Feedback: Dawntrail MSQ dungeon difficulty

[jdtuggey]

I think you misunderstand. I do not care what your "problem" with my thoughts are here. ...If I don't verbalize to Square that I would like something changed, shame on me. I am not here telling you that you are right or wrong so you might want to spread the BS where you'll think it works, it does not work here with me.

...And you're here pretending we are the villains. I offered insight on how you might be ignoring some of the consequences of what you ask for, and yes, you did ask for things.

Not sure why the so called regular and leets are so scared of allowing a player base that has problems get through JUST THE MSQ with an xtra choice option like: the ability to use TRUST with an added rez skill from the healer and an easy mode for all the dungeon types during the xpac if people choose to go that route. It won't affect other players at all

I do the forced content during the MSQ then never touch those dungeons again. I do not need the gear, I run a bazillion HUNTS and high level S ranks for tomes and then enjoy my other time in game doing fates, crafting, gathering, submarines, etc. Seems a simple fix Square could implement that would only affect the choices of a certain section of the player base. To me, your balkng at this is just a story about "toxic control".

Like, if you had read my reply, you'd see it's relevant, it even answers your "not sure why". :P
And like, clearly you want these things, even if it's not for you, anyone who has reasons to disagree, you describe as:

They luv, luv, luv to attack what they do not agree with even though it may be just suggestions. Sound familar?? Now we are chastized, hummiliated, bullied and berated for simple opinions. Sounds like woke finally reared their ugly heads in game.

And then you go and make assumptions, conflating asserting we are happy with how they made dawntrail more dynamic, and we don't want this change to be rollback with "chastizing, humiliating, bullying" and other terrible things.
If we were really doing these things, mods would be all over our posts deleting them. Some have been what you describe and mods have acted on them, but most of us aren't.
From my perspective, you're being mean and disparaging to others based on assumptions and you're completely closed to any kind of conversation.
I really tried being kind to you while explaining my perspective, but it doesn't seem like you're willing to engage, and your goal seem to be about demonizing and alienating people who disagree with you, projecting your behavior onto them to then call them all of these nasty words and assign all of these bad intentions to them.

And what's this about being woke ? lol. You know nothing about us. What does a political slander qualificative have anything to do with an ffxiv topic lol ?
And if you don't do this content, why does this even matter to you ? You're being so unclear and aggressive that I can't even tell which side of the fence you stand on, feels like you're just looking for negative attention or venting some unrelated frustration.

[jdtuggey]

What I dont understand is where disability has suddenly entered the equation

Especially when I have the same disability (I see as being different/a strength) and it feels like it makes me better at the game and video games in general.
I feel it makes me really good at analyzing data and resolving problems. However, yeah, I struggle a lot with social cues, but this isn't what Manusya confuse is.
I struggle when some random lala slaps my bottoms in gridania It happened yesterday, I first interpreted it as the lala having something against me, but they were just being a brat rofl.
Lala probably liked what I project, and being a brat to me is his way of saying that and getting my attention ?
Perhaps my experience of this differs from his though, in all honesty.

Like, I don't want to disparage anyone, but I don't think it's reasonable to use things like this to say "I can't do this because of X factor I can't do anything about, the game should accommodate me", especially when we're talking about leaving a lot of other players behind. (not saying the person has, but disability seems to be brought up often to like, try to strongarm change, not just in ffxiv, but in just about every game)
Sometimes, it's okay to acknowledge one's own limitations (disabled or not) and leave the areas where you are limited to the people who aren't, or find clever ways to adapt. The people around you will be happy for it, and they themselves will probably come forwards to accommodate you. Karma is pretty strong on the internet, empathizing with people and not imposing on them often leads to much more positive consequences than demanding they accommodate us.
I was pretty shocked lately, some guy I got paired with had recently lost a hand, he was super forthcoming when we got into the dungeon.
He didn't do as good as us 3 others, but he never imposed on us, just warned us of the situation and assured us he will try as hard as he can, and he really did, and we got through the dungeon without any problems.
Like, I'd help that guy again any day, though I will probably never see him again due to the nature of roulettes. :P

It's laudable when devs put efforts to accommodate people, as long as it doesn't affect other players significantly, imho, but then again, we probably all have different definitions of "affecting other players".
Lots of people in these discussions seem to assume that if a change someone is demanding doesn't affect them, it doesn't affect anyone else, especially when there's this added virtuous component of catering to a disabled person.

Also like, in that person who mentions a disability's post, he mentions that those of us that can clear this content quickly get rid of it to do extremes, savages and ultimates.
I struggle with that, first because I'm not very good with social and playing with strangers, and second, because I'm almost 40 years old and I really don't want to commit to wiping 360 times on an ultimate, I have better things to do, no shade to the people who do these things, y'all are really skilled and patient. I'm decent enough at the game for sure, I have tried raiding uwu in a static, and I was the best performing member. It isn't about being unable to do it, it's about being unable to commit and not wanting to commit. The content I do is leveling/experts/normal raids, even if I'd be able to do more, more doesn't appeal to me. Am I then to be left in the gap between experts and savages when there was content for me in that gap prior to EW ? I think my situation represents a majority of people who play this game too.
Notice that at no point I've been asking for savage and ultimates to be brought down to a level of commitment I can manage. I'm happy to leave this to the absolute chads who can commit and clear it, and am not even gonna touch on the fact that these people who do savages and ultimates still need and probably want to farm casual content.

[Jaxtaro]

Try to be a little more fair and nuanced. It's become reallybeasy and fashionable for people to equate a single positiin to some form of universal coddling. I'm kind of the poster child on this as an elderly, disabled person with vision problems, and there are a couple of things that are very true.

1. I am one who loves Arcadion (although not entirely thrilled with a couple of mechanics, such as the timer on the multiple lariat phase in bomber).

2. I didn't have much of a problem doing trusts while doing the MSQ, any learning curve helped me create musvle memory for subsequent runs with a group without being carried.

3. None of this obviates the fact that I still find the dungeon content overtuned as a normal duty, which will absolutely lead to less people queuing for daily roulettes, and this kind of thing has a long, sordid history in MMO's.

Gates of Discord and Cataclysm were precursors to this, and offer important lessons in how to and how not to address content difficulty questions.

The best play for SE is to acknowledge and support the needs of their whole playerbase, not pitting one against the other with a "winner take all" design approach.

Fact is, any online game, in order to remain successful, requires an influx of new players, and in a linear progression game such as this, a healthy population of veterans who queue up in daily roulettes to always have group access available when someone hits an MSQ dungeon or trial. By having normal content be too stressful or uncomfortable, especially for off jobs, people just dont queue, which has an impact on the entire population of the game, not just DT instances.

I believe that a two tiered approach requires the least amount of coding, which is...simply make some adjustments for a normal queue, and change expert queue from 2 dungeons to just a more challenging version of current content.


The reason that disabilities entered the discussion is because there exist a portion of the playerbase who have some challenge or other, be it age, disability, discomfort with performance anxiety, or just plain not high skill, who deserve to have a venue to play the game. There isn't one "right" way to play this game, which is also generally ridiculed by the recent rush to remain fashionable by piling it on those they deem "unworthy" (I am not including you in this, you seem receptive to some discussion, however also a little paranoid that people really want to replace the content you feel is fun and engaging by invoking shady tactics).

The people who disagree with you on this detail are not your enemy, nor are they looking to displace the content you like, but they want to be able to play without stress and feel comfortable doing what they have spent years doing...logging in, doing their dailies, maybe progress an off job or so and log off. At the end of it, it's not an unreasonable request, and it shouldn't come off as a threat or pernicious pandering.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Also like, in that person who mentions a disability's post, he mentions that those of us that can clear this content quickly get rid of it to do extremes, savages and ultimates.
I struggle with that, first because I'm not very good with social and playing with strangers, and second, because I'm almost 40 years old and I really don't want to commit to wiping 360 times on an ultimate, I have better things to do, no shade to the people who do these things, y'all are really skilled and patient. I'm decent enough at the game for sure, I have tried raiding uwu in a static, and I was the best performing member. It isn't about being unable to do it, it's about being unable to commit and not wanting to commit. The content I do is leveling/experts/normal raids, even if I'd be able to do more, more doesn't appeal to me. Am I then to be left in the gap between experts and savages when there was content for me in that gap prior to EW ? I think my situation represents a majority of people who play this game too.
Notice that at no point I've been asking for savage and ultimates to be brought down to a level of commitment I can manage. I'm happy to leave this to the absolute chads who can commit and clear it, and am not even gonna touch on the fact that these people who do savages and ultimates still need and probably want to farm casual content.

I havent got the time or energy to commit to savage/ultimate/extremes but doesnt mean that I wont dabble with a few friends and run them. But what I don't want is the game to turn into some retirement home where players are only just managing to do Island sanctuary. I'm also not a young gamer 43 here and yes i'm getting aches and pains with a few other issues thrown in.

[jdtuggey]

...

My understanding of the situation is "they've been bleeding players since that spike in SHB, even the devs started to think the game has become boring and they overdid simplifying the game". Yes, they need to include new players but they also need to be careful not to alienate their loyal playerbase, like, bleeding veterans is just as bad ?

I struggle with the idea of a two-tiered approach, cause that expert queue, if it's at the level of dawntrail content, will become the bar for "average player", and these players that are under this bar will still feel excluded, except now the game will be the one telling them they're "less capable".

How I interpret these posts: they play for the reward, feels like. They play to hear the game tell them "congratulations, you've cleared the content". The least effort they can put in to achieve that, the better. Then, they interpret we all play for this reason, so they don't understand when we tell them we want to be challenged in the content, and they say "well go do ultimates if you wanna challenged, that content is for you", which feels extremely unempathetic and really disconnected from the actual reality. Reality is most of us play to be challenged and overcome that challenge but we don't necessarily want to commit to ultimates or savage. I don't have time and I don't want to put the effort in that, am almost 40, am well beyond committing to a schedule or trying too hard on a video game.

Concerning disabilities, "Deserve to play the game" is such a strong word. It's a video game, not medical supplies.
No one "deserves" to play a particular video game, but if anyone here who has setbacks that prevents them from tackling certain types of content, there's other content in the game that are made for them that can also be pretty engaging, and then there's other video games at large. Yes, everyone deserves to be able to play video games, but no one is entitled to a particular video game. It's impossible to include everyone in a single video games anyways, from having seen so many games fail for trying to do just that.

And then, what about the people who still want to find fun in the content they've been doing for 10 years, watched the content made for them slowly degrade to accommodate more and more people, and see the changes in dawntrail as a vindication that this game is still for them and the developers care about them ? Are we going to take that away from them ? There's two sides to every medal.

Also, look at this from the perspective of Yoshi P, according to him, his life's work made him sleepy during endwalker. Would you wish that on anyone ? It's his and Square's game after all, not our game.

[jdtuggey]

I havent got the time or energy to commit to savage/ultimate/extremes but doesnt mean that I wont dabble with a few friends and run them. But what I don't want is the game to turn into some retirement home where players are only just managing to do Island sanctuary. I'm also not a young gamer 43 here and yes i'm getting aches and pains with a few other issues thrown in.

I feel that profoundly lol, my eyes aren't what they used to be, minor aches everywhere all the time, responsibilities throwing monkey wrenches at my face.....

[elshogoso]

FF14 is a really formulaic game. It's a bit sad that they're a bit too conservative when it comes to trying new things and ideas for the game. I feel like that creates on some players a bit of shock when they find themselves being taken out of their comfort zone - be it by the usual difficulty spike of a new expansion (where you are more likely to party with players who are also new to the content and won't carry you, and where you have the bare minimum ilvl for the content), as they're used to the game being extremely predictable even when it comes to things like the layout of overworld maps (see how many maps we got in dawntrail where you get 4 aetherytes, 2 each half of the map, usually separated by some kind of thing splitting the map in half?), or even to the kinds of content we get with a new expansion (exactly the same as in 6.0). FF14 casual content is gearing players towards staying in the comfort zone.

WoW is on the other extreme of the spectrum, they try to maintain the game fresh and innovative and end up changing the game to the point they end up having to re-release old versions of the game because the current game is completely different and old players no longer feel it's the game they got invested into.

So I get it, it's hard to balance those things. Both the "the game is too easy" and "this difficulty spike is too much" feedback are expected to be seen. There will be people thinking their job is too complicated. There will be thinking SQenix dumbed down their jobs too much by removing or simplifying buttons. I really, really don't envy the job of the designers of this game.

[Lizvette]

They luv, luv, luv to attack what they do not agree with even though it may be just suggestions. Sound familar?? Now we are chastized, hummiliated, bullied and berated for simple opinions. Sounds like woke finally reared their ugly heads in game.

you're a hypocrite that called other people "low IQ", while the only rotation you have mastered is that of a disciple of the hand.
drop your holier-than-thou attitude, because nobody is buying it.

[Besame]

you're a hypocrite that called other people "low IQ", while the only rotation you have mastered is that of a disciple of the hand.
drop your holier-than-thou attitude, because nobody is buying it.

You are the proof in the pudding. Look at my name plate. They change when you are on another char for a while leveling. It says on the plate you called hypocrite: "Main Class Bard L 100". Thanks for the chuckle, I needed it but it's best NOT to wake the sleeping giant...or her other 22 classes.

[jdtuggey]

You are the proof in the pudding. Look at my name plate. They change when you are on another char for a while leveling. It says on the plate you called hypocrite: "Main Class Bard L 100". Thanks for the chuckle, I needed it but it's best NOT to wake the sleeping giant...or her other 22 classes.

I mean, not like you haven't been able to answer the million of other criticisms in the thread, yet you're still acting like you know better.
Cat lady (I mean this in the best way possible haha ♥) is right with the holier than thou attitude, even if the steps she took to get there might be wrong. :P
And well, whether you're a giant or not, you wouldn't be the only one, not that it matters if you have all classes at 100, you can still be wrong. :P
Just the fact you're mentioning these 22 classes is very holier than thou, I feel like using that as an argument would be detrimental to my points, and would show that I have nothing better as an argument.
Then again, at this point, it's hard to take you seriously at all, I'm sorry. I got a real chuckle out of that post. Thanks for that. :P