PAX EAST: I was the person that asked the "Challenging content" question at the end.

[BigRed5392]

Don't make this a debate about semantics please .

it already was and had been since video games existed. People do need to wake up to that realization that the things they ask for are subjective and effect everyone, not just their group of friends. Which is why yoshida said what he said.

nothing stays a challenge forever, and the people who get the worst are those who are catching up.

People ask for this, get it, and complain. It been going on since he got on board of ff14. :/ I've been here since 1.0... kinda of tired of these 1 shot requests, that ends up screwing over everyone else.

[BigRed5392]

First of all, I was also at the PAX East panel and wanted to say thank you for asking the question you did, even if it wasn't taken the right way. And good job! I'm also horrible at public speaking, so props to you for having the courage to ask a question at all (I definitely didn't).

Having been in a static that went through the issue of "got our weekly clears, time to log off for a week", I agree with your perspective and wish Yoshi had understood the question better. I don't want to make existing content harder necessarily - but I'd love more difficult content in addition to what we get already. Dungeons would be a great place to start - keep the difficulty we have now while adding another level as well.

yoshida understood the question... it gets asked often. people get what they want, and complain, then the rest of us get screwed over.


since pople don't get what I'm saying here it is:

i do not mind them adding more content, I do not mind if the content has 4 tiers of difficulty.

what i a, talking about is the community reaction to said content. Which is never good. People complain it is still too easy, while others complain it is too hard.

The people screwed over are the people who show up late to said content, in which everyone moved on from.

The NA community is very cut throat when it comes to content, that if you don't run it how they expect.. you do not have a good experience. I'm late to a lot of content due to just getting back 3 mnths ago after an 8 mnth break due to personal issiues. I'm in the process of farming lore for aether oil, and farming scrip for scripture gear. I got just 1 piece of scripture gear.

At present doing the latest experts isn't a very good idea as I can't handle more then 1 pull at a time ( tried and i just saw my hp drop fast with CD)

If people went back and was more understanding of new/fresh 60 players no one would have much issue. Playing catch up in the NA community isn't fun.

SSE needs to make sure all content is open to players, not just 1 and done. So no matter when you start, you are able to do said content.

[Istaru]

I apologize for the length of this, it wound up much larger than I thought it would.

issue is not everyone enjoys raids but does need to increase their ilvl as cap content has ilvl restrictions, like need to be 230 for story, and if you are a fresh 60, getting that 230 can be overwhelming. More so if you are not used to the system.

Everyone doesn't have to enjoy raids. Not a requirement, I don't think anyone said that it was a requirement. What I think that is being asked for, is to have content other than the latest savage to have some difficulty to it. They could make the same thing have more variety of difficulty. An example:

Going to play with the Nidhogg fight, with the following things:
Weapon = same ilvl as current tomestone ilvl +5
Weapon upgrade makes it tomestone+10 to match the powered up tomestone weapon
bird is the Nidhogg bird
crafting material would be for making a Nidhogg glowy or for furniture or whatever
VE=Very Easy, E=Easy, N=Normal, D=(Difficult and VD=Very Difficult

• Nidhogg VE (ilvl-10) - 0% weapon, 0% upgrade, 0% bird, 0% material
• Nidhogg E (ilvl-5) - 25% weapon, 0% upgrade, 0% bird, 0% material
• Nihogg N (ilvl) - 50% weapon, 1% upgrade, 0.5% bird, 0% material
• Nidhogg D (ilvl+5) - 75% weapon, 5% upgrade, 1% bird, 0% material
• Nidhogg VD (ilvl+10) - 100% weapon, 10% upgrade, 5% bird, 5% material

For the same fight, the ilvl+10 has all the moves of the current EX, and the I-10 has the current moves of the Normal mode. They add and remove parts of the fight mechanics and lower and raise stats based on the difficulty.

It did not require much more dev time since all the same assets are used for all 5 difficulties.

Part of your challenge to catch up in ilvl is the extreme verticality of gearing in this game. We ended with Gubal library gear at i148, Dun Scaith is i235. That is 87 levels to make up. That is a lot.

Compare that to the end of ARR, the last dungeon rewarded i47 gear, and WoD required i90. It only needed 43 levels to make it.

You are also limited by the limited number of options you have to make ground up. They are factors of how they design and deliver content. That is something I would like to see them change, slow down how fast we progress through gear. I still want gear progression, just not so fast, it does harm new players in their ability to catch up.

Remember not everyone played WoW.

I never played WoW. I am probably in the same boat as you on that. FFXI, FFXIV 1.0 and FFXIV ARR/Hw.

If the community was less cut throat, things would be better.

An answer to that can go many different ways. I will only look at one part of it, someone could write a book on that subject. A really big book.

Part of that goes back to how they handle progression in this game. They do not release a lot of content in each patch. That is ok. Problem is that they invalidate so much content so quickly. Content does not need to stay relevant for years and years and years like in XI. But longer than 3-6 months, or less, could help with that.

I am going to continue responding to this after another part of your post taken out of order.

challenging content is subjective, and things get easier. Which is why yoshida said what he said.

That is part of progression. It is totally ok.

Here is the problem, when your content starts at very easy, where it goes next is not particularly good, especially when every encounter is highly scripted and unchanging. It goes to boring, dull, tedious, a chore, tiring, I could go on, I hope you see where I am going with this.

Back to the other part of what you said about the community. They keep funneling us back into old content for the relic and for tomestones as examples. They are requiring that we go back and do content again, that is just not fun. It isn't, there is no excitement in going back and doing ARF for 160 runs to get one step of that item completed. It is a chore and time consuming as it is used to give people something to do. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that the fun is missing.

This is supposed to be a form of entertainment, it does not do a very good job of that at times due to how they distribute that entertainment. They need to address that.

Part of the toxicity between the players comes from the lack of enjoyable content that lasts and has multiple uses. A lot of content in this game is one and done for the excitement part, after that it is just going through the motions with predictable mechanics and results. There isn't anything to get excited about.

Instead of asking for this for the right now, look to suggest things for the long term, and be willing to go back and help people through.

I do go back and help people with things. I have put this in other places. One of my favorite things in this game is actually something with my FC. It is "movie night". Where we take a new player who has reached the end of ARR through the 2 level 50 MSQ dungeons. Wait for it.

We do it min ilvl, which syncs us to level 42. No gigantic pulls, no faceroll start to finish. We actually have to do mechanics and not mess up too much or we will wipe. That is fun.

Failure is fun. Failure is what makes success taste so good when you finally get it.

I'm all for adding more content, but i rather they do things to promote a better community on NA side. Or NA side do better as a community.

Look at all of this in another light please.

I like harder content. Due to how they create and distribute that content, there is not much for me to do. I also like glamours (the relic is a glamour to me), mounts and minions.

How do you obtain those items, especially the relic?

Go back and grind old content, a lot. Remember earlier, the content starts at very easy and goes to boring and tedious. For the relic, you have to go and do a lot of tedious work. It is not fun. For things that are not fun, people want to get them over with and out of the way so they can go have fun (kinda like work), when you mix those people with people who, due to being new, lesser geared or skilled, problems ensue. The person working on a relic has spent the last 4 hours running ARF with friends who are as well geared as they are and achieved 20% of their goal. They spend the next 4 hours in DF, we will assume instant pops, and in the same amount of time, they only achieve another 5%.

Repeat this over and over, on content that is not fun. You will see the attitudes of many people rapidly make their way into the toilet.

I think that for a lot of what you mention, the lack of interesting content is part of the problems you are mentioning.

[Istaru]

Yoshida understood the question... it gets asked often. people get what they want, and complain, then the rest of us get screwed over.

Since pople don't get what I'm saying here it is:

I do not mind them adding more content, I do not mind if the content has 4 tiers of difficulty.

What I am talking about, is the community reaction to said content. Which is never good. People complain it is still too easy, while others complain it is too hard.

The people screwed over are the people who show up late to said content, in which everyone moved on from.

Again, I am going to say that part of the problem is that the content they give us is super boring super fast due to how overgeared we are in reference to the content. It is not fun. It makes the content tired and boring on delivery. That is not a good way to design and deliver content.

The NA community is very cut throat when it comes to content, that if you don't run it how they expect.. you do not have a good experience. I'm late to a lot of content due to just getting back 3 mnths ago after an 8 mnth break due to personal issiues. I'm in the process of farming lore for aether oil, and farming scrip for scripture gear. I got just 1 piece of scripture gear.

At present doing the latest experts isn't a very good idea as I can't handle more then 1 pull at a time ( tried and i just saw my hp drop fast with CD)

If people went back and was more understanding of new/fresh 60 players no one would have much issue. Playing catch up in the NA community isn't fun.

Again, the content is not much fun to run over and over. I have stopped running EX content during HW. I refuse to run that content anymore due to boredom with it. And the fact that the current level of gear is worthless in relation to the content level they provided. All the better gear does is to make the currently boring content even more boring. I know I am jaded and apathetic, so I avoid the content that brings that out in me. No, it is not the most efficient use of my time in making more relics and gearing more jobs, but that is how I deal with it.

SE needs to make sure all content is open to players, not just 1 and done. So no matter when you start, you are able to do said content.

I am going to state this again, the rapid acceleration of gear is partly to blame for this. Coming in at 60, you are about 120 levels below current players. That is far too much of a jump from the start to the end of an expansion. I think that is a mistake that SE made.

I understand what you are saying. I am not going to say that the community is full of angels. It isn't. Some people are nice and some people, quite frankly, suck.

When the developers of this game, give us boring, mundane content, more than challenging content, you will see more people who want it to be over as quickly as possible so they can do something else they find fun.

By challenging content, that does not have to mean savage difficulty, it could be as simple as changing how bosses work. Instead of it always being ability "X" at checkpoint "Y", why not it picks a random ability and uses it?

I have an issue with how the game is being developed. I do not have issues with undergeared or new players. It is not their fault that the game is in the state that it is currently in.

[alimdia]

They said they didn't want to do 3 raid difficulties because they lacked staff, I imagine if they can't do 3 raid tiers they can't do 2 difficulties per dungeon either without increasing the staff dedicated to tuning dungeons, and also increase the QA staff.

If we had Xelphatol (extreme) it wouldn't be just increasing enemy damage and HP, they also have to add new attacks and properly test everything over and over.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

yoshida understood the question... it gets asked often. people get what they want, and complain, then the rest of us get screwed over.

No, it wasn't. The person never mentioned Savage, the dev team simply presumed they meant Creator because others have criticised this tier as too easy. There is a stark difference between asking for what is essentially midcore level content and the soul crusher that was Gordias. Content outside Extremes and Savage are objectively made significantly easier-- to the point of being a faceroll. You needs not even know how to properly play your job to clear dungeons. We see it all the time when tanks won't use any cooldowns, Monks pull 500 DPS and Ninjas never touch their mudras. Unfortunately, these types of players have no incentive to improve since the games has yet to hinder their progression. I always come back to Xelphatol yet it remains a perfect example. Here we have a dungeon that requires gear released back when Heavenward launched. Why would new players think to upgrade their gear when the requirements are that low? Unless the bottom tier is pushed up, we're not going to diminish the skill gap amongst players.

[Clethoria]

Can I get an abridged version of those first posts?

[RoninDarkchild]

yoshida understood the question... it gets asked often. people get what they want, and complain, then the rest of us get screwed over.

No.... it literally was not the question I asked.... please stop... they thought I meant "harder than the raid" when I was talking Numbers. He answered a previous question that was a different question entirely. And he said the same thing. He gave the same answer to two different questions because he thought they were the same. Which is why people said "He already answered that".

[RoninDarkchild]

If we had Xelphatol (extreme) it wouldn't be just increasing enemy damage and HP, they also have to add new attacks and properly test everything over and over.

"Why" would they need to add new attacks or new attack patterns? Did Diadem Normal and Diadem Hard have new attacks for the same mobs when the only thing that changed was the mob rank? The ONLY difference between Diadem Normal and Diadem Hard was Mob ranks and Chest drop rates!!! Hard mode had higher chance of gold chests.

There isn't even a real difference in the new Diadem between Matron and Fury except for the method of progress. It's the same exact map, same exact mobs.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I find the whole notion of 5 tiers of raid difficulty appalling. It ruined any desire to raid in WoW. Content that gets rehashed "but harder!" and then after you beat it you're expected to "do it again but even harder!" and then "do it yet again! Even harder than before!" is friggin stupid. It's an excuse to reuse the same content multiple times calling it additional content when it is anything but. Just because its "harder" and gives higher ilvl gear doesn't make it new content. It's an insult to me as a consumer and I hope SE never decides to listen suggestions of the sort. FFXIV doesn't need that. You want "challenging" "five-difficulty" "content"? Go play WoW or some other game that offers such "content". It was a terrible design decision for WoW (imo) and I'd be truly heartbroken if they ever implemented it here.

Savage difficulty should be the "challenging content". There doesn't need to be 5 different difficulties. Regular difficulty for the story and people not looking for a "challenge" and Savage for those who are. That's more than enough. Can SE adjust the difficulty of Savage to make it more challenging? Sure. Ask them for that. But for the love of Hydalen please don't ask them to turn FFXIV into a Raid or Die model.

Raiding is niche content as far as I'm concerned, and resources are better devoted elsewhere than for rehashes of existing raids and giving multiple ilvl jumps between them just to incentivize people to actually do it. Such resources would be far better spent adding more story, more quality of life features, more jobs, more quests, more music, more dungeons, more of anything and everything BUT raids, in my opinion.

Raiding has its place. It's a small place, but it has it. It doesn't get neglected by any measure. It gets exactly the amount of focus it deserves from my perspective. I'm hoping that doesn't change.