...you should probably use those, because this one is a nowhere burger.

At the end of it though, what I was responding to wasn't the difficulty topic in that post you responded to, but a very specific set of claims about what the daily roulettes were.