People Enjoy hard Games

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.

I can see both sides. Sometimes after a long day of work all I want to do is chill out and play a game without having to throw myself at bullet/sword/spell sponges that can one shot you right back.

Then there are days...bring the pain. I want it to hurt.

An MMO should be easy at first and then get gradually harder however I feel it started easy, got hard ( giggity), then job changes got dumbed down, then content got dumbed down to the point this is the easiest MMO I've played in ages.

Elden ring is on almost every platform, xvi is on one.



I enjoy both hard and easy games.



I have the platinum in Elden ring.



I also enjoyed the crap out of xvi.

I'd actually like to see content getting tougher as levels go up - I'm fine with level 50 content being baby mode but at 90 I expect some sort of engagement and danger that can catch me off guard. It doesn't have to be frustratingly hard full of oneshots like savage but bit more than the 1-2 button faceroll show we have rn in dungeons etc.

And people enjoy easy/relaxing games. *shrug*

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Originally Posted by Ath192

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.

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Know what else sold a ton? Hogwart's Legacy and Diablo 4. Both easy and mindless.

Then people should go play those games and leave us alone.

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Originally Posted by ChonkGoblinSuprem

Then people should go play those games and leave us alone.

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Who is "us", who is it you speak for ? You dont speak for me, speak for yourself.

I feel like there has to be a distinction made between "challenging" and "hard". But it's been a long week and I'm not sure I'm up to the eloquence required to get the point across right now. I'll try to remember to come back to it later.

I dont enjoy hard games tho..
but i like the option to play on harder difficuilty!.

I was able to play and finish Elden Ring because it had an option to play it "easier"..
by that i mean magic build..

Games earn more by having different difficulty settings..
Because people enjoy different difficulty settings!..

Uh sure, I can half agree.

The biggest issue is, is that they aren't necessarily the same audience or people playing for that matter. E.g., you cannot really conclude that because BG3 was difficult, and people loved it, therefore it would work out the same in XIV. Or more broadly speaking, other games for that matter.

I do think they should have another difficulty between story and extreme, and equally, I do think that there should be an option for solo duties, where you can pick Easy, Medium, or Hard... (Or maybe even beyond), but I don't necessarily think a higher difficulty should be the default. - It's always been pretty polarising, even for something like Shinryu which wasn't necessarily anything new, but just a combination of existing mechanics. It's not necessarily just people sucking either that were the only ones complaining.

This scenario already played out in WoW. The devs tried to make normal dungeon content more difficult in Cataclysm, hoping that players would rise to the occasion, but instead players just gave up and complained until everything was nerfed into the ground.

You could say that's a different game and a long time ago, but the same thing has played out here in Orbonne Monastery. Orbonne was not hard, at all, but players found it so incredibly difficult many would just bail on the raid the second they saw that it popped. This eventually led to the echo buff being added and Thunder God being heavily nerfed. 90% of the Thunder God fight is just looking at the boss and standing at the front or back at the right time, but that was too much to ask for a lot of people.

Heck, half the reason people ilvl cheese alliance raids in general is because they can't do mechanics. I once had a dude begin an Orbonne run by saying "oh shit I forgot to take my gear off" and he spent the entire rest of the raid dying to literally every mechanic, every time it happened, all while constantly complaining in party chat about "OMG THIS IS SO HARD" and "I JUST WANT MY TOMESTONES WTF!!"

I would personally love if standard content were more difficult and I had the same outlook as OP years ago, but unfortunately the reality is to the contrary. The system we have now is probably the best approach, where most content is pretty easy but there are more difficult alternatives if that's what you're looking for.

I much prefer XIV taking the direction to increase the " Skill-Ceiling " of Jobs while keeping the " Skill-Floor " where it is for friendly barrier of entry and go from there. This allows the player... to choose how well they wish to master a Job to its limits beyond what is required to clear/farm/grind any piece of content. Skill-Expression is a big appeal to many players that stays with us as any piece PvE combat content? is not all appealing to every single person... but you always will need to take a Job to said PvE combat content near 100% of the time.

While more difficult content is not automatically well received if we just universally demand it to be raised? How say dungeons are currently setup feels more like a theme-park tour then anything else as we mow down a pack of mobs towards a boss repeat process and that's it, only in Endwalker it has become worse with how Square has homogenized so much more of our Jobs that it's boring on-top of boring... Which is fine for players who want a laidback game, true...but at some point? Players do wish to have the option for excitement. If you like all your food 95% bland and unseasoned? great, players will be happy for you... but there should be an option for all of us to experience flavor, depth, nuances, complexity from either our Job gameplay? the content or both. And the excuse that we only get to get a slither of this at the last 5% of PvE Combat at Extreme/Savage? is not a good one if you ask me. The good ole line from Yoshi-P " Just go play Ultimate " did not age well for a good reason...

Have played other MMORPG's and the route to take either extreme's of to casual or to hardcore usually doesn't go well. XIV at least has the benefit of not having P2W features to outright power-tune your character. But XIV has become for me at least Jobwise? way to bland to really love the content as much as I used to, mhm

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

I'd actually like to see content getting tougher as levels go up

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Ah, but you see, therein lies the problem. The longer the game lasts, they can't just keep making content harder and harder as the level cap increases, because it will eventually become too hard...even though the gigachad gamers will never admit it.

I, for one, couldn't care less about game difficulty. I play easy games. I play hard games. I play games I find fun, difficulty has no bearing on fun in my mind.

I’m fine with the baseline content being clearable by a toddler, the problem is none of the jobs have any skill expression, dungeons are scaled so a cure 1 spammer can clear them, great if you are a cure 1 spammer, what is someone who actually has enough brain cells to rub together to play healer at any sort of competent level……1111111111111111111111

They need to stop having the skill ceiling being the skill floor and you might get veterans engaged with casual content again

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

I much prefer XIV taking the direction to increase the " Skill-Ceiling " of Jobs while keeping the " Skill-Floor " where it is for friendly barrier of entry and go from there. This allows the player... to choose how well they wish to master a Job to its limits beyond what is required to clear/farm/grind any piece of content. Skill-Expression is a big appeal to many players that stays with us as any piece PvE combat content? is not all appealing to every single person... but you always will need to take a Job to said PvE combat content near 100% of the time.

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Agreed.

Easy content isn't a slog if your class is still fun to play, but if the content is easy and your job is braindead as well, that's a bad time. I think having a range of jobs from simple to complex is good for the game, but it does concern me how they've all been going down the simplification track recently. Job design is one of the things that attracted me to this game to begin with and most of my favorite jobs are the "busier" ones. If they all got turned into Summoner I would just quit.

I don't think that difficulty plays a bigger role than world building/design and player expression/immersion.

Both Elden Ring and Baldur's gate let players try different builds, different paths, and all of them without feeling wrong or meaningless thanks to its world bulding and world design. This wide array of options let players have different experiences, gets them more into the game and makes them feel like a part of it, those invested players are very likely to speak highly of the game and more sales come from those recommendations (sounds familiar considering XIV case)

In XVI however you dont have that freedom, everything is extremely streamlined and deviating from the main story more often than not reward the players with boring fetch quests. It all makes you feel like tourist that is only there for the story and not a part of the world. This is also where difficulty comes into play because usually difficult battles make the players change their gameplay and develop strategies increasing their investment in the game, BG and ER aren't afraid to challenge you while XVI seems really scared to do it.

I feel that XIV could learn a lesson or two in how ER and BG handle their content, allowing for more player/skill expression in their systems instead of streamlining everything and making sure that not even the lowest common denominator feels slightly challenged

I really just think job design needs to improve. I don't care if "casual content" is easy because the game already allows us to form into different groups and do the type of content we want, which is great. I don't want to force someone who is just wanting to chill after work and farm glams from an alliance raid to have to smash their head against it, wipe after wipe, for 2 hours just to clear; but the gutting of the skill ceiling on jobs means I have to do high end content to get any enjoyment out of the gameplay of the game anymore... so basically I play once a week on Tuesday reclears and then don't have anything else to do.

Making an encounter harder doesn't make your job more engaging, and the job is how you interact and engage with the encounter. If your job is fun to play at a baseline in all content, then all the content you want to do becomes fun.

The recent success of Baldur's Gate 3 really shows this off. Sure it has variable difficulty settings, but even on the lower settings there are still TONS of options for how you want to play your character, set up your party, all that fun jazz. They don't dumb it down even if you pick easy.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

People Enjoy hard Games

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SOME people enjoy hard games. Some people like easy games and just want something easy to occupy their attention or to relax with. That is why I believe games are best when they have a "hard mode" and an "easy mode" (that you can choose from the very beginning).

The issue with FFXIV is that this hard mode is only available by unlocking the extreme, savage and ultimate modes and people only do these with a pre-formed party. You usually can't just queue for them, so a lot of people just end up doing the easy versions most of the time through roulettes.

An alternative way to do it would be to make the "hard" mode a client setting where you can disable telegraphs in the character config, so that orange telegraphs and tank buster indicators don't appear even in normal modes. Then the players that aren't very good with mechanics can keep the indicators on and the people who want a challenge can disable the indicators.

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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.

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There are a lot of people that like hard content, sure. It is pretty split.

Most of the people who want to do hard content don't actually end up doing it because of anxiety. I made a linkshell back in Heavensward catered to such people and within 2 days it had filled to 128 people and a lot of them told me they wanted to do this content but PF looked toxic so they didn't. Many of them were women.

It's a lot better now because there is cross-world PF, a [Practice] tag and the [Duty Complete] tag replaced the "2 chests, no bonus" toxic description we used to use. But I think it's most likely still a big issue.

So that is one of the challenges. A lot of people want to do it but never actually will. The other factor is they want to but they are too busy to put a serious focus on it because of work and real life.

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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.

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Majority or not, they exist and I remember Koji once said in response to people saying content is too easy that "easy is good... for us". A blunt response that a lot of people knew already. Easy is good for their statistics and people feel like they beat hard content when they win, even though it was in fact easy. He was usually translating for Yoshi-P then, so it may have actually been Yoshi-P.

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they both outperformed FFXVI which is a story game with incredibly easy gameplay.

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It was PS5 exclusive. If streams are anything to go by, tens of thousands of people per streamer watched the archived streams of FF16, obviously because plenty of people don't want to get a PS5.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

I don't think that difficulty plays a bigger role than world building/design and player expression/immersion.

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To me it does to some extent, a problem I feel is that after a dungeon or any multiplayer experience of the "Casual" variety doesn't feel special. It never feels like we did something meaningful together. We didn't need to talk, the boss just dropped dead and now everyone move along pls, next instance.

We are just mindlessly doing things. So perhaps more collaboration needed would feel more immersive. Just my 2 cents on that.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

I really just think job design needs to improve. I don't care if "casual content" is easy because the game already allows us to form into different groups and do the type of content we want, which is great. I don't want to force someone who is just wanting to chill after work and farm glams from an alliance raid to have to smash their head against it, wipe after wipe, for 2 hours just to clear; but the gutting of the skill ceiling on jobs means I have to do high end content to get any enjoyment out of the gameplay of the game anymore... so basically I play once a week on Tuesday reclears and then don't have anything else to do.

Making an encounter harder doesn't make your job more engaging, and the job is how you interact and engage with the encounter. If your job is fun to play at a baseline in all content, then all the content you want to do becomes fun.

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PREACH IT !! ...mhm

https://i.ibb.co/0QpBth9/Big-Nodders.gif

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

The recent success of Baldur's Gate 3 really shows this off. Sure it has variable difficulty settings, but even on the lower settings there are still TONS of options for how you want to play your character, set up your party, all that fun jazz. They don't dumb it down even if you pick easy.

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I mean yes, the options in that game are amazing. But the game isn't that hard, either. Not if you know what you're doing and know how DnD works, at least.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

I mean yes, the options in that game are amazing. But the game isn't that hard, either. Not if you know what you're doing and know how DnD works, at least.

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It's still rocket science compared to FFXIV or FFXVI.

I like having the option of different difficulty. Sometimes I feel like being challenged and sometimes I just want to come home after a long day at work and relax.

Also, no, the people who enjoy difficult games are not a majority. Just very vocal. In fact, many of them won't shut up and will constantly push their idea of fun on everyone else.

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

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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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I understand the desire for more difficult content and support it as side content in a MMORPG.

The problem is that some individuals are asking for the base game content to be made more difficult. That does not work well in MMORPGs (the games you mention are not MMOs) where players of different skill levels will be playing together in the base content.

Just because someone is playing an online game does not mean they consider themselves a "gamer". Games are generally a minor part of a player's life, not the focus. They are playing only a few hours a week and not several hours a day. Unless naturally gifted, they're not going to reach the same skill level as those who consider themselves "gamers" because they're not investing as many hours to develop that skill.

Another difference is that single player games allow players to have save points. That gives players a "safety net" that makes tackling higher difficulty content less stressful. You try, you fail, you load the saved game so there is zero negative effect on your character. Nothing is lost. It's as if the failed attempt didn't happen. Not so with MMORPGs, where you need to repair gear and replace consumables after failure. That might feel like a trivial problem to some but to others it ends up frustrating. They are playing the game for different reasons.

One thing the market trends aren't telling you is how many players that purchase games like Baldur's Gate and Elden Ring actually manage to complete the game all the way through. Many players will pick a game up, play until they hit their skill ceiling (or their interest dies out) then quit.

What highly publicized MMORPG tried going the higher skill floor route? Wildstar. Where is that game today? Totally dead (unless someone has it running on a private server). Not enough players were interested in difficult content and that's all there was for end game. Once a casual player completed the leveling experience, the game was over for them.

It just does not work in practice for MMORPGs.

Certainly there is room for improvement in this game to make it more appealing to more highly skilled players. Increasing the base difficulty is not the way to do it.

If you want a MMORPG that is truly difficult, try contacting FromSoftware. They seem the most likely developer that would be able to produce one that would succeed.

They could please more players if they would just fix the bloody netcode already. They're extremely limited in the types of mechanics they can introduce simply because of a number of factors on their end, not the least of which being the incredibly strange way clients and servers communicate with one another. Every fight boils down to DDR. High tier endgame content ranges from slightly above average DDR to a crackhead's idea of DDR, but it's DDR all the same. You can only rehash that so many times. The ability to implement randomized, reactive fights where you may know what each mechanic does but have no clue what order they're coming in would go a long way toward opening up their options.

As it is, it seems like they've been experimenting with reactive mechanics it at least a little. We've got more randomized mechanics now than we used to, and some of those do demand a degree of quick on-the-spot decision making, but the bosses themselves still have a set rotation of sorts.

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

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Can't disagree there. I somehow suffered through playing as a healer through ARR, then switched to DRG for HW because it felt thematically appropriate and it was so much better. Ended up playing story content as DPS and dungeons as healer.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

They could please more players if they would just fix the bloody netcode already.

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Do you mean weaving?

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The ability to implement randomized, reactive fights where you may know what each mechanic does but have no clue what order they're coming in would go a long way toward opening up their options.

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Believe me, they are perfectly capable of this. This is how old fights used to work in ARR. I recall that Shiva from ARR chooses random mechanics. You can fight S ranks from ARR and they cast in a completely random order. The first cast isn't the same and is random out of 8 or so casts.

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We've got more randomized mechanics now than we used to, and some of those do demand a degree of quick on-the-spot decision making, but the bosses themselves still have a set rotation of sorts.

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We have definitely always had random mechanics that still happen in a set rotation of sorts since Heavensward. Chaos in Stormblood would completely choose a random phase to start with and it was easy for that to throw the whole fight off for you after you'd got used to starting with the other phase.

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

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I was one of those kids who liked throwing rocks...so I had plenty of healing experience before I even started FF14!

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Originally Posted by Ath192

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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So here's the thing: while some people do think Elden Ring and Dark Souls games are hard, they're really not. From Software has more than a decade of experience making games that feel challenging, while at the same time bending over backwards to give players feedback and an excess of tools with which to succeed. And it's no surprise that after doing that for so long, Elden Ring is easily their most accessible game to date. They are masters at their craft.

The same can't be said for FF14; the game is just not very good at teaching people to play it, nor does it give players any variety of tools or methods with which to succeed. Credit where credit is due, most non-Ex/Sav fights have gotten pretty good at introducing boss abilities at a cadence where players can fail the first deployment of a new mechanic without wiping so they can learn from it on-the-go, and I really love that about FF14. But after a full decade, there's still nothing that teaches players how to effectively use the only tool they have to actually beat a fight: their kit.

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.

In addition, Elden Ring lets you over-level. As an MMO, that's simply not an option that FF14 will ever be able to provide its players. I mean, you can wait a handful of updates until there's gear with a higher iLevel, but that's wildly different from taking an hour or so to grind some runes and giving the fight another go.

If you just have difficulty, but you don't offer players an accessible variety of ways to tackle challenges, your game will never be anywhere close to the success that Elden Ring is. Elden Ring is where it's at because the people who made it are experts at crafting games that give players every possible advantage so that they can overcome content that would otherwise be difficult. It would take a drastic pivot for FF14 to even approach Elden Ring's success in that arena.

(And beyond that, I'd say you can't really compare the sales numbers of an MMO with a non-MMO, as there are plenty of people who won't play an MMO just because it's an MMO, or they'll drop it because it's a really big ongoing commitment, or they can't afford to pay monthly for a game, etc. There are simply other factors that need to be taken into consideration to do a fair comparison.)

I enjoy many games that are considered difficult.

I do not however, enjoy the way FFXIV's difficult content is designed, so I play the easy bits because they're fun.

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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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FFXIV Gameplay in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz8ssH7LiB0

This is one of the problems inherent to MMOs. While a single player game can just be whatever it is, the goal of an MMO is to have a little bit of something for everyone. That's why there are so many different types of content in the first place. Problem is, people like what they like and tend to see everything else a waste. You have people who want hard content complaining that things like islands and variant dungeons are "catering to the casuals", while simultaneously people who don't like hard content complain about how any resources go into things like ultimates that relatively few players even engage with, let alone clear.

The devs can't win here and it's pointless for them to even try, which is why they generally don't engage in conversation on the topic.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

This scenario already played out in WoW. The devs tried to make normal dungeon content more difficult in Cataclysm, hoping that players would rise to the occasion, but instead players just gave up and complained until everything was nerfed into the ground.

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To be fair, some of the Cata dungeons were actually broken at launch. Ashbury was literally unkillable if LFD put you into a group without the right CCs/interrupts, etc. Some of the early Cata "it's too hard" complaints were justified.

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

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Don't forget: they should also do it as a Hrothgar + AST.

No job swapping allowed.

> has someone else tell them the mathematically calculated best way to play this game

> complains this game is too easy

lollers

Here's another thing I could note... XIV has been designed to not encourage players to improve from the get go.

Job wise you do not need to know what the hell you're doing. Square will drag your dead bodies through the finish-lines in casual content. And while this can be relaxing and Fun, this also creates an environment where players do not wish to strife because there is no urgency to, the complete opposite of the message in the Endwalker MSQ. Why would you ever wanna improve when you can Echo-Unsync brute force it later anyways? Then once the players are met with an ounce of difficulty or hurdle to overcome? they already been conditioned to find it to much of a hassle, a challenge to much and avoid it. Nowadays? reading Tool-Tips of the Jobs they play being is burden to heavy... The Jobs are so hollow that they essentially play themselves. Between Black Desert login rewards and feeding my workers beer? there's literally no difference for me between that and an Expert roulette. At least not in feel for me... and that's terrible...

Keep casual content or 95% of FFXIV's content below Extreme easy? sure. But don't hollow out both the content and the Jobs we play, even the optional complexity we can master. Like one or the other. Yet Square seems to go to the direction of both if all these simplifications we have been hit with isn't a sign... then not just Yoshi P but everyone can just tell us to " Just go Play Ultimate ". I do not enjoy doing the hardest mechanics of having the mechanics be so astronomically difficult that we have to spend a full week bashing our heads into it, with hopefully a scheduled Static instead of a sporadic party-finder you have to constantly find or create... I do not see the fun in this, not me. I had more fun when my Job had more complexity. I used to love doing roulettes and dailies. I really spammed the crap out of Experts just for the hell of it... it was relaxing to do because it was Fun. But not anymore, now because it's so easy? its so unfun... that it becomes stressful, because I don't feel any excitement like I used to for playing well. In fact I feel like the game is just playing itself which is horrible... made worse when I know Square can do better because they have done better, mhm.

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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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I mean, if I wanna play hard games there is a smorgasbord of them ready for me to play.

It’s not wrong/bad to want more midcore/hardcore content in FFXIV, but it is folly to want this one game to be every possible game and cater to every possible want a gamer might have.

The devs have the data on what sells and keeps subs high, and they are going to build the game in that direction to the Nth degree; they absolutely know they will lose, say, 100 people who want a harder game…but they also know that loss will keep the 500 or so candy-crush moms who just wanna chill/faceroll the game.

So, they try to cater to everyone like mentioned above, but generally speaking the bulk of resources are going to be put towards whatever people engage in/burn game time on.

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

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just finished doing it on an alt. specifically, I did as much of the MSQ I could purely solo just to see what it was like. it is quite possibly the worst experience anyone could deliberately put themselves through in this game. duty support NPCs deal laughably weak damage which pads out dungeons, yet they don't take enough damage either so you're not actually healing that much unless you pull more yourself (which doesn't even make some dungeons go by faster since the NPCs don't do enough AoE damage). on top of healers already doing low damage, it grinds every single encounter in the game to an agonizing crawl to the point where some solo instances can stretch out to almost 10 minutes, all the while, you only have one damage spell and a DoT to use. for all 90 levels, for every single fight.

someone might say "that's your own fault for choosing to play alone in an MMORPG" which is partly true, but it does not excuse that the MSQ healer experience is still absolutely miserable compared to a tank/DPS playthrough.

If nothing else for the sake of the MSQ it would be so easy to add a “cleric stance” you could toggle in solo duties that turns your oGCD heals into damage spells

You’d still be spamming your nuke and DOT but at least you’d have 4-5 oGCD’s a minute to juggle