The constant disbanding of Steps of Faith

[Nalien]

It's incredibly sad that the creative direction of future storyline content is going to be completely inhibited because a few players don't want to have to think about anything...

Crap like this also makes the Elitist/Casual dichotomy far more apparent and creates more vitriol in the community as a result.

Content should have progressively gotten more challenging and required more attention from players. Instead the opposite has happened, everything has progressively gotten so much easier. It is absolutely no surprise that there are so many terrible players out there. Had content been progressively more challenging, your average player would generally be better at the game and things like T5 wouldn't be such a road block for some. Instead your average player still can't even deal with the simplest of mechanics, and SE now has to cater to them for fear of losing subscribers... Alienating those of us who are starting to fall asleep at the simplicity of so much of this games content...

I'm really not too sure why anyone thinks it's OK for SE to cater to these individuals constantly. It's a terrible plan which cheapens the entire game. I know plenty of people who quit this game due to the relative ease of its content, I'm not even going to try convincing them to come back... What would I say, "Remember how we had a hard time with Garuda (Hard)? She's a total joke now, you should totally start playing again!"? If you actually lay out what happens to content in this game and try to use that as a sales pitch, I don't think anyone would buy it. Had players been given ample room to develop and get better at the game, rather than constantly having those chances removed, we'd have a much better game and could expect much better content. That's a sales pitch which would actually work. Shame the opposite is true.

[Imoye]

I'll state this. WoW tried to appease similar hardcores once, it was Cataclysm expansion which almost ended in a cataclysm for Blizzard. Elitism was at an all time high, and after losing over 1 million subs, they had to nerf it.

Cataclysm was a huge step towards dumbing down the game and appealing to casuals; not hardcores. I really have no idea what game you've been playing. WoW has been systematically made more casual friendly ever since Cataclysm, and they keep losing subs because of it. Semi-difficult dungeons were completely unrelated to the sub loss, the expansion was simply crap and you had a huge wave of well-known PvP profiles and promoters quitting the game because of the casualfest it become. Dungeons were difficult, but that was about it, a lot of people actually liked that, apart from the few that couldn't clear them. Not the game's fault, some people will never be able to clear stuff simply because they don't put in enough effort and that's exactly what we're seeing with SoF. MMO needs to reward time-investment, if they don't people quit which is what is happening in WoW because it's so casual.

Now, WoD has dumbed down the game even further and has lost 3M subs in the 1st quarter. Appealing to casuals DOES NOT WORK. The most current content should be difficult because it gives people a reason to do the content, not just rush through LFR and faceroll everything and then cancel your sub.

Luckily, FFXIV has plenty of different endgame versions depending on preference.

SE really got this right with Crystal Tower being an easy raid and Coil for the more time-invested players. Steps of Faith is a story trial, so it's not really a big deal if gets nerfed a little. Just never do it mid-expansion. We are closing in on the end, so people should be allowed to clear it.

[RyuDragnier]

Then why not start it with 3.0 rather than gating to it? Even if you try to tell them to get better at the game, soemthing like SoF is much more team oriented where you can't outcarry 2 or 3 baddies (or trolls), even if they were DPS who typically have the most leeway for performance.

You could say its a babystep to endgame...except this isn't even required for coil so I'm not sure what it's supposed to lead to. If it's leading to what 3.0 is expecting, then I'd like to vouch that it'd be the wrong time to do so (at the end of 2.0 instead of one of the story trials in 3.0).

Well it's the final story battle of the 2.x story, makes sense that it's this hard. I'd be disappointed if it had been lolLahabrea easy again.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

This is going to be the same thing as the Coil nerfs; people will whine about it and then they'll just forget about it and move on.

[Cyrus-Wallace]

This is going to be the same thing as the Coil nerfs; people will whine about it and then they'll just forget about it and move on.

That's not the point. The point is that we basically can't have challenging content and, if we do, it gets nerfed asap. The future content to be released will pretty much have that in consideration before it gets developed. Step of Faith was, ironically, a first step into a something different world of development and I really wanted to see more like that in the 3.0, but sadly it broke the existing structure. People expected a tank+spank, they didn't have it. They failed. As a consequence, the whine was real. They called it "hard", because people were unable to pay attention, let alone following instructions.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

And my point is nothing is really going to change beyond whatever nerfs Square had planned. Every change always brings out the doom n' gloom predictions or people threatening to quit.

[RiceisNice]

Well it's the final story battle of the 2.x story, makes sense that it's this hard. I'd be disappointed if it had been lolLahabrea easy again.

Yet we've had no difficulty ramp up since the start of Levi HM. And all things considered, this didn't even feel hyped like the "final" battle as much as ultima was. I'm all for content being progressively harder as we go down, but we've had absolutely none of that with how the HM primal fights were designed.

That's not the point. The point is that we basically can't have challenging content and, if we do, it gets nerfed asap. The future content to be released will pretty much have that in consideration before it gets developed. Step of Faith was, ironically, a first step into a something different world of development and I really wanted to see more like that in the 3.0, but sadly it broke the existing structure. People expected a tank+spank, they didn't have it. They failed. As a consequence, the whine was real. They called it "hard", because people were unable to pay attention, let alone following instructions.

And this happens because we have no build up to this sort of difficulty or coordination required out of a main scenario fight. Can you even consider steps to be a traditional trial fight like the primals or the Ascian beforehand? It's different, but it also raises up the bar for expectations of group coordination (for something that's put on duty finder), which I feel is done poorly either because there was no build up to it (previous trials had no difficulty behind it) or where it's done (that it is a gate to an expansion, which might as well be a new game altogether).

[Sapphic]

Chains of Promethia. Yea. us XI players never had challenging content to get through our story mode... :P

Cutscenes of Promethia, as I call it ^_^

Still, Prishe! Still one of my fave chars in XI, then Lillisette. Plus CoP got teh nrefed :P

Also my post you quoted was in reference to those from XI and 14 1.0 who presistently asked for things to change to XI and 1.0 respectivelly and they complained tht 14 wasn't like those.

[Sapphic]

Yet we've had no difficulty ramp up since the start of Levi HM.

We did have mildly challenging content with the original AK and Pharus sirus. Look what happened to those. Nerfed due to vote abandon issues and complaints on the forums. Players are the reason we cant have more difficult fights outside coil because they complain or just leave it when presented with it.

Same is happening with Steps of Faith. Thing is, it isn't mechanically in anyway hard. It just requires a little bit of coordination and common sense to clear. Which is a bare minimum for multiplayer party content. Yet many are incapable of that minor level of co-ordination. Steps highlights exactly why some are stuck on tier 5 even massivly overgearing and with echo. Exactly because of the co-ordination needed. Going into party content with a lone wolf attitude is totally wrong.

So what do they do? They add easier HMs so players dont auto abandon them as they have shown to before and have to nerf them later.

tldr: common sense should be renamed uncommon sense.

[RiceisNice]

..

But is it mechanically straight forward? It deviates so far from requiring 2 tanks and 4 dps. My first impressions after being told "arrows will avail us little" was that most of the damage would come from the weaponry. That's definitely not the case though if you want to get Vishap down before the final gate. I just feel that this sort of fight was implemented at the wrong place (main scenario, again the required coordination is astoundingly different considering the previous main scenario fights) at the wrong time (end of the cycle, combined with what I mentioned earlier, and this being required for 3.0, an entire expansion)

I havent done AK or Pharos pre-nerf, but honestly I wouldn't have a problem being hard dungeons, you're expected to be ready to tackle these sort of things since there's no previous low-low expectations from otehr dungeons, and those sort of things naturally get easier anyway as you overgear it (less mechanic oriented for example).