To those that say FF14 is not a big dog in MMO's

[Penthea]

My favorite moment of all of it was how completely it shut up the Classic supremists who would basically call retail baby-mod easy with claims of how hard Classic was. Im sorry, but you cant claim a game is hard when you end-game boss (for release) is down within HOURS of release.

What is genuinely more difficult in Classic is solo questing. Aside from the famously broken frost mage, solo questing in Classic is significantly more dangerous than modern WoW and FFXIV. This was one of the things I loved about Classic. The world is a threatening place. Things hit you very hard, they take much longer to die and class resources don't last for very long. But I admit that by today's standards it's tedious. It's not super easy to do but it's not necessarily interesting either. And the downtime between pulls can test people's patience far more than the combat itself.

But the raid content, oh I knew that wouldn't present anything resembling the challenge it did before. When you have a highly coordinated team with at least years if not over a decade of raiding experience behind them, bosses were doomed to fall over fast. They were absolutely not designed for that level of team play or experience. Back in vanilla the raiders were newbs, and Blizzard were newbs to boss design. It was a very different time. Never mind how so many useful Classic add-ons now simply did not exist during Vanilla, which is another advantage modern players have.

Again this is happening with TBC, and again -- Im ready with popcorn with how fast things will be done.

I am curious to see how Sunwell goes, the final raid instance, because there was a boss in there notorious for making guilds fall apart. I don't expect it to present the same challenge as before, but it will be interesting to see how long it will stand up against today's players.

Its just nostalgia bait. Its all re-living memories once had as a kid or as a young gamer. Its fine to relive those, but you will always have that rude awakening when the game, its audience, and you have changed since that time.

It 100% is nostalgia bait. With the TBC launch being soon I am really wondering how Blizzard are going to maintain Classic. Wrath is next but after that...well lets just say a huge amount of the playerbase agree that Cata is when WoW began its downfall. It's a controversial expansion to say the least.

It would be funny if they just rebooted Classic or just stopped at Wrath instead of continuing on into Cata because that would be, in a sense, Blizzard admitting that particular expansion was the beginning of a wrong turn.

And just to note before anyone perhaps accuses me of not liking the huge jump in difficulty in content Cata gave, I actually really enjoyed it. However it was too heavy handed from the beginning so it alienated many players whose skill level was enough for their goals before and then suddenly it was not. The difficulty increase should have been gradual, not a sudden big change. Huge mistake by Blizzard.

It was also controversial due to the manner in how many zones changed. To this day I'm still salty over what the goblins did to Azshara, lol.

[VelKallor]

I didn't expect the community to be just as it was before, but I also wasn't expecting a dps priest to get laughed at in Ragefire Chasm, the lowest lvl dungeon in the game, solely because they're not playing holy. The best part was their dps wasn't even the lowest and they still got ridiculed for their choice of spec.

What was it I said a week or so ago?

Oh thats right...I remember now....

"We allow people to use dps meters in FF 14? in a single day we will have "that guy" spamming dps numbers in Sastasha"

[Dzian]

I find FF14 raids to be far more enjoyable because a MAJOR part of an mmorpg is immersion, the fights often are designed in such a way and with such animations that you feel being part of them, I still remember when Niddhog falls down on the platform and causes a mini earthquake that makes you FEEL his weight or Susano's giant sword. Plus the realistic and non cartoony graphics helps a lot with that aspect.

There's certinly a little truth to this but at the same time fight design and animations is often one of the biggest immersion breakers.

If we take Susano for example that big sword screen shaking smash. Sure it can look cool but there's this huge disconnect between whats actually happening and what you see. It's realistically possible to stand right under that sword smash and live because the animations while nice, are heavily out of sync with the rest of the gameplay. There's thousands of examples of times where you can quite literally stand in the stupid and be fine because the damage was already calculated before you stepped into it.

This leads to a huge disconnect for many people because it smahses that sense of immersion when you get hit by something you were visually a malm away from and something you're stood right in the middle of doesn't even touch you. absolute immersion breaker.

If I'm reading it right, that's still a respectable number. FF XIV's population has never been the absolute biggest, but I'd say it's one of the most loyal fan bases.

While there's some loyalty there, for many players it also does a pretty good job of showing the rate at which 14 loses players. The population you see in those censuses tends not to fluctuate very much over time but when you consider the ever increasing number of new players the game pulls in.. 4 million, 5 million, 6 million, 8 million, 10 million, 12 million.... ever increasing. Yet ths population always remains about the same which is why many people say the game struggles because for every million players it pulls in, it effectively bleeds another million right out.. Which is where the sentiment about the games lack of longevity often stems from..

Which also adds fuel to the ever growing number of people getting tired of the same old repeatable pattern of content, the boring treadmill and any number of other arguemnets. accessibility and over simplification has taken away a lot of that Final Fantasy depth and magic and a lot of players get bored very quickly because simple stuff just isn't engaging, satisfying or rewarding.. "Yay I got a new pair of gloves." but at the same time "Meh I'll just throw them away next week....." Not very satisfying gameplay is it when everything you get is ultimately just rubbish?

The longest players tend to stick around for reasons less about the game andmore about the players.. I have some great friends some I've known since playing FFXI 20 years ago andi can still have fun hanging out with those guys occassionally. The fun isnt so much the game, it's the banter and jokes we crack between ourelves.. I know a good few people with a similar mindset.

But that comes back to new players as well.. I think one of the bigger factors determining how long new players stick around is governed less by the game itself and more by any social connections they makewhile playing.

[ReynTime]

which also adds fuel to the ever growing number of people getting tired of the same old repeatable pattern of content and boring treadmill and any number of other arguemnets. accessibility and over simplification has taken away a lot of that final fantasy depth and magic and a lot of players get bored quite quickly because simple stuff isnt engaging, satisfying or rewarding.. "Yay i got a new pair of gloves". but at the same time "meh i'll just throw them away next week....." not very satisfying gameplay is it when everything you get is just rubbish.

the longest players tend to stick around for reasons less aboyt the game andmore about the players.. i have some great friends some i've known since playing ff11 20 years ago andi can still have fun hanging out with those guys occassionally. the fun isnt so much the game it's the banter and jookes we crack between ourelves.. and i know a good few people with a similar mindset.

but that comes back to new players as well.. i think one of the bigger factors determining how long new players stick around is governed less by the game and more by any social connections they make..

I kind of agree with this.
I try to do everything I can in the game, but that's mostly to be helpful to friends I play with. I noticed I have a lot more fun replaying the ARR and Heavensward content than anything of the endgame, and that's because I just don't connect with the hyperfocus on accessibility the game had since 2019. I would have unsubbed and just wait for Endwalker if I wasn't hanging with friends in the game.

[VelKallor]

I noticed I have a lot more fun replaying the ARR and Heavensward content than anything of the endgame, and that's because I just don't connect with the hyperfocus on accessibility the game had since 2019.

You'd have content and gameplay LESS accessible?

Why?

[Dzian]

You'd have content and gameplay LESS accessible?

Why?

The issue lies less with the accessibility itself and more this idea people have that accessibility must mean ultra simplistic or easy.
Accessible can be hard as nails. The definition means being able to access content.
Whether or not you can actually clear it has nothing to do with it's accessiblity.

Savage raiding for example is accessible content for anyone its designed to be that way.
It's designed in such a way that even if you only have 60-90 minutes you can jump in the raid finder and get ya weekly clear or even just a decent bit of practice.. It's been that way since late heavensward at least. It doesn't require massive time investments of 4-6 hours a night. It is quite possible to log on for just an hour and get a couple of fights done or a bit of practice. The JP side demonstrates this with great success. (the NA side would to if they used raid finder properly and didnt expect carries)

Yet despite being super accessible the raid teirs get easier and easier, and arguably so does all other content.. right down to dungeons..

This doesnt make content more accessible. It just makes it less rewarding and less satisfying which is why many players get bored.
Hence why its a pretty common opinion that 5.0 content has been pretty bland in comparison to previous expansions.

Accessibility is fine. Its when they over simplify and tone things down as much as they do that it becomes a problem for many players. because thats not making it accessible it's making it braindead boring..

[Theodric]

You'd have content and gameplay LESS accessible?

Why?

I enjoy hiking as a hobby. It's fun. I like a challenge, so I'll tackle all sorts of different slopes and trails.

You could make them more accessible, yet after a certain point those slopes become a flat line which ceases to be hiking at all.

By making the game accessible to every possible person ever, a similar issue arises. There's no grit or challenge after a certain point. I find dungeons in their current state to be mind numbingly boring. They're so easy and it's a crying shame they aren't designed more along the lines of the original Pharos Sirius. With adjusted rewards to make the extra challenge pay off.

[Ayuhra]

I enjoy hiking as a hobby. It's fun. I like a challenge, so I'll tackle all sorts of different slopes and trails.

You could make them more accessible, yet after a certain point those slopes become a flat line which ceases to be hiking at all.

By making the game accessible to every possible person ever, a similar issue arises. There's no grit or challenge after a certain point. I find dungeons in their current state to be mind numbingly boring. They're so easy and it's a crying shame they aren't designed more along the lines of the original Pharos Sirius. With adjusted rewards to make the extra challenge pay off.

It's a weird problem that this game has.

The skill floor is higher than in other games. To get by you need to know what you're doing after a certain point. There is a lot to learn from long and fairly complex rotations to encounter design to things as simple as customizing your HUD.

The skill ceiling, however, is a lot LOWER so when you learn the ropes and get comfortable you might feel like the game has no challenge outside Savage.

[Lauront]

It helps keep it distinct from becoming a visual novel; being a game there should be some level of challenge to overcome. Fights like Tsukuyomi or Seat of Sacrifice are pitched at around the right level of difficulty, IMO, for MSQ stuff - putting aside the group wiping if someone fails the button mash on Elidibus. Mettle loss aside, the DR stuff was also good. The opponents in the MSQs are some of the most potent lorewise, so it is a shame that sometimes the mechanics don't do them justice, and something which concerns me as we shift to Hydaelyn and Zodiark. The Ex modes may compensate from a mechanical POV, but they're non-canon usually. Much easier than the trials I mentioned, and it becomes a bit of a joke. This is irrespective of whether there are harder modes etc. for those who want to do them; it is a point regarding immersion.

Theodric is right about dungeons and I've hated the ones since Grand Cosmos.

The issue is less with the accessibility itself and more this idea people have that accessibility must mean ultra simplistic or easy. accessible can be hard as nails.the definition is able to access content. whether or not you can clear it has nothiong to do with accessiblity.

Savage raiding for example is Accessible content for anyone its designed to be that way.

it's designed in such a way that even if you only have 60-90 minutes you can jump in the raidfinder and get ya weekly clear or even just a decent bit of practice.. it's been that way since late heavensward at least
It doesnt require massive time investments of 4-6 hours a night. it is quite possible to log on for just an hour and get a couple of fights done. from a design perspective at least.. the JP side demonstrates this with great success.

Yet despite being super accessible the raid teirs get easier and easier, and arguably so does all other content.. right down to dungeons..

this doesnt make content more accessible it just makes it less rewarding and satisfying which is why players get bored. hence why its a pretty common opinion that 5.0 content has been pretty bland in comparison to previous expansions.

Accessibility is fine. Its when they over simplify and tone things down as much as they do that it becomes a problem for many players.

I don't raid in this game due to work schedules and also Eden not being particularly interesting to me as a raid tier, but from that vantage point, it sounds like there's a missing gap in the midcore area which savage is conscripted into filling, as the higher difficulty stuff filters into the (rare) ultimates. If you don't do savage, aside from the occasional alliance raid and the (badly designed) PVP, there isn't much else repeat content. Not everyone likes the relic grind and much of it consists of repeating old content. NA and EU raiding being what it is, it requires more of a time commitment.

[Y2K21]

You'd have content and gameplay LESS accessible?

Why?

Making a game accessible? Fine

Making a game oversimplistic? Bad.

You dont want to make a game oversimplistic or else it will start to wain on game identity and job identity overall. For example, if SE decided to remove positionals from melee DPS -- it would make the classes more accessible to players but it would also simplify all melee jobs to being the same difficulty and lose any active aspect of their gameplay outside of OGCD weaving.

Along with that, removing challenge or difficulty from a game actually hampers gamelife. If there are no challenges a player must overcome in terms of difficult content, endgame becomes even more stagnant. Sure, there are things like housing removed -- but if SE removed things like Savage or Ultimates, you would ultimately lower the skill ceiling of your game to where it would be near the skill floor.