People Enjoy hard Games

[CelestiCer]

I really just think job design needs to improve. I don't care if "casual content" is easy because the game already allows us to form into different groups and do the type of content we want, which is great. I don't want to force someone who is just wanting to chill after work and farm glams from an alliance raid to have to smash their head against it, wipe after wipe, for 2 hours just to clear; but the gutting of the skill ceiling on jobs means I have to do high end content to get any enjoyment out of the gameplay of the game anymore... so basically I play once a week on Tuesday reclears and then don't have anything else to do.

Making an encounter harder doesn't make your job more engaging, and the job is how you interact and engage with the encounter. If your job is fun to play at a baseline in all content, then all the content you want to do becomes fun.

PREACH IT !! ...mhm

[PercibelTheren]

The recent success of Baldur's Gate 3 really shows this off. Sure it has variable difficulty settings, but even on the lower settings there are still TONS of options for how you want to play your character, set up your party, all that fun jazz. They don't dumb it down even if you pick easy.

I mean yes, the options in that game are amazing. But the game isn't that hard, either. Not if you know what you're doing and know how DnD works, at least.

[Deo14]

I mean yes, the options in that game are amazing. But the game isn't that hard, either. Not if you know what you're doing and know how DnD works, at least.

It's still rocket science compared to FFXIV or FFXVI.

[PercibelTheren]

I like having the option of different difficulty. Sometimes I feel like being challenged and sometimes I just want to come home after a long day at work and relax.

Also, no, the people who enjoy difficult games are not a majority. Just very vocal. In fact, many of them won't shut up and will constantly push their idea of fun on everyone else.

[ThaCa]

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

[Jojoya]

I find it interesting that everyone criticizes forum posters asking for harder content and they dismiss us for being the vocal minority on these forums but to be honest we may be somewhat of the silent majority with a few outspoken people.

The game has repeatedly doubled down on making itself easier because it has been under the false impression that people calling for an easier game were in fact the majority.

If anything, market trends have telling data that a games difficulty is actually something gamers enjoy. If we take a look at Baldurs Gate and Elden ring both of them became main stream hits despite being more difficult titles to beat, and they both outperformed FFXVI which is a story game with incredibly easy gameplay.

We could argue that using the PS5 platform only hurt them however, it doesn't change the fact that making an engaging and difficult game DOES NOT mean you are reducing your playerbase and hurting the games bottom line.

In short, XIV is too easy, and recent commercial successes reveal there is no reason to dumb the game down to where it is today.

I understand the desire for more difficult content and support it as side content in a MMORPG.

The problem is that some individuals are asking for the base game content to be made more difficult. That does not work well in MMORPGs (the games you mention are not MMOs) where players of different skill levels will be playing together in the base content.

Just because someone is playing an online game does not mean they consider themselves a "gamer". Games are generally a minor part of a player's life, not the focus. They are playing only a few hours a week and not several hours a day. Unless naturally gifted, they're not going to reach the same skill level as those who consider themselves "gamers" because they're not investing as many hours to develop that skill.

Another difference is that single player games allow players to have save points. That gives players a "safety net" that makes tackling higher difficulty content less stressful. You try, you fail, you load the saved game so there is zero negative effect on your character. Nothing is lost. It's as if the failed attempt didn't happen. Not so with MMORPGs, where you need to repair gear and replace consumables after failure. That might feel like a trivial problem to some but to others it ends up frustrating. They are playing the game for different reasons.

One thing the market trends aren't telling you is how many players that purchase games like Baldur's Gate and Elden Ring actually manage to complete the game all the way through. Many players will pick a game up, play until they hit their skill ceiling (or their interest dies out) then quit.

What highly publicized MMORPG tried going the higher skill floor route? Wildstar. Where is that game today? Totally dead (unless someone has it running on a private server). Not enough players were interested in difficult content and that's all there was for end game. Once a casual player completed the leveling experience, the game was over for them.

It just does not work in practice for MMORPGs.

Certainly there is room for improvement in this game to make it more appealing to more highly skilled players. Increasing the base difficulty is not the way to do it.

If you want a MMORPG that is truly difficult, try contacting FromSoftware. They seem the most likely developer that would be able to produce one that would succeed.

[Absimiliard]

They could please more players if they would just fix the bloody netcode already. They're extremely limited in the types of mechanics they can introduce simply because of a number of factors on their end, not the least of which being the incredibly strange way clients and servers communicate with one another. Every fight boils down to DDR. High tier endgame content ranges from slightly above average DDR to a crackhead's idea of DDR, but it's DDR all the same. You can only rehash that so many times. The ability to implement randomized, reactive fights where you may know what each mechanic does but have no clue what order they're coming in would go a long way toward opening up their options.

As it is, it seems like they've been experimenting with reactive mechanics it at least a little. We've got more randomized mechanics now than we used to, and some of those do demand a degree of quick on-the-spot decision making, but the bosses themselves still have a set rotation of sorts.

[PercibelTheren]

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

Can't disagree there. I somehow suffered through playing as a healer through ARR, then switched to DRG for HW because it felt thematically appropriate and it was so much better. Ended up playing story content as DPS and dungeons as healer.

[Jeeqbit]

They could please more players if they would just fix the bloody netcode already.

Do you mean weaving?

The ability to implement randomized, reactive fights where you may know what each mechanic does but have no clue what order they're coming in would go a long way toward opening up their options.

Believe me, they are perfectly capable of this. This is how old fights used to work in ARR. I recall that Shiva from ARR chooses random mechanics. You can fight S ranks from ARR and they cast in a completely random order. The first cast isn't the same and is random out of 8 or so casts.

We've got more randomized mechanics now than we used to, and some of those do demand a degree of quick on-the-spot decision making, but the bosses themselves still have a set rotation of sorts.

We have definitely always had random mechanics that still happen in a set rotation of sorts since Heavensward. Chaos in Stormblood would completely choose a random phase to start with and it was easy for that to throw the whole fight off for you after you'd got used to starting with the other phase.

[Renalt]

Someone should force the devs to replay the story as Healer. It's incredibly tedious, easy and boring.

I was one of those kids who liked throwing rocks...so I had plenty of healing experience before I even started FF14!