Ballancing the game for ALL

I have recently seen a lot of topics saying how FFXIV is WAY to easy... and in all honesty I have to agree. Yet I understand SE's desire to bring in a new audience with the more "Player Friendly" environment.

But if bringing in new players is happening at the expense of past fans, then it may be more harmful than helpful. But how could you cater to both audiences? Well it would be hard but it is possible.

First the roads should stay about the same. It makes sense in a fantasy sort of way as the roads would be patrolled and cleared of any truly dangerous monsters. But the farther from the main roads you get the more dangerous things become. And I mean like "party required" kind of hard. Of course leave the core areas for the casual players, make it so they can get threw the game how they want to. But add areas that make hardcore players nervous, places that require not only a party but a smart party. And fill it with treasures and rewards unlike anything else you can find elsewhere. The best Harvesting spots, the greatest loot, and the most desirable recipes (that must be found personally before using). And don't make these places just endgame material, sprinkle them all over so that anyone wanting more than just levequests can explore the deadly challenges that FFXIV has to offer. Basically, Make the game accessible and fun for all, but reward your champions, not just with loot, but stories and adventure.

Add a death penalty. I do think that the leviquests are not suited for any kind of death penalty though. The time limit and nature of these missions is just not a good match for death penalty. So to keep the ease of leviquests on casual gamers, as well as give the hardcore players the risk vs rewards feel of exploration I suggest that guardian aspect be given a new ability to wave all death punishment for its duration. This allows for casual player to still grow steadily with leviquests without death penalty making them shy away from it, but still gives players who want to truly explore the risk to make the game world feel alive and dangerous, and not like a "no one cares snooze fest" This would keep the game accessible to the casual players and turn leviquests into something that hardcore players enjoyed as a "break" between grand quests and adventures.

And there is also the question of what would be punished. I know that in FFXI the punishment took away xp and that could work. But I have also seen an MMO where instead of taking away xp you receive debt, and it takes away 50% of xp until you pay off the debt and I think it could work here.

Those some of my ideas as to how to improve the game. But what about you? We all play this game Casual games and hardcore. Going after each other for wanting things our own way only makes development decisions harder to make for SE and therefor hurts the games chances of recovery. So how can we improve the game for EVERYONE? How would you change the game to keep it accessible to Casual gamers but challenging enough to bring in hard core players?

Very good ideas =) I would like to subscribe to your weekly newsletter.

To make a game that has accessible and enjoyable content for both "casual" and "hardcore" gamers and everyone in between, that is going to be the real challenge for SE. I just hope they can pull it off.

I find it hard to believe no one has responded to this yet considering the heated debate that took place regarding spawn times and drop rates for the new NM's. So I'll go ahead and throw out some ideas.

For the "Hardcore players" I think they should go ahead and add in HNM's/kings with 12-24 hour respawn timers for groups of 16+ players. The drops from these HNM's could be +1 or +2 versions of certain weapons and armor, and a very high drop rate (50-60%) for items needed to synth other high end gear.

For the "Casual players" they could add instanced boss fights like BCNM's or ENM's for groups of 4-8 people that could be done once every 5 days or so. These fights could even be light versions of the HNM's fights. The drops from these fights would be the normal versions of the same weapons and armor that is dropped from the HNM's, and the same items needed to synth the other high end gear would drop as well but at a lower drop rate (15-30%). Similar to ENM's from FFXI these fights would require everyone in the group to have a certain item which they have to obtain each week before being able to enter the fight.