Who Thought Adding Difficulty Levels To Instanced Quests Was A Good Idea?

[Eli85]

Putting the extreme hyperbolic claims aside, This change doesn't affect anyone in any way. Giving players who suffer from debilitating conditions or disabilities more ease of access for Story Content Is always a plus. There was even that incredibly inspiring reddit post about a player who was paralyzed from the chest down playing FFXIV with just his thoughts via brain implants.

This change gives players dealing with difficult circumstances more access to the game that they wouldn't otherwise have. All I see for this change is a boon to reach out to even more players building both the player base and community even further. We really need to give this Gate Keeping a rest and realize this change wasn't made to let "bad" players through by nerfing content, It's to appeal to current and future players the most, especially those that suffer from biological limitations that normally can't play these types of games. All in all this is a great change.

This logic only holds up if players with debilitating conditions or disabilities were the only ones accessing easy or very easy difficulty modes. Which is a fallacy, as we all know. Players, more often than not, will take the path of least resistance, regardless of their skill level. When you combine this with the hard carry that goes on in dungeon content (be it by other players or trusts), you can get some really awful, terrible players at end game—potentially far more than we have at present. That said, I understand why S-E did it: money. They keep more players this way. But it's impossible to deny that the skill level of the player base will worsen significantly with this change.

[Lium]

oh no, someone's going to be able to do solo content I did only once 3 minutes faster than me back in 2017

quick, SE, fire everyone


... Grow up.

It is really unfortunate that I can only like this post once.

[Alistaire]

This is ridiculous...did people not know this was already in the game, but just locked behind failing the instance? I'll admit I've had one here or there where you're supposed to do something specific and fail it because of not paying attention. And all this does is boost your numbers, you'll still fail based on those same mechanics with this, and in the end that's the more important thing for them to learn.

[Lium]

I'm going to run it at the lowest difficulty every time because solo instances don't matter except for story. Knocking on the same HP-sponge for 5 minutes or 2 and a half minutes won't make a lick of difference for me and that goes triple for fights where I'm playing some other character (Looking at you, Thancred).

Will it make some really awful players be able to skirt through without improving? Maybe. I don't think there were many people being held back to begin with, though.

It's not something I asked for or even understand why they added, but it makes something that's not really all that fun for me take less time. That's about it.

Putting this behind spoilers in case there are people who haven't played it yet.

Both Ranjit fights are very tedious to me. Especially the Thancred version. When you fight as yourself, at least there's some mechanics to dodge and stuff.

So, on every other one of my toons, I'm doing this instance on very easy mode.

[Berethos]

This is ridiculous...did people not know this was already in the game, but just locked behind failing the instance?

Given that, even after having it pointed out, we continue to have people come in and decry the addition of easier modes to solo battles from quests despite the years said easier mode has existed with it simply being beyond explicit player control?

I don't think these players even truly care about the fact that it's been around for a while. My theory, based on the posts I've seen in this thread, is that they care about their own egos far more, and believe they will have trouble propping up said ego if the nebulous "they" on the internet perceive their chosen hobby as being too easy/too casual.

Feels like it's the only thing that fits with the sheer amount of pushback this tiny menu addition is getting.

[SamSmoot]

It needs a 4th option: SKIP. Tried 3 times on the first one in 5.1, failed on final boss 3 times, twice in very easy mode. I move with my mouse, and can't do that while clicking abilities with the mouse. Move, go to click,. move out of AOE, try to click again, repeat until dead.
If I could play it on my own characters with my own keybinds, it would be no problem, but as-is with an unconfigured UI, it's a big problem. I'll give it 10 more attempts tomorrow, and If I can't get through it. I'll just have to forget about completing the story.

[wereotter]

Why should anyone care what difficulty people choose to play? The game stops you into characters who play jobs you may or may not be familiar with, and even if you are, their moves always seem to be a bit off.

Then they do things like if you fail, you get sent back to the beginning of all the cutscenes and have to fight your way through all the trash before the boss again, wasting your time because you didn’t know one mechanic.

I do savage raids and jumped right on very easy when offered because I don’t know a thing about dragoon and had no way of finding out what Estinien’s moves do. I didn’t want to spend all night figuring it out either; I just wanted to move on with the story.

[Noitems]

I honestly find it very interesting people are saying they are failing the 5.1 roleplay quest, because IMO it is the easiest one they've put out so far. I mean you got four skills for the final boss that all do something, heck you even get an OGCD which is extremely good for it.

I'm all in favor for them giving people the option if they fail repeatedly, however my first initial reaction to this was just simply "They're really easy though...". Not throwing shade at any players but to me all of these roleplay sessions were all extremely easy, and the only "hard" one being the Hien one in 4.5 simply because it was so absolutely boring pre 5.1 patch since all you really had was a single gcd and a dot.

Want to stress that I'm happy people have the option to this, BUT I feel in turn mixing MSQ required dungeons where the difficulty is harder then these roleplay segments will push some players not as well versed into awkward situations if they do it on DF (if they want to continue without trusts being fully leveled if the game takes that option away).

The fact they allow Trusts is a very big boon for those players, but as we get further in the expac and the mandatory trials for MSQ keep coming I worry about how SE will make it for normal mode for those players. Titania is a perfect example of one of those gatekeepers since it's a fight that does require good dps from the majority to manage through the add phase and it's still a fight regular players can goof up if placement for a newbie is bad.

[ADarklore]

People seem to think SE did this on a whim... but the devs KNOW the hard data behind it. They know how many people attempt various instanced battles, they know how many fail, how many times people re-attempted, and how many of those players just walked away and never finished it. SE wants 'player retention' that is how they make money... and if they can see that many people are simply walking away, or are spending too much time trying and failing, they obviously are going to make changes- and they did. Also, what some people find 'easy' are not so easy for many other people- obviously, once again- SE KNOWS how many people are impacted... YOU DO NOT! So people acting like failing instanced battles doesn't or shouldn't be a problem for people clearly don't know what SE does.

[Verlyn]

A bit of a fallacy there. The devs do not necessarily have All The Data or make fully informed decisions just because they are behind the curtain (you might be surprised how many are simply winging it in software dev). I don't think there's an epidemic of players constantly failing story instances here. I think this is just one of many items on the current dartboard to make the MSQ less of a timesink for new players. Given they aim to have ARR revamped on 5.3, it would make sense that they'd make all sorts of QOL and misc changes to things like story instances in preparation for that.