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

[Shurrikhan]

OP is so elitist that he wants to show off just how little meaning his life holds outside of this game. Not everyone has such free time that they can sit at their computer for 20hrs a day, 7 days a week, trying to master a boss battle just to progress through the story. When it comes to actual hard content, sure, I'll read up on the fight and perfect my 3 button presses that any game requires.

There's a vast gap between wanting the difficulty equivalent of being able to go on a walk without being blocked or otherwise pace-set by elderly rehabbers and wanting one's life to be an endless sprint.

We've already had the levels of difficulty being reminisced about. Just as WoW has "Classic" we had fights like Demon Wall, Siren, Titan Ex, and Thordan Ex which stood out from the fights surrounding them. They added spark. They added a bit of enjoyable notoriety. But those stand-out fights are becoming fewer and farther between while much of content just blurs further into each other and out of mind.

And when your idea of hard content is that it involves a third button, and you work so many more hours than the average player of this MMO (your 79+ per week), you are clearly an outlier. Why should the game compromise design for millions to appease just you? I'd be surprised if there are another dozen players with the work-life balance you allege here.

[Dubont]

There's a vast gap between wanting the difficulty equivalent of being able to go on a walk without being blocked or otherwise pace-set by elderly rehabbers and wanting one's life to be an endless sprint.

We've already had the levels of difficulty being reminisced about. Just as WoW has "Classic" we had fights like Demon Wall, Siren, Titan Ex, and Thordan Ex which stood out from the fights surrounding them. They added spark. They added a bit of enjoyable notoriety. But those stand-out fights are becoming fewer and farther between while much of content just blurs further into each other and out of mind.

And when your idea of hard content is that it involves a third button, and you work so many more hours than the average player of this MMO (your 79+ per week), you are clearly an outlier. Why should the game compromise design for millions to appease just you? I'd be surprised if there are another dozen players with the work-life balance you allege here.

"allege" as if it were not the truth. 2pm-11pm Mon-Fri and 6am-11pm Sat & Sun. Should people who work hella hard in real life be forbidden from enjoying this game in their free time? Should the majority of the content be blocked off from anyone past their teenage years? Just because we don't have as much free time to sink into committing every single fight to muscle memory?

I also never said that using a 3rd button was difficult. I'm saying even those "difficult" MMOs are just a 3 button press system. FFXI had some insanely difficult fights. Still just a system of ctrl+1 - 0 to swap gear and using the right spell at the right time. The main difficulty differences were 1) It took FOREVER to do anything because nothing could be done without a full party and getting a party together could take weeks for story content 2) Fighting was less about spamming weapon skills and more about auto attacking for 5 minutes until everyone got enough TP to use a WS chain. So really, not difficult so much as a "hurry up and wait" playstyle

[Shurrikhan]

[1] "allege" as if it were not the truth. 2pm-11pm Mon-Fri and 6am-11pm Sat & Sun. [2] Should people who work hella hard in real life be forbidden from enjoying this game in their free time?

1. I say allege because I have no way of knowing if you're trolling. The mere fact that you would ask that the game be dumbed down to literally fewer than three buttons save in its "hard content", just to pander to your incredibly, incredibly niche, if not outright unique, situation makes you rather suspect in my opinion.

2. No, but the game should not be designed around the 0.0000001%. What you're asking for is far more exclusive and purely self-servicing than the "elitist" desires the OP and those who've at all agreed with her have mentioned, (e.g. wanting a normal ascending difficulty curve over the course of the game--rather than the third expansion, for instance being easier than the first or the base game--or a greater variety of difficulties that does not pander to and thereby aggravate polarizing divides in the playerbase).

[Dubont]

1. I say allege because I have no way of knowing if you're trolling. The mere fact that you would ask that the game be dumbed down to literally fewer than three buttons save in its "hard content", just to pander to your incredibly, incredibly niche, if not outright unique, situation makes you rather suspect in my opinion.

2. No, but the game should not be designed around the 0.0000001%. What you're asking for is far more exclusive and purely self-servicing than the "elitist" desires the OP and those who've at all agreed with her have mentioned, (e.g. wanting a normal ascending difficulty curve over the course of the game--rather than the third expansion, for instance being easier than the first or the base game--or a greater variety of difficulties that does not pander to and thereby aggravate polarizing divides in the playerbase).

1) Nowhere in either of my posts did I say anything about wanting the game being dumbed down to less than 3 buttons. I'm merely pointing out that in every MMO I have ever played (and it has been A LOT of them) they all boil down to using 3 buttons to execute various commands and this game is no different. Even in it's base form, which was pretty obviously quite hard to most of you, despite me finding it very enjoyable, it STILL revolved around using 3ish commands to fight. F to pull out weapon, click to attack, click your spell. DONE.

2) I'm not asking that the entire game cater to adults. I'm saying that the story itself should not be completely locked off to those that can't play all day every day. Hard content and NON-STORY raids? Sure man. Look, FFXI Pandemonium was a complete beast that a lot of people could not tackle at the time. I could, because I was in college. Now though? No way, don't have the time. But that's ok because that was a NM that wasn't required to progress through the story. Chains of Promethia Bahamut fight? Yeah that was some BS. Do you know how long it took to get a group together to complete that thing without wiping? And that was with me having the time to sit on the game all day. Could you imagine now?

Expansion content is never "harder" than previous content. I've never seen a game that does this. The mobs are a higher level or hit for a bit more damage but the game itself is never harder. What are you wanting, a Dark Souls expansion? Get hit once and you die? Do a level 1 speedrun of the game and enjoy being part of the minority.

Or, if you want a truly difficult and unenjoyable game, compared to this one at least, try and find a private server for FFXIV 1.0 or vanilla FFXI. Would you prefer they bring back the daily EXP cap? Or bring back the 100TP cap and every ws used 50+tp (TP only recovered out of battle)? Is that what you want? Because right now, the game seems just fine to every person I've talked to that has a life outside of their mother's home.

[Shurrikhan]

[1]Nowhere in either of my posts did I say anything about wanting the game being dumbed down to less than 3 buttons. [2] I'm merely pointing out that in every MMO I have ever played (and it has been A LOT of them) they all boil down to using 3 buttons to execute various commands and this game is no different. Even in it's base form, which was pretty obviously quite hard to most of you, despite me finding it very enjoyable, it STILL revolved around using 3ish commands to fight. F to pull out weapon, click to attack, click your spell. DONE.

You defined anything which would take "3 button presses" as "hard content".

Perhaps in the first few levels of Runescape. I cannot think of a single MMO since that this could remotely apply to unless you're treating any and all spells as just "your spell" and only ever played casters in PvE content that allowed you to turret unmovingly throughout the whole fight.

It certainly does not apply to Vindictus, Slayer, Dragonnest, Ragnorak Online, SWTOR, Tera, GW, GW2, WoW, EQ, EQ2, Wildstar, BDO, Aion, Neverwinter, LotR:O, CoH, ESO, Secret World, or XIV. And yes, I've missed several others I've tried. I've still yet to see a single MMO that boiled down to just those 3 things.

I'm not asking that the entire game cater to adults. I'm saying that the story itself should not be completely locked off to those that can't play all day every day.

It isn't and no one has asked it to be. At present, it is fully available to everyone who can manage half of a rotation and about an hour per week of play.

Expansion content is never "harder" than previous content. I've never seen a game that does this.

It often is and I've often seen exactly that. Take the notorious WoW examples, for instance. While the content might not have felt harder in expansion 5 than 2 or whatnot, it objectively had tighter constraints and more numerous and more complex mechanics (i.e. greater difficulty), on the [correct] assumption that their average player had gotten better at the game. It is very rare that an MMO would remove a further set of mechanics or trim away from the total with each successive expansion, ultimately expecting more from players in particular leveling dungeons than at endgame.

Or, if you want a truly difficult and unenjoyable game, compared to this one at least, try and find a private server for FFXIV 1.0 or vanilla FFXI. Would you prefer they bring back the daily EXP cap?

It will be difficult for us to have any meaningful discussion if you define difficulty as time-gate gimmicks. I will be clear in how I (and I believe most) define from here out, so please make use of the conventional definition attached.

I've never said the game isn't enjoyable to me. I could honestly say it's less enjoyable than it's been, and give you dozens of reasons why each with examples of how playerbases have shrunk and ratings fallen for MMOs that have partaken in the specified change and why so many developers agree that the change is of poor design, but that will ultimately mean little and is entirely irrelevant here. My point was that asking for increases in difficulty where reasonable to the progression of the game -- where "difficulty", to be clear, is simply the amount of productive engagement (e.g. awareness and memory of and innovations or deductions made from previous lessons learned over the course of the game) required of a player in a given piece of content (nothing to do with time-gating or other artificial means of exclusion) -- is far from being elitist or exclusionary. Players are not asking for increased difficulty here and there to exclude you, but simply because it is as close, as to objectively as is possible, better design. Reasonable difficulty curves and progressions over MMOs allows for player experiences which are more intuitive, more engaging, and (as paradoxical as it may initially sound) ultimately more supportive and community-friendly.

It's like looking at a vase being spun and noticing some warping because the caster's hand slipped or overly relaxed near its top. This particular vase is a mere exercise; it's top will never finish until the whole thing spirals out of control. Nonetheless, we might recommend that we correct the warpage, before it accelerates the vase's collapse. The same applies when you see a break from form that has no advantage, only disadvantage, and the precedent from which further risks the future levels... of a game. It's not a desire to crush the vase. It's not a desire to mark it for oneself. It's just a concern for its longevity.

[Dubont]

Wall of text here, but you are incredibly wrong about most of it. Also, again, I DID NOT SAY NOR IMPLY THAT HARD CONTENT IS ANYTHING WITH 3 COMMANDS. I, ONCE AGAIN, SAID THAT THIS AND ALL OTHER MMORPGS ONLY REQUIRE 3 BUTTON PRESSES FOR ANY OF IT'S CONTENT.

In every game you mentioned, all commands can be applied to a macro, thus turning every fight into "move here, press macro. Move behind mob, press macro."

The OP was implying that the game isn't hard enough because you don't need an army to complete the story. Fact.

You're wrong on everything...just...all of it.

The game is fine and shouldn't change. Fact. /thread