Player Drop Off and Accessibility/Diffculty

[Mecia]

Put the ''difficulty'' back into jobs.

[Yeonhee]

There is a player base in this game that likes to do stuff at max level and ins't doing the latest difficulty dungeon ... they enjoy housing, glam and a myriad of other things, which has been the attraction of ffxiv in the first place ... and this for a long time has been the draw of the game for many players, including older players, disabled players, those who may play for themselves, with their children, or even grandchildren in some cases. They happily made their way through the MSQ, making mistakes and learning, not burdening other players with their lack of speed and reactions, and making their way via duty support to end game.

However, come DT and things changed.. The speed with which aoe's are chucked out is ridiculous for some players except almost professional players. Yes, we can work out our mistakes, yes, we can move when need, but not at that speed. Not as an older/disabled player.

I think that it's not only the lack of content, diffuculty of content or whatever ... I think alot of older and/or disabled players that enjoyed the game and invested a lot of money through subs and/or online store purchases, have now decided it all too much and cancelled their subs. They cannnot progress any further, especially if, as Yoshi has said, it will get even more difficult.

I know my post is coming from only one part of the fandom, but I also know that many other parts are unhappy, so what should they do ... or will they go down the Blizz route and not listen to anyone?

I'm all for some accessibility settings like disabling some of the bosses VFX of making clearer colors. But reducing the already quite easy difficulty even more and making the majority of the content boring for everyone just so a small minority can clear it easier isn't an healthy way forward.

Sure, DT is harder than EW which was a huge snoozefest but it's ridiculous to say that it's for "almost professional players". The normal's content difficulty is still quite easy. I know that's a quite unpopular opinion here but not all games has to be for everybody nor should they. If one finds DT's dungeon to be so hard that they can't manage to clear them, maybe it's time for that person to reconsider playing the game.

And telling people who don't want to fall asleep while playing to "just do savage/ultimate" is pretty ridiculous. Some people still want a baseline difficulty without having to throw themselves into the game high-end difficulty. Having only "inexistant" and "high-end" choices with nothing in-between isn't exactly a good way for combats.

Put the ''difficulty'' back into jobs.

That would be great but then you would have people still complaining that they now need to decently press buttons to clear content and that's still too hard for them because of age and/or disabilities.

[Mesarthim]

"The speed with which aoe's are chucked out is ridiculous for some players except almost professional players"

So the boss actually doing something other than standing around doing nothing but 3 autos in a row and saying hurr durr is for professionals now? Can't wait for 7.4's inevitable "this dungeon is too hard!" thread. You know it's coming and the cycle repeats.

[Jaltaer]

"The speed with which aoe's are chucked out is ridiculous for some players except almost professional players"

So the boss actually doing something other than standing around doing nothing but 3 autos in a row and saying hurr durr is for professionals now? Can't wait for 7.4's inevitable "this dungeon is too hard!" thread. You know it's coming and the cycle repeats.

Adding to this - in later/newer content, a lot of the time, if you can see the orange AOE marker, you're already too late to dodge. Most bosses and enemies have other tells and cues before their AOE goes off (using M7 as an example - Brute Abominator has an attack that can either be a point-blank or donut AOE. It's telegraphed beforehand by both the name on the castbar, as well as which of his weapons is glowing), the orange is pretty much there to let you know how far in/out you should be dodging, it's there as something you can remember for the next time the mechanic happens or you're in the fight. While I don't doubt that yes, there are people lazy enough to use plugins to solve mechanics for them, it's far more likely these hypothetical people being accused of cheating are simply paying attention and have learned the fight and its tells. Add that to the fact that pretty much every new fight is on a script these days, and it's not hard to preposition yourself for a good 80-90% of mechanics.

[Valence]

Adding to this - in later/newer content, a lot of the time, if you can see the orange AOE marker, you're already too late to dodge. Most bosses and enemies have other tells and cues before their AOE goes off (using M7 as an example - Brute Abominator has an attack that can either be a point-blank or donut AOE. It's telegraphed beforehand by both the name on the castbar, as well as which of his weapons is glowing), the orange is pretty much there to let you know how far in/out you should be dodging, it's there as something you can remember for the next time the mechanic happens or you're in the fight. While I don't doubt that yes, there are people lazy enough to use plugins to solve mechanics for them, it's far more likely these hypothetical people being accused of cheating are simply paying attention and have learned the fight and its tells. Add that to the fact that pretty much every new fight is on a script these days, and it's not hard to preposition yourself for a good 80-90% of mechanics.

Those cues are garbage. I'm not playing Seikiro, I'm playing a MMORPG.

What the fuck has happened to this game in pve over the years I don't even

[Yeonhee]

Cool so let's hope that 3% of the whole population can keep up the whole XIV then if they are focused only over those people.
The game will be just empty as never before and getting that back on track to be running up it's a quite a challange.

Harder content pretty much always have rather low clear rate because, well, they're harder and not everyone wants to bother with that. If you want content like savage/ultimate to have a high clear rate you would have to severely reduce the difficulty probably to normal raid level or, at the very most, extreme-level. But then you have to also reduce the actual normal-level difficulty otherwise it makes no sense. So you ends up with the high-end difficulty content to be easy and nothing in the game is remotely hard and challenging to do. You also alienate the majority of the players because all content are a snoozefest and nothing is remotely interesting to do. Overall, you end up with a dead game.

Hardcore raiders only gets 4 savages like every other patch and one ultimate once in a while, they've not remotely become the target audience. I would say that DT's target audience are the average casual people who don't necessarely want savage-level of difficulty but still don't want to fall asleep while doing every single piece of content.

Those cues are garbage. I'm not playing Seikiro, I'm playing a MMORPG.

What the fuck has happened to this game in pve over the years I don't even

And most MMORPGs have visual/audio cues for mechanics and not just a orange danger puddle on the ground for 30 seconds. And with most jobs now being braindead to play, you should be able to focus on something else than your rotation anyway.

[Myotis]

Harder content pretty much always have rather low clear rate because, well, they're harder and not everyone wants to bother with that. If you want content like savage/ultimate to have a high clear rate you would have to severely reduce the difficulty probably to normal raid level or, at the very most, extreme-level. But then you have to also reduce the actual normal-level difficulty otherwise it makes no sense. So you ends up with the high-end difficulty content to be easy and nothing in the game is remotely hard and challenging to do. You also alienate the majority of the players because all content are a snoozefest and nothing is remotely interesting to do. Overall, you end up with a dead game.

Hardcore raiders only gets 4 savages like every other patch and one ultimate once in a while, they've not remotely become the target audience. I would say that DT's target audience are the average casual people who don't necessarely want savage-level of difficulty but still don't want to fall asleep while doing every single piece of content.

I don't see how your personal skill could affect anything - current clear rate is a complete joke and disaster for an game like this and effects of it we can see each day seeing empty towns and waiting longer and longer in queue to get any duty done.

For the harder content you only need patience to learn certain quite boring dance where they want you to stand in certain position - your personal skill is unable to save the party from a wipe if anybody does a mistake.

I would say that normal content is made out to be too easy while it's fun to avoid the orange puddles the game does not promote anything requiring "skill" more of pattern learning i felt that a change was in valigarmanda fight and it was nice.

Extremes i find quite balanced if you are into DDR fight schemes
Savages - annoying and constant wipes during the prog are meant to exteend your grind on memorizng the patterns as the dps checks what require some better equipment later on.

as for Ultimates at first i tought they are unique but it's the same as the savage but just longer so you need quite more of the patience to learn your pixel standing spots.

Right now the clear rate for an mmogame is a pure disaster the effects of it we can see each day while we wait longer and longer in queues , while watching empty towns or quite less ammount of active PF's.

The game has massive issues with scalling, boss mechanic smoothness and there is insane visual clutter to only exteend the grind.

If this won't be fixed as you see now people won't bother - even top ultimate clear teams ain't bother at least 2 of them are being caught cheating each new ultimate is being realised.
This will only promote futher growth of black market for skips and cheating.

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

Harder content pretty much always have rather low clear rate because, well, they're harder and not everyone wants to bother with that. If you want content like savage/ultimate to have a high clear rate you would have to severely reduce the difficulty probably to normal raid level or, at the very most, extreme-level. But then you have to also reduce the actual normal-level difficulty otherwise it makes no sense. So you ends up with the high-end difficulty content to be easy and nothing in the game is remotely hard and challenging to do. You also alienate the majority of the players because all content are a snoozefest and nothing is remotely interesting to do. Overall, you end up with a dead game.

Hardcore raiders only gets 4 savages like every other patch and one ultimate once in a while, they've not remotely become the target audience. I would say that DT's target audience are the average casual people who don't necessarely want savage-level of difficulty but still don't want to fall asleep while doing every single piece of content.



And most MMORPGs have visual/audio cues for mechanics and not just a orange danger puddle on the ground for 30 seconds. And with most jobs now being braindead to play, you should be able to focus on something else than your rotation anyway.

Sorry but the 4 savage and 1 ultimate excuse dosn't fly anymore when hadcore raiders have been eating exceptionally good in dawntrail while everyone else had borderline 0 content until Occult Crescent.

They currently have 8 savage raid, 1 ultimate, 1 chaotic, 1 alliance raid (Forked Tower) and for some reason now we also have the Deep dungeon boss accessible by que with the difficulty cranked up to 11.
Meanwhile Casual players have: 8 normal raids, 2 alliance raids, Occult Crescent without an ending because of forked tower, ill be generous and say that the new deep dungeon is casual but its actually debateable due to requirement for entry aaaaaand thats it i guess.

I always laugh when YoshiP says in an interview that they want to make content for everyone from now on and thats why we have the new deep dungeon stuff shoehorned in, while forked tower and chaotic is still unplayable pieces of...content. Somehow the content for everyone means we also get a hard version of things, but for some reason i highly doubt the next ultimate will have a normal mode when you actually survive stuff and normal raids with the savage exclusive boss forms.

All in all lets just stop the copium, its obvious that square wants to cater to the hardcore raiders and it is objectively, actively reducing the playerbase in dawntrail and overall interest in the game.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Put the ''difficulty'' back into jobs.

Pretty much (mostly).

Are people surprised though? When you take out the difficulties from playing the job then dumps them into solely encounter difficulty, what else can they make other than increasing the amount of "stand here or die idc" and its severity?

Maybe it's cheaper for devs to do this (not enough cost lmao) because they only need to design mechanics for main tank and non-tank instead of trying to design for diff subroles but look what that has done to the rest of the game lol.

[Crafoutis]

Put the ''difficulty'' back into jobs.

From someone for who things come easily: doing the thing isn't the hard part.

I shouldn't find it difficult to make my Warrior combo correctly, that should be instinct.

The difficulty should come in the decision-making from the outside (the encounter), not from the execution (the player's kit)