Thoughts from a casual

[Alhanelem]

FF14 will end up being casual friendly.

"casual friendly' and 'hardcore friendly" don't have to be mutually exclusive.

[razz]

Am i the only one around here who thinks, that content in 1.x was already very hard (for a casual player)?
I think the problem is not that i am playing casually, it's more like nearly all of my LS mates where casuals. We only did runs, when there were 8 players online and it was very hard to get the same 8 players 2 days in a row. All challenges took us very long to win (Dzemael, Ifrit Hard, King Moogle Mog, Aurum Vale).
Some things (like Garuda hard, Raven normal) i could only finish with getting a spot in an experienced or japanese party. Maybe you will think, that im a losy player. But i usually played tank or bard and it really was a matter of party experience and concentration (and of course server lag).

But the most important thing is fun. Winning a hard challenge is fun. But often "hardcore" players fight only in static parties because they don't want to lose a fight due to casual players. And if you eventually get a spot in an experienced static, they just do the stuff, they still need and you have to accept it. Or else they get someone else for you...
It's not always like this, most players are very helpful. But the helpful ones are most likely casuals...

PS: Casual in my view is about 5-20 hours playtime a week.

[Zenaku]

Am i the only one around here who thinks, that content in 1.x was already very hard (for a casual player)?
I think the problem is not that i am playing casually, it's more like nearly all of my LS mates where casuals. We only did runs, when there were 8 players online and it was very hard to get the same 8 players 2 days in a row. All challenges took us very long to win (Dzemael, Ifrit Hard, King Moogle Mog, Aurum Vale).
Some things (like Garuda hard, Raven normal) i could only finish with getting a spot in an experienced or japanese party. Maybe you will think, that im a losy player. But i usually played tank or bard and it really was a matter of party experience and concentration (and of course server lag).

But the most important thing is fun. Winning a hard challenge is fun. But often "hardcore" players fight only in static parties because they don't want to lose a fight due to casual players. And if you eventually get a spot in an experienced static, they just do the stuff, they still need and you have to accept it. Or else they get someone else for you...
It's not always like this, most players are very helpful. But the helpful ones are most likely casuals...

PS: Casual in my view is about 5-20 hours playtime a week.

Most of the fight was not hard it was time base and that what made it hard and also the dam 15MIN wait time on everything. Everyone had to be top of there game to do the dungeon to get the item for relic or even get 5 chest run if one person d/c or fail it could cost the win for everyone.

I think that the issue with 1.0 time base and lag overall it was easy once everyone knew what to do but getting the same people everyday like you said was hard enough top of the lag,time base and such.

[fusional]

Things I liked in 11:

Difficulty:

grind != game difficulty. gear requirements != game difficulty. player efficiency impact != game difficulty. ffxi players commonly mistake these things as actual game difficulty, when they are not the same at all. aside from notable exceptions (AV, PW) few things in ffxi were ever very difficult. i guess CoP missions were a bit challenging at first, but then people cried and it all got nerfed. but otherwise, you could beat pretty much any boss using one of maybe three strategies (easy strategies at that), combat was terribly slow generally came down waiting 20-30 seconds to push a gear swap macro followed by a WS macro (the same WS every time, because it was your strongest) and maybe an ability macro every 5 minutes.

V 1.0 was just to easy, every part of it was easy

every part of it? so with this statement, i assume you experienced and completed every facet of FFXIV 1.0. a quick look at your history, however, proves this not to be true. while i'll readily agree *the vast majority* of content in xiv 1.0 lacked difficulty, i wouldn't say *every part* is easy because i know garuda (which i consider easy) was only completed by ~20% of the english speaking community, rivenroad (hard) was completed by ~5% of the english speaking community, and ifrit (extreme) was legitimately challenging even after people had completed it (due primarily to latency, to be fair). clearly there was a fairly small selection of actually difficult content, but it did exist. not participating in it or finishing it doesn't mean it wasn't there or wasn't difficult.

so perhaps the phrase you're looking for is "every part of xiv 1.0 i experienced was easy"

Solo play: I think many people have thought v 1.0 is more solo friendly than 11 but I feel that's completely backwards. Yes you can solo 1-50 and do most everything but instances on your own, but you could do alot of that in 11 also. I solo'd all the time in 11( being a fan of the least sought after jobs) I would find a spot which dropped items I needed for crafting and solo, slowly but solo it was. I think soloing should be easier but not as pitiful as it was in 1.0.

uh, what? xp tweaks after beta/launch made it faceroll easy to solo any job to 50, and then adjustments to crafting xp gain made the path to all 50 crafts extremely easy as well. there were quite a few jobs you absolutely could not legitimately level solo to cap in xi, and crafting has forever been completely punishing and unforgiving to skill up. the fact that you could sit down and solo like a sloth not only doesn't paint us a full picture (ie: did you solo those jobs all the way to 75/99? how long did it take? do others share your experience?), but it does absolutely nothing to back up your claim that solo is more friendly in XI than XIV. furthermore, you then contradict yourself with the very last sentence.

I think writing this has discouraged me even more about xiv but I'll save my judgement for when the servers come back up

awesome, cool, great. nostalgia goggles and bias lead to you being discouraged about a revamped incarnation of a game you haven't even experienced yet. good for you, then. but how is any of this supposed to help the devs make xiv better? it comes off less like you're trying to start a dialogue with devs with intent to improve 2.0 and more like someone needing an outlet for emotional expression/response.

maybe next time frame your intentions for what they are: to create a support thread for other XI fans who, for whatever reasons they can't fully articulate, feel discouraged about xiv 2.0.

if you want to create a structured thread with specific intent of helping devs and improving a game in areas that absolutely do need work- this isn't the way to do it.

(though, to be fair, there have been MUCH WORSE examples...)

[fusional]

FF14 will end up being casual friendly.

I remember a guy in LotRO sitting in Moria 8 hrs after they released Two Towers, level capped, complaining how it was too easy. It doesn't make any difference how "hard" they make it, power gamers will mulch through content like ruthless pit bulls, ignoring all finesse with the sole objective of completion. No Developer wants 2 years of their life to be turned in to exper ticks and 12 hr marathon grinds on low graphics because it improves performance.

and yet, look how successful MMOs have been that don't come stocked with a rich selection of challenging content for the hardcore players.

either A. they fail outright within a couple months of release and go f2p, or B. they sell a lot of boxes then suffer a slow death over the next 6-12 months, fading into MMO obscurity (and also usually going f2p)

casual-friendly content sells you the most boxes, and gets you a larger number of subs short-term. deeper, more difficult and involved content (generally designed for midcores and hardcores), however, is what keeps people paying and playing. (prime example- EvE)

"hardcores will just gobble up the content and crap it out in a couple hours" is hardly a valid justification for not bothering to design difficult content for a game. i mean, seriously? because some students will always finish their SATs in like 20 minutes with a nearly perfect score and say it was pretty easy, they should just make the SATs easier and more accessible for everyone else? that's idiotic.

a successful, healthy game that aims to be more than just another niche title primarily consisting of one particular gaming demographic needs plenty of content to keep each category of gamer happy. this is the WoW model, and 11 million subs (in an era where people keep CLAIMING f2p is the 'future' of gaming) is more than enough evidence that it works.

[Lady]

I talked about this in another thread, but I'll bring it up here too.
In FFXI, getting to lvl cap was an adventure by itself (of course this might have all changed since I last played) You couldn't just xp grind non-stop. There were points when you had to stop lvling and do other things. Like get your SJ, get the 3 keys to take the airship to Kazham, Mission Ranks, RSE, AF, etc. It wasn't just a "Grind to the top lvl" game. For a casual this might have taken years to do it all. All of that added to the immersion and adventure of the game. FFXIV didn't really have that. There weren't stops along the way to 50.

[fusional]

any time you force players to stop leveling to do other things, for whatever reason, those are essentially artificial roadblocks to progression. while i don't disagree that it led to greater immersion and sense of adventure in XI, it's also a major reason why XI was never considered a commercial success and predominantly kept only a small niche of dedicated players happy over the years.

adventure and immersion are important, without a doubt- but i don't agree that artificial roadblocks are the answer. especially not when the game using artificial roadblocks as an example was never very successful itself.

[Allesasi]

"casual friendly' and 'hardcore friendly" don't have to be mutually exclusive.

I consider myself as Casual Hardcore!!!!!!!!

[Lady]

any time you force players to stop leveling to do other things, for whatever reason, those are essentially artificial roadblocks to progression. while i don't disagree that it led to greater immersion and sense of adventure in XI, it's also a major reason why XI was never considered a commercial success and predominantly kept only a small niche of dedicated players happy over the years.

adventure and immersion are important, without a doubt- but i don't agree that artificial roadblocks are the answer. especially not when the game using artificial roadblocks as an example was never very successful itself.

I wouldn't say a game that has survived 10 years with enough players to sustain a P2P enviroment is a failure.

But as far as the "artificial roadblocks", to me they weren't that. I lvled to 18 to get my SJ, I lvl'd to 30 to get my adv job, I lvl'd to 40 to wear full RSE, I lvl'd to 60 to wear full AF. To me these were goals, not blocks.

[Zenaku]

I wouldn't say a game that has survived 10 years with enough players to sustain a P2P enviroment is a failure.

But as far as the "artificial roadblocks", to me they weren't that. I lvled to 18 to get my SJ, I lvl'd to 30 to get my adv job, I lvl'd to 40 to wear full RSE, I lvl'd to 60 to wear full AF. To me these were goals, not blocks.

NOPE ffxi pay itself x2 it pretty much what keep SE up and running to make FFXIV but they fail really bad. Here the problem with some people on here.

Some want casual and simple some want hardcore i don't see why we can't have both in a game i don't see the issue at all.


back to topic
You want Darklight sure do this dungeon and try and get it

Casual players: Would waste hours everyday hours they don't have to get it but they get token and can but the darklight a weak version but still good enough and i think that just what SE is doing with FFXIV so there you go if you don't want a weak version of that darklight i guess you work harder to you get it but 1-3 lower stats would really matter you still enjoy the gear and look nice you just wont have the best version.

I enjoy any gear i get even if it's 1-3 lower that better then working my ass off for 3week in a linkshell and getting out bid by other members. So it help both casual and hardcore still have something and keep up with other players a reward system for unlucky people