New 4.X open field monsters will be a shorter fight.

[alimdia]

Being accessible to casuals does not mean that the world needs to be devoid of difficulty

Have you seen the average DPS in duty finder? Did you see what happened to Steps of Faith? Did you see what happened to Gordias?

I don't want things to be the way they are, but I understand why they are the way they are, and it's a sad truth that if they want content to remain open to "everyone" they do have to neuter difficulty. At least there is hard content being developed as well, just in their own instances instead of open world. Anyone can go tackle them anytime they want instead of it being forced on everyone.

To answer "Why would there only be one level of difficulty in a given experience?", because they want open world content to be accessible for everybody, and again for that to be true they have to neuter difficulty or it won't be open for everybody. This is their design philosophy whether you like it or not.

Why spend so much time developing a piece of content, if it's going to be ultimately meaningless

Have we playing a different game in the last years? Every single piece of content is released with planned obsolescence in mind, FFXIV content is meant to be consumed right as it comes, with small repurposing in the form of roulettes in the case of instances and relics/gathering/hunts/etc in the case of open world.

To me it seems more like you people need to come in to terms about what this game is and is not, because again it's very clear the devs don't want to change their vision of the game.

[dragonseth07]

Have you seen the average DPS in duty finder? Did you see what happened to Steps of Faith? Did you see what happened to Gordias?

This. Like it or not, this playerbase is defined by its lack of skill, even compared to other MMO's.

The playerbase certainly isn't changing, so they have to cater to it. It's a sad reality.

[Shurrikhan]

Have you seen the average DPS in duty finder? Did you see what happened to Steps of Faith? Did you see what happened to Gordias?

I don't want things to be the way they are, but I understand why they are the way they are, and it's a sad truth that if they want content to remain open to "everyone" they do have to neuter difficulty. At least there is hard content being developed as well, just in their own instances instead of open world.

Maybe this is just me talking as a teacher, but I don't see how anyone can expect otherwise when any real challenge and support were both nearly inexistant throughout content and gameplay leading up to them. Any alleged inability to make difficult content is due to their having already initially refused... to make proximally difficult content. That's like someone who's scarcely saved a penny saying that it's impossible to put aside a year's salary over their lifetime. It may have been more and more dehabituated, and may meet more resistance, but that's because the difficulty came later than it should have, and without much of any strong, purposeful entry when it did arrive (especially for those who skipped out on, say, content at minimum ilvl). Should XIV refuse to every try to bridge that gap through actually bringing their skills up, rather than just padding the (irrelevant, if they're not actually going to do anything challenging) difference with tome gear and other grindables, and pigeon-hole challenge into some glorified but tiny fraction of overall content?

To answer "Why would there only be one level of difficulty in a given experience?", because they want open world content to be accessible for everybody, and again for that to be true they have to neuter difficulty or it won't be open for everybody. This is their design philosophy whether you like it or not.

But you don't have to make open world content any less accessible in order to give it higher levels of difficulty. Not everything has to be devoid of triggers, conditions, or dynamics. Consider WoW's upward scaling for a moment, or dynamic spawns, or mob camps in skill-dependent MMOs (where less ambitious players can stealth kill one at a time, but a skilled player may pull the whole camp and nonetheless dodge every blow). By no means do you have to make the open world inaccessible to anyone to also make it potentially challenging for anyone.

Have we playing a different game in the last years? Every single piece of content is released with planned obsolescence in mind, FFXIV content is meant to be consumed right as it comes, with small repurposing in the form of roulettes in the case of instances and relics/gathering/hunts/etc in the case of open world.

Have we been reading different forums? Has that system been reportedly ideal here? Inundating, perhaps, but almost never ideal. Do we really want to be paying primarily for reskins. As long as there is no aim to make the things you've designed actually last, and no aim to actually improve upon the deeper design philosophy, that's all it's going to be. I wonder how many pages I have to go back on general discussion to find complaints towards exactly that—or more likely, how many there'll be on the first page?

To me it seems more like you people need to come in to terms about what this game is and is not, because again it's very clear the devs don't want to change their vision of the game.

What can I say? Their loss. Complacency, short of a massive cult (in the sense of "cult-classic") player-base, has never meant increased subs. Nor has nearsightedness, frequent oversights, or content waste.

This. Like it or not, this playerbase is defined by its lack of skill, even compared to other MMO's.

The playerbase certainly isn't changing, so they have to cater to it. It's a sad reality.

Except games don't just cater to playerbases. They also shape them. Not to do so is immensely restrictive to any game's vision.

[DuskTS]

Isn't there specifically going to be an exploration zone with high hp mobs that you spend a lot of time grinding for rng loot?

I'm sure it will be a big hit.

[Khalithar]

Same reaction. The open world feels like a shallow skin of no consequence already. We need to make it more so? What?

A thought with enemy monsters though, they just said they're decreasing the amount of time it takes to kill something. That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be noticeably easier, for example, as a tradeoff for the lower hp they could increase the amount of damage it does single target or give it a few different telegraphs with a shorter cast time to make the fights more interesting and active. I don't know if they will do this but it's something to consider. Even leveling through HW there weren't really dangerous enemies but there were some that seemed to drag on because of their hp, that's not enemies being difficult that's just enemies being obtuse.

[dragonseth07]

snip

You're right, but to frame it from one teacher to another:

All of the players here are college freshmen taking a Gen Ed irrelevant to their major and are going to a party tonight.

I'm sure you've seen it: when something too hard for a player shows up, they don't think "How can I learn to beat this?" They either just want to get carried or cry about how hard it is.

There are exceptions to that rule of course. But, that is far and away most of this playerbase. The Dark Souls community has their philosophy of "Git Gud". Even new players get roped in, rather than spending their days whining. Here, the philosophy is "Stay Bad". And we do a great job teaching it with lovely phrases like "You don't pay my sub" and "Oh, yeah? How do you know how much damage I'm doing?"

Try as you might, you can't make someone care to learn. I've tried. Teaching at university, I learned very quickly when someone was a lost cause. This playerbase is mostly made up of lost causes.

[Feidam]

This. Like it or not, this playerbase is defined by its lack of skill, even compared to other MMO's.

The playerbase certainly isn't changing, so they have to cater to it. It's a sad reality.

This is said of every mmo out there. That's why savage modes are important imo. And should be available for 4 man dungeons as well as primals and raids. And they should stick to the idea savage are hard and not nerf them. That way everyone gets content. Open world mobs in the end mean very little so whether or not they have small hp pools or larger ones is irrelevant.

[Kallera]

In Heavensward the mobs are still reduced to gobflys even into the endgame of 3.0.

The problem, imo, is that the mobs in the open world are designed for a x.0 player to kill. Given that they are making the fight time shorter only seems to point that they will be even easier to kill, since even in HW, where they insisted on making the overworld mobs harder, they are still reduced to fodder after a rather short time after the player starts getting tome gear.

What should be done, is to set up mobs that would be scaled for the player that is deeper into the expansion, not just at its outset. Having sections where the flight or riding capability is no longer an escape option would also come to mind. (Garlean anti aircraft guns can't just be for their own ships, you know!)

[alimdia]

Maybe this is just me talking as a teacher, but I don't see how anyone can expect otherwise when any real challenge and support were both nearly inexistant throughout content and gameplay leading up to them. [...]

You're coming from a point of view where if people are shown hard content they will learn and start to like to be challenged, that's not the reality, this is not school, if you don't like something you walk away and find another game that caters to you, this is what the devs fear, today's MMO market is over saturated, many new MMOs are coming out every year just to end up with a niche playerbase because people move on to the next flavor of the month, so losing a player for a difficulty experiment is not something they are going to do when their previous tests were met with failure (the two contents I mentioned).

I feel like for this point I have to mention the fact that this game was rebuilt after a failed launch, a failed launch is a massive financial hit for a game publisher, they took a gamble re-releasing it and it was a success, but the failed launch and how much it cost the company is something they will always keep in mind, and I believe the disaster that was 1.0 is the main thing preventing us from seeing innovations, they aren't gonna change the formula that "worked" and saved the game, they are gonna play safe until this game closes. Square Enix used to be two companies, Squaresoft and Enix, it was a failed CGI movie that nearly bankrupted Squaresoft and forced them to merge even after the success of FFVII, I think if ARR failed the company would have taken such a financial hit FFXV probably wouldn't be released right now and most other big projects would have been delayed.

But you don't have to make open world content any less accessible in order to give it higher levels of difficulty. Not everything has to be devoid of triggers, conditions, or dynamics. Consider WoW's upward scaling for a moment, or dynamic spawns, or mob camps in skill-dependent MMOs (where less ambitious players can stealth kill one at a time, but a skilled player may pull the whole camp and nonetheless dodge every blow). By no means do you have to make the open world inaccessible to anyone to also make it potentially challenging for anyone.

I think we might be thinking of different degrees of challenges here, when this topic comes up people usually want to see monsters that hit so hard you can't even solo one, like old school games, a type of difficulty like that means the less skilled (which unfortunately make up the majority of the players) would be the first at risk to quit the game over that.

Have we been reading different forums? Has that system been reportedly ideal here? Inundating, perhaps, but almost never ideal. Do we really want to be paying primarily for reskins. As long as there is no aim to make the things you've designed actually last, and no aim to actually improve upon the deeper design philosophy, that's all it's going to be. I wonder how many pages I have to go back on general discussion to find complaints towards exactly that—or more likely, how many there'll be on the first page?

Of course you will find complaints of that, but as usual the people who visit the forums are a tiny percent of the people who play the game, so they rely on metrics, and if they have metrics showing many players capping tomes every week and looking forward to the next piece of consumable content, which group are they gonna listen to? I don't want to claim to know the percentage of people who would prefer a horizontal approach vs those who like the current formula, but if the former group was that big this game would have less active players, metrics would show a sharp decline in population, that doesn't seem to be the case.

What can I say? Their loss. Complacency, short of a massive cult (in the sense of "cult-classic") player-base, has never meant increased subs. Nor has nearsightedness, frequent oversights, or content waste.

Only time can tell if your opinion is right or not, so far the subs have been pretty stable with the current formula so evidence is not supporting your claim.

[Atoli]

Yeah having the mobs be harder to kill is just more annoying than anything. That may be what people liked back then, but it doesn't appeal to many of us who are playing this game today.

Back in 1.x monsters didn't necessarily take ages to kill either. Things on your own level died fairly fast too.
What made the world dangerous was that 1. there were lots of really high monsters around that you had to look out for, take a wrong turn in the Shroud and you run into a giant tree that will oneshot you, take a shortcut outside Ul'dah and a drake will roast you, overestimate your abilities and take on an opponent that is too much for you and it will end badly for you and 2. normal enemies had actually dangerous abilities that you had to look out for. It didn't necessarily take long to kill a cactuar, but if you didn't evade it's 1000 needles (and nope, no bright red telegraphs), that was certain death, or if you got three skeletons, you learned that focusing them down one by one was a better idea than to AoE them since they siphoned off HP from you so they regnerated faster than you could damage them with the weaker aoe dmg and you'd run out of HP before you had them all down.

I'm not saying a dangerous overworld would necessarily be a good idea (even though I personally would love it), it is definitely an inconvenience and many would not like that.
But it's a fairly fun inconvenience, that also opens up amazing challenges (like servers banding together to beat a lvl 100 monster and stuff like that). I'm just saying, if you want to introduce danger to the overworld, do it right.
Higher HP pool of mobs = not danger.