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

[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.

[Uielyave]

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.

[Conquistadork]

TLDR: The challenge is gone and with it the community.

The savage content is there for you to play, there's your challenge, and the community is thriving more than ever with the expansion releasing in one week, so don't know what your are talking about.

[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

[Adrestia]

The savage content is there for you to play, there's your challenge, and the community is thriving more than ever with the expansion releasing in one week, so don't know what your are talking about.

If there was enough savage content to keep people busy (let’s be honest, this is impossible) and we weren’t funneled into casual content that wasn’t made for people who like a challenge, that would sound fine.

However, the progression path for all characters, no matter whether you want your content to be relaxing or engaging, is the same. Grind your tomestones every week, because if you’re not doing savage it’s the best gear for you to aspire to, and if you are doing savage some number of pieces. Are still the best gear for you to aspire to, and the rest are to be used during progression until you get enough drops.

I’m one of the lucky ones who loves Eureka, so I stopped needing to run experts. Yay for me. But Eureka wasn’t the right answer for a lot of people, and so they’re still expected to pull hallways of wet noodles and mash one button AoE “rotations,” collect loot that serves zero purpose to them outside GC seals (maybe glamour the first time around, if they like it, but the roulette grind never ends), and get the tomestone-flavored cookie at the end.

So far, the only solution proposed by the FFXIV game team is “take a break and play other games.” Ignoring for a moment that we’d have to keep our accounts subscribed so as to not lose our houses, this still isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s perfectly valid to want to remain immersed in one virtual world, with your friends. It’s also valid to want the freedom to go play soccer with cars and not feel like XIV has to take up all your time, so Yoshida’s goals aren’t pointless either. Just try to understand that a large number of people do feel very “left out” by XIV’s current strategies for content (non-)production.

[Skyclaw726]

If you agree that being challenged and improving have a causal relationship, then perhaps it would follow that random parties would not remain such a burden forever. Or did you mean that having to put in effort is tedious? I can't say I'll ever understand that point of view.

SHinryu wasn't challenging, it was boring. The hardest part of the fight was the add phase.

[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.

[zaviermhigo]

FFXIV has never been, is not and will never be a hard mmorpg to play.
Yoshi P said it already, he wants an mmorpg that you actually play it like a game and not treat it like a job.
It IS a casual mmorpg where you could jump in and play whatever time you could put at it and have a fine time, hence why there are so many women playing this game, since they dont have to dedicate their life towards it.
But there is something for a hardcore players too you are not left on the ice, savage and extreme content is quite demanding and maybe you cant grind the game like you could do with WoW or BDO, yet there is still a challenge for someone who seeks it.

I always find it funny Yoshi-P says he wants a casual experience that you don't treat like a job, but this game always turns into a job, and that's why I end up quitting. Didn't cap this week because you had irl stuff to do? Oh you're behind now, and you can never catch up to your friends with dead end jobs who think doing chores in XIV is fun. But wait...isn't the cap system supposed to make it so casual players aren't behind? Yeah its bs, its actually a hindrance. Just let me not log in for two weeks and do a bunch of spamming when I get back from real life. Just let people spam as much as they want, and people could, at that rate, stop worrying about whether or not someone spams 24/7. This game is a casual game for people who need constant gratification from somewhere cause they don't get it irl. 95% of the game is a chore you do so you can do 5% of the content which is fun. I get some people don't have anything of value in their real life's so they love to do only the 95% and never do the 5%, that's honestly most people who play this game. But that is the part that makes me want to quit every time. I've been playing since 1.0, weekly cap and constant dungeon spamming will make me quit every time. Then its 24 man raid spamming with people who have two left feet, a little better but ultimately terrible.

The fact of the matter is nothing is this game is hard, its numb and brainless. Even savage is hard when you first go in, then its just a dance you learn, and if you can do the dance fine. The hardest part of savage is "can the other 7 people do the dance." It just feels like this game is a snoozefest made for people missing lobes of their brain half the time. Maybe I'm particularly jaded since I main heals too, and they are making it so a literally person on life support can heal in 5.0

[ForteNightshade]

I always find it funny Yoshi-P says he wants a casual experience that you don't treat like a job, but this game always turns into a job, and that's why I end up quitting. Didn't cap this week because you had irl stuff to do? Oh you're behind now, and you can never catch up to your friends with dead end jobs who think doing chores in XIV is fun. But wait...isn't the cap system supposed to make it so casual players aren't behind? Yeah its bs, its actually a hindrance. Just let me not log in for two weeks and do a bunch of spamming when I get back from real life. Just let people spam as much as they want, and people could, at that rate, stop worrying about whether or not someone spams 24/7. This game is a casual game for people who aren't good at anything in real life and need constant gratification from somewhere. 95% of the game is a chore you do so you can do 5% of the content which is fun. I get some people don't have anything of value in their real life's so they love to do only the 95% and never do the 5%, that's honestly most people who play this game.

If they allowed people to spam tome farming whenever they wanted, they invalidate like half their content. Why am I going to care about running Ivalice more than once when I already have i390 gear from months ago? Why am I going to even look at Normal mode or buy crafted? i380 is literally dead on arrival since you can just spam dungeons now. Want to try out that new EX Primal? Hope you farmed for a full i390 set because PF will put ilvl locks closer towards that. In one fell swoop, three options for gear progression—one of which is the whole crafting end game—just became obsolete.

Losing a week or two of tomes isn't that big a deal. If you aren't doing Savage, who even cares? The tome gear is hilariously overpowered for how easy Expert dungeons are in this game.

[xxvaynxx]

The game is too easy but haven't did a single savage or ex primal.
Ok buddy, calm down.