[Personal Opinion] FFXIV is too casual friendly

[Naunet]

I don't like using the phrase "too casual friendly", because casual players can enjoy difficulty... (like me!)

I do, however, agree that the game is way too easy in too many places. I'd like to be able to stay awake while doing dungeons. While I'd wish for WildStar levels of challenge, I'd settle for any kind of difficulty increase really... >_<

[NekoNova]

What would be the better option?

Being given a single gold trophy to strive and improve for? Or giving everyone a price for participating?

In the long run i believe a gold medal is better. I remember fondly my first few weeping city runs. The community worked together on something. I dont, however, have any memorable thoughts on any lvl 60 dungeon. Theyre all so bland and same-y. Boring. No challenge.

I mean theyre called expert dungeons for crying out loud, yet no expertice is required to conplete them. Easy, spam bootshine, no-brain content should be left in the lvl 50 roulette. Dont play an mmo if you dont want to improve for (and with) other people.

In common sense, yes this is true.
In business however it's not.
It's for Square-Enix way better to keep everyone happy, making sure they keep paying and playing then just raising a few above the others.

[Genaxx]

Since we get one story dungeon and one hm dungeon, Perhaps they should keep the story one the current faceroll difficulty and make the hm normal difficulty (oh the irony). It is an optional dungeon after all.

[Lambdafish]

snip

First off, let me say that I appreciate this (usually toxic) discussion being kept reasonable and healthy as a debate topic, it's nice to see.

However I just want to point out that your line of thinking is slightly flawed when it comes to this game because the levelling experience is some of the harder "casual" content in Heavensward. Dungeons like Sohm Al and the Vault set players up to learn their jobs and actually have a reasonable challenge without being walled, which was great to see, but then at 60 the difficulty went completely flat and mind numbing (compare healing the vault to healing antitower).

Can you justify that you want to keep things as they are when the actual MSQ was one of the more challenging and engaging parts of the HW dungeons?


Edit: Just a reminder to everyone, the devs said at fanfest that something is changing about dungeons in SB to make them more engaging.

[Airget]

The OPs remark is to bias, he list things that are of course easy because that's what the devs designed them for. Dungeon are easy because they are just a tool to help people catch up. MSQ is easy because it's meant to be enjoyed, but hey even then it's inaccurate to say MSQ is easy, recall the last DF based fight we had in MSQ last VU? That was somewhat hard before people understood the mechanics. As for Job quest, same deal, no point trying to micro-manage difficulty with a singular instance that players only go through once with their character, it's just a fun narrative for your job.

Overall your statement would work better if you provide the full run-down of all current content and the diversity of who it caters to, because honestly, I think it's rather balanced atm. When Diadem 2.0 comes around it might have a better balance because it would have content that caters to the midcore players and POTD is the first step in "Deep Dungeon" content to provide that tough content people are asking for in dungeons.

Truth is, in the current dungeon format that is set for catching up, you can never make them difficult because they fit a set linear design to make them easy to run however let me leave you with this question.

What if SE decided to only release 1 "Extreme" Dungeon per patch however they also introduced a Mini-Deep Dungeon for those that want a slice of randomness thrown into their runs. So rather than design 2 linear dungeons they design 1 linear dungeon that casual players can go through and then provide an RNG dungeon for those that want something random. It could just be a bite-size 10-floor design dungeon with it's own unique gimmicks that vary traps, unique mini-bosses and bosses. There could be 2 designs for these dungeon types, a Matched-setting that provides a linear RNG narrative that changes with each run and a fixed-party setting that gives the group of 4 a unique path to choose which route they want to take to complete the objective.

You could say that this matched RNG-dungeon would provide the same difficulty curve as the normal dungeon but the mob types, potential gimmicks and even bosses would vary. Meanwhile the fixed-party group would provide players with the opportunity to adjust the difficulty based on how they feel, taking certian paths that are only open as long as they have less than 0 KO party wide or reach a certain location in X amount of time, or find a secret that leads them to opening a hidden area to move forward.

I think things like that could be fun, if people didn't mind SE splitting their current 2 dungeon resources into 1 dungeon and 1 RNG dungeon with POTD inspiration.

[Jetstream_Fox]

This topic is all opinions. Don't tell me how I should play the game. Don't tell me this is an MMO so it should be a certain way. If you ever failed your first time at insert dungeon name here Extreme then you weren't ready and need to learn the basics of game play. If you weren't over geared before running a dungeon then you should of never ran it. Alright now that we got that settled lets all uninstall the game except for the Korean players out there because we all know they never wipe. Ever.

You contradict yourself, you can't say don't run a dungeon if not over geared, and also say don't tell me how to play. And furthermore it's not an opinion that every fight in this game follows nearly the same exact formula, the only difference between the difficulty of each content level is the rate of how quickly the mechanics happen and the dps checks.

SE can make things as easy and hard as they want, recall A3s, that fight broke many raid groups, now recall Steps of Faith, that fight caused many players to scream and cry. Now look at the current raid and dungeons, players are burning through them with such ease it's remarkable. But weakening or strengthening content isn't the answer to issues SE has, they need to revamp their formula as a whole and find a constant, or develop fights that don't follow the current system that 98% of the entire game follows.

[Synrin]

Look at WoW, they dumbed down the classes so much but at the same time they made that same content a bit harder and more challening for those who want it that way by buffing up the numbers/adding a mechanic or two more. In FF there is content for those who have the time and are willing to put in the effort, but there is also content for those who don't have the time or maybe even the will to actually get up from the scrub level. I consider myself a casual mostly cause I don't have enough time to dedicate myself to the game. And let me tell you that getting some things done (like the anima) takes a while when you aren't actively grinding your ass off. The bottom line of my ramble is - I think the game is well-balanced. Seen way worse out there on the market. More difficulty levels wouldn't hurt anyone though, just to keep it challenging. Normal - Savage/Extreme - WIPEFEST or sth... I personally would love to try extreme/savage versions of dungeons.

[ShaneDawn]

We should also remove the "Hard Mode" tags away from piss easy content that is usually less challenging than their Normal Mode variants. Why is this even a thing, I don't know.

People have been asking for more moderately challenging content for ages. Palace of the Dead kinda fills in that blank now, but I still think we should scrap Hard Mode titles from all super easy content and actually reserve those titles for the moderately challenging dungeons and the like... and of course have some time and focus invested into that sort of thing in general.

[JunseiKei]

I think things like that could be fun, if people didn't mind SE splitting their current 2 dungeon resources into 1 dungeon and 1 RNG dungeon with POTD inspiration.

Simply pointing this out as this is really my only issue with PotD and anything inspired from it;
While it's great to get all of your skills, weapon and armor as you go with PotD, it doesn't reward you for trying to do things correctly like you would encounter in a real dungeon. Due to the nature of the randomness of traps, they took out positionals from mobs, so you automatically never need to learn if a move is rear or flank in the case of melee. Also due to this nature, you don't really learn the need to dodge flank or rear to avoid AoEs while trying to get your increased potencies from hitting the correct sides.

[AmeliaVerves]

In my opinion story dungeons and MSQ (including class/job quests) are totally fine the way they are, ever since this is content everyone needs to do to move on with the game. So everyone should have a chance to complete it. Those who this is not enough for do have optional stuff, such as Ex Primals and Savage raids.

But here comes the question: If Ex Primals and Savage is for people who WANT to challenge themselves, how does it come it is free to enter for everyone?! This is SO annoying... people keep entering Sophia EX farm groups even though they have no clue what to do at all. To prevent this and give above mid-core/hardcore players the chance to play the forcing way they want to, without people wiping them because of a lack of class skill, we need a new system for that. A test within the starting quest for this content for example, in which you need to beat an enemy by showing you are capable of playing your class to an certain point

And the argument "just go with your fc then" is ridiculously invalid, because my fc members have a real live as well and will not always be online when i am and even if they are, they might not be in the mood to do it when i am. >.>