Mediocrity should NOT be the standard for players in any content.

[Liam_Harper]

I can accept players don't want to try anymore, but I really don't understand it.

Whenever I've started an MMO or a new class I intend to play at max level, I want to be good at it. You know the feeling... you're in your nub gear killing your first mobs and day dreaming of one day being amazing at your class, decked out in shiny gear and people being glad to see you in their group or pointing you out to others. That vision keeps you going and every quest, level and new item is a step towards that goal. Even the MSQ feeds that fantasy as you transition from nobody to legendary hero. It feels good.

I can definitely understand players who prefer solo play, who don't want to read guides, who are happy reaching their own goal and not the highest point, who don't need to master everything. But in the past they co-existed alongside the veteran players and each did their own thing. That's different from the growing crowd who want access to EX, Savage, all the best crafting recipes and items, but don't want to learn anything or have to master anything to reach that. They don't care about being good at anything, they just want a reward, even if it means nothing because 100000 others have the same thing.

I don't get where the motivation went.
If you even dare hint that you want to have goals to master that not every player will earn, you're a branded a show-off, snowflake, no-lifer who wants to rub meaningless crap in other peoples faces. You're shamed for wanting to accomplish something. It doesn't matter if you dislike showing off, want to help others reach that point too and just feel personal satisfaction, you'll be looked down on.

The game doesn't need to be hardcore. "Easy to learn, hard to master" used to be a successful motto for many games, since anyone could step in, but you always had goals. But now it's just "Easy to learn" and the majority prefer that. What happened?

[DrWho2010]

a game can't be everything to everyone. you can only please some of the people some of the time. etc. etc. etc. such is life. there will always be those that reach for the stars and those that are fine just flying close to the ground.

[Lauront]

I happen to agree. Although with an MMO it's commercially important for it to attract a wide audience, at some point you have to ask why is the player even playing this if they just want to steamroll everything with no challenge? How is it fun? Personally I think they should just go down the route of making "easy" versions of MSQ content for people who have absolutely no interest in anything but the story, so we can get decent difficulty story bosses in the "normal" mode, and stop compromising the difficulty of everything else. Ideally, you'd see a ladder, from dungeons to trials to alliance raids to raids to ultimate mode - that kind of exists already, albeit it varies from time to time, but we'll see what happens with Nier, as they implied earlier on that it will be easier overall than Orbonne.

Mollycoddling doesn't lead to anyone's improvement. Plus, with the TOS as they are, most people don't talk in dungeons because of the perception that people with fragile egos will report them the minute they point out performance issues in a way that does not coat said fragile egos in honey. Few people start out great, and it takes some practice to get good at one's job and mechanics, as well as feedback.

[Packetdancer]

Personally I think they should just go down the route of making "easy" versions of MSQ content for people who have absolutely no interest in anything but the story, so we can get decent difficulty story bosses in the "normal" mode, and stop compromising the difficulty of everything else.

Well, they clearly are experimenting with exactly that: single-player MSQ duties have the option now to pick an 'easy' or 'very easy' mode so that those players can just continue on if they'd like. My impression has been that it's not a popular change with large chunks of the playerbase, unfortunately. But that aside, I'd be surprised if Square isn't tracking exactly how often people use that option; if it's extremely prevalent, separating difficulty levels on multi-player duties in future expansions wouldn't be a surprising way to act on it. (The counterpoint, of course, is that if you separate difficulty levels it's likely that much harder to fill a party from Duty Finder queue, which I suspect might weigh heavily against the possibility in the devs' minds.)

[linay]

My impression has been that it's not a popular change with large chunks of the playerbase, unfortunately.

My disagreement with it aside, it's probably a well liked feature (or at least one that people just ignore if they choose not to use it) overall or they wouldn't have made the change in the first place.

[3c-33]

For the most part, I really don't think this game's difficulty in all "casual" content is that hard in the first place. It requires you to give a shit about what's happening at best and lets you fall asleep at the wheel at worst. I play this game in about 5fps, which makes my movement speed a lot slower than someone playing in normal frames. imagine you permanently have a heavy debuff like in certain parts of toto-rak, it's exactly like that. But I've still been perfectly able to clear 95% of the game's content with little to no issue despite playing in circumstances most people would probably consider to be outright unplayable.

That being said, I've rarely had experiences with other party members who refused to try or overall were a needless burden to the party and every time I see a thread like this I wonder about what terrible luck some of you guys must have to see a dozen people like this every day. Vast majority of my runs, some people say a greeting, we speedrun the dungeon with no issues, say tyfp and leave.

I've even had my fair share of struggle runs where we wiped multiple times in different parts of the dungeon or trial but the people who were struggling were clearly trying. I had one cutter's cry run where the healer and one dps kept dying to the chimera's mechanics, and we ended up being there for an hour, but they kept trying and we managed to beat it and I can commend those people, especially the healer, for not leaving. I think it's very brave and difficult for them to not get discouraged over that in a game where social anxiety is very commonplace for fear of being judged, yelled at, or being a burden to the rest of the party. I have had so many people tell me they are too scared to play a tank or healer for those reasons which would actually tell us that those people really do care. (I've even been that healer myself before.)

Yeah I've had some ice mages or people who leave instantly after one wipe or refused to listen to some basic advice (like turning the boss around at the last stone vigil boss, that one took 3 attempts of telling them to turn it around for them to actually do it...) but those are the minority of my experiences and I think threads like this really blow things out of proportion as to how rampant issues like this may actually be. Overall the playerbase is not getting worse, most people are not that lazy. Is the game itself getting dumbed down too much? Definitely.

One of the biggest issues I have with this game at the moment is level sync gutting jobs too much at lower levels while also making you ridiculously overpowered at the same time. Can we just look at what dps skills gunbreaker has available at level 50 for a moment?



Your standard, generic 123.



your standard, generic aoe + ranged ability that every tank has.



And then your gnb specific abilities that have no bearing on how the job plays at this level. I always dread getting the low level dungeons not even because of the dungeons themselves, but because most jobs at this level are so mind numbingly boring I'd rather just leave than actually sit through the ensuing boredom that would follow it, and I think every tank especially suffers from this. Why is TBN, Continuation, and Inner Release gated at level 70? They are the core focal points of each tank and yet you don't unlock them until you're done with like, 70% of the game already? That is a long time to play through the msq while missing huge chunks of your job. All of this is coming from someone who considers themself a casual player that does not do ex/savage content but still wants the other content to feel more engaging/challenging, because at the moment it's really not. I'm positive some level sync/level progression adjustments would not kill this game's playerbase. Steamrolling 50/60 dungeons and skipping mechanics is not fun..

tl;dr most of the playerbase is not that bad but level sync kills a large portion of the game making it too easy because of power creep and lack of job identity/complexity at earlier levels (and later levels as well) and you could maybe argue that early level cakewalking conditions people to not expect the game to get any harder and therefore not want to try, therefore leading people to disband in those forbidden alliance raids.

I will atleast say though, that the fact alliance roulette is actually just crystal tower roulette is another problem on its own and I can't argue against that or the people disbanding in the 70 ones so I can give it that

[hynaku]

I have yet to see any options in any of my main story duties so far that let me pick a setting.

[Brill_]

I have yet to see any options in any of my main story duties so far that let me pick a setting.

You have to fail an instance first. The option pops up when you attempt it a 2nd time.

[linay]

You have to fail an instance first. The option pops up when you attempt it a 2nd time.

And the second attempt has to be within the same login session as the first attempt.

[NanaWiloh]

And on the other hand, this is a multiplayer (mostly cooperative) game. And since your actions impact other players, your freedom ends where theirs begins. If you don't want to learn or don't care in the sense that you're knowingly being a burder to your fellow players, you fail as a person before failing at the game.

I find more often then not it omni players being a burden. I have lost count of how many Omni players have encountered playing a healer and having no clue as to what they are doing. There is nothing wrong with leveling all battle classes but if you are going to go do group content with a class that is not your main bread and butter. Then learning the basics of that class should be the first thing you do before joining any group content. Of course not all omni levlers are this way and to those who take the time to learn the basics of the classes and play them well enough to not be a burden thank you!!