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

[Arohk]

Honestly it is mostly the midcore players who are ignored in this game. this game has become to easy to the point that i had to leave this game to get content that i crave

exactly, normal raids are way too easy , the gap between a normal raid and an EX trial is way too large, especialy the older normal raids are an absolute joke beside some janky mechanics here and there.

Normal raids should be way way more difficult, about half of an EX trial.

[EiraWoqiso]

(snip)

I think that the SCH that you had may have either been unfamiliar with either the dungeon or the job - especially on SCH, where they might have leveled SMN before. In addition to that, I think some of these 'lower-skill' players (not meant to be said derogatorily) may have gotten complacent with the difficulty of normal content in 5.x and 6.x, so this jump in difficulty comes out of nowhere and demands more than they're used to giving.

I think this can be solved with more detailed tutorials per role, let it be a revamped Hall of the Novice, an addition to Stone Sky Sea, or something to help players learn what the content demands of them before they get put into content they may struggle with. If a player is dead-set on it being an easy zero-stress experience, I can envision a "story mode" being added in the future, which limits you to Trusts in dungeons, removes item drops and EXP gains, and vastly improves the party damage output while vastly reducing incoming damage.

That aside, I think this difficulty is what I would expect after 10 years of the game being out - if the content difficulty continued to increase from expansion to expansion, this is around the difficulty I would anticipate. However, the 4.x -> 5.x -> 6.x difficulty was a downwards curve instead, so the expectation was that this content would be *less* difficult again, rather than a spike in difficulty. This isn't to say that I think the content is difficult, but the difference in the necessary skill floor has increased against expectation.

It could also be a difference in regional culture, but as I can't read Japanese a lot of what I've heard on Twitter is that the JP forums have also been upset with the difficulty of normal content, with a non-negligible amount of players struggling to proceed past the Lv 94 solo duty. From that, I would anticipate that this is not a difference in culture, but a matter of unfamiliarity and a mismatch of the player's expectation against the content of the game.

[Puyocha]

♥

I mean yea I agree with you, I love the current difficulty too.
I am just concerned with people who complain with the difficulty...I want to know where they are actually coming from.

As an artist who draw to earn a living, I understand what you said. But I also listen to my clients and editors, but that doesn't mean I budge.
I try to understand where they are coming from, and find other ways to satisfy those things.
As we all know, their feelings might be valid, but their suggestions for change could be bad.

The reason why knowing is important is, others get to judge for themselves if those sentiments are true or not.
I understand their feelings, but I also wonder what sort of "sacrifices" they are willing to make to get what they want. (goes back to the art and music part)
Because we all know to achieve anything, one needs to commit to it.
And from what I see, they are more commit to complain about the game than actually learn about the game...
And I am fully aware I might be wrong on this, hence I want to know what level do they actually play.
And if they are avoid learning the game, why?
I wonder if they will get bored with the same gameplay, or same tells every time, or jobs getting the same.
Which is exactly what the healer strike was about...
I guess my question is, where is the middle ground?
And have they considered the midcore player's position, instead of just pushing everyone who thinks normal is easy as elitest?

ps I also don't want to just say casual is bad, thats no my point. But there is a difference between an actual bad player and a casual player.
would be helpful if the casual players actually distinguish this, so we can separate the wheat from the chaff.

[jdtuggey]

As an artist who draw to earn a living, I understand what you said. But I also listen to my clients and editors, but that doesn't mean I budge.
I try to understand where they are coming from, and find other ways to satisfy those things.
As we all know, their feelings might be valid, but their suggestions for change could be bad.

Of course there's nuance to that, if I'm doing a commission, it's another story entirely, for example.
I also listen to feedback from people I trust a lot, but these people tell me "oh god this definitely sounds like you", and this part is so important to me.
Usually the feedback I take is "this instrument is too loud", but then again I wouldn't listen to an isolated voice in dozens of voices telling me it's fine ?
I also have data to guide me, some styles and sounds I tackle get more hits than others, it gives me a general sense of where to go, moreso than feedback.

I'm speaking more about a particular entitlement I see in gaming communities that like...
They feel it's okay to ask the devs (ie: the artist) to accommodate subjective changes to make the experience palatable to them, regardless of the consequences on the rest of the playerbase and with no respect for this "It's their game" part.
I hear people say "This game is for everyone", like no, I wouldn't play a game like that. Just like I don't make or listen to music that is made for everyone. Immediately, you see that "This game is for everyone" is an oxymoron.
Making something "for everyone" makes it stale and generic, and there's people that don't like that, therefore, it's impossible to make things for everyone. :P

When an experience is not palatable to me to the point of saying things like "I might as well stay dead and leech my clears from you all", I don't ask for change, I just don't engage rofl.
If a majority of people agree with me and decides not to engage anymore, the devs will feel the consequences of these changes, and we've respected their artistic integrity and the "It's their game" part.
We're also respecting the experience of a majority of players here. If you turn out to be in a minority, sucks for you, but it feels reasonable for everyone involved that you seek an experience that checks your boxes.
The "but endwalker worked for me!" argument doesn't work, because I can reverse that argument as a veteran and say that HW/StB difficulty worked for me, and Dawntrail is a step towards a return to form.

[Puyocha]

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Yup yup, that is why I think knowing is important too, gives a better general sense, I think this general skill helps us critically think, and think about the feedback, to get what is important and get rid of the noise.
And like manga, if you put everything into one manga, it loses it's identity and uniqueness, so it is impossible to make something for everyone.
There is this trend as of late where people complain about a protagonist in a certain anime, but those who complain didn't actually put themselves in the character's shoes...which kind of baffles me.

I think the nuance lies in example like this: people need to be able to distinguish if something is bad because it really is bad? Or it is just "not their taste / habit". I don't wanna go into the MSQ story here, but it is divisive and mixed. I don't like it, but I don't hate it. If anything my personal opinion is, there are some really really good parts, but there are some really weird misses, which makes the good parts contrast with these parts...and becomes mixed. But enough of that here.
I guess a good discussion is that we can be in good faith and actually see if the problem is the game or the player.
As for normal difficulty, I think as many have point to, the problem is that we have been on a downward difficulty and most players are accustomed to the difficulty of EW, for better (if they just casual) or worse (if they felt bored) and the sudden spike up while good for those who want something engaging, maybe a bit of a steep curve for those who are fine with the difficulty before.

Another personal experience: I have been doing some M1-4 with my friends, we wiped a lot but we learnt and got past it in 1 night.
They do feel that the mechanics are generally faster, so in that sense it is more "difficult"
So from that perspective, maybe i would consider the cast for mechanic 1 gcd longer (its a bit too long, maybe 1.5sec)
But the mechanic doesn't need change, so people have slightly more time to read and understand.
As a tank, I feel that the damage is not harsh for normal, in fact it is probably a bit more generous than before.
So players can make more mistakes, but only up to a certain point. (not for extreme, extreme still requires good mitigation)
M2's hearts mechanic is annoying, I didn't like it, but its funny because we joke that savage would probably be strict,
and the patterns becomes clearer, then it may actually become more easy than normal.
But aside from that, the 3 hearts on the head, that is a really good way to teach players too.

I definitely think this is going in the right direction, but it is hard to change player habits.

[Jinglypockets]

There are always options, but all options has trade offs:

1) Make MSQ slightly more engaging or harder (depends how you view it) to help players get accustom to mechanics in normal
(what they have picked, I am personally enjoying it, but it creates the current problem.)
OR
2) Make MSQ the way it used to ,then make hard mode dungeons(with more rewards) using more resources (Not criterion, but more like ARR hard modes)
(older players who actually knows how to play jobs and mechanics will get bored easily and it takes more SQEX resources to do so)
OR
3) Make trust system even easier than it is for players who only wants to clear story.
(this means every one can clear, and it becomes a choice, seems all good, except this will never improve the player base and will make it even less of an MMO)

Dungeon difficulty options where they scale up the difficulty by scaling up the numbers and offer better rewards for higher difficulties. The difficulty can scale infinitely, but the rewards only scale to a point.

This can be done more programmatically, which means they can set up the system once and maintaining it becomes a relatively low-cost way to massively increase the amount of content available to players at all skill/difficulty levels.
It also eliminates the problem of dungeons becoming trivial once people get a little bit of gear.

When another MMO did this, it was so massively popular that it created an entire new pillar of the game.

[MegaOddly]

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.

Yet the Minority of players complain on here saying they are the majority and the push back that is happening is proving that. He has a point.

[MegaOddly]

The problem with your position is multifold.

1.First and foremost, people who don't like the difficulty know exactly how to play the game as it was designed and has existed for every single expac until this. You are asking them to play a different game.

2. No one is asking for content which is set aside to be challenging to be not available to you. Everyone wants you to have content for you. These folks want content for them consistent with the entire game up to this point, and your position seeks to deny them of that.

3. People aren't queuing for daily roulettes for multiple reasons related to Dawntrail dungeons.

A. Toxicity is much higher with votekicks, performance pressure and impatience.

B. Performance anxiety demotivates people from queuing with jobs they aren't comfortable with, and especially those with cast times.

Finally, and probably most important, FFXIV has a reputation for being a "big tent" game that tries to support all playstyles, andvthis is a drastic deviation from thst.

Older players, non gamers, disabled players, those who have any kind of challenge are being told "you and your subscription are not wanted".

1. They have had from level 1 to 100 to learn to play if content becomes too hard because you didnt learn how to play that is on you not the game.
2. They are actively wanting the majority of the content in the game dumbed down so they can continue to not learn to do mechanics and be carried passed the finish line.
3. thats on them. I dont do it for reasons i have limited time and put that to other things over the roulettes.
A never been kicked in a dungeon or roulette in my entire time playing even when i was performing bad.
b. If you have anxiety in a game That is something you should deal with why should everyone else try to help your anxiety if you refuse to deal with it?

A game you try to make for everyone ends up being a game for no one. That is the path the game will go down if they bend the knee to everyone. Devs are making the game more entertaining games don't have to be for everyone and that is okay.

[MegaOddly]

Perhaps paying attention to the context of the discussion would be in order. I was literally responding to the argument that disabled people want things harder to "overcome the challemge". It was the topic at hand, and the paragraph was relevant to show the absurdity of that claim, which was the actual subject.

And your comment was braindead. You 100% knew there was a difference between what he said and what you said but you said it just to try and "prove" your point you don't care about disabled people you want to use them to push your own narrative

[MegaOddly]

And perhaps we should stop exaggerating: to hear you tell it, DT's dungeons are dens of death, requiring a mad mastery of the game to be successful

I mean who's exaggerating now? At no point was this ever a position that I took. My position is that it's simply not worth joining daily roulettes, that it creates too much stress for normal content, and that they aren't even THAT much overtuned, that most of the mechanics are pretty good and that the content is overall pretty fun, but they could use tuning on specific encounters.

This is a LONG, LONG way from how you describe it.

If the content stresses you out. then don't play it.