Totally agree with Yoshida in terms of game content, too easy then too hard.

[thegreatonemal]

[QUOTE=FeliAiko;4045888]I love the Gordias argument for "when we make things harder people complain".

1. People want next raid to be harder than Final Coil (which was made in response to people claiming Second Coil was too hard, according to Yoshi)
2. Yoshi says that Gordias difficulty would be set between Second Coil and Final Coil
3. Gordias ends up not even being this, but instead the hardest of all raid tiers thus far


It was for the most part it was simply too tightly tuned mechanically he was spot on but they overestimated how well people would adjust to the new rotations people would need to learn and master. problem is they knew it was over tuned and said nothing until like a few weeks before midas. Thats bad because it set the standard for hw raids as a whole which led to a bunch of people quitting and here we are.

they need to balance how they see fit.

[thegreatonemal]

I love the Gordias argument for "when we make things harder people complain".

1. People want next raid to be harder than Final Coil (which was made in response to people claiming Second Coil was too hard, according to Yoshi)
2. Yoshi says that Gordias difficulty would be set between Second Coil and Final Coil
3. Gordias ends up not even being this, but instead the hardest of all raid tiers thus far

It was for the most part it was simply too tightly tuned mechanically he was spot on but they overestimated how well people would adjust to the new rotations people would need to learn and master. problem is they knew it was over tuned and said nothing until like a few weeks before midas. Thats bad because it set the standard for hw raids as a whole which led to a bunch of people quitting and here we are.

they need to balance how they see fit.

[RubenSnizzle]

When the max was ilv90, the challenge was perfect, but even since we crossed that gap, stuff have been too easy.

[Aylis]

Thoughts on this?

The only thought I have is....this really is just what it is and what it will forever be.

While I would love the return of old harder dungeons (Pharos 1.0 comes to mind) I just don't see it happening unless they're willing to break the mold. Since I know some don't want the challenge, ideally these dungeons should be their own separate thing and away from the normal roulettes. Something players /have/ to select intentionally. So both sides are happy. Except the currant model is two dungeons per new patch. That comes down to one easy and one hard dungeon each patch. I could totally see this causing an upset. Then there's incentive. Pharos I remember having this problem. Difficult dungeon, with rewards no better then the more favored easy version of that particular patch. No easy way i can think of to fix this, this is a vertical progression game. So the game offers no way to advance a character outside of gear. Horizontal could fix it (you must run and farm this hard dungeon for a skill book to learn this combat technique) or whatever, but its not going to happen. The game and devs are set in their ways.

Its pretty much...this is iwhat it is and what its going to be till the end.

[Malzian]

Okay, so let's all take a moment and ponder this little thing... The devs don't have a "difficulty slider" that runs from really easy to really hard that they can just adjust on a particular piece of content. The content must be designed, implemented and then tested. Note that all of the is done by the devs so that means you can expect 2 things:

1) You have content being tested by the people who know the most about the game, its functions and the content itself, so they can't be expected to look at it from the same perspective as people who are just playing the game.
2) The valuation of difficulty is dependant upon the person viewing the content and their ability to process and react to certain things. What's easy for you may not be easy for me so trying to tune a single piece of content just right for everyone is a impossible task.

You can sit there and say things like, "The devs should create difficulties that work for everyone." But then you end up needing 20 different versions of the same encounter that all need to be tuned and tested which would be a huge drain in dev time taking away from making other content. Will some content end up faceroll easy? Sadly yes. Will some end up soul-crushingly hard? Sadly yes. It's a compromise that you'll never be above to 100% solve. I, for one, think they do a great job of pleasing as many people as possible, which is really the best they'll ever be able to do.

[Rikku1987]

Theres no reason to have a story-mode and a savage mode when content is tuned as easy as it is now seriously.

[Soge01]

Isn't the problem with the raid content and what not being too difficult for some or most players because the overall game itself is made too easy for them to actually develop the proper skills and thinking to play that certain content right?

[Vhailor]

Okay, so let's all take a moment and ponder this little thing... The devs don't have a "difficulty slider" that runs from really easy to really hard that they can just adjust on a particular piece of content. The content must be designed, implemented and then tested. Note that all of the is done by the devs so that means you can expect 2 things:

1) You have content being tested by the people who know the most about the game, its functions and the content itself, so they can't be expected to look at it from the same perspective as people who are just playing the game.
2) The valuation of difficulty is dependant upon the person viewing the content and their ability to process and react to certain things. What's easy for you may not be easy for me so trying to tune a single piece of content just right for everyone is a impossible task.

You can sit there and say things like, "The devs should create difficulties that work for everyone." But then you end up needing 20 different versions of the same encounter that all need to be tuned and tested which would be a huge drain in dev time taking away from making other content. Will some content end up faceroll easy? Sadly yes. Will some end up soul-crushingly hard? Sadly yes. It's a compromise that you'll never be above to 100% solve. I, for one, think they do a great job of pleasing as many people as possible, which is really the best they'll ever be able to do.

I think this is excusing SE just a little bit. Part of what the development team is paid to do is accurately balance content. Occasionally, yes, we should be understanding when content comes out that isn't tuned quite right, but SE hasn't been making small mistakes here - they've been all over the map, and usually to one of the extremes (way too easy or way too hard).

Part of the reason for this, as I pointed out earlier, is their lack of innovation when it comes to difficulty (they basically leverage only mechanics or gear checks, and occasionally a combination of both), but there's a component that's sheer lack of competency, too. Go create a beta server for people to try stuff out on if need be; other games have used that to great effect. Small mistakes are forgivable, but SE hasn't been making small mistakes, and we have every right to hold them to a higher standard than you seem to be doing.

[ZhaneX]

Yoshi-P summed it up best...

Honestly this was probably the best moment of all of Frankfurt.

[Malzian]

Honestly this was probably the best moment of all of Frankfurt.

Yeah, though sadly that image is from the Japanese Fan Fest. Couldn't get the image from the moment they actually asked him for harder content in the Live Letter.