Mistaking difficulty for other things

I see a lot of people saying more difficulty is something they'd really want to see added to the game. A number of people are saying they want that more than anything. I even saw one person say that difficulty essentially equaled things that require more time and effort.

I really hope this is not what we are asking for. Something is not difficult because you have to spend more time on it. As for the effort part I get the feeling that its only considered effort because of the amount of time being put in.

But even if its because you have to fight nothing but mobs that are way higher level than you. Time and Effort is not Difficulty. Difficult things often require more time and effort but it doesn't work backwards.

I would much rather think of difficulty as something that is mentally engaging and challenging and of course still fun.

What is difficulty to you? Are we really just asking for more grind (time and effort) or is it really a challenging engaging experience that we're after? Clarity is important when the devs are listening so closely.

One last note, there was a dev response recently about them making crafting easier. I don't think it needs to be any easier but we can talk about that in another post.

The underlying main issue with the game is there is no feeling of accomplishment no reward.

Part of that is because everything just falls over dead. (difficulty part)
- The missions a joke, a rank 20 person could probably beat rank 36 battles.
- Leves are a joke, the mobs have 1/2 the hp as normal mobs
- Lower level NMs are decent for their Levels
- Higher level NMs are a joke, I am watching people duo/trio them people want things that take 8 coordinated people to kill.

The other issue is people are being handed everything and are being handed it fast
-You can get millions apon million of gil just playing the game. You do not even have to try to make money to make it. Therefor getting gear feels meaning less.
-NMS while they might have a horrible drop rate, if you fight it for an hour you are most likely guaranteed to get it. It is like this for every lesser nm.
-Leveling is much to fast with fighting classes, you can get to 20 in like 3hrs then all the way to 50 in another 3 weeks. While I agree 50 is obviously not the permanent endgame... the game is just too easy to progress.


So you have 2 issues of why people are complaining they are not the same.
-Difficulty does not = time , but the people who are bringing in the time complaint are doing so because atm square is taking 2-3 months to develop content which is good for 2hrs.... think about that for a sec.

People do not necessarily want long time sinks, but they want content that will last them for thousands of hours. They want to feel that working on something will payoff. They do not want handouts, they want to work hard and along time to get the best of the best gear. Atm the game simply lacks that.

Between the ease of killing everything, and the fact that everything in the game besides faction NMs just crap out gear there is simply no feeling of reward, accomplishment, or fun in the whole game.

Square has a major issue, they need to find a way to make casuals happy as well as make it to where the people who can play 60hrs a week never run out of content to do.

There's good difficulty and bad difficulty. Something that takes a lot of time and brute force is bad difficulty. Something that takes a lot of intelligence is good difficulty.

Examples of Good Difficulty:

Radiant Historia's battle system. If you auto-attack, it takes a really long time and is very very hard. If you use your abilities intelligently, you can end most fights in 1-2 rounds. This is good difficulty, it rewards intelligence and ingenuity.

FFXI's Salvage. With all the limitations imposed on the team (time, cells, routes to take, monster selection), a team had to play smart or get their ass kicked. The bosses like LBC were a perfect example of this same difficulty you see in Radiant Historia: brutally hard but if you approach them intelligently you can take them down like clockwork.

Devil May Cry. Skill is more important than effort here. It's a meatgrinder otherwise.

Examples of Bad Difficulty:

FFXI's Salvage. Once you got the pattern down and knew what you were doing, the drop rates were so bad that you had to grind over and over and over for a 2% drop (times 6 because everyone on your team wants it too).

Yiazmat from FFXII. Has like 50 million HP. You can actually leave the area and save and come back during this fight, that's how long it takes. Not necessarily hard, but just plain fatiguing.

Final Fantasy XIV login screen. Ugh, so much effort to get past this.

But yeah crafting isn't hard it's just monotonous.

i think what all mmo's need to do at this point is create seperate servers for casual and hardcore, let people chose. there is pvp servers an non pvp in most mmo's now. so how bout just make 2seperate games for the both as well. seriously don't think they can ever satisfy both. and eventually casuals will realize that they need us to even wipe there asses lol jk, but seriously lol. i like this idea.

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Originally Posted by Xatsh

So you have 2 issues of why people are complaining they are not the same.
-Difficulty does not = time , but the people who are bringing in the time complaint are doing so because atm square is taking 2-3 months to develop content which is good for 2hrs.... think about that for a sec.

People do not necessarily want long time sinks, but they want content that will last them for thousands of hours. They want to feel that working on something will payoff. They do not want handouts, they want to work hard and along time to get the best of the best gear. Atm the game simply lacks that.

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Ok I can agree with this. We want a lot of content. And sure it is frustrating when you wait months for new stuff and it really doesn't provide more than an hour or two of extra game play.

The problem I see is there's no way around the long wait time. Developing, testing, and balancing content takes time I don't think many of us imagine differently. The more we rush them the poorer the quality we get. The player base has a long wait on its hands and unless SE is going to double their production team size I can't see this changing. Even doubled it would probably be quite a while until we saw "enough" content coming into the game.

Maybe one bright side to this is that the game is currently undergoing core-system overhauls (battle, core coding, environments etc) When the system overhauls are done we will likely see an increase in the amount of content being released per patch.

I'll post this again, even if you all must be tired of me insisting on this. But to me challenge comes with capped fights that are designed around that cap level. The way they had level capped areas/missions in FFXI. To me that is the definition of ongoing challenge, promotes skillfull play and even includes casual players. Being casual =/= wanting everytime steamrollable and easy. Capped missions also makes things challenging without being a grinding time sink.

Capped missions allows for high level to go help their low level friends and still get excitement with the mission and also keeps you more on your toes since bad playing could lead you to a wipe.

I think anyone who oppose to that just wants the possibility to have easy content by allowing their high level LS mates to come clear stuff for them while they watch TV and eat cookies. But that's just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Perrin_Aybarra

I'll post this again, even if you all must be tired of me insisting on this. But to me challenge comes with capped fights that are designed around that cap level. The way they had level capped areas/missions in FFXI. To me that is the definition of ongoing challenge, promotes skillfull play and even includes casual players. Being casual =/= wanting everytime steamrollable and easy. Capped missions also makes things challenging without being a grinding time sink.

Capped missions allows for high level to go help their low level friends and still get excitement with the mission and also keeps you more on your toes since bad playing could lead you to a wipe.

I think anyone who oppose to that just wants the possibility to have easy content by allowing their high level LS mates to come clear stuff for them while they watch TV and eat cookies. But that's just my opinion.

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Wait, your LS gets cookies? Where do I sign up?

I think adding difficulty to the game will definitely make it a lot better, even if it's just adjusting the strengths of the monsters. I liked how in FFXI it took time to defeat even normal monsters that con EP. In FFXIV you can kill about 10 monsters in the same time. During leves when groups of monsters attack, I don't mind that mobs being easier than normal, but balance it a bit to give it a challenge. I hate just going in and pressing 1 for a normal attack maybe 3 times and then I'm ready to fight the next monster in line.

Also, I do like the idea of implementing some kind of caps. CoP was the best expansion for FFXI, and it was because of the caps. It took me months to beat the Promyvions (mostly because it was a weekend thing I did with friends), but even when I had finished I would always be the first (and only) to offer help to people who haven't done it because I enjoyed the challenge. I enjoyed capped Promyvions and mammets more than any other content in the entire game (mammets was as far as I had gotten before the removal of caps, then I just quit doing CoP because of lack of challenge).

And if there are no caps, at least scale the monster levels up to match the highest player, like someone had suggested in another thread. It greatly pisses me off, especially in FFXI, that players get handed things to them because they have such great buddies (like a friend of mine I had received a Haubergeon from someone for free when it was still worth a million or 2) while I'm working my ass off to achieve the same thing because I don't have friends who are that kind to help me.

I think SE's definition of challenge has died. To me CoP was the golden age of MMORPG, the very definition of what it should be. FFXIV is becoming more and more a joke of a game, trying to make everything so easy that even facebook games are starting to be more challenging.

Like you said Xeak, I also loved to go back to help friends do their CoP missions, loved the fact that I was capped and that there was always a challenge waiting. Removing the cap was really a bad decision if you ask me, there are plenty of games that pretends to be MMORPGs out there that already allows you to go steamroll through their content... FFXIV should be aimed for a different crew.

Agreed. Throughout Final Fantasy's long and glorious career, the games have continued to be aimed at pro-gamers, people who love the challenge. Since FF became an MMO (at least in recent years on FFXI) it's targeting players who I'll refer to as pansies. They think something's too difficult because they went through it once, failed, and never bothered to try again. I suppose most MMOs would rather their players just be bulked up with tons of content that they'll never bore of regardless of being so easy (like WoW). I think the easy content is a bore just going through it the first time, and getting whatever treasures from it isn't as rewarding, and those "elitists" who rule WoW shouldn't be considered elitists. I'm sure many on here will agree with me on that, I know plenty of people on the Bismarck server on FFXI did. It's the challenges of the game that makes elite players. I would like to see FFXIV as challenging as FFXI had been and then some. That would make for the perfect MMO imo.

It seems like SE just wants players for now though, which is understandable. FFXI didn't have the cred that WoW did. It took FFXI 6 years I believe to reach 2 million subscribers while WoW had 10 million in maybe about 3 years. So giving us content that's enjoyable and easy for now I'm not completely against, but I hope they give us plenty of challenging content when the PS3 release comes and we have to start paying a subscription fee. I've stuck with FFXIV since alpha, even on my laptop where the graphics lagged unbelievably. (I have a desktop now that's a lot better!) My hopes for this game have no dwindled a bit. But if FFXIV continues to target pansies like the WoW audience, I'm not sure I'll stick around very long. Each time I started up on WoW I could only play for maybe 2 months before boring of it and quitting for a year. I would hate it if FFXIV became just like that for me.

I didn't enjoy the level caps in CoP. I enjoyed the content. The level caps were necessary because those areas and fights were balanced for level 30, 40, 50, or 60, and would be utterly broken by a level 75 rushing through. When the devs made CoP, they had the option of either capping the areas, optimizing the entire expansion for level 75, or letting people get a different experience solely based on whether they want to overlevel for it.

CoP's level caps were a pain in the ass, but totally worth it.

battle mechanic is paramount... ease of access is a perk until its perfect. enjoy it while it lasts foo. your a tester, freebee duh

Is it wrong to ask for difficult content as soon as it's released? Personally I would like a challenge that's nearly unbeatable as soon as it's released and as testing goes weaken it a tad to see how it works. That way it'll keep people wanting to try to beat it for the rewards, and people won't be through the whole thing within a few weeks (maybe days) and just quit running it altogether. And it'd be an extra perk for those LS elitists that manage to beat the content, because they'd have bragging rights for the rest of the game's existence as long as they have proof to show that they did it, and when they did it.

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Originally Posted by Perrin_Aybarra

I'll post this again, even if you all must be tired of me insisting on this. But to me challenge comes with capped fights that are designed around that cap level. The way they had level capped areas/missions in FFXI. To me that is the definition of ongoing challenge, promotes skillfull play and even includes casual players. Being casual =/= wanting everytime steamrollable and easy. Capped missions also makes things challenging without being a grinding time sink.

Capped missions allows for high level to go help their low level friends and still get excitement with the mission and also keeps you more on your toes since bad playing could lead you to a wipe.

I think anyone who oppose to that just wants the possibility to have easy content by allowing their high level LS mates to come clear stuff for them while they watch TV and eat cookies. But that's just my opinion.

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i'm all with you on that topic, and still the fights have to be a challenge. The cap alone (looking at how easy the game currently is) won't save the game. The difficulty and like _C-a-e-r-i-t-h_ posted, the way the fights are designed matters
here. And that is where i doubt, that SE will do the right moves. Since so far they put "retard" on par with "casual" - which is BS -. At least the easy-mode all-around cries that out loud... so that has to be their direction atm. Mechanics like this are a killer for every game since ppl won't subscribe for an easy-mode grindfest (crafting).

Oh look it's this thread again.

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Originally Posted by Godryc

What is difficulty to you?

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Having to look left and right at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Anty

i'm all with you on that topic, and still the fights have to be a challenge. The cap alone (looking at how easy the game currently is) won't save the game. The difficulty and like _C-a-e-r-i-t-h_ posted, the way the fights are designed matters
here. And that is where i doubt, that SE will do the right moves. Since so far they put "retard" on par with "casual" - which is BS -. At least the easy-mode all-around cries that out loud... so that has to be their direction atm. Mechanics like this are a killer for every game since ppl won't subscribe for an easy-mode grindfest (crafting).

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I agree, it wouldn't solve the very fact that right now everything is too easy, even if it was capped. I hope like many that they heard us in saying that everyone (hardcores or casuals) want a challenge, and that they know that challenge doesn't mean time sink but skillful play and well designed encounters.

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Originally Posted by Demacia

Oh look it's this thread again.

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It will keep coming back so long as people keep mistakenly equating difficulty with time-in primarily. And rightly so.

True Difficulty

Fights that are short (respectively to the monster you're fighting, at least not a huge fight like an HNM like Kirin) that takes pure skill to beat, so if you make a few mistakes you have the possibility of losing, but can still somehow make up for it in the same fight. In fights right now, especially in a party, the mob is dead after a few swings, or before you even pull your weapon out in a party. Behest to me would feel like a waste of 5 minutes if it didn't give good SP.

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Originally Posted by Xeak

Is it wrong to ask for difficult content as soon as it's released? Personally I would like a challenge that's nearly unbeatable as soon as it's released and as testing goes weaken it a tad to see how it works. That way it'll keep people wanting to try to beat it for the rewards, and people won't be through the whole thing within a few weeks (maybe days) and just quit running it altogether. And it'd be an extra perk for those LS elitists that manage to beat the content, because they'd have bragging rights for the rest of the game's existence as long as they have proof to show that they did it, and when they did it.

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the minute someone gains "bragging rights" over a pretend fight is the day ff community dwindles to the depths of the wow community sadly. ewwwww
not to mention the "elitists". thats exactly what this game does NOT need tyvm.

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Originally Posted by Shyd

Having to look left and right at the same time.

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I do that all the time, what's your problem?

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Originally Posted by Xeak

Is it wrong to ask for difficult content as soon as it's released? Personally I would like a challenge that's nearly unbeatable as soon as it's released and as testing goes weaken it a tad to see how it works. That way it'll keep people wanting to try to beat it for the rewards, and people won't be through the whole thing within a few weeks (maybe days) and just quit running it altogether. And it'd be an extra perk for those LS elitists that manage to beat the content, because they'd have bragging rights for the rest of the game's existence as long as they have proof to show that they did it, and when they did it.

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I agree.

All content should be difficult to beat when it first comes out, and then dwindles over on a monthly-scheduled system by the devs.

Topic: I remember hating the caps in FFXI, then I started playing more games without the level caps (well that or those MMORPGs' version of level caps that were more like level restrictions), and at the end of the day I realized I'd rather have the level caps implemented in FFXI since it can keep content fresh and/or at least keeps content from 'disappearing' because you're too high for said content or the sort thereof.

Then once level caps are implemented, it would be nice to start seeing level-scaled quests and missions too. Like instead of removing the cap for the promies, you could go in as Lv.30 or Lv.75 after beating them while capped at Lv.30. (Though to prevent abuse, you would have to exit to join others for the other cap; otherwise you wouldn't be able to group up or interact with anyone not under the same level cap.)

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Originally Posted by MistyMew

the minute someone gains "bragging rights" over a pretend fight is the day ff community dwindles to the depths of the wow community sadly. ewwwww
not to mention the "elitists". thats exactly what this game does NOT need tyvm.

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Never FFXI'd much, I take it?

Thanks for agreeing with my Dragon. And MistyMew, ever think that it's because of those elitists that the rest of us actually learn how to kill certain things? I wouldn't doubt at all if the first THM to beat the high level NMs solo was just some bored elitist looking for a challenge (or suicidal), and same goes for the people who just decided to start killing level 99 mobs as well. Not saying that it was in fact elitists who started that, but more than likely it could've been. And honestly, a game without elitists isn't possible. They're going to be there no matter what, whether the game completely sucks or if it's the most bad ass game out there.

Difficulty = (chance of failure) x (penalty for failure)

Personally, I like my games to have a high chance of failure, but a low or non-existent penalty for failure. That way, I have to play well and play smart in order to overcome the obstacles of the game, but I don't get frustrated or angry when I get killed.

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

Difficulty = (chance of failure) x (penalty for failure)

Personally, I like my games to have a high chance of failure, but a low or non-existent penalty for failure. That way, I have to play well and play smart in order to overcome the obstacles of the game, but I don't get frustrated or angry when I get killed.

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pretty much same, though no failure pentalties i like only cause ...with them people end up quiting if you don't rip threw it in 1-2 tries ..so no penalty can keep most people trying long as the group don't suck and it's just really hard content.

for non mmo games i am the same but i don't like repeating things. i'll play on hardest mode and quit usually. never playing it again. with mmo's it's all repetetive, but i like stuff like cop where it was very hard and i didn't really need to do it again. if they could make something like cop and add it in every 6months i'd never leave this game.

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Originally Posted by MistyMew

the minute someone gains "bragging rights" over a pretend fight is the day ff community dwindles to the depths of the wow community sadly. ewwwww
not to mention the "elitists". thats exactly what this game does NOT need tyvm.

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Sense of accomplishment is doing something to brag about, and that's what most are asking for in difficulty. Anything to get the community going is welcomed, weather it's negative or positive. Right now outside of your LS there is no community in this game.

My post at this time is useless but at some point I would be increasing the time it takes to level from 1-20, and decreasing the time it takes to level from 20-50, while developing challenging content to get through for all level ranges. Challenge should come from mechanisms from both the player's class and the monster's ability, not from the time it takes you to get leveled up.

We aren't in a "content wave," yet, because core systems are still being redesigned, but once core systems are finished, then content needs to be fleshed out for all level ranges.

Some people are talking about satisfaction. There's not a lot of satisfaction in the game like someone else mentioned because there is so much money in the game; which makes acquiring gear feel trivial; especially since all of the weapons and armor are undervalued anyhow.

I think the worst part of lack of satisfaction are the terrible, terrible moves that you gain as you rank up. They make no impact and aren't significantly different from the other moves that you get, so there's no challenge to your moves, and for the most part you can just pick an assortment of moves that you like the animations for and use them.

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I suppose most MMOs would rather their players just be bulked up with tons of content that they'll never bore of regardless of being so easy (like WoW). I think the easy content is a bore just going through it the first time, and getting whatever treasures from it isn't as rewarding, and those "elitists" who rule WoW shouldn't be considered elitists.

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?

While WoW does baby people through leveling, the game does have interesting mechanisms in their raiding. This game has no interesting mechanisms in the game at all, and coordination is almost never required.

WoW's newest content patch has more casual player mechanics than FF14 has in the entire game for hardcore/casual mechanics combined.

You're correct that FFXIV needs players desperately, which means there has to be accessible content - and content that is aimed at the lower levels is arguably more important right now than content aimed at higher levels.

You're incorrect that WoW is full of pansies, as it has a wide assortment of players, but any WoW player could easily do any of the content in FFXIV provided they would last through the boredom in this game.

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Originally Posted by Godryc

I see a lot of people saying more difficulty is something they'd really want to see added to the game. A number of people are saying they want that more than anything. I even saw one person say that difficulty essentially equaled things that require more time and effort.

I really hope this is not what we are asking for. Something is not difficult because you have to spend more time on it. As for the effort part I get the feeling that its only considered effort because of the amount of time being put in.

But even if its because you have to fight nothing but mobs that are way higher level than you. Time and Effort is not Difficulty. Difficult things often require more time and effort but it doesn't work backwards.

I would much rather think of difficulty as something that is mentally engaging and challenging and of course still fun.

What is difficulty to you? Are we really just asking for more grind (time and effort) or is it really a challenging engaging experience that we're after? Clarity is important when the devs are listening so closely.

One last note, there was a dev response recently about them making crafting easier. I don't think it needs to be any easier but we can talk about that in another post.

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you mean camping for 3 days for a 10 min window isn't difficult, wheres my dictionary.lol.

I don't care much for penalty, take a look at Abe Oddworld games, which the only penalty for dying was restarting from a checkpoint.

In my opinion, difficulty should be skill, and skill alone. What do I mean by skill? It is the ability to analyze your current situation, and apply the correct techniques to increase your chance of success.

I'm going to use a battle situation, since most players can relate to it.

Ever heard of the phrase 'knowing is half the battle'? Obviously, we can't always know what is going to happen when we encounter a "new" monster. However, overtime by battling the same monster you will gain knowledge about it, which would better help you analyze a live battle situation.
E.G. Peiste has a cone aoe attack, you would keep an eye out for it when it is charging up an attack. When you see it's eyes glowing, it is executing a paralyze attack, you should keep your paralyna ready for a quick response.

When everyone actually plays their best move in a battle situation, everyone can feel good about defeating a DIFFICULT monster.

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Originally Posted by Xatsh

The underlying main issue with the game is there is no feeling of accomplishment no reward.

So you have 2 issues of why people are complaining they are not the same.
-Difficulty does not = time , but the people who are bringing in the time complaint are doing so because atm square is taking 2-3 months to develop content which is good for 2hrs.... think about that for a sec.

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Patch hasn't even been live for an hour and half and it only took you two hours to get through all the new content?
Impressive Doc; say mind if I borrow the Delorean for a bit?

You'll be saddened to know that adding content to a game is not as easy as writing up a story and loading it up to a server.

The general pipeline for new content to a game involves creating the assets, scripting any events and the minutiae for driving the content, any new game resources (items, characters, monsters, NPCs, dialogue) and THEN, testing all that, removing or replacing what didn't work, and then doing this for each piece of content.

With all the changes being made to the core of the game I'm taking a wild guess and saying its great they added what new content they did on top of the changes to the interface and combat.

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

Patch hasn't even been live for an hour and half and it only took you two hours to get through all the new content?
Impressive Doc; say mind if I borrow the Delorean for a bit?

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I don't have anything to say on this topic, but I think you should check dates, Phenidate, before you post. That was an old post that came way before the patch release. Xatsh was only saying that 2 hours worth of content is an issue, not that they completed the content already within 2 hours.