Request: More challanging / difficult content. PLEASE

[AndySolace]

Go ahead and add "and its fun every time I attempt it" to that statement and I couldn't agree more.

Hands up, I first read this as sarcasm, and was a little disappointed. I thought it was another "you'll only find something else to complain about" comment.

Then I thought about for a moment re-read it and figured, you know what, I personally spent years in XI fighting the same Sky, Sea, HNM mobs over and over and over. Camp SW, Camp DI, move to HQ Kings and camp them. And yeah actually, every single fight was fun. Losing a claim was a bitter disappointment, but that just made winning one all the more satisfying, and enjoyable.

I actually do not agree entirely with the post you yourself quote though. Cooldowns and scheduling are requirements in my opinion for the successful organisation of events and the people that play them.

If I know that once a week I'm going to do Dzaemel Darkhold, then I can organise either logging in and turning up to the event, or give people notice that i'm busy because i'm off to the pub this Friday for a beer. This allows them then to find a replacement for me and still do the event.

Spontaneous (spelling?) events are fun, sure. "Hey LS, who wants to do Darkhold I still need speed run o/." Problem is having the people online, and available without notice. Yes, it happens that sometimes 7 people agree and you can run along to do it and go home again, but you cannot run an event-based LS on this principle. A social shell, yes of course. But if you're a player only interested in having a social shell then you wouldn't be interested in events and their scheduling, so its a natural reaction.

A counter arguement I guess would be simply a statement of what currently occurs: Yes you can do Moggle every 15 minutes, but that doesn't stop anyone scheduling 6 runs on a Tuesday night. Ergo the time-sink element is not required for scheduling purposes anyway.

This is fine, but not all events can work like this. Not to mention the fact that there will always be people who play to beat new content ASAP, and make guides the next day. This REALLY annoys me to be honest, as it means that people get stuck in a routine within hours of new content being released and eliminates the creative tactical thinking from 90% of the population. Imagine Moggle had even a 15 hour cooldown, rather then 15 minutes. My LS beat it on their 14th run, on the second day after release. That's basically two weeks of developing stategies, attempting new things, experimenting. Instead we see BG post a guide within a couple of days after 100+ runs and suddenly everyone is Archer or GTFO. What happened to those without that job levelled?

Perhaps I deviate slightly from my original point, but its all related to the instant access we have to any content at the moment. With content at its current technical level, we need less access to it to make it more time involved. Increase the amount of time we have to develop LS-specific (or even server specific) strats, increase the amount of time those of us who study the game have to discuss and engage with new content and increase the relative challenge of the content.

If Joe "Casual" Bloggs complains he can't aquire the bestest sword in the game because he only plays FFXVI 2 hours a week and only wants to bother with an "event" of sorts on his single 50 once a month... Instead of making the game to straightforward for the rest of us, perhaps someone should stand up and say, "hold on, maybe he shouldn't have it anyway."

Goobbue is a thank you gift, fine I understand it. My personal opinion is that the best part about that ride is the music; I love it. Thank you for it. But Primal weapons are NOT gifts, they should be worked for and hold an achievement status. They should not be given to everybody. The developers didn't sit around their table one day drinking coffee saying "hmmm I know, lets gift everyone in the game all the best gear so they look pimp but leave out any reason for them to actually equip it!"

Much more... "Lets make it hard to get the best gear in the game, so they look pimp, feel a sense of 'I've achieved something' when wearing it, but give them no other reason to equip it!" Lol, I jest. But you see the difference?

Currently, without making content harder to beat, there must be a limit to our access in the form of a time and/or effort investment, to make current challenges live longer. This is really what the keystone farming was all about, I think.

Also, as I led in bed last night after making this thread something struck me. A simple suggestion that would make content that is currently out a worthy challenge, and can also be applied to to any and all future relevant content. Specifically i'm talking about the current dungeons, and their rank requirements for entry. The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak has an entry requirement of rank 25, and grants level 30 gear from the three bosses. Level cap it. Make it a capped instance, at level 30, and work from there. Dzaemal Darkhold has an entry requirement of 45, and grants gives gear that is used at level 50. So Keep it capped at 50. How many times have people done the 25 dungeon and just switched to a 50 either at the end or upon entry. WHAT'S THE POINT?! Particualarly as there are likely to be new players asking for help with these dungeons now. It ruins it for them.

I don't have all jobs at 50, but I have all my DoW and DoM to 50. That's my choice, fine. But if a level 35~40 dungeon is released, me and many people like me will cakewalk it. Unless its capped at 40. In which case, the challenge remains.

I fully understand that this will not be popular with everyone, but it will ensure that new players get the 'full experience' because they won't be with people 25 levels higher then them, (35, if you count the r15 dungeon Shposhae, however that's much more of an open world 'zoo' that allows a sneak-peak at the extremely impressive Lone Coeurl), and means that whenever the level cap increases, current challenges will still remain. Are The Dev Team seriously expecting us to re-run a 25 dungeon at level 60+ just to aquire a piece of 30 gear for a new job that's released?

Level cap us, nerf our stats. Make life difficult. I honestly wish this was an original idea of my own, but of course it isn't. Its been done before, and was imho hugely successful.

*hits the "Post Quick Reply" button* lol'd...

[SniperRifle]

My post is not edited.

This is fine, but not all events can work like this. Not to mention the fact that there will always be people who play to beat new content ASAP, and make guides the next day. This REALLY annoys me to be honest, as it means that people get stuck in a routine within hours of new content being released and eliminates the creative tactical thinking from 90% of the population. Imagine Moggle had even a 15 hour cooldown, rather then 15 minutes. My LS beat it on their 14th run, on the second day after release. That's basically two weeks of developing stategies, attempting new things, experimenting. Instead we see BG post a guide within a couple of days after 100+ runs and suddenly everyone is Archer or GTFO. What happened to those without that job levelled?

It's the evolution of gaming. People can access information much faster then a year or two ago. It will only get faster. Back in 1950 you only needed to be good at one thing to become a star. Today you need to be 16, play 3 instruments, sing, and be named Justin Beiber. In 2005 there were like 20 big Halo 2 pros. Now there are thousands of kids watching pro footage everyday on youtube going out to tournies basically imitating a professional gamers every move because they studied to get better.

For the Archer zerge issue it probably just is class balance. I say that because I compare it to WoW, a game where every single Boss Fight you look up on youtube there was a different class color on the top of the damage meter. Essentially gear and skill determined your damage output (how it should be). Even melee classes still stood the test of time... Warriors could stun constantly, rogues destroyed in damage. SE only thinks in terms of damage but really what is the harm in giving PGL an OP ability? And not OP in terms one skill TP move that does big DMG, a simple ability that allows them to stun enemies every 10s, or aoe stuns, and give tanks more/potent aoe hate abilities so stun doesn't take from everything. This doesn't mean fights become easier, it just gives classes more of a purpose. Give lancer or mrd a rush ability so they can just target a mob, and practically blink to an enemies location, so range wouldn't matter because just by targeting a monster a mrd can hit it. Every class has CC abilities in WoW (depending on spec). So regardless of what class you played, you could still have room to improve your CC skills. I'm just saying if classes were equally powerful it wouldn't matter what type of fight you went into. Plus Shadowbind plays a huge role in ARC burns, how many other melee classes have long ranged binded, or something of equal use? Just giving more damage abilities + HP to melee classes won't help in fights that have insane aoe, require lots of running + a time limit.

Say PGL did have a 10s recast of AOE stun, where they got little hate and it wasn't a big deal. And 7PGL,1GLA,1CNJ went into Moogle. Literally every 2-3seconds a new PGL would just have to spam Stun and every 10s they would keep redoing it. No one would get hit. It would be a cake walk even if some people missed a Stun. And there would probably be a biiiig abundance in PGL Moogle zerges.

My case in point meaning if one class is OP, and makes the fight more convienent (sp?) to overcome then people will use it. ARC was obvi OP'd for the fight and so it is the dominant desired class. Give PGL more abilities then uber dmg from counter clockwise upsidedown position of the mob, and recycle abilities that worked like Sap, Stun, Banish, Bind, potent paralyze, and give it to melee classes as well. Whether it's chance of hit, ability, or on their AF gear. As the classes get equally OP (not being unbalanced) then you can make primals that are scaled to the difficulty of the balanced classes.

Instead of stripping every class of every abilitiy to make a crappy game where we just attack and do damage. You give EVERY class the ability to do damage, cc, and stay alive (SE kind of does this, but last I checked, ARC can Second Wind, and PGL cant Shadowbind. Just a good concept done wrong/unfinished).

Ex. of a boss battle.
Say bosses can't be stunned, but the adds can.
The adds automatically attack the WHM/BLM of the PT every single time. It's fixed hate.
Adds resist all magic CC and can only be stunned by melee. It's how the fight was intended.
PGL now have a purpose in boss fight.
Maybe these mobs are very weak to stun. They get stunned for 20s instead of the brief moment.
2 PGL can stun the 2 adds. Go back on boss, then reapply stun every 20s so mages dont get hurt.
The adds do like 2x dmg to WHM/BLM, so it's necessary for the PGLs to stun the adds.
The boss has insane HP so simply zerging him w/ any other OP single target DPS class won't work. The adds would kill the mages... even with the most powerful groups, the mages would get annhiltated from the adds if 1 stun was missed (like Suzaku Stun priority done differently), therefore the PGLs would be required.
Now SE could make a similar fight for the other classes, as well as a fair mix of tank and spanks. Maybe even the fights that require a certain class, give better benefits to that class (as well as some complmentary drops for another class or 2).

In a different battle, mobs disperse fast, so Marauder would have to use some rush ability, or Lancer would have to Super/Jump to make them stop moving/getting further away. This would stop the mobs from moving, everyone could continue to attack, then they would redisperse, and the marauder and the lancer would serve their purpose again.

So on and so forth, then Archer serves it's purpose, fast long ranged DPS in a fight w/ a main boss who spams aoe/cone attacks that would eat up any class but paladin.

The primal fights now are fine, but the classes are still unbalanced, and I'll partake in abusing the most OP one until (if ever) they fix them. Much like if level synch comes in and killing Lv1 marmots over and over w/ a 2nd account is the most fastest way to gain xp, I will do it. If the game is broken in anyway, it will be exploited. Youtube video/guides is just this generation. You can learn anything instantly thanks to the internet. It's not something people should avoid. Engineers should use this information to create more complex revolutionary gameplay, that people can't piece together within a day or two, instead creating long lasting gameplay, that is actually fun to learn and get better at.

I know this is already a long post but off-quote, I see now why people are saying the game is getting more casual friendly. I didn't see it as SE was intentially doing it at first but now I can definately see where Yoshi stated he wanted to focus primarily on instanced content, and then he removed the lockout/cd timers for content in the game. And, whether people wanted it or not, the point is what did Yoshi think any casual/hardcore player would do after they beat the content? There should be only one answer to the question, which is, 'Keep wanting to play'. If the answer isn't that, then Yoshi is intentionally killing the game. Why make 30min battles that people can spam endlessly unless you thought this game was suppose to die? Ofcourse he didn't really think that but wtf, casuals aren't going to stay, they were simply pleased they didn't have to waste precious hours like the stereotypical hardcore player to get the same rewards, and now they don't have to play again.

It doesn't matter what content it is just scale the content accordingly. If you can spam the 30mins battles, create 300 battles, if you can do the battles once per day, make less of them. Meanwhile, giving every battle a purpose and replay value. I'm not a programmer, but the concepts and ideaology are so freaking simple. It's as if FF14 was the first video game ever being created and they are learning the cause and effect to every issue one by one like every other video game developer has been doing for the last 3 decades.

I've been really digging Super Meat Boy lately, I actually just completed it 100% last night. Many people consider this game difficult. If you disagree, (internet) you can google it. There are a lot of difficult games but I was pretty captivated by SMB, so I went and looked at the Team Meat website and what the Lead Designer said was that the difficulty of video games has been changing since the first Arcade games.

Games like Donkey Kong where you were given 3 lives and if you lose 3 lives you have to pay a quarter to continue. Then with Super Mario Bros you were given 3 lives, lose those and you have to restart the game. Then with SMW you were given 5 lives + continues, and the penalty was to restart the chapter. As a decade or two pass, the penalties in video games have nearly vanished and the frustration and stress caused by difficulty has practically vanished. Which is where SMeatB comes in and you can die and instantly respawn. The levels were kept mildy small to decrease the stress of not knowing what was to come. This does feed ADD/ADHD kids/adults of our generation (probably not too many kids in the FF14 community), but the game still remains difficult, without the frustration and stress of a time sink. It is a platformer yes, so ofcourse this doesnt directly tie into MMO's, however, SMB has over 310 levels on the main game, and over 100 additional levels (with more to come, user created level as well, and FREE). It may take you an hour or 2 and 100-300 attempts to clear some of the most difficult levels, giving you a feeling of satisfactory once you're done, but there are over 300 more to do, with more to come, and every level is completely different from the last. If anything, it's frustrating spending an hour trying to dominate one of the most difficult levels, succeeding, then moving on to the next level just to get your poop pushed in over and over. As you get further you'll notice NO level is a pushover.

Compare SMB's difficulty with FF14's. We have primals, which can represent levels. SMB has over 400 including the free user made levels, FFXIV has 2.

How about the penalty? No penalty in SMB for dieing/wiping.
In FFXIV we have to repair our gear after guesstimately 4-5 deaths, plus wait 5 minutes. So there is indeed a penalty.

I wouldn't really consider repairing, or the 5 minute time limit for that matter, frustrating or stressful. I'd probably call it more annoying then anything. Like a mosquito. Repairing is certainly less anoying then what it used to be, and I believe they are making it even more less (lol) annoying in the future.

Why the designers of SMB decided to get rid of the frustrating and stressful penalties of the game is because it let them base the difficulty off level design and challenge.

Essentially, a less creative designer, would have a battle where you just use your practiced skills to overcome the boss, but if you lose, uber rape penalty. Exp loss in FFXI wasn't really that much of an issue. It was annoying yes, and, that pretty much what it was. It's not like 'Tee hee were we so close then we died drats we have to go get XP again!' It's like, 'God damn I funking delvl'd I feel slightly demotivated to play.'

And with no penalty, the possibilities really are endless. What we have is 2 boss fights, w/ a tiny penalty, and no reward. FFXI had 1000+ boss fights, a medium penalty, and uncomparable to anything in any other game rewards. When you are born, you have 2 choices in life... Get a Relic in FFXI, or become a doctor. Doctors are really missing out. (Exagerated a little, grats to anyone who became a doctor + got a relic pre lvl cap raise) Either way, that's how monumental the rewards got in 11.

WoW has no penalty for death. Raiders can even die on end game trash, run back right into the instance w/ the raid, and continue fighting w/o skipping a beat. I guess the biggest issue I had with WoW raiding was using so many consumables and having to make more after a full day of wipes (lol @ anyone who says spending like .3% of their total gold on repairs, which is made effortlessly, is a penalty/issue). WoW does have much better server structure then FF14, but the boss battles got very unique. WoW's endgame was good for what it was but why I stopped playing was because I beat the final boss of the final instance. I wanted to end on a good note, several other, including the Guild leader did the same. WoW thrives on it's PVP though it does have a quality end game (for the short lived end game that it is). This is probably why WoW doesn't release every instance in one xpac/patch. Sunwell Plateau didn't come out til 3/4ths of the way into BC (iirc it was a long time ago). For a long time players were stuck grinding Black Temple for Warglaives and pimping alts. This method of content release is recycled in FFXIV, only, we get 1 fight every 3 months, not an entire instance that requires minimal 4+ months of successful raiding gear to take down the first of 7 bosses.

Had WoW continued to make more quality raids, w/o the level cap increase, I probably would've kept playing. Boss battles were difficult and even some trash required spot on CC and group focus to get around.

Anyways thats some info I had on difficulty. A lot of people have an example of what they liked, and want to bring it here, but the truth is that whether there is no lockout, 24 hour lockouts, massive penalty for death, or no penalty for death, the content just has to be scaled accordingly.

SMB wouldn't be so critically acclaimed if it didn't have soooo many levels of such a variety, and a decent scaling of difficulty. FFXIV can continue w/ Primal spamming w/ next to no penalty, they just need to make way way way more (as well as balance the classes).

I revered Primals as Gods. Something that is rare, difficult to defeat, and should you ever kill it, you'll gain reputation for your skill in defeating it. Exceeeeeeept, Primals in this game, are actually more like an obstacle, with no reward for overcoming. And no one gives a flip if you kill it. Garuda will arrive, I will kill, then I will log off. Until SE throws another obstacle in my way, about 300 more. With a useful reward, tieing into some plot...

This is kind of just fresh off my head, but, what if designers made content, faster then players could keep up with it? And I'm not talking about level cap raises. But, for instance, there is Dynamis Sandy,Bast, Windy... The best of the best of the best in the world take like a month to get 95% through Dynamis Windy and they're soooo close to having done everything when bam, Dynamis Jeuno drops, and OMFG NO FREAKING WAY SOMETHING HARDER TO UNLOCK!? I GOTTA PLAY MOAAAAR. Rinse repeat w/ Jeuno, Dynamis Quf/Valk/Burb comes out and you cant enter until you conquered Jeuno.

Then, just before the bestest n fastest beat that, MOAR CONTENT! MOAR GAME!!!Say, over the course of a year this happens. For 1 year developers can assume their subscriber base is actively working towards a clear defined goal. All the currency in alll the Dynamis, from the easiest to the hardest, all of it goes towards relic weapons, or gear, or abilities, which you will need to obtain and practice with, in order to overcome the next content.

A NEW PROBLEM APPEARS! (Even though the game was a success for a solid year, which is all that matters, people enjoying and actively playing your game, telling their friends and spreading the publicity)

Won't old content become obsolete? I'm not a game designer, but I'm sure it is possible, most-definately, to scale/balance the content accordingly so even if the content does become obsolete, players still enjoy the game. It may not be perfect scaling, but if your making profit off your game and your getting high ratings by every critic, you can then settle for repeating and perfecting what you're already doing.

I know a lot of us hate WoW for making old content obsolete, and sky wasn't nearly as popular by the 5-6 year mark (this doesnt mean people didn't do it, it just means players didn't go 18 hours a day 7 days a week in '07 like they did in '04). It's impossible to keep very old content just as useful as the first day it came out in any game that involves physical character progression.

[AndySolace]

2,812 words

My god, do you read your posts? Some interesting stuff though.

@OranGemeo: I'd double meld my Helm of the Lone Knight 100 times if the chance was there. Sipahi Turban too. We spent ages aquiring these items only to have them made obselete by the Paragon's Crown. God knows what i'd put on them though. 5x Magic Evasion I guess, that'd be cool.