Make the majority of content something the majority of your players are interested in doing.
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Make the majority of content something the majority of your players are interested in doing.
give the people what they want and they'll still find something to complain about
What if different players are interested in different things? SE is trying to make content for all the different categories of players, which spreads them thin:
- RPers (housing, furniture, glam).
- Casual players (alliance raids, MSQ, dungeons).
- Midcore players that want grinds, relics, mounts and things like that (lots of mount grinds with hunts, FATEs, beast tribes, scrips, Extremes, Field Operations, etc)
- Raiders (Savage and Ultimate).
- People who want dungeons to have more variety (variant dungeons).
- People who want mythic+ (criterion).
- People who enjoy BA and DRS large scale raiding (Chaos raids).
But by satisfying all these different types of people, it spreads them thin making few of them actually satisfied.
To be honest in this instance they should have just learned that after a decade of developing content you should have a good structure for when content comes out or how it is developed...
Let's take raiders who enjoy large scale raiding (BA/DRS/Chaotic) and casual players that want alliance raids, there is no reason why you cannot satisfy both at the same time. In the similar way they did when they added Variant -> Criterion as a multi-step difficulty. There is very little reason why Chaotic could not have served as a 2 step difficulty.
Midcore players that want grinds? There is no reason why you cannot release the relic sooner in the games lifecycle, and then eventually integrate it into exploratory content or the sort. Like what is there to stop them from adding in a tomestone grind, or a FATE grind like they did in animated quest for the HW relic. To my knowledge the asset models for the initial weren't even entirely fresh either, but recycled from 3.05 with some visual effects added. The option is there, and it just seems they elect not to.. At this point most people wouldn't even mind if the initial model was recycled from another model as it would actually give them something to do.
You will never make the entire player base happy. Never ever.
The devs have created a situation where there is too much of a skill gap for everyone to be happy with any one piece of content.
You have turbo casuals who don't even know what half of their buttons do and uber hardcore who don't enjoy anything below savage difficulty.
The devs will never be able to create a piece of content that both of these groups will enjoy.
If you ask me (which nobody did) it’s not about the ’quantity’ of the content, it’s that the devs need to find a better balance of drip-feeding us casual/raid content.
There probably is enough content to satisfy [most] people, they’ve just only been releasing the raid content and leaving out any substantive ‘casual content’. Instead we get daily lock-out allied tribes or weekly lockout Jeuno
As for the quality, well, I’ll just say that…varies. lol
Or maybe they're just creatively bankrupt and people are sick of it. Who knows.
Bozja was praised extensively by both casuals and hardcore players.
Casuals had something to grind, they had options behind their relic, and it offered a good money making method in addition to several desired items like mounts, minions and TT cards. Addressed the majority of issues people had with exploratory when it was Eureka. Had a friendly entry point and death wasn't as detrimental to the experience, nor was the whole 'elemental level' thing present, people liked this.
Raiders both midcore and hardcore praised it, it gave them a long-term goal for a weapon, it facilitated several large scale raids which they thought were appropriately designed. Released the first formal large-scale savage raid, which those doing savage liked quite a lot, eventually leading to many raiders requesting they release or work on savage alliance raids and large scale raids in the future. Also came with duels, which they complemented, granted the RNG factor of getting a duel wasn't the most well-liked decision. Also included lost actions and essences which elevated their gameplay. Critical Engagements were well received.
It was praised well by both casuals and hardcore players, and not an insignificant amount either... Obviously it wasn't flawless, but then nothing is.. It's like if you get down to it, you could say that any given player in the game has never universally liked content even when it was designed exclusively for them, for example, you can still find hardcore raiders that still complain about ultimates to some varying degree. So obviously there's always issues, but again, point being it was well received by both casual and hardcore players.
It was still ultimately content that was designed for both categories of players, and something that both categories enjoyed.
I know tons of people that hated Bozja specifically because the bulk of the content was locked behind hours and hours of FATE grinding.
The raids were good, but almost everyone I play with didn't do them because they didn't want to do all the grind that came before it.
It's amazing to see all that you put into midcore as if midcore is grinds...no, grinds are for everyone who likes to grind and has too much time on their hands. Bozja/Eureka are a perfect example of that and they can be done by causal to hardcore players. Fates (including in Eureka) and hunts are all utterly repetitive, mind numbing and unchallenging content. Critical engagements were fun at first but how many times can you do that? It becomes mind numbing too. I liked doing Bozja once for the story and go back a few times for the raids but not to get new weapons. One was more than enough grind.
Beast tribes midcore? That's the easiest content in the game whether it is battle or DOL/DOH quests. Feed an alpaca, carry a crate and press a key to perform a trick with a flying fish... really? The most casual player can manage that.
The only real midcore content in that list is extremes. Content suitable for former raiders with limited time, people that have outgrown casual battle content or people who want to build up more confidence/experience before tackling harder content (PF is often 90% waiting and 10% fighting) or schedule (fixed time raiding) to accommodate savage/ultimate raiding.
Atm all the fighting content except one ex per patch (unreals are just "refurbished" old fights and not new content) is either causal and totally brain dead or punishing savage that requires watching vids and studying the fights. Extreme content requires one to know their job and be able to move and adapt without being utterly punishing with things like bodychecks (which btw isn't even a fun mechanic as progress of an entire alliance hindered by one person: you don't get to see what comes after, everyone gets obliterated because of a single person's mistake ). Alliance raids, variant, dungeons, normal raids, regular trials are all super easy and interesting only the first and second time around and come with zero challenge beyond that. This game needs more extreme level content.
Variant and criterion dungeons? It was a lost opportunity. You have the choice between brain dead fights (that includes soloing the content) with trash adds that are pure boring damage sponges or savage and savage +, nothing in between. At least give us criterion with rezzes, it would encourage more people to participate and become better players. BA and DRS are closer to extreme than the Chaotic raid. The Chaotic raid would have been much more approachable for those midcore players if the dooms were longer or removed and if there were not those punishing body checks that make you dependent on 23 other people yet it would still be challenging contrary to Jeuno (it's soooo slow with each boss taking all their sweet time to show you what is coming next).
Then maybe the ones not doing it are casual?
I agree about FATEs (except the super boss FATEs). I do not agree that hunts are unchallenging; the bodies everywhere say otherwise.Quote:
Fates (including in Eureka) and hunts are all utterly repetitive and unchallenging content.
They can, but in my observation it's not casual players doing it; it's the players that spend more than a day playing after a patch ie. the ones who would prob do a field operation. Easy to spot familiar players.Quote:
Beast tribes midcore? That's the easiest content in the game whether it is battle or DOL/DOH quests. Feed an alpaca, carry a crate and press a key to perform a trick with a flying fish... really? The most casual player can manage that.
Maybe, but it's still an effort SE made to answer specific community requests. I didn't say they had 100% succeeded at that necessarily.Quote:
Variant and criterion dungeons? It was a lost opportunity.
This is an issue of them having:
- lack of budget / will of the management/investors to solve the issue
- lack of will from the team to solve the issue
- lack of a team in terms of bodies working to solve the issue
- lack of a proper vision behind them driving them to solve the issue
- lack of skill to solve the issue
- lack of technical capability to solve the issue
Among other things. Because all of those are solvable. But because we are dealing with a handicapped company / team in one way or another of those above reasons. We are getting this "pick one, or two, we arent getting all of them" "Oh wait time for content grows again" "Character customization? Hats for your "complete" new races, hah! No chance buster" retirement home of an MMO. I can't wait to see Koji Fox and Soken singing in wheelchairs for 15.0.
All jokes aside. I don't think this game deserves a sub system anymore its subs are riding on "replay the MSQ or do everything that was in former expansions", but alas the MMO market is pretty dry. It's either this or WoW unless you want a major downgrade. Without any proper competition, both fill a niche, so in the worst case scenario FFXIV doesn't even need to try. People here will complain, myself included and nothing will change in any reasonable amount of time.
Only game that could even dream of competing is WoW or the Riot MMO (r.i.p)
So to you midcore is just people with infinite time on their hands? No, that's just people with a lot of time on their hands. I just want good fights that are not brain dead. Something that is clearable in PF in an evening or two. Atm the only fights that suit lifestyle are extremes and there is just one fight per patch. I would have loved a real alliance raid at that level. Did Jeuno right after it came out in the first hours of the morning before starting work and we didn't even wipe... I have zero interest in grinding ad nauseam (like what's the fun in doing the same critical engagement for the 50th time?).
To be fair while the entire collective field content isn’t midcore it does hide the closest things to midcore we have in this game
The 5 field content raids (except maybe DRS which is legit a savage especially before you could blow it away with rays) are basically the closest we have to midcore content in this game. Like besides its stupid entry requirements BA is the most quintessential example of midcore content in this game and while dal, CLL and DRN lean more towards “difficult alliance raid” they do have some curveballs and messy content that feels more midcore, stuff like TA’s complete lack of care about killing you with her temperature mechanic or Diablo armament actually doing raidwides that need to be mitigated to properly survive.
Once you go any higher you start enforcing PF, that alone doesn’t necessarily make it hardcore alone (as easy extremes are not hardcore) but the enforced PF does drag it down
Maybe there could be a grind category in what I said. But it would be pointless to make one and here is why.
SE makes seasonal events, MSQ, alliance raids, normal raids. Easy to see people return for a day in droves then vanish for these. So clearly, they are actually for casual players by definition.
Then they make content where people are made to play for more than a day. That is beast tribes. Why? Because they have to keep logging in again and again and again to rank up. At a certain point, those players stop being casual and you notice you spotted all of them doing all the other content too, like field ops.
And then what kept people doing field ops for more than a day? Some sort of grind, somewhere, otherwise they'd be done in a day.
I did forget to mention Island Sanctuary and content like that. It's hard to really say where that sits. I'm sure people into grinds will do it. But would a casual player? Hmmmmmm it'll probably be ignored now unless they have a thing for sims or want to decorate an island.
From SE's perspective it seems far more broad. They just seem to see:
- casual content that does 2% damage or is done very quickly
- hardcore content that takes lots of prog or is time-gated
I agree (as I put just above this quote). I do think that people attribute the wrong design goal to content though. For example, people will say the same thing about criterion (that they just wanted it to be cleared with randoms quickly) but not be as crazy easy as variants. But that wasn't their goal, because the feedback they were responding to was obviously the people saying "mythic+" or "multiple pathway dungeons" all over the forums.Quote:
I just want good fights that are not brain dead. Something that is clearable in PF in an evening or two.
Might be similar with chaotic because the issue with Endwalker was it being quiet and solo, and this most definitely brings a lot of people together to spend a lot of time together progging and go through strife together.
well I have an idea that would change the game completly with little things,
Battle royal dungeons, 3 teams going to dungeon faster got more rewards: each team 3 players: Tank/Healer/DPS
at least we will see less players afking when queue dungeon
Man, you truly believe that, don't you? How you can be so blue-eyed is beyond me.
They are not spread thin because they are trying to make things for all the players, they are spread thin because
1. their project management (what to prioritize when) sucks
2. their team is mismanaged as hell (talent is being pulled off of 14 to work on other projects)
3. the teams workload is uncredibly off putting (work on FFXIV, work on 2 more games, work on patching FFXVI)
4. their project lead Yoshi-P is constantly being pulled off to other things (like supervising the mobile port)
Your list of content is also full of wrong deductions and stretched unnecessarily. Its almost as shameless as Yoshi-P's lies. Like man, come on.
- Casual players (alliance raids, MSQ, dungeons).
-> that's part of the regular scope of content, which already has been reduced for years to keep up with development times.
- People who want dungeons to have more variety (variant dungeons).
-> that's for the casuals too, so I am putting it up here instead. They were experimenting with new types of content (which is good), does not change what it was for.
- Midcore players that want grinds, relics, mounts and things like that (lots of mount grinds with hunts, FATEs, beast tribes, scrips, Extremes, Field Operations, etc)
-> that's straight up not true, lol. Mindless grinds is not midcore content. 5-Minute-a-Day Beast tribes are not midcore content. Fates are not midcore content. I could go on, but I won't. Others have debunked that in the thread already.
Field Operations is not even released yet.
Ex being midcore, okay, but those are still within the expected scope of the project. Those have also been changed, by the way, and incorporated in the MSQ instead of being an addition to it, to lessen development workload.
- Raiders (Savage and Ultimate).
-> and Chaotic, and Ex Trials, and Criterion
(yes, I am aware that they wanted chaotic to be on Ex Level, but they let Mr. Ozma do things to it. Yes, I know Ex is not on the same difficulty level as Savage, its still raid content.)
- People who want mythic+ (criterion).
-> see above. Criterion is not M+.
- People who enjoy BA and DRS large scale raiding (Chaos raids).
-> See above again.
Your list is sugarcoating at its finest.
Bozja was okay on release but the experience after release is was more miserable than Eureka. You need people for CLL? Too bad, no one wants to do it, the instance is empty/people who are in are grinding their asses against fates/ce....I have an alt that is perpetually stuck on Dalriada cause no one seems to want to do it. I had a far more positive experience in Eureka and I think Eureka has a more community feel, people were spawning NMs for lower level players and waiting for them to arrive, in Bozja you're trapped in your zone and the few fates that you have with no one to help you because no one wants to do the Z1/Z2 fates and stick only to Z3.
I fell asleep many times grinding fates on Bozja because it was boring...I remember being really interested in the lore and wanted to collect the field notes for lore...but they locked the lore behind a fate grind/duels/CLL? Why? My man I ain't grinding all that shit for lore, idc about the mount. It just feels really bloated. I have no interest in duels at all so it's impossible for me to get the field notes...so why waste time.
Eureka is still alive today because it's the only way you can progress your relic, I hope they don't make this mistake again. I'm sick of relic steps tied to CT...
Crazier idea: what if they just make the game they want to make, and if players don't like it... they can play something else???
Why should they be beholden to the whims of fickle masses?
It's like telling [insert content creator] "you should do more reaction streams, those are so popular."
If you want different content, you can go find it elsewhere. That content surely exists somewhere out there, right?
Not really. I am not saying it is midcore content by people's wishes in this thread. I am saying it is midcore content by the definition of who ACTUALLY does it.
If you simply look at the people who do this content, they are the same people you're gonna notice doing things like field ops. Because 5-minute a day beast tribes are timegating, forcing people not to be casual players that play for 3 days every patch then quit. Likewise, who does FATE farming? Certainly not the players that are gonna quit 3 days after the patch releases.
Obviously, those "midcore" players are hungry for something more, but they are finding a way to occupy themselves meanwhile such as beast tribes.
The line between the current casual and midcore is kind of thin though, because you actually have journalists now that are bored wanting more content after doing beast tribes. And that's because they discovered that even with their busy schedule they can get through this content. Nevertheless, many people's behaviour is simply to quit after doing MSQ/alliance/normal raids.
This misses my point because it's not strictly aimed at people who do Savage. Based on what they said about the raids in Field Ops, it's aimed more broadly than that, such as at people who like the larger scale raids like BA, DRS or WoW raids and dislike the small-scale raids we have.Quote:
- Raiders (Savage and Ultimate).
-> and Chaotic, and Ex Trials, and Criterion
(yes, I am aware that they wanted chaotic to be on Ex Level, but they let Mr. Ozma do things to it. Yes, I know Ex is not on the same difficulty level as Savage, its still raid content.)
It might not be. But the content was created after people cried out for M+ and 4-person raids for a few years. I never said they succeeded at making it M+. My point was this was their goal.Quote:
- People who want mythic+ (criterion).
-> see above. Criterion is not M+.
Incorrect, those things are more casual content than midcore content. One could maybe argue about fates, but beast tribes are definitely casual content. No time commitment, and an easy way to level alt classes.
Now you are mudding definitions even more. Midcore is not exactly defined, and people flip flop around the definition anyhow, so huddling down and trying to redefine midcore is not helping you. Fact is, beast tribes require no real time commitment, and can be done within a month of regular subscription (the minimum amount). People not caring about them does not mean they aren't.Quote:
If you simply look at the people who do this content, they are the same people you're gonna notice doing things like field ops. Because 5-minute a day beast tribes are timegating, forcing people not to be casual players that play for 3 days every patch then quit. Likewise, who does FATE farming? Certainly not the players that are gonna quit 3 days after the patch releases.
Obviously, those "midcore" players are hungry for something more, but they are finding a way to occupy themselves meanwhile such as beast tribes.
And just because you are entertained by fates, and hunt grinds, does not mean everything is.
No, you are missing my point here - the fact that this is content aimed at raiders, no matter the difficulty level.Quote:
This misses my point because it's not strictly aimed at people who do Savage. Based on what they said about the raids in Field Ops, it's aimed more broadly than that, such as at people who like the larger scale raids like BA, DRS or WoW raids and dislike the small-scale raids we have.
Its raids for 4 people, because raids is all Square Enix can do nowadays.Quote:
It might not be. But the content was created after people cried out for M+ and 4-person raids for a few years. I never said they succeeded at making it M+. My point was this was their goal.
Missing my point. Casual players - as in, people who do not commit to playing every single day for weeks at a time, would be unable to do them due to time gating. So who does that leave to do them then? The answer is obviously the players who are logging in every single day but are bored ie. non-casual players.
You're right. I normally define it differently. But for practicality I needed to find a way to properly measure the difference between them in a way that reflects who actually does the content. Clearly, the servers are filled to the brim on patch release day with people in cutscenes at the MSQ icons, but not all of them stay to go and do their daily beast tribes for weeks.Quote:
Midcore is not exactly defined, and people flip flop around the definition anyhow, so huddling down and trying to redefine midcore is not helping you.
And if they do their daily beast tribes every single day for weeks, that is logging in consistently, so doesn't that make them a "midcore" player then? Because they are not playing casually.
I still kinda remember how Yoshi-P advertised this expansion to have all kinds of content, things that people have asked for in the past. Deep Dungeons, Field Operations, a new "Ishgardian Restoration" kinda deal. The fact that most of it will be released over a year after the expansion launch is absolutely miffing. The entirety of 7.1 looks very barebones, and 7.2 seems to be far away on the horizon at the moment.
Pretty much this. I don't know many people that disliked the raids (CLL/DR/Dalriada) and in fact most people seem to hold those into high praise if just for the creativity behind, but the fate grind? I don't know about that. Even the CEs seem to be pretty divisive in the playerbase.
We are paying a monthly fee for access, that is true.
However, we also paid the full cost of the expansion itself, which is supposed to come with certain features. It is entirely okay to ask the developers when the promised features become available. We paid for a product, we are entitled to get that product. This is how it works.
Except you're getting the answers and then complaining because it isn't "everything is available immediately all at once in 7.0". Also, remember the enormous credit sequence after you finished the 7.0 MSQ (someone said it lasts about 40 minutes?)? All those people is what the "cost of the expansion" paid for.
You would get a bit critical too though if you paid for a sports club membership every month, and your trainer has had you mostly benched for the past twelve months? They keep promising that some good stuff is coming for the next twelve, and there probably really is, but you'd feel pretty much strung along -- and you can't quite unsub until there is something for you to do or they'll empty out your locker that you totally customized at some expense. (Sorry for that last part of the metaphor, had to get the house demolishing thing keeping people from unsubbing in there somewhere)