@Casuals , do you think the message has gotten through?

[Kaurhz]

How is savage/ultimate any more "the focus" than it was 8 years ago in Strormblood or Shadowbringers when casual were happy?

I don't think the focus has changed, but many of the games subsystems are very hollow and soulless since Stormblood, tbh...

Like, even many of the side activities like crafting and gathering felt satisfying to engage with, they were rewarding... These days, it's just a shallow experience between all the streamlining, and gutting of abilities.... There is a point when you can QoL the life out of some parts of the game, and this is one of the biggest changes between Stormblood and now.

[Altina_Orion]

As a filthy casual, there's no repeatable content that I care to keep doing. I'm not into crafting, so Cosmic Exploration does nothing for me. Occult Crescent gets old very quickly, and I find the relics underwhelming and kinda ugly. Forked Tower is just a mess, and pretty much out of reach for casuals anyway. The second wing of Arcadion has so much visual vomit that it gives me a migraine. I've never played XI, so the alliance raid doesn't mean anything to me. Not a big fan of PVP either. And the main upcoming content is.....a deep dungeon. Which I'll probably do once to see the story and then forget about entirely, just like the last one.

So, I'm probably gonna unsub again until the next patch, do the story, and then decide if I want to stick around or go back on break.

Honestly it sounds like you don't like XIV. Was there ever content for you outside of dungeons and story you liked?

[Altina_Orion]

I don't think the focus has changed, but many of the games subsystems are very hollow and soulless since Stormblood, tbh...

Like, even many of the side activities like crafting and gathering felt satisfying to engage with, they were rewarding... These days, it's just a shallow experience between all the streamlining, and gutting of abilities.... There is a point when you can QoL the life out of some parts of the game, and this is one of the biggest changes between Stormblood and now.

I'm totally on board, but this doesn't have to come at the expense of savage/ulti level content. Realistically, SE needs to simply invest more into the game and take more risks. This game, even with its playerbase HALVED since ShB, still is VERY VERY profitable for the company.

[Kaurhz]

I'm totally on board, but this doesn't have to come at the expense of savage/ulti level content. Realistically, SE needs to simply invest more into the game and take more risks. This game, even with its playerbase HALVED since ShB, still is VERY VERY profitable for the company.

I don't think it should, and I don't think it has to... Like.. I don't think it's practical to go that path where they need to take away x to give y. The game just needs to have a little self-respect and realize that beyond a certain point they aren't really catering to anyone, or anything, aside from this misbegotten idea of all-or-nothing.. Like, they try so hard to address that 1 vague issue, and in doing so... Nothing gets addressed. aka... Endwalker and this expansion.

With how lifeless they've made most of the game, they've just created this dilemma where it's basically... raid or nothing, if you want to actually find yourself even remotely immersed or engaged.

I remember long ago where I could spend hours upon hours, learning, and playing with abilities like Whistle While You Work, seeing how far I could stretch a recipe, whilst still keeping the control of the success of the recipe in my hands... These days it's just... Completely shallow, with a system placed on top of it, designed to try and mimic that experience, when really the content will only ever be as fun as the abilities provided.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Honestly it sounds like you don't like XIV. Was there ever content for you outside of dungeons and story you liked?

While the story was always the main thing for me, there were plenty of other things. The problem is that I've done as much of them as I wanted to do, and there's nothing new coming up for me. So it's just a good time to take a break. I've been around since Heavensward, I've had plenty of time to get my value out of the game.

[Bryson]

You're unironically delusional if you think that they are actually catering to anyone.

You're playing aren't you? doesn't look like you raid much.

I've cleared FT like 6 times and a whole lot of people in our clear runs don't do savage or ultimates.

Aside from ultimates, there's really nothing a casual can't do.

whether you choose to engage in x content is up to you...

don't conflate being a casual with being lazy or disinterested.

[Kaurhz]

You're playing aren't you? doesn't look like you raid much.

I've cleared FT like 6 times and a whole lot of people in our clear runs don't do savage or ultimates.

Aside from ultimates, there's really nothing a casual can't do.

whether you choose to engage in x content is up to you...

don't conflate being a casual with being lazy or disinterested.

This is not my main character.

Good for them? I personally don't take an issue with the difficulty of FT itself. I take issue with the lack of continuity between the expectation of the duty, and how the devs 'intended' for the duty to be queued up, e.g., in a public instance. Literally don't even care outside of this point.

Not an argument I've even made, but OK? The argument I've personally made is that normal mode is a miserable experience. Not whether casual players can or cannot raid. With the way this game is designed, it is not casual unfriendly (Never made that point either). My point is that also if you want to have an engaging experience then your only option is to basically raid, because they've been routinely abandoning systems. I've raided in the past, enjoyed it, but didn't enjoy the accessibility behind it (Eden's Verse), stopped bothering since. That's all there is to it

Well done, sherlock? Again, not a point I even made.

Again, also not a point I even made? Are you coming in here just to call everyone lazy that doesn't raid or something?

I called you delusional, because you have this strange idea that the devs have been pandering to casuals, when in reality they haven't been pandering to anything or anyone beyond that misbegotten idea of all or nothing with feedback, and you've only really confirmed this seeing as you're trying to attribute arguments made by OP onto other people, e.g., myself.

[TaleraRistain]

I'm not a casual but it does feel like when Yoshi-P said he tipped the scales too far in one direction (easier) and wanted to introduce more friction, he's now tipping the scales too far in the other direction. The first mistake was Criterion. Criterion should have been a step above Variant to make that more accessible content. It might still be alive today if they had. Then Savage could have been the current Criterion version to provide challenge requiring more coordinated groups.

Chaotic was an interesting experiment. They didn't paste the "Savage" flag on it so I saw people who had never touched even Extremes try it out because I think they thought it was just a hard alliance raid. And to be honest, that's probably the route they should have gone with it. I never ended up completing it. I ran it for a few weeks at launch and groups just kept breaking up after one or two pulls so it wasn't worth it to me to keep trying to prog it. If it had been a hard version of an alliance raid, then I think it would have had more longevity. Hopefully they are keeping that example in mind and giving serious thought to dedicating resources to that content in the future, especially now that they admit a lack of resources as their reason for not having a normal Forked Tower.

Forked Tower needed a basic normal mode that used the cipher system in zone and a Savage challenge version that had a direct outside instance queue. You can do Dalriada do this day (or at least up to right before OC, I haven't been in there since OC drop) because people still in Bozja still love running it. You can easily do it even with newbies with a couple of groups worth of people. I took some friends through right before OC. This would have been content everyone from casual to hardcore could enjoy together.

I don't quite understand their thought processes. I think maybe they have this fixated idea of more challenge because that's the message they were sent at some point, but they're not considering how they need to balance that to make the majority of content something most players can enjoy.

[SalamanderIX]

I don't think anything has been addressed because the essential problem has stayed the same. The hard content in this game is too hard and the easy content is too easy.

I was somewhat feeling the weight of how much they expect from Hardcore players in the second half of Endwalker, Anabaseios was intensely difficult to clear in party finder. Now I want to make it clear this isn't a matter that I think learning these fights is all that hard for an average gamer, or even that takes a high degree of skill to defeat them. However also within is a massive overestimation of the average FFXIV players abilities, communication skills, and commitment. In Party Finder it shows. P10s was agonizing dedication of hours a night for over two weeks straight in party finder for me, it felt like I should had been doing an ultimate. P12S was the same. And this was after i memorized, and more or less mastered the mechanics. It was all too simply complex and punishing for 8 individuals who are unlikely to get everything perfect every time.
And then there was Critereon, which was just Savage again, but there was no players, barely any guides,it seems these were designed for raiders to chew into but none of them were interested. the content was DOA and now it's beyond dead due to having a forced level sync.

Dawntrail started off well with an easier first tier, but after Choatic the Cruiserweight Savage, they seem to be right back to where they were. M6S and M7S being massive walls with high execution, the ads phase being one of the most punishing mechanics ever and the boss of 7 having one of the strictest DPS chests since P8S p1.

The trouble is going to be always, Square wants to serve hardcore raiders. Many of the big raid streamers (not naming any of them) praised the hell out of something like p10s, some of them even called it the greatest savage ever. This sentiment is the exact opposite of most experiencing in in party finder or with a non-hardcore group. It was the most misrable fight ever. The trouble is harder=better is what gets the megaphone, and their viewers may feel inclined to promote these views, even if they don't raid themselves.
But I also sense, by making so much hard content these days, they want players to engage with this content. They *want* us to be raiders, they want those people who might had not tried to give it a try. Because afterall being into raiding makes for a dedicated player who will remain subbed for long periods of time to await new tiers and challenges.

So was it really so bad when lightweight was a little bit easier? I know some complained but the community was hardly on fire over it. There was a lot of positivity about the lower difficulty, especially after Anabaseios, and Abyssos.

As for the too easy part, there's a lot less to say. The dungeons are mostly hilariously easy and unrewarding, the MSQ is so afraid of challenge and there was few opportunities for it. I realize some players struggle, but would it really be so hard to give them something like - trust npcs are just godmoded to carry you, and msq challenges have a "very easy mode" toggle?

I'm not great at writing out solutions, other than there needs to be levels to raiding, and Square overestimates the average player. Forked Tower shows the extent of that overestimation, and to a lesser degree Chaotic.

[Volgia]

Honestly it sounds like you don't like XIV. Was there ever content for you outside of dungeons and story you liked?

I'm starting to think the anger a lot of people feel towards this game is because they are realizing it's an MMO.