FFXIV: Difficulty level a joke now.

So yeah, as the title says I think this game has become way too easy. Especially after the 1.17 patch reducing party size to 8. Before with larger parties the NM's actually took some sort of coordination to overcome, but that is no longer the case. I am desperately looking for a challenge to keep me coming back. If i can just breeze through everything I may as well break out Candyland and go to my baby cousin's house.

Anyone else feeling this way?

I feel the same over the NM

When they comming with the bigger ones later in the game are they gonna have 1-5 min repop on them also and so easy you got them first try ?

The idea of fast pop easy kill make the game feeling boring for some of the players

I hope they atleast can make some NM versions for the hardcore players also in future

Or make dual versions of the NM one easy version standard drop easy to kill

One king version 1 to 3 star stats on the drops long pop time

And make chance pop king version in instance also where you have to do a harder battle then get chance get 1-3 stars items

I miss the battle where you have to use your abilites wise and some tactics to win

I hope they will have content items in future you can fell you had to work for

Not just make all content to easy is not the right way keep players i think

But have chance do it easy for standard drop or risk your points for HQ drops will make the game fit both the casual and the hardcore

You guys got to remember that 50 is going to end up being a MID level rank. Currently in between Rank 10-45 there was NO Content what so ever. So yes while we (50)'s or what ever you want to call us high levels were gimped with what we can do and what we consider fun, you have to remember the lack of content.

I understand that, that was our content. Now you need to think about OK, well those were level 50 NM's and now they are prob low level 40 to mid level 40 NM's... So I wonder what they have in store for the higher ups. Everyone keeps whining about how low the NMs are now but everyone forgets how there is no content in the game and that level 50 is only the first level cap. The level 50 NM's we are fighting are going to be a Joke.

The battle update will bring some fun stuff. You can't expect the combat content to be polished with regards to difficulty and such until after that, which I'm very much looking forward to.

On the plus side, adding these NMs and now the egg hunting has given me lots to do that's not exactly challenging.

I understand 50 is only the first level cap, but there should be some sort of challenge to keep us busy, otherwise we're just ranking to 50 to wait.

Meh, they needed to reduce parties to a maximum size of 8. 15 man zerg parties weren't that great nor fun. As for the difficulty level, yes this game is still pretty easy. I'm just waiting to really judge the game until they fix the battle/classes because that's the make or break part of the game. If we have auto-attack, battles will last a little bit longer

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Originally Posted by DeadRiser

Meh, they needed to reduce parties to a maximum size of 8. 15 man zerg parties weren't that great nor fun. As for the difficulty level, yes this game is still pretty easy. I'm just waiting to really judge the game until they fix the battle/classes because that's the make or break part of the game. If we have auto-attack, battles will last a little bit longer

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I agree. 15 was way too high of a party limit in the first place. 6-8 is where it should always have been.

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Originally Posted by Vegas_Kingpin

I understand 50 is only the first level cap, but there should be some sort of challenge to keep us busy, otherwise we're just ranking to 50 to wait.

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DUH.

but yeah, you can't completely disregard low-mid level content. Probably wouldn't sit well with the possible future new players.

I think this issue has mainly to do with how the game progresses as you level.

The beggining is necessarily easy to get new players (potentially ones that have never played an MMO before) to learn the ropes. However, this sets the pace for the rest of the game.

Game difficulty, in FFXI particular, is hard to manage when the core game mechanics are so limited. First we have to think within the limits of the game itself and make suggestions, then think outside for potential future changes.

Working within these limits, here's a few examples of increasing game difficulty:

1. Increase Monster Level.
2. Make Battles with greater level differences more rewarding.

These are simple, first is probably the most simple, yet least rewarding. The second would encourage players to move from extremely rewarding, yet extremely easy content (Spamming easy leves) into potentially more difficult encounters (Fighting more difficult world monsters).

Now, if we look outside of current game mechanics we do do a few things as well:

One example being: Add interesting Monster behaviors.

The first is relatively large in scope but can be simplified. Monster behavior can include, movement, attacks, incapacitations etc.

But, the combination of all these ideas can contribute to potentially more difficult, and more importantly, more fun encounters.

For example, if we had a new Monster, that is meant to be fought by 8 level 50 characters. We can increase it's difficulty quite substantially. But, we then give the opportunity for players to then weaken the monster by incapacitating it several ways. Let's assume it has a giant horn used for dealing great damage to the tanks. Well, we can give the players the opportunity to break said horn, but they then risk getting impaled themselves. Thus this encounter then has DPS characters moving in and out of harms away delivering blows to the horn. Then, we can give the players the opportunity to bring the monster down quicker. Let us say the monster has a thick outter shell protecting a weak spot. Require the players to deal a certain amount of damage within a specified amount of time, and the shell is broken, exposing a soft underbelly for the players to attack. By doing this, we have created a mechanic for players to work together for a common goal. Then finally suppose this monster is fairly intelligent, and will use the surroundings to it's advantage. Perhaps it flees down into a cave, as the adventurers give chase, the monster suddenly turns around exposing them all to his horn. Or perhaps he leads the adventurers to a beach where he then proceeds to take a giant gulp of water and sprays it out at incredibly high pressure. The players will have to adapt quickly by interrupting slowing or stopping the monster to avoid being annialhated.

But, that aside, I agree the game needs to be more difficult, but it needs to add it by adding depth, not just a wall for players to smash their heads against.

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Originally Posted by Vegas_Kingpin

So yeah, as the title says I think this game has become way too easy. Especially after the 1.17 patch reducing party size to 8. Before with larger parties the NM's actually took some sort of coordination to overcome, but that is no longer the case. I am desperately looking for a challenge to keep me coming back. If i can just breeze through everything I may as well break out Candyland and go to my baby cousin's house.

Anyone else feeling this way?

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You should submit this to Peregrine Falcon (in your LS) since he knows what this game needs.

Anyways, I could have sworn I posted about this and got flamed, but whateves.