"Casual" content thoughts

[Mycow8me]

I'm not going to go find the person who posted a video of him playing with his feet due to disability on these forums but its out there. Very inspirational and he played extremely well. Makes you wonder how long he spent to adapt to be able to play that well.

[Avatre]

I'm not going to go find the person who posted a video of him playing with his feet due to disability on these forums but its out there. Very inspirational and he played extremely well. Makes you wonder how long he spent to adapt to be able to play that well.

There are very many stories/videos/articles/examples of people overcoming their "disability" to be superb gamers. And before someone says "Why is disabilities in quotations?!", the reason for that is because those people don't see it as a shortcoming most of the time, but more of a challenge to better themselves.

One story I recently read, while not for FFXIV, is for something that needs LOTS of communication. In Destiny 2 the Leviathan raid has parts where you HAVE to talk to each other to get past certain parts(in the gauntlet section the runners say which hole has light around it, and the people outside shoot the triangles NOT called; for the final boss you need to call out three symbols and kill an enemy floating above the fourth - things like that). Apparently a completely deaf team beat the raid(didn't go into specifics of how, but that's 6 people who are so in-sync - probably in the same room also to check screens - who can't hear each other).

So, it's completely possible that people will adapt and overcome whatever "shortcomings" they have to, quite likely, be better than most people who don't have that disadvantage.

[RiyahArp]

I'm not going to go find the person who posted a video of him playing with his feet due to disability on these forums but its out there. Very inspirational and he played extremely well. Makes you wonder how long he spent to adapt to be able to play that well.

You don't see the disabled people who can't play video games at all, because they don't make youtube videos about it that go viral due to flattering people's sense of how accessible their game is. The guy who plays FFXIV with his feet is a huge outlier, who in part probably made it his way of coping with his disability and creating an identity and a purpose out of it. That shouldn't be used in the sense that anyone can do it, any more than a disabled person running in a marathon means anyone can train to run in a marathon.

There is also the failure to see that there is a middle ground in terms of difficult: take some of the posts in this thread and others, where people claim that anyone asking for “harder” or “more engaging” content are automatically demanding that it be “Savage tier.” There is a middle ground between “easy mode/Baby’s First MMO” and “savage”. Making content “more engaging” is not going to “scare away” the casual players.

We have that. It's called the EX Primals, and everyone seems to hate them. What people don't want is the casual side becoming more like them. If you think ex roulette is bad now, imagine when you queued for it, it would be like your average pickup primal group. Skip Soar or disband.

People don't seem to get that harder content doesn't mean you still get to clear it 95% of the time apart from that one random ice mage.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

You don't see the disabled people who can't play video games at all, because they don't make youtube videos about it that go viral due to flattering people's sense of how accessible their game is. The guy who plays FFXIV with his feet is a huge outlier, who in part probably made it his way of coping with his disability and creating an identity and a purpose out of it. That shouldn't be used in the sense that anyone can do it, any more than a disabled person running in a marathon means anyone can train to run in a marathon.

You're missing the forest for the trees. You cannot design content around the assumption people will have disabilities or handicaps lest it all stagnates. Per your example, are we going to start making marathons easier because some people are physically incapable of running them? Furthermore, just become a disabled person can't necessarily do something doesn't mean they expect the world to bend over for them. In fact, very few actually want that. They want to persevere in their own way not have their hands held.

We have that. It's called the EX Primals, and everyone seems to hate them. What people don't want is the casual side becoming more like them. If you think ex roulette is bad now, imagine when you queued for it, it would be like your average pickup primal group. Skip Soar or disband.

People don't seem to get that harder content doesn't mean you still get to clear it 95% of the time apart from that one random ice mage.

People don't hate them. Raiders simply how they have steadily been neutered. Has it ever occurred to you that constant reduction in difficulty contributes to players apathy; i.e., they don't improve because everything keeps getting easier. Skip Soar memes were born because the DPS check was so pitiful, a proper opener with a standard comp should be more than enough. It's not asking much for people to know their job. Zurvan proved just how few people actually know a proper rotation, or can't be bothered to learn. If this game instilled a better difficulty curve, you would likely see less of this as players would continuously reach a reasonable wall relative to their current skill sets they needs overcome. Instead, we see content that dies with barely an effort put forth juxtaposed with content that wipes the raid for even one error. Zurvan epitomized it better than any. Skip Soar and the entire fight breaks—to the point he literally does nothing of note for 50% of his HP. Don't Skip Soar and people can't handle a mechanic that isn't even difficult to begin with. Now if the normal node better prepared players, maybe this gets avoided.

[RiyahArp]

YPeople don't hate them. Raiders simply how they have steadily been neutered. Has it ever occurred to you that constant reduction in difficulty contributes to players apathy.

No, sigh it doesn't work that way. You are assuming all players treat the game like you would.

Let me put it this way. Let's assume instead of royal menagerie, the last fight was slightly harder than Susano EX. I don't think I'd be wrong in thinking you'd find this good, and that you believe players would rise to beat it, and then go on. But I think players would probably go through trying to beat it, a lot would fail or get sick of it, and a lot more would realize that after the week or two it took to beat him in PUG that the rest of the game would probably be even harder, and ditch endgame entirely. It's not apathy in that sense...it's that they don't find the process of raid-level optimization fun, nor the whole "whale on a fifteen minute fight for dozens of tries wiping constantly until you beat it or bust." idea that endgame is in this game.

This is what I meant by savageification...if farming tomes was like farming Zurvan, you wouldn't get a good playerbase. You'd get a lot of people at ilvl 320 not farming tomes. You can't really assume everyone wants to rise to the challenge and enjoys this game's hard content.

[Sylvina]

You don't see the disabled people who can't play video games at all, because they don't make youtube videos about it that go viral due to flattering people's sense of how accessible their game is. The guy who plays FFXIV with his feet is a huge outlier, who in part probably made it his way of coping with his disability and creating an identity and a purpose out of it. That shouldn't be used in the sense that anyone can do it, any more than a disabled person running in a marathon means anyone can train to run in a marathon.

Even your analogies here are flawed. Any very HEALTHY person can train to run in a marathon. and Any person who has the desire and patience to clear can clear the content in this game, provided they are also healthy in the ways which matter for computer games.

Also fun before clear should not be unique to the casual player mentality. Fun before clear needs to be embraced by all, clear before fun is why we have toxic assholes in raiding.