People Enjoy hard Games

[Ath192]

If you didn't mean me, why did you quote me and not the person you intended to reply to?

I'm not twisting your words. I'm taking them as they are written.

You are probably misunderstanding. I replied to your quote because its the one that gave me the question. So it was a reply to your post, however, asking a question to anyone in general. You took it as a personal insult, and told people I was taking digs at you.

If you look up the definition of you, you will see this, and understand I was asking the general public if they felt like normal content was difficult enough to warrant a guide. so the word "you" was used to refer to any person in general during that part of the post, not referring to you personally:




Here is my quote again, and by use of very obvious context clues, you can see I was referring to anyone, and not using "you" to refer to "Jojoya" only.

If anyone legit couldn’t beat it please come forward. I don’t mean this to look down on you, just legitimately curious if we actually haven’t hit rock bottom difficulty wise in alliance raids.

[SquishyPlushie]

It sounds like you just want a greater variety of rewards to earn as opposed to being genuinely opposed to timegating. Even your proposed rewards would run into a time gate of sorts by requiring time spent to complete the X number of rewards.

There's nothing that says the actual combat gear can't continue to be time gated while the cosmetics only need the participation requirements met.

Loot has always been the bait to get people into content. Players have been conditioned by marketing and social media to feel like they're owed something for their time instead of enjoying the content for its own sake. Look at Criterion - it's gotten a lot of praise as content. Then the same people turn around and say they won't do it unless they get better rewards from it. What's a developer to do when making good content alone still isn't enough to satisfy players?

As for Blizzard's Trading Post, I have bad news for you. It turns out it's been a microtransaction monetization scheme all along. As time passes, the costs of the rewards are increasing while the currency that can be earned through game play isn't. No player will ever be able to get all the rewards they might want without going heavy into the microtransactions.

Timegate caps 100% steer me off whatever it's being applied to. Once I run into a timegate cap or weekly I stop playing the game mode entirely, they give me the I'm being trolled feeling. Timegate killed WoW for me and it's killed caring about lvl 90 raiding in FF14. Please do not conflate timegate loot caps and throttles with additional reward disbursement for engagement.

... I want positive reinforcement that's conducive to progressing content put in. Making loot uncapped, albeit low drop rate instead, and adding recolors of cosmetics/mounts for participation thresholds itself would be a start.

As for the rewards for participation aspect, SE does do this, but they limit it primarily behind Tomestone Events... So they know it works but won't do it normally outside of targeted dates...

[TaleraRistain]

I looked up FFXIV Euphrosyne guide on youtube, the top hit is a video by MTQ at 65K views, If I do the same thing for The Voidcast Dais EX, Hector's has over a quarter million views. Clearly if the majority of the playerbase is "Casual" if people actually looked up guides for normal content in XIV then the guide view count should be astronomically higher than the minority of the playerbase that does harder content.

I feel like this comparison is a little flawed because it's not factoring in repeat views. Someone might look up the Euphrosyne guide to get a general idea of mechanics but there's a lot of leeway. So that person can watch and find out "Okay watch this area for this attack" and not need to go back again.

Contrast that with the EX guide where I know I found myself going back on a regular basis as I got certain prog points down to make sure I knew where to go or orient myself for the next arc of mechanics. There's not nearly as much leeway, especially given the body checks in that fight where people must be exactly where they're supposed to be at certain points or the party will wipe.

Youtube does put a limit on repeat views in 24 hours but they can still multiply the numbers and make the comparison not as reliable.

[Jojoya]

You are probably misunderstanding. I replied to your quote because its the one that gave me the question. So it was a reply to your post, however, asking a question to anyone in general. You took it as a personal insult, and told people I was taking digs at you.

If you look up the definition of you, you will see this, and understand I was asking the general public if they felt like normal content was difficult enough to warrant a guide. so the word "you" was used to refer to any person in general during that part of the post, not referring to you personally:




Here is my quote again, and by use of very obvious context clues, you can see I was referring to anyone, and not using "you" to refer to "Jojoya" only.

I understand now that it was not intended as a dig at me. My apologies.

I would say that it's better to avoid using the generic "you" when another person is being quoted for clarity's sake. It's a bad habit I had for a while and trained myself not to use it because even if I did my best to make my intent clear, I know there would be some that would misinterpret it. Saying "if a player" instead of "if you" removes any possible confusion.

Making loot uncapped, albeit low drop rate instead, and adding recolors of cosmetics/mounts for participation thresholds itself would be a start.

Low drop ends up penalizing the player that can only play a couple of hours a week. You're effectively trying to add a new time gating system but with rules that favor your specific playstyle instead of being fair to all paying customers.

MMORPGs have moved away from the low drop rate systems to the weekly time gated systems to be fair. They've added in additional optional rewards for those who like the low drop rate grinds to keep them engaged with content longer.

The tomestone events are limited because SE knows that the majority of players can't keep doing those hard grinds indefinitely.

If you need that steady reinforcement to remain interested in playing, then ARPGs are a much better way to go.

[Ath192]

I feel like this comparison is a little flawed because it's not factoring in repeat views. Someone might look up the Euphrosyne guide to get a general idea of mechanics but there's a lot of leeway. So that person can watch and find out "Okay watch this area for this attack" and not need to go back again.

Contrast that with the EX guide where I know I found myself going back on a regular basis as I got certain prog points down to make sure I knew where to go or orient myself for the next arc of mechanics. There's not nearly as much leeway, especially given the body checks in that fight where people must be exactly where they're supposed to be at certain points or the party will wipe.

Youtube does put a limit on repeat views in 24 hours but they can still multiply the numbers and make the comparison not as reliable.

It is a little flawed, but I went to look up others guides for stuff like the Orbonne Monastery, a good difficulty raid when it released and it is better than Euphrosyne as well. It's not meant to be extremely accurate but serve as a clue that more interesting and complex content does generate more engagement from gamers.

As another example, if we pull up Elden Ring - Margit guide you will get a video with 1.2 Million views, where if you pull up FFXVI - Garuda guide you wont get anywhere near as many views (both single player titles). So it serves as a general pointer that people were much more engaged with Margit than the Garuda fight. There are many variables to this, but common sense and experience if you played both games will tell you Margit was a more engaging fight.

To me, it would've been much better for the game to give all its instances the balancing treatment unreal fights get than to emulate Syrcus Tower as the standard of difficulty players prefer for current raids.

Making a game too hard is bad for it, I agree, but making it too easy is also very shortsighted imo and equally as bad.

[Darnath]

Does anyone know of someone who looked up a guide for Euphrosyne because they couldn’t figure it out themselves? Just wondering if someone legit couldn’t stop dying until they looked up a guide.

I for one don’t believe there is any and would be quite surprised. If anyone legit couldn’t beat it please come forward. I don’t mean this to look down on you, just legitimately curious if we actually haven’t hit rock bottom difficulty wise in alliance raids.

I also don’t mean you died. I mean you couldn’t stop dying because you could never comprehend what was going on in the raid until you looked up a guide.

Guilty.

I'll blame it on my old WoW mythic (well, Heroic back then) raider days when I had the nerves to do such stuff, but I'll almost never do content without looking at a guide first. Yes, even MSQ based trials and non-trusted dungeons like Smileton. Thus why Trusts were a *bleep* godsend to me so I could learn the mechanics before hitting the roulettes.

To me it's not a spoiler as the fight isn't the story to be spoiled, the fight's just a way to earn a reward. And as somebody else pointed out, as a healer I want try to mitigate my own screwups to try to help out the others who are going in blind and die to mechanics. Heck, even after reading (prefer reading) a guide I still died to a mechanic and revisited the guide to understand why I screwed up.

[Renathras]

Once again field content sets the bar high for what content should be in this game

I’d also argue TA’s temperature mechanic killing you instantly for a failure and twice come ruin on DRN’s attacks alongside diablos are the perfect examples of that midcore difficulty we should be aiming for

I'm not sure anything "killing you instantly for a failure" is a good description of "midcore" difficulty.

[Shurrikhan]

Once again field content sets the bar high for what content should be in this game

I’d also argue TA’s temperature mechanic killing you instantly for a failure and twice come ruin on DRN’s attacks alongside diablos are the perfect examples of that midcore difficulty we should be aiming for

...Why these, of all things? Especially for "midcore"?

When I think "midcore", I usually think something with cumulatively high cognitive load made of individually intuitive parts, guided towards mechanical intersections that don't suddenly overwhelm the player nor leave them bored, and usually aren't so individually strict as to forbid broader gambles or punish meeting 2 of 3 simultaneous mechanics identically to meeting 0 of 3, etc.

[ChrysOCE]

I'm not sure anything "killing you instantly for a failure" is a good description of "midcore" difficulty.

I would say it is, if it doesn't result in the entire party wiping (sure, you could have everyone fail it). It's a "challenging" mechanic but it's not savage-level, where if you fail it, everyone wipes, even if they do theirs correctly.

Also, to be precise, it's not instantly for failure. It's failing twice in a row within an allotted timeframe. - oh, i was thinking of twice come ruin, not the temperature mechanic. But still, it's an individual mechanic, not a party wipe mechanic.

[Ath192]

Guilty.

I'll blame it on my old WoW mythic (well, Heroic back then) raider days when I had the nerves to do such stuff, but I'll almost never do content without looking at a guide first. Yes, even MSQ based trials and non-trusted dungeons like Smileton. Thus why Trusts were a *bleep* godsend to me so I could learn the mechanics before hitting the roulettes.

To me it's not a spoiler as the fight isn't the story to be spoiled, the fight's just a way to earn a reward. And as somebody else pointed out, as a healer I want try to mitigate my own screwups to try to help out the others who are going in blind and die to mechanics. Heck, even after reading (prefer reading) a guide I still died to a mechanic and revisited the guide to understand why I screwed up.

Thats fine, there isn't anything wrong with this. If there are people who feel this way then feedback readers need to know it. I still feel the game is too easy for its own good but I wanted to know if we could at least find some people who felt the need to look up guides and there are.

It would've been worse if nobody came forward TBH, because then it would be extremely obvious noone feels a challenge. Personally I plan on playing this game a lot less next expansion with the hopes of one day being able to let go of my house. I no longer feel the spark or excitement I once had for running alliance raids like during SB or HW and feeling like a wipe was a real possibility. So while I like the game, I like it a lot less, despite feeling it was going to get better. Now it feels like it isn't, at least for people who enjoy risk like me.

If I know the outcome is always going to be winning then the food doesn't taste as good in my own world view. The only time Ive actually wiped at an alliance raid recently is from the Aglaia oneshot, but it doesn't bring the thrill that other raids did where wipes were due to a combination of mechanics and not a gacha insta wipe.