People Enjoy hard Games

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Originally Posted by Aravell

The only thing being spoken by the people in that case is that there's a lot of reasons to pick SMN. What people don't seem to realise is that not everyone who plays SMN enjoys it. Just like how not everyone who did Eureka enjoyed it.

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I am someone who currently plays SMN on a few alts that *misses* the way it used to play. give me back my freaking dots, SE!

Some people enjoy hard games. There's a difference between something challenging and something being hard.

I consider myself a midcore player, good enough to have succesfuly cleared some old extremes, but bad enough to stay away from Savage because of how badly I played tank against Alexander Prime (Normal) and Sephirot (Extreme). I think this game has more than enough midcore content, the problem is that nowadays the lack of an ilvl sync for most of it, on top of a long history of class changes, makes it a joke.

There's also the issue of how big of a leap in difficulty is going from Normal, to Extreme, to Savage. In my own experience, Normal does very little to prepare you for the extreme versions of Trials, and if what I've read holds true, Savage Raids are even worse. Normal introduces you to mechanics that either will completely change or become irrelevant on the Extreme version, giving you a false sense of mastery and security once you clear it, and confusion when you have no idea what the hell killed you. Also, the game does nothing to introduce players into harder content. The game teaches you that every instanced content you unlock can be queued for in DF, but no one has the will to go and do it for Extremes/Savage, so new players are faced with infinite queues, or with groups full of people who have no idea what they're getting into, usually led by a frustrated mentor because he does know how things will play out. Many people will say "you can do PF", but the game never actually bothers to teach you that alternative, and even then, very few people seem to be interested in doing old extremes without unsync, whcih might speak volumes of how "engaging" they find that content to be in the long run. I recall reading somewhere that Yoshi-P said they don't want people skipping old content because they worked hard on it, but I don't see SE making an effort to keep it relevant.

And speaking of encounter design, that's also a problem in FFXIV. The 2 Minute Meta has been so far what has really kept me on edge about trying Savages, and I consider it one of the biggest walls for new players to get involved in hard content and learn, as it's one of the most anti-PUG designs I've ever encountered in an MMO. The game doesn't takes into account personal mastery of the encounter and instead punishes good players for the mistakes of others.

Also keep in mind that usually, hardcore players in MMOs are a low percentage, and games that have tried to carter to said demographic usually fail. Sadly, it's the Limsa Catgirls and the Hrothgar Furries in Faerie that pay the bills for FFXIV Devs, and I am sure they'd rather lose 4 regular subs than that one player who will buy an entire catalog of outfits for alts and any new shiny cosmetic and mount. We in the forums of any game are usually the most passionate bunch, and also very vocal, but we aren't really a substantial part of the population.

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Originally Posted by WeebPolice

Nobody is lobbying for SE to make the game hostile to casual players yet you brought that up.

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Yeah idk why so many players people who don’t engage with anything extreme and up take the is as a personal attack, I think everyone is in agreement that the msq and normal mode content should be accessible, but there needs to be better slope into endgame content.

The same issue with SMN. The number of people who get so huffy thinking the calls to make SMN more engaging is a personal attack. Here’s a reality check: every single job at its core is easy to play. What people are interested in and where the difficult comes in is the optimization of the job. SMN doesn’t really have any. And when you don’t engage in any content that has a hard enrage check (extreme and up), it’s just not something that is really considered or something you are required to think about. It’s optional for casual content, and it’s entirely for more advanced content. It’s why people gatekeep endgame conversations, it’s not personal but it requires a different mentality. That’s why you see a lot of pushback against two specific serial posters; one who continually demonstrated they don’t understand the game on a fundamental level and another one who has labeled all endgame players with a broad brush in a self crusade against “cheaters and elitists”. These players claim that they have provoked the “official forums bully mob”, but in reality the content of their posts just shows they lack the experience to what actually happens in high level group content, since they don’t actively participate in it.

The reality is that the difficulty in this game is 100% optional (extreme to ultimate is literally not required at all to enjoy the msq), and the MSQ encounters are always going to be balanced around high completion rates. It’s why certain players are scoffed at when they contribute to balance discussions. No one should be excluded on job feedback at a base level, but to not realize that balance in this game is based around 2 things; week 1 savage and ultimate is ignorant.

When people say they want harder games, what they want in a MMO is more optional difficulty, which comes from both encounter design, and higher level optimizations of the jobs which plays very heavily into a jobs theoretical maximum dps. No one should be coming for casual content.

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

post too long to quote

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That's the problem with casuals, at least in FFXIV, they want it their way and only their way, they cant accept that people want challenging content because then they feel like they "HAVE" to do it (yet it provides basically nothing to do so, aside from a small ilevel increase), they just have to get the same thing as everybody, else they will cry about it endlessly on the forums about how they are treated differently.

The difficulty of the content in itself is the reason why I refuse to do the content FFXIV has to offer and I would rather do content in WoW, and use FFXIV for the social aspect and housing, content in FFXIV is an absolute joke, a slow paced complete bore with 0 job uniqueness and no "cool" spells, a 2 minutes meta that reinforces even more the bore effect of it, and with a more than mediocre difficulty that is barely equal to HC in WoW, and I am sure I am not the only one to think that way, the casual side of this game is happy, but the side that actually wants a challenge and wants to play the game is not.

To me, the biggest problem is that we got very easy normal mode stuff (dungeons, trials, 8+24 man raid) and then if you want something more challenging you have to go to Extreme trials or Savage raids. That leaves a very wide gap in the middle for the more mid-core gamers that want a challenge, but not long progs like with Extremes and up.
And then we have something like Variant/Criterion which is basicly very easy, savage and savage plus.

Personally I would love for some content of similar difficulty to on-release Orbonne Monastery, it was difficult and fun without being pushed all the way into extreme.

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

It’s why people gatekeep endgame conversations, it’s not personal but it requires a different mentality.

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There would honestly be better conversation around this topic if people who don't have a deep understanding on the topic didn't dig in their heels and refuse to be corrected on anything. It's extremely frustrating when people go in with a misconception and refuse to accept that they're wrong, so they dig in their heels and keep repeating the wrong information everywhere as if there weren't 10 people trying to correct them.

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Originally Posted by SophiaDL

That's the problem with casuals, at least in FFXIV, they want it their way and only their way, they cant accept that people want challenging content because then they feel like they "HAVE" to do it (yet it provides basically nothing to do so, aside from a small ilevel increase), they just have to get the same thing as everybody, else they will cry about it endlessly on the forums about how they are treated differently.

The difficulty of the content in itself is the reason why I refuse to do the content FFXIV has to offer and I would rather do content in WoW, and use FFXIV for the social aspect and housing, content in FFXIV is an absolute joke, a slow paced complete bore with 0 job uniqueness and no "cool" spells, a 2 minutes meta that reinforces even more the bore effect of it, and with a more than mediocre difficulty that is barely equal to HC in WoW, and I am sure I am not the only one to think that way, the casual side of this game is happy, but the side that actually wants a challenge and wants to play the game is not.

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I don’t raid mythic anymore and havnt since legion, so I can’t speak on current difficulty but still currently raid heroic and idk, I am not sure I agree 100% with your sentiment. I find different enjoyment in raiding on both but ultimate on content especially the new ones are far and above anything I did in wow during mop-legion when I was most active in mythic raiding.

But idk I find raiding in this game to still be a lot of fun despite the changes to the meta (it is a sour taste but not one to completely ruin my enjoyment). It’s out of passion that the game is solid fundamentally but could be improved upon that gets players like myself heated up and itching for improvement.

As for the first statement on the casual issue, idk it’s hard. Everyone obviously in it for their own personal enjoyment and experiences but people have convinced themselves that the status quo is going to change when in theory it shouldn’t and thing will be no different day to day for the casual player. Convincing people of it is the difficult issue.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

There would honestly be better conversation around this topic if people who don't have a deep understanding on the topic didn't dig in their heels and refuse to be corrected on anything. It's extremely frustrating when people go in with a misconception and refuse to accept that they're wrong, so they dig in their heels and keep repeating the wrong information everywhere as if there weren't 10 people trying to correct them.

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The issue is instead of questioning their understanding of the game this person chooses to view themselves like the john wick meme with everyone pointing a gun at their head

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

I don’t raid mythic anymore and havnt since legion, so I can’t speak on current difficulty but still currently raid heroic and idk, I am not sure I agree 100% with your sentiment. I find different enjoyment in raiding on both but ultimate on content especially the new ones are far and above anything I did in wow during mop-legion when I was most active in mythic raiding.

But idk I find raiding in this game to still be a lot of fun despite the changes to the meta (it is a sour taste but not one to completely ruin my enjoyment). It’s out of passion that the game is solid fundamentally but could be improved upon that gets players like myself heated up and itching for improvement.

As for the first statement on the casual issue, idk it’s hard. Everyone obviously in it for their own personal enjoyment and experiences but people have convinced themselves that the status quo is going to change when in theory it shouldn’t and thing will be no different day to day for the casual player. Convincing people of it is the difficult issue.

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Ultimate content is extremely rare though as in the pacing in between one and the next, so even if you do compare it to WoW, it's very different by design, ultimates in FFXIV are an extremely "limited" ressource, while mythic raiding happens every raid tier, so even if it might be true that ultimate difficulty has a higher skill ceiling/difficulty in general, it's also.. very scarce, which makes it unfun, because in my opinion you can do one fight only so many times until eventually you get fed up by it, WoW refreshes it every raid tier, FFXIV does not.

Regarding the casual issue, the problem is that they dont want things to change, they dont want to understand, they just dont want the difficulty to exist, because lets be honest here, FFXIV players are entitled, they want everything, but also dont want to do any effort to get it, they know if something get added, they'll want it the second it comes out and will have to do the effort to get it, or just complain that they cant get it because its too hard. We both know which one they'll pick, or at least the majority will pick.

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Originally Posted by SophiaDL

That's the problem with casuals, at least in FFXIV, they want it their way and only their way, they cant accept that people want challenging content because then they feel like they "HAVE" to do it (yet it provides basically nothing to do so, aside from a small ilevel increase), they just have to get the same thing as everybody, else they will cry about it endlessly on the forums about how they are treated differently.

The difficulty of the content in itself is the reason why I refuse to do the content FFXIV has to offer and I would rather do content in WoW, and use FFXIV for the social aspect and housing, content in FFXIV is an absolute joke, a slow paced complete bore with 0 job uniqueness and no "cool" spells, a 2 minutes meta that reinforces even more the bore effect of it, and with a more than mediocre difficulty that is barely equal to HC in WoW, and I am sure I am not the only one to think that way, the casual side of this game is happy, but the side that actually wants a challenge and wants to play the game is not.

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The casuals are asking for these changes as well. The ones against it are simply either lazy players or clout chasers that keep getting labeled as "casual". The actual casual player base want to actually play the game. Not watch the game and have it play itself. However they keep getting grouped with these people demanding to be rewarded with cookies for kicking the cat after being told not to while tossing out every disease and condition they can find on web MD as an excuse for why the majority of the player base cannot have the content changes they want.

When most of the challenge is coordinating other players to perform well rather than yourself, then thats not challenge, thata just frustrating.

Its why trying to use the Dark Souls or Elden Ring analogy doesnt apply with MMOs because the reason its super popular is because those are solo challenges which have more room for finding satisfaction and reward.

Im not too keen with FFXIV's strict and formulaic raid design where almost everything is a straight dance. It got boring for me after a while.

No joke, I had more fun running Dun Scaith with randos than Pandemonium with people I mostly know because theres a larger margin of error and good players can still save the whole group from large mistakes rather than one player messing up the whole raid. Hot take here

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Its why trying to use the Dark Souls or Elden Ring analogy doesnt apply with MMOs because the reason its super popular is because those are solo challenges which have more room for finding satisfaction and reward.

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Pretty much hit the nail on the head here. I believe this is a big part of the raid scene in MMOs across the board going into decline as it has. Part of it is of course also the result of the genre itself being in a state of decline, but that's a different discussion entirely. At the end of the day, most people do want a challenge. Thing is players nowadays tend to prefer facing challenges on their own terms and overcoming them on their own merits, absent the help (or more likely hindrance) of others. The herding of cats truly does typify your average MMO raiding experience, and that just gets old after a while.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

No joke, I had more fun running Dun Scaith with randos than Pandemonium with people I mostly know because theres a larger margin of error and good players can still save the whole group from large mistakes rather than one player messing up the whole raid. Hot take here

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I'm not so sure if this is a hot take. Burnout is real, and it's becoming increasingly common these days. Most of the raiders I know have decided to become casual players and use the game to unwind after work. They turn a Soulslike or whip out ye olde Battle Toads if they want to overcome a challenge.

Here's the thing though, Dun Scaith has teeth.

It's recoverable, but it has teeth.

Compare it to Nophica, who is basically the endboss for sirensong sea (except she hits the tank less hard) and Menphina who will actually aim her half room cleave at 0 players in a raid of goddamn 24.

There's too much difficulty and not allowing your support jobs to step up and save the run between so many body checks, and such tight mechanics that there's basically only one way to actually succeed something that appears complex, and then there's enough difficulty that players at least feel engaged by more than just the sound and graphic design. You know, like a game. Not a movie.

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Originally Posted by Post

Here's the thing though, Dun Scaith has teeth.

It's recoverable, but it has teeth.

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The last in each set of alliance raids keeps better than the two before it, since they're closer to the item level sync. Compare World of Darkness to Labyrinth of the Ancients, or Paradigm's Breach to Copied Factory, or Orbonne (even after Thunder God's nerf) to Rabanastre.

The item level difference isn't what makes Halone do the first mechanic twice in a row just in case the concept of "she telegraphs 4 attacks in sequence" was too hard for one person in 24 to wrap their brain around, or the 'three separate cages' mechanic from the first alliance raid series that players are required by the MSQ to have played yet easier because you don't need to coordinate who goes where at all.

Anyways, every fight in Ivalice is tougher than Euphrosyne (even Belias can have some players screw up and wipe the raid), even with that ilvl difference.

I can't speak to Aglaia on release, but damn if I didn't even conceive of dying a single time on my first time through, especially when compared to LotA and The Copied Factory. I wasn't playing those two right on release week either.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Creativity is rewarded in Elden Ring. You can beat the same boss in wildly different ways depending on your build, the tools you use, and the way you approach the fight. FF14 offers none of this. FF14 asks you to dance a specific dance, and if you are at-level there are generally no alternative steps you can take. FF14 has right answers and wrong answers, and sometimes a continuum between them along which you can be more or less right. Creativity can help you find the solution, but it can't help you find a meaningfully different one.

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Other games also have a "correct" way to beat an encounter, but either the meta isn't there yet or the community doesn't push into it. In elden ring and other souls games you can say you have creativity to beat a boss, but there's always going to be the build or rotation or strategy that beats it the fastest. Elden ring being a single player game, there's no push to play optimally other than speedrunning.. but take Monster Hunter World for example, after the DPS meter became standard in coop it's clear what builds are better sometimes you would even get shunned for not doing enough dps or not being meta. Same in Tera where before the DPS meter was standard people did whatever they want, then afterwards it became about playing optimally. So, you can be creative and play as an ice mage in 14 too, but that's obviously not optimal. Similarly pretty much any encounter that requires doing damage has "the" solution. This is especially true in 14 because doing damage is the only metric that matters in a boss fight (ex: CC, dispelling, almost doesn't exist at all), and the way that you output that damage has basically no variance because they're tuned around job rotations that are balanced to all be within a few % of their role. Also because 14 is a tab target where you just lock on the boss and do damage, unlike other action combat games where active evading/blocking and hitting/missing the target is a thing.

This is why healers are in a bad spot right now imo. Since the only metric that matters is damage, you're just naturally pushed into doing damage because it's optimal. Under this design philosophy, you can either give healers a more complex damage kit to make them less boring, or make the healing requirement higher by having more incoming damage, but you can't really do the latter without changing how encounters are fundamentally right now (more random bursty damage, moving away from encounters being a dance and more randomness, harder heal checks like those in wow) Also just making the healing kit/rotation more complex won't work without also changing boss encounters because then it'll just be more healing kit that you don't need (which is already the case for anything not ultimate or week1-4 savage).

I've only played wow briefly but I enjoyed healing in it a lot because of how many skills you had to work with and it pushed you into using the whole kit during high damage instances, which came in a variety of ways such as pools that don't instantly kill you but do a lot of dmg, removable stacking dots/debuffs, aoe heals not being able to cover everyone bc they only target 4-5 people so you had to group people up and/or work with your cohealers, and just harder heal checks in general. It would be nice if Yoship took notes and tried to change up the encounter design to make things more dynamic. But I'm kind of losing hope.. because every patch that has come out since I started playing (4.3) has been the dumbing down of healers and other jobs. :/

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Originally Posted by shiraneko

Other games also have a "correct" way to beat an encounter, but either the meta isn't there yet or the community doesn't push into it. In elden ring and other souls games you can say you have creativity to beat a boss, but there's always going to be the build or rotation or strategy that beats it the fastest. Elden ring being a single player game, there's no push to play optimally other than speedrunning.. but take Monster Hunter World for example, after the DPS meter became standard in coop it's clear what builds are better sometimes you would even get shunned for not doing enough dps or not being meta. Same in Tera where before the DPS meter was standard people did whatever they want, then afterwards it became about playing optimally.

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The "DPS Meta" for Monster Hunter games however was a double edged sword that created it's own share of problems due to the builds being glass cannons that got carted if the monster so much as sneezed (or farted in the case of a certain pink monkey) on the player resulting in a higher percentage of failed quests due to people playing with something beyond their skill level just because something online told them it was the "correct build". World/Iceborn/Rise/Sunbreak I primarily used an "Immortal" Gunlance build that may take an extra couple minutes to kill a monster but would shrug off just about everything that did hit me. Exceptions would be autocart skills like Safi Jiva's Sapphire Star and Behemoth's Ecliptic Meteor. However I could face tank Alatreon's unmitigated AoE when people failed to break it's horns. Rise/Sunbreak lacks monsters with instacart by design attacks so I could literally AFK in the middle of fighting anything and still be standing when I get back to the game. Clearing 100% of hunts going 2-3 min slower is still far more productive than only clearing 30% of hunts because of quest failures due to excessive carting.

FFXIV's "DPS Meta" exists because the game lacks these kinds of variables. It's basically just get highest ilvl gear, slot materia for preferred substat not already capped on each gear piece by default, then press skill buttons in order while following footsteps on dance floor. For the most part it's just a matter of how long it takes people to paint said footsteps on the floor for others to follow.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

The only thing being spoken by the people in that case is that there's a lot of reasons to pick SMN. What people don't seem to realise is that not everyone who plays SMN enjoys it. Just like how not everyone who did Eureka enjoyed it.

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Isn't this true of all content, though?

Not everyone who does Ultimates, Savages, Extremes, Criterion, etc enjoys it. Not everyone that plays X Job (fill in X with literally any Job in the game) enjoys it.

Unless you have a scientific, official poll of people to determine how many people play a Job and enjoy it vs those that play the Job and don't enjoy it, this is a meaningless argument since it applies to literally everything. "People like BLM because it's a challenge! This proves people want Jobs to be more challenging!" "Well, not everyone that plays BLM enjoys it, just like how not everyone who did Eureka enjoyed it."

Would you accept that as a valid counter argument?

You could try to move the goalpost "SURELY no one plays BLM unless they enjoy it! It's not like it does more damage, can be a ranged Melee, or has any advantage or benefit where anyone would pick it over an easier Job!" isn't really a valid argument, either because (as I sarcastically stated in that imaginary quote) there are advantages BLM holds over SMN and RDM that might make people feel pressured to play it even if they don't really personally enjoy it or what it requires of them.

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So you can't really use this as an argument. ESPECIALLY since it's not in vacuum:

WAR is one of the top played Tanks (even before it became top damage, it was still highly played)
WHM is the most played Healer (despite it being the least meta choice and weakest overall)
DNC is the most played Ranged (this also destroys the argument WAR and WHM are only most played because they start at level 1, as DNC clearly does not)
SGE is the second most played Healer and is the second easiest and easier than its competition, SGE (again debunking the "starts at level 1" argument)
RPR is the most played Melee outside of JP (and 2nd there) and SAM the most played in Japan (2nd in the West), and they are the two easiest of the Melees to play to most people (again debunking the "starts at level 1" argument)

The people kind of have spoken.

My personal philosophy is the game should have a range of Jobs from simple to complex (but you know and disagree with this), but the alternative is them all being WAR/WHM/DNC/SMN-like. I just think they need to stop changing existing Jobs. Adding new Jobs for new playstyles is the way to go. If they want "simple BLM" in the future, they need to leave BLM alone and just add a new Caster "elementalist" or whatever to fill that niche. Don't take from people what they already have, that's my view. And this goes both for making Jobs simpler and for making them more complex than they currently are.

Again I want to point out that having a lot of players on a job does not mean the job is good. People will flock to the easiest job specifically because it's easy. Lowest common denominator and all that.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Again I want to point out that having a lot of players on a job does not mean the job is good. People will flock to the easiest job specifically because it's easy. Lowest common denominator and all that.

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There's also a newness factor as well when not looking at high end content. People will often want to play the new shiny thing whether that be an actual new job or one that's been essentially rebuilt to the point it feels like a whole new job.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Again I want to point out that having a lot of players on a job does not mean the job is good. People will flock to the easiest job specifically because it's easy. Lowest common denominator and all that.

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Don't leave out visual or thematic appeal. Summoner for example has huge appeal; even if it's too simple now a lot of people were waiting for the day they could summon the primals like in past FFs, and they feel at home now. It's just unfortunate how little player expression there is, there's almost none left; the job basically plays itself on auto, there's no way anyone could mess up the rotation outside of energy drain.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Isn't this true of all content, though?

Not everyone who does Ultimates, Savages, Extremes, Criterion, etc enjoys it. Not everyone that plays X Job (fill in X with literally any Job in the game) enjoys it.

Unless you have a scientific, official poll of people to determine how many people play a Job and enjoy it vs those that play the Job and don't enjoy it, this is a meaningless argument since it applies to literally everything. "People like BLM because it's a challenge! This proves people want Jobs to be more challenging!" "Well, not everyone that plays BLM enjoys it, just like how not everyone who did Eureka enjoyed it."

Would you accept that as a valid counter argument?

You could try to move the goalpost "SURELY no one plays BLM unless they enjoy it! It's not like it does more damage, can be a ranged Melee, or has any advantage or benefit where anyone would pick it over an easier Job!" isn't really a valid argument, either because (as I sarcastically stated in that imaginary quote) there are advantages BLM holds over SMN and RDM that might make people feel pressured to play it even if they don't really personally enjoy it or what it requires of them.

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You just....proved my point? People have a wide variety of reasons to play a job, player population does not equal player satisfaction, to get an actual number on player satisfaction you'd have to have an official poll, a fact that you also mentioned, so how can you say "The people have spoken" when the people were never given a voice?

If you really think player population equals player satisfaction, then SB WHM was the most played healer at the time, so bring back SB lilies, the people have spoken.

Less than 1% of the playerbase does Ultimates.

Just gonna leave that here.

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

Less than 1% of the playerbase does Ultimates.

Just gonna leave that here.

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Tell us something we Don’t know next time pls

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Originally Posted by Ath192

I find it interesting that everyone criticizes forum posters asking for harder content and they dismiss us for being the vocal minority on these forums but to be honest we may be somewhat of the silent majority with a few outspoken people.

The game has repeatedly doubled down on making itself easier because it has been under the false impression that people calling for an easier game were in fact the majority.

If anything, market trends have telling data that a games difficulty is actually something gamers enjoy. If we take a look at Baldurs Gate and Elden ring both of them became main stream hits despite being more difficult titles to beat, and they both outperformed FFXVI which is a story game with incredibly easy gameplay.

We could argue that using the PS5 platform only hurt them however, it doesn't change the fact that making an engaging and difficult game DOES NOT mean you are reducing your playerbase and hurting the games bottom line.

In short, XIV is too easy, and recent commercial successes reveal there is no reason to dumb the game down to where it is today.

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"The game has repeatedly doubled down on making itself easier because it has been under the false impression that people calling for an easier game were in fact the majority."

I swear...how are these type of players so delusional to think they are "the silent majority" when every factor of evidence proves otherwise. It take literally a basic google search to get the facts!

https://i.imgur.com/UJ1Zjp7.png

From the 187k players whos info was submitted, Savage raiders only make up only 25% of the playerbase. You are not the majority!
Look up the achievements players from Lodestone have gotten yourself...this doesn't even account for players who do this content on other toons on the same account.
https://www.lalachievements.com/rari...vement/global/
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/

I will be honest here. Started as a SMN main in 2019 and I will admit, I miss SMN pre Shadowbringers. My hands may sue me for this, but I loved it. I miss my tanky pet, whilst SMN runs okay now, I agree that some of the "identity" has been lost.

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I think everyone is in agreement that the msq and normal mode content should be accessible, but there needs to be better slope into endgame content.

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Ivtrix: Nailed it. Thank you for saying clearly what I fumbled, your point about MSQ difficulty was what i was trying to say, you said it better.

I am 1000% in agreeance with better midcore content, Criterion didnt seem to hit the mark. Going back to the Dawntrail trailer and the panels, it WAS said that they had some kind of new content a la Bozja planned, as to what that is no one knows yet. Hopefully the next FanFest will have more details.

Wasnt a fan of Bozja myself, but I can see why people wanted it.

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Im not too keen with FFXIV's strict and formulaic raid design where almost everything is a straight dance. It got boring for me after a while.

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Atelier: There is one HUGE difference between WOW raiding and FF 14..the time factor.

WOWs raiding wastes a HUGE amount of time, getting people together is like herding cats ( hey wait, we actually did that in Legion heheheh...), in that regard I dont think we need copy their model, but in terms of variance and terrain you may very well have a point.

Did you have any ideas on this?

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I'm not so sure if this is a hot take. Burnout is real, and it's becoming increasingly common these days. Most of the raiders I know have decided to become casual players and use the game to unwind after work. They turn a Soulslike or whip out ye olde Battle Toads if they want to overcome a challenge.

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Absimilard: Ive actually said this myself here..and was sneered at for saying so. I raided up to Mythic back in WOW, and whilst I wont call it burnout, it has gotten to the point I just feel I have done my bit and dont want to climb back onto that hamster wheel anymore. The time factor, the stress, its a never ending gear cycle that some enjoy, sure, but to me its more like we chase BiS in this expac and then the next and then the next...........these days the MSQ and normal content for me is fine.

What gets lost in this mix is a point i raised a while back: The playerbase as a whole is ageing, time is at a premium when you get into the 30's and real life says "Me first buddy, games later". When youve just worked an 8 or 10 hr shift and your body is screaming for food, rest, you think "I could log in for the raid tonight" then your stomach growls or your eyes start to droop and its "God no,. Im too tired and my kids need me more.."

A growing percentage are WELL over 50, their priorities are very different to a 20 year old.

Nothing wrong with others wanting to do harder, sure, there SHOULD be midcore and harder. ( Better rewards are DEFINITELY an issue here )

Hopefully we get more details soon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

Less than 1% of the playerbase does Ultimates.

Just gonna leave that here.

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Even back in 2021, two entire years ago, TEA/UWU clear rates were both ~5% in JP. Ultimate's have since seen a massive surge in popularity since then, so it can pretty easily be assumed rates are even higher now. We can also assume that the number of people interacting or 'doing' the content without actually clearing it is substantial as well.

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Originally Posted by TheRealMadruck

"The game has repeatedly doubled down on making itself easier because it has been under the false impression that people calling for an easier game were in fact the majority."

I swear...how are these type of players so delusional to think they are "the silent majority" when every factor of evidence proves otherwise. It take literally a basic google search to get the facts!

https://i.imgur.com/UJ1Zjp7.png

From the 187k players whos info was submitted, Savage raiders only make up only 25% of the playerbase. You are not the majority!
Look up the achievements players from Lodestone have gotten yourself...this doesn't even account for players who do this content on other toons on the same account.
https://www.lalachievements.com/rari...vement/global/
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/

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No. You've just displayed another example of the flawed mindset causing the issue where you think the only people that don't want an easier game are the ones doing ex/savage/ultimate. The actual silent majority is the bulk of the playerbase not doing that specific content for various reasons that the noisy problem minority has been claiming to represent calling themselves the "casual gamers" when they are no such thing.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

No. You've just displayed another example of the flawed mindset causing the issue where you think the only people that don't want an easier game are the ones doing ex/savage/ultimate. The actual silent majority is the bulk of the playerbase not doing that specific content for various reasons that the noisy problem minority has been claiming to represent calling themselves the "casual gamers" when they are no such thing.

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"The actual silent majority is the bulk of the playerbase not doing that specific content for various reasons"

So let me understand this...you are claiming that "the silent majority" who are supposed to want harder content...are not currently doing some of the hardest content in the game?!?! :0
Either you are a troll or you are a really bad at lying. Its maybe both!

The biggest content people engage with outside of the core roulettes is Bozja (over 50% of people have step foot inside Bozja at one time or another), so yes the core of the playerbase lies in that “I don’t want to turn my brain off but extreme is a bit too complex to regularly do” which field content fills

Turbo casuals just seem to think it’s only people who do savage that want more content harder than normal raids and that all content should be savage level for some reason despite their being no justification for the existence of that mindset

What in the name of the Twelve is a "turbo casual"?

There's a fine line between hard and too hard. I like games that are hard enough for me to pay attention and actually try but not so hard that it takes me dozens of hours to accomplish stuff. That's why I don't raid anymore (well that and recent raid design has been horrifically boring). That said, too easy is certainly a thing and 14 is absolutely too easy nowadays. Jobs are way too simple and dungeons/normal trials are so easy you almost cannot fail. There is a solid middle ground to be found and 14 was on it for a long time, until early ShB really. Just make me try a little bit, just a bit, and I'll be happy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

What in the name of the Twelve is a "turbo casual"?

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In other MMOs, at least: Someone who expects things to be doable with minimal chance or severity of being slowed by anything, and would rather lobby for the removal of such slow-downs (through content, kit, or broad mechanical changes) than learn how to deal with them (even if that learning process is pretty darn painless by even an average "casual" [in terms of engagement with optimization/learning] player's opinion).

Haven't seen the term often enough here to guess at its specific denotation for/in XIV specifically.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

In other MMOs, at least: Someone who expects things to be doable with minimal chance or severity of being slowed by anything, and would rather lobby for the removal of such slow-downs (through content, kit, or broad mechanical changes) than learn how to deal with them (even if that learning process is pretty darn painless by even an average "casual" [in terms of engagement with optimization/learning] player's opinion).

Haven't seen the term often enough here to guess at its specific denotation for/in XIV specifically.

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Well that definitely isnt me. I dont mind a challenge, Im also not a fan of brick walls. Somewhere in the middle makes sense to me.

Shurrikan: You may disagree with this approach but bear with me: I normally do ALL solo instances on normal, if I find one is really annoying me, THEN I go to very easy mode and thats usually after two or three tries. My rationale that this is STORY mode content, so its also solo and not group content...what I am highlighting is my earlier point..story MSQ should be doable with a challenge BUT not a brick wall.

I mentioned In From the Cold earlier, Ive done that four times on different alts, I did it ONCE on very easy, the next few times I did it on normal because I knew what the hell I was doing. My primary issue with that specific instance was with its design. AT least give a player some kind of hint where the hell to START looking. No need for "hand holding" BUT a simple hint like " You see disturbed ground and debris leading to the southwest"

Thats not "dumbing it down" thats telling a player the bare minimum as to where they might want to look. Drop the timer down to one hour and FOCUS ON THE GAMEPLAY elements to make the entire instance more fun and engaging.

People DO stress when they see the timer ticking down, give them MORE time to absorb the atmosphere,. to get a feel of where they are and "Oh God this place has been trashed, all these people"..you are in a wrecked, war torn city that once was the capital of a mighty empire, let them get immersed in the actual area which adds to the gameplay element.

They will remember it not just for "I got this done" and more to "Now I see what happened here and this is terrifying.." you arent the warrior of light, your powers are gone, you are alone..feel the difference, think maybe a second of the man whose body you now inhabit and wonder who they were and what happened to THEM...it adds to the flavour and feel of the entire scenario.

There also the twisted feeling that you are ( and this was what I felt ) desecrating this mans body for Fandaniels sick agenda. Whoever he was, he deserved better than this violation of his rest.

^which as has been discussed ad nauseum is what almost everyone on here wants, regardless of your actual opinions on Bozja Bozja is the level of content we are missing in this game

Admittedly the title of this thread is probably flawed but also if anyone new to this thread did some remote reading that’s all people want, but people seem to read the title then go “acshooly sweaty we don’t all play ultimate stop trying to hard wall me in the MSQ” despite nobody having that opinion

Very quickly: See Pokemon and Mario Kart's numbers. People enjoy both hard and easy games.

I don't really care if XIV's MSQ remains as simple as it has been as of late. I'm not sure how many people were here for OG Steps of Faith, but people were locked out of Ishgard by a fight that nowadays may qualify as EX, and I'm not sure the MSQ should have stuff like that... I guess it's open for debate. What I want is just more midcore content, and maybe review the rewards for EX/Criterion/SVG/Ultimate.

Just my two cents.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

Well that definitely isnt me. I dont mind a challenge, Im also not a fan of brick walls. Somewhere in the middle makes sense to me.

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Same here, depending on what we call that "middle". I enjoy min-maxing to an extent (I like perfecting my rotation, but don't mind flubbing it occasionally by trying something harder, and would never give up my Skill Speed), but don't really care for rote memorization/execution of mechanics, and therefore am not about to get a kick out of Ultimate (this particular character has never even touched it). I preferred M+, especially when things are still being figured out early in a given season, over Mythic or even most Heroic raiding, for instance, and could still enjoy most Normal bosses if helping friends.

We could probably both fit either among "casual" (in terms of preferred content / extent of engagement, not just hours played) or "average"/"normal" players, depending simply on whether the term "average" is used up on describing which span of players is most populous or instead describes the median group along that spectrum of typically preferred extent of engagement with mechanics and content, both. (That is, admittedly, a bit of a conflation since one could enjoy min-maxing dungeons or being carried through Savage, but it's a decently useful bundling on the whole.)

Which just means that the reference is about some portion of players who have an even narrower span of engagement with the game itself (not necessarily with "meta-" or "community-born" content) they like to work within, or they have some different approach to how their desire ought to be supported.

"Turbo-casual" in most MMOs is a bit of a known paradox, like demanding little time taken to reach BiS... all so that one can then go back to grinding rewardless side-content that didn't need the gear in the first place. Such a player might not be any more casual than most; it's more the combination of "Give me what I want now" and "if it's not specifically in my interest, it's a waste" that differentiates them, a bit like a merely political person and an extremist ***hole.

Food for thought: A "turbo-hardcore" (though I've never seen the term), by contrast, would probably be like someone who wants to restrict all means of broadly applicable strength/gear progression to the content most unique to them and to restrict that content's accessibility to only those who engage with it to the same extent they enjoy, and who would consider any content made outside of their interests to be a waste.

I've seen both over the last decade or so, though admittedly more of the former, especially so long as lower-end content still has room for greater engagement.

On which note... XIV is really not in a great spot, in that one increasingly has increasingly needed to seek out stratified (e.g., "hardcore"-only) content to get to higher levels of engagement, which then puts the desires of "casual" players more at odds with "hardcore" (and even "midcore") players.

After all, if all groups can clear yet, simultaneously, all groups can put in additional effort for at least decent reward, both those with a narrow range of enjoyable engagement and those who need more total engagement to feel stimulated can be satisfied. It will inevitably be worth it to, on one end, have some content that everyone can clear but not everyone will be able to be sufficiently engaged by and, on the other, have some content that not everyone can clear but with room enough that everyone could, in time, be sufficiently engaged by, but if your most mainstay content doesn't even have the room enough to engage the vast majority of players, that's going to get wasteful and, ultimately, make providing sufficient content for those increasingly split groups that much less efficient.

By the way, one last point. This was my wish alone, but after that instance, i would have liked a small cutscene of granting that poor soldier a decent burial. We should have knelt and at least paid our respect to whoever that was, showing that we, unlike Fandanel, had some decency and compassion.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheRealMadruck

"The game has repeatedly doubled down on making itself easier because it has been under the false impression that people calling for an easier game were in fact the majority."

I swear...how are these type of players so delusional to think they are "the silent majority" when every factor of evidence proves otherwise. It take literally a basic google search to get the facts!

https://i.imgur.com/UJ1Zjp7.png

From the 187k players whos info was submitted, Savage raiders only make up only 25% of the playerbase. You are not the majority!
Look up the achievements players from Lodestone have gotten yourself...this doesn't even account for players who do this content on other toons on the same account.
https://www.lalachievements.com/rari...vement/global/
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/

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Do consider that the achievements only track people who have FINISHED the tier, and don't consider people who do a couple bosses and stop, or can't finish for one reason or another.