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

[Drayce1]

Yeah, the niche theyre aiming for is people who play the games I do and the content I do.

what they really want to aim for is people who fill that description but are 15 years younger, but the game isnt going to do that.

Pleeeeeeeenty of players on some sorts welfare, early retirement, or stay at home spouses wanting to play it lad. I think they aiming for those.

[Dzian]

Then you should have said then what you just said now instead of generalizing a whole group of players by just saying 'Casuals'.

/rantmode

The problem is that "casuals" has lost its meaning. people read casual these days and what they see is "Easy" and its the same with other words like "accessible" people see that and again see "easy". pretty much everything gets seen as easy instead of what it actually means.

A casual gamer is not a gamer does not want everything to be easy because they spend less time playing games. they still want satisfaction and challenges.
accessibility again doesn't mean things have to be easy. it's like when goverments aim to make education more accessible they do not mean throw out phds to every monkey that wants one.. and the same is true in xiv. savage raiding is designed to be casual friendly and accessible. it's literally something you could log in for a hour hit the raid finder and go... (admittedly not many folks use raid finder but thats a community problem not a design problem the content itself is accessible and friendly to gamers with less time)

Another point that has come up a few times on various websites and articles over recent months is that there is this growing disconnect between gamers and the industry. the industry keeps dumbing down and simplifying games in the hopes of drawing in bigger crowds. but gamers actually want some challenge, complexity and depth in there games. this is one of the reasons why some of the best selling games of the last few years have been remasters of classic games of years ago, because the old games have that challenge, depth and complexity that gamrrs like. where so many of the new games that get released basically flop because gamers just aren't interested in easy simple crap.

it's one of the biggest reasons so many popular games franchises have been killed second only to ridiculous monetization policies and micro transactions, because the developers try and dumb everything down and simplify it so much that it destroys everything that made it popular in the first place..

one can see growing evidence of this huge disconnect between gamers and the indusrty on various websites and communites. you can go to metacritic and find games on there that critics have pushed out said its amazing something everyone wants to play bam 95/100 score, then find 7,000 gamers have reviewed it and its got a score of 26.... andthe same goes the other way you get games critics slam to the floor but gamers actually loved.

there's also been comments recently about the industry being in decline because so many games are basically flopping and people just arent buying them but that's been proven to be untrue as well. because while many games are flopping and failing miserably because they're dumbed down and simplified so much they lose identity. many games that stay true to themselves smash all expectations.. god of war being a recent example, the devs said it wasnt made for the masses it was made to make fans happy. and it was an overwhelming success as a result. where all these games that get tuned down and oversimplified generally don't sell well. literally endless things on youtube and various developer forums about this.

If i recall yoshi even made a similar comment back in february about the future of the final fantasy franchise needs to forget mainstream audiences and focus on the fans...

14 has no real issue in pulling players in. it's big problem is in retaining them because so many players find it so easy thats theres no sense of satisfaction or accomplishment from playing it...

maybe its a generational thing though. the so dubbed millenial generation can't handle failure because they've lived such protected lives, which is why major depression and suicide rates are at record highs amoung the younger generations,

basically though gamers want challenges. even casuals.. there are times where i might only play my ps4 for 3 hours a week but i still play most games on the harder difficulties. i'm not fussed if it took me 3 months to finish a game because i played it on hard. be more satisfying than clearing the whole thing in a single night and thinking well that wasnt worth £50...

The easier gameplay = more players philosophy is generally false anyway 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.

[Fynlar]

The problem is that "casuals" has lost its meaning. people read casual these days and what they see is "Easy" and its the same with other words like "accessible" people see that and again see "easy". pretty much everything gets seen as easy instead of what it actually means.

Incidentally, I had a NN conversation the other night with someone who thought of "casual" as anyone who did not do the "serious" endgame content (which I basically assume to mean anything at least at the level of ex primals, although it was specifically savage/ultimate that came up in discussion)

I personally don't feel like that's the best definition of the term. Some people, myself included, invest far more time/effort in this game than what can be reasonably considered as "casual" despite not really being a hardcore endgamey type. I don't think casual players level everything to max, for starters. To me casual is more like the kind of player that maybe hops on for an hour or so at a time to get a quest or two done here and there, and probably not even every day of the week. If that was the kind of player I was, I wouldn't be anywhere near the point in the game where I'm at now.

I feel like "midcore" was created as a term specifically for people like myself, but I actually don't hear it in conversation much these days.

[Melichoir]

Incidentally, I had a NN conversation the other night with someone who thought of "casual" as anyone who did not do the "serious" endgame content (which I basically assume to mean anything at least at the level of ex primals, although it was specifically savage/ultimate that came up in discussion)

I personally don't feel like that's the best definition of the term. Some people, myself included, invest far more time/effort in this game than what can be reasonably considered as "casual" despite not really being a hardcore endgamey type. I don't think casual players level everything to max, for starters. To me casual is more like the kind of player that maybe hops on for an hour or so at a time to get a quest or two done here and there, and probably not even every day of the week. If that was the kind of player I was, I wouldn't be anywhere near the point in the game where I'm at now.

I feel like "midcore" was created as a term specifically for people like myself, but I actually don't hear it in conversation much these days.

Probably more accurate to define casuals as players who do not look at guides for classes or game mechanics but progress through brute force. As a point, When the upper end of BLMs can do something like 7k DPS, but your average BLM player will do 2.5-3k cause theyre not even trying to optimize in any facet, you can call them casuals by that regards. A lot of people get upset by this. They call the upper end Try hards and the like. But the simple fact is that decent understanding of your class while also being decently geared should net you closer to 5k-ish DPS. This is simply a matter that the casual player doesnt care about that, and see that as long as they complete the content, thats good enough. There is little desire to see upwards improvement. It's a casual way to view the game and play it.

[Edax]

/rantmode

The problem is that "casuals" has lost its meaning. people read casual these days and what they see is "Easy" and its the same with other words like "accessible" people see that and again see "easy". pretty much everything gets seen as easy instead of what it actually means.


Another point that has come up a few times on various websites and articles over recent months is that there is this growing disconnect between gamers and the industry. the industry keeps dumbing down and simplifying games in the hopes of drawing in bigger crowds. but gamers actually want some challenge, complexity and depth in there games. this is one of the reasons why some of the best selling games of the last few years have been remasters of classic games of years ago, because the old games have that challenge, depth and complexity that gamrrs like. where so many of the new games that get released basically flop because gamers just aren't interested in easy simple crap.

If i recall yoshi even made a similar comment back in february about the future of the final fantasy franchise needs to forget mainstream audiences and focus on the fans...

14 has no real issue in pulling players in. it's big problem is in retaining them because so many players find it so easy thats theres no sense of satisfaction or accomplishment from playing it...

maybe its a generational thing though. the so dubbed millenial generation can't handle failure because they've lived such protected lives, which is why major depression and suicide rates are at record highs amoung the younger generations,

The easier gameplay = more players philosophy is generally false anyway 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.

This is just nonsense. I've seen Eve Corps breakup because the game was too cruel and grief heavy. Working together in Eve is a challenge because the game rewards ruthlessness and sociopaths. I remember one of my corp members was a firefighter who ran into buildings on fire to save people, being broken by Eve Online. I've seen WoW guilds fall apart because too many Raids failed on a single boss. I've seen countless players give up on other games because it was too challenging. I've never personally seen a player leave a game because it was "too easy". I'm sure they are out there, but I've seen challenges break people far far more times then I've seen the ease of gameplay break anyone.

I suspect your bias against Millennial is clouding your judgement.

[Ronduwil]

That said, it makes no sense to then treat gear progression as if it were mere grinding. That certainly doesn't happen in raids, so why should someone who can't beat the fights in X time at Y difficulty (the equivalent of clearing any boss Y in a raid, we might say) be rewarded with that same loot?

Because at the end of the day, they beat the boss! That is, after all why you're going in there. To kill a boss and take his stuff. Putting an arbitrary expiration date on it makes no sense.

Removing the Mythic+ timer would be the equivalent of removing every enrage from raids and making the excess time purely a point of vanity. I can't take Dyslexic Joe to the Linguomancer raid fight. It may suck, but that's just the fact of it. Why would I expect any different, then, from something that provides the same quality of loot, even if based on a dungeon model?

That's my point: enrage mechanics, like arbitrary completion timers, are stupid! I know that a portion of the population gets a kick out of them, but they are anti-fun from my perspective. Why does everything have to be a freaking speed run? If everyone is at full health, the healers are still at full mana, and the boss is almost dead, why should the raid be arbitrarily forced to wipe? It makes no sense with regards to immersion, and it completely excludes the majority of players who are playing games simply for fun. I can see enrage timers as occasional gimmicks, but their pervasiveness is a symptom of lazy game design. When designers can't think of a creative challenge for a given fight, they fall back on enrage timers and arbitrary completion timers. I don't want to play a game if i can't play with friends who typically multi-task during gaming sessions out of necessity. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that.

[Ronduwil]

There was so much that I liked about your post, but then you wrote this. If we follow your logic, then any remotely challenging activity in an MMO would feel like a "second job." MMOs should be accessible—particularly in the leveling process—but if end game was catered to "take anyone, regardless of skill," then that is a very shallow game that would not maintain its player base.

That's not what I said. If a game is designed properly, it can provide a challenge without having to rely on enrage mechanics and arbitrary timers. WoW was at the height of its popularity during WotLK, which happens to have hit that sweet spot where you could take anyone regardless of skill. Granted, you might have been prevented from successfully doing some of the hard modes, but those were completely optional.

On a personal level, I will not go back to WoW, but M+ is quite frankly the best MMO system that we've seen in a very, very long time. It's casual friendly and accessible. The only people who truly have problems with M+ are the horrendously awful players—and I mean the kind of players who don't read skill descriptions, do whatever they want, and play for the lols. The way M+ is designed—both in Legion and BFA—is the capped gear rewards (so completing a +10 or +15) is easily achievable by anyone who has a functioning brain. You may wipe some and have some groups disband because some really awful players snuck into your group, but it's so easy to join groups and the skill requirement is quite modest, making it the furthest thing from a "second job." Any of WoW's recent expansions is a really bad example to use for "second job." As outside the initial leveling process, players who clear the hardest content in the game can easily do so with an under <10 per week schedule. It really doesn't hold up.

If Mythic+ is "the best MMO system that we've seen in a very, very long time," then why aren't you playing WoW right now? Personally, I didn't even attempt it because I was late to the game, and I didn't want to deal with the stress of preventing someone from making their weekly quota (literally a quota) while I was trying to learn.

As for "second job," I was recalling my Cataclysm/MoP experiences. I have not attempted high end raiding since MoP because of the frustration of watching three guilds fall apart, fending off recruiters, and the guilt of costing my guild their weekly raid every time I chose to support my kids' extra-curricular activities. I know I made the right choice, but I still felt guilty doing it, and I don't play games to feel guilty.

[Barraind]

I feel like "midcore" was created as a term specifically for people like myself, but I actually don't hear it in conversation much these days.

Because its a nebulous term created to be a bridge of two nebulous terms which mean different things to different people.

you use "midcore" to describe people who arent casual but dont do endgame stuff. But from my time in EQ and WoW, midcore to me means the people who raid 5 days a week, but do it horrifically inefficiently and can never catch up to the hardcore guilds clearing stuff in 2 or 3, because they lack either the leadership or the grasp of strategy, or, like every EQ TLP guild I've seen, they spend 3 hours of a 6 hour raid sitting around with people afk and not paying attention and derdling about.

Theres a lot of factors that go into mindsets of MMO's, and taking concepts that applied specifically to the raid and competitive scene and trying to apply them across a broad spectrum has huge problems.

Like, you arent "hardcore" regardless of the time you spend, if you arent optimizing everything you do, with proper preparation; or if you arent continually trying to refine and improve your process.

I've never personally seen a player leave a game because it was "too easy".

It happens all the time. Or, generally, people move to games that provide a challenge, but keep the "too easy" game as something they can jump into and dick around in when they have downtime. I havent raided with someone in EQ or WoW in 20 years that didnt have another MMO or single player game to use as stress relief. "Raids drained me, lets go dick around in D2 for a while". "Raids are done for the week, lets go dick around in D3". "bored in 14, lets do some seasonal stuff in Overwatch / Destiny2 / D3".

I have a library of games that are "easy" and free to play when I'm not crafting in 14 or raiding in EQ that I could NEVER even consider playing full time at this point.

[Adrestia]

Because at the end of the day, they beat the boss! That is, after all why you're going in there. To kill a boss and take his stuff. Putting an arbitrary expiration date on it makes no sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rij_...&feature=share

[Edax]

It happens all the time. Or, generally, people move to games that provide a challenge, but keep the "too easy" game as something they can jump into and dick around in when they have downtime. I havent raided with someone in EQ or WoW in 20 years that didnt have another MMO or single player game to use as stress relief. "Raids drained me, lets go dick around in D2 for a while". "Raids are done for the week, lets go dick around in D3". "bored in 14, lets do some seasonal stuff in Overwatch / Destiny2 / D3".

I have a library of games that are "easy" and free to play when I'm not crafting in 14 or raiding in EQ that I could NEVER even consider playing full time at this point.

I think you've confused "challenge" for difficulty. One of the reasons I played Minecraft is that building is a challenge of resources, planning and logistics but not difficulty. Decorating my Shirogane Mansion was a challenge, but it wasn't difficult. Earning the gil to buy my Shirogane Mansion was a challenge, but not difficult. I love certain kinds of challenges and those challenges are most certainly not found inside a Raid.