The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

[Rowyne]

Yoshi P said he would make three difficulty levels if he could but he just doesn't have the resources for it. So he has to make two and try and balance them to work for as many people as possible.

Then it only makes sense to make the 8-man raids tuned for midcore and hardcore since the 24-mans are already tuned on easy. I'm not a hardcore raider, by any means, but it's only fair that all three types of gamers have something offered to them.

[Belhi]

Which goes back to the argument that the two he chose was in expense of the audience the content was designed for.

Well it seems his focus is to move the harder difficulty back towards the favoured difficulty of the Midcore. To be honest it might also be their mindset was born from their experience playing with the Japanese playerbase, who while not happy with the difficulty either, have had MUCH higher clear rates than the North American playerbase.

[FeliAiko]

Then it only makes sense to make the 8-man raids tuned for midcore and hardcore since the 24-mans are already tuned on easy. I'm not a hardcore raider, by any means, but it's only fair that all three types of gamers have something offered to them.

Yeah. Just like he doesn't want to have different versions of the same job (but role instead), why not take advantage of the fact you have VA/NM/Savage and have those be your Easy/Normal/Hard raids. You can then as others mentioned nerf NM to easy mode once the new tiers come out.

[Velhart]

Well it seems his focus is to move the harder difficulty back towards the favoured difficulty of the Midcore. To be honest it might also be their mindset was born from their experience playing with the Japanese playerbase, who while not happy with the difficulty either, have had MUCH higher clear rates than the North American playerbase.

It is pretty much common sense no matter what country you are developing from that there needs to be that over the top difficulty to keep your hardcore players engaged. I find it funny I have never seen a MMO development team with this much backwards thinking on raid structure. Even terrible MMO's know that you shouldn't mess with the formula.

Starting at 3.2, at best FFXIV is going to be a midcore game. Which compared to other MMO's is going to be considered a joke in the raid scene. I can see the higher end teams beating all turns within two weeks easily.

[Zojha]

Starting at 3.2, at best FFXIV is going to be a midcore game.

Pardon me if I see nothing wrong with that.

[Ibi]

It is pretty much common sense no matter what country you are developing from that there needs to be that over the top difficulty to keep your hardcore players engaged.

I hope is that one day someone will provide some actual evidence of this kind of statement, instead of just throwing it out there as though its truth is self-evident. The only thing that's ever provided to corroborate it is anecdotal comments from people saying things like "Yeah, I remember being inspired to raid by some guy wearing <insert raid loot here>!"

While on the other side of things you have a game like Wildstar, designed specifically to have "over the top difficulty to keep your hardcore players engaged" falling flat it on its face shortly after release.

Starting at 3.2, at best FFXIV is going to be a midcore game. Which compared to other MMO's is going to be considered a joke in the raid scene.

Given that it's only ever provided, at most, four challenging fights per six months, it's always been a "midcore" game. If you're a serious hardcore raider, looking for something to play, FFXIV has probably never been very high on your list.

[RiceisNice]

Pardon me if I see nothing wrong with that.

It becomes unable to cover all spectrum of players (specifically the hard cores), because it's not retrofitted to do so. But it also wholly depends on how they're tuning midas to be easier. Worse case scenario, even the midcore players clear it within 2-weeks month, farm it for a month, and is done with it until 3.4 to get their next raiding fix. From my perspective, difficulty helps add longevity to the game provided it's something I look forward to. Savage fails that completely in 3.0 because there was nothing in between (looking forward vs looking at).

[Alahra]

Given that it's only ever provided, at most, four challenging fights per six months, it's always been a "midcore" game.

We've had more than that a couple of times, if you consider Ifrit/Gardua/Titan EX to be challenging fights, and if you include both SCOB and SCOB (Savage). But those times have been comparably rare (and no longer seem to be part of the established formula), so yes, the truth is that FFXIV has largely always been a midcore game.

And that makes business sense. Hardcore players are always the smallest portion of the population, but their content requires some of the most investment in terms of development time and other resources to create. Focusing primarily on them would end up being pretty problematic.

The "common wisdom" that MMOs should cater to the hardcore players first doesn't seem to be rooted in anything concrete; it's more of an ideological preference than a demonstrably superior business model.

[Ibi]

The "common wisdom" that MMOs should cater to the hardcore players first doesn't seem to be rooted in anything concrete; it's more of an ideological preference than a demonstrably superior business model.

Indeed. The only people I've ever seen claiming that it's common sense/wisdom that a game should cater to hardcore players first are people who want the game to cater to hardcore players first.

It also does a nice trick of shifting the burden of proof away from the person making the claim. If something's common sense, why do they need to prove it? Everyone must already know it to be true, right?

[Kaurie]

While on the other side of things you have a game like Wildstar, designed specifically to have "over the top difficulty to keep your hardcore players engaged" falling flat it on its face shortly after release.

To be fair to Wildstar, there are players (such as myself) who quit shortly after leveling to max level and it had nothing to do with difficulty or it being too hardcore.

Which goes back to the argument that the two he chose was in expense of the audience the content was designed for.

Unfortunately, I haven't made it to A3S and A4S quite yet , but based on A1S and A2S, I don't see how he couldn't make more difficulties. I mean A1S changes from A1N are -these attacks do more damage, this buff lasts longer and now there are twice as many adds! Like I'm sure they just needed to copy paste some code, adjust a few numbers and duplicate a couple lines of code. A2S seems pretty much A2N with higher damage output.

They keep on throwing out content that is seemingly copy pasted and then going on to talk about how they can't add more due to resources. Look, either give us quantity or quality, but don't hold back on both.