Why are people calling it “casualbringers” now?

[Dzian]

Even if they are calling it casual bringer and the game is getting dumb down it's going to benefit SE in the long term.

Easier gameplay means more people who can play your game means more money..

Actually not true at all.
One of the biggest reasons so many amazing franchises have died over recent years is because developers try to make game play simpler, easier or more accessible in the hope of attracting more players, only to end up destroying the games identity and everything that made it popular to begin with thus completely alienating its fans in the process.

SE is no different. You can see it with Tomb Raider, Hitman. Dragon Age (wait is that SE?l) and Final Fantasy where pretty much everything that's been released over recent years basically flops.

If I recall it wasnt so long ago (maybe February) that Yoshi said the future of the Final Fantasy franchise needs to move away from mainstream audiences and go back to the fans...

XIII for example alienated a lot of Final Fantasy fans and is generally regarded as one of the worst games in the franchise why? Because it took away everything that made it Final Fantasy and all that was left was this giant corridor feeling from beginning to end because the developers wanted to make it easier and more accessible to players. They didnt want people to feel lost or overwhelmed trying to control multiple characters and various other things. Basically they ruined the whole game by making it super simple and easy.

XV sufferend many of the same complaints. The first part of the game was great but the second part once again became this long corridor and players were left feeling that so much stuff was cut from the game in order to make it easier and more accessible to players which is why there are so many holes in it's plot line..

Alternatively, I could claim that watered down game play leaves the core user base dissatisfied, who will themselves churn from the end product toward another more focused game. Having the core user base churn will cause all the precious new customers to likewise churn because "Wow everybody's leaving, this must be bad."

Whatever information they have, they have a lot more data than I do. But "easier gameplay = more players" is not an associative rule you can glean from the data available to the public.

This.
If you go and take a look at why so many big games franchises die, You'll see that focusing on making them to easy or simplistic in an attempt to draw in more players almost always ends up destroying everything that made the franchise great in the first place. It's a far to common occurrence..

The easier gameplay = more players doesn't work out better either. This is especially true on the mobile side of things. Sure 100 million people have played Angry Birds or something similar. But how many of them played it for any length of time... Yes its kind of fun for a couple of hours but gets boring incredibly quickly and the result is people drop the games just as quickly as they pick them up.. which isn't good for business in the long run.

[grinkdaboy]

Even if they are calling it casual bringer and the game is getting dumb down it's going to benefit SE in the long term.

Easier gameplay means more people who can play your game means more money.

While I dont agree with microtransactions, I do agree with smart marketing.

the problem with that thinking is that this new audience is usually not nearly as retentive as the veterans that are being alienated. so you have 100 people, 20 of them leave. you have 25 people to replace them, but only 15 of them stay long term.

[Jandor]

The only thing I can see that seems maybe a tad too casual is the removal of aggro as any sort of real concern.

Before it was a party mechanic, everyone had to do their bit to ensure enemies focused on who they were supposed to, it wasn't a difficult mechanic by any stretch, but it existed.

That appears to have been replaced with chucking on tank stance and having everything glue itself to you.

--

Nothing else really stood out though:
TP hasn't really been used for anything for a long time now.
MP standardization doesn't change much from a gameplay perspective.
Piercing debuff was just a pain in the ass.
Main stats are stupid in this game anyway and I'm surprised that it's just the materia for them that's gone.

AST cards looked maybe a tad too simple, from what I saw of a leak. Not an AST player though so no real comment here from me.

[Kalise]

Alternatively, I could claim that watered down gameplay leaves the core userbase dissatisfied, who will themselves churn from the end product toward another more focused game. Having the core userbase churn will cause all the precious new customers to likewise churn because "Wow everybody's leaving, this must be bad."

Whatever information they have, they have a lot more data than I do. But "easier gameplay = more players" is not an associative rule you can glean from the data available to the public.

Yeah...

Devs often make the mistake of screwing over hardcore fans, in favour of pandering for fresh new blood in the form of FotM players.

Which will often provide a large boost in short term monetary gain, as all these people will buy the game and expansions and get a few months of subs. But the nature of FotM players is they'll leave quickly when the next new shiny thing is released and grabs their attention.

Meanwhile, if you've screwed over your core fanbase, then they'll leave for a game that satisfies their need for you know... Actual content. Thus, leaving your game a husk with no players (See: Every MMO that has failed to date)

While catering to your core fanbase, won't provide large immediate profit, but will snowball over time. As other games kill themselves through stupid decisions about pandering to FotM players (Or Mobile gamers) players from those games will look to alternatives, to which, having a core fanbase that enjoys the game will be able to invite them over.

Like, we literally have evidence of this, from the ancient times of 2018.

Path of Exile was a pretty niche game, developed by a small indie company (Literally, not just the EA/SE/Bli$$ard meme). It was always dwarfed by Diablo.

Then "Don't you guys have phones?" happened and Diablo crashed and PoE got a huge surge in popularity because it never compromized its gameplay or design to appease to the masses, while games that did burned around it. So literally all the core fan bases migrated over. The game is doing pretty well these days as a result and will likely get more and more popular when more people start to look for a good ARPG and PoE is the default reccomendation now that Diablo as a franchise is pretty much dead.

We can also see this with World of Warcraft too.

WoW destroyed itself with the latest expansion (After slowly killing itself since Cataclysm, with only Legion offering something that wasn't pure garbage since Pandaria) and so all the core fanbase are moving over to find their new home. Thus, you can't go anywhere on YouTube without a bunch of "WoW to FFXIV" comparison videos and "WoW Refugee Guides to FFXIV". Of course, these days, WoW Classic is in the mix and so the original game before tons of expansions worth of dumbing down and catering to the lowest common denominator is available.

Which means that currently, one of the main competitors for FFXIV is... A 15 year old game... With all of its clunk and bass ackwards designs, horrible quests ("Hey Mr Not-High-Enough-Level-Or-Rich-Enough-To-Own-A-Mount! Why dontcha travel all the way to my sister on the other side of... The OTHER CONTINENT through zones that are 20 levels higher than you, with enemies that proc Daze status effect when they hit from behind and like 1 Graveyard per zone to go fetch my slippers and bring them back? Kthanxbai!") and terrible balance (Warrior is the ONLY Tank. PvP is Rock, Paper, Scissors, Paladin and Shaman are faction locked, the Forsaken race is vulnerable to "Anti-Undead" spells in PvP etc...))

But much of this clunk is stuff that core fans like. They like how things aren't "Kill 5 boars... Gratz you've got 200 levels and it dropped 15 Epics!!" and there was challenging things like getting Grand Marshal/Warlord titles in PvP as well as Raids that were big, expansive and difficult in mechanics (As opposed to difficulty merely through Enrage Timers). How there was server communities because there wasn't any cross-realm play and especially no LFD tools so people had to manually make parties and thus Ninja Looters and asshats could get blacklisted by a server for being asshats. Etc.

This doesn't mean archaic design is better, but that development should take into consideration the core playerbase and what they enjoy. Like, WoW hit its apex during WotLK where many systems had been streamlined and updated. It however, still kept some core designs, such as meaningful Raids and didn't just scrap them in favour of catering to "Casuals" by dumbing them down and making them quick and easy to get through by even terrible players (Like Pandaria+)

[ForteNightshade]

Even if they are calling it casual bringer and the game is getting dumb down it's going to benefit SE in the long term.

Easier gameplay means more people who can play your game means more money.

While I dont agree with microtransactions, I do agree with smart marketing.

In theory, perhaps. However, if a game becomes too watered down, you have the inverse effect. People feeling no sense of progression or satisfaction because the vast majority of content can be crushed without breaking a sweat. Case in point, what is the primary complaint new players have? ARR is slow and boring. In fact, it's been a common complaint even at the end game regarding dungeons. While some people may like a game that holds their hand from start to finish, you'll find a lot want some kind of challenge even if it isn't an overly taxing one.

[xbahax92]

People are to dumb to even do one easy combo rotation applying debuffs or buffs on monsters or bosses. And whats the solution for that? Get rid of more buffs, debuffs, mechanics or features so even the dumbest person can play the job without reading tooltips. "Casualbringers" is in some way true, its thanks to that skill player gap that features get deleted. A black mage who cant differentiate between Thunder III and Thunder IV or bards that cant keep up straight buff shots every 30s up, are a prove of that.

Yet Yoshida's argument is: "To much stress". Sadly he doesnt consider that sometimes stressful things can be really fun once you learn them how to play. Complex systems/gameplay are not immediatly something bad.

[Nora_of_Mira]

XIII for example alienated a lot of Final Fantasy fans and is generally regarded as one of the worst games in the franchise why? Because it took away everything that made it Final Fantasy and all that was left was this giant corridor feeling from beginning to end because the developers wanted to make it easier and more accessible to players. They didnt want people to feel lost or overwhelmed trying to control multiple characters and various other things. Basically they ruined the whole game by making it super simple and easy.

XV sufferend many of the same complaints. The first part of the game was great but the second part once again became this long corridor and players were left feeling that so much stuff was cut from the game in order to make it easier and more accessible to players which is why there are so many holes in it's plot line..

That doesn't really take into account people that aren't already fans of FF. FF13 was the game that got me into the FF series due to its accessibility and now I've been subbed to FF14 for a few years, own FF12 on several platforms, played a myriad of spinoffs, and completed FF15. I understand why players get alienated with change but saying "its a ruined game" is an exaggeration. I had primarily ignored the FF franchise (due to only owning nintendo consoles and being a child) but when I saw FF13's graphics on xbox360 i decide to give it a shot and liked it.

FF15 though, is just an unfinished game. the ending wasnt all corridors because they wanted accessibility (why do that at the end of a game?), it was because they had a date to push the game out and couldn't finish it in time. that has nothing to do with making the game easier for players.

[JunKriid]

Yeah. This mentality destroyed many others MMOs. In WoW it was actually hard early in it's life to hold aggro and you had to be mindful as a DPS. Was it hard? No, but it still wasn't given for free. Now in WoW you just press 1 button and never worry again. DPS can pop all their cooldowns and you will never lose aggro.

If a game is popular because of how it plays, you don't need to reduce it so much for "new players". Besides is FF14 really that hard? What type of players are you encouraging if even an already casual friendly MMO wants to go more casual? Keep your loyal fanbase happy is foremost, they bought and supported the game to make it what it is today.

Blizzards attitude is now, if 20 loyal players leave because of a drastic change but it brings 21 new players then let's do it. Horrible because you're only getting 21 short-lived players and you will KEEP having to make drastic changes to get more temporary players as the previous ones leave and go play another game for a free months. Basically you turn into a take-away MMO.

[ViolaCrossfire]

For people that do not believe that SE won't oversimplify things, look at new Provoke. you now get an emnity boost above the emnity you copy. Apparently doing an emnity attack after your provoke was too difficult. Not only that but every single attack increases emnity so the only reason you would benefit from this change would be if you break the golden rule.
Which golden rule?
Always be attacking.

[Kalise]

For people that do not believe that SE won't oversimplify things, look at new Provoke. you now get an emnity boost above the emnity you copy. Apparently doing an emnity attack after your provoke was too difficult. Not only that but every single attack increases emnity so the only reason you would benefit from this change would be if you break the golden rule.
Which golden rule?
Always be attacking.

Though, that change actually has merit. Since, if an add spawns and is running right at your healer and you Provoke it... You might not even be in range to attack it (Especially given the garbage range on "Ranged" skills for Tanks), so you Provoke, it turns towards you and then a HoT ticks and the add goes right back to charging for the Healer and mauling their face off, while you desperately run after it spamming your "Ranged" skill trying to get into range and by the time you're in range to throw your stupid "Ranged" skill the Healer has had to actually use heals on themself to stay alive and thus you've lost any effect of that Provoke...

Of course, they could just put not stupidly pathetic ranges on Tank's "Ranged" skills... But that requires making changes that actually make any sense >.>