Your thoughts on the direction of this game?

[Krr]

I just want to add something to the discussion of difficulty:

When 2.0 was fresh, a great amount of content was actually fairly challenging. Hard mode primals required people to do pretty darn well at their jobs and Titan HM was basically considered a "wall" against pubs trying to get their relics. AK was a bit of a trash-filled slog but many of its bosses had legitimately dangerous encounters when you were item level 60ish and stuff like the soft enrage of antanaboga's pillar-breaking or the bees on demon wall could actually give players trouble and forced them to 'learn their way up' to having myth gear.

Even when WP SRs became the 'thing' they required people to push their classes pretty hard, largely as a result of i90 slowly entering peoples' hands and making the old dungeons pretty trivial. People were constantly testing the waters what they could and couldn't do with various new pieces of gear and trying to skip mechanics actually posed some danger.

And the stuff it dropped was relevant! i60 stopgaps were actually stopgaps on your way to darklight, which took a decent amount of time to get.

A thing I'd like to see is 4-man dungeons and 'Hard' mode content in general actually tuned to challenge the current item level average again, and for their rewards to be balanced with other modes of play. What I desired back then was more dungeons to do, and we got that - but now all of them are really, *really* easy and not fun or engaging for me to do. And on top of that, there actually isn't that much dungeon variety - because expert roulette only ever has 3 dungeons in it, and the other, like, 10 are myth pinatas that are less time-effective than other myth pinatas.

I'm not saying this stuff was elite raider tier (well, except maybe HM primals, which were basically pre-coil raid requirements,) but the sharp dive in challenge with this content definitely rings true to me on not feeling challenged by the game outside of Coil or EX modes. And trust me, the average casual player *COULD* do AK when it required explaining the mechanics and paying attention. Content doesn't need to me mindlessly easy to accommodate non-elite-raiders.

I'm also not saying that the average player doesn't deserve decent gear, but - part of the item level curve is a function of learning. Right now, no one is learning anything on the way to their i90 gear, which thrusts them right into stuff like EX primals, T5, and even T6 and beyond. It's like waddling around in the kiddie pool and then being shoved onto the diving board into the deep end - it's intimidating, and frustrating, and actually not a good player experience! 2.0 gave us that sort of learning with decently-difficult (but not extreme hardcore) 4-man dungeons.

[Tupsi]

Not looking at the market was what doomed 1.0 in the first place.

Actually, being an unfinished MMORPG on an engine not suited for MMORPGs then released by the head of your company to try to beat out WoW's Cataclysm was what doomed it. TERA for example was designed by only looking at what's standard in the market (WoW styled MMOs) but actually doing something different with it's battle system - you know, being a clone while actually trying to be unique at the same time?

[Mcshiggs]

Whoah, dps races? Tank swaps? Cleansing?

You know that this game has that already.

You obviously didn't play it, but even though it may sound a bit the same, but it was completely different. Tanks swaps consisted of more than just a provoke and go, people had to actually watch their threat, not just tanks. The second fight in BWL the boss starts in execute range, and everyone has infinite combat resources, so watching your threat was the key because if you spun the boss 30 people would take a breath attack. Some of the dragons had threat issues not because of buffing the dps, but because the tanks would get debuffs that lowered their own. Classes like rogues and hunters would need to push their dps to the point of almost stealing aggro, then start with their threat dumps, cleansing was more than just a healer hitting one button, you had to see what type it was and the correct class had to handle, hell even mages got in on it, since they could cleanse curses, druids would handle poisons, and priests and paladins had theirs as well. One fight, Chromaggus, if you got 4 different types of debuffs before they were cleansed, and he would debuff multiple people at once, you would turn into a giant dragonkin for the remainder of the fight and destroy the people in your raid. One nifty little fight I just remembered was in ICC, the goal wasn't to kill a boss, but you had to save one, a big assed dragon being attacked, the raid not only had to kill the attackers, but the goal of the fight was to heal the dragon to full health, while npcs were trying to kill it.

When 2.0 was fresh, a great amount of content was actually fairly challenging.

Did they keep that up though? NO, Pharos Sirius was considered too difficult for XIV players, and Yoshi has admitted it, so all the dungeons getting released can't be too hard or the people will whine about it.

[Krr]

Did they keep that up though? NO, Pharos Sirius was considered too difficult for XIV players, and Yoshi has admitted it, so all the dungeons getting released can't be too hard or the people will whine about it.

That's not entirely true. Haukke Manor HM was fairly challenging as well, as was Copperbell. The difference was, Haukke Manor was speedrunnable and well-designed, where the other two dungeons were a catastrophe of stupid, opaque mechanics that instantly killed you if you didn't have a guide even if you knew your job and the basic mechanics of the game well. "Too difficult" can mean a lot of things in game design that aren't so simple to explain in a public statement.

I agree that dungeon difficulty is too low right now and that's probably in part an overreaction to what happened in 2.1. But, I'd also implore you to look at the item level requirements and rewards of these dungeons, and the average item level of the max level player right now, and ask yourself if, possibly, there is a misunderstanding of how new players experience the item level curve rather than "HHH THEY RUINED IT CATERING FOR THE CASUALS HHHHhhh".

[silentwindfr]

the main difference is the speed of the fight, in WoW the gcd is 1.5 since the start, here we are at 2.5, the difference in term of fight flow and mechanic it's huge.
where in wow you have to act fast for counter mechanic, you see them coming long before really be able to react.

i had fight while the beta for reduce to gcd at least to 2.0... and believe me it was worst at the start some gcd was at 3.0... (what pain me it's they did promise us that with stats for reduce gcd we will see the difference... but well let's face it exept monk the other gain something like 0.2 on the gcd...)
indeed, it's the particularity of FF14, but let be honest it's a huge wall for make interesting fast paced content, because it's what make a raid interesting, the fact that you had to adapt fast to what happend to you. but here in FF14 is not the case you don't adapt, you know the fight and simply execute what you must execute always at the same time.

well it will lying to say it's not the case in other game like wow, you do have script too, but you have a huge part of random in wich order the skill will come, it make the encounter more interesting and more challenging.

Yoshida and it team, must stop to hold the hand of the newplayer, they need to learn the reality, is not in making the game easy that it will retain people, even new player will want challenge, and i'm talking of TRUE challenge, not the DDR type challenge we did get soo far.
and more important, he need to offer us a use for the gears we get from token and raid, outside raid! the world need to have teeth in a way, we need to have dungeon at 4 really hard, that will ask people to be well stuffed and play well. we need more different content that can based on stuff like T4, some survival mode can be interesting challenge if well done.

they need to stop to worry about the fact that raider will loose motivation because people will get gears outside raid. if they need the gears carrot for do raid, they are not raider!

more important, they must be ready to hurt player, to shock them by doing test and finally stop to try to please everyone, raider,HCG, noob, new player,... they need to balance the game!

That's not entirely true. Haukke Manor HM was fairly challenging as well, as was Copperbell. The difference was, Haukke Manor was speedrunnable and well-designed, where the other two dungeons were a catastrophe of stupid, opaque mechanics that instantly killed you if you didn't have a guide even if you knew your job and the basic mechanics of the game well. "Too difficult" can mean a lot of things in game design that aren't so simple to explain in a public statement.

I agree that dungeon difficulty is too low right now and that's probably in part an overreaction to what happened in 2.1. But, I'd also implore you to look at the item level requirements and rewards of these dungeons, and the average item level of the max level player right now, and ask yourself if, possibly, there is a misunderstanding of how new players experience the item level curve rather than "HHH THEY RUINED IT CATERING FOR THE CASUALS HHHHhhh".

it's not entierly true, indeed for a new player barely stuffed for the dungeon it can be hard to pass the last boss of haukke. however, since it's easy to get stuff now, (thanks hunt) this dungeon and every other dungeon available are a joke!
why? because the encounter are too simple? well yes, in a way, but that not all... the main trouble it's they are make for people with stuff i70 for the last batch of dungeon... god, we have acces to i110-115 gears... how you want the dungeon to stay dangerous enough? it's impossible! even in i90 this dungeon pose no threat.

i do hope for the 2.4 to see dungeon that ask to have i100 to be beaten. we must stop to get dungeon that have no teeth! they are steeping stone and loose interest for most player right when they come out. why do we do them? because the gears inside the dungeon are often more class than what we did get in skin in ST and 2.2 token vendor.

[Mcshiggs]

I agree that dungeon difficulty is too low right now and that's probably in part an overreaction to what happened in 2.1. But, I'd also implore you to look at the item level requirements and rewards of these dungeons, and the average item level of the max level player right now, and ask yourself if, possibly, there is a misunderstanding of how new players experience the item level curve rather than "HHH THEY RUINED IT CATERING FOR THE CASUALS HHHHhhh".

They admitted they lowered dungeon difficulty, and that this is the difficulty they intend to maintain. If they are releasing these new dungeons with high ilvl rewards and low ilvl requirements, then they are releasing dungeons for folks that aren't playing the game yet, so they can catch up gear wise. That just makes it worse, each patch then the people that are already max level basically get a primal released for them, and every other patch a new coil, as the dungeons are just there for people to play catch up. I didn't say anything about casuals, I talked about people whining because stuff was too hard, if you want to imply that means casual then by all means go ahead, it doesn't change the fact that when they released Pharos, people complained, and this is how it was handled, dumbing down dungeon difficulty.

[Ryel]

That's not entirely true. Haukke Manor HM was fairly challenging as well, as was Copperbell. The difference was, Haukke Manor was speedrunnable and well-designed, where the other two dungeons were a catastrophe of stupid, opaque mechanics that instantly killed you if you didn't have a guide even if you knew your job and the basic mechanics of the game well. "Too difficult" can mean a lot of things in game design that aren't so simple to explain in a public statement.

I agree that dungeon difficulty is too low right now and that's probably in part an overreaction to what happened in 2.1. But, I'd also implore you to look at the item level requirements and rewards of these dungeons, and the average item level of the max level player right now, and ask yourself if, possibly, there is a misunderstanding of how new players experience the item level curve rather than "HHH THEY RUINED IT CATERING FOR THE CASUALS HHHHhhh".

Pretty much this ^

Pharos Sirius wasn't deemed too difficult, it was it's ilvl ratio to its rewards that were deemed to be improperly scaled. When you had a dungeon rewarding ilvl60-ish gear with an ilvl48 entry requirement giving players who were ilvl80-ilvl90 difficulty issues its an obvious problem.

Keep in mind this game is still at MID-LEVEL, we haven't reached true endgame yet.

[Krr]

I didn't say anything about casuals, I talked about people whining because stuff was too hard, if you want to imply that means casual then by all means go ahead, it doesn't change the fact that when they released Pharos, people complained, and this is how it was handled, dumbing down dungeon difficulty.

You're honestly missing the point of the Pharos Sirius nerf. Pharos was complained about because its item level requirements and rewards were out of whack with its actual numerical fight difficulty, as well as the opacity of its terrible boss mechanics, and accordingly, the numbers of the fights were decreased as a band-aid. It was put in line with the other two dungeons released at its scale, not "dumbed down".

There was literally nothing whatsoever that was even enjoyable about prenerf Pharos Sirius unless you liked looking at Siren's boobies, and the reason the devs gave was because it was numerically overtuned. Whereas the other dungeons, which also posed their own legitimate threats to players, were numerically in line.

If it wasn't clearly implied enough in my initial posts on the issue, I don't agree with the current retro-fitting of item levels using dungeons that are already outdated for the majority of the playerbase to help new players "catch up". Especially when they aren't necessary for those players to "catch up" with everything sneezing myth.

What I am saying is - the dungeons you see now are braindead easy not because S-E is "dumbing down" the game. They are braindead easy because S-E is putting in stopgaps to the item level curve we don't need when they should be adding in 4-mans for players on the mid-high end of it who need to be challenged.

[Eej]

You obviously didn't play it, but even though it may sound a bit the same, but it was completely different.

In Vanilla I did everything from MC to Naxx. I was one of the Hunters very active on the forums figuring out the best rotation given our awful mechanics back then. You don't have to patronize me.

[Mcshiggs]

the numbers of the fights were decreased as a band-aid. It was put in line with the other two dungeons released at its scale, not "dumbed down".

So you are saying the didn't make the fights easier, they only decreased the difficulty, gotcha.