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

[KayRadley]

Meanwhile me: Doesn’t care about politics and happily bought diablo 3 and is having a blast with it.

If people stopped playing games made by shitty people or businesses, we wouldn’t have any games left to play. SE isn’t exempt from this either.

That's a sacrifice I'd happily make.

[s1mulacrum]

The WoW exodus was caused by what Blizzard is currently doing on the inside of their company. I played Diablo 3 constantly, but stopped the second the news hit. I still miss playing it, but any company that does what Blizzard did does not deserve my time or money.

This is why I said "in part". I think it was the straw that broke the camel's back for most people, myself included. There can be many factors that can contribute to a person's decision.

[Felis-Silvertis]

Maybe create a "difficult mode"setting in your client that splits some abilities to create extra buttons, so that those who want the "challenge" can have their "challenge".

[-BlueGreen-]

It sucks for those of us who can play a more challenging game, but when and where cash is king, accessibility will always be viewed as the best option. Why?

• A skilled player can play any game an unskilled player can, but not the other way around. Easy game = larger potential audience = larger potential income
• Can't make some classes 'hard' and others 'easy'. People who like the looks of a 'hard' class but are unable to play it well will nag to have changes made to make the class more accessible
• We can't have different styles/specs of each class. If we did, those chasing the meta around will force near uniformity in end game content. Why? Easy gameplay reduces the odds of making a mistake, so you'll be forced into running the easy setup unless the hard setup increases DPS, in which case easy-mode players will be banned from participating in places where DPS is king. Either way the choice is effectively removed from the player (just like base attribute points). If there's ultimately not going to be diversity, why invest resources to have it at all?

Maybe, just maybe it could be possible to balance the multi-spec thing to have it be generally acceptable. If "easy mode" versions of jobs could theoretically reach something like 80% of the theoretical max output of the "hard mode", I suspect that more casual raiding groups might be open to allowing "easy mode" players that's doing close to that 80% than asking them to do "hard mode" and then not clearing because they only manage 50-60% (or less). Of course, we've all seen groups who refuse to recruit anyone who isn't a top-tier job for the raiding meta because the lower cap on max DPS tends to translate to "greater chance of failing DPS checks" in their minds.

I feel like no matter how it's balanced, it'll be hard for an actual choice to gain traction without proper transparency (e.g. in-game DPS meters, showing who's in easy/hard modes, showing groups which have cleared content while using one mode or the other). Granted, that's pretty much not going to happen as SE has made it very clear that they aren't going to add in-game DPS meters.

[s1mulacrum]

Meanwhile me: Doesn’t care about politics and happily bought diablo 3 and is having a blast with it.

If people stopped playing games made by shitty people or businesses, we wouldn’t have any games left to play. SE isn’t exempt from this either.

You should read the allegations against Blizzard execs a little more closely, friend. I'm not sure how sexual harassment, assault, and suicide = politics, but okay.

Shitty isn't binary: it is subject to gradation. Yoshi-P was creepy to a cosplayer once and I played anyway b/c I assume he was just trying to meme. Companies I still support engage in ethically questionable behavior b/c of perverse incentives created by our economic system. I understand relativity. What Blizzard execs did is FAR worse. The fact that you are being that dismissive about real people's suffering and reducing all of that to "politics" is gross.

[Roflcopter]

It sucks for those of us who can play a more challenging game, but when and where cash is king, accessibility will always be viewed as the best option. Why?

• A skilled player can play any game an unskilled player can, but not the other way around. Easy game = larger potential audience = larger potential income
• Can't make some classes 'hard' and others 'easy'. People who like the looks of a 'hard' class but are unable to play it well will nag to have changes made to make the class more accessible
• We can't have different styles/specs of each class. If we did, those chasing the meta around will force near uniformity in end game content. Why? Easy gameplay reduces the odds of making a mistake, so you'll be forced into running the easy setup unless the hard setup increases DPS, in which case easy-mode players will be banned from participating in places where DPS is king. Either way the choice is effectively removed from the player (just like base attribute points). If there's ultimately not going to be diversity, why invest resources to have it at all?

Maybe, just maybe it could be possible to balance the multi-spec thing to have it be generally acceptable. If "easy mode" versions of jobs could theoretically reach something like 80% of the theoretical max output of the "hard mode", I suspect that more casual raiding groups might be open to allowing "easy mode" players that's doing close to that 80% than asking them to do "hard mode" and then not clearing because they only manage 50-60% (or less). Of course, we've all seen groups who refuse to recruit anyone who isn't a top-tier job for the raiding meta because the lower cap on max DPS tends to translate to "greater chance of failing DPS checks" in their minds.

I feel like no matter how it's balanced, it'll be hard for an actual choice to gain traction without proper transparency (e.g. in-game DPS meters, showing who's in easy/hard modes, showing groups which have cleared content while using one mode or the other). Granted, that's pretty much not going to happen as SE has made it very clear that they aren't going to add in-game DPS meters.

People who talk this way are almost never anywhere close to as good as they think or say they are. This is just something you learn after playing mmorpgs for 25 years.

[Anemic]

You should read the allegations against Blizzard execs a little more closely, friend. I'm not sure how sexual harassment, assault, and suicide = politics, but okay.

Shitty isn't binary: it is subject to gradation. Yoshi-P was creepy to a cosplayer once and I played anyway b/c I assume he was just trying to meme. Companies I still support engage in ethically questionable behavior b/c of perverse incentives created by our economic system. I understand relativity. What Blizzard execs did is FAR worse. The fact that you are being that dismissive about real people's suffering and reducing all of that to "politics" is gross.

It's in the direction society or maybe more so NA has been going as of the late decade. Pretty sadge IMO.

[Felis-Silvertis]

FFXIV was never really designed to be hardcore competitive, complex game. Even the 1.0 was, while grindy and tedious, fairly straightforward in its combat gameplay.
On my server (Faerie), majority of people play the game as a single player RPG and only use the MMO aspects for socializing and fun group activities, rather than to accomplish challenging goals, and it feels at least, that the sizeable chunck of the population plays this way (as much as some people wish it wasn't so).
So while personally I wouldn't necessarily object to a more complex gameplay, I would be concerned that by doing so we will lose more than we will gain.

[KizuyaKatogami]

You should read the allegations against Blizzard execs a little more closely, friend. I'm not sure how sexual harassment, assault, and suicide = politics, but okay.

Shitty isn't binary: it is subject to gradation. Yoshi-P was creepy to a cosplayer once and I played anyway b/c I assume he was just trying to meme. Companies I still support engage in ethically questionable behavior b/c of perverse incentives created by our economic system. I understand relativity. What Blizzard execs did is FAR worse. The fact that you are being that dismissive about real people's suffering and reducing all of that to "politics" is gross.

Its video games. I typically dont really care what the company themselves do, i detach them from the game itself. I can still find a game to be made well and have fun, just because the people behind it may be bad doesnt really change that for me.I could hardly care what you think of me though, this playerbase has shown one too many times its....lackluster taste.Either way i play games to retreat from real life. I dont need people bringing up that a company did xyz and that i shouldnt play their game because of it. Its childish.

[KayRadley]

FFXIV was never really designed to be hardcore competitive, complex game. Even the 1.0 was, while grindy and tedious, fairly straightforward in its combat gameplay.
On my server (Faerie), majority of people play the game as a single player RPG and only use the MMO aspects for socializing and fun group activities, rather than to accomplish challenging goals, and it feels at least, that the sizeable chunck of the population plays this way (as much as some people wish it wasn't so).
So while personally I wouldn't necessarily object to a more complex gameplay, I would be concerned that by doing so we will lose more than we will gain.

This, this, a thousand times this. If you want to play a game that is super-duper-complex, play FFXI.