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

[s1mulacrum]

It's a Souls-like game that has 4 player co-op. It isn't an MMO. Honestly I don't think MMOs can sustain challenging content given the nature of the beast. If you want challenge, your best bet is migrating to other game types or activities imo.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I feel like the issue is they're listening to people like that guy that said Elden Ring was garbage because it didn't let him select an "easy mode" difficulty causing the first boss to kill him in 5 seconds so it wasn't made for everyone and shouldn't exist. Some games benefit from the ability to select difficulties for player skill level accessibility but other games don't. In the case of MMO's I'm more inclined to say dumbing things down and making some things easier and other things ends up doing more harm than good. The reason being that it creates far too many situations in group content with other people where players become nothing but a hinderance or burden to the group because they were given a path to jump into that content without actually having to learn how to play the game, they haven't learned about game mechanics or markers, they haven't learned what their job's skills do, etc...

This just creates rifts in the player base resulting in segregation, pointless arguments, wasted time, and so on.

A majority of the nerfs done were to MSQ duties, many of them party duties tied into the MSQ others to specific solo duties or the later addition of people being able to just die immediately on a solo duty then choose "easy ignore any and all mechanics" mode. I personally don't agree with any of it as the duties nerfed weren't difficult to begin with and I feel the point of the MSQ should have been to develop the player so they're competent enough to do the other optional "endgame" content later. There are plenty of other game genre's and titles out there for players that want to play a game and finish it without actually learning how anything in the game works.

In short for the most part I feel like online titles like this game and other MMO's need to stick to making players learn the game to proceed and leave all the dumbing down and difficulty nerfing to offline game titles.

[s1mulacrum]

This is literally going to happen before 6.5

The funny thing is I don't even hate the idea of giving people this option for MSQ lol. I just hated that all of this "dumbing down" affects my and others' experience of the game and "high-level" content in particular. I think we just have to accept that this game isn't meant for hardcore players and move on. I do think these things will hurt the game in the long run like it did for WoW, but it is easy for devs to not see this if the changes are slow enough.

It reminds me of the boiled frog apologue or the Sorites Paradox.

[D6Damager]

"If you want a challenge play Ultimate" this is straight from the developer's mouth. Otherwise, the game has thrived for years being casual friendly. If you're bored and unhappy then switch games, there's tons of more challenging games out there and they aren't going to change what has been successful for them.

[Lily_Skye]

jokes on you i'm a filthy casual and i love these patches

[Caurcas]

"If you want a challenge play Ultimate" this is straight from the developer's mouth. Otherwise, the game has thrived for years being casual friendly. If you're bored and unhappy then switch games, there's tons of more challenging games out there and they aren't going to change what has been successful for them.

Actually they had a formula that worked for both casual and non-casual alike. Jobs had skill cellings and skill floors. We got a balance of difficulty in the content as well across the board. Now that formula has been abandoned for short term gain.

[s1mulacrum]

"If you want a challenge play Ultimate" this is straight from the developer's mouth. Otherwise, the game has thrived for years being casual friendly. If you're bored and unhappy then switch games, there's tons of more challenging games out there and they aren't going to change what has been successful for them.

I agree that this is what people should do, but it seems like you don't understand the point we are making while also making it for us. FFXIV got its big influx of subs from the WoW exodus. WoW lost subs in part by doing all of the things FFXIV is currently doing. If people do leave the game b/c of this pattern of changes (as we both suggest), then that shows that these decisions are making people leave. The OP's entire point is that SE will lose players, which is the opposite of successful.

[BaconBits]

Yes, both are unsightly and unhealthy to contribution. Thing is the dude perpetuates the stereotype, and then you have people clever enough to try and conform to said stereotype. Personally, I wouldn’t exactly be surprised people holding a mindset against more complexities in the game when on several occasions the forums have used logs to try and discredit opinion, or just to borderline harass. But again, both are unsightly.

I'm not here for intelligent discussion, especially not with someone that can barely play their way out of a paper bag.

[Kaurhz]

I'm not here for intelligent discussion, especially not with someone that can barely play their way out of a paper bag.

But you will waste time on them, sound thinking there!

[Imoye]

Cause you have no clue how the silent majority feels about this clearly.

You yourself have aboslutely no clue what the "silent majority" feels because they chose to be silent. Thus, their opinion could be anything. Their silence is on them and not relevant to anything discussed here. As you can see from the front page on the forum and also in a lot of threads on Reddit, the sentiments I have noted here are widely shared. Meanwhile, you're here belittling nonsense about some imagined disparity between minority and majority opinion that adds no value nor insight to the discussion at hand.