Mean what you say and say what you mean

Some of you may have seen the poll I recently started regarding hard vs easy. The results of this poll so far have panned out exactly the way I expected. Most players enjoy hard content more than easy content.

However, that's NOT to say that those who enjoy hard content MORE, do not enjoy easy content AT ALL.

Personally, I would like to see all types of content with varying difficulties. I like options, just like everyone else. I just enjoy difficult content more than any other.

Now here's the problem. You may have noticed that this poll was influenced by the contradictory results of the capped vs uncapped poll.

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Looking at the recent poll of capped vs uncapped content, I find that quite a few people are contradicting what they were asking for only a few short months ago.

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It seems we've finally come to the point where content will be introduced on a regular basis (hopefully.) SE confirmed the release of 2 dungeons, 1 high rank and 1 mid rank. Judging by the results of both polls, I cannot understand why, when the opportunity finally arises to get challenging content, many still refuse it. And when suggestions are made to make the challenge OPTIONAL, may STILL refuse it.

Why are we contradicting ourselves?

A general poll ends up with results of 10/1, more or less, when asking what people enjoy more.

A more specific poll ends up with very consistent results of 2/1 when asking how a specific type of content should be implemented.

Both are mostly in favor of hard content.

What happened? I really can't understand this.

Yea, I'm very happy to see that the R50 dungeon will be difficult. I also don't mind that the mid rank dungeon can be easy, because I understand that many people enjoy easy content too (myself included.) But why do many still refuse the option of capping the content at a specific level?

Why, for example, should a player who really enjoys hard content and has already leveled all their classes past the "target range" be left out of half of the patch? If anything, they should be rewarded for their immense dedication to the game, not cut out of half of it. And no, I'm not being biased. I have only 1 battle class above rank 30, so my argument has nothing to do with me specifically, at all.

Is this the trend we will be seeing in the future? When SE releases content that can easily be made to be enjoyable for EVERYONE, will it still be skewed to only players of a certain rank or play-style? That hardly seems fair.

There's plenty of open world content that can be made to cater to a specific type of player. Being that it's open world and not instanced, it's difficult to make it enjoyable for everyone. But instanced content (the majority of content that we will be getting in this game) can easily be made to keep everyone entertained.

My advice to the players, Mean what you say and say what you mean. SE is relying heavily on players' opinions to help them design content. If SE has the opportunity to make any piece of content enjoyable for more players than just a specific group, it should be encouraged. The game is not being designed for me, you, my friend, your friend or any single person in particular.

The more content we get the better, even if the loot rewards may not be all that great. For many people, completing challenging content is a reward in its own right. There's no reason certain people should be left out of it simply because it was designed too late for them.

Kind of like when people say they want an Auction House but actually mean they want to just buy items from a text based interface rather than actually blind bidding on items?

Yea, you can definitely apply the same logic there as well. Contradicting ourselves only leads to a confused development team and half-assed results.

if square-enix needs your opinion, they will ask you in a questionnaire, like they did the first time... Sure we can rant and rave on the forums, but in the end the conclusions we come up with here are pretty much internal. When the time come we'll get another survey.

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Originally Posted by Morphemes

if square-enix needs your opinion, they will ask you in a questionnaire, like they did the first time... Sure we can rant and rave on the forums, but in the end the conclusions we come up with here are pretty much internal. When the time come we'll get another survey.

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I highly doubt we'll be getting any more polls. My gut tells me that the only reason those polls were made was to get a general idea of what they player-base preferred, just to get started.

SE said from the start that they wanted to design the game around the community's input. These forums are an outlet for us to express our opinions and suggestions. If this was not the case, there wouldn't be any DEV tags nor would we be getting any replies like "keep the suggestions coming."

The part that bothers me the most, is that people ask for one thing but mean something totally different. I can't imagine the massive headaches the devs get when they give us what we want and yet we still complain. Sometimes I think it might be better off if they designed the game the way they want to and explain to us, in detail, what that all entails. If their plan isn't for me, that's cool, I'll find something else to do with my spare time. At least we'd know exactly which direction the game is heading.

It's not contradictory.

S-E has a history of implementing level caps poorly. They were the least enjoyable part of CoP: having to find gear of varying level caps, having to store said gear, etc. When level sync was added, it wasn't much of a solution because synced-down gear had its stats severely reduced, meaning you still needed specialized gear for level cap.

People didn't enjoy S-E's attempts at level cap in FFXI.

People don't have faith that S-E learned anything from FFXI.

Ergo, people voted against level caps.

We want challenging content, sure, but we want the challenge to come from needing to use teamwork and strategy, not from struggling with a terrible system.

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Originally Posted by _C-a-e-r-i-t-h_

It's not contradictory.

S-E has a history of implementing level caps poorly. They were the least enjoyable part of CoP: having to find gear of varying level caps, having to store said gear, etc. When level sync was added, it wasn't much of a solution because synced-down gear had its stats severely reduced, meaning you still needed specialized gear for level cap.

People didn't enjoy S-E's attempts at level cap in FFXI.

People don't have faith that S-E learned anything from FFXI.

Ergo, people voted against level caps.

We want challenging content, sure, but we want the challenge to come from needing to use teamwork and strategy, not from struggling with a terrible system.

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So basically, the only true challenging content you want is endgame content? What I mean by that is, with Max cap content (endgame) you're forced to use strategies because you simply can't have someone 20, 30 or 40 levels above the cap come in and steamroll it.

Also, as this seems to be your main argument, this isn't FFXI. Gear scales MUCH better here than it did there. Often times gear above your level is better than gear made for your level. Your argument about scaling gear has no merit aside from your FFXI comparisons, which again, mean nothing here.

While I personally would rather hard content remain hard with no choices (hard/easy modes,) that's my opinion and it's not what people are asking for. We're asking for an option that in no way hinders your game-play if you choose not to use it. The lack of it however destroys the challenge for those who don't have low level classes, or who's favorite class is too high to keep it challenging.

If you have a better way of keeping mid and low level content challenging, at any level, I'd love to hear it. The way I see it, level caps are the easiest and best way to do it.

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Originally Posted by MeowyWowie

So basically, the only true challenging content you want is endgame content? What I mean by that is, with Max cap content (endgame) you're forced to use strategies because you simply can't have someone 20, 30 or 40 levels above the cap come in and steamroll it.

Also, as this seems to be your main argument, this isn't FFXI. Gear scales MUCH better here than it did there. Often times gear above your level is better than gear made for your level. Your argument about scaling gear has no merit aside from your FFXI comparisons, which again, mean nothing here.

While I personally would rather hard content remain hard with no choices (hard/easy modes,) that's my opinion and it's not what people are asking for. We're asking for an option that in no way hinders your game-play if you choose not to use it. The lack of it however destroys the challenge for those who don't have low level classes, or who's favorite class is too high to keep it challenging.

If you have a better way of keeping mid and low level content challenging, at any level, I'd love to hear it. The way I see it, level caps are the easiest and best way to do it.

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The title of this thread is "mean what you say, say what you mean." I did just that. Please refrain from reinterpreting my words and putting your own words in my mouth. I am not a strawman.

Here's what I said. It's also what I meant.

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Originally Posted by _C-a-e-r-i-t-h_

The title of this thread is "mean what you say, say what you mean." I did just that. Please refrain from reinterpreting my words and putting your own words in my mouth. I am not a strawman.

Here's what I said. It's also what I meant.

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Ok so, you say you want challenging content to be challenging because of the teamwork and strategy involved.

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We want challenging content, sure, but we want the challenge to come from needing to use teamwork and strategy

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Yet, when a system is suggested to keep content challenging by using precisely those elements you're against it?

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not from struggling with a terrible system.

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If you think that keeping a set of gear for capped fights is a struggle, god help you. Again, your argument does not apply in FFXIV. Gear scales much better here than it did in XI.

Ergo, there's no struggle in having to keep capped gear sets.

Thank you for proving my point even further.

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Originally Posted by AlexiaKidd

Kind of like when people say they want an Auction House but actually mean they want to just buy items from a text based interface rather than actually blind bidding on items?

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While I get what you are saying I wouldnt mind an Ebay style AH with both buy it now and bidding.