the normal content is too easy

Stat Templates. You shouldn't be able to solo dungeons sync'd as a SCH. Make sure the dungeon plays as intended and future proof it.


I have already said my peace but hoooboy we are not having "balance is the only good card" discourse again in 2022. I will behave. I will not recite the old texts.

(Only bad Ast thought that, and the optimization was for making sure balance was used correctly when you pulled it because it had the biggest gap between useless and god-tier in usage.)

I failed. Flog me for I deserve it.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

As a healer main, I am not in any way suggesting the current state of healing in this game is good. Believe me, I am painfully aware of how simplistic our jobs have gotten.

I am saying that if we want to complain about the state of the game, I do not think that you can put the blame for all of the current state entirely on the "casual" audience, as some folks often seem to want to.

Just because healers now aren't happy with the AST card system as it stands doesn't change the fact that folks—some of them the same folks complaining now—were also complaining that only the Balance was worth playing back in Stormblood, and those complaints about numerically optimal play with cards were not—so far as I can tell—from the "casual" side of the playerbase. The changes we've gotten may not be the ones we wanted, but I do think they're partly our own fault. I know if I were a game designer working on this game, the "well, they're going to turn every dungeon into a linear speed-run, no matter what we make" factor would absolutely begin to figure into my design considerations. After all, why bother spending time on puzzles and side-hallways and such if most of the playerbase will never do them? You could spend that time on other game elements instead.

That's not the only reason, of course; making the MSQ and game more approachable almost certainly is a factor. I just don't think making things more approachable is the only factor in play here.

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Well yes. The other fairly obvious major factor is Square. They have a manager, two job designers, and an intern working on the ever-increasing number of jobs we have available. Not a single one of them mains a healer. They have neither the time nor the expertise to take a critique about counterintuitive job design and work through it thoughtfully; if the community complains about something, just bash it with the easy hammer until it's unrecognizable but quick to design.

The casual community isn't exactly responsible for getting the jobs to where they are at the moment. They're just rejoicing that they got here; Square's incompetence steered us this way.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

The changes we've gotten may not be the ones we wanted, but I do think they're partly our own fault.

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Sorry, but I refuse to take any responsibility for WHM's early lily era in Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by Sunhwapark

Sorry, but I refuse to take any responsibility for WHM's early lily era in Stormblood.

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I mean... fair? I suspect the job designer or designers who came up with that—and anyone who approved it—would prefer not to take responsibility for that situation either.

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Originally Posted by RocciaSolida

Why do you want the normal content to be harder? Just yesterday I did a Vanaspati (level 85 dungeon) run in roulette and got matched with a RPR that didn't use Enshroud once, it took us around 35 minutes to clear.
People give zero F's about doing even the bare minimum, imagine what would happen if the content was harder.
I'm all for making the normal content as braindead as possible.

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They have this thought process purely because the content never challenges them! And get a grip a instance taking 5 min longer doesn’t make it “harder”

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

I mean... fair? I suspect the job designer or designers who came up with that—and anyone who approved it—would prefer not to take responsibility for that situation either.

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True, and I do agree with what you said in your other post that the low difficulty for content makes it more approachable to the general userbase.
I do like that we can run most dungeons without it being extremely difficult, as that's frustrating but also when dungeons are thrown into roulettes it's less problematic and reduces the amount of times you queue into content only to have people leave instantly upon entering because it's content they don't wanna run due to the fact that it can either be a very smooth and fast run, or take forever and be a slugfest (like Aurum Vale/Vault/Amdapor).

I think I'd just want the harder content to be difficult, not really worried about the storymode difficulty level content but I'm not opposed to it being made a bit more engaging... somehow.

game is not challenging much anymore.... and old areas is pretty much rendered useless as well.

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Originally Posted by RocciaSolida

Why do you want the normal content to be harder? Just yesterday I did a Vanaspati (level 85 dungeon) run in roulette and got matched with a RPR that didn't use Enshroud once, it took us around 35 minutes to clear.

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Probably because there’s honestly no reason to. I don’t condone people not learning their jobs, but nothing in the normal course of this game requires that. You can clear things by simply auto-attacking your way through, or spamming the first ability of your combo.

If the game actually required the use of one’s brain, perhaps there would be less of these types of players.

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People give zero F's about doing even the bare minimum, imagine what would happen if the content was harder.

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They would no longer be able to skirt by on the coattails of others. I fail to see the issue with that.

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I'm all for making the normal content as braindead as possible.

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I’m not. I prefer to be engaged when I’m doing content. One of the main reasons I avoid Alliance Roulette is because of how common the CT raids are in it, and all three are basically resident sleepers.

I wish they would undo whatever they did in the past year that made all legacy content complete faceroll. They must have done some sort of stat adjustment for EW that made most content prior to the current expansion a complete joke. Dungeons for example, are like night and day compared to just last summer. Quite simply, everything does far less damage, and dies much faster. If I didn't know better I'd say they completely broke lower level scaling.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

As I've pointed out before, how often does anyone take alternate paths in any ARR dungeon that has side areas? How often does anyone bother with the puzzles in Qarn? Even in 1.x, there were people who posted the "optimal" path through Toto-Rak to hit all three diremites. We've demonstrated that no matter what they give us as a dungeon, we will optimize it down to the shortest path possible to get rewards, and then run that path as fast as we can, pulling everything until the dungeon forces us to stop.

And that is not on the "casuals", that is on those of us who do higher-end content. Most "casual" players I encounter would be happy to do the puzzles in Qarn or wander into side hallways, because they're not the ones trying to speed-run the dungeons. You want the devs to cater to us? They did; I would lay solid odds that's a big part of why more recent dungeons are now pre-optimized into linear hallways for us.

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You have it backwards. Part of the fun in re-running MMO dungeons comes from knowing all the little routing and pulling tricks and being able to show off your skills. You make a video game dungeon so people can discern which parts are necessary and find the route through. That is not a flaw of the content, that is the intent. Puzzles are not worthless for having solutions!

Other games solve the problem of people optimizing away side paths and pulling everything by putting stuff in side paths that makes people want to go down them and creating enemies that are capable of killing careless players. FF14 "solves" the problem by preemptively removing the possibility of fun, churning out bland hallways with automatic pull partitions and useless loot you'll replace after an hour. It's terrible, robotic, cynical design.

"But people will be rude to new players who don't know the routes!"

Just like how they're rude to new players who want to watch the long story cutscenes in ARR dungeons? No, they aren't, because the community and moderators already come down hard on jerks who ruin the new player experience.