Regarding Dungeon Feedback: Don’t Listen to People Who Don’t Know How to Play

[Furrysparks]

You cannot just ask the dev team to ignore one side of the feedback, that's simply not how it's going to work. If you ask the Devs to completely ignore one side of the community then the game won't have a future either, like it or not there is a need for casual players too. There can be easy content in this game as well as challenging.

Like it or not there has to be accomodation for both casuals and raiders alike. If that means slightly tuning down the Story/Narrative modes of Raids and making MSQ accessible to a majority of players regardless of skill? Sure. Yoshi-P once famously said if you want harder content go do Ultimates. Yes Endwalker was easy but that doesn't mean we bring up the Story Content progressively until it's near Extreme.

If anything we should be asking for content such as Criterion, the Eureka/Bozja type content to fulfill the midcore jump.

Funnily enough I'm happy for more content to be difficult but I want it to be placed appropriately. If the direction is this for the foreseeable future then I'm fine with that but I won't ever endorse outright ignoring other players.

There has been more than enough accomodations for the "other side". The game has constantly been streamlined, simplified, and homogenized for years. We have one tiny bit of a scrap of content for midcore players and people already want to complain and have it removed. The difficulty increase in EXPERT dungeons and raids has been good.

[yoshinoharu]

I don't agree with your foil hat summary. People that are making the argument are saying in essence that content which is going to pop up in their daily roulette shouldn't make them regret having joined it.

It seems that a viable solution could be found by redefining things...make a normal roulette that has the content tuned in line with how the game has always scaled...

That's fair, it's why it is admittedly a tin-foil hat theory.

The problem with this is you're asking the devs to make the game twice.

I'm willing to admit that this is my preference and not an objective truth, but I think of it kind of like a restaurant: I'd rather have a smaller menu of extremely well executed dishes that does not allow for substitutions or modifications than go to some place where with a gigantic menu of 'build your own' dishes which all just end up being mediocre because the chefs are just not allowed to cook.

As for 'How the game has always scaled.' I really don't think you actually want that. Shadowbringers was the advent of simplifying and homogenizing everything to make things more accessible. Many, many players were incredibly dissatisfied with this, but the changes were not so egregious that it made the game absolutely boring. Endwalker was really where we saw the changes, especially in raiding content, that were absolutely bad.

What we are experiencing now, speaking as someone who has played since 1.0 beta, is probably somewhere between Shadowbringers and Stormblood in difficulty and complexity, with significantly less jank than there used to be. If we return to 'how the game has always scaled' we would have to consider Heavensward, Stormblood, and A Realm Reborn, which averaging out through Endwalker and Shadowbringers, would still be significantly harder and unforgiving than what we have now.

I'm not saying this as a refute or argument of any kind, just that Shadowbringers and Endwalker is not as representative of the difficulty scaling of this game as you seem to think it is.

I am personally appeased with the current level of complexity (pending savage release of course) because though it's very much still accessible and approachable for newer players who are paying attention (for context on why I think this is: My girlfriend plays as well who has a condition that prevents her from using her keyboard effectively so she MUST click cast and we have had deep discussions about the accessibility of the current game.). It is still engaging enough and forces enough attention be payed to the game that I, as an admittedly extremely sweaty endgame player, can stay engaged and actually have to pay attention. I still think the game could stand to be harder, but leaving it where it is is something that's more or less the compromise and I'm willing to accept that.

[Jaxtaro]

I don't think you're being unreasonable, and I also don't necessarily agree with your conclusion to some degree. For instance, you say that "they would have to make the game twice,". Well, not necessarily, it isn't necessary to make it from scratch, it's the same content, just tuned and duplicated. There is precedent for this, This is already done with savage and ultimate raids.

Also, I do not include Arcadion in the discussion (even though I think that the timer of the back to back lariats on bomber may be a tad harsh). There is no way you can conclude that something as new as the raid content that everyone is pretty new at can be adequately defined as in need of adjustment.

My sole concern is daily roulette content and MSQ and it isn,'t even that much that needs adjustment, but it could use a slightly liwer tier than current. It isn't a Herculean effort.

[yoshinoharu]

I don't think you're being unreasonable, and I also don't necessarily agree with your conclusion to some degree. For instance, you say that "they would have to make the game twice,". Well, not necessarily, it isn't necessary to make it from scratch, it's the same content, just tuned and duplicated. There is precedent for this, This is already done with savage and ultimate raids.

Also, I do not include Arcadion in the discussion (even though I think that the timer of the back to back lariats on bomber may be a tad harsh). There is no way you can conclude that something as new as the raid content that everyone is pretty new at can be adequately defined as in need of adjustment.

My sole concern is daily roulette content and MSQ and it isn,'t even that much that needs adjustment, but it could use a slightly liwer tier than current. It isn't a Herculean effort.

Though it wouldn't be a Herculean effort by any stretch of the imagination, mostly just numbers tweaking, I think my opinion on this is that, to use corporate terminology here: The juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

Savage and Ultimate probably aren't the best examples of 'retuned' however since they are redesigns of a fight.

The best precedence of 'retuning' would probably be the Unreal fights, and there's a reason that there's only one of those per major patch. Even if it wouldn't be a difficult thing to do, fine tuning numbers and potentially having to redesign things like timing and telegraphs is an incredibly time consuming thing to do. It's not like they can just throw something together and get it out the door. They have to tweak, test, tweak, test again, and so forth. Ultimately this pulls development time away from a plethora of other things. There would have to be something given up somewhere in the development process to accomplish something like this and I honestly just don't think it's worth it from a business and development standpoint.

The other big problem is difficulty progression. Like it or not, the last MSQ dungeon of any patch is included in the Expert Roulette, and if the intent is to tune up the optional expert dungeons and make Expert Roulette a bit of a challenge, there needs to be a gradual increase of difficulty leading up to the final MSQ dungeon, which requires that everything preceding that has to be slightly more difficult. Personally I think that the progression of difficulty leading into Alexandria is appropriate. There is a bit of an incline at Alexandria, but it's more of a speedbump than an actual wall thanks to how the preceding dungeons scale.

If you are implying that all the levelling dungeons are far too hard for the average player, and to be clear I am talking about the large majority of players 70% or more as form a business standpoint this is going to be a developer's primary concern and would warrant an immediate change, then I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree.

[Absurdity]

but unfortunately those daily experts are tuned to be the most rewarding in weekly tomes, even a decade of alternate content later.

Actually not true, hunt trains are.
If you can't stand expert dungeons and want a more efficient method of farming all 3 tomestones (once the weekly capped version comes out), combat materia and hunt currency at the same time, join a hunt discord for your data center.
They're technically just as boring as most dungeons but at least you get more out of your time investment.

[Jaxtaro]

No, I'm not at all, but I'm saying that the population is probably sustantial enough to justify it, and that considering how popular MSQ roulette still is, as mentally punishing as it is with cutscenes and repetitiveness, but how important it is to get people through it, that given a decent enough reward, it's worth keeping the population around, and would end up being consumed, and have a decent chance of people then moving upwards as they get more comfortable.

I tend to have a pretty high tolerance for peoples' different learning curves, and many, many years ago during the height of Everquest's popularity was exactly the opposite, having fairly high level of influence to the heads of design, I learned just how wrong I was in being protectionist about my playstyle and how a healthy population at every level was crucial to the long term success of a franchise, so much so that when Cataclysm beta came around in WoW, the fragrance of this disaster permeated, and I kind of watched helplessly as the same ballet played out...people acting as I had were influential and the kind of exclusion occurred and the game had, to this day, the most disastrous mass exodus in MMO history. I see similar dynamics here...not identical, but similar, and the toxicity and intolerance of people attacking players less competent than them is the biggest risk the game currently faces. During the age of ShB/EW, the game had two things happen... first was it had a population renaissance, and second, the community was recognized as standing out in its welcoming, tolerant nature.

A month into Dawntrail and that has evaporated. The venom and targeted attacks in this very forum, the "those people aren't worth it" has harmed the very soul of this community, and pulled back the curtain on the fact that they were never as good as they got the credit for being, they were just untested and when thevtest came, they failed.

[yoshinoharu]

During the age of ShB/EW, the game had two things happen... first was it had a population renaissance, and second, the community was recognized as standing out in its welcoming, tolerant nature.

The only real issue with this is that at came at the expense of what the large majority consider entertaining and engaging gameplay mechanics. At some point something has to break. This community is more than welcoming and tolerant for people willing to put in effort, and over the past few days I have seen that even the casual community is dissenting to the opinion that gameplay content is 'too hard.' Many people with disabilities are also coming forward saying that despite their challenges, they find the content enjoyable and engaging. The people that the community is extremely intolerant of are people that try to represent a voice or large subsection of the community without their consent. No one really likes being spoken for, especially when the person doing the speaking is not accurately representing them.

I have seen you also saying that the subsection of the community is large enough that it warrants change. However, after scouring many of the posts here I really only see a small handful of the same faces recurring over and over again. Small enough of a number that I can count them on my fingers. I think that if the community subsection demanding a difficulty decrease is as significant as you say that it is, a bigger effort to actually organize those voices should be made. Many of us in-game are encouraging other players that enjoy the difficulty level to go post on the forums about it in order to make sure that the changes are not needlessly reverted.

If the voices that are really affected by the difficulty that badly remain silent, like we who have wanted difficulty increase to happen for half a decade, nothing will ever happen.

To be clear, the subject of difficulty has always kind of been a problem, the people that are for making the game unilaterally more challenging and engaging are just making their voices heard now.

[Jaxtaro]

I feel as though we are talking in circles. I know and fully acknowledge that there was a substantial portion of the playerbase who didn't get, and deserved the content they needed. This isn't a new point, it's just kind of becoming a Pavlovian response while justifying the inverse denial of content, a concept that I find abhorrent, especially when combined with the toxicity, bullying, and piling on that is accompanying it.

Not necessarily you. I think you're trying to at least engage in a decent discussion, and agreeing or disagreeing is a reasonable exchange of opinions, but you have to at least acknowledge that the atmosphere throughout the community is one of intimidation into silence and that isn't the earmark of a world class community, and is a big part of why you tend to see more support for one side...the hostility ensures that is the outcome.

Also, to be clear, my version of "change":is additive, not a replacement.

[yoshinoharu]

I feel as though we are talking in circles.

I agree. At this point, I just don't feel as if there's a large enough portion of the community that's affected heavily enough to reasonably push for the additions and the extra development work that such additions would require. That is a point that I could concede on if, again, it were demonstrated that it was a large chunk of the community as you claim, but that has not been demonstrated clearly enough and the people voicing pushback against the idea seem to just be more sizable. It's especially damning that the very people that the ones complaining about difficulty claim to be defending have come forth to explain that they disagree. Until such a point that the chunk of community you claim to be representing comes forward in a larger volume, it kind of calls into question whether or not such a community is not more than a small handful that are being particularly loud. I won't deny that such a group could exist, but the evidence just doesn't support the claim adequately, which is where the hesitation stems from.

My fear is that we will push more work onto the devs, delaying content and other much more needed quality of life changes for a group that numbers in the hundreds as opposed to the multiple millions that play. On that particular point is where we are having a disagreement.

I can also agree that there are some less than savory intimidation tactics going on from this side of the conflict, which I am heavily disappointed in, but I also can't really blame the people doing it either because they feel like people are attempting to rob them. On the same token though, neither side is really innocent of unwholesome tactics. People claiming that the difficulty is too much are VERY quick to label the opposing viewpoint as elitist, uncaring, and selfish even when reasonable arguments, though sometimes poorly worded, are presented and I can't really blame people too much for that either. Someone that has only experienced Shadowbringers or Endwalker might feel like they are being robbed as well. You are definitely one of the more reasonable ones I think, I have seen you conceding points where they make sense to concede.

I don't think there's any more fruit in further discussion though, I think we've both done an adequate job explaining the viewpoints of both sides at this point.

[jdtuggey]

...

I'm almost 40 years old, I've played this game for 10 years, and I haven't seen my capability to play it go down. It's my patience, focus and time that did. If anything, I play a lot better than when I was in my late 20's ?
My brother is late 40's, and he still games as well, plays shooters like destiny even. Like, my early 70's father is still agile and like, sharp enough to play this. I wouldn't put him through 100's of hours to learn though, he never gamed his whole life. :P
Not saying someone can't be handicapped by age, but if we're gonna like... assert that age makes you a poorer gamer conclusively for a majority, I'm not so sure about that.

About the population/community, surface level, sure, I guess it's pretty great ? Depends on how much you engage with it. Like, the reputation of its community soured a lot once it got more popular and started getting more content made about it. I've had some of the nastiest drama ever on ffxiv.
And concerning a population renaissance, it was covid, wow was bad at the time, wow streamers decided to try ffxiv. Context matters here before saying it was the content. :P
Game bled population at about the midpoint of endwalker, Yoshi P himself said the content made him sleepy, and they wanted to reintroduce tension into the game.
Look at the result of that, and this is a quote from Yoshi P: "With your support, we were able to reach a record number of concurrent users we’ve not seen since the release of A Realm Reborn in 2013."
Safe to assume part of that was these changes ?

I also really don't think there's a significant enough number of people that need changes to be made at all anyways. Once you get used to the better pacing, it feels like good ol ffxiv again.

I also addressed adding another tier of content in another post:
Let's suppose they make expert a new tier above current expert, and they create another tier of content that is endwalker difficulty under it, it's pretty clear to me that Dawntrail difficulty is where the average of the playerbase is, so players will start seeing it as the "default, average difficulty", what's under it will be considered "easy mode", so we find ourselves into a situation where the game is telling these players they're subpar. I don't think you would mind, you're probably playing this to destress and you don't need it for your dopamine rush. Try telling a younger, fiery lad prone to fomo that they're not as good as the majority of the playerbase, and they don't deserve the same rewards. He doesn't want that, he wants to be able to do the same content most can, and I don't think the team would want to send that message either. That's why other people are asking for nerfs to the content, not another tier. To be clear, I wouldn't mind it, I just don't think it would solve the issue.