If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

[Kolsykol]

As always, there is a huge bias among the people likely to post on forums compared to the total population of people who play the game. People here play more often, do new content sooner, and are way more likely to do more difficult content in the game than the average player. It's natural for those types of players, for whom a single game is a big part of their lives, to feel like the game is second nature and thus quite simple to execute. Then any decrease in complexity for those people is going from "easy" to "even easier."

But this is simply not the case for a huge percentage of players. They don't level up 17 jobs to the max, they don't cap tomestones every week, and they definitely don't do every raid and extreme and ultimate every time they're added. They play the game for a little bit when new story is added, and it takes up only as much time as the other 30 games they played that year (or they actually have "a life" and don't do that either, but you get the idea). There are way more people who are closer to this style than "half" of the people who play the game, and there are of course even more of them who don't play the game at all because MMOs tend to be inscrutable to newcomers with only really WoW and FFXIV ever breaking out into the mainstream of gaming. I've had a handful of friends who have tried FFXIV out at various points and they are completely overwhelmed by how many actions they have to learn when to use, as well as the thousands of UI settings and various menus that mean nothing until you've played the game for 50 hours.

I don't mean to say that either of these is more valid than the other, just to point out that a company like Square Enix providing a subscription service game is going to go with doing the thing that they think is good for a majority of people and not a minority. It might seem like the forums or "everyone I know" agrees that the game is too simple or too easy, but that sampling is heavily skewed and not likely to be representative of the real majority.

I just don't think that the game should be designed for those people.
Those people will manage by playing suboptimally just fine I don't think that you need to lower the skill ceiling or even floor for them.
I see people in dungeons that don't even have their Job crystal yet at lvl 50 and SAM players who are spamming AoE on bosses and doing the backstep, ranged and charge combo over and over again and somehow they still manage to get by in the content they do.
Those people aren't suddenly going to learn because Kaiten gets removed or whatever.

You also learn the actions gradually, you have time to get used to each one of them.
Also if you're a new player you're going to have to learn...
Part of the learning process is not knowing and not being used to things, I just really dislike this mentality that instead of people learning we need to dumb things down.
I see this every time in a game when people run into a challenge and I just kinda find it a bit sad tbh.
And I don't think it should negatively affect the rest of us.

Like is '' beginners aren't playing well '' really an actual argument here?
I see this in fighting games too with people asking for them to be dumbed down because beginners are jumping in and can't do complex combos.
Being able to do complex combos doesn't make you a better player either you can do all the combos in the world and still get your ass kicked.
It's the same in FFXIV, even if they turned the Jobs all into 1 button spam the people these changes are supposedly aimed at would still not clear content where DPS even matters.

Plus the game is more popular than it's ever been. Claiming that half the playerbase is going to vanish just because they're fixing button bloat is just the worst kind of hyperbole. It won't have a negative effect at all.

If this was really about fixing '' button bloat '' then why is Kaiten being removed and why isn't Ikishoten turning into Ogi Namikiri or Shoha 1 and 2 being merged?
That'd do more too and actually be more understandable.

If you actually talk to players who play these Jobs I have a very hard time believing that they'd mention Kaiten as button bloat if you asked them.

[Colt47]

We don't really have enough information to say the game is being "dumbed down". WoW was technically dumbed down when they introduced Warlords of Draenor, but look at all the changes that happened: It wasn't simplifying controls that did it as much as automation of in-game activities. Players definitely sought efficiency, but at the same time granting that in it's most extreme form simply turned the game into a soul-less husk.

[Tsukino]

I just don't think that the game should be designed for those people.
Those people will manage by playing suboptimally just fine I don't think that you need to lower the skill ceiling or even floor for them.
I see people in dungeons that don't even have their Job crystal yet at lvl 50 and SAM players who are spamming AoE on bosses and doing the backstep, ranged and charge combo over and over again and somehow they still manage to get by in the content they do.
Those people aren't suddenly going to learn because Kaiten gets removed or whatever.

You also learn the actions gradually, you have time to get used to each one of them.



If this was really about fixing '' button bloat '' then why is Kaiten being removed and why isn't Ikishoten turning into Ogi Namikiri or Shoha 1 and 2 being merged?
That'd do more to and actually be more understandable.

If you actually talk to players who play these Jobs I have a very hard time believing that they'd mention Kaiten as button bloat if you asked them.

That's fair, that people don't have to be good at the game or fully understand anything at first, and will eventually get used to it and get better with time and practice. In fact, that works great for people like me (who I weirdly left out for some reason) for whom difficulty is just a non-factor in the games they pick to play or not.

But my point was as a response to the OP, who said half the players will quit if they keep dumbing down the game. They won't, not even close to half of the people who play the game even perceive the game as being simple, they're not even likely to be aware of all the updates and changes.

[KizuyaKatogami]

We don't really have enough information to say the game is being "dumbed down". WoW was technically dumbed down when they introduced Warlords of Draenor, but look at all the changes that happened: It wasn't simplifying controls that did it as much as automation of in-game activities. Players definitely sought efficiency, but at the same time granting that in it's most extreme form simply turned the game into a soul-less husk.

Really? So them getting rid of harder mechanics and simplifying dungeons isn’t enough information? Them specifically saying they want to streamline future dungeons isn’t enough information? Them gutting healers and dps jobs every expansion isn’t enough information? What IS enough information?

[Raoabolic]

It's this thread again? It's a simple concept. Keep doing things that alienate the veteran playerbase (less content per patch, hominization of all classes, weak effort ala blue mage and hrothgar, ect.) and they leave. You do get new players but they will eventually become the new vets and see the same problems. Unless the devs can keep that revolving door moving then they will start to see a decline in players. It's not the first time this happened and that's okay, no game can last forever. I would have assumed Endwalker would have taught that lesson, but, you know, the ending and all. Or I might be wrong and glamour really will be the end game at the end of the day!

[Nekokaori]

Plus the game is more popular than it's ever been. Claiming that half the playerbase is going to vanish just because they're fixing button bloat is just the worst kind of hyperbole. It won't have a negative effect at all.

first off their is 0 button bloat with any job what so ever I play on controller 1 bar only 1 bar gets filled with any job if you know how to sort out and think how am i going to set up my lay out u have 0 buttton bloat in fact











we dont have enough buttons on any job

very easy and not annoying to switch between bars at all

anyone claiming button bloat is a lier and or 2 stupid to know how to set up bars

[Colt47]

Really? So them getting rid of harder mechanics and simplifying dungeons isn’t enough information? Them specifically saying they want to streamline future dungeons isn’t enough information? Them gutting healers and dps jobs every expansion isn’t enough information? What IS enough information?

They're trying to figure out how to design the game from a new baseline. It's possible the new style of game they want will be too easy, but they can go from there to change and rebalance things. The things they are streamlining involve content that was built for the transition period when the game went from 1.0 to 2.0. Good old days of stone skin, getting knocked off a platform because ping was horrible and Titan was a nightmare, etc. Also I wouldn't call the changes to jobs streamlining as much as "how do we get this thing to work on controller as well as these other jobs?"

[RyuDragnier]

Oh wow, this thread again. I think this thread has appeared at the beginning of almost every expansion, with the exception of HW, screaming about how dumbing down the game is going to lose players...which has not been proven by reality, as the game gets more and more players every expansion.

[MisterNublet]

Plus the game is more popular than it's ever been. Claiming that half the playerbase is going to vanish just because they're fixing button bloat is just the worst kind of hyperbole. It won't have a negative effect at all.

WoW was at its height at the start of WotLK, but at the same time they started a new motto "Bring the player and not the class". They simplified classes, and homogenization across the board. They began trivializing non-raid content.

Blizzard stopped reporting subscriptions during WotLK, and the player base began to decline as the expansion grew older. Everything came to a head, and exploded in Blizzards face with the release of Cataclysm.

SE is just repeating history with Endwalker.

[Raim]

Actually according to the latest census its just gone up again..