Please, Developers, Please! Put an end to Easy Mode thinking

[DoctorMog]

Of course. I'm just pointing out that while exercising your basic rights, you're coming off as a braggart and a jerk. You might want to look into that.

Not just because being a braggart and a jerk is a bad thing; but because it makes your message much less convincing to those who read it.

I can see how that might be the case.

But anyone who knows me knows that I genuinely enjoy this game and want to see it succeed.

It is my opinion on this topic however that a big budget, FF MMO can not survive on catering strictly to casuals and so I speak my mind on the necessity of harder content.

Attitude aside, it also makes you look like a jerk when I discuss topic and you retort with personal attacks.

Also, please re-read all of my posts. I use capitals for emphasis and maybe you are confusing it for sarcasm. I also type exactly how I speak. And while the typing might seem condescending, I assure you if you heard me speak the words you wouldn't think that way.

[Cycloptichorn]

Attitude aside, it also makes you look like a jerk when I discuss topic and you retort with personal attacks.

You wouldn't have gotten it without editing your reply to me to be very snarky and condescending. You get what you give... you didn't like that I pointed out that your earlier post was incorrect, but if you're gonna respond with a lot of sass when people point it out, just remember - it's a boomerang.

Also, please re-read all of my posts. I use capitals for emphasis and maybe you are confusing it for sarcasm.

No, I've read enough already today, thanks.

IF you love the game so much, why the constant bashing of it and talking about how much it sucks? I love a lot of things in my life. I don't go around putting down any of them, because it's not productive.

Also, let me ask my question to you for the third time: are you actually trying to take on the most difficult mobs in the game before complaining about the lack of challenge? The various r70+ mobs that we see roaming around in some zones?

[KumaAkuma]

I'm for easy - normal - hard mode servers. I don't see why there only has to be one difficulty setting.

I've never understood Casual vs. Hardcore either. Casuals are about time management, Hardcores are about difficulty management. These aren't opposite ends of the spectrum.

[Payadopa]

I'm all for a balance between XI's demand for parties to accomplish anything and XIV's way of almost giving you everything with little effort. Oh well, I'll reserve judgement until I have my own chocobo. lol

[Denmo]

SE's in a particularly difficult bind with this problem. On one end they want to keep the players they currently have, and on the other end they want to attract new people. People who remember FFXI and thought, "that was too hard".

It's a difficult thing to balance, but I agree with most of this thread, thus far I've seen very little content that's actually challenging to the point of being endearing. We're getting all the easy stuff first while they fix their broken systems. It's fun for a couple of weeks but then just dies on you.

Here's hoping for more challenge in the future.

[Rutelor]

I'm for easy - normal - hard mode servers. I don't see why there only has to be one difficulty setting.

I've never understood Casual vs. Hardcore either. Casuals are about time management, Hardcores are about difficulty management. These aren't opposite ends of the spectrum.

Couldn't agree more. It's not like the casuals want to be bored during the one hour they have to play. I've always thought it was even possible to implement different avenues in the same server. Just like we had easy missions for RotZ, and neck-breakingly difficult ones in CoP. Ideally, in this game the desing and correspondence of those two sides could be more organic and better planned, as avenues of alternative experiences.

Yoshida often mentions the amusement-park approach to MMOs, and I always thought that was a great analogy. My friend and I could go together, ride some rides together, but knowing that she hates roller-coasters, and that I get sick in spinning cups, perhaps we could part for an hour or so, and do those on our own, or with other friends.

[Rutelor]

SE's in a particularly difficult bind with this problem. On one end they want to keep the players they currently have, and on the other end they want to attract new people. People who remember FFXI and thought, "that was too hard".

It's a difficult thing to balance, but I agree with most of this thread, thus far I've seen very little content that's actually challenging to the point of being endearing. We're getting all the easy stuff first while they fix their broken systems. It's fun for a couple of weeks but then just dies on you.

Here's hoping for more challenge in the future.

I don't think the issues most had with FFXI were problems of difficulty. The problems had to do a player base that felt alienated by the game. This, by association, made the world feel difficult and unwelcoming. I went, and I know I'm not alone in this, through the pain of trying to bring throngs of friends to the game; I did it just to crash against the disappointment of seeing most of them unable to get past the eccentricity of the user interface, or the painful learning curve, or the backwards lack of streamlining to the processes and the procedures in-game. I like challenge, and minimal spoon-feeding, but my first PC video game was Myst, which told you nothing, and gave you little. FFXI was made my size.

However, many of those friends, having come to FFXI from playing things like WoW, or EQ2, had trouble with what people back then started calling the "Unforgiving Learning Curve." Many of them did not have the patience to adapt to the world (well, the city, really) and wanted to start killing anything right away. I always thought that more than anything, the game had an issue with rhythm and pace, and a rather alien feel, for the average, testosteronal, generational/gender/nationality group that made a success story out of World of Warcraft.

The exception to that rule was the vast numbers of American, male and young players that had fallen in love with the Final Fantasy franchise. Alas, this group encountered one enormous conceptual obstacle when faced with FFXI: They couldn't understand why they had to pay a subscription to play yet another installment of a game series that traditionally was one-charge only.

So, for the average American gamer of the early 2000s, (still mainly Male and Young) the game seemed alien, esoteric, clumsily designed and incomprehensibly conceptualized. To say nothing that it almost forced them to play in a console-like manner, even on their PCs. (And these were the years in which, because of the market's obsession with FPSs, the console acquired a reputation for clumsy, kiddy, playstyle. The base and the media defined it's player-group's identities as juvenile or ghetto, whereas the PC, on the other hand read as adult and sophisticated. To a certain extent, you still encounter long threads or rants, hyping the very un-gamelike combo of keyboard and mouse--a pairing the computer world cannot wait to shed--as superior to the more ergonomic design of the gamepad.)

On the other hand, for the one subset of that group that was culturally prepared to receive the game well, and understand it, the legacy Final Fantasy fan, XI seemed perversely expensive, and illogically burdened with group drama.

Hence the double-edged alienation of the game. The ability to maintain an average 500k subscribers over more than 9 years is one of the unheralded success stories of the genre, btw, completely obliterated by the general audiences' infatuation with the fantastically designed, but conceptually diluted, World of Warcraft.

[Andrien]

I swear its like full moon on the net and all the b!tching and chaos is flowing none stop lol

[AmyRae]

My mountain of rank 50s has NOTHING to do with having difficult content in this MMO or not.

Right now, there is no challenge for even the casuals.

It's about on par with FFXI's challenge. There you had to level up to 20, get a chocobo license by trading in a few greens, then you could go buy a cheap egg off a Jeuno NPC and start raising a chocobo.

In FFXIV, you have to level to rank 20, and start the process of joining a Grand Company long enough to earn 3,000 credits which will take a bit time too. Then you can start raising your own chocobo (not from a chick, exactly, but they'll be adding future content in this regard).

In both cases, it's a reasonable level 20 challenge.

[akumutensai]

Wrong, I have over 6k in each city by only doing the current grand company quests.

4k is a joke.

did you even read the comment? he said if you HAVENT done every company quest including DH. obviously you have done them all....