Going to the same route as WoW. The game is TOO easy

[Knoahl]

FFXIV is never going to follow same path as wow did.

I think it is though from the years I have played both MMOs, the pruning to the simplification of mechanics just for new players. It is interesting to note that sales were the best they'd ever been for Battle for Azeroth, yet look at how awful that expansion is. Everyone just needs to look in the direction of the healer changes to see we are potentially hitting the same direction, the amount of identity and complexity lost since HW, which isn't really an excuse when Jobs lack any form of customisation to play them your own way.

It is important to note that the social aspect of FFXIV is among one of the best I've experienced outside of content and more just enjoying the game with friends, the overworld was one of the worst in any mmo but that seems to be getting looked at this expansion, even if it will still be easy at least the fates will be useful, as is its PvP also being one of the worst.

WoW does really well in its PvE content that's not the issue, it's the lack of stuff to do with how awful World Quests are after Legion ended, the new zone layouts, no side content to do which is any fun. FF could do with something like Mythic + dungeons which we'll never get since the team is so understaffed.

I don't think the FF team intend the mistakes they make, as they are far from lazy, but some changes come across that way and I think it's because they are understaffed tbh /shrug Ofc that's not me speaking gospel, it's just a guess, I'm not speaking facts either, just opinions.

[Fyce]

I think it is though from the years I have played both MMOs, the pruning to the simplification of mechanics just for new players. It is interesting to note that sales were the best they'd ever been for Battle for Azeroth, yet look at how awful that expansion is. Everyone just needs to look in the direction of the healer changes to see we are potentially hitting the same direction, the amount of identity and complexity lost since HW, which isn't really an excuse when Jobs lack any form of customisation to play them your own way.

The pruning regarding DPS skills on Healers is definitly not an indication of the global direction the game is taking. It is a specific exception that absolutly cannot be stretched as far as making that kind of generalization regarding the "route" the game is taking as a whole.

Besides, you compare what we have now to Heavensward -while conveniently forgetting the huge failure that was Gordias- to speak about the game's direction. But if you compare it to ARR instead, you'll see how far above we still are as long as you don't wear rose tinted glasses.

Finally, customization is not a necessity, nor is it desirable if done incorrectly (which is almost always the case). And regarding "identity", that's pretty much the reason why we didn't get a 4th healer.

[Knoahl]

The pruning regarding DPS skills on Healers is definitly not an indication of the global direction the game is taking. It is a specific exception that absolutly cannot be stretched as far as making that kind of generalization regarding the "route" the game is taking as a whole.

Besides, you compare what we have now to Heavensward -while conveniently forgetting the huge failure that was Gordias- to speak about the game's direction. But if you compare it to ARR instead, you'll see how far above we still are as long as you don't wear rose tinted glasses.

Finally, customization is not a necessity, nor is it desirable if done incorrectly (which is almost always the case). And regarding "identity", that's pretty much the reason why we didn't get a 4th healer.

Is it not an indication, from how the healer forums are I get a far different imperession, role actions are another example, it's looking like we are expected to prety much do our rotations and that's it.

Gordias was a failure yeah, Coil doesn't need rose tinted glasses, it was a fun raid and I personally as someone who was a raider at the time really liked that it was exclusively hard content, but I understand why we have the new "normal" raids to allow people to experience the story, but it sort of takes away the incentive to do savage and being one of the fewer people who got to experience it, it's what made me stop raiding.

Customisation isn't a necessity no, but if they can't even get bare balancing right, why deny people more choice in form of passives on materia/equipment (not definitively just romancing the idea) I'm not nescessarily meaning talent trees etc, just more ways to develop, incentives to get gear. Identity isn't why we didn't get a fourth healer, it was balance supposedly, they've lost pretty much all of their identity this expansion more so than any of the ones before it.

As for the wildstar comment @Uielyave, that's not why it died I'm sure, the 40 mans had a hand in it, but I'm certain there were a lot more issues than that, correct me if wrong but thats what I recall from videos investiagting it etc. I remember I personally didn't transition over to it as I loved 2.1/2.2 on FFXIV at the time when it came out.

Edit: "Balance" and "accessibility" puts a massive damper on a games fun factor in the long term I feel, not saying things should be broken, I just feel its like they are scared to be daring or try new things, monk being the most "daring" yet... no one is wanting to play it from polls/video views on its coverage, because they just pruned it and added a new greased lightning on it, omg so daring. lmao

[ForteNightshade]

The pruning regarding DPS skills on Healers is definitly not an indication of the global direction the game is taking. It is a specific exception that absolutly cannot be stretched as far as making that kind of generalization regarding the "route" the game is taking as a whole.

Besides, you compare what we have now to Heavensward -while conveniently forgetting the huge failure that was Gordias- to speak about the game's direction. But if you compare it to ARR instead, you'll see how far above we still are as long as you don't wear rose tinted glasses.

Finally, customization is not a necessity, nor is it desirable if done incorrectly (which is almost always the case). And regarding "identity", that's pretty much the reason why we didn't get a 4th healer.

Gordias continuously gets reference but without a lot of context. Why did it nearly kill the raid scene?

- The dev team openly acknowledged they did not test it properly. Instead of doing the entire fight from start to finish, they tested each individual mechanic in a vacuum. This caused it to become gear synced. Manipulator was straight up impossible to clear while Living Liquid required perfect performance to barely inch by enrage.
- No Cross-world Party Finder meant if you weren't on a dedicated raid server, your chances to clear went down dramatically.
- No CD reset.
- Due to the huge failures of LoV and Diadem, the extended length between patches left people bereft of content.
- Two of the three new jobs were borderline unplayable messes, Astro especially. Dark Knight wasn't great either but serviceable.

Pointing to Gordias and saying "See! You can't make hard content!" is incredibly disingenuous. A lot went into crippling the raid scene beyond simply Gordias—which, itself, was not balanced properly.

As for the fourth healer. It's looking more like we didn't get one because the dev team has no idea what to actually make. What we have seen from the healer rework shows almost nothing that would suggest a fourth healer were some monumental task.

A game that caters to people who only want the hardest content will be unable to thrive, because the majority of a game's full player base are casual.
Look at Wildstar.
It was centered around very hard content.
And now it's dead.

Someone with more knowledge of Wilstar will need to provide better details but if I recall, there were far more issues than difficulty. It had almost no content for lengthily periods, balance was a complete mess and PvP had a lot of problems. Again, I can't speak from experience—having never played it myself. I have, however, seen this argument a lot.

I found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/4api0a/why_did_wildstar_fail/

Basically, the devs had no idea what they were doing. It wasn't because Wildstar was hard.

[Fyce]

Gordias continuously gets reference but without a lot of context. Why did it nearly kill the raid scene?

- The dev team openly acknowledged they did not test it properly. Instead of doing the entire fight from start to finish, they tested each individual mechanic in a vacuum. This caused it to become gear synced. Manipulator was straight up impossible to clear while Living Liquid required perfect performance to barely inch by enrage.
- No Cross-world Party Finder meant if you weren't on a dedicated raid server, your chances to clear went down dramatically.
- No CD reset.
- Due to the huge failures of LoV and Diadem, the extended length between patches left people bereft of content.
- Two of the three new jobs were borderline unplayable messes, Astro especially. Dark Knight wasn't great either but serviceable.

Pointing to Gordias and saying "See! You can't make hard content!" is incredibly disingenuous. A lot went into crippling the raid scene beyond simply Gordias—which, itself, was not balanced properly.

Having all of that doesn't mean that Gordias would've been a success.
Besides, my point refered to the complexity of jobs in Heavensward, which definitly played a big role in Gordias's failure.
Also, I never said that we can't have hard content. Otherwise I'd have to say that Ultimate doesn't exist or is bad, and I'm not that dumb.

As for the fourth healer. It's looking more like we didn't get one because the dev team has no idea what to actually make. What we have seen from the healer rework shows almost nothing that would suggest a fourth healer were some monumental task.

They just got rid of one of the biggest splinter they had in the foot since ARR by killing that "identity" that everyone was trying to protect so hard. Even if you don't see what they actually did or the reason why they did it, they can now walk forward and finally start designing healing in FFXIV how it should've been. We probably won't see much happen before at least 5.2, or even 6.0 at worst. But I won't go further into that, because I'm already seeing a bunch of people starting to scream that I'm moving their precious goalpost that apparently must remain at a Lv.73 MSQ trial.

[Fellgon]

This game its not "too easy". Maybe its easy for OP cause he knows how play very well TODAY, but for new players may be not.
I remember my first day of playing ARR and others mmo the amount of hours i took to undestand interface, searching for quests, reading every skill description, learning every dungeon...all this u cant achiv in 30 minutes of play. This game its not casual at all. Casual for me, are those games that you can play in 30 minutes, 1 hour...and absorb everything.

I can undestand english, read and listen, but i have friends in real life who dont know english and still trying to learn this game.
Im sure that in 1997 theres wasnt youtube, internet as we see today, and still in those years i had a friend that was trying to play final fantasy 7 in japanese. He didnt undestand english, even harder japanese, but in those years we was enjoying the game. Try play like him: no internet, no magazine, foreign language, no cellphone.

For me, to know everything i know so far about this game, took months of play. Even today, theres some content i never finished or did. This game is great! I hope it doenst become as easy as candy crush or harder like darksouls.

[sxman]

The pruning regarding DPS skills on Healers is definitly not an indication of the global direction the game is taking. It is a specific exception that absolutly cannot be stretched as far as making that kind of generalization regarding the "route" the game is taking as a whole.

it really does seem they are from all these videos im watching leading into expansion and patch it really does seem like they are taking almost the same route as wow . atleast regarding healers . they are stripping the fun uniqueness of healer classes and making soulless versions of them to coincide with how they are designing the higher level content . which basically starts to happen when you run out of ideas and have nothing better to do then butcher classes trying to extend the longevity of the game