Endwalker hates casual players

[Turtledeluxe]

Like all things there's more than one axis to deal with when talking about target audiences.

But my post does not mention hardcore players. It mentions minmaxing raiders because once again, nearly all moment to moment gameplay outside non combat options (are non combat options the primary reason people play MMOs???) has been shaped by them -- rewards, job design, fight design, gear progression, gear access. When devs say "players asked for the two minute meta" what they mean is raiders asked for the two minute meta. When players say "my class has been simplified to the point of boredom" what they mean is "raiders asked for the changes to my job to make Ultimates more fun/accessible for my job". Yoshi P says players are in unison-- what he means is he listens to people who play the endgame on loop because that requires a sub over the extended drought periods between MSQ beats. And the best engame they can think of is savage raiding and Ultimates. As for Criterion-- if I am understanding you correctly you are seriously trying to tell me people don't like the piss poor Criterion reward bc it doesn't match the target audience? That's insane. People don't want BiS or anything close to it in Criterion because raiders are terrified of people getting raid equivalent gear outside of raids, terrified of some other form of progression than what already exists.

This is why you get so many people on the forums who are legitimately confused constantly by the state of this game-- because the dev team is listening to a tiny % of people who, most likely, spend the most on the game. Ask Bungie how that long term strategy is working for them.

The devs are not listening to the harccore house designer, the hardcore crafter, the hardcore island sanctuary user. They could give an f less. Those are all things to distract you before you go on hiatus/unsub after the forum goads you into "go play other games".

[Fawkes]

What do you need BiS Equipment for? It's hard content, it should be kind of rewarding, this is an alternative route to BiS route if you don't want to farm p12s anymore. You will get casual BiS when Relic releases, just be patient.
Want Glam? Well - Glam often is behind raids, the most beautiful glams are imo. Do the fights or don't get it, always been like that.

So for raiders it's "here's an alternate thing if you don't want to do p12s", but for casuals it's "do this or don't get it, no alternatives".

[tsuchii]

I don't mind hard content if there are more mid-core content like extremes. At least those are workable on party-finder. Savage really is a lot easier with a static but not all of us have the capacity to join a group for scheduled gameplay. It sucks.

I just wish there was more harder content in between casual and high-end. The last Blue Carnivale was nice but it was literally non-repeatable content. Extremes are fun for the first few clears up to mastery but farming them for mounts is just a chore. I wish there were more rewarding, doable mid-core content for casual players. Teaming for a video game is just draining.

[Payadopa]

FFXIV, like all MMOs late stage, caters to raiders hand over fist. That's why once MSQ is done, casual and midcore players are told to go play other games.

Raiders decide everything. Job design, the meta, fight design. Nearly all moment to moment gameplay you experience is driven by minmaxing raiders whose entire life is playing this game with plug-ins.

I'd also argue the only reason EW spiced up casual content a bit is because the devs were course correcting from how braindead they made the game in the effort to appease raiders about jobs and gear.

There's a hot take you can all quote and cry about.

I think that's spot on. The MSQ is supposed to be easy so solo MMO enjoyers can get through it.

And on the other hand we have boring jobs because someone broke out a calculator and decided that [insert old ability] is a DPS loss so it got removed.

Now we do things like weaving in gap closers or using heal abilities for DPS gains only, along with the removal of positionals or boss circles the size of the moon because uptime. lol

To be fair I think a couple of things also got removed to make things accessable for casuals like aggro management or 1 button DPSing on healers while alienating the people who originally liked the design.

All of the above is subjective. I just don't think catering to both extremes is all that enticing in the long run. But that's just me.

[Nestama]

Nah, Endwalker leans too much for casuals in my opinion.

They gave casuals a whole island and stripped down the relic grind into a tomestone farm. There's also the variant dungeons.

The only additional content hardcore players got was the criterion dungeons and more than 1 ultimate.

I don't want content moving forward to feel more barebones than it already is now.

24man raids were also dumbed down quite a lot, too. Went from interesting engaging fights in Ivalice (with party/individual responsibility mechanics) to... just dodge the aoe you've seen a thousand times before in MSQ dungeons.

[Colt47]

But my post does not mention hardcore players. It mentions minmaxing raiders because once again, nearly all moment to moment gameplay outside non combat options (are non combat options the primary reason people play MMOs???) has been shaped by them -- rewards, job design, fight design, gear progression, gear access. When devs say "players asked for the two minute meta" what they mean is raiders asked for the two minute meta. When players say "my class has been simplified to the point of boredom" what they mean is "raiders asked for the changes to my job to make Ultimates more fun/accessible for my job". Yoshi P says players are in unison-- what he means is he listens to people who play the endgame on loop because that requires a sub over the extended drought periods between MSQ beats. And the best engame they can think of is savage raiding and Ultimates. As for Criterion-- if I am understanding you correctly you are seriously trying to tell me people don't like the piss poor Criterion reward bc it doesn't match the target audience? That's insane. People don't want BiS or anything close to it in Criterion because raiders are terrified of people getting raid equivalent gear outside of raids, terrified of some other form of progression than what already exists.

This is why you get so many people on the forums who are legitimately confused constantly by the state of this game-- because the dev team is listening to a tiny % of people who, most likely, spend the most on the game. Ask Bungie how that long term strategy is working for them.

The devs are not listening to the harccore house designer, the hardcore crafter, the hardcore island sanctuary user. They could give an f less. Those are all things to distract you before you go on hiatus/unsub after the forum goads you into "go play other games".

Not sure where you are coming from but I can tell you that the people who actually do hard content wouldn't really care if others got access to the higher iLvL or not.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Not a hot take.

Extremes are casual content.

Lol nah. Extremes are absolutely mid-core. Casual content is anything a player can step into with absolutely no pressure, no pre-gearing, no skill practicing, no role responsibility, no video guide watching, no substantial time investment, no long term grind, no expectations. Many casuals still do not participate in synced Extremes because the upfront investment, albeit minimal, is still more than they care to engage with the game.

Not to mention, the motivations to play extremes, especially current iLevel extremes, align more with mid-core grinds (mounts) and signifiers (weapon drops/crafting). The average casual player will look at potentially needing to repeat a piece of content 99 times for a specific reward and either (a) not bother or (b) be happy to wait potentially years until they can grind it unsynced with no challenge.

Extremes may represent the bottom-most threshhold of mid-core content, but they are still mid-core. When over half your playerbase does not have Kirin or any of the Lanners, and only 4 percent have Lynx of Imperious Wind, Extremes are beyond most casuals' interest.

[xbahax92]

I dont think it's fair to say that casual players dont need gear progression. Even if they dont participate in savage or ultimate, it does help in 24man raids and dungeons.
Also, it's quite rewarding when you finish gear for multiple jobs.
There should be more horizontal gear progression instead of just one path.

[chip793]

Not wanting to play the content is your choice. But I do think it voids the right to complain when you openly state as much. Like others have said, we'll get our final relic step in a couple months and it'll be BiS anyway. Plus Savage can always be unsynced easily in the next expac. As it stands you can get by with a tome weapon and have zero issues getting decent clear times in normal content. If you want more oomph, the new EX isn't particularly demanding aside its one wall mechanic.

[the-kuponut]

Counting Island Sanctuary as "casual content" is so funny considering it's just making a list 5 times a week 99% of the time, there's nothing else to do there. It's not something you're supposed to spend time doing. Saying it's casual content is like saying sending squadron on missions is casual content.