People Enjoy hard Games

[RitsukoSonoda]

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

I feel like part of this design issue is caused by player attitudes that frequently surface outside of static compositions. If the party wipes due to tanks repeatedly dying or healers not keeping up with the damage output you'll frequently get people flaming the tanks or healers over it. If the party wipes due to enrage caused by low DPS or a failed DPS check you rarely see people flaming the dps and instead see the whole "Oh well. I guess WE weren't good enough"

[Supersnow845]

I feel like part of this design issue is caused by player attitudes that frequently surface outside of static compositions. If the party wipes due to tanks repeatedly dying or healers not keeping up with the damage output you'll frequently get people flaming the tanks or healers over it. If the party wipes due to enrage caused by low DPS or a failed DPS check you rarely see people flaming the dps and instead see the whole "Oh well. I guess WE weren't good enough"

DPS shirking responsibility for raid problems is nothing new to MMO’s so I don’t really think it should factor into design decisions

[Raikai]

I'm satisfied with the amount of hard content XIV has. Savages (and EX to some extent) are pretty hard to the average player. There's Ultimates, but also Criterion dungeons, although the latter suffers from having a good structure but with awful payoffs. Honorable mention to Deep Dungeon harder levels and solo challenges.

If I could add something to the cache of hard content to run, would be - something - to do at the even patches that is not Ultimate. Maybe they can move Criterion there in Dawntrail, but I like the idea that it can be (if properly managed) a complement for the raid patch. An actual 'perfect even patch' for me would have something more out of the box when it comes to harder content, like Delubrum Reginae Savage, and since they hinted that a Field Mission is a possibility for DT, there's hope.

What I'm not satisfied with, though, is job design and the 2 minute meta and how it's basically the source of all the recent 'dumbing down'.

[CelestiCer]

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...

...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.

A good group of Casual Players mention endless times that they do not wish the game to be anymore challenging. Meaning... the difficulty that the game could provide must be " Optional ", ruling out increasing difficulty of any content below Extreme or even Savage Difficulty as it would otherwise creep towards it being " Mandatory " . Players have proven to prefer tricking the queue up towards Crystal Tower, and doing Extreme/Savage content on Echo or Unsynced rather then when it's current, I believe partially cause Square has conditioned and pampered players to never improve

Suggesting there for difficulty to be provided through the game features? is admirable I don't disagree, but Square shows no sign of moving towards anything else but sticking to what the game currently is all bout... Dishing more DPS or dealing with taking DPS. That's it. Hell Square even has proven to even nerf content deemed to difficult. Examples of content nerfs? think Orbonne, Red Chocobo and Iconoclasm to name but a few.

We'll have to go to optional difficulty by choice which comes in the form of modes. But even here? Savage raiders even like myself avoid Ultimate's as it's not meant for everyone. More of this is always welcomed for Hardcore raiders though, of which is being denied. Arthars even asked Yoshi P personally about this, it's just a polite no. Players who want more difficult content? can count themselves lucky to even get Criterion. Casual players are already having issues getting more content out of Square, let alone more difficult content being served up...

This means the last thing left we have... that we can apply and affects how we experience nearly all PvE combat content? is our " Jobs " in the form of rotation depth and complexity. More buttons for the sake of more? is equally as meaningless as less for the sake of less... unless its given substance of which gradually is being taken from us. Bit by Bit, Rework by Rework, Job by job, Patch by Patch, Expansion by... Expansion. And there's Zero proof that any simplification was necessary or held back any content being the difficulty that it is or can provide beyond. Kaiten removal or SMN rework did not held us back from us not getting DSR and TOP to name one extreme example. Giving up more? is also an empty promise that we might get something more difficult...

This is also why you have players like me who value Job complexity that's " Optional " as this will never negatively affect Casual or Hardcore players.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

Yet Summoner was a low played job before its rework. Now it's one of the most played Jobs.

The people have spoken.

[caffe_macchiato]

Baldurs Gate and Elden ring

Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate make a fraction of the revenue that FFXIV does. FFXIV is easy on purpose so that people can get to endgame as quickly as possible and enjoy social activities like clubbing and ERP. And FFXIV pays off without any of the work that other companies have to put in. So what's the loss here? You're subscribed anyway, so clearly Square Enix did something right.

Not to mention that Square Enix is nowhere near the size or scale of Larian or FromSoftware. Like, come on. It's like expecting caviar from McDonald's. It ain't gonna happen pal.

[RitsukoSonoda]

DPS shirking responsibility for raid problems is nothing new to MMO’s so I don’t really think it should factor into design decisions

It shouldn't. But think for a minute on what influenced other design decisions in this game and you start to see why this probably was a factor in this title.

[Supersnow845]

Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate make a fraction of the revenue that FFXIV does. FFXIV is easy on purpose so that people can get to endgame as quickly as possible and enjoy social activities like clubbing and ERP. And FFXIV pays off without any of the work that other companies have to put in. So what's the loss here? You're subscribed anyway, so clearly Square Enix did something right.

Not to mention that Square Enix is nowhere near the size or scale of Larian or FromSoftware. Like, come on. It's like expecting caviar from McDonald's. It ain't gonna happen pal.

Wow so 14 dwarfs them in revenue, this revenue somehow can’t be used to make the game better but also square is small indie company

This is like three layers of defending square all in one comment

[Rolder50]

Yet Summoner was a low played job before its rework. Now it's one of the most played Jobs.

The people have spoken.

People flocking to a job because it's easy does not mean the job is good. The easiest job will always have the most players.

[VentVanitas]

Yet Summoner was a low played job before its rework. Now it's one of the most played Jobs.

The people have spoken.

it... it wasn't unpopular. it did not even come close to other jobs like BRD, MNK, SCH or AST in ShB. please don't just make random shit up