Please stop making old content super easy

[Iriadysa]

Everything in the game is reduced to a pile of no challenge to the exception of top tier content. Even new content is born as zero challenge if it's not meant for top tiers (see: new dungeons in last patch. While some entertaining mechanics appeared -as found in the last boss of Stone Vigil HM-, they are so tuned down it posed no real challenge beyond being able to press keys).

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
Rambling incoming!

I know there's still people that think T5 is hard. That Titan is impossible. But here's the real problem; a problem that plagues MMOs and as the gaming industry grows and expands it starts plaguing even offline games.

Players have become costumers. Long gone are the days were being a player and buying a game meant you were accepting a challenge posed by its creators. It was an implicit contract: you gave them money to be entertained and challenged.

But players have different skill levels and all of them want to be entertained. Thus the concept of difficulty levels surfaced, different approaches of a game genre would be taken in an effort to allow as many people as possible to enjoy the game without losing on the challenge factor, etc. Fast forward to MMOs and now players are not just players but costumers that pay for a subscription for a service. It took some years for the new mentality to sink in, but with the explosion of MMOs after WoW, it has already become part of it: we are costumers and as costumers we demand to be entertained, pampered and pleased. Or we shall take our money elsewhere.

XIV is a game for the masses and as such, most of its content has to be made for them. It's a sad truth. The real shame here, however, is that all MMOs that have come out in the last years are trying to grab the WoW-carrot and all of them are aiming for a high amount of costumers.

Considering the ever increasing demand for multimedia quality from gamers (we don't accept anything but the best!) and the cost of fulfilling this, it may take years for the niche MMO to come back, if ever. But who knows; the recent indie game explosion gives a ray of hope to the gaming community.