Well, they actually did it, the absolute madmen

[AngelCheese77]

This is a great thing for people who have physical and mental handicaps. I know of at least two people in my FC who are physically handicapped. One of them has a degenerative disease that has robbed her of a lot of mobility. (She used to be a hardcore raider for crissakes until this hit her.) She has a special rig to play the game with. We, her FC, can help her with things that require more than one player. But duties for the MSQ are often solo. Some she can do no problem, others are very difficult and frustrate her. She walks away from those, unable to finish the MSQ sometimes for weeks or months until we figure out a way to get her through it.

Can we please not assume that something (that doesn't affect anyone personally) is automatically a 'lazy' option? kthnx

It's great for my husband as well. He has a mental issue that can narrow his focus to just one thing, so dodging many AoEs can be near impossible for him when trying to get through solo quests. I've had to hop on his character and help him through it, until we can group up again.

[Brill_]

The over reaction to this is hilarious. These solo instance never taught one how to play group content. They are one and done and can't be repeated for practice. This will have zero impact on group content.

[TheForce]

This thread is disgusting. I see no problem with letting players choose any difficulty they want for MSQ single-player duties. Please stop treating all non-ex/savage content as a preparation/training for ex/savage.

I agree that this post is fairly elitist and I don't see eye to eye with OP on this either, but to say it's "disgusting" is pretty extreme. Personally, as far as single Player MSQ content goes, I don't mind the addition of easier difficulties. But, it needs to stay there. If the devs start making the entire game easy mode and eliminate all sense of challenge and meaningful achievements, the game just won't be as fun. If everything is able to be facerolled and just stomped through, then what's the point in even learning how to play and progressing your character?

Once again, doing this for MSQ is OKAY in my opinion, because it's just the story and from my understanding, all people really care about is learning what happens in it. However, if, for example, Extreme Primals received a "Normal", "Easy", and "Very Easy" mode in the future and they all gave the same rewards, I'd be pretty upset about that because the whole point of that type of content is essentially for players to prove themselves, which I love.

[Niyuka]

I love how we as gamers seem to regress from the early days of Super Mario to today. Its hilarious.
I dont personally care how hard single player content is, but they also keep making dungeons and other multiplayer content easier and easier every patch. No good game design goes BACKWARDS in difficulty from beginning to end. FFXIV keeps doing this. With this new patch, there is ONE single fight for people who dont want faceroll content. ONE. Thats the absolute bare minimum of what you can do to cater to people who LIKE to press 1,2 and 3 in the right order. Everything else is purely catering to supercasuals, popotos and people who play tapper games on mobile phones as the peak of their ability. Its a disappointment.

[Mirassou]

I'm sorry I don't know why people are getting upset about this - forum warriors and all that I suppose.

I assume SE is monitoring their data and trying to provide an optimum playing experience for all of their playerbase.

The idea that people think this is somehow going to affect their DUTY FINDER (lol) experiences, oh well ... suck it up - DF is what it is. I always just make the best of it - every now and then yes there is a bad one, but usually we clear and that's the point, no?

There are thousands of players who never grace these lovely forums, so I always remember this forum (and individual threads) can be a bit of an echo chamber.

Personally, I like that SE is actually trying to help those who are having issues with certain MSQ instances. I've played many games where the devs don't seem to give a **, so thank you SE for trying to look out for ALL of your playerbase.

[Gula]

I'm sorry I don't know why people are getting upset abo-

Gonna stop you there with people being very different and having opinions.

[Shurrikhan]

If you're really so concerned about being forced into content with the miserable proles who use easy mode, there is a solution! It's called a pre-formed party. Start an FC, screen applicants like it's a static, and then you'll only have other philosopher kings to play with. Never again will you be forced to spend 6 extra minutes in a dungeon.

And... why shouldn't this rule apply to the minority of players, instead of punishing the vast majority?

[Krokov]

Looking at the picture from understanding the notes correctly you only get that option to change difficulty if you fail when doing it for the 1st time and then when your retrying. So it'll basically be someone doesn't want to have it lessened in difficulty theyll just leave it on normal and problem only even touch it or if they just want to get through it then they'll do it. Will it affect other aspects of the game as others are saying I have no idea probably not.

[Berethos]

I mean if you really think so.

So far every second or third expert or eden (or hell, even omega) run i see people just have no idea about what they are doing or what they can do.

Based on my experience in MMOs going back to 2006...

This would be the case regardless of the existence of any sort of solo instanced trial. In fact, it is the case - players that don't know what to do in level capped dungeons or the basic normal raids and have no real desire to improve will exist...and most of them almost certainly made it through those solo instance quest battles on the first try too.

And if they didn't? They almost certainly did by the third attempt, when the game starts to give the Echo buff anyway.

The solo instance battles have never been this grand gatekeeper to keep out the unskilled (and were never meant to serve that function anyway), so I truthfully have no idea why you and others are treating them like they are.

If the devs start making the entire game easy mode and eliminate all sense of challenge and meaningful achievements

They won't.

To repeat - this function of providing the player with the Echo Buff following failed attempts in solo instance battles has existed for years. This just adds menu control to that function, giving the player the ability to choose if they want the buff to apply at all, but only after a failed attempt at the normal difficulty.

Again, this is not some new difficulty setting or new philosophy toward difficulty settings of content, it is simply adding player control via a menu to a function that already exists in the game. Any concern that this will somehow lead to a shift where all game content suddenly gets similar difficulty settings to be chosen via a menu is, simply put, baseless.

The change will be both good and bad. There are always those who will just suicide just so they get the three options of difficulty. This being the bad.

They can already do this, they just have to suicide the instance battle more than once to get the full buff (which is equivalent to the upcoming very easy option). So "the bad" is already here...so what are worried about again with this change?

[kazzel120]

I want to preface this by saying I am a casual scrub. In fact, to call me a casual scrub would be a compliment. I am by no means a great player, but I am competent...

Have we really reached the point where we're now actively catering to players who cannot be bothered to learn their jobs, read their tooltips, and actually press buttons?



I understand brand new players having difficulty learning the ropes in the first few levels of the game, and I love guiding new players on their paths, but when a small number of people are complaining about not being able to smash a solo duty at level 70... LEVEL SEVENTY... when everyone else can clear it with absolute ease, and those people are catered to instead of suggesting they simply learn their role...

"But if you can clear these fights easily, why do you care?" I hear you cry.

Because when people are given an easy option to clear already basic content, this spills over into Duty Finder, which on Chaos DC is already a sea of Ice Mages, zero-DPS healers, Tanks who only pull one mob at a time, and Paladins who insist on using Clemency on themselves at 95% HP.

Duty Finder gets filled with the kind of players who aren't pushed to learn their job properly, or even to a competent level, and then everyone suffers.

Guess it looks like I'll be running content with my FC in future, because wew lads.

The option to choose a difficulty will be displayed upon defeat or when replaying the battle.

So if someone happens to not 1 and done they can choose to use echo or not thats it has zero impact on anyone else's playing of the game.