Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

[Kuwagami]

I recognize your posts by your signature gif and I believe someone needs to tell you this: you seem to have some pent up frustration with MMOs.

Not really. I have some pent up frustration with MMOs' population.

One of the major good point about MMO is that you can socialize, meet friendly strangers who will help you or who you can help, eventually you may become friends of just happen to play together.


Instead of that, people are insulting each other for "not being good", noone has time to help people, let alone socialize.
As they say it themselves, most people don't even have the time to play or just have basic courtesy : "please speed run", "you're wasting my time", "stop sucking so hard", "how hard is it to dodge such an easy thing"... and so on.

There was a time when high-end player = player dedicated and who has a lot of experience and knowledge to share.
Now, it has become new player = hindrance.

The whole concept of MMOs in defeated the moment you decide to throw away people because they are not corresponding to your criteria. A 8-men play is not a MMO (for those who only play in static). A game with only people bringing their A-game isn't a MMO either.

concrete example : someone who would be scornful against anyone not yet at T6 would turn their back at 95% of the player base. Why ? If you want to succeed 100% of the time, play a solo game. If you do not want to meet people from different horizons, with different expectations and levels, why do you even play a MMO ? Is that so hard to accept that people less skilled/dedicated than you exist and play too ? Apparently it is.


http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-our-community

this thread expresses it better than I do.

If it's the norm nowadays, MMOs won't last long. The genre may stay, but every single MMO developping a community where everyone is turning their back to everyone else is doomed, because they aren't MMOs anymore. You can have as many 8-men group as you want in a game, if they never mix and play with other people, it's not a MMO.


PS :

The thing is, most of the game is casual paradise. Name anything that isn't Coil 2 and it's casual.

Titan Ex ? Oh right, "easy". Many people could disagree, but meh, their point has no value since it's not yours.
Also T5. But again, no value because 5-6% of the player base having it cleared is casual enough ?

Do not take me wrong on this PS, but no, Coil2 is not the only non-casual content.

[Iriadysa]

I apologize, for I don't have the energy to argue dramatic victimism. Yet, I'd like to point a funny bit in your argument:

If you want to succeed 100% of the time, play a solo game.

It's funny, because this is exactly what this thread keeps asking of the game.

Titan Ex ? Oh right, "easy". Many people could disagree, but meh, their point has no value since it's not yours.
Also T5. But again, no value because 5-6% of the player base having it cleared is casual enough ?

Do not take me wrong on this PS, but no, Coil2 is not the only non-casual content.

Of course "many people could disagree". I already even acknowledged that the massive population is not only casual in terms of time, but casual in terms of skill. There's a lot of people that consider this game "hard", yet what's truthfully hard is to find people that are not horrible players.

This is a side effect of the popularization of MMOs and video games in general. The average skill level of the current video game client (previously known as player) is at an all time low and games retroactively respond to this. Most of XIV is geared towards this group of people to the exception of bleeding edge content. I don't even count Titan Ex and T5 because in all honesty they are not hard. Sure, they aren't as easy as Admapor City or Braflox HM, but the thing is everything under Titan Ex is a laughable joke in terms of difficulty.

But XIV is not the only game doing this "casualization" of content. The buzz word is, I believe, "accessibility", and it is plaguing everything: from F2P games to subscription MMOs to offline games.

The main problem is the casual crowd (which is the dominant crowd in terms of numbers and thus in terms of money) is voracious and has a horrible time accepting that only 90%* of the game is made for them.

*75% of all statistics on the internet are made up.

[Kuwagami]

It's funny, because this is exactly what this thread keeps asking of the game.

It's funny, because the OP never mentioned anything to give 100% success rate on the game. More things like "Can't do it ? Don't worry, you'll get it in 6/12 month when you are overgeared enough". See the difference ? you didn't succeed, you even failed. The game will make it eventually easier over time, as a true RPG I'd say. Easying fights by overgearing/overlevelling. Been there for ages.

yet what's truthfully hard is to find people that are not horrible players.

I could say some horribly mean things about that but not worth the trouble. Seriously, give up that attitude, you're exactly in the case I described above with that type of speech.

the thing is everything under Titan Ex is a laughable joke in terms of difficulty.

Because they aren't meant to be hard maybe ? Hard content is supposed to be Coil and extreme primals. If you don't find it hard, you're in the minority, but the point remains true

The main problem is the casual crowd (which is the dominant crowd in terms of numbers and thus in terms of money) is voracious and has a horrible time accepting that the remaining 10% of the game remains out of reach even when the ones capable of doing it don't bother at all about it anymore.

Fixed that for you.

But maybe you are still doing Ifrit Ex/titan Ex for fun from time to time ? Or T1 ? I highly doubt so.

So what do we have here ? Content that noone should ever do because "good players" have nothing to do anymore there and "bad players" are too bad to complete ? It's a total waste of content. Actual "casualisation" handing content to less skilled players after some time is far better. It gives a second life to content before being trashed away.

[Melithea]

Is that so hard to accept that people less skilled/dedicated than you exist and play too ? Apparently it is.

I have no problem "accepting that people exist". I do admit to getting frustrated by these people when I spend two weeks trying to get my 6th Titan EX kill because of them, though. I don't want to be a sociopathic elitist screaming at people, "Why can't you learn to dodge?!" I really, really don't. But the more I play with people the more I get like this because, wow. I am (apparently) a player of above average skill but I can't even do Second Coil because it is just that hard to find seven other people to do it with. Despite the fact that I'm in the #2 ranked FC on my server in terms of size/activity.

There's a time for socializing, teaching new players how to play, and screwing around. End game raiding is time for seriousface. Instead of learning to step it up just a little bit, people seem to be learning to expect to have their hand held and the content cleared for them.