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

[Dyvid]

I'm seeing pretty much what I thought I would. You don't have to agree with my opinion, but offer your own instead of 'wishing their was a dislike button'.

Also, community isn't the same as sub numbers. There might be more people playing than ever, but be honest, what community interaction do the MAJORITY of people have besides standing in their city of choice and waiting for their queue?

I understand the game is trying to cater to more people, which is exactly my point. WoW streamlined everything and in the end Classic is being released for all their efforts. A 15 year old product is more appealing to the playerbase than the current version. That's what I don't want for XIV.

It doesn't have to be DMC ball busting hard, but come on, dungeons and 24 man content is brain dead outside of the 1st week of release.

Clearly this just isn't the game for you.. You keep toss WoW classic, it's not that a 15 year old product is more appealing to the playerbase, it's a 15 year leap in the past is more appealing to those seeking to return to 2000's era of MMO gameplay.

[ForteNightshade]

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.

Because without enrages, every single encounter becomes a war of attrition. Just keep throwing bodies at the boss until it dies. You only ever need a healer and/or Caster (sans BLM) alive to keep going. This absolves any responsibility from damage dealers. In fact, you could literally just bring all four tanks, all three healers and a RDM to practically guarantee you'll see every mechanic within the first 30 minutes. Why bring a DRG when a WAR can survive half the mechanics bosses do? I'm sorry but if you can't focus on a fight for 5-10 minutes because of other obligations, then don't queue into the content to begin with. Normal modes and 24 mans are a mess because there is zero incentive for players to improve outside self motivation. As stated above, so long as someone's alive to raise people, it doesn't matter how many times you die.

If anything, I want enrages for the easier content so people are held somewhat accountable. They aren't about speed killing, but telling you to stop making mistakes and "git gud."

[Eli85]

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.

Eh, there's a lot where your argument falls apart. Enrage mechanics and timers are integral in this—and quite frankly any—genre for challenge. The difficulty of MMOs is executing the mechanics correctly and dealing out high DPS to defeat bosses. If you take away enrage mechanics and timers, you just need to not have your entire raid die to one-shot mechanics. Without enrage mechanics and timers, one tank and one healer can literally solo bosses. That's not hard. Secondly, outside of the 25-player hard mode, WotLK was a complete joke. You could take almost anyone you want because the game never challenged you in any substantive way. Do we all not remember, barring a few minor exceptions, that 10-player hard modes were pushovers? Citing WotLK does not make your argument in this, friend.

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.

Oh, I love this argument. Another MMO has a great system, and if I think it's great, I must want to play it because that's all that matters! Please. No one stays subscribed to any MMO because of one singular system. But to answer the question: I'm not playing WoW right now because there is more bad than good (and FF XIV is more good than bad). That doesn't mean that M+ is "bad." You really should have tried it. Assuming you don't get power leveled, anyone with a functioning brain can succeed at M+.

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.

All of that is self-inflicted. Sure, the schedule didn't work for you anymore, and that's fine, but in both WoW and FF XIV, almost everything but the hardest of the hard is puggable, easily, assuming you have a functioning brain.

People really need to understand that MMOs are not that hard, unless you're doing the end bosses of Mythic and ultimate raids.

[Baalfrog]

I'm doing it!

Imagine, complaining in the the thread that the game is too easy (another can of worms) that its not easy enough.

Also, just cause another game has a great feature doesn't mean that you absolutely must pick it, see M+ point for more info. Thats SO stupid.

I guess nothing is worse than toxic casual. Great community BTW!

Edit: Oh yea, actually answering to the topic. BACK in the good old days of ARR when the game was good and hard, and men were Übermensch and everything was HARD and just to get to Sastasha you had to go to school 7 days a week 12 months a year and it was always snowing and it was always an uphill battle and the game was always SO INSANELY HARD that most people came from other games and they though, "Wow, this clearly is the dark souls of MMORPGs and everything is so hard! This will keep those casuals out of MY HARD MMO!"

[Shurrikhan]

Also, just cause another game has a great feature doesn't mean that you absolutely must pick it, see M+ point for more info. Thats SO stupid.

Agreed. I'd have preferred to see Eureka really doubled down on any made an integral and enjoyable part of endgame, for instance, than to see XIV even consider any system, however well-functioning exactly as it was done in another game. That is, before Eureka was made it a sort of MMO template way itself (just another level cap hunting ground we've seen all over other MMOs), rather than anything integral, and with an obvious lack of polish in its bundled functionality (see the lack of level sync and the centrifugal effects of the leveling system as it was initially implemented). After that point, I've been a lot less willing to ignore other, less fundamentally organic (i.e. using what the game's already been built around or "about") or cohesive ways of developing content, so long as I still believe that can result in something satisfyingly cohesive.

I think the reason you see these things mentioned so often, though, is that they fill a perceived need, in terms of attention to detail or how it might fill a currently underdeveloped niche (e.g. reiterative content that isn't purely side-content) or a game-wide issue (sharp content obsoletion). And it would rarely take exactly system X or whatnot to make any of the people mentioning those systems happy; the system is merely emblematic to some change in design principle that think would be beneficial to the game. Mythic+, for instance, tends to point towards (1) spending an initial development cost to implement a system that you can thereafter reap the rewards of near enough forever, (2) building applicable content in such a way that allows for difficulty that would expandable in fine steps, and (3) continuing to build new mechanics (and make use of old mechanics, such as CC and kiting) to contribute to available means of content difficulty available to the vast majority of playerbase, rather than just its top 10% (e.g. just Savage players).

[Vercinotrix]

Probably more accurate to define casuals as players who do not look at guides for classes or game mechanics but progress through brute force.

Man I really am at a disconnect with the MMO culture. I remember years ago that reading/watching boss/class guides was considered casual.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

I get your point. I just vehemently disagree with it.

I'd more often rather spend additional attempts trying to make for a clean run, sometimes throwing ourselves off the edge when we realize the attempt is irredeemable, than just outlast a fight. It forces us to actually learn each mechanic and work around it well, not just work around it at all (i.e. however poorly).

There are times when I prefer the other, but it's just generally not the case, especially because putting an enrage timer on a fight allows for a different slant of difficulty in each of its punitive mechanics.

Consider, how do you maintain any level of difficulty in a mechanic given infinite time? You either have to (1) make resources noticeably finite, which still amounts to a soft enrage, or you have to (2) make each set of mechanics nearly as punishing as a hard enrage, so that rather than performing them poorly over time costing you a clear, any individual failure may do so.

How is that any more fun?

If you would just answer back with "well, that's anti-fun, too!" then, I don't know what to tell you. Perhaps difficulty of any sort, at higher degrees, just isn't for you?

Though then I have to wonder what you'd possibly need that level of gear for? Gear quite strictly equals simply survival (Vit) and output (main stat + secondaries) breakpoints; it is pointless if it isn't making a cutting edge difference on surviving X mechanic at Y level of increased risk (e.g. proximity to an AoE for uptime) or via Z increase raid DPS (e.g. to burn a key add). Removing difficulty by removing fight constraints effectively removes the point of gear, reducing it to a time played vanity measurement.

[Orbus]

Enrage mechanics from a logical standpoint is kind of weird (if they can use this one shot attack to instantly end the fight, why don't they just use it from the start???), but yeah they're there to make sure it's an actual fight instead of a war of attrition of raising your dead raid party, who were doing no dps, who then are in a weakened state and do far less damage making the fight take even longer and you basically just throw your bodies against the boss for an hour until the fanfare music plays.
And really, who wants to win doing the latter.
Who can even have fun doing the latter?
It would literally be faster to restart the whole fight and start from the beginning than to slog your way kicking and screaming to the end with half the party dead and the other half with the brink of death debuff.

[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

[Fynlar]

Enrage mechanics from a logical standpoint is kind of weird (if they can use this one shot attack to instantly end the fight, why don't they just use it from the start???),

This is pretty much why I've never liked them.

Then again, in video game land, we also liberally employ similarly silly things such as the Tactical Suicide Boss, stuff like Amon conveniently providing the ice blocks to hide behind right before he starts charging up Curtain Call, so I guess you have to suspend disbelief with things like this.