Game too complex or easy?

[Gardes]

Here we go again.. no one says that savage is not hard enough, but having one hardcore content in game doesn't justify not having more hard or mid/core content. I get it, faceroll lovers are afraid that if there was 1 hard dungeon now and then there wouldn't be enough content for them.

But.. we already have 1 item level 90 dungeon, why more? Just run it all over again with lowest ilvl gear.

Faceroll lovers probably don't care about the content itself. They care about what the content gives them. As long as it provides the same ilvl gear as the hardest content (or the potential of it) they'd probably be content and feel 'equal'. Their standards are so low but their gratification demand is so high.

[Casper]

This game is definitely too compleasy. Please do something about it Yoshi-P. Now. Or i leave. And my cat is not renewing his sub either.

[ApolloGenX]

Personally, I think the game has challenge, but it is not a challenge that appeals to everyone.

In another thread someone said they were drunk and finished an encounter and others said they did well. This poster attributed it to muscle memory.

I think this is the issue for some people. Yes, there is a challenge of execution. Things are incredibly scripted, and as long as you memorize the script and execute, you do well. That is one type of challenge. Another type of challenge is more situational awareness and reactive based on dynamic encounters.

Depending on your capability and preferences, one might be preferred over the other and the "difficulty" of each is subjective based on your preferred style and capabilities or willingness to perform according to the challenge style.

My preference is a mix of the two, with some encounters following one style and other encounters following other styles. Diversity in content allows players to choose what kind of content they prefer doing, and doesn't require them to only experience one type of game play.

[Melch]

You realize that if they did this all the people wanting to experience the story and that barely have any use in story mode are going to be queuing for savage and ex right?

Why would it be a problem? PF should be the best way to learn and clear outside of the world first racing groups.

[Tuathaa]

Why would it be a problem? PF should be the best way to learn and clear outside of the world first racing groups.

Because people who are doing it for the story aren't going to be all that concerned about optimal rotations and gear optimization. Which means wipe fest in savage and ex

[Reinha]

It makes sense that most content is easy, in my opinion, because then most of the content is accessible for everyone who buy the game. Of course there needs to be a decent amount of hard content too, but not to the point where it takes up the majority of end game, leaving little to do for less capable players. To me the difficulty distribution for battle content looks roughly like this:

Beginner/faceroll: Leveling dungeons 1-49, quests, guildhests, all world content, undersized dungeons
Easy: Normal and Hard mode dungeons and trials 50-60, Alex normal, 24-mans
Medium: Extremes, Coil with echo
Hard: Coil without echo, Alex savage

There's a lot to do in this game, and something for everyone. However, looking at the list of things to do per difficulty, I understand why people wish to have a bit more medium difficulty content. There's not much variety in that bracket.

Getting more difficult 4-mans would be nice. The kind that would fall on the medium difficulty instead of easy. Perhaps hard modes of the 51-59 dungeons that always sync you down to the minimum required item level so you can't over-gear it, and where mobs hit really hard and you are rewarded a special currency for doing it fast enough. That currency could allow you to buy unique glamours/hairstyles or exchange it for MGP. Defeating all 5 dungeons within a certain amount of time would give you a cool title and enough currency to buy one glamour set. There could even be high score boards stating the time taken and group members, so people have an incentive to keep doing it. A way to make 4-mans one type of end game.

I know, I know, it's just like Challenge Modes in WoW, but those were one of the best mid tier content I've ever seen implemented because it offers replay-ability beyond just loot drops and doesn't take long sessions or a big group of people.

Another kind of mid tier content could be expert leves for max level characters. You know how it pops up with a difficulty slider when you initiate? Make it so that rewards scale depending on chosen difficulty (ranging from quite hard to really f**king hard to almost impossible), speed of completion and the amount of bonus objectives completed. The leves could be bosses with varying mechanics, avoid-things-while-carrying-something-somewhere quests, hard hitting mobs that may require cc, long escort missions, healer challenges or unforgiving jumping puzzles. Rewards could be esoterics, centurio seals or crafting related things. Nothing game breaking but an alternative way to get the rewards roulettes and hunts offer. It should also be possible to do them with a group of 2-4 people, and the difficulty should increase based on the number of people doing it.

Edit. "Faceroll" refers to the last things I wrote on the easiest bracket: world content like leves, dailies, hunts and fates, and also undersized dungeons, because they are all trivially easy but not specifically meant for beginners. I also left out crafting, gathering and gold saucer because I clearly stated I was talking about battle content.

[Gilthas]

Why would it be a problem? PF should be the best way to learn and clear outside of the world first racing groups.

Not everyone enjoys headbutting walls.

I'm sure that if I put my mind to it and trained for it with a good group that I could beat any content in the game. But when I play videogames I want to relax and have fun.

[Riardon]

From a hardcore perspective the game is too easy and shallow. From a casual perspective the game is just fine rich and deep if you can't play many hours a week.
My opinion is that the game is on average and needs to be improved in some areas. I want better and more diverse endgame content without making the game too much complex and hard for those who can't follow.
You see the game needs to maintain a balance between the casual and the hardcore players. At the moment I feel that the hardcore content and the endgame content is just poor and limited.
What saves the game is the frequent patches but some areas needs to be improved. I expect a deeper endgame with 3.1. I think the devs already stated that the nature of 3.0 will be more lvling your jobs to 60 till 3.1 arrives.

[Kosmos992k]

Beginner/faceroll: Leveling dungeons 1-49, quests, guildhests, all world content, undersized dungeons
Easy: Normal and Hard mode dungeons and trials 50-60, Alex normal, 24-mans
Medium: Extremes, Coil with echo
Hard: Coil without echo, Alex savage

There's a lot to do in this game, and something for everyone. However, looking at the list of things to do per difficulty, I understand why people wish to have a bit more medium difficulty content. There's not much variety in that bracket.

This game is, as it should be a pyramid with the broadest range of content and the lowest level of difficulty and the narrowest range of content at the highest level. Your list demonstrates that pyramid, although I think that your assignment of content needs a little bit of a modification, as do the categories.

IMHO, calling a range of content beginner content is fine, but putting the tag "faceroll' on it is derisory and should be avoided. You have also missed out a great deal of other content that is part of the game and has difficulty levels as well. I also think that both Coil, and eventually Alex vary in difficulty sufficiently to cover several standards of difficulty.

• Beginner: Dungeons 1-49, Class/Job quests, guildhests, FATE, Levequests, crafting lvl 1-50, gathering lvl 1-50, Sidequests, Gold Saucer
• Easy: lvl 50 & Hard mode dungeons, Pre HW trials (HM), LoTA, ST & WoD, Crafting 1 & 2 star, gathering unspoiled nodes, some Coil turns with echo
• Medium: HW Dungeons, HW Primals, All normal Coil with echo, crafting lvl 51-60, gathering lvl 51-60, crafting 3 star, specialization,
• End-game Normal: All normal Coil without Echo, Pre-HW EX trials/Primals, Alex normal, top tier HW crafting & gathering
• End-game Hard: Savage Coil, Alex savage, HW EX Primals

Please note that I am basing the difficulty of dungeons, primals and trials on how hard they are for players at the appropriate level with level appropriate gear. It's not based on lvl 60 players with top tier everything that is level sync'd (or not) as the case may be.

For the end-game category I am estimating the difficulty based on having current End-game level gear.

Overgearing and over leveling completely disrupt the natural difficulty level of all content. That's why so many hard core players who have leveled everything and have the very best gear talk about how faceroll easy everything is, they out gear it and over level it to the point of making the difficulty somewhat irrelevant - to them.

I broke coil open a bit because early turns of coil with Echo are really not as difficult as your list indicated, although there are specific exceptions since Twintania still annoys new groups in Turn 5 (for example) despite nerfs and echo.

I think that there is a pretty good spread of content, and as the HW patches start to drop, the amount of end-game or moderately difficult content will increase. But I think it's really important to remember that judging content based on how difficult it is in top tier raid gear is really not a fair way to judge the content.

I also think that things like running with undersized groups, or deliberately limiting gear to level appropriate gear and running completely level sync'd creates difficulty challenges for players of all abilities. There is a reason AV is and has been very unpopular. It's level 49 with level sync that nerfs skills and gear. the actual difficulty of the content is objectively higher than it seems because sooner or later we overgear the majority of it. Power creep happens and is something of a self influicted thing when it comes to finding content to easy. It's too easy because we're highly over geared, not because it is in fact too easy.

[Kosmos992k]

I have 15 level 60 jobs most of them from this ridicilous fate grinding I can't even play my jobs but this silly levling mentality promotes the lazyness slackerish gaming I mentioned before. Its really sad that this game is taking this path.

Sorry, but this is an entirely self inflicted wound.

I'm sorry but if you consider the likes of Garuda, Ifrit, Leviathan, and Shiva hardcore then I'm completely speechless. All those fights are ridiculously easy once you know the mechanic.

In what gear? With what level of experience with the game (not character level). Seriously, EX mode primals are not ridiculously easy for player who don't utterly outgear them. Sure, it's fine for a group who outgear these fights by however many ilvls to ignore some of the mechanics and burn them down. Just the same as the HM versions are a joke because if you get a party of folks who outgear it, all they do is burn the primal and completely ignore the mechanics. Maybe you've forgotten what it's like to play without the easy button that is your stupidly overgeared character?

You don't get good by leveling, so leveling faster or slower is irrelevant in both case. I'd rather level fast so I can learn how to play sooner. There's a lot more requirements to become a good player.

You don't learn to play after leveling, you learn to play while leveling. If you power level your way to the top, and then try to learn your skills, you're putting the cart before the horse.