MSQ Difficulty and Exclusion

[VerdeLuck]

So what about the people who are actively turned away from the game because it is in their worlds excessively easy to the point of being unenjoyable, sure this is anecdotal but I have seen more than 5 people turned off the game because crucial lynchpin fights like endsinger, hades and thordran go down because you breathed too hard on them. Are there opinions not relevant to this situation at all. The MSQ just feels so hollow because all these enemies that you have been working towards for dozens of quests just get bowled over before they can even do a full mechanical loop

Again there is a difference between what we currently have and savage difficulty, raidwides hitting a bit harder, vuln stacks being tuned up a bit more, maybe a few more x come ruins or harder execution mechanics like starfall wouldn’t go astray

If these bosses can’t hurt us the entire design of the story comes crashing down

Those people won't quit, they'll kick and scream on the forums about how the game is being "dumbed down" and throw tantrums but they're so addicted to the game they're never going to just quit.

[Supersnow845]

Those people won't quit, they'll kick and scream on the forums about how the game is being "dumbed down" and throw tantrums but they're so addicted to the game they're never going to just quit.

You just hear whatever you want to hear and reply to that don’t you, these people I’m talking about were new players that decided to pick the game up after hearing about it or recommendations, they aren’t addicted, they aren’t whining on the forums, they are gone because the game didn’t respect them at all

Then, frankly, maybe this isn't game for them. That's okay. Not every game is going to appeal to every person, even within the same genre. I like FPS games, but I personally just can't get into the ones that are set back in WWI or WWII...I prefer the modern ones. I don't go around insisting that games set in that era add modern weapons just for me; I pick the games that already fit the design I'm looking for. FFXIV isn't an eSports game like WoW has become, with the focus on pushing ever higher M+ keys and going for world-first Mythic+ raids. That's just not FFXIV. It's a story-driven game with an immense focus on the plot and the soundtrack, and is meant to attract a different audience than those looking to push the difficulty as high as they can. That's okay. It means it won't be for everyone, but nothing will, so...

And, I mean, the current approach is working wonders. That "more than 5 people" honestly draws a chuckle when we consider there's literally hundreds of thousands of active players, even now during a content lull. Anecdotal evidence can be great for case studies, but doesn't really mean anything if trying to generalize it to a larger population.

Okay now explain to me how saying “this isn’t the game for them” isn’t toxic when it’s coming from people saying the game needs to stay easy but is 100% toxic when it comes from people asking for the game to be more complex because I’ve been called toxic for exactly the same sentence on this thread no less but coming from the other direction

[Packetdancer]

Okay now explain to me how saying “this isn’t the game for them” isn’t toxic when it’s coming from people saying the game needs to stay easy but is 100% toxic when it comes from people asking for the game to be more complex because I’ve been called toxic for exactly the same sentence but coming from the other direction

I mean, I don't think it's that the positions are inherently more or less toxic than each other? But when the portion of the game that is tied specifically to the main scenario is currently easy, people saying they'd like it to remain easy are arguing for the status quo, while those asking that it become more difficult are asking for change.

Saying "this is the way the game is, and if you don't like it, maybe it's not the game for you" is a statement of fact -- whether or not the game should be that way, or if there's reason for it to change, that doesn't alter what it is right now.

Saying "this is the way I think the game should be, I want it all changed, and if the new game wouldn't be to your liking maybe this isn't the game for you"? What the game should be is subjective; what it is right now... that's somewhat less so.

After all, I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing that the MSQ is too difficult as it stands; I don't even think anyone's arguing that the game couldn't do better with its difficulty curve in some way or another -- right now, anything else aside, a lot of people demonstrably feel like there's a gap between "MSQ difficulty" and "extreme trial difficulty", and not a lot of content that bridges the gap.

(And some of us who don't think the MSQ difficulty being ramped up is necessarily the best approach also believe firmly that the game could really use some more content with some actual teeth. I'm a healer main; believe me, I know precisely how little healing this game requires in the vast majority of content, unless stuff goes catastrophically wrong -- and honestly, the catastrophically-wrong runs are often the more interesting ones because of that.)

But one side is basically saying "this is the game right now, it works for me, and if you don't like it there may be other games out there more suited to your taste." And if the counter-argument boils down to functionally "right now, this game matches your wants, not mine; I want the game to match mine instead, and if you don't like that, maybe you should leave" -- whether or not it's meant to be confrontational, there's some confrontation kind of built-in there, because it's demanding a change to the status quo.

This isn't to say there isn't a way to accomodate both, mind you. SQEX's efforts to make more and more of the game's content playable with trust means that hypothetically, they could make more difficult versions of content and have the more-approachable ones that are story-centric based around trusts instead, if they added trust support for the various trials as well.

Things don't necessarily have to be an all-or-nothing.

Mind you, all of this is probably moot, since the chances that SQEX will actually make meaningful changes to game balance based on random threads on the forums are, if not zero, so close to such that it probably qualifies as a rounding error.

(Okay I'm done for now, before I make enough posts that the forums put me back into the Talky Timeout Box.)