Take it easy on the Nerfing :/

[Remilia_Nightfall]

You say that, but I'm fairly sure SE just took an extra cost adjusting Steps of Faith...

Indeed. They had to patch something that was apparently too hard. Maybe next time they will make it easier in the first place. Unfortunate, I know.

There are these things called genres... Or do you really think SE is trying to appeal to the mobile app demographic with Final Fantasy XIV...

Not necessarily, but I am sure you get what I mean. The age of DAoC or UO is gone. WoW created a new genre tbh, a "new way of experiencing MMOs", and if you want to join the market at this point in time you, as a developer / publisher, cannot disregard that.

Standards, mostly. That's why, even though I'm not particularly fond of the Souls franchise, I have a great deal of respect for its developers.

I am a huge fan of Souls games. I know that challenges are what make a game (or anything in life, really) enjoyable and satisfying. Still, we must face the truth that the majority of people do not like that.

[Nalien]

Indeed. They had to patch something that was apparently too hard. Maybe next time they will make it easier in the first place. Unfortunate, I know.

That wasn't the issue with Steps though. The issue was that people left because it simply wasn't worth the time investment for what you'd get out of it. Anyone who didn't already have it cleared had to deal with constant disbands because of this. That was the issue.

All they needed to do was address the issue with rewards and perhaps make certain aspects of it more forgiving. People would have stayed, gladly depending on how much better the rewards were, it could have been slightly easier and everyone would get their clear while still experiencing the original fight. Instead they just completely idiot proofed it. People will still stay, sure, it's almost impossible to fail now, but the fight has completely lost its soul IMO.

Steps really just comes off as something that was ill planned at this point. The fight was great and I really enjoyed it, but they gated Heavensward behind it. They ended up coming close to Heavensward with people still not beating it, despite the fact that I'm sure something like the Chrysalis would have had a similar completion curve (actually I helped a friend catch up before Steps was nerfed, just me and two other people, we wiped more to Chrysalis than Steps...). That timing forced them to drastically nerf it to keep Heavensward accessible. A smart developer probably wouldn't have built an expansion with all the content gated behind the story so that all their subscribers didn't feel the need to madly rush the story...