Problem with toxic casual players on this forum

[Taranok]

I'm the same as you. I don't particularly like challenging myself to Savage because I already worked long hours, and got no time to find a static. I do try it from time to time, but it's never really my focus. I enjoy 14 because it told me a good story, and because my friends are here. When the story department went to get some milk the way my dad did, it hurts about the same.

You're right, too, that people need to stop acting like there's only hardcore and casual players. I wish the devs would realize this as well and give the midcore players more things to do between each expansions. I loved Eureka and Bozja, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade them for anything, but the grindy nature of them is hard to follow on a regular salaryman schedule. Not if you wanna keep a healthy life, anyway.

This is the thing. Baseline content people are expected to do, especially grind, needs to be casual. You don't want to introduce frustration into people doing what is literally mandatory content (I.E. trials and dungeons.) When you start pushing for difficulty, eventually it starts making certain jobs miserable (currently casters and healers,) but eventually the drive for difficulty creates Deadwalk, a dungeon with 2 completely awful bosses, especially for what should be low-effort.

That is, the dungeons, and even trials, should be doable by someone who's tired, drunk, and just looking to unwind. If a drunk person can't handle the dungeon without dying, it is simply too hard for the literal floor of grindable instanced content.

However, you are correct. This game is polarized on difficulty to the point where people are begging for harder content because there's not much between dungeons and raids. Especially progression raiding related to give a sense of moving forward. There's a surprisingly simple solution to this though.

Take the dungeons we already have, and make hard modes of them. Not the ARR/HW/SB hard mode that may as well be a new dungeon, but actual hard modes. Make the rewards better than normal. Think 150 tomestones instead of 90 of the weekly cap. And also add a weekly reward: An item you can trade in for either a tomestone armor upgrade or a 'new' armor set. Stats are identical to savage, but take a little longer to get. If making 'new' armor, take old dungeon sets, make a dyeable version with a reskin. Add some fancy special particle effects. Make a unique-ish weapon (could also be dungeon weapons!) Make them fancy and unique to this midcore content.

Instead of dungeons all the time, take old trials. Instead of unreal mode, reimagine the fight. Similar or even same mechanics but in a different order or with different telegraphing. Hell, take unreal fights and just throw those into their own roulette. Add some sort of gatekeeping mechanic to make sure people are semi-skilled enough to get in, but otherwise can queue in with a roulette. Try to encourage roulettes as well.

And after doing all that, if this somehow kills off savage raiding, then the problem is in savage raiding. If glamour and challenge isn't good enough, then there's something wrong with the glamour and/or the challenge.

Midcore needs representation, it needs to be a good, fun way to gear. But it needs to be opt in and also have real rewards. And definitely not be anything like critereon dungeons which may as well be lite party ultimate. Tomestone gear with alliance upgrades just isn't good enough.

Difficulty scaling is extremely important in MMOs. It needs to be brainless and approachable at the low end, and extremely engaging at the high end. The devs have kneecapped themselves with EW and especially DT on dungeons. The low end is too hard, the high end is too frustrating (as of EW.) But the solution is to create hard bosses for hard dungeons, and then make the same bosses super casual for story mode.

[KisaiTenshi]

Take the dungeons we already have, and make hard modes of them. Not the ARR/HW/SB hard mode that may as well be a new dungeon, but actual hard modes. Make the rewards better than normal. Think 150 tomestones instead of 90 of the weekly cap. And also add a weekly reward: An item you can trade in for either a tomestone armor upgrade or a 'new' armor set. Stats are identical to savage, but take a little longer to get. If making 'new' armor, take old dungeon sets, make a dyeable version with a reskin. Add some fancy special particle effects. Make a unique-ish weapon (could also be dungeon weapons!) Make them fancy and unique to this midcore content.

Instead of dungeons all the time, take old trials. Instead of unreal mode, reimagine the fight. Similar or even same mechanics but in a different order or with different telegraphing. Hell, take unreal fights and just throw those into their own roulette. Add some sort of gatekeeping mechanic to make sure people are semi-skilled enough to get in, but otherwise can queue in with a roulette. Try to encourage roulettes as well.
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That doesn't work. In games that do this, all that really results in are mobs with higher HP, or normal mobs swapped out with mobs that have more HP and have a more complicated AI.

Eg take sastasha, 4 man. Make a "Savage" version that is now an 8-man, and every trash mob has as much HP as the boss fight, and the boss fight's have insta-wipe level damage. The dungeon is otherwise the same map, and exhausting to do since now instead of a trash mob pack taking 30 seconds, it takes minutes.

The reality is that in other MMORPG's that do this, you end up in this upside down situation where players just want the reward, so they will instead (pay someone to) get carried through it just to get to the reward at the end. Thus back to the problem we've had since 2.x, with very few people actually legitimately "clearing" content when it's new, and instead waiting for it to be de-facto nerfed by the next expansion before trying it to avoid the P2W extortion racket.

Don't underestimate players desire to take shortcuts and want instant-gratification. Ever ask yourself why players would keep finding ways to keep doing Labyrinth of the Ancients from the roulette for tomes/cracked-materia-items rather than any of the harder raids? Because players would find ways to manipulate the roulette, first by wearing lower level gear, and now apparently by having someone who hasn't unlocked anything but Labyrinth to be in their party when they queue for the roulette. That loophole needs to be fixed.

My preference really is that if players really want harder content that is still accessible is to have variations on the "Field operations" applied to dungeons and trials, where you earn mettle by clearing it on a per-player score (eg being carried won't earn you points,) and your gear has specific strengths/weaknesses that need to be rotated on a per-fight basis (so you have to actually pay attention.) But I don't see this happening since the Field operations aren't very popular since they've been designed as time-sinks. All "special weapon" grinds are.

Difficulty != Timesink.