MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[Packetdancer]

It's not true, as has been shown in the past in other games which have tried this. Other games have ramped up the difficulty, with that mindset that by doing so it'll motivate players to get better.... and all they ended up doing was chasing players away.

Or my own beloved and much-missed WildStar.

The early levels were fairly accessible. However, WildStar did not have a smooth difficulty curve; in fact, somewhere around... I wanna say level 40? ...it turned into more of a difficulty cliff. More than a few people I knew slammed into that cliff at high speed; a few decided to climb it, but others bounced off, looked at the cliff, and went "Nope" and vanished back to other games.

I mean, don't get me wrong... I loved WildStar, but I'm under no illusions that the difficulty curve was the only mistake the game made. But it was definitely a mistake, and one that I definitely don't think helped player retention. Since I personally knew like... 8 people who hit that level range and noped out, saying they played games to relax and didn't find that sudden cliff relaxing. Or enjoyable.

[vetch]

If you make it too difficult you're going to alienate and fail to draw in people who primarily (or only) care about the story.

Contrariwise, if you make it too easy you're going to alienate people who don't want to be bored while playing. This is why single-player games often have difficulty settings.

If other people aren't good (and let's be honest, encountering somebody who's not paying attention or just not good at their job in game is inevitable) you're going to have a hard time clearing content.

If by 'have a hard time' you mean 'leave, do something else for 30 minutes, and then requeue to try and get someone who's not *so* bad that they can't finish an MSQ dungeon within a 90-minute lockout'.

MMOs are different beasts. Even XI, which was / is an old-school MMO with the more grind-heavy mindset that was common of it's time, requires other people to "git gud" for you to have fun. There's a reason that game design went the way of the dodo.

Yes. The reason is because that type of MMO design brings in merely 'some profit' instead of 'loads and loads of profit'. It's not that there's no demand for the FF11 style. People still play FF11.

[VelKallor]

I mean, don't get me wrong... I loved WildStar, but I'm under no illusions that the difficulty curve was the only mistake the game made. But it was definitely a mistake, and one that I definitely don't think helped player retention. Since I personally knew like... 8 people who hit that level range and noped out, saying they played games to relax and didn't find that sudden cliff relaxing. Or enjoyable.

When 0.05% of your playerbase sees raid content, thats a red flag something is seriously wrong.

[Kamatsu]

When 0.05% of your playerbase sees raid content, thats a red flag something is seriously wrong.

Hmm, here's an interesting tidbit for you: WoW, the "raiding MMO"... as at Burning Crusade only had 6% of it's active player base ever set foot into a raid. Not only that, only 4% cleared the 1st raid, only 1% made it to the penultimate raid, and less than 0.5% cleared it.

This is according to WoW dev's way back when they were working on WotLK and talking about why they were making sweeping changes to the raiding scene - such as moving the penultimate vanilla raid to the base tier in LK, making entry into raiding easier, working on a LFR tool... it was because despite WoW being knowing as a "Raid or die" game... very few of it's casual playerbase wanted anything at all to do with the raids. Why? Too hard... if/when casual players hit the raiding wallblock, they said "nope" and didn't finish them.

Thankfully for WoW there was still plenty of other things for casual players to do, which is why they stuck around there. That and many, many players never even got that far in the game - I admit I played WoW, and it took me something around 3 years to get a 'current' max level character. Now just imagine what would have happened to WoW had they forced players to go through the dungeons in the game (like XIV does, dungeons in WoW were optional to doing it's "MSQ"), while also ramping the difficulty higher and higher... I'd bet money that WoW would not have become the juggernaut and behemoth that it did - this is because ppl flocked to it due to it being Warcraft, Blizzard, and the 1st mainstream MMO that was accessible to casual players who could solo the vast majority of the game.

[monochrom]

I think MSQ difficulty will stay how it is but i have no qualms or issues about it increasing in difficulty. I've started EW and the first dungeon as a healer gives me vertigo with all the aoes I gotta dodge. #NerfTowerofZot pls

[LianaThorne]

Extreme elitists should stop expecting that everyone has a desire to play in the big leagues while extreme casuals should stop expecting that other players will be fine carrying them through content while they only press one button the entire time.

The clear is the point, let's not forget, however basic knowledge of how to play your class should be something everyone strives for to make said clears more efficient.

Rather than making MSQ harder (because difficulties already exist for a reason clearly), introduce walls that are similar to the Hall of the Novice at the end of each expansion. They'll test the player on their skills and knowledge on how the buttons work and then send them on their way afterwards to begin the next expac. I feel this would be a more productive solution than gatekeep MSQ trials/make them harder for whatever reason.

[Amenara]

#NerfTowerofZot pls

Please no

[Aelin_Ashryver]

I wouldn't mind the normal difficulty of instanced battles being harder and keeping the very easy... very easy. And dungeons could do a bit more too since you have 3 other ppl to pick up your slack and give tips to help you.

But given we have seen in another thread a person cant even get past the very easy instance. I doubt such things would ever happen. They could make the whole thing to press the one button and somehow some way someone will fail.

[Raoabolic]

Rather than making MSQ harder (because difficulties already exist for a reason clearly), introduce walls that are similar to the Hall of the Novice at the end of each expansion. They'll test the player on their skills and knowledge on how the buttons work and then send them on their way afterwards to begin the next expac. I feel this would be a more productive solution than gatekeep MSQ trials/make them harder for whatever reason.

*buys level/story skip potion*
*steps over walls*
Walls are for the bourgeoisie~ :^)

[Reinha]

Most of these ppl just want to log in, relax and do the story after a day/week at work... they don't want to be stressed out with a game, challenged or have to watch youtube video guides on how to beat a MSQ dungeon/trial... and if they can't just mash their way through a fight and thus get stuck, they will leave and go play something else that doesn't force them to struggle.

I don't think anyone is asking for the kind of difficulty that players have to watch guides for. Solo duties can kill you and make you struggle but you just try again. Many dungeons are much easier, to the point of being too easy especially as jobs get more powerful at high levels. It's just weird to go from a level 50 solo duty full of AoE dodging and a soft enrage to dungeons where half the party isn't even needed, nothing can kill you and mechanics either don't exist or can be ignored. The game expects us to be able to clear solo duties without dying so why should dungeons be so forgiving that half the party can be afk or dead and still pass?