Dungeons we need to talk dungeons

[RitsukoSonoda]

No FFXI is clearly harder, but much less popular. How much those two factors influence each other is open for debate but you used FFXI as an example of how harder is better. Im suggesting its difficulty caused a lot of people to quit.

My overall point about dungeon difficulty is that we have easy dungeons now as a direct consequence of the problems caused by having harder dungeons when the game launched. It used to be harder to tank, so we ended up with a shortage of tanks and tanks bailing at the start of certain dungeons. This lead to long queues. It used to be harder to heal, same thing, shortage of healers. We've had stricter DPS checks, it led to wipes and abandoned dungeon runs.

People are asking to start rolling that back, but with it you will get the problems back too.

Dungeons are designed for everyone to play. So they are tuned to make that possible with as little friction as possible. For players seeking a greater challenge the game has provided it. Asking to raise the difficulty floor will lead to less players, and more drama. SE know this, because we've seen it and done it before.

However making everything easier has resulted in other problems. Players that took the time to learn how to play the game are quitting because of boredom because the game is too easy resulting in people seeing various duties abandoned more often before they even start because the odds of encountering a player in DF that hasn't learned basic mechanics has increased. This also translates to problems with the content labeled "harder" because the easy mode players are not going to sit around satisfied with easy mode rewards. They want the shiny things they see in the "harder" content too. So it makes more sense to have the things leading up to that "harder" content be harder as well so that they're atleast prepared for the "harder" content when they jump into it. Back in the days you talk about where dungeons were harder it was fairly common to clear EX primals through DF. Now, not so much. Harder duties didn't make a shortage of tanks or healers. The playerbase created a shortage of tanks and healers. Anything SE does to try and "fix" this implied shortage is nothing more than using a band-aid to try and stop a leaking water pipe. This is due to a mentality of wanting to be the "hero" in the party and a majority of the player base associated this role with being the one that pushes button and makes big damage numbers hence DPS. Tanks will likely be the most in demand role when Endwalker launches simply because DPS and Healer are getting new job options. Tank and healer felt non existent when stormblood launched because they added 2 new dps jobs which were ones that were asked for by a large amount of the player base. Healer was the most in demand role when Shadowbringers launched because it launched with a new tank and DPS.

[Shurrikhan]

That people like difficulty and involvement in content they love. And simplicity and ease only make for a forgettable experience. As such, they should make FFXIV more challenging because the game is too easy.

I would agree with all that. But treating difficulty as if it were interchangeable with complexity on one end or or convolution on the other does design no favors -- hence my asking why you would bother pointing out something as useless as synonyms for words that end up with varyingly precise meanings, especially in the discussion of video games.

We've seen time and time again, for instance, that difficulty and accessibility are not opposite one another unless one considers "difficulty", quite uselessly, as anything that would determine an player's chances of success regardless of prior encounters or likely encounters -- as opposed to, say, the actual cognitive load (or relative increase in cognitive load and related stress) that a player would face. (Heck, it's generally a lack of difficulty across most of the game that makes certain later mechanics and the likes of Savage or Ultimate seem to lack accessibility.)

Similarly, even those who have condemned a loss in complexity have often been thrilled by reduced convolution, simply because removing that façade of complexity has made space for actual additions to the given kit's means of engagement, all while increasing quality of life in ways that do not negatively impact true complexity.

[Artemiz]

snip

But the game has never had so many players and its still rising. However many people leave because dungeons are too easy they are clearly being vastly outnumbered by the amount of new players starting, attracted in large part, by the accessibility of content.

I beg to differ about ex primals BTW, its always been party finder content for the vast majority.

And yes, new jobs effect queue times. I dont think anyone is arguing they don't.

[Shurrikhan]

But the game has never had so many players and its still rising. However many people leave because dungeons are too easy they are clearly being vastly outnumbered by the amount of new players starting, attracted in large part, by the accessibility of content.

Except you have no way of drawing causation there short of surveying a significant, random/representative sample and finding that, yes, the main reason they play is the lack of difficulty in dungeons or the ease (and thereby quickness) with which content can be consumed.

And even if they were all tell you, unequivocally, that they find the game better off for that quick consumption, that still wouldn't be enough to reasonably inform design because they aren't yet in a position where there are any costs in trade (i.e., where they'd actually run out of content), even while players for whom there is far less new content available see almost nothing but costs for design having favored to those newer players. And yet, unless you can forever and always draw in as many new players as you have players reach the end of available content, it's not sustainable. It's merely a pyramid scheme of favoring group B over former group A in order to draw in a larger group C to eventually replace A and B alike and draw group D, etc., etc.

[Artemiz]

Except you have no way of drawing causation there short of surveying a significant, random/representative sample and finding that, yes, the main reason they play is the lack of difficulty in dungeons or the ease (and thereby quickness) with which content can be consumed.

I didnt claim they did. I was countering a claim that people are leaving because dungeons are too easy. With dungeons being by far the majority of multi-player content new players experience then success is the best way of encouraging them to continue. You dont need a survey for that, its basic psychology.

[Shurrikhan]

I didnt claim they did. I was countering a claim that people are leaving because dungeons are too easy.

They... are, though. We don't know if that portion is significant, but unless our LS mates and Discord friends and the like are outright lying to us out of some nefarious ulterior motive, that group of people certainly do exist.

With dungeons being by far the majority of multi-player content new players experience then success is the best way of encouraging them to continue.

Encouragement and steadily lowering relative expectations are not necessarily, or even typically, the same thing.

[Artemiz]

They... are, though. We don't know if that portion is significant, but unless our LS mates and Discord friends and the like are outright lying to us out of some nefarious ulterior motive, that group of people certainly do exist.


Encouragement and steadily lowering relative expectations are not necessarily, or even typically, the same thing.

Im not claiming people are lying and I'm sure there are people quitting because they are bored. My point was that the playerbase is still expanding quite rapidly, especially for am MMO this old. So anyone quitting is being replaced by at least more than one new player. Its a shame for those who are bored, but the game is in good health regardless.

Im not sure what your saying with your last point, success is a very strong motivator, thats not really in doubt.

A quick edit just to add, it doesn't matter what you or I think about it, because I'm not trying to convince anyone. It was SE's decision to go down this route and I'm just trying to point out why. I will say though given how successful the game has been it does appear to have been a wise decision and any player unhappy with the difficulty of dungeons cam always do harder content.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

That's....the entire point of tough content.

Sure, that's the point, but a 4 person party empirically has a much higher point of failure than an 8 person party does though, which is exactly Yoshi-P's point.

If the healer dies in a 4 person party and you don't have a SMN/RDM, it's an automatic failure (assuming its actually tuned difficulty wise that a tank can't just perpetually self heal themselves). Contrast an 8 person party where you not only have greater odds of having a rezzer dps in your party, but also a 2nd healer that can salvage the run. Take a look at Pharos Sirius when it was first released; the dungeon was leagues more difficult than its competitor released at the same time as it, on top of being far harder than most dungeons. If you had a bad healer, you were automatically GG before the dungeon even began. Hence why the dungeon had intense issues of people instant bailing the moment they saw it and didn't want to stick around to find out if they got a good healer or not until 5-10 mins into the run.

Yoshi-P simply doesn't want difficult content where the point of failure is shifted so extremely onto a single person (the healer). Not to mention if it was sufficiently difficult enough, you'd have hilarious issues like SMN/RDM kicking all other dps to the curb in terms of meta simply because they have rezzes. The only possible way I could see Yoshi-P being on board with difficult 4 man content is if they gave everyone like a duty action rez during the dungeon to prevent the single point of failure issue.

[Nishira]

I’m guessing this discussion has been had internally by the game devs repeatedly as well tbh, there are pros and cons to their approach and they’re most likely very aware of it. Just like there’d be pros and cons to a different approach. My guess is that their goal first and foremost is to tell the story, and have as many enjoy that as are willing to play FF14. I do get that for veterans this might feel like they are valued less, it crossed my mind before. I don’t think that’s the case tho, more that they don’t want to exclude people.

From playing other games I’d say healers and tanks burning out and signing up less has usually been a result of making dungeons more difficult. Sometimes because they’re not that great themselves and struggle with the content, sometimes because others are not that great, sometimes because it can easily lead to shorter fuses and arguments. Neither of these things is usually perceived as fun.

If patience, consideration and the ability to laugh about things not going great are a given, it’s much easier to decide that challenge is ok and that it will promote teamwork and fun as a group. I haven’t played long enough to be a proper judge of whether this is the case here and the game devs are underestimating players, or whether they decided rightly to protect their players from those bad vibes.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Im not claiming people are lying and I'm sure there are people quitting because they are bored. My point was that the playerbase is still expanding quite rapidly, especially for am MMO this old. So anyone quitting is being replaced by at least more than one new player. Its a shame for those who are bored, but the game is in good health regardless.

Im not sure what your saying with your last point, success is a very strong motivator, thats not really in doubt.

A quick edit just to add, it doesn't matter what you or I think about it, because I'm not trying to convince anyone. It was SE's decision to go down this route and I'm just trying to point out why. I will say though given how successful the game has been it does appear to have been a wise decision and any player unhappy with the difficulty of dungeons cam always do harder content.

At the same time it's not the dumbing down or decisions by SE that directly relate to the recent increases in players in the game. The 2 major factors in that are the addition of a free version that can be played infinitely and offers most if not all content up to 3.0 and the rapidly declining playerbase of WoW that's caused large amounts of players from that game to seek something else to play. There's been a few of these WoW migrations over the years and they've generally resulted in poor decisions being made by Blizzard targeted towards appeasing smaller parts of the game's community which upset other parts of their community or in some cases even upset the very people they were trying to appease. Many of these players coming from WoW want this game to essentially be new WoW rather an FFXIV and keep asking for things in WoW to be used here such as their tiered "difficulty" of content. Again I feel the creation of content by "difficulty" is the core of the issue here because people are not going to be satisfied with only getting the easy rewards and the long term use of this concept in WoW is likely one of the major causes of the issues that title is facing now. Rather than repeat WoW's mistakes and deal with the same issues later, learn from WoW's mistakes and take a different course of action to build a better game.