I think SE needs to focus on making players feel important again.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I'm fine with the Trust/Duty Support addition so long they don't change the vanilla non trust-version of the duties or forces all future duties to abide the AI limitation. I.e. all these 'must reset to center of arena' quirks that they add to many of these 'reworked duties' are annoying af. Or that part where they literally deletes the transmogs in Skalla. Is it so hard to make the AI be like "Oh what's this circl-- WOOPS" to keep that?

[Tehmon]

It is a common trap to assume that the opinions we hold are secretly held by a silent majority. That is not the position I am coming from. The opposite in fact. I am pushing back against the narrative that the silent majority of casuals all want to keep the game as it is now. We assume they will quit at the drop of a hat if we raise the skill floor or skill ceiling even a little bit. We assume a risk of failure will drive casuals away. As a casual myself who's getting older, I thought I'd add a different perspective.

I think the skill floor is great where it is now. I like that 14 is an accessible game, but I'd love it if we could also raise the skill ceiling. I think that would be a good compromise the devs can make.

How about you? What is the content you enjoy doing the most? What is your biggest fear (if any) with raising the game's skill ceiling?

This is not about fears, if this game becomes too frustrating for me to play I'm just going to quit instead of making several threads about it on this forum. If the devs decide you are the most profitable demographic to go after, I'm not going to stand in their way.

But from my experience and knowledge, the '' difficult '' casual content that exists in the game isn't exactly popular. And the difficult casual content that is too difficult has gotten nerfed before, like Ivalice. That tells me that a sizeable portion of casual players aren't exactly interested in getting better, much less for your enjoyment's sake.

Then there's just a general issue of things like '' skill ceiling, skill floor, engagement, value, difficulty '' and such being very much subjective things that varies from each player (which takes into consideration previous history with games, MMOs and the amount of time they've put into FFXIV) so finding consensus is difficult within players and devs. But of course, this doesn't mean that devs shouldn't try, but it also means that I'm not going to be offended when they don't necessarily hit the mark. This applies to most casual content in the game: some are great, some are dreadful. This is true to Endwalker and all the expansions before it.

Lastly, when we talk about casual content, sure you might raise the difficulty (a bit), and it'll be refreshing for a while but once you learn it, you have learned it and we are back to the starting point of casual content not being engaging enough. Some might think '' this is great, people are going to get better so all the next content is going to be harder as well '' but now you are on the fast track lane of doing real damage to enticing new players. MMOs just aren't the place where people go to test their skills, when there are other much better options available in both the single player and multiplayer genre of games.

In conclusion, do as you will, but I really don't think what you are suggesting is the correct maneuver for long term player satisfaction. And personally I don't think devs are being lazy for not accomplishing difficult things. Shoot me.

[IvoryBadge]

Ah, it's interesting that you mention that, because Duty Support as it is currently is having the opposite effect I think.

Personally I’ve only tried duty support once when it came out during EW 2nd trial i think? And yeah it was kinda bad i had to leave mid duty and queue up for the trial. I just assumed it got more polished since then and considering it keeps getting updated, But overall it’s still doable.

On the note of newer players in cutscenes, I genuinely enjoy having more sprouts during trials or alliance raids because it may shake things up a bit instead of the repetitive scenario of smooth 8/24 players hitting things till duty is over, which i think contributed in sparking this thread.

[Banriikku]

What we need to do stuff before getting actual rewards ??? NAYYYYYYYYYYYYY....
and "but i saw somebody die", "my pf/df group wiped" and because of that youre argument is incorrect/invalid and SE cant be wrong. PRAISE YOSHIDA - incoming.

Dungeons have no reason to exist at the moment. Make them Solo/NPC instance and nothing is lost or missing. No... wait when i play with NPC's there is sometimes a challenge because the NPC's are a little special with mechs.

Holy Trinity is also a empty shell. Tanks are DPS with defense CD's and healer's are gutted DPS with "can make the BLM survive his/her leylines a bit longer" CD's.

SE does not understand "easy to learn and hard to master" nor do they understand difficulty or rewards.
Give us the "FEELING" of the class and a complexity that allows us to dive deep if we wish to but allows on the same side Mrs-i-roll-my-cat-on-the-keyboard to beat the story. Not that hard.

If instructions are not clear : it is and was done by MANY games already. Look at them and look for "why do players like it". We are not in 1985 and nobody has a clue what they are doing or everything is new.

[Jeeqbit]

HW PLD, PLD had 2.5 problems

It was honestly frustrating that they didn't give PLD magical mitigation back then. I didn't understand why it took them so long, at the time, but as the expansions went on, it became clear they don't think they can make changes except every 2-3 years when an expansion releases. They have made some little overhauls in patches since, such as the mini Ninja and PLD reworks, so at least they've tried to respond in patches now.

I keep hearing this argument that the game is for casuals, and casuals require the game to be this easy or they'll quit.

If you do roulettes for years as I have, you regularly encounter sprouts and returners (flower icons). If a mechanic is not obvious, they are usually flat out unaware of it and never learn it. Or they just die to it repeatedly. It's hopeless. If you watch videos of them playing, they have damage buffs on their hotbar and never press them. Tanks have damage reduction buffs on their hotbar and often don't seem to use them at all. Unless SE makes it obvious and hard to mess up, many of these players just, don't do these things for the few days they return to the game for. I observed this happening regularly for years until SE made it hard to mess everything up and made all the mechanics extremely obvious in Endwalker.

I'm getting older, and real life responsibilities are eating into the time I have to game. If I want something mind-numbing and risk-free... I just curl up on the couch and watch Netflix.

Some people, like yourself, dig challenges even as they get older. But not everyone is like that. Many people are just hopeless. This is true in all professions. For example, some people are just not capable of programming even if you explain it to them for years. While other people can continue to do it into their 70s.

We assume they will quit at the drop of a hat if we raise the skill floor or skill ceiling even a little bit.

I don't think they quit at the drop of a hat. But over a long period of time, you can get lost in the overwhelming complexity of a game you don't understand. Take a game with several layers of skill trees that aren't very intuitive. That sort of thing can just put you off even logging into a game.

I think the skill floor is great where it is now. I like that 14 is an accessible game, but I'd love it if we could also raise the skill ceiling.

I agree. I think it is challenging to raise the ceiling without raising the floor, but not impossible. The primary way I've seen that the ceiling can be raised is by adding utility actions. For example, resurrects, raid-wide mitigation or damage reduction, rescue, knockback immunity, positional nullification, gap closers, retreat jumps. These actions are great, but thinking of more ideas like it, which aren't required but show skill and situational awareness, are one way to increase the ceiling without affecting the floor.

Endwalker's dungeons and alliance raids are some of the most boring content in the game imo. They are just way too easy and predictable.

The Thaleia alliance raid I was in yesterday was actually a near-wipe in many of the fights. It had a lot of new and returning players in. I was resurrecting a lot on SMN trying to hold it together. Our tank abandoned it so a tank buster destroyed me, because I had the most enmity. I see deaths pretty regularly in the latest dungeon too, especially to the second boss and occasionally to the last boss.

All of which begs the question of if it's that they are too easy, or if it's that the knowledge and experience of people on this forum has just outgrown them.

They are also just well-telegraphed now compared to prior expansions. The spider might not have shown us where it was going to go in advance for example and the quicksand would stay up for a few minutes instead of disappearing. Oschon probably wouldn't telegraph the bows like it does so that we just have to find the little arrows without any aoe telegraphs or indicators. AoEs would probably remain placed for a while, the adds would need separating, some players would have to place things that can be placed wrong.

it's just pure lazyness that made them stop doing dungeon Hard Modes that were available in ARR and HW.

They weren't hard. They were essentially just "sidequest dungeons". They only seem harder now because the sidequest dungeons didn't get revamped like main ones did.

Sure there is criterion now, but that is 1 dungeon per what... expansion almost?

3 per expansion. 3 in Endwalker, expecting 3 in Dawntrail.

Alliance raid also needs a huge doze of creativity. There should be Alliance (Hard, Extreme or Savage) with a raid experience similar to something like Baldesion Annex (Eureka) or the Bozja raids.

The phrasing suggested we're gonna have a large-scale raid to "clear" in Dawntrail's Field Operation.

But I agree it would be nice to have Bozja and Zadnor level difficulty in Alliance Raids. Particularly like CLL with its first boss split, rescuing prisoners, only telegraphing things once and not on subsequent casts, having 8 people fight a different boss that can wipe the raid, maybe like Dalriada's last boss where it was so fast that most of the raid wiped to it, where everyone has a different number of steps to take in the last boss of DR, or something that caught people like the hot and cold mechanics.

[Hycinthus]

MMOs just aren't the place where people go to test their skills

Why is an MMO not a place for people to test their skills?

[Tehmon]

Why is an MMO not a place for people to test their skills?

People CAN test their skill in MMOs and they certainly do, but MMORPGs don't offer the same ease of picking them up as many other competitive games, the barrier of entry is big and previous gaming experience will help you little, as things like rigid long rotations and triple the amount of buttons you need to press compared to most other games are things that only really exist within the MMO genre. This comment was specifically highlighting that for the most part it SEEMS that casual people don't really care about getting better in MMOs, and I also might add that if the barrier of entry is raised significantly in casual story content, it will be detrimental to the game in my opinion, as people don't seem to be joining the game to test their skill unless they are into hardcore raiding. And, well, these people do hardcore raiding, and are mostly concerned about hardcore raiding, nothing else.

[Grizzlpaw]

^Good Post.

The bit about sprouts failing miserably due to not hitting their buttons is a good point to bring up. This isn't actually a FF14 specific issue. It's a very common problem in the multiplayer online genre. Not just in MMOs but even other games I've played. Off the top of my head Warframe, LoL, and GW2 all have this problem too. Arguably far worse than 14 does.

The problem stems from games not adequately teaching players the ropes. There's a lot SE could do to help with this.

The big one is giving new players their buttons core buttons much sooner. Your basic 1-2-3 combo shouldn't take 26 levels to unlock. Your basic AoE should really be available by the 1st dungeon. Skills like Holy that stun can offer players a weaker version so they can start to play around with these buttons sooner and start getting acquainted with them. By level 50 you should have all the important bits of your end game rotation fully unlocked.

The game should also do a much better job of communicating how and when to use role actions, buffs, and situational utility.

Here's one example. in the Dancer job quest, the game can direct the player to select a dance partner, then it can ask them to heal an ally. The game will ask them to try to position themselves so that the heal from themselves and their dance partner land on their target. Then it can ask them to do it again but with more stakes attached. Little things like this sprinkled throughout your game go a long way.

SE could also consider a job-specific hall of the novice.

There's a lot that SE can do to help ease these frustrations. A lot of them come from players not knowing what the game expects them to do. It's not an quick and easy problem to solve, but it is solvable.

Even if the community is largely opposed to raising the game's difficulty curve. I think there's a lot of value in revamping the way 14 teaches new and intermediate players. If nothing else, everyone's daily roulettes might go a bit smoother.

[Rehayem]

The current ceiling for skillset and threat level is so low, game actually rewards mediocrity. I fear more for my life doing open world events in GW2 than dungeons in FFXIV. There's no sense of "punishment" or failure of any sorts in normal content, except savage and ultimates. People are right to criticize Myths raids, I think it's worse than CT. Game is becoming easier each patch because SE wants to invite the newer and younger generation in, but they forget the ones that keep the game moving are actually adults.

[Saraide]

I'm fine with the Trust/Duty Support addition so long they don't change the vanilla non trust-version of the duties or forces all future duties to abide the AI limitation. I.e. all these 'must reset to center of arena' quirks that they add to many of these 'reworked duties' are annoying af. Or that part where they literally deletes the transmogs in Skalla. Is it so hard to make the AI be like "Oh what's this circl-- WOOPS" to keep that?

I'm having a hard time accepting that the recent dungeon changes were made for the trust ai. The castrum abania boss with the elemental weakness&immunity was changed even though stripped to the studs the mechanic is indistinguishable from any other donut aoe. Something the trust npcs can already handle in other dungeons.