MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I want you to realize something: think about how bad the average player you meet in the DF is, and then realize that half of them are somehow even worse than that by the law of averages.

It's a simple reality, but there is a substantial chunk of this playerbase that plays purely for the story, who's 'savage' equivalent for their personal difficulty perception is one of the easier 24man raids; a sizeable chunk that plays the game because they don't want to be challenged, to simply lay back and enjoy some relaxed, casual content for some tomes and have fun with friends. With a game that has content and future story locked behind MSQ content, it's an important goal in its design that anyone, regardless of their skill, can be brought to the finish line, whether through being carried by other players, or given 100% echo to trivialize instances. Otherwise, that player, who mind you, might be a massive whale on the mogstation and might pay 50x you ever will on your sub in mogstation items and thus has more intrinsic value to Square as a customer than you do, will find another game.

Asking for MSQ to be harder is the literal antithesis to what Square wants. The MSQ has to be so easy anyone can get through it no matter what, so all the instances tied to it have to be easy. Otherwise, you get stuff like Final Steps of Faith/Royal Menagrie where those people are calling for nerfs because they're getting hardwalled and simply waiting until they can find a group that can carry them, or they just leave the game entirely. Not even old content is exempt from this either, even during the game's "glory days" as many like to remember, the original Steps of Faith was so unforgiving compared to any DF content before it the devs had to literally nerf the content so hard, because asking for people to have basic teamwork and know the bare rotation is too tall an order. Even Yoshi-P has said they prefer larger scale group content since it allows the skilled few of the party to more easily carry the many bads.

There's also the fact that due to jump potions existing, every expansion has to be a casual 'jump in' point that can ease these low-skilled players in. Making later content harder and saying 'screw the jumpers, let them trial by fire for purchasing it' is how you get a stale, aging playerbase with little lifeblood coming in, and Square knows that all too well.

Putting a mandatory, difficult challenge in front of these players will not make them get better. For many of them who play video games to relax and not have to deal with a challenge, it will make them give up and find something else. It's a blunt truth many people in favor of making stuff harder like to pretend otherwise. This has been a point discussed well over half a decade now, and the devs have ignored it or simply gave evidence to the contrary; your energy is better spent asking for optional difficult stuff to be added to the game, not trying to force mandatory content to become more difficult that will alienate a sizeable chunk of the playerbase.

Also I dunno what experience you had with the 83 trial; but that place is ridiculously wipeapalooza to the point I stopped queueing trial roulette when >= 83. it places so much difficulty on the healers due to how ruthless that stack marker is when <8 people from people dying to everything imaginable in that fight that if your group doesn't have good ones, you're basically guaranteed to have to wipe at least once or twice to get some echo.

[Illmaeran]

Otherwise, you get stuff like Final Steps of Faith/Royal Menagrie where those people are calling for nerfs because they're getting hardwalled and simply waiting until they can find a group that can carry them, or they just leave the game entirely.

This describes me. A couple of days before Stormblood released I was diagnosed with a very serious illness and started extremely aggressive treatment. That treatment led to significant reduction in both my physical and mental reflexes, making the solo duty in Azim Steppe undoable, no matter how many times I tried on Very Easy. It was so frustrating to get hard walled on an MSQ point that I left and didn't come back until just before Endwalker. Thankfully, over time my situation's improved, but I'm never going to have the reflexes or processing speed I did pre-treatment. Some of the EW MSQ dungeons/trials were very challenging for me; a couple to the point where I had to put them on the back burner until I could get friends to help me through them.

There are people in my FC who are retired and max out at MSQ/DF difficulty and, like me, at times have needed help getting through fights like the three sisters. People like us absolutely do exist in the player base and absolutely do appreciate the lower difficulty of MSQ compared to things like Savage and Ultimate. No content required by the MSQ should be so difficult that it limits any player's ability to get through it. Likewise, anything that winds up on the general DF/Roulette list should be doable by all players. The exception I grant to this are alliance raids that need to be unlocked. I know my limits and have specifically left things like Eden and Omega locked to keep from getting them in DF. If Ivalice wasn't required for Bozja, I'd have left that locked too.

Increasing challenge should only come as optional content. I firmly believe this game needs this challenging content to meet the desires of the portion of the player base who seek it out; it's only fair that paying customers have that at their disposal. I hope the Criterion dungeons help fill the gap between DF-level challenge and Savage; that's another area the game needs to address.

As one of the previous posters mentioned, MMOs are a massive investment and depend on player retention to remain viable. In order to accomplish this, content needs to be as accessible to as many people as possible. This means they can't reach the difficulty of single player games or those MMOs focused on high-end raiding, ala Wildstar and current WoW without risking losing a significant portion of their player base. The vast majority of people I play with are looking for a fun time playing through casual content with friends in a good social atmosphere. We are the bread and butter of the MMO community that any MMO developer needs to design for in order to maximize their customer base. We're also the group of people a contingent of the people here on the OF call "actively bad". In all my years of playing this game I've never met anyone who's intentionally played poorly. They may only want to play the game at DF difficulty, but none of them have ever actively expressed that they only want to hit a basic combo and forget everything else in their skill kit.

It is a balancing act though. As ramp it up to much and engagement becomes frustration and drives players away just as quickly as setting the bar to low does..

This happened in Heavensward. Players during original ARR asked for more difficulty and SE provided. However, the response from the larger portion of the player base was that it was too difficult so SE tuned it downward. Every adjustment toward being more easy is a response to the majority of input SE receive. They're not doing it in a vacuum and would be foolish to make arbitrary changes without referencing player input to see where the largest portion of their customers lay.

I believe we're now at the point where SE are looking to increase the offerings of optional, more difficult, content while keeping MSQ and general dungeons/trials at the point the majority of the community are seeking.