People Enjoy hard Games

[Shurrikhan]

The problem is, it's generally NOT optional in most proposals, it's mandatory.

Again, this is literally the crux of the entire disagreement. Getting this wrong means an impossibility to come to a solution since you fundamentally don't understand what the disagreement is even about.

<< "Right now we have mechanics 1-8 in our kits and barely even need to passably do 1-3 (or, roughly half the kit overall) to do clear virtually all content, since the fundamentals are worth so much more than each little element of difficulty added thereafter and all content is really quite lenient right now. However, even when using that entire kit, the gameplay still feels kinda... shallow/barebone, so I'd love to have a few more mechanics to work with. It's fine if content continues only to require as much as it does now, even after those additions. We can just raise the output ceilings that little bit, without nerfing what exists now."

>> "You would FORCE that additional complexity on everyone?!?!"

???

Someone disagreeing with you about what is optional is not a failure to understand that disagreement.

Just as players are not forced to go BLM right now, nor forced to optimize any job, neither would they be forced to make use of additional skill ceiling. None of that is mandatory.

Most of the existing kits are already far from mandatory in their usage, or you wouldn't so often see them go barely to not at all used in clears. A single death will frequently make a larger difference to one's "performance" than up to a third of one's buttons, and crit/dhit luck will often make a bigger difference than hyperoptimizations.

[Rufalus]

they both outperformed FFXVI which is a story game with incredibly easy gameplay.

Thanks, I needed another excuse to complain about that game.

So I saw a comment on reddit, a guy who actually tried to explore the maps without being prompted to do so. He kept finding odd rooms that look like an event might happen there. Of course they were all empty on first visit. He soon learned that those slightly larger rooms only exist to host battles against hunt marks, ones he hadn't progressed enough to unlock yet. So he just stopped going anywhere until the game explicitly told him to, as it is designed. CBU3 hate exploration, unpredictability, player agency.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I feel like there has to be a distinction made between "challenging" and "hard". But it's been a long week and I'm not sure I'm up to the eloquence required to get the point across right now. I'll try to remember to come back to it later.

As threatened, I want to come back to this idea a bit. Lots of opinions incoming. I'm mostly going to be sticking to current endgame for this ramble, because by all things holy I'm tired of thinking about the Crystal Tower.

Most people aren't looking for something super-difficult, just something more engaging. And a lot of level cap content doesn't deliver on it after the first week or two. Part of it, I believe, is that item level increases without real synching defangs a lot of encounters. Compare Endsinger at launch to her state today; you can power straight through most of the first phase, without even seeing repeat mechanics beyond maybe the second set of planet collisions. You won't see the part where she resets the collisions to replay twice in a row, or the diving attack where she's also dropping AoEs on people. (The final phase is also over in half the time, but that part was basically a victory lap in the first place; now you just miss part of her monologue.) Now that most of us massively out-gear the fight, it's lost the threat and become almost a formality. Similar fates befell Shinryu and Hades. (Thordan on Normal mode was never a challenge in the first place, sadly.) Compare to, say, Hydaelyn, who syncs the party, and thus can still put the hurt on if you don't follow the mechanics, and it's night and day.

Now, part of the challenge is, naturally, going to be lost in repetition, as we simply learn the dance steps and remember how to do things. But power creep is undeniably a factor, too. The same also applies to other endgame content. Compare Aglaia or the first four floors of Pandaemonium at launch to now.

I also honestly feel that a lot of our jobs are simply far too powerful now. Tanks, in particular, being able to solo current dungeon bosses is absolutely absurd. The idea that healers can be left out of current content is also disheartening, to say the least. I'm not gonna go deep into healer game play, because I don't play them enough myself to feel qualified to do so, but I can see why most of them are less than happy right now. Tanks have lost all sense of challenge, which in turns means healers have less to do as well. Tanks could stand to be toned down some, to give the rest of us more to do.

That segues into another point. Are jobs hard to play? Well, no. Some are a little harder to get down than others (I struggle a bit with remembering Ninja's mudra combinations, for example), but none of them are especially difficult to figure out. But were they harder in the past?

For the most part, no. Not really.

I'm sure someone's already preparing an angry and probably insulting reply, but read on first.

Jobs have never been hard to play, at least not for the right reasons. Tanks used to struggle with aggro, because the game was designed around damage races and aggro stance reduced damage, so nobody wanted to use it. That's not really hard, that's just a weird design choice. Party buffs and AoE heals had smaller ranges, but that just meant people had to group up closer to the caster; it's not a challenge for the caster so much as a fail state for the other players. Machinists in Stormblood had a clunky and excessively ping-dependent Heat gauge; yes, you could learn to play around it and get decent results, but that's still more bad design than genuine difficulty. Summoners had to press a lot more buttons, but that's complexity, not difficulty. (Mind you, I'd agree that summoner went a bit too far in the other direction now, but it still wasn't that bad before.)

If anything, I'd argue that a lot of jobs just feel cluttered and overly busy, without actually being meaningfully more challenging to play well. More buttons doesn't equal depth when you're hitting them all in mostly the same order all the time anyway. Once muscle memory takes over, you barely think about it anymore anyway. (There's also my issues with attack and spell animations being obnoxiously overdone, to the point where it's sometimes hard to even see the target under everything happening, but that's a whole other thing.)

This kind of comes to my thoughts on the overall issue. I feel like the challenge should come from what the game is doing. Enemies need to hit harder and faster, and players need less ways to invalidate it all. I also feel that we should be worried more about watching the play field, rather than keeping up with a fifteen-button rotation and positional combos and other controller gymnastics. The basic building blocks are in the game, they're just not used as effectively as they could be. In short, I want it to be more challenging, but for the right reasons.

[Lauront]

I'm in this category. I don't have the time or energy to push the super difficult content like Ultimate, but I DO want some content that at least makes me think. Which FF14 is severely lacking in.

Same. If you don't have the time to put into its more hardcore content but also don't want everything to be a cakewalk, that's where the game struggles to provide. As someone who has become a more casual player, it does not mean I want or like easy/unchallenging content. Quite the opposite, it's off-putting to me if it's too easy.

It's one of those reasons I was annoyed by 16 not offering a harder difficulty from the outset, as well. I don't feel it respected my time particularly well by demanding I play through it once and the base difficulty was not fun to me.

Likewise in XIV, I'd like more optional segregation of the MSQ difficulty levels, as well as more midcore content in general. I second this poster in this being something where I believe WoW currently does a better job on delivering. I have some issues with that game but it does get some things right.

This kind of comes to my thoughts on the overall issue. I feel like the challenge should come from what the game is doing. Enemies need to hit harder and faster, and players need less ways to invalidate it all.

I think that's a good summary of what a lot of games get wrong, XIV included.

[Aravell]

Most of the existing kits are already far from mandatory in their usage, or you wouldn't so often see them go barely to not at all used in clears. A single death will frequently make a larger difference to one's "performance" than up to a third of one's buttons, and crit/dhit luck will often make a bigger difference than hyperoptimizations.

I went and looked into it a bit, I found that if a SCH doesn't put up Biolysis even once in P9S, the damage loss can be almost entirely covered by a NIN direct critting a single Hyosho Ranryu.

[Supersnow845]

I went and looked into it a bit, I found that if a SCH doesn't put up Biolysis even once in P9S, the damage loss can be almost entirely covered by a NIN direct critting a single Hyosho Ranryu.

Healers have 2 damage buttons and one can be invalidated by a single DPS critting a single time in the burst window (if hyosho Ranryu crit does it at least enkindle will also do it)

Absolutely A++++ design

[WeebPolice]

Because some people think they're entitled to have all content tailored specifically for them. They cannot comprehend the idea of optional content, and will force themselves to do content they hate, and then complain about it.

You speak the truth for real. In other cases they'll force themselves to do content they hate and then say it was good content that was time well spent because of the sunk cost fallacy.

[Iscah]

[B]Just as players not forced to go BLM right now, nor forced to optimize any job, neither would they be forced to make use of additional skill ceiling. None of that is mandatory.

Most of the existing kits are already far from mandatory in their usage, or you wouldn't so often see them go barely to not at all used in clears. A single death will frequently make a larger difference to one's "performance" than up to a third of one's buttons, and crit/dhit luck will often make a bigger difference than hyperoptimizations.

Healers have 2 damage buttons and one can be invalidated by a single DPS critting a single time in the burst window (if hyosho Ranryu crit does it at least enkindle will also do it)

Absolutely A++++ design

These factors seem to work against each other.

On the one hand you have people saying "they could design classes so you can do a lot more damage if you put in the effort".

And then on the other hand, you have people pointing out (with what reads as resentment) that someone can do enough damage to cover up another party member's weakness.

Which is wanted? Gameplay where it's okay for only some party members to have optimised their skills, or where everyone is pulling equal weight?

And why is it a problem that a DPS does more damage than a healer? The game isn't a contest of who does more damage individually, but how much you do together as a team.

Am I missing something?

[Rolder50]

These factors seem to work against each other.

On the one hand you have people saying "they could design classes so you can do a lot more damage if you put in the effort".

And then on the other hand, you have people pointing out (with what reads as resentment) that someone can do enough damage to cover up another party member's weakness.

Which is wanted? Gameplay where it's okay for only some party members to have optimised their skills, or where everyone is pulling equal weight?

And why is it a problem that a DPS does more damage than a healer? The game isn't a contest of who does more damage individually, but how much you do together as a team.

Am I missing something?

Pretty sure that the point is: Healers spend 90% of their actions DPSing. Those DPS actions largely come down to two buttons. But the healer DPSing is so unimportant that they can be covered by a DPS getting lucky. So, what is the point of playing a healer if there is almost nothing to heal and your DPS doesn't matter?

Generally people fall into three camps in this issue:
1) They are fine with the status quo.
2) They want more DPS actions / more contribution to DPS. If you are going to spend the majority of your time doing dps anyway, might as well make it fun.
3) They want there to be more to heal in encounters. So you spend less time doing damage and more time healing / being a support / etc.

[Supersnow845]

These factors seem to work against each other.

On the one hand you have people saying "they could design classes so you can do a lot more damage if you put in the effort".

And then on the other hand, you have people pointing out (with what reads as resentment) that someone can do enough damage to cover up another party member's weakness.

Which is wanted? Gameplay where it's okay for only some party members to have optimised their skills, or where everyone is pulling equal weight?

And why is it a problem that a DPS does more damage than a healer? The game isn't a contest of who does more damage individually, but how much you do together as a team.

Am I missing something?

You should be able to optimise to do more damage if you understand your class. A (clunky) example of this sort of optimisation is AST, if you never draw a card in the entire fight you are likely only losing about 15% of your total damage, MNK and BLM’s lines are also examples of this sort of optimisation (though again there isn’t remotely enough of it)

Crit variance is not a form of optimisation and nor should it be big enough to invalidate that level of damage variance of another class (even a healer), remember this is savage on this point if your skill floor is 80% of your skill ceiling in this theoretical design then you should be doing 95% to clear savage, not relying on crit variance of another class

My personal resentment of that fact is also coloured by how boring healer damage in general is, I have 2 damage buttons and one is completely invalidated by the damage done by one burst window crit of one DPS job, just kinda makes your contribution feel worthless