MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[ForteNightshade]

The OP is demonstrating a classic elitist mindset. MSQs are too easy for the OP so ramp up the difficulty of the MSQs regardless of whether or not others are adversely affected and/or even excluded. This is classic elitism at its finest. Making the game harder so that only the OP and fewer and fewer people can participate. You don't have to be at the top of the game charts to be elitist. You only need to be willing to exclude others below you.

This is a ridiculous exaggeration.

While I disagree with aspect of the OP's post, your comparison to Savage is jumping to the opposite extreme. We could see an uptick in the MSQ content difficulty, or casual content in general, without it being anywhere close to Savage. Right now, the MSQ and most dungeon content is borderline fail-proof. There's a decently large middle ground between so comically easy it takes effort to fail and Savage. Whether you agree with the OP or not, their stance is moving closer to that middle ground where dungeons can actually hurt you compared to now where a single pulling tank is quite literally useless. None of that is elitism either because the OP gives examples of content casual players have already cleared en masse. The only players "excluded" would be those who want to put in almost no effort yet still expect a clear.

[VelKallor]

None of that is elitism either because the OP gives examples of content casual players have already cleared en masse. The only players "excluded" would be those who want to put in almost no effort yet still expect a clear.

Reread his post...OP wanted to exclude people over a certain age group.

While I admittedly haven't had the time to read each post in this thread, I just wanted to chime in and say that I'm not sure that making MSQ content easier in order to not exclude older players is a good thing. Why would someone in their late teens or early 20s want to play a game that was also designed to accommodate for the reaction times of someone significantly older? I do think that having a set target demographic in terms of age is a good thing, especially in terms of difficulty level.

Wanting to exclude people because they dont meet his "standards" isnt elitist...?

Yes..yes it is.

There was also another commenter in another thread that bluntly said disabled people shouldnt even play.

[ForteNightshade]

Reread his post...OP wanted to exclude people over a certain age group.



Wanting to exclude people because they dont meet his "standards" isnt elitist...?

Yes..yes it is.

Now re-read mine; specifically where I said say, they OP gave examples. Let's look at those, shall we?

"Titania
• All 3 NieR raids
• All 3 Ivalice raids
• Delubrum Reginae"

Titania is far from difficult. She simply can kill people expecting a complete faceroll.

While partly subjective, the Nier raids are among the easiest introduced. Yoshida even acknowledged as much, saying they were designed to be easier than normal because they wanted to appeal towards Nier fans potentially unfamiliar with FFXIV.

That leaves the Ivalice series and Delubrum. The former is more or less average in difficulty. The bosses can kill you, which is more than one can say about any dungeon boss. Nevertheless, they aren't walls even in their heyday. The exception being Thunder God Cid before the massive nerfs that completely neutered him. Delubrum, on the other hand, is where I'd disagree with the OP. Those bosses have more intricate designs and mechanics better fit for Normal modes.

All in all, these examples largely don't lineup with excluding the vast majority of players given it's all content that currently exists and has been cleared by a significant amount of players, especially Titania.

[VelKallor]

I willingly concede on difficulty.

Ivalice Im not really a fan of, I preferred the CT series tbh in terms of mechanics etc plus its fun ( I wish we had more to do inside the tower truthfully, explore more of its innards and maybe more lore what is can do and why...) , Ivalice is okay but not my favourite.

Nier, yes I agree..but the last one was somewhat..annoying....with some of the mechanics..then again, maybe thats more of a case to do with me needing more practice than the mechanics themselves..so yes, Ill agree on that as well.

Good point.

Titania is the exception as it IS an MSQ raid (Ill add here that Nier and Ivalice arent tied to MSQ...Ivalice is to unlock Bozja , with the counterpoint Bozja is NOT part of the main MSQ...I think you see what I mean on that one.

The key element here is we NEED to separate what is in the MSQ as opposed to what is not...maybe thats where the comparison falls over, Id like your thoughts on that. Delubrum is again not main MSQ, its part of Bozja and is optional content if you are after a relic weapon....sooooo..Delubrum vs say Dying Gasp as a contrast?

MSQ on its own should NOT be a bloody brick wall, the OPs attitudes on older players actually grates on me..I was actually astounded that ANYONE is still stuck in a 2004 mindset..but I am sure he means well, bless his gentle, kind heart.

[Eraden]

This is a ridiculous exaggeration.

While I disagree with aspect of the OP's post, your comparison to Savage is jumping to the opposite extreme. We could see an uptick in the MSQ content difficulty, or casual content in general, without it being anywhere close to Savage. Right now, the MSQ and most dungeon content is borderline fail-proof. There's a decently large middle ground between so comically easy it takes effort to fail and Savage. Whether you agree with the OP or not, their stance is moving closer to that middle ground where dungeons can actually hurt you compared to now where a single pulling tank is quite literally useless. None of that is elitism either because the OP gives examples of content casual players have already cleared en masse. The only players "excluded" would be those who want to put in almost no effort yet still expect a clear.

There is a considerable amount of content that bridges the gap between the MSQs and Savage tier content. There is no need to force the MSQs to be harder if you are looking for any other sort of challenge. It already exists. MSQs, more specifically the trials, are NOT easy for me to do. Titania was quite difficult for me to get done. Does that mean that in your eyes I should be excluded because I don't want to put in any effort? Well newsflash: by the time I got finished doing Titania I was shaking like a leaf. I was trying my damnedest to do everything right and barely got it done. I have a few friends who also have difficulty getting the trials done. But in your eyes we are people "who want to put in almost no effort yet still expect a clear". I am going to chalk this up to you being grossly ignorant of what people like myself go through when playing this game, rather than you trying to outright libel me. I am hoping that you are not that malicious. The simple fact is there will be people who will be excluded from this game if the MSQs are made harder and not all of those people are lazy like you seem to suggest.

[ForteNightshade]

There is a considerable amount of content that bridges the gap between the MSQs and Savage tier content. There is no need to force the MSQs to be harder if you are looking for any other sort of challenge. It already exists. MSQs, more specifically the trials, are NOT easy for me to do. Titania was quite difficult for me to get done. Does that mean that in your eyes I should be excluded because I don't want to put in any effort? Well newsflash: by the time I got finished doing Titania I was shaking like a leaf. I was trying my damnedest to do everything right and barely got it done. I have a few friends who also have difficulty getting the trials done. But in your eyes we are people "who want to put in almost no effort yet still expect a clear". I am going to chalk this up to you being grossly ignorant of what people like myself go through when playing this game, rather than you trying to outright libel me. I am hoping that you are not that malicious. The simple fact is there will be people who will be excluded from this game if the MSQs are made harder and not all of those people are lazy like you seem to suggest.

To be entirely blunt, if you're "shaking like a leaf" over Titania, then you simply haven't practiced whatsoever prior to reaching her. She introduces nothing the game hasn't thrown at you already in spades. The fact you're painting her as some monumental challenge screams you either don't know mechanic well enough or don't play your job well. Now either is entirely fine... provided you're willing to practice and get better. Considering a lot of players aren't, well, my statement stands. When I see Black Mages who don't press Fire 1 in their rotation, I'm going to say they aren't putting in much effort to learn considering that's the base rotation from ARR levels.

Nevertheless, nobody is asking for the MSQ content to be some insurmountable wall. A good chunk of people would like things like dungeons to be more than simply wall pull a bunch of wet noodles and sleep to victory. When dungeons don't even need a healer it speaks volumes to how grossly undertuned they are.

As for this "considerable amount of content between MSQ and Savage." Where? A good chunk of that content has continuously been watered down because god forbid there's content people can't do. Sephirot Unreal will be coming out in three weeks time and he will completely obliterate every EX trial that existed over the last three years that isn't named Warrior of Light. The difference from his era and now is staggering. Hydaelyn and Zodiark were so woefully undertuned, they were cleared, on release, without a healer. Endsinger is a 12 minute fight an average PF group will kill in 9. She has a single "gotcha" mechanic that will one-shot. Otherwise, she does practically nothing. One person slaps on the Danger Dorito and leads everyone to victory. Even Savage isn't immune to this as P1S is the easiest first entry fight we've had since Alte Roite, who was notoriously meme'd on when he was killed in a single pull.

[Packetdancer]

To be entirely blunt, if you're "shaking like a leaf" over Titania, then you simply haven't practiced whatsoever prior to reaching her. She introduces nothing the game hasn't thrown at you already in spades. The fact you're painting her as some monumental challenge screams you either don't know mechanic well enough or don't play your job well. Now either is entirely fine... provided you're willing to practice and get better.

I'm not 100% sure I agree with this. While I agree the Titania trial is not actually possessed of any really remotely difficult mechanics, I don't think it introduces nothing the game hasn't thrown at someone prior. At least, if the person in question has only really done MSQ content.

Because while none of those mechanics are new, I think some of them are ones that hadn't been used in normal content prior to Titania... or if they had been used, they weren't used often.

For instance, the 'starburst' telegraph that shows where her thorns will go; I can't offhand think of anywhere prior to Titania that those get used in normal content. (I may be forgetting one, though, I grant.) Similarly, things like sealing the puddles and then stacking in one of those puddles for the fire punch... while it's not unheard-of for normal content to have follow-on mechanics like that, I would say it is uncommon.

Add to that the fact that Titania has some sort of weird -- and entirely unwarranted -- reputation for being Super Difficult, and I've seen folks enter that trial nervous to start with. And being nervous about "oh god I'm going to mess up" is probably not the best mindset to make tackling potentially somewhat-unfamiliar mechanics feel like a simple task.

When I see Black Mages who don't press Fire 1 in their rotation, I'm going to say they aren't putting in much effort to learn considering that's the base rotation from ARR levels.

...to be honest, I don't use Fire I in my black mage rotation.

It's like... Fire III, Fire IV, Fire IV, Fire IV, Fire IV (if I've got the time/speed to pull that fourth one off before Astral Fire drops off), Despair, Manafont, Fire IV, Despair, Blizzard III, Blizzard IV, Thunder III, and cycle back to the start with Fire III. Obviously with some Xenoglossy, Sharpcast, Triplecast, and Swiftcast mixed in there as appropriate. (As black mage is my last DPS to get to 90, I don't yet have Paradox to work into that anywhere.)

That said, I also don't play black mage much -- or play it in any particularly high-end content, because it's 100% my least favorite job in the game -- so I grant I might be doing it wrong. (In fact, I am probably doing it wrong.) But that just feels to me like it should be the most effective rotation, and there's no place in there I see for Fire I.

[Deveryn]

I'm not 100% sure I agree with this. While I agree the Titania trial is not actually possessed of any really remotely difficult mechanics, I don't think it introduces nothing the game hasn't thrown at someone prior. At least, if the person in question has only really done MSQ content.

Because while none of those mechanics are new, I think some of them are ones that hadn't been used in normal content prior to Titania... or if they had been used, they weren't used often.

For instance, the 'starburst' telegraph that shows where her thorns will go; I can't offhand think of anywhere prior to Titania that those get used in normal content. (I may be forgetting one, though, I grant.) Similarly, things like sealing the puddles and then stacking in one of those puddles for the fire punch... while it's not unheard-of for normal content to have follow-on mechanics like that, I would say it is uncommon.

The Mist Dragon in The Burn uses the starburst telegraph. You get one first then 2 later on.

As for elemental damage, that's been used enough and the story certainly talks enough about how the elements oppose each other. When you face Shinryu, you have puddles that give you +fire resist and -lightning.

The bridge between MSQ content and extreme / savage is in doing the regular content and playing through everything more than once and properly learning what does what. To make this all easier, they're going back and making sure all markers are consistent. In the meantime, the information is out there for all the fights.

[Packetdancer]

The Mist Dragon in The Burn uses the starburst telegraph. You get one first then 2 later on.

Ah! Thank you; I suspected I might be forgetting one.

(It's been a long day. I've had a lot of meetings. Please kill me.)

As for elemental damage, that's been used enough and the story certainly talks enough about how the elements oppose each other. When you face Shinryu, you have puddles that give you +fire resist and -lightning.

While I agree, I will point out that Shinryu is a duty that also has a (not terribly deserved) reputation for being difficult, and where I've seen people just flail around and die during that specific part before. So I'm not entirely convinced it's a duty that is conducive to really learning that for the average player, much less remembering it later in the heat of the moment when they're in an unfamiliar duty.

The bridge between MSQ content and extreme / savage is in doing the regular content and playing through everything more than once and properly learning what does what. To make this all easier, they're going back and making sure all markers are consistent. In the meantime, the information is out there for all the fights.

While -- again -- I agree almost entirely with this, I will say that I think where the step-up from normal content to higher-end is difficult for some is that almost nothing in normal content requires you to pay close attention to the environment, as opposed to just watching telegraphs/symbols. And that's the part I don't think is entirely well-covered by existing content -- or rather, where it is covered by content with an intermediate difficulty, it's in content that ends up being rather niche and having something of a shelf-life. (Bozjan critical engagements et al.)

[redheadturk]

For instance, the 'starburst' telegraph that shows where her thorns will go; I can't offhand think of anywhere prior to Titania that those get used in normal content. (I may be forgetting one, though, I grant.) Similarly, things like sealing the puddles and then stacking in one of those puddles for the fire punch... while it's not unheard-of for normal content to have follow-on mechanics like that, I would say it is uncommon.

The Burn is the only other place I have ever seen that mechanic, and I hated it in that too.