The only thing I miss about WoW when playing FFXIV: Scrub's rights.

[Packetdancer]

I admit I read the first post of this thread and winced, thinking "Oh, this will go downhill fast."

You think the main story quests are a filter? My oh my, I hope you never have to set foot inside an extreme trial, let alone a savage raid...

I enjoy savage content; I only started recently and am still learning, so I'm more 'passable' than 'good', but I've really been enjoying it. However, I'm also under no illusions that it's required content, so the bar to entry being higher isn't really a huge problem for those who just want the story content. (Heck, they could probably raise the bar for getting into savage and not have any appreciable detrimental effect on the general game populace.)

The role quests are not optional; you have to do at least one even if you are the most casual player, and all four if you want the actual story that unlocks after completing all four. Whether or not you think they're hard, they're definitely not optional. Which I think is the OP's point, that 'skill-check' challenges that gate content may only show up on optional content in other games, as opposed to being mandatory to progress the main scenario.

Whether or not you think those particular fights actually are a 'skill-check' is a different matter, mind you. I personally actually didn't think the role ones were; for one thing, the role quest fights were—perhaps unsurprisingly—tailored to your actual role, and provided you read things (and paid attention to what the NPCs said in their little word-bubbles) they were reasonably straightforward.

The ones that I've seen which I think you could make an argument are gatekeeping in a potentially-annoying way are the solo ones that everyone has to do and which don't really take your role into account. Like the Zenos fight at the end of Stormblood, which can be somewhat irritating if you're a healer main and have nothing else leveled sufficiently to do that fight with. (As just happened to a friend this morning; she's not a bad player, but that's not a fight designed primarily with a healer in mind.)

And I can actually definitely see the argument, if the example were that final Stormblood fight rather than the role quests.

I had a friend who had suffered fairly serious nerve damage to his hands during military service, but who still loved to play MMORPGs. Dungeons and group content weren't a concern for him because he'd only ever party up in a fully premade group with friends who knew him, who he knew would be patient and not hold it against him if his hands seized up or spasmed during a fight. Solo stuff which blocked his story from moving forward could get frustrating for him, though; on several occasions in other games he just gave up, temporarily changed his password, and asked a friend to log in as him and get him past whatever part was blocking him. He never played FFXIV before he passed away, but I suspect he would've slammed into a wall hard at the end of Stormblood because of that fight prior to the introduction of difficulty levels.

So, yeah, I can see him feeling like—at that spot—the game was skill-checking him in order to see the next chapter, and potentially being annoyed by that.

Still, I feel like SquareEnix has already tried to address this exact concern by adding the difficulty settings to any instanced solo content. If my late friend could've set it to 'Very Easy' and breezed through solo—even on a bad day—and then resumed doing stuff with friends, I suspect he would've felt self-sufficient in a way that he wouldn't otherwise have been able to. That's the whole reason I really like the 'Very Easy' mode being in the game, honestly; I have no desire to use the other difficulty levels myself, but I can see them discussed and think, "Wow, that feature would have made Bryan's gaming life a lot easier."

But at a certain point, a game is there to be played and there will be some content players are expected to pass to progress; this is true in single player games as much as MMOs. If you're playing Uncharted and can't get past a specific gun-battle, then your story is blocked. If you're playing Horizon Zero Dawn and can't get through one of the Cauldrons, your story probably hits a roadblock. If you're playing a Fire Emblem game and cannot win a specific battle, your story probably hits a roadblock. If you're playing FFVI and you can't beat the Phantom Train (suplex!), your story hits a roadblock. (Unrelated digression: does anyone else kind of wish that Sigmascape V1.0 had a 'Suplex' duty action? Just for laughs?)

At any rate, while I can feel for the OP and understand where they're coming from, I'm not completely certain what exactly they'd want changed about those fights beyond the change SquareEnix has already made in adding the Very Easy option. (Or whether it's just venting without an implied change request, which... sure, sometimes we all just need to vent, but then I'm not sure there's much to actually address in this discussion.)

Why would someone continue to play a game they find boring or dull? At that point, you might as well unsub.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but I read it as "the game is boring so people don't want to get better".

Oh, it's possible to find the combat system dull (or broken, or whatever) and still enjoy a game overall enough to want to stick around. I played—and deeply loved—The Secret World's original incarnation avidly for years for the excellent meta-story and atmosphere, as well as the great community. (And also the investigation missions, which I thought were wonderful.)

I played and loved that game despite a combat system which pretty nearly the entire remaining active playerbase agreed was a spectacularly burning trash heap on an epic scale.

Admittedly, with FunCom's take on the 'design your own class' style system it was at least a relatively unique burning trash heap, which—sadly—the 'Secret World Legends' reboot does not have going for it. The legacy game's combat was like a rare and fascinating flower which just happened to have the most stomach-turning scent... so, basically a corpse flower, I guess.

That works: The Secret World's combat was the corpse flower of MMO combat system designs.

And plenty of us played it loyally despite readily admitting that.

[Canada_bangs]

You picked the wrong game if you wanted something like a gameplay lite experience. Not only did you pick the wrong game you picked a japanese game of all things. Most japanese games have a habit of making you push MORE buttons not less. This is a gear or you're not good enough to clear issue. I'm not going to say everything in the game is piss easy mostly because in my 2 weeks of playing I've watched some insane wipes. But I will say I haven't had any issues in any of the solo fights and the fact you just informed me they have a very easy mode? Ye...ah you just need to get better man. You shouldn't be having issues on very easy if you can read and move your fingers. Stay out of red stuff and run away from giant floating red eyes. And most importantly, press your buttons. Nothing gets done in this game until you start moving. Only you can improve your gameplay.

[Sakei]

I mean this is a video game not an interactive movie. "Daring to test you" is standard video game stuff. Can't beat Bowser at the end of World 1? Then no World 2 for you. Can't beat the first Griffin in Witcher 3? Can't progress the story til you can. Et cetera.

The bad thing about that way of thinking is that this is still an mmo. If someone gets stuck, then there are no more expansions possible. If this were a single player game, then they could just put the game down and move on. SE would have lost nothing since they still sold the game. SE needs to keep them chasing a new carrot, or the players just stop paying. I don't think the MSQ should be very difficult. There can be plenty of gated options, but locking someone out of the rest of the game entirely doesn't seem very smart. It also keeps dropping down your playerbase more and more as things keep going up.

[linay]

The bad thing about that way of thinking is that this is still an mmo. If someone gets stuck, then there are no more expansions possible. If this were a single player game, then they could just put the game down and move on. SE would have lost nothing since they still sold the game. SE needs to keep them chasing a new carrot, or the players just stop paying. I don't think the MSQ should be very difficult. There can be plenty of gated options, but locking someone out of the rest of the game entirely doesn't seem very smart. It also keeps dropping down your playerbase more and more as things keep going up.

SE doesn't need to keep everyone because SE will never be able to please everyone. There are plenty of carrots for those who stay.

[SamRF]

I feel like it isn't mentioned enough, but your gear usually makes a pretty significant difference, especially for those role specific quests. I've only recently started ShB as returner so can't speak of those specific instances but there sure were some job specific solo instances that were imo pretty damn tough to do if your gear wasn't up to par, which was the case sometimes when you're leveling an alt job. I can assure you that I was playing close to optimal rotation wise. Have never tried below normal difficulty though so idk how big the difference is.

Maybe OP didn't realize they weren't well equipped? Seems unlikely if it's your main and its an MSQ mandatory instance, but idk maybe forgot or overlooked some things.

[Arngrim_Greyashe]

The bad thing about that way of thinking is that this is still an mmo. If someone gets stuck, then there are no more expansions possible. If this were a single player game, then they could just put the game down and move on. SE would have lost nothing since they still sold the game. SE needs to keep them chasing a new carrot, or the players just stop paying. I don't think the MSQ should be very difficult. There can be plenty of gated options, but locking someone out of the rest of the game entirely doesn't seem very smart. It also keeps dropping down your playerbase more and more as things keep going up.

It's not hard. That's the thing. It wasn't hard before they added difficulty changes and it definitely isn't difficult after.

[van_arn]

posting in a very silly thread that voices the opinion the MSQ is too hard

insert youtube video of winning as Hien without pushing buttons

I suggest reading tooltips.

If you want to play it, learn to play it. If you don't want to learn how to play it, you don't want to play it. I suggest youtube in this situation if you can't be bothered to learn.

I -want- you to be locked out of content if it'll keep you out of dungeons and away from people that have done the bare minimum you can't be bothered to learn how to handle.

[Saefinn]

I'm looking through this thread thinking about this talk of the role quests being a benchmark for people knowing how to play their jobs and now I'm thinking back to my FFXI days and how easy we have it in this game. My first job to take all the was was SCH, it took me 3 weeks to beat my level 70 quest, which I had to beat if I wanted to level past level 70 and it was a solo fight, so nobody could carry you (the infamous Maat fights, though for SCH it wasn't Maat, but same principle). I think it was 13 attempts in total, because I couldn't just simply retry, but put some prep into it and try to better myself each time and farm an item to retry each time to allow me re-entry and the mobs that dropped them were a higher level than you.

But how I felt when I beat it? Like a damn king, it was frustrating as hell, but a sense of accomplishment for doing it. Not only that, but it actively pushed me to get better each time, which in effect helped me for later parts of the game and get in the mentality of prepping for fights and to plan ahead, which ended up being useful for that particularly game's way of doing things.

If you're struggling against these fights, its good to keep pushing and trying to beat them, fortunately, FFXIV's wall is nowhere near as bad as my FFXI example. But if you push, you will find you improve because of it and that can be a good thing, because one of the aims the game has is to teach you how to play the job/role you've chosen, to make life easier when you come to run content with other people. And it's what tank, healer and DPS checks are good for too in fights.

It's strange reading complaints where parts of the MSQ might be too hard for people who aren't as experienced/skilled, because this game to me is very good with new and inexperienced players. Because a lot of its design is supposed to ease you into the game's content. They've also made efforts to helping less experienced players have more of a fighting chance, particularly by comparison of my experience playing WoW, where queuing as a tank or healer for the first time felt like I was blind as nothing prepared me. That said, if I just quested and levelled that way, then yes, it's a cakewalk.

Then FFXIV has hall of the novice to go over the absolute basics. You unlock guildhests at level 10, which give you tiny dungeons that are low maintenance and low commitment with the basic principles that work as good practice. Then your first 3 dungeons are very low maintenance. They've also simplified healing and tanking a great deal since I've got started (to my annoyance as a healer that's now bored of healing because of it). Then the content gradually gets harder, but doesn't throw you in the deepend, even if in places it may test how you've progressed with healer/tank/DPS checks.


And this is why I think by the time you reach role quests you'd have already conquered tougher stuff. I don't see how the role quests are tougher than Shinryu or Tsukiyomi, which you will have had to have beaten. At least, if you progressed the normal way rather than using a jump potion or finding people covered any issues you might have had. If the jump potion, then I'd argue is your responsibility to bring yourself up to speed and if you're completely new, you've robbed yourself of a valuable learning experience. If carried, then it is worth getting more practice in more general rather than rely on other people to carry you through.

To me level 1-50 is you learning how the game works & the jobs & systems within it, 50-70 is improving on that, because you're in endgame territories. 70-80 is preparing for current endgame. So for anything 70-80 my expectation is that the player ought to be in a position where they'd be able to clear the job quests, no shame if they struggle for whatever reason that may be, but not something I think would be reasonable to be changed.


But I guess the weirdest bit for me is that...FFXIV is a video game and RPG at that. Clearing content is integral to progression and is all a part of the experience. I know WoW might be different here, as dungeons are optional when levelling and quests are easy to clear. But that's not a standard for MMO's, but is how WoW does it and some other MMO's too. But FFXIV I think tries to keep to their RPG ties more, particularly in such a story driven series where if you struggled to beat the Black Watlz in the ice cavern in FFIX you couldn't progress any further in the story and thus had to work harder to beat them and to improve if that was a problem for you, my first few attempts doing that as a kid were terrible and as an adult with years playing RPG's I'm like "how did I struggle?". The which is normal for most games, particularly RPG's. Yet, even saying that, FFXIV makes it easier than most MMO's I've played.

[Reeereee]

A number of the solo story events require you read what the characters are saying and follow their instructions or the event will fail/you'll get one shot.

I know this isn't earth shattering levels of difficulty but the OP is correct in stating that it's more difficult than what most other MMOs tune their solo story content to, where it's nearly impossible to die.

[van_arn]

A number of the solo story events require you read what the characters are saying and follow their instructions or the event will fail/you'll get one shot.

I know this isn't earth shattering levels of difficulty but the OP is correct in stating that it's more difficult than what most other MMOs tune their solo story content to, where it's nearly impossible to die.

Let's all remember those "other MMOs" and their lowest common denominator design philosophy aren't doing so hot. Heck, the most popular change in the last year for "other" has been a renunciation of those new philosophies.

I don't want players to need to be learn their class at a expert/savage tier to clear content, but it's a matter of simple courtesy -- if you play with other people, you should be expected to be worth playing with. The bar for "worth playing with" is already set extremely low for normal content, so I apologize if I sound like I have zero sympathy for people that refuse to better themselves to pass very gentle quest hurdles but yeah-- I have no sympathy if that next cutscene is locked because someone doesn't want to read.

Negative sympathy. Youtube it instead if you absolutely must see it, but don't impose on people playing the game. Because you aren't playing; you're watching.